Jacobus De Vidts

For Pamel, my main sources - by far - are the two volumes of the "Gezinsreconstructie" by Rita Van Isveldt. I have stated before that, without these volumes, and without the work on Okegem by Herman Van Isterdael, my family tree would be nothing more than a very small sapling and a weak sapling at that. Even now, I haven't used all the information available in these volumes. I owe both the authors an everlasting debt of gratitude !

But even after these gigantic undertakings, small mysteries and inconsistencies remain, probably never to be solved.

The date given for the death (or burial) of Jacobus De Vidts in the previous post is not absolutely certain. Mrs Van Isveldt indicates that it may have been the burial date of another Jacobus De Vidts.

And then, for the children of Jacobus and Maaiken :

-- for Petrus De Vidts, there is no birth date. He married twice and died of the pest in 1668 ;
-- Maria De Vidts was born on December 19 1622 and died three moths later on March 20 1623 ;
-- Joannes De Vidts was born on September 2 1623, not fully nine months after his sister, and died ca 1623. His may have been a premature birth ;
-- but then another Joannes De Vidts was born six months later, on March 20 1624, with a different set of godparents. Nothing more is known about him ; he may have died young, or he may have married and died elsewhere. Most probably a mistaken note by the priest ;

Then the pace slows down :

-- Francisca De Vidts was born on May 19 1630, married and died in 1668, maybe from the pest like her brother Petrus ;
-- Martinus De Vidts was born op April 29 1637, and that's all we know about him, except that a Martinus De Vidts died in 1693 - possibly the same guy.

All this shows how hellishly difficult these family reconstructions can be. The parish registers were not always complete ; the parish priests were not infallible even when their writing was legible, which more often than not wasn't the case either.