Midwest (US) Settlements:
IAJGS Conference 2025

A Model Case Study of Researching Immigration
from a Volhynia Shtetl to the Midwest:
Mapping the Belogorodka Diaspora Using Community-Based Research
Presentation: PDF

Introduction

This project, led by three members of the Belogorodka Descendants Research Group—a grassroots collective of descendants—explores a collective approach to tracing, narrating, and interpreting the migration and settlement of Jewish families from Belogorodka (Bilohorodka, Ukraine, in former region of Volhynia), with a tight focus on the American Midwest—particularly Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. Moving beyond traditional genealogical tools, we emphasize storytelling strategies, case studies, community-based reconstruction, alternate documentation, and digital platforms to tell the complex story of our ancestors’ diaspora and that of the generations that followed.

Mapping the Belogorodka Diaspora: Timelines, Networks, and Movement

As we moved beyond focusing solely on individual family trees, we began to take a collective, panel-based approach, pooling insights to compare migration paths and timing. When we began to consider all of our ancestors as part of a single extended family, we were able to see the big picture. One of our central goals has been to create a census of every Jewish person we have documented as being born in or residing in Belogorodka. This exercise has familiarized us with the constellation of large, interrelated and intermarried families fragmented across the vast geography of the diaspora, with their fluctuating surnames and challenging transliterations. An extension of this has been to track the first people to arrive in the Midwest (and other destinations) to create an immigration timeline and document the networks of interconnected families scattered in different towns in the Midwest. 

• Key Sites Explored: Muscatine, Rock Island, Alton, St. Louis, and Chicago.

• Technique Used: Mapping shared surnames, given name patterns and conventions, occupations, social events, and communal institutions (e.g., synagogues, cemeteries, Jewish businesses and employers).

• Outcome: Case studies identifying recurring migration chains, settlements, and intermarriages across cities, with insights into how the first immigrants were able to pave the way for subsequent waves. We found our ancestors responding to the historical and social realities of each moment, both in Belogorodka and in the American Midwest.

Our immigration timeline in each major midwestern community has traced the oldest arrivals to the early 1880s, with a distribution anchored along the Mississippi River. Many of these early immigrants played a key part in expanding the community by sponsoring their siblings, cousins, and landsmen, who arrived in the following decades. They also established “Belogorodka Societies” and landsmanshaftn in their respective towns.

Archival Mining with a Social-Historical Lens

Standard vital and immigration records are supplemented by local newspapers, court records, echoes of social calendar events, and business directories to unearth untold stories with rich, often overlooked insights into economic activity, legal challenges, and mental health stigmas within the immigrant community. We uncovered a long-forgotten wedding announcement, a letter of good conduct for a prospective 19-year-old immigrant signed by Belogorodka townspeople, and a synagogue’s celebration of its Golden Jubilee—each a community narrative of data, personal relationships, and connections.

According to our research, the Quad Cities, St. Louis/Alton, and Chicago are where Belogorodkers began to immigrate in the late 1800s, with the main communities aligned along the Mississippi River. These clusters served as launching pads to satellite communities in Omaha, Council Bluffs, Ottumwa, Des Moines, Cincinnati, Little Rock and beyond to New Orleans, and points in Texas and, eventually, California. The propagation of certain professions, such as grocers, tailors, factory workers, and scrap and salvage businesses often provided the impetus for geographic expansion.

Migration over the decades happened within the communities as well. From east to west in St. Louis, from town to town in the Quad Cities, south to north in Chicago. Institutions such as schools, shuls (synagogues), cemeteries, and kosher stores followed the same paths. We use data from documents such as ship manifests, WWI and WWII draft cards, census records, marriage and death certificates, etc. to map these movements in each major community for our case-study families.

Organization of Our Presentation

Part I
Immigration to the Midwest from Belogorodka

Part II

History of the Belogorodka Immigrant Jewish Communities (Quad Cities, St. Louis, and “East of the River,” especially Alton)

Part III

Case Studies of Large Belogorodka Immigrant Families

Part IV

Timeline, Maps and Patterns of Immigration from Belogorodka. Conclusions