The Belgian Settlements is Door and Kewaunee Counties (Sep 1858)

The Belgian Settlements is Door and Kewaunee Counties
Sep 1858- From the Green Bay Advocate.

It will surprise very many even of our own people when we state that Kewaunee county and the southern portion of Door county are as densely populated as any other section of the same extent in the State--that is, of strictly farming country. The people there are mostly Belgians, and are settled compactly together— each family upon a forty or eighty—rarely upon a larger tract. They are just beginning to hew openings enough among the trees to raise what they need for their own consumption. We can scarcely expect any surplus from them for some years, but it will come by and by; and we are confident that the Peninsula will be one of the gardens of Wisconsin.

Probably no other race on this continent could have gone into the woods and combatted the privations of forest life with the patience, industry, and success which these people have. They were poor, with few exceptions, reaching here with exhausted purses after running a gauntlet of emigrant swindles between New York and the West. The purchase of forty or eighty acres of land generally took all that was left— and after throwing up a rough block house, the first question which presented itself to the head of the family was, how to get food for his little ones until an opening could be made in the trees, and the season roll round with the fruits of the earth. Shingle making has generally been the resort in such cases ; but the hard times of last year and the general crash in everything reached even the shingle trade so that none but a Belgian pioneer could have faced the task of making a living for a family by manufacturing shingles at the ruling prices. It was done however.— The very best quality of shaved shingle shingles were made in large quantities and sold for one dollar per thousand, and even less.

Another thing. Some of them manufactured lumber by hand. The statement will hardly be credited, but it is no less a fact that the Belgians have, with a common "whip-saw," manufactured the best pine lumber at a less price than it could be made with all the appliances of steam engines, muley saws and the most improved styles of mills. As handsome lumber as we ever saw has been made by them and sold at $5,- 50 and $6 per 1000 feet! In such ways as this— by hard and persistent labor— they gathered together the means of obtaining their daily bread find little else they needed; for some dry bread and potatoes formed the bill of fare for six days in the week, and the seventh a little coffee, mixed with chickory, for economy's sake, made a sort of holiday of Sunday. Butter and milk and eggs, there were none, for there were no cows nor hens.

Last week we were in the mill which does the grinding for probably half the county. It is the rudest structure imaginable. An over-shot wheel turns one stone slowly, and the bolting apparatus is propelled by a woman. She stood there patiently the day long, turning the crank with one hand, and with the other supplying the screen with the unbolted flour. The mill was thronged with customers, men, women and children, who brought the grain on their heads, and waited for it to be ground. Some of them come five, six, and eight miles, bringing each a load of from fifty to an hundred pounds.— Among hundreds of families, there are but two or three pairs of oxen, and we did not hear of but one horse in the whole settlement. The roads, indeed, do not permit of the use of wheeled vehicles to any extent. They are nothing but trails.

We saw, in one clearing, a man and a boy hitched to a wooden drag, preparing the ground for next season's crops. Most of the tilling is done by means of a sort of grub hoe; though lately the more fortunate ones manage to get some plowing done.

We met a woman and her son on the way to Green Bay with a basket of chickens and some other little produce. They had already walked eight miles and had fourteen more to go—making twenty-two miles. Their marketing would bring them in town perhaps one dollar and a half.

At one house where we stopped in, the field hands were at dinner, a loaf of black bread and a kettle of coffee were all that we saw on the table. They dipped the bread in the coffee and seemed to be making a comfortable meal. At another house we found a man cutting up a pig. So marked an instance of extravagance surprised us, until we were told that a hear had killed it the night before, and they had rescued it from his clutches. The bears are very troublesome, carrying off pigs and calves. Some of them are killed occasionally.

We have already noticed the beginning of a town on the Bay shore— Dycksville- which is likely to be their principal post on the western side. Here are one or two taverns, or places where the travelers may find rest for the night—and a very good store kept by Mr. Van Dyck. His establishment embraces almost everything needed in a new country, from wooden shoes to sacks of flour. And not alone wooden shoes, for we noticed some fine shoes for women and boots for men. Mr. Van Dyck seems to be doing a paying business, and he ought to— for he is a pleasant and sociable gentleman.

