Chapter 8. August Deschacht and Paraïlde Allemeersch, Bekegem and Zedelgem, 1883 to 1971

To Zedelgem

August, born in the inn at Bekegem in 1883, grew up to be a butcher. By 1913 his parents, Fredericus and Ludovica, had left Bekegem and were farming at Loppem, south of Brugge, and August lived with them. On Thursday 29 May 1913, the day before his thirtieth birthday, he married Paraïlde Allemeersch at the town hall of Zedelgem, her village, before the mayor Karel Lievens.¹

The bride was a kantwerkster, a lacemaker - in those years thousands of West Flemish women and girls worked bobbin lace at home for the Bruges dealers. She had been born at Zedelgem on 25 September 1885, the daughter of Lodewijk Allemeersch and Ludovica Keirsebilck. All four parents were there and consented. Six days before the wedding the couple had signed a marriage contract before the notary Vercruysse at Ruddervoorde - a sign that there was some property to settle. The witnesses were a stair-maker and a merchant of Zedelgem, no relatives. The groom signed De Schaegt August, spelling his own name the old way; the bride signed in full, and so did August's mother, L. Meulemeester. His father, at seventy-one, and both of the bride's parents declared that they could not write.¹

They settled at Zedelgem, between Torhout and Brugge.

Their son Camiel Joseph was born at Zedelgem in 1915 and died there in September of the same year, an infant of the first war year.² West Flanders was by then occupied country: the German army held the whole region behind the Yser front, and Zedelgem, like Torhout a few kilometres south, lay in its rear area for four years.⁶ Zedelgem was more than a rear area: the Germans made it a supply base for the Yser front. They laid tram lines, built ammunition depots and stores, made an airfield, and turned the Claeys works - the firm that had begun making Flandria bicycles in 1896 - into an artillery workshop.⁷ The headquarters of the German Fourth Army, with its commander Duke Albrecht of Württemberg, was at Tielt, where the Deschacht line had begun; the Kaiser came there in 1914, 1915 and 1916.⁸ Camiel and Godelieva were born into a village full of soldiers, and Godelieva was two when the Germans left in October 1918.

Godelieva

On 25 August 1916 August, "a man of thirty-three born at Bekegem", reported to the acting mayor of Zedelgem the birth of a daughter, born two days before, on 23 August 1916, at two in the afternoon. The mother was his wife Paraïlde Allemeersch, thirty-one, born at Zedelgem. They named the child Godelieva.³

Godelieva Deschacht married Sidon Dewulf of Torhout, the last man of the line told in The Dewulfs of Torhout. The records of the 1930s and later are closed to the public, so the date and place of their marriage are not yet known. August died at Brugge on 1 September 1971, and Paraïlde in the same year. They lie together under one stone, "Familie Deschacht-Allemeersch", in the cemetery of Veldegem, a parish of Zedelgem.⁵ Godelieva died at Jette, in Brussels, on 22 October 2004, aged eighty-eight.⁴

Epilogue

Sidon and Godelieva's daughter is Ingrid Dewulf. She married Peter Saeij, of the family whose history is told in The Saeijs of Sleidinge and Zeeland; their son is Jeroen Saeij, and his son is Johan Saeij-Torreiro. Through Godelieva, the Deschachts of Tielt, Wingene and the villages west of Brugge join the Dewulfs of Torhout and the Saeijs of Sleidinge: three families of Flemish farmers, labourers and innkeepers whose lines meet in one household today.