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Already before 1500 we find Truyman(s) families in the region of Temse and Bazel (tax books),
but parish registers were not yet kept. In Bazel the pastor started to register baptisms from around 1585,
marriages and deaths from around 1600.
The population of the Truyman(s) remained in Bazel of the 16th century, still limited to a few dozen.
Around 1675, their number began to decline rapidly due to death and emigration (also to Melsele, some via Kruibeke and Zwijndrecht).
The causes of this or the circumstances under which this happened are not clear.
The indications of acquiring real estate are still scarce (*). The population of Truyman(s)
from the region of Stekene, with branches to Schellebelle, Wetteren, Melle and Gijzenzele – not small in number,
but still without any demonstrable connection with that of Basel – seems to have been in better shape.
On August 26, 1706, the last male Truyman, a widower of 66 years, died in Basel.
His wife, Catharina Van Leugenhaege, had died the day after Candlemas of that same year. Seven of their daughters are known.
A few died as a child. The daughter Margareta, who lost her husband Thomas Smet in 1709 and was left with six little orphans
on a farm in the Barbierwijk, remarried the following year with Jan Staes. This was in that period and for at least a century,
the last noted marriage of a Truyman in Bazel. She herself, her sister Amelberga, who was married to Piet Vergouwen,
and the other daughters of Leonard, all died in Bazel in the years after. No more Truyman(s) were born in Bazel.Elsewhere the story continues…
On the fourth of May in the year 1641 Martinus Truyman marries Josina Bacx in Melsele.
He is the first Truyman we find in the parish registers there. It is not yet known where he came from.
Perhaps from Beveren , where we find a State of Good in 1618 for a certain Merten Truyman, married to Jenne Wittock.
Also from Bazel, Truyman(s) came down to Melsele in the second half of the 17th century
But a appropriate Martinus is not to be found. Perhaps Martinus Truyman, whose wife Elisabeth Van de Vijver
died on 7 April 1650 in Melsele, is the father of the young Martinus, who came from Beveren with his family?
On 14 January 1647, the marriage of Judocus Truyman and Elisabeth Verdonck is registered in Melsele.
On 23 December 1652, their child Anna is baptized. The mother dies in March 1654.
The pioneer Martinus is also unlucky. His Judoca (=Josina) dies in July of that same year 1654.
There are no children in her name.
Both will remarry. Judocus at least twice. Children came. Life went on as usual.
It became evening and morning… They saw that it was good in Melsele and they stayed there.
(*) The Eighty Years' War (1568 – 1648) was then in full swing. For decades, the Land of Waas,
strategically important because of its location between Ghent and Antwerp, was ravaged.
The second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century formed a fault line for many wealthy families in the countryside.
Many saw their farms and lands are lost through plundering and arson. Converting to the new religion (Protestantism) or expressing sympathy for it was asking for trouble under the Spanish regime.
When people lost property at that time, there was no recovery through insurance or legal proceedings, as there is today opposite.
In most cases, the victims of the decades of war violence became impoverished.
Many Flemish people who had converted to the new faith then emigrated to the Northern Netherlands under pressure from the Spanish governor Alexander Farnese (1545-1592).
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