Years hence, when another generation shall have grown up and taken the place of the present one, the solid and prosperous men of the Peninsula will remember the stories of their fathers' hardships in the new country with wonder. The "gentle slopes and groves between" will bloom and blossom with all the wealth of a rich country, and Kewaunee County will rank with the first in the State.

Sufferings Among The Belgians In Brown County

(Jan 25, 1856)

Sufferings Among The Belgians In Brown County

The Green Bay Advocate of the 17th inst., says;

Information was received here last week that a party of Belgian emigrants, who have located near the Bay shore in the vicinity of Red River, about 20 miles north of Green Bay, were in a suffering condition for want of provisions. A generous donation in the shape of flour and other other supplies, was at once made by some of our citizens, and sent to them. Measrs. Scott and D. M. Whitney, the gentlemen who volunteerd to distribute the supplies, give a sad account of their condition. Wholly unused to providefor a Northern winter, their houses or huts are entirely unfit to protect them from the cold, being roughly built of logs and brush, the cracks and crevices of which are so open as to admit the wind freely. Many of the mens had already frozen their hands and feet, During one of the coldest days which we have had, one of the men came up as far as the house of Mr. Rosseau, soliciting provisions for his starving family.- It was late before he was ready to return, and as he was inefficently clad Mr. R. urged him to stay until the morning; but being fearful that his sufferng wife and little ones at home might die for the want of provisions, he started home and froze both feet getting there.

Wisconsin pre 1907 records

For those new to genealogy and for overseas cousins, mabe this will help explain things.

Wisconsin became a state in 1848, but it took a long time for Wisconsin to get good record keeping practices. Prior to 1907 civil registration was not required by the State of Wisconsin that vital events be registered with them. That Wisconsin has any registered marriages, death or births prior to 1907 at all is because persons who had knowledge of those events could voluntarily conduct a registration, I think always at the courthouse and almost always by the officiant of the wedding, etc. It seems that making a special trip to the court house just to register a marriage, birth or death was burdensome. So an officiant would wait until he had an unrelated reason to go to town, and stop off at the courthouse to do all of his registering then. A result of this practice is that marriages, births and deaths in the Peninsula Belgian community were commonly not registered in the county where the event occurred, but rather in a country where the priest happened to visit sometime thereafter. Brown County was the most common recipient of these out-of-the-county marriage registrations. No surprise there. But some are rather strange. For example; such as being married or dying in the Town of Brussels, but the marriage was registered in Kewaunee County.

In Wisconsin there is also an old law that prohibits reproduction and sharing of vital records. So if you want copies of the originals you have to pay. Historically the groups of volunteers have created some county level indexing, such as this list courtesy of the Peninsula Genealogical Society: http://sites.rootsweb.com/~wipgs/PGS/DCDeathIndexAlphaToEndof1897on20May2008.pdf

Those early volunteer efforts have largely turned into a larger pre-1907 index effort that can be found in three main locations (Wisconsinhistory.org, familysearch.org and Ancestry). However it is possible that some records only exist at the county level and are not in the state-level collection.

If the record made it to the state one can see some basic info and order a copy from the Wisconsin historical society, an example:

https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records?&terms=Decamp&facets=County%3a%22Brown%22&nodes=*Family*History*

An example is Leopold Debeck(er)'s wife, Julienne Kinnart. The state had no copy of her death record, but the county did. And to make matters worse it recorded her birthplace wrong (France instead of Belgium). Same goes for her marriage record, only at the county level and a most unusual one, filed 40 some years after the event. The civil record says they were married at Bay Settlement, but no church record survives.

In a few other cases I have found some of the records the Rev. René Vilatte made ended up in Canada where he went after starting a bunch of churches here.

