Belgians in Michigan

by Bernard A. Cook

Overview

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Michigan was home to the second-largest Belgian population in the United States, and Detroit had one of the largest Belgian populations in the nation. Although immigration declined after World War I, the Belgian- American community is still prominent in the state. Political, religious, and economic conditions, including a nineteenth- century economic depression, helped motivate the move to America. Belgians brought with them the ability and willingness to innovate, as well as a tradition of hard work and devotion. The Gazette van Detroit, a Flemish-language newspaper first printed in Detroit in 1914, continues to be produced and distributed to subscribers throughout the United States and overseas. Belgian-Americans continue to incorporate traditional values with newfound American values, enabling them to forever preserve their heritage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609170226
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	11/08/2007
Series:	Discovering the Peoples of Michigan
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Bernard A. Cook, who began his teaching career at Northern Michigan University, is Provost Distinguished Professor of History at Loyola University in New Orleans. He has directed Loyola University's summer study program in Leuven, Belgium since 1993. He is the author of numerous works on Belgium and central Europe.

Read an Excerpt

Belgians in Michigan

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By Bernard A. Cook

Michigan State University Press

Copyright © 2007 Bernard A. Cook
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87013-812-6

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Chapter One

Belgian Immigration

At the beginning of the twenty-first century there were 360,642 people in the United States who claimed Belgian heritage. Michigan, with 53,135 people who listed Belgium as their place of birth or the country from which their ancestors came, was second only to the state of Wisconsin, which had 57,808. The descendants of Belgian immigrants in Michigan are descendants of several waves of Belgian immigration to the United States. Between 1830 and 1975 approximately 200,000 Belgians immigrated to the United States. Sixty-three thousand came before 1900. Following the economic crisis of 1847 to 1849, 6,000 to 7,000 Belgians came to the United States annually. The period of heaviest Belgian immigration to the United States was the first two decades of the twentieth century, when 75,000 Belgians left their homeland for America. An additional 62,000 came after 1920. Most of the Belgians who came before 1930 were Flemish, Dutch-speaking Belgians, and most of the immigrants who arrived from Belgium after 1930, and especially after World War II, have been Walloons from the French-speaking sections of Belgium. The great influx of Flemish before 1930 is related to the relative disadvantage of the Flemish in a Belgium, which until after World War II was dominated culturally, economically, and politically by the French-speaking Walloons. When the economic tide switched after World War II in favor of the Dutch-speaking Flemish it was the Walloons who made up the bulk of Belgian immigrants to the United States.

A Short History of Belgium

Belgium is located in Western Europe. It is surrounded by the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, France, and the North Sea. Its population is divided into three official national groups, six million Flemish, four million French-speaking Walloons, and seventy thousand Germans. Belgium is an ancient land, but the independent state of Belgium is a rather recent creation. The Belgians were mentioned by Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars. Th ose Belgians were a fierce Celtic people. Much of present-day Belgium was overrun and colonized by the Romans. However, in the third century Germanic Franks and other German tribes increasingly pushed into the area. Roman power receded and the whole area came under Frankish rule by the fifth century. Despite their political and military dominance, Frankish settlement produced a Frankish majority only in the northern and western parts of present-day Belgium. Th at is the section of Belgium where the Flemish people predominate. They speak Flemish, a Germanic language, the written form of which is today the same as modern Dutch. In areas of Belgium where Gallo-Romans remained the majority, the Franks were assimilated and the language of the people evolved into a form of French. The Low Lands, today's Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (Benelux), were the sites of many dynastic and political struggles. Flanders was an early European area of urban development, commerce, and manufacturing. There was great local pride and urban patriotism in towns like Brugge (Bruges) and Ghent. Workers of both cities struggled in the fourteenth century to prevent the French kingdom from dominating their towns. Under the Burgundians the area seemed on the path to nationhood, but untimely deaths and political marriages led to the area falling under the control of the Hapsburgs. When Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, divided his realm in 1556, he handed the Low Lands over to his son Philip II. Philip's championing of the Catholic Counter-Reformation against his Protestant subjects led to war and the eventual establishment of a separate Netherlands, which was dominated politically by Protestants. Protestants became a discriminated-against minority in the south and a number of Walloon and Flemish Protestants sought refuge in the Netherlands or, more properly, the United Provinces.

What is today Belgium became a cockpit in the struggle between France and Spain, and eventually, after the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14), passed to the Austrian Hapsburgs. The eighteenth century was a time of material progress in the Austrian Netherlands, but it also saw a growing movement for "Belgian" independence. Change came in the 1790s but at the hands of revolutionary France. "Belgium" was absorbed by France and was part of Napoleon's French Empire until he was defeated. The Congress of Vienna, which attempted to restore order and stability in Europe, combined "Belgium," the old Austrian Netherlands, with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The peacemakers thought that their marriage of the two parts of the Low Lands had much to recommend it. However, grievances boiled up in the south. Belgians were saddled with a disproportionate part of the Dutch war debt. They were underrepresented in the parliament. The economic policy of the united state favored Dutch commercial interests over the manufacturers of Flanders and Wallonia. The Dutch king's Protestantism off ended the predominantly Catholic population of the south, especially the conservative Catholic population of Flanders. And the primacy given to the Dutch language in the newly united state off ended the educated and economic elite in Belgium, who, whether Walloon or Flemish, were French-speaking. An independent Belgium was established as a result of a revolt against the Dutch king in 1830. A state with one of the most liberal constitutions in the world was established under the new Belgian king, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The Dutch king, William, after much resistance, finally agreed to a treaty on April 19, 1839, which recognized Belgium as an independent state. The great powers by this treaty also recognized the permanent neutrality of Belgium. It was this treaty that Theobald Bethmann-Hollweg, the German chancellor, contemptuously referred to as "a scrap pf paper" just before the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914.

