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BELGIANS IN AMERICA: Belgian settlements by State
Distribution
according to the State of settlement : Indiana |
Vincennes | Southern Indiana |
southern indiana, Along the Ohio River
Belgian families In 1850 only three Counties registered Belgian settlers. Perry with the village of Leopold, Floyd with Belgians in New Albany and Lafayette, and a few Belgians in Madison, Jefferson County. ten years latter Belgians were registered in : Clark, Crawford, Dearborn, Dubois, Harrison, Knox, Lawrence, Warrick, Washington Counties
And following the draft records, more were found in Counties with or without Belgians listed in the 1860 census:
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SOUTHERN indiana |
cantons:
Etalle | Etalle | Habay-la-Neuve | Rulles |
Anlier | Habay-la-Vieille | Sainte-Marie | |
Bellefontaine | Hachy | Tintigny | |
Châtillon | Rossignol | Vance | |
Villers-sur-Semois | |||
Virton | Virton | Lamorteau | Robelmont |
Bleid | La Tour | Ruette | |
Dampicourt | Meix-devant-Virton | Saint-Léger | |
Ethe | Musson | Saint-Mard | |
Gérouville | Mussy-la-Ville | Torgny | |
Villers-la-Loue | |||
Arlon | Arlon | Bonnert | Nobressart |
Attert | Guirsh | Thiaumont | |
Autel-Bas | Heinsch | Toernich | |
Those lists of Belgian settlers along the Ohio River area are based on many
sources. First of all is the Jean Ducat book “De Semois en Indiana” published in
Belgium in 1992. As he wrote in that book, no longer available, the list of
Belgian settlers at Leopold, Perry County, can be considered as “a working
tool”. Twenty years later, the world as changed and a lot of tools added for
somebody searching to establish such a list. The cyber world at least changed.
Now, tools like Ancestry, Geneanet, Find a Grave, Fold3, FamilySearch, and
others; have put on the web a lot of information available to anybody searching
to complete such lists.
My main source, after Ducat book, was the
“Family Trees” section of Ancestry. I searched hundreds of those trees,
with good or bad results. Some were very detailed and accurate, but others were
a ramble of data with such things as children death before their father was
born, people listed in censuses after their death, and all the children with
similar family names, found in the same area, gathered under the same parents.
Brothers or cousin were often intermingled. Men were married twice at the same
time with differents spouses. People were born in the wrong place: in Belgium
after having emigrated or, on the contrary, in the States before emigrating.
They were also born, married, died at different times and places following the
autors of those family trees. The lists of children are the most difficults
ones, as the births place and date, marriage and death, vary considerably from a
genealogy list to the other.
At Ancestry, the "censuses" and
"ship arrivals" sections, complete each family, when I was able to find them.
With also their defaults: misspellings and "lost" members in families or
families who avoided listing themselves. For the ship lists, some families are
uterly not findable. Either because the manifest is lost and was not transcribed
or because their family name was so unreadable by the transcribers that linking
to them was beyond my abilities. A last list is the draft records taken in
Indiana and Ohio during the Civil War. It gives the birth place of the men fit
to be enlisted in the Union armies.
Belgian sources are also now
available on line. The official registers recording the birth, marriage and
death are now on-line at FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1&countryId=1927071)
and the Belgin State Archives gives the Parochial Records (http://search.arch.be/fr/tips/98-registresparoissiaux)
and somme official registers also on-line (http://search.arch.be/fr/tips/101-etat-civil).
It's the recent availability of those Belgian sources that pushed me to begin
that work of expanding Father Ducat book to other areas than Leopold, adding
information concerning the birth place and date for the Belgian settlers and
their marriage and death, and adding marriage and death information for their
children.
On Line, are also Indiana sources I used: the Southern
Indiana Connection (http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?includedb=southerindiana),
the Saint Augustine’s Catholic Church baptisms from 1850 to 1895, established by
Sue Yamtich for the Belgium-Roots Project (http://belgium.rootsweb.com/usa/in/perry/in_leopold_augustine01_1850.html).
Other sources are in libraries and archives: Gail Bisbey sent me the list
of Declaration of Intent, found in the Tell City Public Library, and established
by Don Goffinet and Jean Ducat from the Cannelton Courthouse Archives. The "History
of Warrick, Spencer, and Perry Counties, Indiana" gives also some
biographies of the Belgian settlers. I also added family stories, obituaries and
any information found when doing those searches: extract of letters and
books, photos, tombstones photo of those settlers have been added to gives more
understanding of the life of those people.
The list in "The
Belgians of Perry County" is an alphabetical list. I omitted the people
arriving in the area after the Civil War, as they cannot be named “early
settlers” any more. They are grouped at the end of the list. I tried, for each
family to find their first appearance in the censuses, date and place. The 1850
census for those arriving before 1850, and the 1860 one for the others. If
nothing else was available, the first census where they are listed. I also tried
to connect the immigrants with their ship and how they were listed in the ship
manifest. Not always with success, for the censuses or the ship manifests
either.
For each family, I indicated they date and place of birth,
marriage and death and the date of their Declaraton of Intent (DIN). I limited
the search of their children at those having immigrated with them and those born
in the USA. For the single people, I limited the list to their wife or husband
they married in the USA, and their children. Not all the information was always
available, and the one available not always accurate or even reliable. So,
you’ll often find a lot of question-mark.
map from the 1874 atlas