Belgian Ancestors Remembered #AtoZChallenge2021

The failure of potato crops and the very small revenue of tiny family farms in Belgium during the 19th century affected the lives of my Belgian ancestors. Clement Baugniet and Augustine Paquet, great grandparents of my father, chose to leave Mehaigne, Belgium for a new life in America. In 1856, they boarded the ship Trumbell with their three sons, Francois, Florent and Frederick, and sailed from Antwerp to New York. Then they traveled down through Chicago to their new home in the village of Mishicot, Wisconsin.

Overlooking the Meuse River in Belgium
during my visit in 2007

Using information from the vital records I had researched over a ten-year period, I wrote the following short family history of my great, great grandparents who emigrated from Mehaigne, in the Walloon Region (Wallonia) of Belgium.

A SHORT FAMILY HISTORY TO PRESERVE MEMORIES, HOPES, AND DREAMS

Much has been written of the emigration of Belgian citizens and the hardships they endured to make a better life for their families.

Clement and Augustine had been married for fourteen years and had three young sons when they made the voyage by ship across the Atlantic Ocean in 1856. They left behind many loved ones: relatives, friends, and neighbors. Although Clement’s mother, Elizabeth, had died three years before the journey, his father, Andre, was still alive at the age of 82. Their youngest son, Frederick Joseph, was only eight months old when they sailed out of Antwerp. Before they were able to make a return trip to their homeland, Clement’s father died in 1858 and his sister, Marie Catherine, died in 1861.

Through these difficult times, Clement and Augustine found reasons to rejoice. The boys remained healthy and were able to labor alongside their father on the heavily wooded farmland located near the Mishicot River, acreage Clement purchased in a quiet farming town in eastern Wisconsin. In 1867, Clement and Augustine celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. 

Copy of marriage certificate of Clement Baugniet and Augustine Paquet
from the Archives de l'Etat a Anderlecht

Within ten years, all of their sons were married, their youngest on the final day of 1877. Their celebrations included neighboring farm families who owned land adjacent to or near their homestead. Eventually, most of the neighbors became branches of the family tree as grandchildren married.

Lest we forget the hardships they endured and the opportunities their actions offered to us, their descendants, it is important to record our family histories. May their memories, along with their hopes and dreams, live in us and continue to inspire the constant striving for betterment imbued in the zealous Belgian spirit.

For pictures and articles about my visit to Belgium in 2007, visit this link: genealogy trip, Belgium, 2007

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AS ABOVE, SO BELOW A Novel of Peter Bruegel by Rudy Rucker

If you have read Girl with a Pearl Earring and enjoyed the references to Vermeer’s paintings, you will likely enjoy reading Rudy Rucker’s imagined tale of artist Peter Bruegel’s progress with his many paintings. The story ends before his two sons, Little Peter and Jan, took up the brush. 

Each of Rucker’s chapters is headed with the title and photograph of a Bruegel painting. The journey begins in the French-Italian Alps and Rome, but quickly moves to Belgium, mainly in Antwerp and Brussels. 

Life in the middle 1500s was not easy, what with the Inquisition breathing down your neck or lopping off your head at the neck. But even with an uneasy certainty that someone you knew would soon be hung or headless, life went on in soap opera fashion. Family life, friendships, feuds and patched relationships abound with humor and tragedy mingled together in a fascinating narrative. 

Throughout, Bruegel’s dry humor and joie de vivre shine a bright central light on the tale and move the story forward. A comment that especially struck me was: 

“That was the thing about art:

your fingers spilled the secrets of your soul

before you knew them yourself.” 

Another comment that remains vivid in my mind is presented after Peter Bruegel witnesses an everyday scene in a street filled with descriptive characters and everyday occurrences: 

“—life was endlessly rich and endlessly various,

and it could take a man eight years simply to paint

one single moment of one single day.” 

This intimate look at Bruegel’s Beekeepers, Beggars, and Birdsnesters is well worth reading. 

 

Next up for review is:

Kill Switch by Steve N Lee