Zalewski Family Genealogy

Mary Philomene Laurent

The LAURENT surname is from my maternal grandmother’s side of the family. This is the side with the most French/Belgian ancestry.

The surname first appears in my family tree with my great-great-grandmother, Mary Philomene LAURENT. Mary married Joseph DEBROUX on 8 Sep 1891 in Langlade Co., Wisconsin. Mary’s parents were from two different countries, though of similar origin. Her mother, Olivine ST. LOUIS, was born in Quebec, Canada and her father, Jean-Baptiste LAURENT, was born in Biez, Chaumont-Gistoux, Walloon Brabant, Belgium. I have a United States Land Record for Jean B. Laurent from 24 April 1820 when he received eighty acres of land from the government in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin.

Just recently have I been able to track Jean’s family further back thanks to a Belgian vital record transcription site for the Walloon Brabant area of Belgium called Netradyle that I found. According to a document on Belgian research, this is what Netradyle is:

Netradyle, located in Tourinnes-la-Grosse reopened its doors on March 3, 2009. The organization was created in 1993 with the goal of creating an awareness of the local history, and providing information for genealogy research.

It’s name is composed of the abbreviations of Néthen, Train and Dyle, the three rivers which run through villages in Walloon Brabant.

At the Netradyle site, you will be able to search through the following records from Liege, Namur, Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, and Vlaams Brabant.

- 598,513 birth/christening records
- 148, 167 marriage records
- 303,485 death/burial records

It’s been great so far. If anything, I’m at least able to make some basic ancestry traces and put in some notes before looking for actual records. But, it does give me a better idea on specific areas to look through.

Jean’s parents were found to be Constant Joseph LAURENT and Marie Josèphe BERO (or BEREAU or BERRAUNT, as seen elsewhere.) They were married on 17 May 1809 in Piétrebais, Walloon Brabant, Wallonia, Belgium which is only a small distance from Biez. Constant’s parents were Joseph LAURENT and Marie Catherine MOUREAU (or MOREAUX). They were married on 28 Jul 1776 (only a few weeks after their future descendant’s country’s independence) in Grez-Doiceau, Walloon Brabant, Belgium.

After that, I am only able to trace it back to the names of Joseph’s parents, though no dates. His parents were listed as Guillaume LAURENT and Marie CATTELAIN.

According to Ancestry.com, the name is probably of French origin meaning a vernacular form of the Latin personal name Laurentius (or Lawrence.) In 1840, it wasn’t very popular in Wisconsin, but in 1880, it is the 2nd-most-popular state along with New York and Louisiana.

The DeBroux surname first enters my family tree as my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. The surname itself is Belgian, at least when I trace it back from America. According to Ancestry.com, the surname along with the preposition de (‘from’), denoting someone from either of two places called Broux, in Rhône and Vienne. Both Rhône and Vienne are located in France, which a lot of my Belgian and Dutch surnames tend to originate from.

I’ve been able to trace it back the early 1800s. First through my great-grandfather, Leon DeBroux, who was born in 1901 in Phlox, Langlade Co., Wisconsin. Another piece of information for the DeBroux surname is that the DeBroux family seemed to have settled mostly in Wisconsin, which is good for me. Leon’s father was Joseph DeBroux, who was born in May 1865 in Grand Chute, Outagamie Co., Wisconsin. The Grand Chute and Little Chute area is a very high-percentage Belgian and Dutch area. It’s obvious by all of the “Van” and “De” surnames and businesses in the area.

I originally had Joseph’s parents listed a Desire and Desiree DeBroux. I know it sounds like they were a traveling folk duet, but I’m pretty sure they were just normal people. Even though they sound like a unique name combination, I had no luck in finding any more information about them…until. I ran across a site called “Netradyle” (which is all in French) that seems to be a location of a lot of Belgian vital records. Thanks to Google Translate, I was able to find my way around and after some searching I found my DeBroux family. It turns out that Desire and Desiree were their middles names. They probably used them to separate themselves from the others since it seemed that every family named their children either Jean Joseph or Marie. I know why, but it does confuse things now.

