More of the Gazette van Moline Online

Earlier this year I reported on the digitization efforts at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) where some of the earliest years of the Gazette van Moline were placed online. Today I received word that the Rock Island County Historical Society has added to the endeavor by digitizing the remaining years of this important Flemish American newspaper. The Society’s digital holdings start on 23 April 1915, exactly where the run at CRL is interrupted, and end with the paper’s last issue on 18 April 1940 when it announced its merger with the Gazette van Detroit.

Search capabilities are more advanced than at CRL, but at both places the researcher must be cognizant of the limitations of Optical Character Recognition technology and spelling variations in the Dutch language during the early years.

Take a look today and explore the lives of Belgian Americans one hundred years ago.

Cite this post

Kristine Smets, “More of the Gazette van Moline Online” The Belgian American, (https://thebelgianamerican.com : accessed [date]), posted 27 August 2021.

The Gazette van Moline

The Center of Research Libraries, an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries, has digitized selected years of The Gazette van Moline, the Flemish newspaper that was published from 1907 until it merged with the Gazette van Detroit in 1940.

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Some Secondary Resources for the Belgians in and around Moline, Illinois.

No comprehensive work exists describing the Belgian immigration to the Moline, Illinois area. The following is a brief annotated bibliography of works, some more scholarly than others, that include information about this particular Belgian-American community.

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The Belgians in Moline, Illinois: An Overview.

Sacred Heart (Belgian Church) in Moline, Illinois. (Wikicommons)

Did you know that during the first two decades of the twentieth century, Moline, Illinois,  was the major center for the Belgian immigrants? Not only did the area receive a large portion of the new arrivals, but the city even hosted its own Flemish newspaper, the Gazette van Moline.1

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