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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School

2011 The Evolution of Dutch American Identities, 1847-Present Michael J. Douma

Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

THE EVOLUTION OF DUTCH AMERICAN IDENTITIES, 1847-PRESENT

By

MICHAEL J. DOUMA

A Dissertation submitted to the History Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011

i The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Michael J. Douma defended on March 18, 2011.

______Dr. Suzanne Sinke Professor Directing Dissertation

______Dr. Reinier Leushuis University Representative

______Dr. Edward Gray Committee Member

______Dr. Jennifer Koslow Committee Member

______Dr. Darrin McMahon Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members.

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was written on napkins, the reverse sides of archival call slips and grocery receipts, on notebook paper while sitting in the train, in Dutch but mostly in English, in long-hand, scribble, and digital text. Most of the chapters were composed in a fourth floor apartment on the west side of in the sunless winter of 2009-2010 and the slightly less gloomy spring of 2010. Distractions from the work included Sudoku puzzles, European girls, and Eurosport broadcasts of the Winter Olympics on a used television with a recurring sound glitch. This dissertation is the product of my mind and its faults are my responsibility, but the final product represents the work and activity of many who helped me along the way. Suzanne Sinke directed the dissertation, and helped focus my scattered thoughts. I am thankful for having had a demanding yet caring advisor through my years at Florida State. Sinke's former master’s thesis advisor at Kent State University, Robert Swierenga (now at the Institute), gave straightforward comments on the value of certain chapters and contributed to my better understanding of the topic. Hans Krabbendam read, edited, and commented on numerous sections of the text. Through Hans' invitation, I participated in a productive seminar with Dutch graduate students (AIO's) at the Roosevelt Institute in Middelburg, the . This project was funded by a Fulbright grant to the Netherlands, a Florida State University International Dissertation Fellowship, two yearly fellowships from the Institute for Humane Studies, and a summer fellowship at the Van Raalte Institute. As a "medewerker" in the history department at , I was greeted by the friendly Marlou Schrover, who encouraged my participation in departmental lectures and events. Dr. Schrover was also responsible for aiding the publication of my second chapter as an in the Tijdschrijft voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis [Journal of Social and Economic History]. Conversations with George Harinck, James Kennedy, Martijn van , Bosch, Steef Eman, and others in the academic historian circles of the Netherlands aided my search for primary documents and strengthened my understanding of Dutch history. Pieter Stokvis and J.P. VerHave were kind enough to invite me into their homes in Leiden and , respectively. Family relations in the villages of , , and Bedum, , invited me for Christmas and showed me another side of the . Archival centers consulted in the Netherlands included the Dutch Royal Library, the Amsterdam Municipal Archives, the National Archives of the Netherlands in , the North Archive, TRESOAR (the archives of the province of Friesland, the Reformed (Gereformeerde) Church Archive and Documentation Center in Kampen, the Protestant Documentation Center at Amsterdam’s Free University, and the Leiden University Archives. The staff of the Van Raalte Institute, and particularly Elton Bruins, were helpful in fielding my questions about topics ranging from the structure of the Reformed Church in America to the history of Dutch communities. In this time, we were saddened with the loss of Karen Schakel, the secretary of the institute. Richard Harms and the staff of Heritage Hall at Calvin College were, as always, kind and helpful, as was Catherine Jung at the Holland Museum Archives. It is now seven years since I graduated from Hope College, where I worked for four years at the Joint Archives of Holland alongside Lori Trethewey and Geoffrey Reynolds, who have seen more than just this project take shape. They have also seen me grow up. Most of all, I am thankful to my parents for supporting me through it all. I dedicate this work to them.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables v

List of Abbreviations vi

Abstract vii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Origins of Dutch American Identities 22

Chapter 2: The Making of an Imagined Dutch American Subculture, 1847-1875 45

Chapter 3: Making Patriotic American Citizens, 1850-1900 69

Chapter 4: A Black Dutchman and the Racial Discourse of the Dutch in America, 1865-1920 97

Chapter 5: The Peak of Dutch America, 1900-1920 113

Chapter 6: Arnold Mulder's Alienated Second Generation 134

Chapter 7: Tulip Time and the Invention of a New Ethnic Identity 156

Chapter 8: From Identity to Heritage: The Memory and Myth of Van Raalte 176

Chapter 9: The Fading Away of Dutch America 199

Chapter 10: Dutch American Identities Since 1980 221

Conclusion/ Eplilogue 243

Bibliography 247

iv LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Some Major Influences Shaping Dutch American Identities 14 Table 2: RCA West and CRC Membership Statistics Compared 115 Table 3: Transition in Rural Dutch American Churches 209

v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations appear either in the text or the footnotes of the manuscript. The first use of an abbreviation is accompanied by its full term.

JAH - Joint Archives of Holland HMA - Holland Museum Archives DIS - Dutch International Society RCA - Reformed Church in America CRC - Christian Reformed Church NHK - Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk () VU - Vrije Universiteit (Free )

vi ABSTRACT

This work is at once a study of ethnic change among Dutch and a contribution to the study of ethnic identity in America more broadly. It seeks to explain how Dutch American identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries formed and evolved and why references to the Netherlands played an enduring role in how Americans of Dutch descent identified themselves. This study argues that the evolution, the adaptability, and the reinterpretation of "Dutchness" in an American setting has been the primary cause of the persistence of Dutch American ethnic identities. It shows that for the Dutch in America, ethnic identity has been resilient, not because it has remained intact, but rather because it has changed shape. The main contribution of this study is its demonstration of the evolution of ethnicity over the long-term (over generations and centuries) and the implications of this perspective for how we understand ethnic groups. Scholars have long seen ethnic groups as ever-evolving entities with boundaries that are constantly renegotiated. But like the evolution of species, ethnic change is gradual and imperceptible at the daily level. From the perspective of decades or centuries, however, certain themes of historical change become visible. At least two key lessons emerge from this long-term perspective on the evolution of ethnic identity. One is the understanding that ethnic groups persist by evolving, and do so when and where ethnicity is flexible, adaptable, and useful. The second lesson is the important role of written histories and historical memory in influencing the continued evolution of ethnicity. Ethnicities must be understood as developing categories, historically situated, and continually informed by interpretations of the past.

vii INTRODUCTION

A foreign man arrived in Hudsonville, , in 1949 and found his way to the rural home of his American cousin. He knocked on the front door and it opened halfway as a Mrs. Plumert stuck her head out to view her afternoon visitor. When the man said that he was family from Holland and had come to say hello, the door closed a few centimeters. Mrs. Plumert had no family in Holland, Michigan, a just a few miles away, so she took the visitor to be a liar. But the man responded hastily that he had come from “the Netherlands”, from the same place that her husband had left twenty-three years before, and the door opened wide. “I thought you were a vacuum cleaner-salesman!" apologized Mrs. Plumert, "one of them who travels around with their vacuums and tries by any means to come inside and give a demonstration. I didn't believe you at first. I'm so sorry!'"1 Having learned the visitor's true identity, Mrs. Plumert invited him inside. That evening and the next day, the visitor and his host family regaled one another with stories about the old days in the old country. The encounter at the doorway provides just one illustration of the divergence between the Dutch and the . For many Dutch Americans like Mrs. Plumert, the city of Holland, Michigan, featured more prominently on the mental landscape than the country known as Holland, or the Netherlands. Mrs. Plumert, whose original was Brouwer, was not an immigrant, but she was a Dutch American. Like many in , Mr. and Mrs. Plumert had not forgotten their connections to the Netherlands, even though they had had developed identities that were distinct from their Dutch origins. This work is at once a study of ethnic change among Dutch Americans and a contribution to the study of ethnic identity in America more broadly. It seeks to explain how Dutch American identities formed and evolved and why references to the Netherlands played an enduring role in how Americans of Dutch descent identified themselves. The main contribution of this study is its demonstration of the evolution of ethnicity over the long-term (over generations and centuries) and the implications of this perspective for how we understand ethnic groups. Scholars have long seen ethnic groups as ever-evolving entities with boundaries that are constantly renegotiated. But like the evolution of species, ethnic change is gradual and imperceptible at the daily level. From the perspective of decades or centuries, however, certain themes of historical change become

1 Nieuwe Leidsche Courant, 19 March 1949.

1 visible. At least two key lessons emerge from this long-term perspective on the evolution of ethnic identity. One is the understanding that ethnic groups persist by evolving, and do so when and where ethnicity is flexible, adaptable, and useful. The second lesson is the important role of written histories and historical memory in influencing the continued evolution of ethnicity. Ethnicities must be understood as developing categories, historically situated, and continually informed by the developments of the past. The observation that ethnicity changes or evolves is not novel, but it is also not well understood or well demonstrated over the long-term. There is a tendency among ethnic groups to want to preserve group boundaries by demanding of their members a steadfast adherence to a conservative interpretation of ethnic identity that seeks to avoid conflict. For example, in the 1930s, the in Holland, Michigan, helped create a new commercialized vision of Dutch American identity, which in many ways contrasted with a standard image of stolid Dutch immigrant pioneers and pious churchgoers. Many agreed with Hudsonville's Bill Plumert, who saw the festival as "just advertisements" and "publicity nonsense", which did not accurately represent what it meant to be Dutch. Plumert's fourteen year-old daughter, Esther, disagreed however and saw her father as old-fashioned in his opposition to the new view of ethnicity. To the Plumert's visitor from the Netherlands, the festival was a lighthearted curiosity worthy of print in his home country for its peculiar interpretation of the Dutch. While the three entertained different views of Dutch identity, the very act of discussing the meaning of "Dutchness" demonstrated the ethnicity's continued relevance. Dutch Americans are an appropriate group for a study of the evolution of ethnic identity because their struggles in forming identities were profound, long-standing, and public as well as private. Also, the Dutch have been in the long enough to allow historians to trace long-term themes of historical change. A similar long-term study might not be as productive, for example, if it were to focus on a post-1965 U.S. immigrant group. A history of Dutch Americans benefits from a wealth of accumulated documents, the likes of which other more recent immigrant groups have yet to collect or archive. As a highly literate people, Dutch Americans produced volumes of letters and published works in which they discussed their struggles in forming ethnic identities. Indeed, this struggle defined them. And yet, while historians within the Dutch American communities have written volumes on their , the Dutch Americans remain fairly unrecognized in professional historiography and are under-appreciated for what

2 light their story can shed on the understanding of ethnicity.2 The history of Dutch Americans provides an example of how contested reinterpretations of ethnic identity enabled an ethnic group to continually re-draw its borders, build an ethnic consciousness, and develop practical identities to deal with the world it encountered. This study argues that the evolution, the adaptability, and the reinterpretation of "Dutchness" in an American setting has been the primary cause of the persistence of Dutch American ethnic identities. It shows that for the Dutch in America, ethnic identity has been resilient, not because it has remained intact, but rather because it has changed shape. The flexibility of “Dutchness” in America may not be entirely unique, but it is peculiar. This view is in contrast to previous works, which argue that Dutch Americans were particularly successful in "holding on" to their ethnic identities. Instead of focusing on the flexibility of ethnicity, as I do, others have seen cultural and religious as the key variables responsible for the persistence of Dutch American communities.

