van den Akker
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Etymology
'van den Akker' is a Dutch name literally meaning 'of the farmland'. The word Akker is an old Germanic word, originally signifiedfarmland that was cultivated by the entire village, but slowly shifted in meaning towards land owned by private farmers. In the old days from before Napoleon the spelling and grammar wasn't standardized, hence that you can find several variants of the name, including 'van den Ecker' and 'van den Acker'. But no matter the spelling, it all came down to the same family.
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History
Our story starts with the 1462 fire that burned down the
St.Pieters church in the town of
Oirschot, North Brabant. In the blazing heat that destroyed this young church, barely 200 years old at the time, a lot of art and documents were lost forever, including 200 years of my family's history. Only rumours of a presence in the early thirteenth century and a few papers from the decades before the fire remained. It's because of this incident that my family's history dates back to the fifteenth instead of the thirteenth century. The reason for the destruction was never discovered. Was it lighting that struck at a wrong place, or was there foul play? Was there something in the documents that had to remain hidden forever? And was that art truely lost? We'll never know.
The fire had devastated the prospering town of Oirschot, but didn't slow down it's growth. As one of the important cities of the Duchy of Brabant, the lord ordered the construction of a new church, which would be finished some fifty years later. It is in the shadow of the burning remains that three brothers had found their fortune. 'Inheritence from father Jan', they said, but could a mere farmer could have been truely that rich? With all evidence pointing to the contrary destroyed in that great fire, no-one could tell differently. Within two years after that fire they found that the streets were still too hot for their feet, and decided to move out of town. Jan, Lambert and Gerrit van den Akker, the three children of that old Jan, bought a leasehold estate with land in one of those small suburbs. As free men, free farmers, they would only answer to their lord and the regents of the town. What happened during those years they hided out there? One can only try to imagine the fights that must have torn them apart. All we know is that in 1472 the oldest brother, Jan, bailed the other two out, and became sole owner of a farm with land in Verrenbest, that peacefull and quiet suburb of Oirschot. As a cooper besides farmer, his fortune was guarenteed to persist beyond his own life.
I wish that I could say that this land remained family possesion for many more generations, but would not be entirely true. Even tough Jan's oldest son Jan (a first name remaining popular even to the present day) inherited the house and the leasehold, he sold it with a huge profit. During the first half of the sixteenth century he slowly acquiered farmland all over the place, ranging from Oirschot till that suburb of Verrenbest his father had moved to, and sold it with more profit than bankers make nowadays. When he died he left the family a fortune, allowing his children to prosper in the community. The oldest son, Thomas, even became churchwarden in Best, another former suburb. Each generation bought new land, and sold old, and even bought very old back. Within a hundred years of the big fire the descendants of the three brothers had formed a dynasty that would dominate the town for at least five more centuries to come.
During these late-Medieval times it was unique for a common family to have a family name. 'Of the farmland' may sound like mere peasants, but make no mistake: this name was a way to display the gathered family wealth. And while nobles did everything in their power to keep possessions like countries in their families, the van den Akkers did the same on a smaller scale. In 1633 Jan, the eight generation, and his brothers even forced their mother to renounce her rights to any inheritence. No in-laws would gain possesion of the richness gathered by so many generations of farm merchants. Even today half the people living in Oirschot are named van den Akker, or are tied to the family.
But as with every family spanning many centuries, a crisis was looming. In the early nineteenth century the family name was locally famous, with half the city council in the pocket and half the town owned by the ever expanding empire of a mere farmer family. For centuries the van den Akkers had climbed up to become the local aristocracy, without the duties that come with the real deal. Like the nobles themselves the head of the family guided the estates in ways that would secure prosperity for many generations to come. But the oldest child of the current godfather was a girl named Johanna. She couldn't possibly continue the good name, for when she'd marry, she would become part of another family. And so it happened. Madly in love with a blacksmith she married, and gave birth to three healthy children. A pity that her happiness didn't last long.
He had seemed like such a nice guy, but in the end hitting her was the least of all his crimes. Her only reason to stay was for the children, as with so many of these cases. She didn't dare to tell the others, but they all saw it. His death was premature, and a full-scale investigation could be prevented. But the damage had been done. It would be a disgrace to live on with the name that hurt her and her children so much. So Johanna gathered all the branches of the clan, and used many of the liquified assets to get something extraordernary done: she
and her children would keep her maiden name, and would thus continue the name van den Akker.
The price was high tough. Using so many resources had cleared her and her childrens name, but left her as a paria in the town. Her eldest son, Francis, was send away to the big city of Amsterdam, where no-one knew him, to become a goldsmith. He couldn't rely on the family's fortune anymore, so he spread out to seek his own. And with success: as a goldsmith he not only managed to accumulate more than he would have had in that town of Oirschot, he also married into a wealthy family with noble ties, uplifting his reputation. Influenced by the noble lineage of his wife, he bought a family weapon for him and his descendants:
His son Louis even enhanced it in full colour:
Unfortunately he and his wife didn't get along that well in the end, and divorced. As in such cases happens too often, the entire wealth vanished into thin air, never to be seen again by him or any of his descenants. Even tough I'm an eighteenth generation van den Akker, I can't claim ownership to any land, wealth or fortune. The only thing left is the family weapon, bought for all generations to come, which I bear with pride. Maybe it's time again for me and my brother to buy some land somewhere, maybe a house. But first we need to 'inherit' a fortune, as they called it in the old days. Two of my former schools have already burned down to the ground. Maybe it's time for some museum or church to be caught in a destructive fire, erasing all valueable art from existence. Don't be surprised if we'll own within a decade or two some land in a town far from here. Land we can assimilate within a century or so, making our descendants local kings. Crusader kings. Part two.
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Sources:
van den Akker, W.L.,
Oorkondeboek 1418-1918, Leiden, 1942.
van den Akker, W.L.,
Het aloude geslacht van den Akker van 1430 tot heden, Barneveld, 1945.
