The NOE family from the Meetjesland in East-Flanders, Belgium

C VIII c Emiel Noë

fs August and Justina De Decker

° Kluizen 11/7/1877
x Watervliet 27/4/1904 Irma De Bock
† Watervliet 4/11/1955

Emiel was the only son of August Noë and Justina De Decker. He was only 3 years old when he moved with his parents and sisters to the polders in St.-Margriete.

Emiel Noë and Irma De Bock on their wedding day

Emiel and Irma on their wedding day.
Click here for the entire picture.

On 27 April 1904 he married Irma Victorine Melanie De Bock, the daughter of Charles Louis De Bock and Victorine De Neve. She was born in Watervliet on 8 August 1880. They took over from August on the farm and many years later they retired to Watervliet when their youngest son married and took over from them.

Click on a picture to view a larger copy.

But long before that, on 30 May 1916, Emiel was sentenced to a fine of 3 Marks by the "Mobile Etappen Kommandantur" of the German Occupation forces for not delivering enough butter during the previous week ("... weil Sie in der letzten Woche zu wenig Butter geliefert haben"). On that day at least 26 other farmers from St.-Margriete were fined up to 15 Marks for the same offence. Here with our thanks to Mr. Alex De Reu is the official document, the "Strafverfügung".


	From left to right: Estelle, Emiel, Willem, Agnes, Maurice, Marie, Irma, Gerard and Georgine.

Here we have the id card Irma received in Watervliet in 1947.

They both died in Watervliet where they had retired, Irma first on 6/7/1951 and Emiel on 4/11/1955.

They had 4 children:

Estelle Noë
° St-Margriete 12/2/1906

Click here
or on the picture
for a larger copy of it.

She never married. She took care of her parents in their old age but died before her father, on 14/3/1952.
Here we now have some photographs, Estelle's souvenirs.
Gerard Noë
° St-Margriete 24/6/1907
He married Georgine Vandevelde in Knokke on 13/7/1935. She was born in St.-Joris-aan-de-IJzer on 2/10/1912. She was the daughter of Cyriel Vandevelde and Alice Broucke.

Here we bring you a great photograph of the bride and groom with the wedding guests, here you can admire a photograph of just the bride and groom on the same great day and finally click here for more information on the Vandevelde family and some of the other wedding guests.

Gerard was a pharmacist. He had a dispensing chemist's (in American, a drugstore) in the center of Deinze where he was a very popular figure.

Gerard and Georgine both passed away in Oudenaarde, he on 7/3/1992 and she on 12/6/1994.

They had 4 sons and 3 daughters. They have 22 grandchildren and since 11 March 2014 they also have 35 great-grandchildren.

One of their twin daughters died very young. Here we have two different funeral cards for her.
One of their granddaughters married an American. They live in the USA and have a daughter of their own whose first name is Noe.

A grandson, ophthalmologist Dr. Piet Noë, was in the press, i.a. on 5 May 2010. Knack, a Flemish weekly magazine and Kerk en Leven (Church and Life) both told us that he performs more than 3000 surgical interventions per year in his medical center in Kabgayi in Ruanda. That means he is responsible for about 85% of all eye surgery in this central African country. Some of the credit also goes to two Belgian not for profit organisations "Licht in het Duister-Rwanda vzw (LIHD) (Light in the Darkness-Ruanda) and Light for the World, who collect donations to help pay for it all.
On 12 June 2014 we were in the HQ of Light for the World for a presentation of his work in Kabgayi by Dr. Piet Noë. Here you can see some pictures made before and after that presentation. We were told that a huge percentage of the blind live in Africa and that very few ophthalmologists work on that continent. Ruanda for instance with its population of 12 million has only 12 ophthalmologists. Most of them work in the capital Kigali and are far too expensive for the poor who most need their services. Belgium on the contrary with its 11 million inhabitants has more than 1,000 ophthalmologists.
Maurice Noë
° St-Margriete 3/4/1909
He took over the family farm shortly after WW II.
On 12 June 1945 in St.-Jan-in-Eremo he married Marie Elisabeth Van Damme, the daughter of Karel Van Damme and Hortensia Sturm. She was born in St.-Jan-in-Eremo on 9 June 1917 and passed away in Watervliet on 20 October 2014. One of her ancestors was Ambrosius De Clerck.
Follow this link for a wedding picture.

Maurice and Marie had 3 sons and 5 daughters. Six of their 12 grandchildren are married and on 9 august 2021 their 17th great-grandchild was born. One of their daughters gave birth to a daughter who gave birth to a daughter. That was 4 generations of the same sex alive until the demise of Marie in 2014. In Dutch they have a name for it; they call that a "viergeslacht" ("vier" = four and "geslacht" = gender).
Maurice passed away in Ghent on 3 January 1981.
Their youngest son succeeded them on the family farm. We translate here something about him and his wife from a really great website (in Dutch) www.Meetjesland.be :
The most meritorious Meetjeslander of 2004

An initiative organized in collaboration with the written and spoken press. The journalists of the region put forward suggestions for the Meetjeslander of the year and one of the 5 nominees for 2004 was the Noë family from St.-Margriete.
Here according to www.Meetjesland.be is why:
On the Livinius [sic] Farm in a historic building Carlos Noë and Sonja Sucaet have found a recipe for modern agriculture. They combine contemporary agriculture with bio-farming, education and social work. They bring children in contact with agriculture, with the region and with nature. They give less privileged children the opportunity to help on the farm and thus to experience something interesting.

Besides restoring the historic buildings there is also room for a modern storehouse and this characterizes their work: they succeed in preserving that valuable dimension from the past while seeking in an innovative way for original solutions where these are required.

In 2004 they were praised for the construction of the watering pool as part of a project of the Regional Landscape Meetjesland and for housing Mondina, an education project for the young which meant their being recognized as an environment and nature education center.

On 22 September they were elected the East-Flemish Concerned Farmer 2004 by Wellbeing Support (Steunpunt Welzijn) and by the East-Flemish Rural Guilds.
The Livinus Farm is also home to the Mondina project, a non profit association whose purpose is to inform children on farming and in particular bio-farming.
Agnes Margarita Noë
° St. Margriete 27-3-1911
x St. Margriete 29-5-1941 Willem Adolf Clement Van Herreweghe
† Serskamp 20 november 1959

And now, here comes... a riddle !
Achilles Van Herreweghe (° 25-10-1876), Emiel Noë (° 11-7-1877) and Cyriel Vandevelde (° 30/1/1878), where and when did they get to know each other ? We know that Emiel, Achilles and Stanislas Verbeke were together in the same school in Gijzegem.
Stanislas Verbeke ? He was born in Lede on 27 July 1876. His son Georges Verbeke got married to Georgina Van Herreweghe, one of Achilles' daughters and of course Willem's sister.
But Cyriel Vandevelde, where did he go to school after St-Joris-aan-den-IJzer ?
Before the Oblate Friars who arrived in Gijzegem in 1945, the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, commonly called the Eudists were there from 1903 onwards. What religious Order ran the school before 1900 or was it a school of the diocese ? Perhaps the answers to our questions are buried away in their archives if these still exist.
See here a school photograph. Who can recognize our three (or four ?) heroes in this picture ? And who are the others ?

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