Mary’s Louis Family Research Story

My journey began on a train from London to Brugge in May 2006. I had known that the Louis family immigrated from somewhere near Brugge in Belgium, and I had seen the name of the town named Knocke mentioned in some records I had seen at the Escanaba Family History center when I was looking up birth, marriage and death records there for another genealogy project I was working on for my family.

I was very excited to finally be traveling to Belgium on this mission. I knew that if I could get some basic records, I would be able to get the start I needed for traveling back in time. My benefactors on this trip were Darren and Kimberly Louis, who then resided in London, and made all the arrangements for me. Kimberly was a great traveling companion, knowing just how to get through customs and the train stations. We arrived in Brugge and settled in our hotel. The city is marvelously beautiful and quaint with all the old architecture left undisturbed by wars. As soon as we got our bearings, we made our way to the town archives just a few blocks from our hotel. The people at the archives were very helpful and pointed us directly to the area we needed to start looking in. My first goal was to find a birth record of Joseph Louis, great-great grandfather of my husband, John Louis. I knew that he was born in Belgium. When we came up with nothing in the Brugge records, I knew it was time to try to find records for the town of Knocke. The archivist was amazing. Not only did she call Knocke City Hall for us (where the records would be), but she made an appointment with a Mr. LaPere for the next morning, and set him to looking for the records we wanted so they would be ready when we got there.

Our work in Brugge being done for the day, we took a boat tour of the lovely canals through town, watched an old woman dressed in traditional garb making beautiful Belgian lace by hand, and of course, we shopped. And ate Belgian chocolate! We finished off our evening with a delicious traditional Flemish dinner at the “Flemish Pot”, and some wine.

The next morning we made our way to Knocke, which is now spelled Knokke, and was at one time in the distant past spelled Cnocke. Knokke (pronounced k-nuck’-a), is situated on the north coast of Belgium, not far from France. It has become a major upscale beach resort town. Though lovely in its own way, it was somewhat disappointing to me. I wanted to get the feel of what life was like for our ancestors, but things had changed. I believe that Knokke was a fishing village, with a standard medieval way of life for many years. People there probably journeyed to Brugge, just 15 miles away or so, for fairs and trade. I picked shells on the beach.

We arrived at City Hall and were ushered to Mr. LaPere’s desk in an office area of other similar records clerks. He was amazing in many ways. First I had to get over that his right eye looked right, and his left eye looked left. It was very disconcerting! Though he spoke English, his accent was very thick, and that combined with his distracting eyes, made it very difficult to understand him. Finally, I decided to focus on only one of his eyes, and get down to business. He was amazingly helpful. Not only did he already have the birth record we were looking for, he also had the marriage record and another birth record. We discussed what other records might be valuable, and he went back into his files and came up with several more fantastic documents. Then he helped us read them (they were in Flemish). I was able to get used to some basic words (geboorte means birth, overlyden means death). He also explained to us that the Gregorian calendar was not used for a time, and gave us a translation sheet that was invaluable. And he explained the different spelling of Louis to Loys, Loeys, and Loÿs. It all has to do with pronunciation, and just trying to spell the word the way it sounds.

Then he made copies for us. The charge was six Euros each which was quite expensive, bit when I saw what he went through for each one, I understood why. He stamped and signed, then placed a lickable stamp, then signed again, then stamped a few more time for good measure. He did this with each sheet of paper (about 8 of them), so it took some time. I just sat mouth-gaping in amazement at the process. I have come to learn that Belgians like their formality. He wanted to make sure that we all knew that these were official copies. Later I learned that there is actually a word in the Flemish language that means “presenting legal information (birth, death, marriage, etc.) at the official courthouse”. The documents themselves are very formal, spelling out all the dates (difficult to read), and naming the officials there who took the information as well as the person(s) presenting, and several witnesses. They all get to sign. In many cases, I saw: “This x is the mark of so-and-so”, where the x was made by the person.

So I had what I came for and then some. We had gotten birth records back to 1803, whereupon Mr. LaPere informed us that anything older would be found on microfilms. This was great news, since I knew just how to get a hold of these films back in the U.S.

