Settlements
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the Civil War
 
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BELGIANS   IN   AMERICA Belgian settlements by State  

 Distribution according
to the State of settlement
: Indiana
Vincennes

Perry County

Southern Indiana

Belgians Settlements in Indiana at the time of the Civil War

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:
  Spencer Musta Alexander 27 single 1836  
  Orange Holman Peter 37   1826  
  Orange Tebon Theodore 36 rope maker 1827  

 
Spencer County,  Dickenson:
 
Alexander Musta: in Jefferson, Kentucky, 1860 census 21 y.o.  born France, a laborer born February 1838 immigrated 1853 (1900 census)
38th Indiana Inf Co B enlisted September 18, 1861.  Death April 12, 1908, New Albany
 
Orange County, Orleans  twp :
 
Peter Holman: see the Holman family at Leopold, Perry County
Theodore Tebon: except an irs tax assesment in 1864 at Orleans as a Hemp rope, no other information found

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