The trade name

Our name is a trade name. We were tradesmen who supplied the slats for the walls of clay houses. The woodwork was braided with small branches and later covered with clay. ( ref: “de Middeleeuwen” van Leo Adriaenseen)

The name “de Lathouder” is the northern variant of “de Lathouwer”. The name is only found in the area around the current Dutch and Belgium border. the word “de” is the English “the” and is separated from the name by a space. In the USA the space is often deleted like in “van der Bilt” meaning “from the town called de Bilt” near Utrecht.

There are about 7 clusters of our name. Between the clusters we have never seen family connections. Within the clusters we found in our case strong connections in Londerzeel around 1630.  De Londerzeel cluster has connections to Buggenhout, Ruisbroek, Malderen and possibly Mechelen.

All “de Lathouder’s” are family for sure. Most live in The Netherlands but two branches left for the USA in around 1850 and 1915. We are at the moment also represented in Spain and Australia.

Variations on the name

There are many variations on the name. When making documents for birth, death, mariage etc the name was writen down as it was said. In the early days the registration was done by the church so they could raise the taxes.  Variations are for instance: Lathouwers, Lathauwers, de Lathouwer, de Lathauwer,  Ladthouwere, etc. I did find the northern variant “de Lathouder” once in Mechelen around 1600 at a marriage while family with the name of “de Lathouwer”  was a withness. That is rare.

The origin

Our family de Lathouder are descendants of Rumoldus de Lathouwer churchwarden in Ruisbroek. He originally came from Londerzeel and his grandfather Rumoldus came from Malderen. Hij kwam echter uit Londerzeel en zijn grootvader Rumoldus kwam uit Malderen. I am convinced that he is the brother of Petrus de Lathouwer from Malderen . Somebody found that the parents of Petrus and Rumoldus are Simon de Lathouwer and Maria Puttemens around 1550. I did not find a source for this.

How was life at the time.

Life was pretty rough aroun 1600-1700. Maderen was hit by the plaque and wiped out 75% of the population. That might explains why the family moved to Londerzeel.  But I also found hail storms that wiped out crops and armies that raided the countryside.  It is likely that grandson (Henricus) of Rumoldus from Ruisbroek fled to the safe protestant Dutch provences. So we might be descendants of a refuge…