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Wisconsin's Belgians
| Article
# : |
14875 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
5,789 Words |
| Author
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William G. Laatsch
William G. Laatsch is professor of geography at the University
of Wisconsin--Green Bay. |
Sussex, Kiel, Polonia, Oostberg, Wales, Berlin, Brussels--these place-names bring to mind a European gazetteer, not a Wisconsin road map. But small, mainly rural villages with these names are indeed located in Wisconsin's "ethnic islands." In these parts of the state, the number of descendants of the English, Germans, Poles, Belgians, and other European groups is especially high, and their traditions are strong.
Ethnic islands and their associated cultural landscapes are important features of Wisconsin's settlement fabric. No other state has gathered such a diversity of European urban or rural groups. One such island, settled by Walloon-speaking Belgians, can be found in the northeastern Door Peninsula, composed of Door County and portions of Brown and Kewaunee countries. This "thumb" of the mitt-shaped state just into Lake Michigan, and is better known for its rocks, woods, water, galleries, restaurants, and fishing than for its ethnic landscapes. Nevertheless, the disciplined eye will detect differences in the landscape and the sharp ear will hear the distinctive speech.
The Belgian cultural region is bounded by those of other ethnic groups. The sharpest line is to the southeast in Kewaunee County, where a well-defined Bohemain-Czechoslovakian community is located. To the east and north the ethnic mix is more varied, with Germans predominating. A Norwegian and a more distinct German community form a northeastern boundary. In terms of language traditions still audible today, these Teutonic and Slavic groups provide a sharp contrast to the English of the Romano-French Walloons.
A variety of material and nonmaterial elements can be identified that belong to the Belgians. Even to the untrained ear, the English spoken by the locals can be recognized as being different from most "Midwesternese." If one were to visit a Belgian home or join in a picnic at the local Roman Catholic parish, some of the food--jutt, trippe, kaset, booyah, and Belgian pie--would be unfamiliar. And the names of some of the places one might visit--Brussels, Rosiere, Namur, Thirty Daems--and such common surnames as LeMense, Baudhuin, Massart, and Jean-Quart, evoke European roots.
Wisconsin State Highway 57 cuts through the region, linking the city of Green Bay and points south or west with the Door Peninsula. At times during summer the highway carries bumper-to-bumper vacation traffic, as urbanites are attracted to the physical and cultural features of the peninsula, and especially of Door County. The vast majority of these people, intent
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