Genealogical Oddities (XXVIII): A Flemish Soldier is Laid To Rest in Aragon

On 18 January 1722 a soldier named Gil Hallfaste died in the remote Aragonese town of Estadilla. He was stated to belong to the Company led by 'Don Bernardo Macsuini' (Bernard MacSweeney) in the 1st Batallion of the Hibernia Regiment. The burial record states that the deceased soldier was about 50 years old, a Flemish native of Maastricht, and that he dropped dead suddenly and was buried that same afternoon.

I cannot venture a guess as to what the correct spelling of the surname, rendered here as 'Hallfaste', may be; his superior MacSweeney's name was rendered pretty far wide of the mark. His Christian name was perhaps Gillis.

SOURCE: Parish of Estadilla (Huesca), Sacramental Records 1693-1721, P. 391

Genealogical Oddities (XIII): An indigent (Flemish) Captain

Life after combat has never been easy for the wounded warrior and is not today either, as some of the stories of young men returning from Iraq or Helmand Province show us only too well. But next Remembrance Day (or Veterans Day, if you're in the US) spare a thought for Captain Juan Meyer.

On 27 July 1719 a veteran appeared before a notary in Madrid to execute an affidavit that was entered in the notary's register as a 'Declaration of Poverty'. In fact, it tells more of a story than that. Juan Bautista Mayer (or Meyer, as he signed his name) stated that he was formerly a Captain of the Cuirassiers in the regiment of 'Monsieur Gaitan' in the Army of Flanders. He states that he is in poor health and resides with Lieutenant-General Don Juan Idiáquez, 'in whose home and at whose expense I have lived for a long time now'. Mayer goes on to certify that he is not married, has no children and no close family, and so as he could expect no resources or intervention from any other quarter when the time came, he wanted to explicitly designate General Idiáquez as the person charged with making whatever funeral and burial arrangements for Captain Mayer as the General should see fit.

In other words, Mayer had to make sure that he left someone proper written permission to bury him. Bureaucracy...

SOURCE: Records of notary Domingo de Munilla y Zuazo, Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Madrid, Legajo 14222.

Genealogical Oddities (VI): Vlaams Blok, er, Blog

Some references to Flemish soldiers in 18th century Zaragoza, in belated tribute to Belgium having at last established a new government.

The diocesan register of marriage licence applications for the year 1730 includes a well-travelled scrap of paper pertaining to a well-travelled man-at-arms. Headed 'Extractum ex Registro Baptismali Exemptae Cathedralis Ecclesiae Sancti Bavonis' it transcribes the record of the following baptism from Ghent:

9 Oct 1691 Joannes, filio Christian Pijn militis et Joanna Feistens conj.

By August 1730 this record's owner, referred to as Juan Pijn, had seen service in Flanders, Germany, France, Castille, Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia since his enlistment in 1709; he had been a Sergeant in the Carlos de Gueldres company of the Regimiento de Malta, until being discharged on 30th June 1730. He had, according to his request, resided in Zaragoza for 6 days and wished to marry Bernarda Rubira, native of Villanueva de Gállego and widow of José Rubio; it is unclear if the two had known each other before or if the widow's charms were so irresistible as to leave this Flemish veteran besotted in under a week. In any event, the request went forward, the groom's witnesses (Joseph de Combals, a musician in the Granada regiment, aged 33 and native of Prague, resident of Zaragoza for 20 days; and Adam Vimor, Sergeant in the Regimiento de Infantería Irlanda, aged 34, and a resident of Zaragoza for 10 days) attesting to having served with him and so being confident that he was neither married nor engaged; and so, licence was duly granted.

Perhaps in Zaragoza Juan Pijn came across one of his countrymen who'd married there a decade previously. On 17 May 1721 Guillermo Bogaerts, soldier in the Regimiento de Artesia, son of Pedro Bogaerts and Isabel Anceng, and a native of Brussels, married one Dominga de Musaurrieta, daughter of Juan de Musaurrieta and María Goicuria and a native of Bilbao (or 'Vilbau', as the priest wrote it, which makes me suspicious of his spelling of Anceng....) A bit of searching reveals that Dominga was baptised at Bilbao's parish of Señor Santiago in July 1695, so this couple could certainly have left descendants, though as yet no Bogaerts Musaurrieta baptism record has fallen into my hands.

SOURCES: Registro de Matrimonios, 1730, Archivo Diocesano de Zaragoza · Marriages, 1690-1738, Parish of San Felipe, Zaragoza · Baptisms 1690-1718, Parish of Señor Santiago, Bilbao.