University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
The Belgian-American Resource Collection and the
Wisconsin Pioneer Experience

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Project (UWDC) has published its first two collections, the Belgian-American Resource Collection and the Wisconsin Pioneer Experience.  Projects that support the teaching and research needs of the University of Wisconsin community, and/or have a UW or Wisconsin focus are primary candidates for inclusion in the UW Digital Collections.  Other projects will include providing access to rare and/or fragile items of broad research value and other items that are of value to students and scholars alike.  For a description and links to these new resources, please read on!

Belgian-American Resource Collection.  A pilot project was undertaken in 1975-1976 to establish a Belgian-American Ethnic Resource Collection in the Special Collections Department of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Cofrin Library. In 2001, a project was undertaken to digitize components of the materials as part of the new University of Wisconsin Digital Collections project.   This multi-media resource contains digitized photographs, e-facsimiles of select publications from the collection, and digitized oral history tapes and abstracts.  As time permits and technology changes, additional materials will be made available.

One of the country's largest concentrations of Walloon-speaking Belgians is found in northeastern Wisconsin, resulting in a unique cultural and social flavor. The largest wave of Belgian immigration to Wisconsin occurred in the mid-1850s. While the 1850 U.S. Census lists only 45 persons of Belgian nativity in the state, by 1860 the number had increased to 4,647. The 1890 U.S. census also shows that 81% of Belgians in the state lived in the northeastern counties of Brown, Kewaunee, and Door. The Belgian immigration into northeastern Wisconsin came to an abrupt halt about 1858 when word reached the homeland of the physical and economic hardships and the cholera epidemic sweeping the settlement.

Link to the Belgian-American Resource Collection at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/BelgAmrCol/.

Wisconsin Pioneer Experience.  The Wisconsin Pioneer Experience is a digital collection of diaries, letters, reminiscences, speeches and other writings of people who settled and built Wisconsin during the 19th century. The project has been made available through the partnership of the Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries (CUWL) and the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS).  The historic papers included in the Wisconsin Pioneer Experience were drawn from the collections of the Area Research Centers (ARC) and the Wisconsin Historical Society. 

Included in this collection is material from the UW-Stevens Point Area Research Center relating to the life of George "Daddy" Salter of Juneau County.  Salter is said to have killed many Native Americans in retaliation for his wife's murder at their Town of Clearfield tavern.  Included is a 34-page typewritten description by Salter of his departure from England; travels (1843-1864) in Wisconsin to Portage, Reedsburg, and Kilbourn City, and down the Mississippi River to New Orleans; life in Wisconsin; and an account of his brutal slaying of two Native Americans suspected of murdering his wife.  Also included is a 4-page typewritten obituary (ca. 1906) of Salter in which he is said to have admitted to murdering eighteen Native Americans.

Link to the Wisconsin Pioneer Experience at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wipionexp/.

For more information on the UW Digital Collections Project, see http://uwdcc.library.wisc.edu/.

Graphics used with permission of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.