Defining Dutch Americans For the purposes of this work, a Dutch American shall be considered any immigrant from the Netherlands to the United States from the mid-nineteenth century forward, or any descendent thereof, who consciously identifies with his or her Dutch background and who interacts with others who have similar interests in the history, language, or cultural heritage of the Netherlands. Dutch American identities were and are primarily a Protestant phenomenon. A core group of Dutch Americans formed a unique, conservative and Calvinist subculture that existed across communities located principally in the American Midwest. As these ethnic communities endured into the twentieth century, they saw their Dutch heritage as an essential attribute for maintaining authentic Christian faith. They believed strongly in God's providence and in a religious calling by which God uses His people in the world. Dutch Americans believed they were among God's chosen people.

2 Popular U.S. history texts on immigrant America frequently omit selections from or about Dutch Americans. Examples of this include Thomas Dublin, ed. Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-1986. (Urbana and : University of Press, 1993); James Olson's otherwise excellent work The Ethnic Dimension in American History (St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1999), allows two pages out of 350 for a joint summary of Dutch colonial and nineteenth century U.S. migration. The Dutch are absent in Ronald Takaki's A Different Mirror: a History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1993), and Jon Gjerde's Major Problems in American and Ethnic History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).

3 It is essential to define Dutch Americans in such a manner as to distinguish this group from others with (equally valid) claims on Dutch identity. According to the 2000 census, over five million people in the United States claim Dutch ancestry. For a contemporary in the Netherlands - a country with a population of just sixteen million - an overseas Dutch population of such size might be surprising. It is as if a lost tribe of Dutchmen wanders America. For many Americans of Dutch ancestry, however, "Dutchness" has little or no bearing on personal identity. Despite some notable ethnic zealots primarily in the Holland Society, the descendents of Dutch colonial (17th century) inhabitants of and have long since assimilated into the fabric of the country. The descendents of the colonial Dutch and the Dutch Americans described in this study should be considered two separate ethnic groups, with marginal correspondence in the nineteenth century and tenuous connections situated in a distant past. Historians who conflate the two groups, do so at their own peril.3 Other Dutch in American include Catholics, who arriving in the nineteenth century, assimilated rapidly because multi- ethnic Catholic churches were abundant in the United States.4 The result was that while there were some 40,000 Dutch Catholics in the U.S. in 1920, there were only 25 specifically Dutch Catholic congregations, and these were often unaware each other.5 Dutch in America traded in their Low Country identities to focus on ethnic fraternity with Jewish Americans of diverse European national origins.6 Only the Calvinist Dutch Americans settled together in sufficient numbers to form cultural institutions that encouraged the long-term preservation of Dutch identity. Dutch identities in America were able to flourish because they were seldom threatening, sometimes marketable, and generally able to adapt to calls to identify with images from the past.

3 See, for example, the unjustified criticisms of Randall Balmer, who elides the two groups in his review of Suzanne Sinke's work Dutch Immigrant Women in The Journal of American History vol. 90, no. 4: (2004) 1481- 1483. Lucas Ligtenberg makes the same error, but on a larger scale. Lucas Ligtenberg, De Nieuwe Wereld van : Nederlandse Voetsporen in the Verenigde Staten (Amsterdam: Balans), 1999. 4 Henry S. Lucas, Netherlanders in America. Dutch Immigration to the United States and , 1798- 1850. (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1955), 459. 5 G. van den Elsen, Twintig Brieven uit Amerika (13th letter, Grand Rapids, 23 August, 1906), Helmod: De Reijdt, 1907, p 93. When the Catholic, Noord-Brabander G. van den Elsen traveled through the United States in 1907 he discovered that in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Dutch Protestants had twenty-five of their own churches, while the Dutch Catholics only had one, and were rather to be found mostly in Irish and German congregations. Jacob Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of the of America. Robert P. Swierenga, ed. and Adriaan de Wit, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book , 1985), 387-388. 6 Robert P. Swierenga, The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press), 1994.

4 Americans had few clear of the Dutch, and these were seldom limiting on the behavior or occupation of a Dutch immigrant. Dutch American identities persisted because they were talked about, defended and encouraged. Multiple sources of historical imagery informed these identities. Their formation, persistence, and development occurred through a conscious discourse about ethnicity, religion, and citizenship, in which "Dutchness" was continually reinterpreted to fulfill the need for individual and group identity. Because the discourse on Dutch American identity was active and conscious, it was bound to evolve as a reflection of the minds of those who considered themselves a part of this ethnic subculture. Dutch immigrants and their descendents emphasized Dutch identity as a practical response, a sort of defense mechanism against exogenous threats such as and war. By explaining themselves with references to two national entities, Dutch Americans formed identities with a Dutch ethnic component, an American civil conscience, and a mind towards conservative, religious orthodoxy.

Locating Dutch Americans within the Historiography of American Ethnic Groups This work seeks to make comparisons between the Dutch and other ethnic groups in America in order to demonstrate how an historically-based view of ethnic identity over the long- term can be useful in understanding ethnic groups more generally. The Dutch were like other European immigrant groups in nineteenth century America who built ethnic networks and communities to buffer the shock of emigration and adaptation. In the process, they participated in "", the forming of a new ethnicity. In one example of this, Norwegian Americans saw themselves as members of a Greater , an ethnic that stretched beyond political boundaries. Of all ethnic groups in the United States, the Norwegian Americans perhaps most closely parallel the Dutch in their development. Pietist farmers who emigrated from peripheral regions dominated both groups and promoted ethnocentrism and a religious/cultural conservatism.7 While the Dutch Americans imagined themselves as a chosen people, or God's elect, Norwegian Americans developed an explicit superiority complex based on national origin myths and social Darwinism. Norwegian American identities evolved under the influence of romantic and progressive politics. Whereas Dutch Americans made little effort to

7 Odd S. Lovoll, The Promise Fulfilled: A Portrait of Norwegian Americans Today (Minneapolis, MN: University of Press, 1998), 3.

5 explain themselves to the country they left behind, Norwegian American identities evolved in a discourse aimed at audiences in Norway, America, and the Norwegian-American communities.8 The pressures of Americanization shaped ethnic identities. To understand this, historians have developed an extensive literature on assimilation theory, with increasingly complex and nuanced views on how immigrants deal identify themselves and relate to culture of their host nation.9 The historiography of nineteenth century European ethnic groups in American shows that European culture continued in America in ethnic enclaves and neighborhoods, indicating that assimilation was not always necessary nor was the complete loss of old world culture inevitable. For example, John Bukowczyk explains that as assimilated they sought status. Assimilation, nearly indistinguishable from Americanization, was linked to increasing interconnectedness between the ethnic enclave and the outside world, particularly through intermarriage. Although nineteenth century ethnics on the one hand stressed the cohesion and maintenance of their own particular groups, they often viewed assimilation as a positive experience. In this assimilation experience, location and circumstance had an important influence.10 Kathleen Conzen explains that assimilation and accommodation work hand in hand, with numerous possible outcomes dependent upon the situation. In Conzen's interpretation, ethnic enclaves served as “decompression chambers” to allow immigrants to become Americans at a slower, less dramatic rate. 11 A study of the persistence of Dutch American ethnicity promises to inform a literature on assimilation that has focused primarily on Eastern and Southern European immigrants, and more recently, Latino immigrant groups. Americans in the nineteenth century felt threatened by waves of Irish, German, and Chinese immigration. Immigration policy debates and Americanization measures reached a peak in the first decades of the twentieth century, resulting in the restrictive immigration quotas of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. Catholics, Southern and Eastern

8 Daron W. Olson, Building a Greater Norway: Emigration and the Creation of National Identities in America and Norway, 1860-1945. Dissertation. (Southern Illinois Univ. - Carbondale, 2006). 9 Milton Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964); Rudolph Vecoli, "Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted," The Journal of American History, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Dec., 1964), 404-417. 10 John J. Bukowczyk. And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of Polish-Americans. (Bloomington, IN: University Press, 1987). 11 Kathleen Neils Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836-1860: Accommodation and Community in a Frontier City. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).

6 Europeans, Africans and Asians faced the harshest restrictions.12 A restrictive quota imposed in 1924 also limited the entry of the Dutch to just over three thousand per year. Despite this, Dutch immigrants in the United States benefited from an advantage of whiteness, and Ameicans accepted them as an original ethnic component of the nation's founding. As a northwest European, white, largely Protestant immigrant group, the Dutch men and women that arrived the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should have quickly assimilated into American society. However, even at their most patriotic, flag-waving, American moments, many Dutch Americans were not willing to give up their Dutch identities so quickly. In the contemporary political discussions about race and ethnicity in America, one might overlook the efforts of earlier groups to retain cultural identity. But questions of cultural and ethnic identity have always been paramount for restless, rootless Americans. Since the nation's founding, have asked what its mean to be or become an American. From the eighteenth century on, political allegiance to the nation was a crucial factor of citizenship. By the mid-nineteenth century, American identity seemed to entail assimilation into the culture of the United States. In the terms of early twentieth century sociologists, Americanization meant the loss of distinct ethnic identity, an acculturation to American .13 But even these customs change and are dependent on exogenous cultural influences. Americanization is a contested term. Questions about identity in America are further entangled in the debates surrounding and shared liberal and democratic traditions. The mixed reception and controversy over Samuel Huntington's book, Who Are We: The Challenges to American National Identity, indicates that these questions are alive and well today. Huntington warns that globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, and an over-eager tolerance for cultural differences threaten the Protestant, Anglo foundations of America.14 For Huntington, cultural assimilation and an acceptance of founding values are essential for American unity and progress.

