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1832 — present
This entry is a boundary, printed plainly: the documented Belgian settlement of St. Joseph County is Mishawaka's West End, and it is Mishawaka's story, held for that city's own build. The chain began with Father Louis de Seille, the first Belgian in the valley, whose 1833 letters from the mission drew the Reyniers brothers and Charles Vanronsle across the Atlantic; Henry A. Verslype's Belgians of Indiana (1987), as the St. Joseph County Public Library's Local History room summarizes it, counts 22 Belgians in the county by 1870. The settlement thickened in Mishawaka: 568 residents of Belgian birth or descent there by 1901, 1,355 in 1912, and 1,702 of the city's 14,864 people in 1919; St. Bavo's parish — its first pastor, Father Charles Stuer, arrived from Belgium in September 1902, its frame church, school and hall dedicated 3 May 1903 at 8th and West — the Belgian bowling clubs and the BK Club are all Mishawaka institutions, and they are not borrowed here. South Bend's own Belgian thread is smaller and later: the city directory of 1877 listed seven Belgian family groups, and most South Bend Belgian families, in the county library's summary, had moved over from Mishawaka when work there failed — a secondary migration across the city line. Belgian ancestry stood at 0.9 percent of South Bend in the 2013 survey count in the population file. That is the whole of this city's documented Belgian community, and it is printed whole.
Sources:
- Verslype, Belgians of Indiana (1987), as summarized by the St. Joseph County Public Library, Local History — "Belgians" research guide — sjcpl.org
- St. Bavo Parish, Mishawaka — parish history (Father Stuer's arrival, September 1902; dedication, 3 May 1903) — boundary source, Mishawaka's record
- Population & Demographics, this history (2013 ACS Belgian ancestry, 0.9 percent) — banked fragment