Chapter 1. Joos Dewulf and Maiken Pateel, Kortemark, 1628 to 1718

This chapter tells a probable story, not a proven one. The couple are named as the parents of Louis Dewulf in an estate inventory known so far only from its index, and they appear as godparents to his children exactly as grandparents would. The inventory itself is still to be read.

A widower of Kortemark

Kortemark lies a few kilometres west of Torhout, among the same small fields and hedged farms. Apart from one small book of marriages for 1604-1621, its parish registers before 1760 are not online, and may not survive in the original at all. What survives is an alphabetical table of them, made in 1861 for the arrondissement commissioner, which lists every baptism, marriage and burial by name, with the page of the old register on which it stood.¹ The table is online at the State Archives, and every entry quoted in this chapter is shown below as it appears there. That table, the little marriage book, and the volunteer index of West Flemish records are the sources for this first chapter.

In the table there is a Judocus, baptised on 13 July 1628, son of Jan Dewulf and Joanna Verhelst.¹ A sister, Joanna, was baptised to the same parents on 21 September 1642, fourteen years later, on page 161 of the lost register.¹ No other child of Jan and Joanna is in the table; the gap between the two suggests that others were born in years the register has lost, or were entered under another spelling. Judocus is the Latin form of the Flemish name Joos, and he is the only Judocus Dewulf born in Kortemark at the right time to be the man of this chapter. That is a reasonable guess, not a proof. The Dewulf name was common in the villages between Torhout, Gits and Ichtegem, and there were other Judocus Dewulfs: one at Gits in 1621, another buried at Kortemark in 1646.²

The name was at Kortemark a generation earlier still. The one register that survives from before the table, a small book of betrothals and marriages for 1604-1621, has two Dewulfs in it: Gerardus de Wulf senior, a witness at a wedding in May 1607, and Charles (Carolus) Dewulf, betrothed on 16 January 1610 to Francisca, daughter of Joos de B[eyse?]. The hand is difficult, and neither man can be tied to Jan.⁷ The marriage of Jan Dewulf and Joanna Verhelst is not in that book, and not in the marriage register of neighbouring Zarren for 1617-1628 either; it has not been found.⁷

Kortemark's own orphan acts (wezerijakten), drawn up by the lordship whenever a death left minor children, survive from 1527, and an index of the couples in them, published in 1989-1990 and put online in 2021, reaches further back than any register: a Francoys De Wulf died at Kortemark about 1579 leaving children by Mayke De Bedts (vol. 1, p. 54) - the earliest Dewulf household in the parish, of the generation before Gerardus senior. The index also has acts for the Dewulfs of Jan's generation: Pryntken (Petronella) De Wulf, whose husband Joos De Bets died at Handzame in 1640 (p. 78); Cathelyne De Wulf and Joos Facx (p. 80); Josyne De Wulf and Pieter De Bruyne (p. 81), and a Josyne and Joos Mombeen, died 1676 (p. 101); and, in the 1670s, Rogier De Wulf and Anna Strubbe and Jan De Wulf and Pieternelle Strubbe (pp. 106-108). Each act names the guardians, and the guardian "on the mother's side" of the De Bets, Facx and De Bruyne children would be a brother or the father of Petronella, Catharina and Judoca De Wulf - the surest way left to learn whether Jan was their brother and who their father was. There is no act for Jan and Joanna Verhelst themselves, nor for Joos and Maria Bygodt: neither death left orphans under this lordship. The acts have not been read; the index only says that they exist.¹⁵

Where Jan himself came from is not known. Several family trees on the internet make him Jan, son of Joris (Georgius) Dewulf and Antonia Van Hoorne of Hooglede, whose sons Marinus and Antonius and daughter Maria did live at Kortemark in the 1630s and 1640s. The Hooglede registers rule that out. That Jan, "son of Jooris", married Margriete van Overschelde at Hooglede in August 1622 and went on baptising children with her there: Jan in 1623, Janneken in 1625, Maykin in 1627, Petronella in April 1629, Pieternelle in February 1630 and Willemijne in January 1632, and probably Judoca in 1636. In July 1628, when Judocus son of Jan Dewulf and Joanna Verhelst was baptised at Kortemark, he was a married man with a family at Hooglede. The Jan of Kortemark was another man.¹³