Another problem I have found is sometime ago the Green Bay dioceses attempted to consolidate their church records, while it's convenient having to only go to one place vs a lot of different churches, they did a poor job. I have seen the paper records for infant deaths of my Bertrand relatives 20 years ago, and now they cannot be found on microfilm. Many are really badly out of focus too.

In many cases before the establishment of today's surviving churches and resident priests (mostly the establishment of the Norbertine order) the only records I have found are property tax records. An example is Jean Joseph Moen's (my 3rd great grandfather); his death location of Dyckesville is from Serge A Theriault, who has possession of Rev. Rene Vilatte church record book, however it had no date. J.J. Moens is shown having last paid his property tax Feb 23, 1892 and there are no further records of him or his property after that date. While Jean Joseph lived in Champion, his oldest son lived in Dyckesville so I assume when he got older he lived with his son and that is where he died.

It's a pretty discouraging mess. To be a purist you have to check a lot of places, especially when you consider the Belgian’s were spread across three different counties.

Belgian Booyah - A Breif Histroy

Les Rentmeester doesn’t claim that his dad, Andrew Rentmeester, invented booyah, just that he invented the word. And he invented the practice of using mass quantities of the magical soup as the main attraction in local fundraisers.

Andrew, a lumberjack-turned-schoolteacher, planned to brew a gargantuan vat of booyah as a fundraiser for Finger Road School, which, “I think is out of business now,” says Lester. This would’ve been around 1906, Lester figures. Andrew went to the Press-Gazette to publicize the event and, when asked how to spell the name of the soup his fundraiser would feature, he came up with b-o-o-y-a-h — as close as he could come phonetically to the French word “bouillon,” by which the soup was known by him and other Walloon Belgians.

The Rentmeester story in detail can be read here: http://whoonew.com/2013/10/the-real-reason-we-call-it-chicken-booyah-in-wisconsin/ It does clear up the confusion on how a Flemish school teacher seems to be connected to what seems to be at least a French/Walloon word.

The earliest mention I have found of "booyah" in a Green Bay newspaper in Dec 18 1907:

Green Bay Marksmen Victors at Kaukauna
Messrs. Meusel and Dieter Carrt Off High Scores in Trap Shoting Contest Sunday....Both of these gentlemen made 21 each, capturing honors at the event. About 20 guests were present from Appleton and Green Bay and were given "booyah" dished up in Rich McCarty's best style....

So while I was expecting to see a blurb in the paper about the school fundraiser and selling booyah, it seems more likely the newspaper company likely just printed posters for the event.

And as mentioned in the video, I too found traces of booya = 1895, and 1910 in Minnesota newspapers, but not necessarily with chicken.

One thing without a doubt in my mind is the high concentration of Belgian's and now their descendants in the area definetly has a lot to do with it's area popularity. Once you travel much out side of Southern Door or past Kaukauna people have never heard of it and no restaurants serve it. As for Minnesota, there is good number of Belgians (mostly Flemish) there at least in the Northern part of the state. It would be interesting if someone from Minnesota could comment on the matter. I'd tend to think it was also another early area for the French Canadian's as the Great Lakes had a lot to do with early settlement, but I don't know for sure.

The standarized spelling may very well be thanks to Andrew Rentmeester, and Booyah's popularity and commercialization has cemented that in.

It seems those who truely would have the answers to all this sadly have long since past away. Bob Baye was the long time Booyah king of St. Peter and Paul. As mentioned in the video there was a guaranteed turnout just from the smell and knowing who was the cook. If you look at which of the early churches served this dish, they were always congregations with a good number of Belgian parishioners. It has since grown in popularity that you'll find cooks from all ethnic backgrounds.

Now back to the the spelling and word itself. It seems to be the only standard spelled Belgian word. I've written before on even the Kermiss has had a few different spellings. And so has the cuyoo card game.

If you want to listen to the French pronunciation of "bouillon", which is roughly what "bouyon" sounds like in Walloon, you can visit this page: https://forvo.com/word/bouillon/

And lastly, Mary Ann Defnet's opinion on its origin.

