[1] In 1506, Willem Van den Ghein (the family name would later change to Vanden Gheyn) came to Mechelen from Goirle, in the Northern Netherlands, and started a bell foundry there.
He was followed by his son Anton I[2][3] Pieter I Vanden Gheyn first started on his own, at the latest in 1533, and after the death of his father inherited his foundry as well.
Jan II died on 22 July 1573: he made some bells which can be found in current Belgium and France, but no carillons.
Mechelen had already been burned once, near the start of the Eighty Years' War, in 1572, but the mass exodus of Protestants to the Northern Netherlands from 1585 on saw the city population shrink from some 25,000 to close to 10,000 in a decade.
Despite the ongoing war and the reduced fortunes of his family and his city, he continued to deliver a steady stream of bells and other founded goods.
[2][3][4] Jan III Vanden Gheyn had a successor in his son Pieter IV Vanden Gheyn (born 1605), who founded in 1638 together with Peter II De Clerck, another bellfounder from Mechelen, the big bell for the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels.
[3] Pieter IV Vanden Gheyn had another, older son, Andries I, who moved to Sint-Truiden in 1655 and to Tienen a few years later.
[2][3] Andries II was born in Sint-Truiden in October 1696, and succeeded his father Pieter V at an early age.
He also completed the carillon in Nijmegen, where work had been started by Jean-Baptiste Levache, a bell founder from Liège but had been found unsatisfactory.
The French Revolution and occupation of the Netherlands caused an interruption in the workings of the foundry, and the destruction of many carillons.
In 1792, André Louis Vanden Gheyn returned to the bell foundry in Leuven; while he continued working as a bellfounder, he made no carillons.
He died in 1833 without having any sons, but his grandson André Louis Jean Van Aerschodt took over the business and signed his bells with both names.
In 1844, André Louis Jean and his younger brother Sévérin cast the Salvator for the St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen: at 8 tons, it was the heaviest bell in the country for more than 100 years.
[2][3] Sévérin Guillaume Van Aerschodt (1819-1885), younger brother to André Louis Jean, first worked in the same foundry, but in 1851 set up a rival company, also claiming the direct continuation of the Vanden Gheyn tradition.
[2][3] Félix Van Aerschodt (4 November 1870 - 23 June 1943) created a carillon for the Ypres Cloth Hall in 1909, which was destroyed only 5 years later when the Germans attacked the city.
By this time, other members of his family had set up other bell-foundries in Leuven, including his nephew Constant Sergeys and his uncle Alphonse Beullens.