He was probably the Jan Dewulf buried at Kortemark on 11 June 1675, the only Jan Dewulf in the Kortemark burial table between 1624 and 1700; no burial of Joanna Verhelst is in that table at all. Where the couple married is still not known. Every marriage register of the district that survives for the 1620s has now been searched - Kortemark's own table, Koekelare page by page, and Zarren, Hooglede, Torhout, Eernegem, Aartrijke, Ardooie, Roeselare and Gistel through the index - and they are in none of them. Nor were their other children baptised at Kortemark, Handzame, Zarren, Koekelare or Hooglede; the family may have lived for years in one of the parishes whose registers are lost. Some other Dewulfs were at Kortemark in Jan's years: a Hermannus Dewulf, whose daughter Maria was baptised there in January 1627 and who later had children at Gistel, and a Gerarda Dewulf, wife of Paschasius Vermant, with children in 1627-1635. When Hermannus's son Joannes was baptised at Gistel in 1638, the godmother was Anna Malegar ux. Petri [Ver]hilst de Kokelaere, the wife of a Verhelst of Koekelare - the only record so far that joins a Dewulf to a Verhelst family outside Kortemark. It is a lead, not a link. That Koekelare couple, Joannes Verhelst and Anna Malegeer, had children there in 1635-1638; the godparents of their daughter Joanna (24 February 1637) were neither Dewulfs nor Verhelsts, and whether the Gistel priest's Petri is a slip for Joannis or a brother is not known.¹⁴

Jan and Joanna's daughter Joanna, baptised at Kortemark in 1642, may be the unmarried Joanna de Wulf who stood godmother at Zarren on 27 November 1669 - the only Dewulf in the Zarren baptisms of July 1669 to December 1671, which were read in full in the search for Loonis's baptism (chapter 2). She would have been twenty-seven.¹⁴

One Jan of the generation before ours is now known five kilometres to the west, at Esen, from the orphan registers of the Brugse Vrije: a Jan De Wulf, free tenant of Esen, alive in August 1632 as grandfather and guardian of the De Clercq orphans, whose son Jan (husband of Franchynken De Vos, married at Woumen in 1632) died at Woumen in November 1647 and whose other son was Mattheus (chapter 9). Esen's own registers are lost. Was the Jan of Kortemark a third son of his? Almost certainly not. The Esen man already had a son called Jan, alive until 1647, and families gave the same name to two living sons only when the first had died. That son cannot be ours either: in 1642, when Jan and Joanna Verhelst had their daughter baptised at Kortemark, he was married to Franchynken De Vos and baptising children at Woumen. And when his orphans needed guardians in 1649, the family chose Mattheus De Wulf, not the Jan of Kortemark, who lived until 1675. Nothing ties the two households together.¹⁶

Joos Dewulf married for the first time on 1 February 1665, at Kortemark, to Maria Bygodt.² If he was the boy of 1628 he was thirty-six. The marriage lasted two and a half years. On 31 August 1667 Maria Bygodt was buried at Kortemark; the burial table calls her "vrouw van Judocus", Joos's wife.¹ No child of this first marriage appears in the table.

Maiken

Ten weeks later, on 10 November 1667, Joos married again, at Kortemark: Maria Pateel.² In the estate inventory of their son she is called Maiken, the everyday Flemish form of Maria.³ A widower with a farm or a trade could not manage long without a wife, and remarriage within months was ordinary.

The Pateels were a family of the same corner of Flanders, recorded at Handzame, Kortemark and Koekelare from the 1630s.² Several online family trees make her the Maria, daughter of Petrus Pateel, baptised at Handzame on 27 February 1642. Petrus Plateel had married Maria Deghoe there in 1639, and their children follow in the Handzame tables from 1640 to 1651; the 1642 entry gives the mother only as "Maria". She would have been twenty-five at the wedding. But there is a second candidate: a Maria, daughter of Jan Plateel and Elisabeth Declercq, baptised at Handzame on 15 November 1637, and Jan had married Elisabeth at Kortemark itself. And in 1654 a Petrus Platteel had another daughter baptised Maria, with a mother called "Margareta" Degoe; if that is the same couple, the first Maria had probably died.