If you look in the Door County Newspaper archives the earliest booyah reference you'll find is Sep 23, 1880.

"We have had a lot of the "Lo" family peddling cranberries. They camped on the bench, and having "obtained a lot of fish-heads and guts, they made a kind of broth of abominable things, in Indian parlance called boo-yah, which they seemed to relish hugely, though there was a strong smell or" "Injun" about it."

It's all from one big pot : booya as an expression of community by Anne R. Kaplan in 1988, is probably the best read. It's 300 pages, and it provides a good Minnesota angle. It's main investigation is Churches, clubs, volunteer fire companies, and neighborhood associations host annual booyas as fundralsers. And from that:

Most people trace booya to the French-Canadian fur traders who supposedly sustained themselves by stewing vats of whatever wild game and vegetables were on hand. By dubious etmology they claom that the name "booya" is an Anglicized verson of the French "bouillir" (to boil)...

Responsibilities of Altar Boys - David Chaudoir & Francis Jauquet

The languages of Belgium

This video is all about the languages of Belgium, and the fascinating linguistic situation in the country. The three official languages of Belgium are Dutch, French, and German, but that's just the beginning.

It covers the area history which explains how the langauges became part of this one country. It explains the federal state and it's three administrative regions which are based on language.

What's a Walloon and Why Does It Matter

To understand the language you need to understand the history. As the language is older than the country, being as that only became it's own in 1830.

What follows is an excerpt from Chapter I: What's a Walloon and Why Does It Matter? by Judith Carlsen

Belgium is the country of our origins, and Belgium is a very small country, approximately the size of Maryland. One would think that designating our forebears as Belgian would be sufficient.

Yet Belgium has always been a divided country. It has long been fought over and subdivided by larger surrounding nations, rather like a solitary bone among a pack of hungry dogs. There are relics of civilizations from earliest antiquity associated with the area we know today as Belgium. The first named inhabitants were the Belgae. These people groups were Celtic tribes that settled the European landmass about 500 BC.

By 51 BC, the Belgae were overtaken by Julius Caesar's armies. Caesar referred to the Belgae as "the bravest of all the Gauls," and Belgium, or Belgica, flourished as a Roman province. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes invaded. The Franks, one of these Germanic tribes, eventually took over Belgium and installed Clovis I as king of the dynasty. After he converted to Christianity he recruited Irish monks and other Christian scholars to preach Christianity to the Belgium populace.

Spain and the Vikings had their turns in conquering and ruling Belgium. Charlemagne was born near Leige, Belgium and he brought a huge part of Europe under his rule. He was crowned "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire" in the year 800. As his empire lost its power in the 11th and 12th centuries, the country we know as Belgium was divided into separate states. These feudal states correspond roughly to the provinces of Belgium from which our ancestors emigrated. It's important to note that the country is divided, geographically, into two halves, roughly corresponding to the language that is spoken : Flemish, the language of the northern, more populous, half, has Germanic-Dutch derivation, while Walloon, a regional dialog with similarities to French, is the dominant language of the southern half. The populace of each half has genetic kinship to their neighboring country, whether it be Holland or France.

Walloon Wisdom (Proverbes Wallons)

The proverbs are voiced by Jacques Desmet from Jodoigne.

This has English captions and is narrated in English. Merci!

History of the French Phonology

I stumbled upon a pretty good History of the French Phonology in a paper titled "The French Phonological Corpus with Equivalents in English, German and Turkish, as Part of a New Multilingual Dictionary Project" by Dr Metin Yurtbaşı, it starts at page 4 of: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED579983.pdf

In Quebec, the French they speak there is closer to our Walloon. In any event a number of Quebecois Canadian's have noted that they understand our Wisconsin Walloon videos better than the French they speak in France. The things to consider is the much earlier time period of when the French Canadian's left France (mostly 15-16th century), and for that matter it's worth noting there are some Quebecois Canadian's who have Belgian ancestors, so they weren't all from France.

