Part One. Destelbergen and Sleidinge, about 1560 to 1767

Chapter 1. Joannes Say and Livina Buyle, Destelbergen, about 1560 to 1627

The first two chapters of this history tell a probable story, not a proven one. From chapter 3 onwards every generation is joined to the next by a record that names the father. Here the joins rest on the run of the records, on names, and on who stood at whose font: strong, but not certain. Each of these chapters ends by saying exactly which document would make it certain, and where that document is.

A village on the Scheldt

The oldest people who can be seen at the head of this family lived at Destelbergen, a village on the north bank of the Scheldt, just east of Ghent and about fourteen kilometres south-east of Sleidinge.¹ Its parish church was dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-ter-Sneeuw, and in the spring of 1598, as the worst of the wars of religion receded, its priest began a register of baptisms. He wrote his name on the flyleaf and the date, 18 March 1598, and for the first year he kept his entries in Latin; from 1599 he wrote many of them in Flemish, desen ... es kersten ghedaen het kindt van ..., "on this day was christened the child of ...".² The burials in the same book begin in 1611, the marriages in 1600.

Say was not a rare name at Destelbergen. In the first years of the register two Say fathers brought children to the font, and older members of the family stood as godparents. The one who concerns us is written Joannes Saij, Jan Sey and, in the end, Joannes Say senior.

The household of Joannes Say senior

Three children of a Joannes or Jan Say were baptised in the first eight years of the register.

• Judocus, baptised on 27 November or December 1598. The clerk wrote the day and the year but forgot the month; the entry stands at the head of page 4, and the last dated entry on page 3 is of 29 November, so December is the likelier reading. His godparents were Judocus van Dijpe and a Catherina Saijs, a Say woman of the older generation.³
• Reynierken, baptised on 7 March 1603, "son of Jan", named after his godfather Reynier Gheldof.⁴
• Serlote, Charlotte, baptised on 21 December 1605, "daughter of Jan". Her godfather was Lieven Sey: a grown man called Livinus Say, living at Destelbergen in 1605, and very probably the Livino [S]aeij who had stood godfather on the second page of the register in July 1598.⁵

None of these entries names the mother. That is the way of this register in its first years, and it is why the father's wife has to be found at the other end of her life. On 17 July 1627 the priest wrote: Decima septima Julij 1627 obijt Livina Buijls vidua Joannis Say, "died Livina Buyls, widow of Joannes Say".⁶ And six years earlier, on 20 February 1621, on the last page of the burials of the first register, he had written the husband's death: Obijt 20 Februarij 1621 Joannes Say senior, "Joannes Say the elder".⁷

That one word, senior, is the hinge of this chapter. A priest does not call a man "the elder" unless there is a younger man of the same name in his parish. The younger one appears on page 46 of the same register, and he is the subject of chapter 2.

Joannes Say senior was born, at a guess, between 1555 and 1565: old enough to have a son who was married by 1612, and to have children of his own until 1605. Where he was born, and who his parents were, no record says. The Destelbergen register begins too late, and the court papers of the village that could name him, the estate inventories and orphans' accounts of its bench of aldermen, have not been searched.⁸ The name is found in the city of Ghent from 1605, when a Petrus, a Niclaeijs and an Adrianus Sey appear in its marriage registers; whether the Destelbergen Says came from the city, or the city Says from the villages, is not known.⁹

The second household, and the name Lieven

Beside Joannes lived a Petrus Say, whose daughter Maria was baptised on 10 June 1599, and whose daughters Synken (1602) and Vijnken (1605) follow in the index.¹⁰ Vijnken is the Flemish pet form of Livina, and the child's godmother was another Vijnken Seys. So by 1605 the Destelbergen Says had a Lieven and two Livinas among them, before Livina Buyle's own name is recorded. The name was in the family. It is worth remembering when, two chapters on, a Livinus Say appears at Sleidinge with no baptism to his name.

The sons who married at Destelbergen

Between 1618 and 1625 four Say men married in the village, and two of them can be tied to Joannes senior and Livina Buyle by a record.

On 31 January 1627, ten weeks before Livina's own death, Jacobus Say and his wife Anna Schatteman brought a son to the font. The priest named the godparents: Joanne Scattemans et Livina Buyls vidua Joannis Saij, "Joannes Schattemans and Livina Buyls, widow of Joannes Saij".¹¹ A grandmother standing for her son's first boy is the commonest thing in these registers, and it makes Jacobus, who had married Anna Schatteman on 7 June 1625, a son of Joannes senior and Livina Buyle.