Weighing the two, the elder Maria is the more likely bride. Only two Pateel marriages were ever celebrated at Kortemark: Jan Pateel and Elisabeth Declerck in 1634, and Maria Pateel and Joos Dewulf in 1667; and Jan and Elisabeth's first child, Petronella, was baptised at Kortemark in 1636 before the family moved to Handzame. Of the two Pateel families, only Jan's had a footing in Joos's parish. The younger Maria, of Petrus, was very probably dead by 1654, when her parents gave the name again. And no other Maria Pateel of the right age is known to have married anyone else. Against the elder Maria is one thing: born in 1637, she would have been forty-four at the birth of her last child in 1682. The best reading, then, is that Maiken was the daughter of Jan Pateel and Elisabeth Declerck, baptised at Handzame on 15 November 1637; her brother Jacob, who died at Koekelare about 1690, left an estate inventory that has not yet been read. It remains a likely identification, not a proof.¹⁰

A village on the border

In Joos's lifetime Kortemark was a farming parish of small fields and pastures, with farms scattered along the Spanjaardsbeek, and flax spun and woven at home.⁶ Its church of Sint-Bartholomeus had been plundered twice in the religious wars of the sixteenth century, and wrecked again by the Geuzen about 1580. Rebuilding in yellow brick began about 1610. Two new altars, to Saint Bartholomew and to Our Lady, were consecrated in 1642, the year Joos's sister Joanna was baptised, and the church was complete about 1650.⁶ Joos married twice in the rebuilt church.

The peace of his youth did not last. In 1667, the year of both his weddings, Louis XIV's armies invaded the Spanish Netherlands in the War of Devolution, and about 1670 Wijnendale and the district of Kortemark only narrowly escaped being annexed to France. The Peace of Nijmegen in 1678 made Ieper French and drew the new frontier along the IJzer to Diksmuide, a short walk from Kortemark, and Vauban fortified it.⁶ Joos's children grew up on the edge of France. In July 1695, in the Nine Years' War, French troops pushed forward to Wijnendale and into the district of Kortemark itself. The Peace of Rijswijk in 1697 sent them back behind the border.⁶ That spring, two of Joos's children were married in the church at Kortemark.

The children

The Kortemark table lists five children of "Judocus Dewulf" and "Maria Pateel(s)":¹

The first Jan died before his third birthday, and the next son was given his name again. That was the usual way.

The son this history follows, Loonis, is not in the Kortemark baptism table. The children above leave room for him in 1669-1671, 1673-1675 or 1679-1681. He was probably baptised in a neighbouring parish, where the family may have lived for a few years. The registers of those parishes have not yet been searched for him.

But he married at Kortemark. The marriage table has "Leo Dewulf" and "Van de Casteele Maria", 7 April 1697, page 645 of the lost register.¹ Leo is the short Latin form of Leonardus, one of the names the Torhout priests gave Loonis (chapter 2), and Maria Van de Casteele is his wife. Six days later, on 13 April 1697, his sister Godelieve married Adrianus Lust in the same church.¹ Two children of Joos married within a week of each other, in their father's parish. Adrianus Lust will return: twenty-one years later he stood godfather to Loonis's youngest son. The couple's children were baptised at Kortemark and Torhout between 1700 and 1720. Adrianus was buried at Handzame in 1739, and Godelieve was buried there as his widow on 16 February 1744, aged about sixty-six.⁸

Godelieve's children

Godelieve's children stayed in the same corner of Flanders, and their baptisms, where the originals survive, show who the family turned to. Her husband, Adrianus Lust, was himself a Kortemark man, baptised there on 20 March 1671 as the son of Guilielmus Lust and Adriana Vandenberghe.¹² Two daughters settled at Moere, near Gistel. Maria married Joannes Pierquaert; Dorothea, born in 1710, married Jacobus Provoost there on 21 June 1729, with her brother-in-law Pierquaert as witness, and died in May 1733, twelve days after the birth of her third child. At two of these Moere christenings, in 1729 and 1730, the grandfather Adrianus Lust stood godfather.¹² The son Petrus, born in 1713, had died by August 1752, when a posthumous daughter of his was baptised at Handzame with his sister Veronica as godmother. Veronica, born in 1720, married Matheus Doom at Handzame in 1742 and, after his death, the much younger Petrus Van Caillie of Roeselare. When her daughter Rosalia Doom was baptised in June 1753 the godmother was a Petronilla de Wulf. Two women of that name were living at Handzame then: Pieternelle, the daughter of Godelieve's brother Loonis, who had married Joannes Goes in 1750, and Petronella, the wife of Georgius de Beuckelaere, of another Handzame Dewulf family. If it was the first, the two branches of Joos's family stood together at the font; the register does not say which. And in 1761 Veronica named a daughter Godeliva, after her mother.¹²

