POTTER United Families

It is also in Keyem that the direct ancestors of this family are found,
in the 16th century. A genealogy of this family was published in the
“Annuaire de Noblesse Belge” in Brussels, in 1896, I, pp. 144-153,
without the name of the author. See the first paragraphs of this study
here besides. Although incomplete, this work was reliable for the
period after 1650, but remained incomplete for the period before.
Pieter Donche reconstructed the genealogy of the family “de Potter
de Droogenwalle” for the period before 1800. It was done accurately,
between 2017 and 2019, on the basis of authentic archival sources
such as: “states of goods” (possessions), “orphan accounts”
(inheritances), “parish registers” (churches records), and numerous
other official archival sources out of the formerly called “Free State
of Bruges”. Ties to the present day were ascertained by DNA-tests.
The most ancient and certain ancestor of that line is Pieter de Potter,
son of Jacob (1525). He was born around 1540 and married Maria
Boone. He owned two lending estates in Keyem, south-east of the
church, attached to the lending estate of Schorre (Dixmude). Jacob
and Pieter belong to the branch of Jan Dries, esquire of Dixmude in
the 13th Century with coat of arms in the Royal Library in Brussels.
Dixmude was attached to the County of Middlebourg, like the family
lordships Droogenwalle and Haveskerque, bought to cousin Merode,
as indicated in the library of the Castle of Loppem. Based on a text
by Gaillard, their arms were carried over from Catherine de Pottere,
Dame of Mortaigne and Potelle, heiress of Alix of Flanders in Lille.
Throughout the entire 16th century, we came across several
inheritances with the name de Pottere in and around Keyem. From
the earliest one, it can be concluded that this branch had already been
present in the region at the end of the 1400s but the complete
destruction of the municipal archive during World War One prevents
us, for the time being, from finding more evidences than the ones in
this book. Online DNA-results are instrumental in this verification.
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