Not long after I returned to the states, I was able to travel to Fayette in Michigan. This is the site of the Jackson Mining company town where Joseph Louis had come in 1872. It is now a Michigan State Park. They have preserved the smelter and other work buildings as well as the hotel, school house, and some family dwellings.

I arrived there by car at 8:30 p.m. on a summer night. I was so excited to be going there now that I knew that I could find out more. I camped in my car at the park that night, a short distance from the water of the bay. I was up at dawn, and made my way over to the cemetery that was now also part of the park. I found Fred Louis’ gravestone there.

When the park officially opened I spent several hours touring the buildings and the displays. It was so fun to see the Louis name on various story boards. From the information I got there I was able to determine just about where Joseph’s house was, and his brother John’s. I spent a lot of time imagining them working and playing in this place. I recommend a visit to all the family. I made some inquiries and was sent to see the Site Historian, Brenda Laakso. She was very interested in what I knew and was able to give me some additional information as well, like the map of the cemetery which shows where Fred’s child was buried (no longer marked). I asked her about some of the pictures that I thought were of Louis men, but she knew that they were actually others. After further digging, I can now tell her about the Louis school children in the picture at the Park.

Armed with the information for Belgium and Fayette, I started asking relatives. My father-in-law, Gene, had some great pictures, and took me to the Escanaba Library where we found obituaries and books on the Louis family. Some of the books had errors. For example, they name Marie Omar, but her name is Osaer. I noted these errors in my data base of information. Gene also was able to put me in touch with his cousin, Robert Burm, and a relative on the Broeckart side, Paul Cole.

Later in the summer, I went to see Robert Burm in Colorado. He gave me his Burm family genealogy, of which his mother Amelia, and Aunt Mary were both daughters of John Louis of Gladstone. They married two Burm brothers. Best of all, Robert had some great stories to tell about taking the train from Superior, Wisconsin to Gladstone to spend time with his grandparents, John and Valentina Louis. He so enjoyed the time he spent fishing and hanging out with his grandfather and grandmother.

Next, I visited with Paul Cole of Gladstone. He has been researching the family genealogy for many years. He gave me many computerized files, as well as some copies of news articles, that I had not seen. I was most interested in the story about Joseph Louis dying in Newberry (currently a mental institution) and he provided me with the article that talked of this. We speculated that Joseph was suffering from depression after his business took a turn for the worse, but perhaps he just had Alzheimer’s disease. It is very curious that his son Phillip also died in Newberry not long afterwards. I have no idea whether he was also in the hospital or just living in the town to be near his father.

After reviewing the information that Paul had given me, I found that he already knew about much of the ancestry of the Louis family. I am proud to say that I have copies of the records that back up his data, as well as expand on it. In my research of the microfilms, I tried to fill in all the brothers and sisters of the ancestral line. I feel this gives us a feel for their lives, full of children, infant deaths, illegitimate offspring made legitimate, and their parent dying at all times of their lives.

In between these travels, I availed myself of the microfilms made available to anyone through the Family History Centers. There was one right in my town, and I spent many, many hours there pouring over the records. I couldn’t help but learn a little more Flemish, Latin and French. I was able to find a Latin teacher to help with some translations, and one woman in my book club turned out to be fluent in Flemish. She grew up in the Netherlands and even had a huge Flemish dictionary that we used.

I used my digital camera to photograph the records that I felt were pertinent. I have hundreds. This helped me immensely because I was able to go home and blow them up on my computer, and study them for as long as I wished. It is funny how the tenth or twentieth time you look as something, you realize a fact that had never caught your eye before.

The final part of my research was a trip to Salt Lake City, a genealogist’s Mecca. I spent 4 days in September there at the Family History Library. I also did do a little touring of the beautiful gardens and architecture there with my girlfriend, Thelma, who had invited me to come with her while she attended a conference for work. It was so nice to be able to just grab a microfilm off the shelf and view it. They also house many books about different countries. I found the Belgium section, sat on the floor, and tried to read Flemish. Luckily, there were a few books in English and the one significant fact I took away was that Belgium was constantly being invaded. They had to work hard to maintain their Flemish heritage, and they did. I think this may be why they are so precise about their records, and making sure that all is recorded and kept. They had to have gumption to fight and then occasionally to put up with their conquerors. If I see anything in the Louis family, I see gumption!