12 John Higham, Strangers in a Strange Land: Patterns of American , 1860-1925 (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1955). 13 In the eyes of the influential, early twentieth century Chicago Sociologist Robert E. Park, an immigrant had two choices, either mainstream assimilation or the maintenance of immigrant culture. Park believed that assimilation was a social and political phenomenon, and that it was gradual, immeasurable, and strongly tied to language use. One was assimilated when one could “get on” or “fit in.” Assimilation, Park thought, could also be delayed if an immigrant stayed within an immigrant community. Robert E. Park, W.I. Thomas, and Herbert A. Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted: the Early Sociology of Culture (New York: Henry Holt, 1921). 14 Samuel Huntington, Who Are We: The Challenges to American National Identity (Simon & Schuster, 2004).

7 Huntington's fears reflect present-day concerns, but his warning call has deep precedence in the American social landscape. Scholarship since the 1990s indicates the increasingly transnational nature of ethnic identities in the United States. “Transnationalim” refers to the flows of labor, capital, and ideas through national borders, and to the social relationship that persist between societies of origin and settlement. Transnational immigrants or “trans-migrants” challenge the nation-state because they belong to imagined communities that exist in de-territorialized space. In this new paradigm, immigrants share an interconnected social experience and feel equally at place in a home nation and a host nation. Transnational identities are difficult to articulate, however, because identity is generally fixed within the nation-state paradigm.15 Scholars of transnationalism question to what extent post-1970s migrations can be compared to earlier migrations. Certainly, cheap airfare, worldwide phone networks and the internet have enabled ethnic groups to maintain greater cultural ties with their homelands. Nevertheless, as this study will show, the transmission of ideas about identity between the place of origin and the place of settlement is not new. Transnational connections to the Netherlands were instrumental in shaping Dutch American identities. During the past 160 years, Dutch Americans have worked to maintain a sense of "Dutchness," but no two could entirely agree upon what it means to be Dutch. Migrants from the Netherlands in the 1840s were pioneers of provincial origin, men and women who identified with Reformed pietism, and who sought economic gain and religious freedom through migration. Dutch immigrants that settled together chose to do so, but not all Protestant Dutch immigrants chose to participate in Dutch American social circles. Some mixed in American or settled in distant locations on the plains, forever leaving behind their former country and its people. Subsequent generations of Dutch Americans alternately distanced themselves from the old country, drew on Dutch history to promote their sense of collective worth, capitalized on Dutch themes for heritage events, and tried to reestablish cultural institutions with direct links to the Netherlands. At times, such as in historical festivals and religious gatherings, Dutch Americans have stressed their Dutch identity more than their American identity, or have claimed both national identities simultaneously. Today, Dutch Americans on the whole are much less aware of

15 Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Gordon and Breach, 1994).

8 their European origins than they were a few generations ago. But while Dutch identity in the American Midwest has faded, an interest in Dutch heritage, and what in it means to be Dutch persists among many descendents of the Dutch in America.

Theories of Ethnic and Social Identity Dutch Americans are a distinct group, located in a particular time and place. An unfortunately large number of scholarly works, however, make the mistake of combining into a single narrative the history of the colonial Dutch in America with that of the Dutch American communities having formed in the mid-nineteenth century.16 Such a combined history overemphasizes cultural continuity and risks treating all Dutch in America as people of a single identity, united under a static, universal concept of "Dutchness" applied to all descendents of past inhabitants of the territory congruent with the modern-day Netherlands. But "Dutchness" is an elusive concept, and its meaning has changed over time. The respected historian Willem Frijhoff explains "Dutchness" as a "consensus obtained ad hoc in the permanently changing interplay of the formative factors of society."17 Accordingly, "Dutchness" is moldable and transferable, and it is interpreted differently in each age and setting. Because ethnic identity is a group phenomenon, its limits are only as clear as the boundaries of the nation from which is arises. A nation, as Thomas Bender defines it in his popular view, is an "ever changing, always contingent outcome of a continuing contest among social groups and ideas for the power to define public culture."18 For Bender, a nation is not a political unit, but a group of people sharing an ethnic heritage, which evolves in a continued social discourse. The views of Frijhoff and Bender show a certain parallel, in that both scholars see identity, community, and nation, as deriving not from monolithic or prescribed boundaries, but rather from the discourse and contingent actions of members of society.

16 Examples include Arnold Mulder's Americans from Holland (1947), Gerald F. De Jong's Dutch in America, 1609-1974 (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1975), and most recently Lucas Ligtenberg's De Nieuwe Wereld van Peter Stuyvesant: Nederlandse Voetsporen in the Verenigde Staten (1999). These summaries of Dutch American history are based largely on secondary works. Despite their redundancies, each book makes an original contribution. For example, Mulder provides a unique chapter on second generation Dutch Americans, De Jong a chapter on post-WWII migration, and Ligtenberg a chapter on late twentieth century Dutch immigrants. 17 Willem Frijhoff, “Dutchness in Fact and Fiction.” In: Joyce D. Goodfriend, Benjamin Schmidt, and Annette Stott (eds.) Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America, 1609-2009. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008) 327- 358 (quote 336). 18 Thomas Bender, "Wholes and Parts: The Need for Synthesis in American History," The Journal of American History, Vol. 73, No. 1. (Jun., 1986), pp. 126.

9 Dutch American identities are a subset of claims for ethnic "Dutchness." The literature about Dutch Americans is rather extensive but generally displays a key misunderstanding about the nature of ethnicity. Some works in the field resemble the ethnic hagiographies of a hundred years past in as far as they limit ethnic identity to a fixed racial and nationalistic construct.19 The trend to incorporate vignettes of industrious and entrepreneurial Americans of Dutch descent, or of famous Dutch Americans, also belies an understanding of ethnicity that has long been divorced from genetics alone. Sociologists from Max Weber in the first quarter of the twentieth century, to Clifford Geertz and Fredrik Barth, more recently, saw ethnicity as having an element of choice, in which one desires to belong to a group and share in its interests. In modern sociological parlance, ethnicity is best understood as a claim on a shared cultural heritage, a real or assumed common identity based partly on race and nation, but also involving common language, tradition, religious ritual, and geography, among other factors.20 Ethnic groups claim cultural continuity to ground their identities over time, but these identities are inevitably dynamic. Ethnic identity derives from one's membership in a social group, a universal feature of human interaction that affects behavior and perspective. Henri Tajfel and his student, John C. Turner, explained that social identity differs from personal identity. Personal identity is the traits, unique abilities, tastes, and bodily characteristics, etc., that make an individual, while social identity is the aspects of identity that derive from membership in a group. Personal identity has to do with self-knowledge, with the singular pronoun "I", whereas social identity deals with internalized feelings of group membership, with the plural pronoun "we."21 Social groups perfer their own kind. They also define themselves as independent collectives. Through such categorizing into an in-group, one hopes to maximize positive distinctiveness. Outsiders often reciprocate by acknowledging the distinct nature of the group.

19 A recent work on in America follows this pattern. Peter de Haan and Kerst Huisman, Famous Frisians in America (: Friese Pers, 2009). 20 Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds.), Max Weber, Economy and Society: an Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Univ. of Press, 1978) (Translation of Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellscht: Grundriss der verstehendrn Soziologie (1922); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic, 1973); Fredrik Barth, Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969). 21 Henri Tajfel, Human groups and social categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981); John C. Turner, "Social identification and psychological group formation" in Henri Tajfel, (ed.). The Social Dimension: European developments in social psychology, Vol. 2 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), 518-538.

10 To some degree then, ethnic identity is a choice, but it can also be imposed by those outsider the ethnic group. Numerous case studies over the past twenty years demonstrate quite well that wealth, class, skin color, and gender relations impact the degree to which one is free to determine one's ethnicity. Dorothee Schneider, for example, showed that in the absence of a viable Socialist party, in late nineteenth century organized around shared political sentiments and a class-consciousness that shaped the boundaries of their ethnic communities.22 In a study of the period 1880 to 1920, Suzanne Sinke illustrated the limited freedom of Dutch American women to explore new identities when they arrived as married partners with children, concentrated in ethnic settlements in the Midwest. While the process of migration rearranged and contributed to a greater variety of gender roles, Dutch culture, the church, and the state proscribed Dutch American women to follow their husbands' lead. Sinke further showed that a woman's age at migration, her proximity to urban areas, and her class also factored into her ability to reinvent herself. Cornelia de Groot was a rare example who found nearly complete independence as a well-educated, single Dutch woman living as a writer in San Francisco.23 Race can also be a limiting factor in choosing one's ethnic identity. West Indian immigrants, for example, have found it difficult to identify as specifically "Jamaican" or "Barbadoan" in the United States when outsiders view them only as . Mary Waters proposed that West Indians are unable to overcome the prejudices of the American racial structure. Race overwhelms their ambitions, and limits their successes. Waters determined that the "good culture" of hard-working West Indians is no match for racial discrimination.24 Nancy Foner explained also that West Indians tend not to assimilate directly into mainstream American culture but into African American subculture.25 Foner proposes a model of "segmented assimilation" to explain how race can affect ethnic development and assimilation. Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut have also contributed to the historiography of segmented

22 Dorothee Schneider, Trade Unions and Community: The German Working Class in New York City, 1870-1900 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994). 23 Suzanne Sinke, Dutch Immigrant Women, 1880-1920 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002). 24 Mary C. Waters. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999),7-8. 25 Nancy Foner. In a New Land: A Comparative View of Immigration. (New York: New York University Press, 2005);

11 assimilation by pointing to “downward” assimilation of second generation immigrant youths into inner-city minority groups.26 While minority race status can be limiting, "whiteness" provides many with an "unearned, unacknowledged, and often invisible" set of advantages not available to all.27 Studies of "whiteness" have proposed that some immigrant groups in America were caught in between racial categories and had to struggle to be accepted as "white." Recent studies, however, have challenged this position. Perhaps the best challenge has been Thomas Guglielmo's White on Arrival, which argued that although Italians seldom identified as whites before the Second World War, Americans generally accepted the Italians as such, while still categorizing them as inferior ethnics.28 In a study of Slovaks and other immigrant Americans from Eastern and Southern in the 1920s and 1930s, June Granatir Alexander opposed the idea that these "immigrants and the second generation were somehow aware of and moved by a desire to overcome an ascribed status as not-yet-white."29 Dutch Americans, meanwhile, faced little race prejudice and were free to settle among and mix in with native-born Americans. The casual acceptance of Dutch immigrants as whites gave them the flexibility to choose and interpret their ethnicity along other lines, primarily religious and civic.

