Google Map of Leopold Immigrants

I constructed two simple Google maps that might be of interest to some of you.

The first map plots the villages of origin of heads of households who emigrated from the Semois River valley region in the Province of Luxembourg, Belgium to Leopold, Indiana. The household data comes from:

Ducat, Jean. (1992) De Semois en Indiana. Biesme-Mettet, Belgium:Luxembourg Belge Amérique.

Clicking on a marker will reveal names of heads of households and spouse(s), if any. There are also a few photos scattered around.

I plan to eventually compare Ducat's information to other sources. I'm betting some of you will spot discrepancies or know the villages of origin that Ducat did not.

The second map is of Leopold, Indiana. Clicking on a marker will reveal photos.

Siblings of André PIERRE

Thanks to the research of Marjorie GOBIN, our cousin in Jamoigne, Belgium, I am now very excited to report the names of three of André PIERRE's siblings! (According to one source, André was the youngest of nine.)

Jean-Joseph b: 30 April 1792
Marie Jeanne b: 3 April 1800
and
Jacques b: 1806

We have photos of the birth records for Jean-Joseph & Marie Jeanne. Jacques' name appears as a witness to the wedding of André PIERRE and Marie Elizabeth GRAVET.

Two of Marie Elizabeth GRAVET's brothers appear as witnesses also: Pierre GRAVET & Arnould GRAVET, plus a brother-in-law whose name I cannot clearly read.

Photos of these documents -- there will be more as time allows -- are uploaded to a new area of the records section of peter-family.net.
http://www.peter-family.net/records/ArchivesArlon/index.html

17,200 Belges devenus Américains

While talking with some members of the Peninsula Belgian American Club in during Belgian Days in July, I was made aware of the following book:

Lacourt, M. (2001). 17,200 Belges devenus Américains. Wavre [Belgium]: Cercle historique et archéologique de Wavre et de la région.

Marcel Lacourt has made an effort to compile information for every Belgian immigrant documented to be in the US between 1620 and 1920. Included among the data Lacourt provides (where data was available): immigrant's place and date of birth, port and date of departure, port and date of arrival, and town or county of residence in the US. Lacourt has also tried to link spouses and children together, though I find the conventions he used for this a bit hard to follow.

The book is written in French, but one doesn't need to be proficient in French to understand the basic data.

The price of the book is 59,00€. In addition, the cost will be about 30,00€ for shipping. All in all, plan to spend a minimum of $135.00 given the current conversion rate, the cost of shipping, and the various fees you may encounter at your bank and post office.

Here is the website: http://chawavre.org/emigrati.php .
Here is their contact form: http://chawavre.org/email.php .

Unfortunately, at the time I contacted CHAW, they had no means to accept credit card payments from the US or payment via Internet. Working out a means to conduct the transaction was the most difficult part of obtaining this publication.



NOTE: Yellow highlighting is not in the book. I used Photoshop to highlight the PIERREs.