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Archiver > BELGIUM-ROOTS > 2001-06 > 0992266503


From: "Robert J. Hamers" <>
Subject: [BEL-R] Re: BELGIUM-ROOTS-D Digest V01 #277
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 08:35:03 -0500
In-Reply-To: <200106110800.f5B804U07396@lists2.rootsweb.com>


Hi, Paula-
Yes, I sent you some information on this. Detroit, Michigan (Wayne County)
and Moline, Ill (Rock Island county) both had large Belgian communities.
My understanding is that these were two of the largest belgian communities
at the time, and they even had their own belgian newspapers., De Gazette
van Moline and De Gazette van Detroit.

Moline continues to have an active Belgian community center; see, for
example,
http://www.qconline.com/progress98/dining/147.htm
http://www.qcmetrolink.com/tours/toursmoline.html

The Center for Belgian Culture
712 18th Avenue
Moline, IL 61265
(309) 762-0167
Web Site: www.belgianmuseumquadcities.org

The state of Illinois has a very good on-line archive center, at:
http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html
that has a lot of old marriage records and also land records. But, they
don't have birth or death records indexed here. I did a quick look under
"Pangier" and got zero hits. So, that might be a dead end for now.

The second place I recommended was Detroit. There, it seems that there
were factories that offered good jobs for immigrants and act as a
stopping-off point.

In my own case, one set of grandparents stopped in Moline, and another
stopped in Detroit. Both then came to Sturtevant, Wisconsin (Racine
County). I think there was a small belgian cluster there as well, but not
nearly the size as the ones in Moline or Detroit (or around Green Bay).

Let me know if I can help more-

Bob Hamers

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