Independent Belgium, a majority of whose citizens were Flemish-speakers, was dominated by a French-speaking elite. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century there was significant industrialization in the Walloon portions of the country. On the other hand, the majority of the Flemish continued to be peasants and the majority of them were quite poor. The cultural, political, and economic dominance of the French-speaking Belgians was successfully challenged after World War II. The older industries declined, and new service and technology sectors developed in the Flemish section of the country. The Flemish profited from the role played by the port of Antwerp in the Marshall Plan and the economic stimulation provided by it. The Flemish also had an advantage integrating into the world economy and the developing interconnected economy of the European Economic Community and European Community because of the facility of their young people in the English language. A new self-confidence and self-assertiveness accompanied the economic growth of the Flemish area. The Flemish pushed for language rights and home-rule. As a result a segmented federal state developed in which the Flemish and French-speaking sections of Belgium, organized as the Flemish Community and the Walloon Region, have a great deal of regional autonomy.

The Flemish Community and the Walloon Region each consist of four provinces. The Flemish provinces are West Flanders, with its administrative center at Brugge (Bruges); East Flanders, with its administrative center at Ghent; Antwerp, with its administrative center at the city of Antwerp; and Limburg, with its administrative center at Hasselt. The Walloon provinces are Hainault, with its administrative center at Mons; Namur, with its administrative center at the city of Namur; Liège, with its administrative center at the city of Liège; and Lumembourg, with its administrative center at Arlon. The province of Brabant is divided into a Flemish and a Walloon section, centered respectively on Leuven and Wavre. The headquarters of the German community is at Eupen in the province of Liège. Bilingual Brussels, the national capital, is organized as a separate region. Adding to this complex arrangement is a French community, consisting of the Walloon Region and the French Linguistic Group of the Council of the Brussels Capital Region, and a Flemish Council, composed of the Flemish Community and the Dutch Linguistic Group of the Brussels Council. All of this administrative complexity exists in a country only a bit larger than the state of Maryland. However, localism, the desire of towns and areas for local autonomy, is an ancient and enduring tradition in the area that became Belgium in the 1830s.

The Earliest Belgians in America

Flemish and Walloon Protestants were with the Dutch who explored and settled New Amsterdam, and Belgian Catholic clerics were among the early explorers of the area of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi basin. Friar Louis Hennepin, a Belgian from Ath, accompanied Robert Cavelier de la Salle on his quest for the mouth of the Mississippi River. Hennepin named Lake St. Claire when he passed through it in 1679 on August 12, the feast day of St. Claire. After returning to Europe, Hennepin in 1683 published Description of Louisiana: Newly Discovered to the Southwest of New France by order of the King. The book became an extraordinary success. It was printed in sixty editions in many languages. Though Hennepin was quite inventive in his account and descriptions, the book stimulated tremendous interest and fascination with the New World. In 1701 Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the governor of Louisiana, founded a fort and the town of Detroit grew up around it.

Belgian Missionaries

Other Belgian priests came to the area that would become Michigan as missionaries to the Native Americans. A Jesuit, Pierre Potier, born in 1708 in Blandain near Doornik in Hainaut, came to Canada in 1743. A year later he was sent to minister to the Hurons on the Detroit River and remained there until his death in 1781. He was asked in 1778 by Henry Hamilton, the British governor of Detroit, to bless his French-speaking militia before their campaign against George Rogers Clark's Americans at Vincennes.

The first lay Belgians probably arrived in Detroit by wagon train in 1801.9 The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 led to an increase in navigation on the Great Lakes and provided easier access to Michigan and the settlement at Detroit. Father Jean de Bruyne and Leo van den Poel set up a mission in the straits area in 1833. They brought nine skilled workers and two teachers with them to work with Native Americans. The two teachers, Charles Bauwens and Peter Walop, became priests and served in the Detroit diocese, but most of the workers eventually returned to Belgium. Among the Flemish priests who ministered to Native Americans in what would become Michigan were Fr. Louis Deseille with the Potawatomi on the St. Joseph River, and Fathers Saenderl and Hatscher with the Menominee. Belgian Protestants were among the first Belgian immigrants to Michigan. Belgium under the Dutch from 1815 to 1830 had been headed by a Protestant king and favored the Dutch language. "After the Walloon-dominated, bourgeois, and predominantly Catholic Belgian state was formed in the 1830s, many Flemish and some Walloon Protestants emigrated for political and religious reasons." In 1833 the Palms family from Antwerp, who would play a significant role in the Belgian community of Detroit, settled in the city. Michigan became a state in 1837, and by 1840 there were 233 Belgians living in its largest and still growing town, Detroit, and they constituted 7 percent of its population. One of the very visible marks that they made on the city was the windmills along the shoreline below the city. Though there were few Belgian Catholics in the city, most of the priests in the area were Belgian.

