Belgian-American Research Collection
***The Belgian American Digital Research Collection is now available! It is a multi-media resource containing digitized photographs, e-fascimiles of books, and digitized audio. ***
The establishment of this collection resulted from a grant received in 1975-1976. The purpose of the grant was to collect, identify, and catalog books, photographs, manuscripts, maps and other materials documenting people of Belgian descent living in the United States with a particular emphasis on those living in Brown, Door, and Kewaunee Counties.
To date, the Belgian-American Research Collection focuses on the rural Walloon settlements, with a limited amount of Flemish materials. The collection includes oral history tapes, photographs, maps, a vertical file, books, and manuscript materials.
A component of the grant project was an architectural survey of Belgian-American farms in the area that had been owned for five or six generations of the same family. Oral history interviews were conducted with these individuals to record information about the farm. The grant staff also prepared original maps of the farms. The maps indicate the physical layout of the farm as well as the location of buildings and gardens. The maps contain historical information as well as information from the date of the mapping project.
The Special Collections Department houses family pedigree charts from individuals of Belgian descent. An index containing each name on the pedigree charts has been created. It is available for use in the Archives Reading Room.
Pedigree charts are still accepted from researchers of Belgian descent.
During the grant period, oral history interviews were conducted with local Belgian-Americans. These interviews are available for patrons to hear and are in the format of cassettes or reel-to-reel tape recordings. Playback equipment is available in the Special Collections Department for listening to the oral history interviews. Copies of oral history recordings may be made for patrons. Specific policies and fees have been established for these requests.
The oral history tapes cover subjects such as folklore, fishing, customs, foods, occupations, and religious beliefs. Some of the tapes contain Walloon folk songs with translations. Personal interviews were also conducted with farmstead owners to accompany the architecture survey of Belgian-American farms.
A brief summary of each tape is available online. Full abstracts are available in the Belgian Collection at the Special Collections Department.
The Belgian-American Research Collection Vertical File is arranged alphabetically by subject. Materials in the files include newspaper clippings, reports, family histories, and recipes. The topics covered include customs, immigration, and communities. The contents of this vertical file are indexed in the appropriate card catalog drawer in the Archives Reading Room.