The Dewulfs of Torhout

Chapter 10. How we know, and what is still open

The method

This history was built from the records outward, not from a family tree inward. A pedigree printed in 2019 and the author's FamilySearch tree served as leads. Every link was then looked up in the registers themselves:

Three corrections

The wrong Joannes Baptiste. The 2019 pedigree made the ancestor of generation 4 a boy baptised in 1764, son of Josephus Dewulf and Maria Vanhollebeke, and carried the line back through Staden to about 1599. The civil marriage of 1797 quotes the ancestor's birth record: 28 November 1758, son of Adrianus de Wulf and Joanna de Vulder. The baptism register confirms it. Everything the pedigree gives before 1758 belongs to another family (chapter 4).

The man with six names. The father of Adrianus is written Eulonius, Leonardus, Lionis, Ludovicus, Louis and Loonis. The indexes treat him as three or four men. He was one: the mother and the godparents are the same every time (chapter 2).

Wrong dates in an index. The index of estate inventories gives Louis Dewulf a death date of 30 January 1760. That is the death of an eighteen-year-old girl of another branch at Handzame. His widow was buried in 1751 (chapter 2). The cause turned out to be mechanical: in this part of the index each date of death is printed one line too early. The same slip gave his son Pieter the death of a Hooglede widow of ninety-three in September 1761, when Pieter had been buried at Handzame in March 1736. An earlier version of chapter 2 repeated that date.

What is proven, and how strongly

Link Evidence Grade
Sidon ← Victor × Flavie Muylle birth act 1913 A
Victor ← Desiderius × Barbara Hillewaere birth act 1879 A
Desiderius (= Desiré, 1841) ← Carel × Eugenia Borra birth act 1841; marriage act 1875 A
Carel ← Jan × Anna Theresia De Corte marriage act 1834 A
Jan (born 1758) ← Adrianus × Joanna Theresia de Vuldere marriage act 1797; baptism 1758 A
Adrianus (1756 groom) = Adrianus Judocus, born 1718, ← Loonis × Maria vande Casteele baptism 1718 (A); the only Adrianus de Wulf baptised at Torhout 1700-1760 (the "rival" of 1722 was a Denolf); five family ties 1738-1768 (A) B
Loonis ← Joos Dewulf × Maiken Pateel estate-inventory index (B); index of the Kortemark orphan acts: Louis († 1722) with Joos De Wulf × Mayke Pateel, vol. 2 p. 31 (B); grandparents and an aunt as godparents, 1699-1703 (A for the entries) B
Joos ← Jan Dewulf × Joanna Verhelst a Kortemark baptism of 1628 in the 1861 table C

What would settle the open questions

  1. The estate inventories of Louis Dewulf (no. 1058), his son Pieter (no. 1063), his daughter Pieternelle's husband Joannes Goes (no. 893) and Joanna Theresia Devuldere (no. 1023). They should name the children and their guardians, and so say outright that the Adrianus of 1756 was the son of Loonis - the only Adrianus de Wulf baptised at Torhout in those years. A request to the State Archives in Bruges is ready. The Kortemark orphan act of 1722 for Louis De Wulf (Coghe, vol. 2, p. 31) asks the same question of a second source; it is in print and in the Kortemark municipal archive.

  2. Whether Joos is the Judocus baptised in 1628, son of Jan Dewulf and Joanna Verhelst, brother of the Joanna baptised in 1642. Only the lost Kortemark originals, or an estate inventory, could say. Their marriage is not in the Kortemark book of 1604-1621 or in the Zarren marriages of 1617-1628, and no child of theirs was baptised at Zarren between 1617 and 1651. Where Jan came from is open too: the Jan son of Joris Dewulf of Hooglede whom several trees name is ruled out by the Hooglede registers (chapter 1). (Loonis's own marriage, once an open question, has been found: Kortemark, 7 April 1697.) The orphan acts of Kortemark for Pryntken, Cathelyne and Josyne De Wulf (Coghe, vol. 1, pp. 78-81) name their guardians on the De Wulf side - a brother or the father - and Francoys De Wulf († c. 1579) is the household to test against. (The older Jan De Wulf of Esen has been tested and is very unlikely: he already had a son Jan living elsewhere; chapter 1.)

  3. The baptism of Loonis, about 1670-1681. It is not in the Kortemark table, and no baptism of a Ludovicus or Leonardus Dewulf of those years is indexed anywhere in the region. The Handzame registers before 1752 are lost except for their table, which does not have him either. Werken (February 1669 to March 1673) and Zarren (July 1669 to December 1671) have now been read page by page [S53, S16] and have no Dewulf baptism at all, and the indexed parishes around (Torhout, Koekelare, Ichtegem, Bovekerke, Eernegem, Staden, Lichtervelde, Gits) have none that fits. He was almost certainly baptised at Kortemark and missed or garbled by the clerk of 1861; only the lost originals could say more. A birth in the gap between the two Jans, 1672-1676, is also possible and has not been searched at Werken or Zarren.

  4. The deaths of Loonis and Barbara. For Loonis, the Torhout burials of 6 December 1720 ("a married man") and 5 December 1732 are the two candidates. The Kortemark orphan acts ("+ 1722") and the estate index, which dates his inventory December 1722 once its one-line shift is allowed for, both point to 1720 (grade C); only the inventory itself can settle it. Barbara Hillewaere was alive in 1903 and is not in the Torhout death tables to 1920. (Settled since the first draft: Desiré died at Torhout on 29 January 1894; Joos has a likely burial at Torhout in 1705, and the Zarren burials of 1704-1718 do not contain him.)
  5. (Settled: Victor Dewulf and Flavie Muylle married at Torhout on 18 November 1903.)

Where the records are

← Chapter 9. The other Dewulf families of Hooglede, Gits and KortemarkChapter 11. The Deschachts, from Tielt to Zedelgem, 1660 to 1916 →