Foreword

Our family history is a Belgian epic, which for me means "a walk through the Kingdom of Belgium" from north to south, with a stop in Brussels, its capital. The Rousseaus are a family of nail makers, coal miners and glassmakers, but there are also tobacco merchants, goldsmiths, lace makers, etc. It was in 1909 that Jules Rousseau came to Etterbeek, a suburb of Brussels, to do his military service. He settled there in 1912 with his wife Marie Jacobs, with whom he had three children, Marcel, Oscar and René. The name "La Chasse" is a reminder of the old days, when the Soignes forest reached here and the King used to rest in a small pavilion when he went hunting; this is why there is another name a little further along the Chaussée de Wavre: "Chasse Royale" (now the Hankar metro station). Marie Jacobs, my paternal grandmother, gave me many memories and legends ... we are descended from Spaniards who came to the Netherlands by boat. Sometimes things happen by chance ... a film, Christopher Columbus, in which the Queen of Spain sends the Count of Bovadilla to the Americas, and that's when things really started to happen. This is how I came to embark on his ship, not to reach the Americas but to rediscover a branch of my roots and find out all about the story of "don Luis de Bobadilla", Sergeant Major in the army of the Spanish Netherlands 1648-1689. I would like to thank André Vroye for the computer support he provided for this genealogy.

Gilberte ROUSSEAU