I recommend reading through page 7, if not the whole paper. I'll share some excerpts here:

1 Gallo-Romance (5th-8th centuries)
The Vulgar Latin in Gaul has developped specific features that made it distinct from the Latin spoken in the other regions of the Roman empire. The Reichenau Glosses are a good example of its phonetics and vocabulary.

2 Old French (9th-13th centuries)
The dialects of Northern Gaul developed into separate language (Langue d'oil, see below) with a grammar of its own. The first written materials in it date from the Strasbourg Oaths of 842. The Old French literature flourished since the 10th century (chansons de geste etc.). French in this period was already taught in the neighboring countries (especially in Germany). In 11th13th centuries it was the dominant language of the English administration. It was, also, the language of the crusaders in the Levantine countries.

3 Middle French (14th-15th centuries)
This period was marked by changes both in the pronunciation and in the grammar. A common literary language, based on the dialect of Île de France (the region of Paris), was promoted by the writers. French was replacing Latin in the texts of the public administration in France.

4 Early Modern French (16th century)
The aim of the writers of this period, as is the case of the poets of La Pléiade, was to elevate the French language to the level of Latin as a medium for literary expression, In 1539 a royal decree proclaimed French official language of the public administration. Since that period the government was always involved in the development and the standardization of the language.

5 Classical Modern French (17th-18th century)
In this period were fixed the main grammar convention of the modern French. By then it was used as an international language throughout Europe and even in the administrative correspondence of countries as Germany. With the colonial expansion of France French spread to America (Canada, Louisiana, the Caribbean islands etc.)

6 Contemporary Modern French (since 19th century)
The contemporary pronunciation of the standard language was fixed in that period, namely between 1789 and 1918. French was established as an official language in the French and Belgian colonial possessions in Africa (ibid).

Now that you have the basics on the History of the French Phonology, here is a a side-by-side recorded comparison that I have pieced together for those curious about the differences between spoken Walloon and French.

https://archive.org/details/spoken-walloon-french-comparison

Community-Driven Language Preservation and the Development of a Wisconsin Walloon Primer

Jadin Ice Fishing Process

Solving the impossible in genealogy

I feel its important to share how you figured out something, more so than just the answer. Isn't that what they taught you in math?

In this case I was trying to determine the where Leopold DeBeck(er)'s wife was from in Belgium. What would have been helpful was her mothers maiden name. From that you could look though the civil records of Belgium, community by community till you spotted the Quinard and X marriage. Those are pretty detailed so you'd likely get both parents ages from the marriage record and if that fits what your Wisconsin census shows, then you'd know of found the right one.

After looking at Julienne's marriage Brown County civil record that dated the marriage on 20 April 1862, it was becomming clear her maiden last name was Kinard or something like that, not the Quinard phonetic interpretation on the census. Sadly the marriage record did not reveal her mothers maiden name. As a matter of fact we are lucky to even have a record of the date at all. Its a very odd record, filed 43 years after their marriage in 1905.

Prior to 1907 was not required by the State of Wisconsin that marriages be registered with them. That Wisconsin has any registered marriages prior to 1907 at all is because persons who had knowledge of a marriage could voluntarily conduct a registration, I think always at the court house and almost always by the officiant of the wedding. It seems that making a special trip to the court house just to register a marriage was burdensome. So a officiant would wait until he had an unrelated reason to go to town, and stop off at the courthouse to do all of his registering then. A result of this practice is that marriages conducted in the Peninsula Belgian community were commonly not registered in the county where the marriage occurred, but rather in a country where the priest happened to visit sometime thereafter.

Truth be told I wasn't even sure the declaration of intent I had found for her father was him for sure. Here is Wisconsin there are number of people with simular names; Kinnaer, Kinnar, Kinnart, Kinard, Kinart, Quinart, Quinard, etc. Joseph's birth year on the declaration of intent did match what the census said. But like I said, Joseph is too common, and the sloppy penmanship and possible surname vararions were boggling.

