Ancestor #106
Jan Baptiste Van Schoonacker (1708-?)

and 
Ancestor #107

Joanne Marie De Rever (1734-?)

Jan Baptiste Van Schoonacker was born in Sint-Laureins, Oost Vlaanderen, Belgium on 28 March 1708[i] and baptized the same day. He is the son of Jan and Judoce (Versluys) Van Schoonacker. He married Joanne Marie De Rever about 1754 based upon the birth of his first child in 1755. Joanne Marie De Rever was born in Sint-Jan-in-Eremo on 5 July 1734[ii] and baptized the following day. She was the daughter of Anthony De Rever and Anne Marie De La Fonteyne.

This family is listed in the index to births, marriages and deaths in Sint Laureins as either Schoonaker (or Schoenaker) or Van Schoonaker (Van Schoenaker) I cannot be sure that Jan Baptiste is my ancestor, but he was the only Jan baptized in the relevant time period. There was another Schoonaker family baptizing children during this period. Paul and his wife who are noted as coming from Kaprijke, had several children but none named Jan. So I have decided provisionally to call Jan and Judoca my ancestors.

I was also unsuccessful in locating a marriage record for this couple. Perhaps Joanne Marie De Rever was living and working in a different town and the marriage took place there. If you don’t know the town where an event occurred, it is nearly impossible to find the record. There is no overall index yet for Belgian church records.

I was able to locate Joanne Marie De Rever’s baptismal record using the ages recorded for her at the time of the baptisms for her children. The baptismal record gave me the names of her parents. However, I could not find death records for either Jan or Joanne. Sint-Jan-in-Eremo is a small congregation and it was not deemed necessary to index the records. Consequently, locating a record is done by hunting through them. If you do not have an approximate period to search, it can be very time consuming. I decided to see if I can find someone else’s tree online. If I have a date and location, I can do a more fruitful search.

Children of Jan and Joanne Marie (De Rever) Van Schoonacker, all born in Sint-Jan-in-Eremo:

i.                     Maria Garoba Van Schoonacker. b. and bap. on 10 Jun 1755.

ii.                   Joanna Maria Van Schoonacker, b. and bap. on 17 May 1758.

iii.                 Petrus Jan Van Schoonacker, b. and bap. on 4 December 1759.

iv.                 Joanna Van Schoonacker, b. 12 February 1762 and bap. the following day.

v.                   Helena Van Schoonacker, b. and bap. on 18 July 1767. She died in Sint Laureins, Oost Vlaanderen, Belgium on 25 December 1796. She married Judocus Du Four on 13 June 1789 in Sint-Jan-in-Eremo. Judocus was born on 7 March 1758 in Sint Laureins and d. 21 September 1803 in Sint-Jan-in-Eremo.

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[i] Church records, Sint-Laureins, East Flanders, Belgium, “Dopen 1685-1710”, baptism of Joannes Baptista Schoonaker, 1708, p. 1401; digital images, FamilySearch.org (http://www.familysearch.org; accessed 15 Oct 2019), film 4,458,809.

[ii] Church records, Sint-Jan-in-Eremo, East Flanders, Belgium, “Dopen, huwelijken, overlijdens 1726-1743”, baptism of Joanna Marie De Rever, 1734, p. 35; digital images, FamilySearch.org (http://www.familysearch.org; accessed 15 Oct 2019), film 4,458,749.