Shaping Dutch American Identities The Calvinist Dutch Americans formed under their own accord a regional community whose borders were difficult to define, but whose existence was impossible to deny. Linguistic issues, however, always complicated the concept of a distinct Dutch American identity. What was one to call these people? Dutch Americans originated in the Netherlands, a political entity comprised of eleven provinces, of which, the province of Holland (split into two provinces after 1840) has historically exerted the most influence. The tendency has been to refer to the whole by its most important part, to elide Holland and the Netherlands. Nineteenth century Americans used both the term "Hollander" and "Dutch" fairly interchangeably when describing people from the Netherlands, but they sometimes confused (i.e. Deutsch or Duits) with Hollanders

26 Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait ( Univ. of California Press, 2006). 27 Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno, eds. Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 5. 28 Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

12 (Dutch), and vice versa. An added complication was that some Germans, both East-Frisians and Reformed Bentheimers, settled among the Dutch in the United States, and certainly Dutch- German intermarriage was not uncommon. "Dutch American," in fact, became a popular term only in the twentieth century, particularly after 1950. The term was sometimes hyphenated to make "Dutch" an adjective of "American," to indicate a hybrid character. Historically, however, Dutch Americans have gone by various names, with no single term dominating over the years. William O. Van Eyck, for example, consistently referred to midwestern Dutch Americans as "western Hollanders," while Jacob Van Hinte used "Nederlanders in Amerika," and Arnold Mulder preferred "Americans from Holland."30 Each term served a unique purpose. Van Eyck's term drew on Dutch Reformed heritage, Van Hinte's use of "Netherlanders" was part of a nationalistic trend in the early twentieth century academic circles, and Mulder's term reflected a shift towards a nationalistic, American-centered perspective on ethnicity. Dutch Americans' tendencies towards social and religious conservatism helped preserve Dutch traditions and identity. Conservative characteristics of Dutch American culture included strict observance of the Sabbath and opposition to activities such as card playing, social dancing, and attending the movies. The defense of these religious and cultural identities was rooted in the context of migration. Historian Louis Hartz wrote that "when a part of a European nation is detached for the whole of it, and hurled outwards onto new soil, it loses the stimulus to change that the whole provides."31 Hartz can be interpreted as saying that an immigrant group takes with it the ideas of its society at the time of migration. This migrant fragment leaves it enemies behind, whether they be political, religious, ethnic, or cultural, and achieves a timelessness, no longer worried about the European past or present, but concerned with its own preservation. For the Dutch Americans, migration promoted conservatism. It allowed a Dutch fragment drawn from the rural periphery of the Netherlands to develop in relative isolation from the Dutch nation.

29 June Granatie Alexander, Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism: Slovaks and Other New Immigrants in the Interwar Era (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004). 30 William O. Van Eyck, Landmarks of the Reformed Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans-Sevensma, 1922); Jacob Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of the of America. Robert P. Swierenga, ed. and Adriaan de Wit, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985: Original, Groningen, 1928); Arnold Mulder. Americans from Holland (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippicott, 1947). 31 Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South , Canada, and . (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1964), 3.

13 Tensions and struggles within the Dutch American communities and between those communities and the outside world encouraged Dutch Americans to draw on the past and seek identity in their historical memory. Michael Kammen explained that "memory is more likely to be activated by contestation, and amnesia is more likely to be induced by the desire for reconciliation."32 The discourse on Dutchness in America relied heavily on historical imagery to establish common links and to distinguish the Dutch Americans from other groups such as New "Yankees," Blacks, or other European immigrants. Influences on Dutch American identities came from three major loci: (1) developments within American culture and society (2) additional immigration from and correspondence with the Netherlands and associated images of Dutch culture, both historical and contemporary, and (3) internal developments within the Dutch American communities. Pressures of Americanization and the passage of generations also shaped Dutch American ethnic identity.

Table 1: Some Major Influences Shaping Dutch American Identities Developments in U.S. Sources of Dutch Identity Developments in Dutch History American Identities 1846- Civil War Provincialism, Localism Chapters 1 and 2: 1875 Organizational Links Community Formation 1875- Industrialization Nationalism Chapters 3 and 4: 1900 Growing Racial Continued Migration Citizenship Questions Consciousness Racial Identity Mass Migration 1900- WWI, , Neo- Chapters 5 and 6: 1930 Americanization Romanticism Denominational Borders Generational Change 1930- Consensus History, WWII - Chapters 7 and 8: 1960 Exceptionalism Concern for Europe Tulip Time Van Raalte Legend 1960- Suburbanization, Dutch-Canada Migration Chapter 9: 1980 Ethnic Commercialization Political Conservatism and Revival Dutch Immigrant Society 1980- Transportation Tourism Chapter 10: 2010 Technology Genealogy, Study Evangelicalism Abroad Professional History

32 Michael Kammen, Mystic chords of memory. The transformation of tradition in American culture (New York 1993), 13.

14

As outlined in the chart above, the influences on Dutch American identities were diverse and complex. In each era, new influences complicated the nature of identity. Early factors on identity, such as the rise of neo-Calvinism and the formation of sharp denominational boundaries in the Reformed churches had reverberating influence in later periods. The legacy of other events, such as the Dutch American opposition to the South African Boer War, was crucial at a particular moment in time, but left less of an influence in later years. The passage of time and generational change contributed the most to historical amnesia, while waves of new Dutch immigrants, particularly in the late nineteenth century and in the 1950s, introduced new concepts of "Dutchness." Dutch American identities evolved to face new challenges. Dutch Americans forgot past identities and recalled them again, invented their own traditions and adopted others.

Historiography of Dutch Americans Dutch American historians have recognized their group's struggle for identity, and their works have exerted a strong influence on the people they chronicle. For this reason, references to the historiography of the Dutch in America will appear routinely in the chapters to follow. Professional study of the subject began with Jacob Van Hinte's Nederlanders in Amerika, first published in 1928. Van Hinte was connected to many of the leading figures in Dutch America, and he received many warm letters of congratulations after the publication of his book.33 Van Hinte's work would be translated and published in English in 1985. In the meanwhile, Henry S. Lucas published in 1955 a similarly titled Netherlanders in America, which gave the first English-language overview of the subject.34 Van Hinte and Lucas presented similar, thoroughly researched, dense descriptions of migration and the formation of Dutch American communities. Both authors arranged their chapters chronologically, focusing on particular locations or regions of Dutch settlement. The key difference between the monographs is in the perspectives of their authors: Van Hinte as a social geographer, a Netherlander, and an outsider to Dutch America, and Lucas, a home-grown professional historian, a descendent of early immigrants to Michigan. Both authors wanted to paint the Dutch American experience as an epic whole that defined a people.

33 Historisch Documentatiecentrum voor Nederlands Protestantisme. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Collection 283.

15 Scholars working in the 1970s and 1980s filled in much of the background to emigration which had been left out by Van Hinte and Lucas, and further studies have deepened the understanding of developments of the Dutch on American soil. In the 1970s, computer technology began to revolutionize the study of history. At the forefront of the quantitative turn, Robert P. Swierenga collected statistics on Dutch immigrants and discovered correlations in the data. Swierenga produced analytic studies of immigrants' occupations, voting patterns, and religious convictions. He also drew connections between socio-economic patterns in the Netherlands and migration rates to the United States.35 Meanwhile, scholars in the Netherlands produced regional case-studies of emigration. These works used statistical data to show migration patterns at municipal and even village levels. They also asked questions about motives, often citing theoretical works like Milton Gordon's Assimilation in American Life.36 At Kent State University in , Swierenga directed the work of a new generation of scholars who also made significant contributions to the field, including Suzanne Sinke with Dutch American Women, 1880-1920 (2002) and Hans Krabbendam with Vrijheid in het Verschiet (2006).37 Krabbendam's book, like James Bratt's 1984 study of Dutch American religious history and culture, continued in a transition from purely descriptive to more analytical studies that pose theoretical questions about the nature of Dutch American culture and identity.38 Krabbendam provided the most up-to-date general description of Dutch immigration to the United States, limited, however, to the years 1840 to 1940. Bratt's work is an intellectual history concerned with the religious identity of Dutch Americans, dealing mostly with the years 1900 to 1950. Both

34 Henry S. Lucas, Netherlanders in America, 1955. Reprinted, Eerdmans. 35 Examples include Robert P. Swierenga, Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920. (New York, NY: Holmes & Meier, 2000), and numerous journal articles including "Local Patterns of Dutch Migration to the United States in the Mid-Nineteenth Century," in Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke, eds., A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 134- 157; and "Dutch International Migration Statistics, 1820-1880: An Analysis of Linked Multinational Nominal Files," International Migration Review 15 (Fall 1981): 445-470. 36 Examples include: Henri Van Steckelenburg, Landverhuizing als Regionaal Verschijnsel: Van Noord- Brabant naar Noord-Amerika, 1820-1880. (, 1991); G.H. Ligterink, De landverhuizers: Emigratie naar Noord-America uit het Gelders-Westfaalse grensgebied tussen de jaren 1830-1850 (: Walburg, 1981); P.R.D. Stokvis, De Nederlandse Trek naar Amerika, 1846-1847 (Leiden Univ. Press, 1977). 37 Hans Krabbendam, Vrijheid in het Eerschiet: Nederlandse Emigratie naar Amerika 1840-1940 ( 2006); Suzanne Sinke, Dutch Immigrant Women, 2002; Annemieke Galema, Frisians to America, 1880-1914: With the baggage of the fatherland (Groningen, 1996). 38 James D. Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: The History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984).