So, it turns out the Desire’s full name is Jean Joseph Desire DeBroux and he was born 16 Feb 1830 in Piétrebais, Walloon Brabant, Wallonia, Belgium, which is a small town in central Belgium just east of Brussel. Desiree’s full name was Marie Desiree LOOD. After that I was only able to find Jean Joseph’s parent’s names, but not any specific information from the records on the site. His parents were Jean Joseph DeBroux (go figure) and Anne Catherine LANGELE.

I did some mapping of the DeBroux family using Google Maps, in case you wanted to see all of the locations. It may include other parts of my maternal line, too.

Any other DeBroux families out there?

Click for larger

This photo was recently sent to me by another DeBroux/Laurent researcher. The ladies shown are the three youngest daughters of Jean-Baptiste LAURENT and Olivine Marie ST. LOUIS. They are Josephine KING, Philomene DEBROUX, and Milly RABIDEAU. Philomene is my great-great-grandmother on my mother’s side. I’m not sure when the photo was taken, but if I had to guess, I ‘d say somewhere from 1940-1950 since Philomene passed away in 1956.

Just spent some time today browsing around random Dutch and Belgian websites looking for that one clue to break open some information. I have listed that my 3rd-great-grandparents, Desire and Desiree DeBroux (that’s a mouthful), were both born in Belgium. It specifically lists it as Brussels, Belgium, but that was a major city, so who knows. I ran across a Belgian site called “Netradyle,” and with some help from Google Translate, was able to figure out how to use it.

I originally got there while doing some random searching for some of my wife’s ancestors, but I thought I’d give the DeBroux family a shot. They both had pretty unique names, even if it was a somewhat normal Belgian name, it still sticks out. I searched birth records for DeBroux and found a lot and checked all of the Desires with no luck. I then figured out that I was only searching birth records, so I tried the marriage records. Fortunately, I did have an idea of when they were married due to census records and I had their birth dates from their headstone (as much as I could read it.) Using all of these dates, I ran across an entry for a marriage between Joseph Désiré DEBROUX and Marie Désirée LOOD on 30 Nov 1854.

A few things match up here. Désiré and Désirée both match their names in the census records. I also have their marriage as being in about 1855, due to math using the census records, and it says there were married in Wallon Brabant, Belgium, which is the same province that Brussels is in.

Using that info, I then looked up their birth records and I found Jean Joseph Désiré DEBROUX born on 16 Feb 1830 in Piétrebais, Walloon Brabant, Wallonia, Belgium. Piétrebais is a small village southeast of Brussels. Well, look at that, another match. I have that Desire DEBROUX was born on 16 Feb 1830 from both the census records and his headstone. The same thing happened with his wife. I found a Marie Désirée LOOD born on 1 Apr 1829 also in Piétrebais, Walloon Brabant, Wallonia, Belgium. I didn’t have her exact birth date, but I did have Apr 1829 from the census and the readable parts of her headstone.

Obviously, I can’t guarantee a perfect match, but this does seem to fit a lot of the required fields. Along with this information, it also lists Desire’s parents as Jean Joseph DEBROUX and Anne Catherine LANGELE (LENGELE). It also lists a village after their name in parenthesis. I’m not sure what this means exactly, but Jean has (Corroy) and Anne has (Gistoux) which are both in the same province. It then lists Desiree’s parents as Francois Eugene LOOD and Marie Catherine DUPONT. This one only lists a village after her mother’s name, Opprebais.

This brings me to my question. While typing in some other names from this search, it seems that one family gave every child the middle name of Joseph (Josephe for the girls.) But, besides that, I see Joseph an awful lot in these searches. Was there anything special about the name Joseph, or do you think it was a family name of some sort?