As a general background, I'll list here my paternal lineage, starting from my grandfather (nr. 9 below) all the way back to my most distant known ancestor (MDKA) Nicolaas van Eessen (sometimes mentioned as van Eessenseune):
- Nicolaas van Eessen (b. ca. 1610 p.o.b. unknown - d. 1669 Slijpe) x 1655 Janneken de Ruysschere (3rd marriage)
- Joos van Eessen (b. 1664 Slijpe - d. 1730 Slijpe) x 1703 Arnolda de Pottere (2nd marriage)
- Nicolaas van Eessen (b. 1713 Slijpe - d. 1772 Leffinge) x 1742 Joanna Verscheure
- Pieter Vaneessen (b. 1742 Leffinge - d. 1818 Gistel) x 1769 Maria Goethals
- Francis Van Eessen (b. 1780 Gistel - d. 1864 Gistel) x 1804 Cecilia Mestdagh
- Francis Van Eessen (b. 1805 Gistel - d. 1855 Gistel) x 1839 Maria Devos
- Karel Vanheessen (b. 1849 Gistel - d. 1919 Gistel) x 1879 Pauline Vanmaele
- Emiel Vanheessen (b. 1880 Gistel - d. 1957 Gistel) x 1912 Clotilde Lingier
- Maurits Vanheessen (b. 1921 Gistel - d. 2010 Ostend) x 1950 Margariet Knockaert
The map below shows the 3 locations (numbered in blue) where my known paternal ancestors were born and have lived: Slijpe (1), Leffinge (2) and Gistel (3). During the Ancien Régime (until the French Revolution), both Slijpe and Leffinge were part of the shire of Camerlinckx (Camerlinckx-Ambacht), with Leffinge being the main parish of the shire. Gistel was a town and centre of the neighbouring shire of Gistel (Gistel-Ambacht). Both shires were part of the Franc of Bruges (Brugse Vrije), a castellany of the County of Flanders.
It was Nicolaas, grandson of the old Nicolaas and youngest child of Joos in his second marriage, who brought the family to nearby Leffinge, when he married Joanna Verscheure in 1742. His eldest son Pieter married in 1769 in nearby Wilskerke (also Camerlinckx-Ambacht). After a short stay there, he settled in 1770 with wife and first child in Gistel, and started what was to become the branch with surname variant Vanheessen, inseparably connected with the town of Gistel (as the majority of its members have been living there for more than two centuries).
The key question with this lineage is of course whether we can trace it back even further than our most distant known ancestor Nicolaas. In a 1645 review list of able-bodied men of Slijpe (monsteringslijst van weerbare mannen), who had to help and defend the area against all kinds of pillagers in turbulent times of war, Nicolaas is mentioned as being 35 years old. Hence, we do know that Nicolaas must have been born around 1610.
Unfortunately, it so far remains unclear where exactly he was born. Still, we can safely assume that it was not in Slijpe. After the Battle of Nieuwpoort (2 July 1600), which actually was fought in Leffinge, and the subsequent three-year Siege of Ostend (1601-1604), the surrounding area and the Camerlinckx-Ambacht were completely devastated and depopulated. The original inhabitants had abandoned the place to seek refuge from the war violence. When the Twelve Year's Truce brought a period of relative peace and stability from 1609 to 1621, some of the original inhabitants returned to their villages to restore the ruins and reorganise their lives. In the subsequent years, many others followed in their footsteps, attracted by the available space and fertile soil (incl. families from the south of present-day West Flanders, and also from French Flanders and North Holland). Most likely there was also a family van Eessen among them, who came to settle in Slijpe in the 1620s together with their children, among whom was also our Nicolaas.
The question then is: where did they come from? We don't really know for sure, but there are clues and they have to do with the red dots in the above map. These red dots indicate places where we find references to people with the surname van Eessen, throughout the 16th century and in the beginning of the 17th century. At the time, these places were part of the shire of Furnes (Veurne-Ambacht), another castellany of the County of Flanders. One of these places was Reninge, where the early parish registers (beginning 17th century) even allow us to reconstruct a complete family. Given the rather small distance between this area and Slijpe (about 20 km), it would not be very unlikely if our family van Eessen that settled in Slijpe was related to this van Eessen family of Reninge.
As far as I know, the Reninge family does not have any living descendants via male lineages in Belgium. However, one of the sons of this family, Joannes van Eessene (born in 1600), migrated to Leiden in the Netherlands to work in the textile industry (Flemish textile workers were very much in demand then and were actively attracted by a number of cities, incl. Leiden). He married there in 1623 and started a family with several offspring, incl. male lines. This means that there could still be living male descendants of this Joannes in the Netherlands or elsewhere with a variant of the van Eessen surname. In such case and if we can identify these people (or if they happen to read this blog and get in touch) it would be possible to confirm or disprove a possible common ancestry in the area of Reninge, by carrying out a simple Y-DNA test.
There is also a green dot on the map, which represents the village of Esen, near Dixmude (Diksmuide). The van Eessen surname (as well as its variants) is derived from a toponym, and, again given the small distances, it likely refers to an early namesake who must have come from Esen, being in the period that fixed surnames were first adopted in our regions (12th-13th century). I also have some hypotheses here, but let's keep that for another post.