16 focused on the continuity of a Dutch American identity built on religious conservatism and family bonds. As Krabbedan saw it, religion was the "glue" which held Dutch Americans together. Religion and its role as a social organism is the self-evident explanation for ethnic persistence. Paradoxically, however, Dutch American religious history is full of conflict and schism. In an anthropological study of Dutch Calvinists in Amsterdam, , Rob Kroes concluded that indeed ethnic consciousness was more important than common religious faith in cementing community ties. About the Dutch of the Gallatin Valley, he wrote:

At best their sense of ethnicity - of Dutchness - is no more than a rather vague sentiment that affects their behavior only in certain areas, in their choice of friends or of marriage partners. And sometimes not even there. There is always a wide, grey zone where an ethnic community tends to blur into its environment. But if we move inward from the margin towards the center, ethnicity becomes more of a guiding force, leaving its imprint on an increasing number of institutions of an unmistakably ethnic character. If we look at it that way, we have another vantage point from which to consider the role of the church in the Dutch community.39

In short, Kroes proposed that for one Dutch American community - and in extension, for Dutch America more generally - religious struggles played themselves out in an ethnic context, where only the participants clearly understood the rules and language of the game. In this sense, religion was an agent of conflict as well as cohesion, but through this conflict Dutch Americans confirmed their ethnic identities. Kroes agrees with Krabbendam that religion was the central factor of Dutch American social life, but it was the ethnic context, and the narrative of providence in which it was set, which ultimately gave Dutch American religion its cohesive power.40 Dutch American identities, in this view, are unique not because of religious conservatism alone, but because of the malleable ethnic atmosphere in which Dutch Calvinism in America operated. This work agrees with Kroes' position and expands upon it with a more comprehensive study.

Author's Connection and Source Material

39 Rob Kroes, The Persistence of Ethnicity: Dutch Calvinist Pioneers in Amsterdam, Montana (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 101. 40 Kroes, The Persistence of Ethnicity, 120.

17 It would be disingenuous if I were to neglect to mention that this story has personal significance in my own search for identity. As a child growing up in the featureless suburbs of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the thought that I belonged to an ethnic group never crossed my mind. That changed in the summer of 1993, when two guests from the Netherlands arrived at my grandfather's house and introduced me to a foreign culture. They were "Grute" and "Lytse" Doede, or big and little Doede Douma (for these cousins happened to share the same first and last name). The two Doede's rolled out a family tree printed on a roll of computer paper that stretched across the living room floor, and I ran my index finger down the list of names until I located my grandfather, my father, and myself. The visitors also presented photographs of their homes and families in the Netherlands. One could infer from their smiles and quick speech that they were ever so happy to have crossed the Atlantic for the first time and to have discovered us long-lost kin. To my great surprise, when they spoke to my grandfather in what struck me as an unintelligble pattern of gutteral sounds, my grandfather responded in a similar voice. This was the first time that I heard my grandfather speak Frisian, the native language of a province in the north of the Netherlands. I realized right then that I had a lot of work to do if I were to understand what this reunion scene meant to my grandfather and how it had come about. Seven years passed until I first visited the Netherlands, at which point I determined to trace the paths of a group of people who had come before me, and to try to understand what it had meant for them to identify as Dutch Americans. This present study is the first single work to cover Dutch Americans from their origins in the 1840s through to the twenty-first century. This study employs theoretical works about ethnicity and identity formation and is built on an array of primary sources found both in the Netherlands and in the United States. Primary sources, which have been essential for understanding claims on identity, include correspondence stored in Holland, Michigan at the Joint Archives of Holland, the Van Raalte Institute, and the Holland Museum Archives, and in Grand Rapids, Michigan at Calvin College's Heritage Hall. Recently acquired materials at these archives shed new light on the Dutch Americans in the . In addition, the papers of the American contingent of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, kept at the Dutch national archive in The Hague, provide new information about Dutch Americans from a transnational angle. Additional provincial and municipal archives across the Netherlands and in the United States contribute significant materials. Further primary sources include articles from

18 Dutch and Dutch American newspapers and previously published letter collections. A diverse base of secondary sources reflects and synthesizes important insights made by Dutch and American scholars independently and often without recognition outside of their respective home . The following chapters are thematic in nature, but are presented chronologically, both in respect to each other, and in their individual contents.

Chapter by Chapter Summary Chapter one questions how Dutch emigrants bound for America in the 1840s and 1850s identified themselves. Emigrants from the afgescheiden (Seceder) church in the Netherlands played an important role in establishing Dutch American communities. For many emigrants, religious identity was linked to national identity. The migration showed, however, that religious identity superseded national identity. Continuing on the themes of the first chapter, chapter two explains the formation of Dutch American communities in the period 1847 to 1875 as acts of imagining ethnic boundaries as spatial relationships.41 Chapter three shows how Dutch Americans appealed to their past contributions in the United States to try to justify their place in the nation. It demonstrates that citizenship was often a practical consideration motivated by its potential advantages. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, Dutch Americans developed a patriotic language to present their ethnic group as an important contributor to the political nation. Chapter four presents the story of Siras Sill, an African-American who fled the South after the Civil War to be raised in a Dutch American household. Siras learned the and came to understand Dutch American culture, and yet, because of his skin color, he was restricted into an occupation as a porter. By placing Siras’ story within the developing racial views of the late nineteenth century, this chapter establishes Dutch ethnics as participants in a national discourse about racial and ethnic identity. Chapter five is concerned with the denominational divide at the center of Dutch American identities. It is quintessentially an "insider" chapter, in that it describes, in relative isolation, the nuanced divisions and struggles within the Dutch American community. Scholars of other ethnic groups may relate to the myopia of the Dutch worldview, in which the in-group

41 This chapter has been published as Michael Douma, "Imagined Beginnings: The Dutch American Immigrant Community, 1847-1875," Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Gescheidenis (Summer 2010).

19 ascribes to themselves an exalted status and generally neglects the views of outsiders. Dutch immigrants arriving after 1880 contributed to Dutch America new concepts of national, religious, and regional identity. The thoughts of provided many Dutch Americans with new motivations for spreading their faith. But the struggle between the RCA and CRC indicated that Dutch Americans defined themselves in relation to each other as much as to the outside world. Chapter six explains the influence of generational change, focusing again on the early decades of the twentieth century. The first generations of Dutch Americans identified as a strongly religious group that together crossed the ocean and established its own communities. The children of Dutch immigrants struggled to conform to the religious orthodoxy of their parents and to find their place between the strict world of Dutch America and the fasted-pace, modernizing America. This chapter uses the life story of Arnold Mulder, an influential Dutch American novelist, to explain how later generations of Dutch in America dealt with problems of hybrid identity. Chapter seven describes the development of the Tulip Time festival in Holland, Michigan, and the shaping of a new ethnic identity based on kitsch and commercialism. In the 1920s and 1930s, direct identification with the Netherlands began to give way to an interest in heritage. Whereas identity is an active, conscious process that affects how one behaves, heritage is a ritualistic glorification of the past. Dutch immigrants and their descendents used new images from the Netherlands to reinterpret and promote their own ethnic identity and heritage. Chapter eight describes the invention of myth surrounding the early leader of Dutch American migration, the founder of Holland, Michigan, Albertus C. Van Raalte. Van Raalte was controversial in his own time, but became a heroic symbol of the Dutch American community after his death. This chapter shows that memories of the past can be re-reinterpreted to help serve an ethnic community's present ideals. The promotion of Van Raalte justified the development of Dutch American culture. It provided an and an anchor for tales of struggle and success. The ninth chapter explains the fading away of distinct Dutch American identities and culture. It questions how identity is protected and controlled at the borders of a group. While Dutch Americans of the early twentieth century identified with the Netherlands, those at mid-

20 century showed a more ambivalent attitude about the country of their ancestors. The fading of Dutch identity indicated a transition into the American environment. Chapter ten discusses Dutch American identities since 1980, and the revival of interest in claims on "Dutchness." It questions the nature of Dutch American identity today and asks what are the positive and negative connotations of being Dutch in America? This chapter explores the rise of interest in Dutch ethnicity in the computer age. The internet, it shows, has allowed curious genealogists and amateur historians more freedom in seeking their identity and in discovering their roots. To conclude, this work argues that ethnic groups are capable of creating an ever-changing culture of their own, with evolving identities based both on their old-world origins and their American environments. National identity is political and objective, but ethnic identity is subjective. It is a social construct, susceptible to change. And yet, ethnic identity is persistent and important. It responds to competition from other sources of identity, and without fading away entirely, can evolve to have new meaning. Dutch Americans explain the importance of ethnicity in more direct terms: "If you're not Dutch, you're not much." One must respond to this ethnic banter by questioning what it means to be Dutch in the first place.

21 CHAPTER 1: THE ORIGINS OF DUTCH AMERICAN IDENTITIES

The most visible and ultimately the most enduring model of Dutch American ethnic identity developed in the Midwest in communities dominated by orthodox Calvinists.1 Dutch American identities formed in the relationship between the 1834 "Afscheiding", or secession of orthodox Dutch Calvinists from the state-supported Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK), the emigration of thousands from the Netherlands to the United States beginning in 1847, and the early religious quarrels that arose among the pious Dutch immigrant settlers.2 This chapter summarizes the Afscheiding and the Dutch migration to the United States to provide a context for the origins of Dutch American identities. It highlights connections between the Seceder mindset in the Netherlands and the developing Dutch American identities of the 1850s. It argues that Seceders were particularly influential in shaping Dutch American communities, but that the Hervormde immigrants who settled among them were not a breed apart. Whether of Seceder or Hervormde background, many in the pioneer generation were radical Orthodox Calvinists who felt that their religious and cultural identity was under constant threat in the United States. Dutch immigrants were family-oriented and patriarchal, and ministers held an exalted place within their communities. The Dutch migrated mostly as nuclear families or single men, but rarely as single women, a trend which contributed to a mild gender imbalance in their settlements.3 Gerritt Baay wrote in 1849 that his Dutch colony of Alto, Wisconsin, only required three things: more , more song books, and more Dutch women.4 In the new Dutch colony of Orange City, , the widower Abram Van Steenwijk complained that "female help is almost

1Dutch Catholic colonies, more secular urban settlements, and even the descendents of Dutch colonials in New York, provide alternative, competing models of Dutch American ethnic identity. 2 Literature about the Afscheiding in English is scarce, even though Dutch historians have covered the topic extensively. Likewise, the English-language historiography of the events leading up to the emigration is limited, particularly when compared to the copious research conducted on the American side of the migration equation. As it stands, Dutch scholars have made thorough investigations of the causes of migration, and American scholars have written much on the development of settlements in the United States, but these two bodies of literature exist large independently of each other. J. Wesseling gives a province by province description of the characters and places involved in the Afscheiding. J.Wesseling, De Afscheiding van 1834 (: Vuurbaak, 1986); Cornelis Smits, De Afscheiding van 1834 (Oudkarspel : De Nijverheid, 1979-). On the pioneers from see G.H. Ligterink, De Landveruizers: Emigratie naar Noord-Amerika uit het Gelders-Westfaalse Grensgebied Tussen de Jaren 1830-1850. (: Walburg Press, 1981). 3 According to Swierenga, just 15 percent of Dutch immigrants in the first decades arrived as solitary adults. This figure rose to 20 percent by 1880 and climbed to 25 percent by 1900. Robert P. Swierenga, Faith and Family: Dutch Immigrant Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920 (Holmes & Meier, 2000), 53. 4 Gerritt Baay, Alto, Wisconsin. 4 Jan. 1849. HMA, Collection T88-0007.

