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In 1993 in "de genealogie van de familie Verroken 1379-1993", Erik Verroken wrote he'd found in the book of J. Bekouw about refugees and exiles from Ronse that in 1592, in the city of Leiden in South-Holland, Adriaentgen vande rouke was married to Jan van der Hooge from Ronse.
Taking into consideration the rareness of the family name van de roke and its different spellings, in combination with the place of origin of her husband, we felt confident Adriaentge vande rouke would fit somewhere in our genealogy.
As we stated in the introduction on the page about the vander Roocke family in Holland, there were several indications a part of the van de roke family at the end of the 16th century had migrated from Berchem to Holland.
At the beginning of the 21st century, a lot of genealogical data became available to everybody and this created a real break through for the search for our relatives on the run.
I searched for the different spellings of our family name on almost every available internet search site.
On the genealogical site of Cees Jan van den Hoek I found a van Roken family in Rotterdam at the end of the 17th century.
In the genealogy of Frans Angevaare I encountered Maertie Jans van Roocken in Warmond, daughter of Jan Janszn van Roocken. Since Warmond is a neighbouring village of Leiden, I suspected immediately they were relatives of Adriaentge vande rouke and the spellings van Roken and van Roocken seemed to confirm we were dealing with a branch of the Berchem van de roke family.
When I discovered the baptesimal, marriage and death registers of the cities of Delft, Rotterdam and Leiden could be consulted on line, I was able to gather as many genealogical data in a week time as we would have found after a few years of visiting all these archives in different places.
A genealogy of Jacop van Roocke, the forfather of a Delft-Schiedam van Roocke family, with a branch in Rotterdam could be drafted.
The fact that the first name Jacop was the principal name in the Berchem van de roke family, seemed to confirm this Jacop van Roocke had emigrated from Berchem in Flanders to Delft in Holland at the end of the 16th century.
The van Roocken forfathers of Frans Angevaare from Warmond and Adriaentge vande rouke however didn't fit in this genealogy, and a more thorough investigation in the region around Leiden was taken on.
On the genealogical website of Jouke de Vries there is a forum on which Danny van den Bos had asked a question about the ancestors of Albert Schaft.
Jouke de Vries had effectuated some research for him in the Leiden archives, and a few weeks later he could present him a few generations of ancestors of Albert Schaft.
One of these ancestors was Katrijn van Rokken, and this name caused me to post a question on Joukes forum for more information concerning this Katrijn and the van Roken or van de rouke family in the Leiden region.
A few days later I received a reply from Jouke : there was a multitude of persons called van Roocke in the late 16th and 17th century Leiden archives to be found, and the earliest registration concerned Bartelmeeus van Roocke from Ronse in 1591 !
Very enthousiasticly, Frans Angevaare went to the Leiden archives, where he discovered some 50 odd mentions of van Roocke marriages and births.
I went to Leiden a few times as well, and the result of my investigations was surprising.
The search is certainly not over yet, but the main lineages of the van Roocke family in the south of Holland could be sketched.
On the pages concerning the first generation of migrants in the south of Holland and the genealogy of Marcus van Roocke you can find an overview of what we found so far.
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