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When some one has a rare and special family name, he is often confronted with specific problems.
Almost 80 % of your correspondents are unable to spell your name correctly, and a lot of them make the remark :
"Thàt's a strange name!",
"One doesn't here that name often!", "How should I write your name ?", "Are you related to ... ?", "What's the meaning of your family name ?"The surname Verroken ís such a special and rare name, and I suppose all namesakes hear these questions regularly. In fact, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with these questions, they often bear whitness of a sound interest in who you are and where you come from.
It can however sometimes be quite annoying when you are unable to give a descent answer to some of these questions...
In the early seventies of the 20th century Antoine Verroken tried to solve one of these questions : "What is the meaning of your name ?".
Soon it became clear that the answer wasn't obvious, and a first round of questions to older familymembers produced exciting stories about the family, but no specific answer to the question.
After a meeting with linguist dr. Maurits Gysseling, it became clear that some genealogical research was necessary in order to solve this mistery.
Together with his brother Daniël, his son Bart and his nephew Erik, Antoine visited the archives of Ronse and Oudenaarde regularly.
In 1975 a first draught of the familytree was published and one of the most important constatations was that all persons who are called Verroken or Verhoken belong to one family.
The multitude of reactions and further investigation resulted in a second edition in 1977, which was sent to all known namesakes.
Plans were made to organise a familyreunion, but due to all kinds of circumstances this reunion didn't take place and because of the unusual history of our family name it took a lot of genealogical research before a real break-through could be realised.
Investigations were conducted in the archives of Gent, Aalst, Tournai, Mons, Ath and Kortrijk and in the libraries of the universities of Gent and Louvain-la-Neuve.
In 1993 Erik Verroken published "De genealogie van de familie Verroken (1379 - 1993)".
Again, a lot of help was offered by namesakes who gathered and communicated the data of their branch of the family!
The past 10 years we've also been "digging" in foreign archives, in order to unveil the secrets of the collective past
of the Verroken, Verhoken, Verhoeke, Delrocq and probabibly Delrock, Van Roock and Van Roecke families.
The search is certainly not completed, and some connections may even never be found.
On this website we'd like to present the results of 30 years of genealogical research.
Two advantages of this new medium are beyond any doubt the possibility of incorporating new findings immediatily and the high level of easy accessability.
On top of this, the technological possibilities are almost unlimited and maybe in the future, this site could become a virtual meeting-point for the whole family.
We'd like to receive your reactions, completions and remarks, and wish you a lot of fun in surfing and reading.
Bart Verroken
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