"Philippe Fontaine burned all the colonial correspondence and all documents in 1847. Subsequently, the area was hit by floods several times, including in 1911. The church, built in 1845 by Van Lede, was spared. But she did not survive the next flood of 1925 and was completely destroyed. There are few visible traces. In this part of Brazil, the Belgians belong to the past but have not been forgotten. The adventures of Charles Van Lede and the Belgian-Brazilian Society for Colonization are still well known. The opening sentence of the advertising brochure of the town of Ilhota refers to the Belgian roots. Some street names have Belgian names and it was even the intention to establish a Belgian museum. Here too, the descendants of the Belgian settlers are the most important remains! They proudly use their typical Belgian surnames, such as Maes, De Gand or Castellain. In this way it remains a hard-to-erasable legacy of the Belgian-Brazilian adventure of the XIXth century, which is automatically passed on from generation to generation."