Ten weeks later, on 11 April 1627, Jacobus stood godfather himself, to Anna, the daughter of Gerardus Say and Maria Baert, who had married in July 1621. Brothers stood for each other's children more often than cousins did, so Gerardus was probably a brother of Jacobus; but a godfather could be a cousin, and this link is weaker than the first.¹² The second record is eight years older. Balduinus Say was betrothed to Catharina de Somer on 30 September 1618, with a Livinus Seij as his witness, and married her on 21 October. Their first child, a girl, was baptised on 28 July 1619, and the priest wrote down her godmother as Livina Buijls uxore Joannis Seij, "Livina Buyls, wife of Joannes Seij", and her name as Livina. The grandmother at the font again, two years before her husband's death, and the child given her name: Balduinus was a son of Joannes senior and Livina Buyle too.¹³ Catharina died in August 1627, and Balduinus married Maria Mathys after her. A fourth Say man of the same generation, Livinus, whose children with Margareta Vandevelde were baptised from April 1621, is made a son of Joannes and Livina by the published family trees, and by nothing else.

The family that the trees gave us

For years the family trees on Ancestry, FamilySearch and Geneanet, the family's own among them, ran our line through this village. They were right about the village and wrong about the branch. The trees followed Jacobus: his son Joannes, baptised on that January day in 1627, married Barbara Baert at Destelbergen on 14 October 1651, with his father Jacobus as the first witness, and their son Joannes was born on 6 December 1661 and baptised on the 8th. The trees took that boy for Joannes Saey of Sleidinge, who died in 1719, and gave him the Sleidinge birth date of 18 June 1660.¹⁴

The Sleidinge registers undo that link twice over. The Sleidinge boy of 1660 was baptised as the son of Livinus Saij and Maria Kerrebrouck, and buried in 1719 as the son of Livinus; the Destelbergen boy was born eighteen months later to Joannes Say and Barbara Baert, and the two families were raising children in two parishes at the same time.¹⁵ Somewhere along the way two boys of the same name and nearly the same age were taken for one. The error was copied from tree to tree, and it hid something true: the Destelbergen Says are our people, one generation and one brother away from where the trees put them. Jacobus is, if the next chapter is right, Livinus's uncle; the Joannes of 1627 his first cousin; the boy of 1661 that cousin's son.

What would make this certain, and how you can help

Two things in this chapter are inferred rather than read.

1. That Joannes junior was the son of Joannes senior. The priest's senior of 1621 and junior of 1612 say that two men of the name lived in the parish, one older than the other; in a village of this size that nearly always means father and son, and the naming of Livina in 1612 and again at Sleidinge in 1630 points to Livina Buyle as the grandmother. But no record yet says "Joannes Say, son of Joannes".
2. That Jacobus and Balduinus were his sons rests on the grandmother at the font in 1619 and 1627, and that Gerardus was on the brother at the font in 1627.

The document that would settle both is an estate paper. When Joannes senior died in February 1621 and Livina Buyle in July 1627, the village court should have drawn up a staat van goed for their estate, or a guardians' account for any child still under age, and such a paper lists the heirs by name. The court records of Destelbergen survive: the State Archives in Ghent hold the fonds "Destelbergen. Schepenbank en Parochie, 1598-1795" (reading-room code AR32).¹⁶ Nobody has yet looked in it for the Says.

If you can go to Ghent: the reading room of the Rijksarchief Gent is at Bagattenstraat 43, 9000 Gent (telephone +32 9 265 76 70, rijksarchief.gent@arch.be). It is open on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9.00 to 16.30, closed on other days and on public holidays, and a seat must be reserved through the archive's online reservation tool at least two working days ahead; a reader's card is issued on the spot with an identity card.¹⁷ Ask for the inventory of AR32 (Destelbergen, schepenbank), and in it for the staten van goed, wezerijboeken or wezenrekeningen of the years 1621 to 1635. Look for Say, Saij, Sey, Saey with the first names Jan (the father, died February 1621), Lievijne Buyle, Buyls or Buijls (the mother, died July 1627), and the sons Jacques, Geeraert, Bauwen, Lieven and Jan de jonghe. A photograph of any page naming them, with the item number and the folio, is what this history needs. The same fonds may hold the marriage contract or the land dealings of Joannes junior before he left for Sleidinge.

If you cannot go: the archive sells scans through the "Order a reproduction" button on its AGATHA catalogue, but only for items whose number is known; the inventory itself is not online. A member of Familiekunde Vlaanderen in Ghent or Aalter may be willing to look on request.

What anyone can do from home: the marriages of 1600 to 1621 (pages 78 to 102 of the first register) and the baptisms of 1598 to 1627 are online, on AGATHA and on FamilySearch. The witnesses at the weddings of Balduinus (1618), Gerardus (1621) and Jacobus (1625), and the godparents of their first children, have not all been read. A "Joannes Say junior" or a "Maria Vereecken" among them would be the first record to put the Sleidinge couple beside the brothers.