Hi! With this message I am trying to get help in my quest for Belgian descendants in your area. I am living in Belgium, and am doing research on the emigrants from a specific area in Belgium, the Waasland, to the United States and Canada between 1830 and 1950. If you would like to know more about this project, I invite you to my web site at http://www.ping.be/picavet/ In the frame of this research, I have already visited Wisconsin on two occasions, in 1995 and 1996. Places I am "familiar" with are Milwaukee, Green Bay, Aurora, Ashland, and Superior. This is not a coincidence: most of my people initially settled there. Most of them emigrated between 1850 and 1910. According to the 1990 Census, Wisconsin had one of the largest concentrations of Belgian descendants in the United States. ---------------------------- Belgian ancestry reported as: State Population First Second Single -------- -------- ----- ------ ------ Michigan 9,295,297 37,442 22,824 18,966 Wisconsin 4,891,769 36,822 25,681 19,133 Most of them can be found in Brown 194,594 16,696 11,407 8,310 Kewaunee 18,878 4,825 1,431 3,251 Door 25,690 2,864 1,248 1,844 Milwaukee 959,275 1,389 1,381 597 Outagamie 140,510 1,303 1,500 543 Oconto 30,226 1,081 736 719 Dane 367,085 761 662 293 Manitowoc 80,421 721 702 342 Marinette 40,548 666 654 340 Waukesha 304,715 639 690 225 (pls let me know if you are interested in this information for other counties) Since it will be difficult to know for anyone not familiar with the families from my area, if a specific family is fitting in my project or not, I am actually looking for any Belgian family in your area. In return, I will also assist any Belgian descendant to trace his roots in Belgium. With this in mind, I have set up my web site, which is containing complete guidelines for anyone starting to trace his Belgian roots. Moreover, I recently started a mailing list especially for these same researchers: BELGIUM-ROOTS-L, also hosted by RootsWeb. It would be nice to hearing from you. Georges PICAVET | Listowner BELGIUM-ROOTS-L Doorn 9 | Phone & Fax 32-3-774.10.11 BEL-9150 Kruibeke | mailto:picavet@ping.be Belgium (Europe) | http://www.ping.be/picavet/