My next step was to look diocese records as the civil record indicated they were married at Bay Settlement. The hours for the diocese didn't work well with my work schedule so I decided to look at land records. What I found there confirmed the Joseph Kinard? on the declaration of intent was the same guy, as he also purchased land in Champion the same day. And that later became Leopold Beck(er)s down the road.

The declaralation of intent sadly referenced the smaller ship they traveled in the Great Lakes "landed at the Port of Green Bay, August 1856", so that was no help trying to figure out what ship they boarded on the other side of the ocean. And thats okay because a lot of the ship manifests for our Belgian ancestors simply don't exist anymore.

I figured the family got off the big ship likely at Quebec city and got on a smaller one for the great lakes trip. As I understand it, Quebec served as one of the most heavily used ports of landing for Belgian immigrants. There are stories of the Belgians early-on discovering the advantages of landing at a port where the locals spoke French, and which also had the advantage of on-water travel to the exact intended destination, Green Bay. Sadly I’ve never seen any listings of the people who passed through these ports of entry. One doesn’t seem to see much about Belgians who landed directly in the US other than at New York. I am not sure why. But it is often mentioned that other ports used by the Belgians included Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. On the embarkation side, Belgians often traveled first to Hull, England, on local passengers ships, crossed England by railroad to Liverpool, and there boarded ocean-going ships to cross the Atlantic.

The Weekly Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI, Wed Jun 25, 1856)
E. D. Sterling, of Oshkosh,

Largest Load of the Season. The Steamer Sullana came in from Buffalo, on Sunday night with 465 tons of freight, and over 400 passengers, a large part of which were Belgian emigrants, who settle on the Peninsula north-east of this city. They pre-empt the Government land at the graduation price, which is 50 cents per acre. It is such loads of passengers and freight that settles the country. Make a route, pay and business good. Put Green Bay down at the next census for 10,000, amd Brown County for 15,000 more inhabitants.

So the next plan of attack was to focus on searching already indexed records on the shared family tree on Family Search and on geneanet for Julienne. My logic was her first name wasn't super common like her father Joseph's, and we at least had a month of birth for her, assuming it was accurate. While I had previously figured the name was more Kinard like than the origional Quinard, I also acknowleged it may be different where she was born as language difficulties changed and screwed up a lot of names here. So I ran multiple searches on; Julienne Kinard, then, Julienne Kinart and down the name of common Wisconsin vararions i had compiled from previous research.

Then your intelligent persistance pays off, and low and behold:
https://gw.geneanet.org/ckmckm?lang=en&iz=11659&p=julienne&n=kinnart

A pretty close match was my first thought. Now to find additional evidence. The nice man from Belgium who created this any many other indexed records indicates she was born in Rancour. So then I confirm his entry by finding the origional record on familysearch. Which confirms it.

Then I wanted to look at the family in the population registers of Rancour. These are the closest thing to our Census. The start of it is here: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-V3DK-36W?cat=368955 This film also includes the next Pop Reg decennial, 1857-1867 (img 227+), but the Kinnard-Limmes were gone by then. From this; I'm sure this family left the country and is the ones that settled here.

Since there is more than one way to solve things. Another plan was to look at other Wisconsin families that arrived in August 1856. In that case we have the Rankin/Renquin family of Wisconsin. They, too, came from Racour, and have left no immigration travel record other than having arrived in Green Bay in 1856. I'd bet they traveled with the Kinnards/Kinnarts.

Margaret (LeRoy) Monfils and Ervin Jadin talking about New Years traditions and "waffle soup"

Town names (road signs)

Many are be aware that Wisconsin's Belgian settlers named a lot of things after places from their homeland. Towns like, Brussels, Namur, Champion, Rosiere, Walhain, etc.

What you may not be aware of is there is at least one road sign in Namur, Belgium after the Wisconsin settlers.