Hubert Grollé

Where our family originally came from was unclear. Given the acute accent, French origins seemed likely, and it was assumed that we descend from fleeing Huguenots.

In the family tree that circulated in our family, Hubert Grollé was for a long time the oldest known ancestor. He was married to Catarina de Lonen and lived in Dordrecht in 1711, where the baptism of their son Tomas Gregorius Grollé was registered on 5 March. The burial register of Dordrecht mentions an earlier child who was buried on 9 September 1707. In the same month Hubert is also listed as a witness at a wedding in Dordrecht.

But where had he lived before that? For a long time I searched for signs of life in the Netherlands, France and even Germany (the name Grolle occurs there too, although without the accent), and I had more or less resigned myself to never finding out.

Until I received an email from someone who had found a statement in the notarial archives made by one ‘Hubert Gregoir alias Grollé’. Further searches under that alternative name led us to the church registers of the small town of Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, close to Liège. There it turned out that the Gregoirs also called themselves, alternately, Grolet, Grolle, Groslet and… Grollé. A name that seems to have existed there as early as the thirteenth century, so the connection with the Huguenots does not seem to exist.

On 23 January 1706 Huberto Gregoire is said to have married Catharina de Loneux there. That combination looks very much like Hubert Grollé and Catarina de Lonen, and the date fits very well with the birth of the first child in Dordrecht in September 1707.

Why would Hubert and Catarina have left for the Netherlands? In the early eighteenth century Liège was a prince-bishopric that was part of the Holy Roman Empire. It became involved in the War of the Spanish Succession, a conflict between several European powers over the succession of the Spanish king Charles II, who had died childless in 1700. France and Spain were allies against a coalition that included Austria, England, Prussia and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

In 1705 a French army invaded the prince-bishopric of Liège and captured several cities, including Liège itself. The population of Liège suffered from the plundering, the taxes and the billeting of French soldiers2. In addition, the prince-bishopric was threatened by the troops of the allies, who were trying to drive the French out. In 1706 a major battle took place at Ramillies, in which the allies under the Duke of Marlborough won a decisive victory over the French. This led to the liberation of most of the prince-bishopric of Liège, but also to new destruction and unrest.

It is therefore possible that some inhabitants of Liège decided in 1706 to move to the Netherlands to escape the war and the misery it brought. The Netherlands was, after all, a relatively safe and prosperous state, which moreover offered religious freedom to Protestants and Catholics. Perhaps Hubert and Catarina, as newlyweds, hoped to find a better life there.

So we are simply Belgians, Walloons even!