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One can try to find as many ancestors as possible, and organize them in an ancestry.
Everybody has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, ... every time you go one generation further back in time, the number of ancestors will dubble.
In an ancestry every ancestor is pointed out by his specific number.
In Dutch every generation of ancestors has a specific name, you can see these names and numbers here.
It is quite obvious that after a few generations, an ancestry will generate an enormous amount of names and it becomes very clear that everyone living in our regions has to be related to each other one way or an other.
Around 1400 the Low Countries had approximately 2.5 million inhabitants.
If you accept that there are 4 generations every century, we have 24 generations between 1400 and 2000.
In the 24th generation of ancestors, you have 16,777,216 persons!
This also implies that everybody has to end up through more than one ancestral lineage with the same ancestor.
Even after only a few generations you easily have a few thousand names in your ancestry, and it becomes practically almost impossible to dig deeper into the lives of all these people.
And indeed, most of the ancestries are merely enumerations of the names of the ancestors of the "probant".
You can draw lists of exclusively male or female ancestors, in what can be described as parentals or maternals.
They each have their particular qualities and advantages and they can be edited for different purposes.
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At the start of our genealogical research, we chose to try and redact the Verroken familytree.
Soon these results were completed with two or more generations of descendents of female namesakes, and if possible relevant information was looked up concearning "in law" families.
One learns by doing, and the complex history of the Verroken family name made it clear that the concept of a familytree was too limited to let the discovered results get their full credit.
The proper method of presenting the results of our investigation proved to be the writing of a family history...
The genealogist who wants to write a family history, usually starts by completing a familytree with small or sizeable ancestries and descendent lists and tries and compose all the data concearning his ancestors and their relatives into a series of biographies, reviews the differences and similarities within the same generation and between consecutive generations...and all this can be considered from a historic, economic, social, cultural and/or religious point of view.
In this way he creates the possibility for himself to incorporate every interesting discovery he makes about a person, a place, an era or an event in the history of his family.
This method also has the advantage of never being finished.
The writing of a family history requires a serious investment of time : the author will have to obtain a minimal knowledge of a number of different scientific disciplines.
The genealogist who isn't well acquainted with the general and economic history of the era and the region he is studying, will certainly not recognize some relations. One should thoroughly know the local history, and for certain eras intens study may prove necessary.
He has to try and find out whàt could be registered in whích archives and where these could be found, presuming they have been preserved.
He has to read books, consult dictionnaries, go through lists, check indexes,... and it certainly helps if he has a more than average dose of patience and perseverance in order to be able to accept that his ancestors were sometimes able to escape registration, and that often precisely thàt piece of paper where they could have been written down on has disappeared, or that the complete archives of the city where his ancestors lived, went up in flames.
A thorough knowledge of old script from different periods is necessary, a lot of time and exercise are required to become able to read the writings from the past.
The genealogical researcher has to recognize and understand the abbreviations and stenographic signs avant-la-lettre, only to find out that he won't comprehend a lot of the text he has decifered, if he isn't master of the typical notary language of that period of time.
There for he has to study certain notions used in the former international, regional and local jurisprudence.
Anthroponimics, the branch of onomastics dealing with human proper names and surnames, can't be studied without knowledge of some linguistic principles...
Often the old texts are redcted in a foreign language, or in a language that doesn't exist any more, or is no longer in use... a thorough knowledge of Medieval Dutch and French, notions of Latin and Picardian proved crucial in our research.
If you want to get a correct idea about the degree of well-being of your ancestors, you have to know how to estimate economic values, or at least know where to look this up ... only when you know what costed how much, and how long some one had to work to gain this amount of money, you can form an idea about the imprtance of certain sums.
An additional problem can be caused by the different currencies and their reciprocal strongly varying exchange rates!
One has to obtain insight in the former family structures and the importance of economic and social networks and relations, in the economical organisation in cities and in the countryside, in specific needs and requirements in exercising certain professions, in long past agricultural techniques and habits, ...
One has to look up information concearning hygienical problems, the danger of contagious diseases this could formerly produce, the other main causes of death, the average age for marriage in different eras, childhood death and expectation of life.
Where -until recently- we needed a very well organised method of classification of our data, we now need to have a minimum of basic knowledge about digital databases and dataprocessing.
It seems that in the future we will only be able to consult a lot of archives digitally, among other reasons in order to better preserve the original documents.
If one decides to create a website, one has to take "a few hours" of time, to learn this exciting skill.
Since the latest techniques of visualization have improved dramatically, a digital gallery of family photos becomes possible, although searching photographical archives and the identification of the photographed persons is not necessarily a simple task!
We hereby launch an appeal to everybody who possesses old photos (or films) from the Verroken, Verhoken, Verhoeke and Delrocq or Delrock family to create a digital copy and to send it to us.
The images will be treated with respect. They will be stored off-line and will be avalable only for familymembers and with permission of the original owner.
Let it be clear that it is practically impossible for one person to excell in all these disciplines, and the biggest help, is... help.
Two always know more than one, and everybody has his specific talents and assets!
Further more, the chance of overlooking something really important becomes smaller if more people work together at the same project.
Each and every one can in his turn ask the help of his friends and make contact with professional scientific researchers and other genealogists.
I would like to emphasize explicitly that this family history is certainly not the merrit of one person!
As you were able to read in the preface, the initial research was done by Antoine and Daniël Verroken and later on Erik Verroken has continued the search a few years on his own, and he has undoubtably made the most remarkable discoveries. I have joined this genealogical search intensively for almost 30 years now and I took upon me the redaction of this website.
A lot of the texts are based on former texts by Antoine and Erik, completed with our findings and new insights of the last few years.
Enjoy!
Bart Verroken
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• to meaning of our name.