22 impossible to come by, and then at high wages."5 This family migration mirrored other groups like the Norwegian and , but contrasted sharply with the Irish, with a majority of female migrants, and the Italians and Greeks, with a trend towards single male laborers.6 As Calvinists, the Dutch Americans naturally feared secularism and were suspicious of most forms of American religion, primarily the results-oriented Methodism. They desired to keep local control over their churches and keep their liturgy and worship clear of modern influences. In 1857, in an attempt to maintain Dutch cultural identity in the face of these threats, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) emerged through a secession of some 300 families or approximately 1,200 persons from the Reformed Church in America (RCA).7 Persistent inter-denominational quarrels led the RCA and CRC factions into steadfast positions, both stubbornly sure of the righteousness of their respective cause. The two groups disagreed on church order, public schooling, and the singing of hymns, but they generally agreed on the major doctrines of Calvinism. Dutch American from both churches united under a common ethnic identity based on a shared history and a shared faith. For Protestants in the Netherlands, religious and national identities were intertwined, but the migration split the two, and showed that what mattered most for those who migrated to Dutch American settlements was the maintenance of a community of believers. Migrants were reluctant at first to give up their allegiance to the Netherlands; they recalled their local origins fondly and corresponded with family in the old country. Provincial identities gave flavor to the Dutch American ethnic equation by providing linguistic and cultural differences, but they were not an insurmountable obstacle in forming new communities.

The Motives and Sources of Migration Despite their small numbers, Seceders set the tone for Dutch American communities in the crucial first years of migration. A decade after the birth of the Dutch Seceder church in 1834, their adherents numbered just 40,000, and in the overall stream of Dutch emigration, the Seceders were always a minority. In the nineteenth century as a whole, 65 percent of Dutch immigrants to the

5 Abram Van Steenwijk ((Orange City, IA) to Gijsbert Van Steenwijk (La Crosse, WI), 1 March 1874. Gijsbert Van Steenwijk Collection, La Crosse, Wisconsin Archives. 6 Hasia Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983). 7 Richard H. Harms, compiler and editor, Historical Directory of the Christian Reformed Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Historical Committee of the CRC, 2004), viii.

23 United States identified as belonging to the Hervormde Kerk, 20 percent were Catholics, and just 13 percent were Seceders.8 Despite this, Seceders comprised nearly 50 percent of the immigrants in the 1840s, and were influential beyond their numbers. Early Dutch American leaders also came from their camp. The founder of Holland, Michigan, Albertus van Raalte, is the best known example, but there was also Cornelius Vander Meulen in , MI, Seine Bolks in Overisel, MI, Martin Ypma in Vriesland, MI, Gerrit Baay in Alto, Wisconsin, and Hendrik Scholte in Pella, Iowa, among others. As the migration continued in the 1850s, Seceders tended to settle in the established Dutch colonies, while Hervormde immigrants were more likely to be found in large cities, or on farms distant from centers of Dutch settlement. The nucleus of Seceders helped shape the character of the first two major Dutch settlements in the Midwest: Holland, Michigan, and Pella, Iowa, both founded in 1847. Although Dutch immigrants had come to the Midwest before this date, they were few and scattered. Immigrants from the Netherlands averaged around 100 per year in the 1830s and early 1840s, a stark contrast to the as many as 8,000 that arrived in 1847.9 This origin year, 1847, has been celebrated at appropriate intervals at Dutch American anniversary events, most notably in Holland, Michigan's semi-centennial, centennial, and sesquicentennial celebrations. Generations of Dutch Americans in the nineteenth century were aware of the events of 1834 and 1847 and many could summarize the relevant details. They debated the story of how the migration came about, however, and proposed various interpretations of the religious origins of their ethnic group. Early historians of the Dutch Americans arose almost exclusively from within the ethnic group. They honored the pioneer generation and used its history as an example of hard work and faith. They drew comparisons to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and referenced a literary favorite of the orthodox Dutch, John Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress, a 17th century allegory of a Christian traveler on a journey to Zion. Unfortunately, however, few thought to preserve first-person narratives of the events 1834 and 1847. By the time amateur historians gathered tales for the 1897 semi-centennial celebrations in Holland, Michigan, they were too late to ask questions of the central players in

8 In addition, 2% were Jewish. 9 Robert P. Swierenga, Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States: 1820-1920 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000), 40-42, 293-309.

24 those past dramas.10 Over time, history mixed with myth until the myths themselves became an important part of history. A general understanding of the background to the migration persisted in oral tales, but the scholarly explanation of these origins came to rely on a few select written sources, often written in Dutch and difficult to locate. The first of these works was Dingman Versteeg's Pelgrim-vaders van Het Westen, a history of the early years of Dutch America, based, one presumes, on interviews the author made with ministers and important figures in Dutch American communities in the 1880s.11 In 1893, Henry E. Dosker's biography of Van Raalte appeared, also published only in Dutch.12 J. A. Wormser's five volume series, Een Schat in Aarden Vaten, used primary sources in the Netherlands to describe the character and actions of leaders of the Afscheiding.13 The first of Wormser's volumes was published in 1915, again in Dutch and in the Netherlands. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Dutch American writers drew on these sources to defend or attack certain theological, doctrinal and existential positions of the RCA or the CRC, and to explain the development of their ethnic group. Dutch Americans were curious to discover, "Who were the Dutch pioneers of 1847 and what did they believe?" For most of the twentieth century, historical works on Dutch Americans focused almost entirely on the Seceder element, and they therefore viewed the migration as a religiously motivated event.14 For example, Henry Lucas, in his monumental work, Netherlanders in America (1955) provided in-depth descriptions of the movements of Scholte and Van Raalte and of the developments of Seceder-led Dutch settlements. Lucas committed a major error, however, when he overestimated the share of Seceders in the migration, while likewise underestimating the size of the Seceder population in the Netherlands. In result, Lucas concluded falsely that by the mid-1850s,

10 Memoirs originally collected by Gerrit van Schelven and William O. Eyck for the 1897 semi-centennial in Holland were first published in turn-of-the-century editions of De Grondwet, and were later arranged in Henry S. Lucas, Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings. (1955) The originals can be found at the HMA. 11 Dingman Versteeg, Pelgrim-vaders van Het Westen: Eene Geschiedenis van de Worstelingen Der Hollandsche Nederzettingen in Michigan, Benevens Eene Schets van de Stichting Der Kolonie Pella in Iowa (Grand Rapids, MI: C.M. Loomis), 1886. 12 Henry E. Dosker, Levensschets van A.C. Van Raalte (, 1893) 13 J.A. Wormser's Een Schat in Aarden Vaten: De Afscheiding in levensbeschrijvingen geschetst. (/, the Netherlands: E.J. Bosch) 1915-1919 (five volumes). 14 Jacob Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of the of America. Robert P. Swierenga, ed. and Adriaan de Wit, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985: Original, Groningen, 1928). Bertus H. Wabeke, Dutch emigration to , 1624-1860: A short history (New York: Netherlands Information Bureau, 1944). Gerald F. De Jong, The Dutch Reformed Church in the Amerícan Colonies. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978). Aleida J. Pieters, A Dutch Settlement in Michigan (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1923).

25 nearly half of all Dutch Seceders had chosen to leave for America. Statistics show, however, that even in the peak migration year of 1847, just 4.4 percent of all Seceders emigrated. Pieter Stokvis brought Lucas's mistake to light in De Nederlandse Trek Naar Amerika (1977), a case-study of the motivations behind Dutch American migration in the years 1846-1847. Stokvis's research shows that while Seceders were never in the majority, they were indeed represented well beyond their numbers.15 Robert Swierenga showed more convincingly, however, that Stokvis himself had underestimated the numbers of Seceders. Swierenga's more complete data indicate that from 1846 to 1849, Seceders outnumbered Hervormde immigrants 5650 to 3027.16 Both historians agree that after this initial wave, Seceders were a distinct minority of arriving immigrants. Before Stokvis' publication, most writers of Dutch American history held at least the tacit assumption that religion was the primary factor behind the emigration.17 Indeed, this tradition of ascribing the migration to religious motives arose early within Dutch American circles and was defended wholeheartedly. It reinforced ethnocentric views about the uniqueness of the Dutch Americans. The pretext of a religious migration also helped explain why the Seceders were over- represented and why Dutch American communities were so religious-minded and ultimately why they had preserved Dutch identities. Bernardus Grootenhuis of Zeeland, Michigan, complained in 1888 that people were forgetting the true causes of the emigration: "We, the first settlers, we all know, that , and the desire to work for an honest living for ourselves and our children were the first motives of this Emigration."18 From the perspective of someone like John Karsten, an RCA cleric who spoke at the 50th anniversary of Dutch settlement in Sheboygan,

15 P.R.D. Stokvis, De Nederlandse Trek naar Amerika,1846-1847. (Leiden Univ. Press, 1977) 54. Such economic equilibrium thinking influenced the analysis of Pieter Stokvis' study of Dutch migration. By balancing the "push" factors behind emigration: potato famines, rise in food prices, demographic pressures, social class stress, and religious persecution, Stokvis came to the conclusion that earlier writers had exaggerated the influence of religious motivations for Dutch American immigrants. His argument is that while religious motivations provided a catalyst for the Seceders, social-economic concerns were the true driving force of discontent. In fact, for many migrants, Stokivs writes, religion played almost no role in the decisions to emigrate. Stokvis' thesis relies on local Dutch government register reports, which indicate that 54 percent of the heads of emigrant families and individual emigrants for the period 1831-1847 emigrated to the United States for social-economic reasons. Only 13 percent, on the other hand, had listed religious freedom as the primary motivation. In addition to these statistics, Stokvis used immigrant letters and contemporary newspaper reports to emphasize the economic dimension behind the migration. 16 Robert P. Swierenga, Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000), 177. 17 An example of this is Adrian Van Koevering's Legends of the Dutch: The Story of a Mass Movement of Nineteenth Century Pilgrims (Zeeland, Michigan: Zeeland Record Co., 1960). 18 Bernard Grootenhuis, HMA, Collection T88-0071. Translation of "Wij, de eerste settlers, wij allen weten, dat godsdienstvrijheid en de begeerte om door vlijt en handenarbeid ons zelven en onze kinderen een eerlijk bestaan te verschaffen de eerste drijfveeren tot deze Emigratie waren."

