Félix-Joseph The Hemptinne or Dehemptinne (Jauche, February 20, 1783 - Ghent, July 3, 1848) was a Gents textile manufacturer. Lifecycle
He was the son of Jean-Lambert De Hemptinne and Jeanne Françoise Drouin. He married Ghent on August 2, 1815, with Henriette Lousbergs, the daughter of textile manufacturer Hubert Lousbergs. Their children were Charles, Marie, Henri, Joseph, Jules and Louise. After his marriage, he moved to Ghent and after the death of his stepfather and his brother-in-law Henri Lousberg in 1827, he resumed their cotton company and then founded the "SA de la Lys" after he died after his second brother-in-law Ferdinand Lousbergs inherited all their industrial heritage in 1859. He belonged to Ghent to the Orangistic Freemasonry Log 'Les Vrais Amis'.
His brother Auguste-Donat De Hemptinne (1781-1854) was a pharmacist and professor at the ULB.
He was a provincial councilor and steadfast deputy of East Flanders.
In 1838 he founded an important vlasspinnerij in Ghent, called Société Linière de La Lys (the Leie), to the river where a lot of flax was thrown into which the factory was located. This was expanded with a cotton factory. After a few years, 3000 workers worked. The factory was located in a very large six-storey building. In the same year, La Gantoise was founded by a competitor, a factory of comparable size.
The building The Director's House at the Opgeëlaanlaan 2 in Ghent, now a furniture store, and a transformer house in the Green Valley of Jan-Albert De Bondt are the only remnants of this industrial past. Felix de Hemptinne does have a large number of offspring. His sons were elevated to the hereditary nobility by the end of the nineteenth century. Literature
wiki
