As part of La Salle's French colonial efforts in 1685, three priests born in Hainaut arrived: Zenobius Membre, Maximus le Clerq, and Anastasius Douay. Membre and le Clerq died in Texas during the Indian attack on Fort St. Louis, but Douay lived to tell Europe his story and the story of La Salle's death.

Juan Banul, a master blacksmith, was born in Brussels but when Belgium was under Spanish rule. Perhaps having a love of frontiers, Banul came to New Spain and moved north to San Antonio de Béxar by 1719.

Banul accompanied the Marqués de Aguayo to East Texas on an expedition to build missions and presidios and stayed until 1723. Back in San Antonio, he did much of the ironwork at the missions of San Antonio de Valero and San José. In 1730 Banul and Maria Adriana García, a Flemish widow, were married. They lived at Valero, later called the Alamo, where Banul ran the blacksmith shop and sawmill.

Much later, in the 1850s, a Belgian stonemason, Theodore Vander Straten, helped repair the Alamo walls so the building could be occupied by the U.S. Army. Army designers, not interested in restoration, added the now-famous curve to the church façade.

Some Belgians arrived with strange stories. Anton Diedrick, walking in Antwerp in the 1840s, came across a murder in progress. The killers turned on him, but instead of murdering their witness, they kidnapped him and literally sold him as an impressed seaman. A virtual prisoner once aboard ship, Diedrick finally escaped in Galveston just in time for the Mexican War.

Speaking only Flemish, he was warmly welcomed by two recruiters for the U.S. Army. They asked his name, but when he began replying in some detail, he was stopped. “Ah, he's Dutch all over,” one of the recruiters said. “We'll call him that.”

So it was that Anton Dutchallover served in the war, survived, and lost the “all” from the middle of his new name.

Becoming a frontier scout, Dutchover joined Big Foot Wallace as shotgun rider on the infrequent San Antonio-El Paso runs in the 1850s. West Texas was well known for hostile climates, renegade Indians, and bandits, but Dutchover liked it.

He operated a sheep ranch at Limpia Canyon and supplied soldiers at nearby Fort Davis with food. Dutchover remained at the fort when Federal troops departed at the start of the Civil War and was left fully in charge when the occupying Confederates decided to leave. Dutchover, his family, and four civilians hid during a successful Apache attack on the fort and maintained their home until 1867, when Federal troops reoccupied Fort Davis and made further Indian raids impossible. Dutchover descendants still live in the area.

But the astronomer's outspokenness remained. An abolitionist, he aided the escape of notable unionists from San Antonio but soon had to flee, disguised as a Mexican laborer, into Mexico.

Later in New Orleans, when the city had been taken by Federal forces, he ran a Union newspaper, then for eight years lived in Jamaica. Finally, having kept his European contacts, he was reinstated as director of the Royal Observatory in Brussels.

In December of 1882, however, Houzeau could not resist a return trip to Texas. He led a scientific expedition to San Antonio to observe a locally visible transit of Venus across the face of the sun—in those days a method of measuring time and gravity.

A few Belgians moved into South Texas after 1867 and the fall of Maximilian's Mexican empire. Maximilian, anointed emperor of Mexico by the French, was an unlikely ruler. His wife, Carlota, was Belgian, and a good number of her countrymen had followed the puppet emperor to Mexico. After Maximilian's execution, many Belgians decided on the Rio Grande valley as home.

Belgians moved to Galveston and Houston, and some were farmers, but San Antonio became Texas's primary area of Belgian settlement. Although entering many fields of endeavor—Belgians were cooks and bakers, candle and soap makers, restaurateurs and musicians—most in the San Antonio settlement were farmers.

From the last of the 19th century, several Belgian families and descendants founded the famous vegetable farms in western San Antonio. Men such as Van de Walle, van Daele, Persyn, and Baeten made year-round vegetable growing a successful business. The Belgians raised common crops and introduced new ones, including cauliflower and kohlrabi. Today, harvests range from flowers to picante sauce.

And the Belgians observed the “Kermess,” a national fall harvest festival held in mid-August—and in mid-November, if the harvest was good. They also celebrated Belgian independence day on July 21. The Belgium Inn, the Belgian Village, and the Flanders Inn, among several other places, provided the settings for many a gathering, traditional or impromptu. And until recent years, the Belgian sport of bolling was played. A version of the game is still demonstrated annually at the Texas Folklife Festival.