Tracking the Loomans Lineage
More than 200 years before the Loomans name arrived on the shores of North America, Hendrick Lomans farmed in Winterswijk, Netherlands. He is the earliest recorded ancestor of the Loomans surname, stretching back more than four centuries with an estimated birth year between 1600 and 1620.
Hendrick died around 1677, leaving two recorded children his land and debts, at the time still owed to the feudal lord.
The older child, Teunis Lomans, was born in 1644 and died on September 26, 1714 at the age of 70. The second recorded child of Hendrick, Geert, was born in 1650. Both children eventually married (albeit, Teunis to an unknown woman), and had children of their own between 1671 and 1685.
The Elder Teunis
Teunis, a derivative of Antonius (or Anthony), was a popular name used in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages and over several centuries after. In the Loomans family lineage, the name Teunis appears several times, but is first recorded with the elder Teunis Lomans born in 1644.
He had five children, all born in Winterswijk, and baptized after 1671. Our lineage flows from Arent Lomans, the second child of Teunis and an unknown woman, born in 1675.
Arent, which roughly translates to “eagle” in Dutch, married Enneken Nijenhuis on November 19, 1702 at a local church (likely Jacobskerk) in Winterswijk. The couple gave birth to 10 children beginning in 1704 with their own named Teunis, baptized on November 2.
Nine others quickly followed over the subsequent two decades. Arent Lomans died around the age of 56 on February 20, 1731. The younger Teunis married on November 23, 1727 to Engele Stemerdinck and had seven children between 1728 and 1741. Both Teunis and Engele died in extensive old age for the period: Teunis passed just shy of 80 years old in January 1784 and Engele lived until she was 90 years old according to a record that states her burial date as February 14, 1792.
On September 17, 1730 a baptism was held for another Teunis Lomans, this time for the son of Teunis and Engele. He would publish the ‘banns of his engagement’ to Gesina Wilterdink on December 3, 1757 and the couple married shortly thereafter on December 23.
In 1759 they gave birth to their first of nine children, with the third following our family’s ancestral lineage, which brings us to the final generation to live entirely in the Netherlands.
Jan Aalbert Lomans, the father of Jan Willem Lomans was baptized on March 14, 1762 in Winterswijk. On November 14, 1790, he married Jan Willem’s mother: Aaltjen te Siepe. At the time of his maturity, Jan Aalbert likely took responsibility for his parents’ farm (Teunis and Gesina died in 1808 and 1800 respectively), although he may have also instead purchased his own plat of land in Winterswijk where he and Aaltjen would raise their seven children.
It seems worth noting, however, that historical Dutch records of plat ownership do suggest our family’s ancestors stretching back to the elder Teunis in the mid-1600s occupied the same area of land (roughly) in Winterswijk’s Meddo hamlet.
A Road Seldom Traveled
What remains unsurprising, yet incredibly remarkable, is the span of time that our family spent in the same 10 to 15 square mile radius of Europe. One would be lucky to venture beyond the invisible fences of their community’s general quarters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—most likely never even leaving the area in which they reached adolescence, married, and settled to have their own families.
The entire concept is nothing short of shocking to even consider in our fast-paced twenty-first century lives. Imagine being confined to the same space from beginning to end, never to venture beyond the reachable distance.
But then again, did Loomans family ancestors really have a reason to do so? Their entire family lived in the region and their primary source of income and wellbeing (the farm) was not exactly an asset that could be easily packed and moved. Any merchant traveling through Winterswijk who told stories of far off lands (like Amsterdam or London or maybe even the silk road that connected Europe to the ancient fertile lands of the Middle East and Asia) likely seemed unhinged.
While the world gradually became smaller in the centuries that preceded Jan Willem’s migration to the United States, it largely remained fragmented until the Industrial Revolution introduced streamlined networks of communication and transportation.
If nothing else this reality of placement underscores the courage and nerve required for Jan Willem to move his family far from the lands his forbearers tended for centuries. While this research effort unveiled no geographical records preceding 1600, the Loomans family likely lived near Winterswijk for a considerable period.
During the Middle Ages (and the corresponding age of serfdom in many parts of Europe), Loomans family ancestors may have moved throughout the general region, but venturing too far outside one’s immediate area was consistently rare.
An Inflection Point in Time
Consider how before the birth of Hendrick Lomans between 1600 and 1620, the golden period of exploration that drove the gradual colonization of Africa and the Americas was just getting underway (the English only founded Jamestown in northern Virginia in 1607 and the Pilgrims wouldn’t sail on the Mayflower for another decade and a half).
For its part, even the Enlightenment was still not yet at its full height and Loomans ancestors would have to wait another 150 years for the United States to form the Constitutional Convention and the world’s first modern democracy.
At this juncture, the Renaissance had only concluded a century before and the Reformation led by Martin Luther was in its final years of spreading across Europe. Promising news of wealth and trade overseas in far off parts of the world encouraged the largest European empires to invest in the expeditions of famed explorers Ferdinand Magellan, Juan Ponce de León, and Henry Hudson (a member of the Dutch East India Company who sailed up the river in North America which today bears his name).
Historical realities aside, the world of Jan Aalbert and his family remained strikingly small. He would follow in the trusted footsteps of his forbearers and be the final generation in the Loomans family’s extensive lineage to live out his life among the farmlands and fields of the East Dutch countryside.
While they had very little in this expanse, Jan Willem Lomans felt compelled for many reasons to expand the family’s prospects and immigrate to a new world.