May 17 1840

Antonia De Vidts was born in Pamel as the third child of Joannes De Vidts (Pamel 1811 - 1881) and Maria Elisabeth Van der Sleyen (Pamel 1811 - 1860). They lived in the Koestraat and had seven children :

Henrica (Pamel 1835 - 1873) ;
Philomena (Pamel 1837 - 1870) ;
Antonia (Pamel 1840 - she probably died in Meerbeke and I still have to look up the date) ;
Petrus Josephus (Pamel 1843 - 1891) ;
an unnamed baby who died on the day of its birth in 1845 ;
Benedictus, who lived for about three months in 1847 ;
Jan Baptist (Pamel 1850 - 1860) ;
Felix (Pamel 1853 - 1940).

It may well be the loss of her third child that led to the premature death of Maria Elisabeth in 1860 - she died a couple of months after Jan Baptist ...

Antonia married Ludovicus De Schepper (Meerbeke 1833 - ?) in Pamel in 1862. As stated many times before, they were the great-grandparents of my father ; her brother Felix and his wife Blondina Muylaert (Denderhoutem 1849 - Pamel 1942) were the maternal grandparents of my mother.

My mother's mother Maria Antonia De Vidts (Pamel 1885 - Okegem 1949) thus never knew her paternal grandparents, nor her paternal aunts and uncles, except maybe for Antonia, who probably was her godmother, and for Petrus Josephus who died when she was about six ; but she knew her cousins, the children of Henrica, of Philomena, of Antonia and of Petrus Josephus.

I still have a lot of research to do on Antonia and Ludovicus, who was a miller's helper, farmer and maybe a local policeman (champetter). Once again, there is almost no published research on Meerbeke, so I have to dig up all the information the hard way.