The Catholic Church in Detroit had been administered by the bishop of Cincinnati. In 1833 the Catholic Church made Detroit a diocese. The German-born vicar-general of the Cincinnati diocese, Frederic Rese, was ordained the first bishop of Detroit. His priests were almost to the man Flemish. Most Belgian priests who came to America at the time aspired to be missionaries to the Native Americans. However, the increasing number of Catholic immigrants in Michigan created the need for priests to minister to them. One of Bishop Rese's first decisions as bishop was to purchase a building at the corner of Larned and Randolph to serve as a school for girls. He invited Belgian nuns from the Poor Clare order under the leadership of Sister Françoise Vindevoghel from Bruges to establish it. The St. Clare Institute became the first girls' secondary school in Detroit. It quickly made a name for itself and within a year had one hundred students, the majority of whom were non-Catholics. Twenty of the students were boarders, forty day students came from prosperous families, and forty girls were from poor families. Two daughters of Ange Palms, Marie Therese and Marie Françoise, taught French at the school. During a cholera epidemic in July 1834, the sisters from the school tirelessly tended to the ill. Due to the interference of the bishop, the promising Clare Institute was dissolved in 1839 and the sisters, to the detriment of Detroit, left.

Rese resigned in August 1840, but kept the title of bishop of Detroit until he died. Rome did not appoint an administrator to replace him until July 1841. At that time, thirty-seven-year-old Fr. Peter Paul Lefevere, from Roeselare in West Flanders, was appointed coadjutor of the diocese. Fr. Lefevere had come to the United States in 1828 as a seminarian, and as a priest he had served as a missionary to Catholics along the Mississippi from Dubuque to Saint Louis. The diocese of Detroit at that time included all of Michigan and Wisconsin. In 1842 Lefevere had only fifteen priests to attend to the needs of twenty-five churches. He immediately sought priests and seminarians. In 1842 he ordained Peter Kindekens from Denderwindeke in East Flanders and promptly appointed him pastor of St. Anne's and his vicar-general. Kindekens was sent to Rome to establish a seminary to provide priests for America and, in particular, Michigan, but because of the political situation in Rome (and probably also because of his background) Kindekens decided that an American Seminary College at the Catholic University of Leuven would be a more fruitful venture. Lefevere and Bishop Martin Spaulding of Louisville, Kentucky, agreed, and Kindekens became the first rector of the American College in Leuven. In 1857 there were twenty-three Belgian priests in the diocese of Detroit. Of these, twelve came from West Flanders, five from East Flanders, two from Mechelen in the Province of Antwerp, two from Tournai in Hainault, and two were Redemptorist order priests. Ten more Belgian priests came before the death of Lefevere on March 4, 1869. Eight of these were trained at the American College in Leuven. Kindekens returned to Detroit in 1860 and was succeeded as rector of the college by a succession of Belgian priests from the diocese of Detroit. The American College sent many priests to the Detroit diocese and eventually became home to American seminarians and priests studying philosophy and theology at the University of Louvain (Leuven).

The pioneering work of Belgian priests extended far beyond the city of Detroit. Father Joseph Joos, who was born in Somerghem in East Flanders and was educated at the seminary in Ghent, was the pastor of St. Mary's in Monroe from 1857 until his death in 1901. He succeeded in bringing together a querulous Catholic community composed of French-Canadians, Irish, and Germans. Among his many accomplishments was his dedication to Catholic education. "Many schools were established by his efforts and hundreds of thousands of children educated." He was the guiding spirit behind the formation of the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who ran St. Mary's Academy in Monroe.

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Excerpted from Belgians in Michigan by Bernard A. Cook Copyright © 2007 by Bernard A. Cook. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................1
Belgian Immigration....................3
A Short History of Belgium....................5
The Earliest Belgians in America....................11
Belgian Emigration to Michigan, 1830–1870....................17
Belgian Immigrants in Michigan, 1860–1930....................23
The Social World of the Belgians in Michigan....................51
Flemish Culture....................61
Leading Belgian Families in Michigan....................67
Belgians in Michigan Today....................75
Belgian National Anthem....................6
The First Belgian to Reach Michigan....................12
Getting to Detroit....................14
Belgian-American All-American Athlete....................27
Belgian Horses....................28
"Buffalo"....................32
Pigeon Racing....................36
The Belgian National Holiday and Flag....................37
Camille Cools, Founder of the Gazette van Detroit....................45
Mussels and Beer at the Cadieux Café....................54
Jazz Accordionist....................62
The Flemish Lion....................63
Congressman Rabaut's Speech on Behalf of Inserting "In God We Trust" into the Pledge of Allegiance....................71
Belgian Food....................77
Bien (A Card Game)....................83
Ethnic Organizations....................87
Notes....................89
For Further Reference....................99
Index....................103