Thanks to the contacts we had with Jan Laukens and Adele Nieuweboer in the Netherlands, and Erica Laukens in Australia, we were able to reconstruct the family tree of our namesakes in Australia. The roots of all known namesakes in Australia trace back to the village of Achel in the North of Belgium (Province of Limburg). All of them are descendants of Herman Laukens, the first Laukens who lived in the 15th century.
Our search started on the website of the national Archives of the Netherlands, in which we found four names of emigrants to Australia. Further exploration of the website of the National Archives in Australia resulted in a list of nine names.
The people that we found are member of two branches of our family tree. The common ancestor is Petrus Joannes Laukens, born 15 September 1755 in Achel, died 5 March 1826. He married in Antwerp 10 January 1785 with Anna Maria Joanna Ercken (Achel 29 August 1758 – 25 January 1820).
They had 10 children, of which 5 went to Holland. Descendants of two of them emigrated to Australia:
– Gerardus (Achel 19 October 1785, Oud-Beierland 10 February 1842)
– Arnoldus (Achel 24 May 1801 – Brussels 26 March 1870). After his marriage he lived in Antwerp, where 6 of his 10 children were born. Around 1840 he moved to Rotterdam. He died in Brussels in 1870.
The link is explained in the diagram below ( for a more detailed outline see “Samenhang tussen de verschillende takken” [1].
Descendants of Laukens Gerardus:
Laukens Cornelis Petrus was born 3 May 1888 in Enkhuizen (Noord-Holland). He married 21 November 1912 with Cornelia Maria Koper .
They had three children; two emigrated to Australia:
– Augustinus Paulus Maria Laukens (Enkhuizen 16 October 1914, Traralgon/Australia 11 March 1994) , he married in 1939 with Geertruida Reus;
– Karel Martinus Laukens (Enkhuizen 12 January 1920, Traralgon/Australia 23 April 2004)
The two brothers and Geertruida Reus arrived on the fifth of December 1954 in Melbourne (ship Sibajak)
Descendants of Laukens Arnoldus
Franciscus Joannes Laukens was born on the ninth of December 1905 in Rotterdam. He married 15 April 1931 with Catharina Maria Dickhoff.
Children who emigrated:
– Theodorus Henricus (19 April 1935) emigrated already in 1956, long before his parents. He made the trip with the Sibajak ,
– Antonius (Rotterdam 14 July 1937, deceased) : arrival not known
– Hendricus Joseph (Rotterdam 7 April 1947 – deceased 18 October 2010) and Maria Honorina Clementina Loerakker arrived in Australia on the 22nd of January 1971.
[1] In order to avoid misunderstandings the data in this text are written as day-month-year, with the month in characters. Please note that in the Dutch texts of our website and in our data base a date mostly is written in a numerical format day-month-year (e.g. 4/5/2013 is the fourth of may 2013)