26 Wisconsin, in 1897, the U.S. was clearly an exceptional land of freedom that had welcomed religious refugees from the Netherlands.19 Modern historians influenced by 's world-systems theory, or other economic equilibrium models must call into question any such mono-casual explanation. The idea that America-bound immigrants fled European tyranny for American freedom has too often been cited without corresponding evidence.20 According to Dirk Hoerder, migrants play a crucial role as workers, filling in where the workforce is needed. They do not follow national plans or individual dreams per se, but are affected largely by economic push-pull factors at the “meso” or middle, regional level. Migration is a self-regulating phenomenon, a non-linear or cyclical system which, seeking an equilibrium of workers, behaves like the weather: calm for days on end, or raining in a sudden rush, but never absent from possibility. While the working class has access to the forecast, those in power have the ability, often with negative consequences, to regulate the flow of people.21 With a focus on economic motivations for migration, religious identity might become a sidelight in a story in which greater social forces are at work. But the choice between economics or religion as the prime mover of migrants is in this case a false dichotomy. One can make an informed judgement about the relative weights of historical causes, but motivations are not measurable as statistics. It makes no sense to say, for example, that economic motivations - in this case or any other - were 1.6 or 2.3 times more important than religious motivations. Motivations overlap and cannot be easily isolated. For example, Dutch emigrants tended to be poor, and the poor in the Netherlands were statistically more likely to be Seceders, while the Seceders were more commonly subject to religious persecution. Socio-economics and religion are two strands of the same string. Lucas may have been mistaken about the statistics of the migrants, but he was correct that "It was the religious motive that gave form and character to the movement."22 Since the Dutch migrated largely in family units and were linked in chain migrations, they were able to "transplant" themselves in America and encourage cultural continuation that included

19 John H. Karsten, "Speech for the 50th Anniversary of Sheboygan," 5 July 1897. JAH: W88-0060. 20 Max Paul Friedman, "Beyond 'Voting with Their Feet': Toward a Conceptual History of 'America' in European Migrant Sending Communities, 1860 to 1914", Journal of Social History, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Spring 2007), 557- 575. 21 Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contract: Worlds Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). 22 Henry S. Lucas, Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789- 1950 (Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan Press, 1955), 42.

27 a distinctly Calvinist perspective.23 Unlike the "uprooted" immigrants of Oscar Handlin's standard text, the Dutch were not torn away from their home soil to find themselves rootless in America.24 Like other American immigrant groups, the Dutch "transplanted" communities were ethnic enclaves and cultural zones that were like little European worlds on the American landscape. Immigrants in ethnic enclaves assimilated into American culture more slowly than those who settled among native-born Americans. In addition, the conservatism of many transplanted communities reflected their isolation from American society and their desire to hold on to Old World values. The most important events in shaping Dutch Americans were the aforementioned Afscheiding of 1834, the 1850 union of Dutch immigrants with the Reformed Church in America, the 1857 secession which established the Christian Reformed Church, and the 1882 controversy over Freemasonry. 25 Dutch immigrants of the late 1840s and 1850s did not stem from a single, unified community in the Netherlands, but they did share a set of common characteristics that enabled them to become a community in the United States. Many of the immigrants came from areas of historically intense religious rivalries along the Dutch " belt" which divides Dutch Catholics to the south and east, and Dutch Protestants to the north and west. Members of the CRC tended to come from Groningen and Friesland (followers of the minister Hendrik De Cock), while immigrants from and (followers of Scholte and Van Raalte) on the other hand, were more likely to be found in the RCA. CRC members also tended to have greater degree of local orientation in the Netherlands, while RCA members tended to be more cosmopolitan.26 The religious divisions among the Dutch in the New World did not entirely mirror those of the Old, but mixed in a new dynamic. Dutch American communities were a mix of provincial Protestants, both of Hervormde and Seceder heritage, with a commitment to the Protestant faith. They believed in the moral supremacy of childbirth within wedlock, the right to raise children in teachings of the Church, and the need for a communal responsibilities. Their shared religious identity encouraged Dutch Americans to remain connected to each other, suspicious of outside influences, and sensitive

23 Robert P. Swierenga, "Dutch Immigrant Demography, 1820-1880," Journal of Family History 5 (Winter 1980): 390-405. 24 Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, 1951. 25 Robert P. Swierenga and Elton J. Bruins, Family Quarrels in the Dutch Reformed Churches in the Nineteenth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).

28 to any heresies. Dutch Catholics from Brabant, , and Gelderland arrived as well and formed communities in Wisconsin, but these remained disconnected from each other and from the Dutch Protestant communities.

The Afscheiding of 1834 and the Seceders The religious atmosphere of nineteenth century Dutch American communities owed much to Dutch pietism and the counter-enlightenment. Freedom of worship and religious tolerance have long been distinguishing characteristics of the Netherlands, but when a group of strict Calvinists seceded from the state-supported Hervormde church in 1834, the Dutch government and Dutch society in general met them with a remarkable intolerance.27 Seceders were outcasts for their faith. They were regularly fined, imprisoned, and forced to endure the presence of soldiers quartered in their homes. Contemporaries called them "ignorant converts to lawlessness and supporters of mysticism."28 In some parts of the country "Scholtian" for the leading Seceder Hendrik Scholte, long endured as a curse word.29 Seceder ministers faced violence and threats; rocks were thrown at Seceder gatherings. As a traveling minister for the new denomination, Albertus Van Raalte once narrowly avoided a mob of twenty armed men who sought to do him bodily harm. On another occasion, a gang armed with pikes and pistols forced the young minister to march seven hours on to a jail in the city of . Fortunately, the warden there had some sympathy for Van Raalte and released him without charge. In another instance, however, the dominee (minister) had to spend eight days in a jail in . According to J.A.G. de , Van Raalte spent cold nights in a jail in after a hostile mob smashed in the windows of his cell and delivered verbal threats of hanging.30 Once when Van Raalte came to Genemuiden to preach, soldiers were

26 Robert P. Swierenga, "Local-Cosmopolitan Theory and Immigrant Religion: The Social Bases of the Antebellum Dutch Reformed Schism," Journal of Social History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1980), 113-135. 27 The tradition of religious tolerance in the Netherlands dates to the later fifteenth century, when Jews who were expelled from during the took refuge in the . During the religious wars of seventeenth century Europe, the was officially a Calvinist nation, but it offered tolerance and protection for Anabaptists, , Lutherans, and Catholics. 28 O.J. DeJong, "Hervormde reacties op de Afscheiding," in W. Bakker, et al. (eds.) De Afscheiding van 1834 en Haar Geschidenis (Kampen, Netherlands: J.H. Kok), 229. Translation of "onkundig, bekeerde losbadigen en aanhangers van het misticisme." 29 J.A. Wormser, Een Schat in Aarden Vaten, Vol. II: Het Leven van Hendrik Peter Scholte (Nijverdal: E.J. Bosch, 1915), 5. 30 J.A.G. , "De Afscheiding: Feestgave aan de Jongeringen en Jongedochters der Chr. Gereformeerde Kerk bij Gelegenheid van Het 50-jarig Gedenkfeest. (Brielle, 1884). JAH Pamphlet Collection W88-0803. J.A.G. de Waal was the principal of a in Kampen. His father, A.G. de Waal was a Seceder minister and acquaintance of Van Raalte.

29 quartered in his very bedroom.31 Other Seceder ministers fared no better. Congregations often held collections specifically to pay their minister's fines, incurred for illegal preaching activities.32 It seems odd that a group of pious Calvinists was so disliked in a Calvinist country, and that they endured years of religious persecution. The 1849 census of the Netherlands counted just 49,308 Seceders, a figure which amounts to about 1.3 percent of the population of the country. Members of the Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk (NHK) meanwhile accounted for 55 percent of the national population, while the Catholics formed a sizeable 38 percent minority. Most segments of society had a reason to dislike the Seceders. The government saw them as disturbers of the peace and the NHK thought they were misled by simple, old-fashioned theology. The doctrinaire and uncompromising nature of the Seceders annoyed the general public at a time when nationalization, liberalization, and centralization required the sweeping away of religious dogma. The identity that the Seceders defended so actively in the Netherlands found expression in the open air of the American Midwest. The Seceder mentality ultimately dates back to the years following the defeat of . The Netherlands had become an independent nation again with the departure of the French in 1813 and the subsequent restoration of a Dutch monarchy under Willem I later that year. In the wake of the French defeat, the Congress of Vienna drew new national boundaries. With a population of just 2 million, the Netherlands united with in 1814, absorbing 3 million of its southern neighbors into a new republic called the of the Netherlands. But the loss of Belgium to its own independence movement in 1831 dealt a blow to the image and self-confidence of the Dutch nation, and it provoked feelings of weakness. The Netherlands was small again, but it hoped to find strength in national unity. The Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk, formed in 1816, provided a sense of common purpose: one Dutch church for one Dutch volk. From the perspective of Orthodox Calvinists, however, the national church was a disgrace. The church tolerated unbelief even in its highest ranks. The church had gone too far in accepting liberal reforms of the Dutch government, and through its actions showed itself to be a rejection of God's covenant with the country. Religious conservatives, meanwhile, argued that the liberal government and church were attempting to destroy traditional Dutch society and religion, and

31 J.A. Wormser, Een Schat in Aarden Vaten, Vol. I: Het Leven van Albertus Christiaan Van Raalte (Nijverdal: E.J. Bosch, 1915), 50-54. 32 J. Wisseling, De Afscheiding van 1834 in Overijssel, 1834-'69: Deel II: De Classis , De Classis Ommen (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 1986), 13.