Marinus, the brother who stayed

The eldest son, Marinus, stayed at Kortemark. He married Joanna Vanwalleghem there on 12 April 1692, and their children were baptised at Kortemark from 1695.¹² One of them, baptised on 5 April 1708, was named Ludovicus.¹ That name will matter in the next chapter, because Ludovicus is one of the ways the clerks wrote Loonis. Joanna Vanwalleghem was buried at Kortemark on 5 May 1723, and the table still calls her "vrouw van Marinus", the wife of Marinus: he was alive. When he died is not known; his burial is not in the Kortemark table.¹

Online family trees give him a second wife, Godelieve Vanhecke, and a death on 6 August 1737. That belongs to his son. A Marinus Dewulf married Godelieve Vanhecke on 19 August 1722, nine months before Joanna died, so he cannot be Joanna's husband; he is the son Marinus, baptised in 1695. It was this younger Marinus who was buried on 6 August 1737 as the widower of Godelieve Vanhecke, seven weeks after her.¹

Of Marinus's own children, Maria Catharina, baptised on 13 October 1702, married Josephus Vansteenkiste; their children were baptised at Kortemark in 1723, 1728 and 1730, and she was buried there as his wife on 20 April 1736, aged thirty-three.¹²

Grandparents at the font

Loonis and Maria vande Casteele set up house at Torhout, and their children were baptised at Sint-Pietersbanden. Flemish custom asked the grandparents to stand as godparents to the first grandchildren, one from each side. The Torhout registers show exactly that:⁴

• On 20 February 1699 their first son was baptised Judocus, and his godfather was Judocus de Wulf.
• On 1 March 1701, at the baptism of twins, the godmother of the first twin was Maria Pateels, and the godfather of the second was Judocus de Wulf again.
• On 6 January 1703 the godmother of their daughter Maria Godeleva was Godeleva de Wulf, who fits the Godelieve baptised at Kortemark in 1678: an aunt, aged twenty-four.

The pattern held to the last child. When Adrianus Judocus was baptised in October 1718, his godparents were Adrianus Lust (the priest wrote "Dust"), the husband of Loonis's sister Godelieve, and Joanna Waelegem, wife of Marinus de Wulf, the wife of Loonis's brother.⁴

So a Judocus de Wulf, a Maria Pateels and a Godeleva de Wulf stood for the children of Loonis de Wulf, and Joos's son-in-law and daughter-in-law for the youngest. It is the pattern one would expect if Loonis was the son of Joos Dewulf and Maria Pateel. The estate inventory of Louis Dewulf, known from its index, says the same thing in so many words: his father was Joos Dewulf, his mother Maiken Pateel.³

The end of the story

Joos's death has not been found. There is no burial of a Judocus Dewulf, husband of Maria Pateel, in the Kortemark table, so he may have died elsewhere, perhaps near his son at Torhout. But he died before his wife: when Maria Pateel was buried, the table calls her "weduwe van Judocus", the widow of Judocus.¹ And there is a candidate. On 24 June 1705 the Torhout register records, in a single line, sep: Judocus de Wulf: "buried, Judocus de Wulf". On the same pages the clerk writes every child as "son of ..., so many years old" or "infant"; this entry has neither, so it is a grown man, not Loonis's six-year-old son of the same name. An old Judocus de Wulf buried at Torhout, where his son lived, eleven years before his widow: if this is Joos, he was seventy-six or seventy-seven, which fits the boy baptised at Kortemark in 1628. The entry does not name a wife or a son, so it remains a likely identification, not a proof.⁵

Some online family trees place Joos's second marriage, and his widow's death, at Zarren, the next parish to the west. The Zarren registers do not bear that out. Its marriage book runs without a gap from July to December 1667 and has no wedding of Joos, and its burial books for 1704 to 1718 have no burial of him; his widow's burial was at Kortemark. That leaves the Torhout burial of 1705 as the only candidate found.⁹

Maria Pateels was buried at Kortemark on 27 September 1718.¹²

A week later, on 4 October 1718, her grandson Adrianus was born at Torhout. He is the next link in this line.