30 thereby "exile Orange from the Netherlands."33 By seceding from the national church in the 1830s, orthodox Calvinists were seen as challenging the new liberal concept of the nation, and were therefore labeled unpatriotic in their own right. Although religious tensions in the NHK had been high for years, the first visible signs of secession came with a conflict over baptism in Ulrum, Groningen in 1834. The minister in Ulrum, Hendrik De Cock, had called the NHK a "false" church and his local opponents, supporters of the church, "wolves." When lay members of congregations outside De Cock's own came to baptize their children in Ulrum, the NHK displayed its displeasure by censuring De Cock for violating church law. In response, De Cock composed, and his entire congregation signed, the Akte van Afscheiding en Wederkering, which officially declared congregational independence from the national church. The Afscheiding began in Ulrum in 1834 and spread quickly across the country. By 1835, no less than 71 congregations had joined the movement, and in 1836 another 57 followed. These Seceders held their first national synod in 1836.34 The Seceders remained a distinct minority in the country, never more than a few percent of the total number of Protestants. The events in Ulrum and the ripple-effects of secession in other orthodox congregations were manifestations of decades of spiritual discontent, which the Seceders traced to the in 1789 and to the influence of French Enlightenment thought in an increasingly liberal Netherlands. Dutch Calvinists since the sixteenth century saw themselves as God's chosen people. In the nineteenth century, it appeared to many conservatives that the Dutch were turning away from the doctrines of Calvinism as defined in 1618-1619 at a national synod held in the Dutch city of (shortened as 'Dordt'). The Enlightenment, the movement that the philosopher Immanuel Kant had described as "man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity" arrived in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century and the Seceders were its discontents.35 The Enlightenment stood for a victory of reason over revelation, for humankind as its own guide in shaping the world, and for the rational intellect's ability to change society. Many Enlightenment thinkers preferred

33 "Oranje uit Nederland verbannen" in Compleete Uitgave van de Officieele Stukken betreffende den uitgang uit het Nederl. Herv. Kerkgenootschap" (Kampen: G.Ph. Zalsman, 1884, original 1863), 24. The definitive biography of De Cock is Harm Veldman, Hedrik de Cock (1801-1842): op de breuklijnen in theologie en kerk in Nederland (Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok, 2009). 34 P.N. Holtrop, "De Afscheiding - breekpunt en kristalisatiepunt", in: W. Bakker, et al. (eds.) De Afscheiding van 1834 en Haar Geschidenis (Kampen, Netherlands: J.H. Kok, 1984), 62-99. 35 Immanuel Kant, "Answering the Question: What is the Enlightenment?," 1784.

31 natural deistic religion or over theism. Enemies of the enlightenment, conservative reactionaries, arose across Europe to resist the influence of the new human-centered teachings.36 The most significant anti-revolutionary movement in the Netherlands was called Het Reveil, (the Reveil) a spiritual revival and an intellectual movement with roots in . Politically, Het Reveil opposed the principles of the French Revolution and the spread of Enlightenment teachings. Its circle in the Netherlands was rather small, and included perhaps 3,000 middle and men of letters. Despite the social distance between this aristocratic movement and the peasant Seceders, the former influenced the latter, and in some ways presented itself as a parallel movement with similar anti-Revolutionary aims. The father of Het Reveil in the Netherlands was Willem Bilderdijk, a poet and historian whose works would later be found in many a Dutch American minister's personal library. As a child, Bilderdijk suffered a leg injury, which limited his movement. As a result, he remained home and found his friends in books. Because of this, Bilderdijk developed a type of hyper-individualism that praised the past. He also studied law and became a lawyer, before becoming a tutor and a professor. From 1817 to 1827, Bilderdijk lectured on Dutch history in a Privatseminar held in a poorly-lit room on the Rapenburg in Leiden. Although this was an unpaid position, and although Bilderdijk only had a total of 40 students in 10 years, he built a reputation at this time as a unique and commanding thinker. Many recognized Bilderdijk as the nation's greatest poet. In his writings, he stressed the unity of God and the providential nature of history. Accordingly, he taught that history was to be written in the framework of fall and salvation, that history was the story of God's plan. Bilderdijk saw himself as a romantic counter-revolutionary, fighting for the old Protestant heart and soul of the Netherlands. He made it clear that true Hollanders were Calvinists and must remain so.37 This was a welcome message for the Seceders. Bilderdijk's most famous student was Isaac Da Costa, a Portuguese Jew who converted to and in 1823 published an influential tract called "Bezwaren Tegen Den Geest Der Eeuw" (Warnings Against the Spirit of the Age). The book soon became a sensation, and the 25- year-old author was praised for having given Het Reveil a manifesto. In the book, Da Costa opposed the type of morality and rationalism espoused by the Frenchmen Voltaire and Rousseau,

36 Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002). 37 M. Kluit, Het Protestantse Reveil in Nederland en Daarbuiten, 1815-1865. (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris N.V.,1970).

32 the liberal thinkers then held in high regard in the Netherlands. Da Costa argued that what the liberal spirit preached as tolerance was in fact only an indifference to evil. Public opinion as expressed in the new democratic spirit, Da Costa wrote, was no standard of truth, and constitutional democracy would be no godsend. The members of the Reveil shared with the Seceders an opposition to the liberal spirit of the age, and both wanted to see an orthodox Calvinism flourish in the Netherlands. But there was a social distance between the two groups that was difficult to . Reveil men were aristocrats, while Seceders were largely low class farmers, small landowners, or hired hands. Some were also tailors, bakers, smiths, carpenters, and merchants, but few were wealthy.38 A member of Het Reveil, the politician Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, saw the Seceders as those who had fallen away and needed to be encouraged to return to the church. Het Reveil wanted to reform the Hervormde church from within; the Seceders had come to the conclusion that this was not possible. Reveil members shook their heads at the radical act of secession and later looked askance at emigration (especially to the land of that Enlightenment thinker, Thomas Jefferson!). Da Costa, meanwhile, considered Hendrik Scholte "the leader of a children's church, that came into being through a student's coup."39 Da Costa was referring to the "Scholte Club", a student group in Leiden comprised of a fairly small circle of like-minded men with a reputation for skipping class and challenging convention. It's members, C.D.C. Bahler, Anthony Brummelkamp, G.F. Gezelle Meerburg, H.P. Scholte, Simon van Velzen, and A.C. van Raalte, each played a role in the secession. While Da Costa ridiculed the group, the NHK outright loathed this movement of upstart seminary students who dared challenge the church. The church, after all, had designed the theological schools to keep students within the fold, and the state wanted the church to help it keep order..40

38 W.J. Wierenga, "De Afscheiding en de Nederlandse samenleving," in W. Bakker, De Afscheiding van 1834, 189-190. 39 Ibid., 194. Translation of "de leider van een kinderkerk, die via een studentencoup tot stand was gekomen." 40The group had hardly formed, however, when its members began going their own ways. Scholte, for example, passed his final exams in 1832, and accepted a call to the Hervormde church congregation in Doeveren. When De Cock ran into trouble in Ulrum in 1834, Scholte paid him a visit, and returned to Doeveren to lead his church into secession just three weeks after Ulrum. By 1834, all of the "Scholte Club" had joined the ministry in the NHK. But Van Raalte, as the youngest of the group, had yet to pass his final examination in Leiden. O.J. DeJong, "Hervormde reacties op de Afscheiding," in W. Bakker, De Afscheiding van 1834, 222. Gerrit J. ten Zythoff, Sources of Secession: The Netherlands Hervormde Kerk on the Eve of the Dutch Immigration to the Midwest (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).

33 Despite their differences of opinion, the leading Seceders continued to communicate with members of Het Reveil. Groen van Prinsterer, after all, was one of the few men of standing who sympathized with the new church, even if he did not agree with its reason for being. Van Prinsterer's 71-page pamplet, entitled De Maatregelen tegen de Afgescheidenen (The Regulations against the Seceders) asked what these Seceders had done to deserve state punishment. In his writing, Groen Van Prinsterer explained the causes of unrest in the NHK and the development of the separatist persuasion. The Dutch constitution of 1814, he said, gave churches independence and freedom of worship. The Dutch government, however, assumed control of the churches and schools. State controls on educational content threatened freedom. In the hands of the state authorities, he continued, biblical history was no longer taught as having a meaning or a moral. In the , the state treated the church as a social institution. As Groen Van Prinsterer described it, the church had become a "machine of the state."41 Restrictions on the freedom of religious education formed perhaps the central complaint of the Seceders. An 1806 national education law gave the government the power to chose school supervisors. The synod of the NHK supported public schools, even when religious education was lacking, but critics expected this type of collusion since the government appointed church officials.42 The government encouraged public school to promote an ecumenical, bland Christianity along with principles of good citizenship and national unity. The result was a humanist-influenced school system in which Reformed teachings were marginalized. Dutch Americans recognized similar trends in American public schooling. The Dutch laws permitted private schools, but supervisors had the right to close any school found wanting or insufficient. In an 1846 article emphasizing educational freedom as a motivation for emigration, Hendrik Scholte blamed not the education laws themselves, but the 's passive acceptance of them. The laziness and disregard of in establishing and maintaining their own schools, he said, indicated the general malaise among Calvinist defenders in the Netherlands.43

41 W.G. Groen van Prinsterer, De Maatregelen tegen De Afgeschiedenen aan Het Staatsregt Getoetst, (Leiden: S. and J. Luchtmans, 1837), 15. Van Raalte and Brummelkamp repeat the word, "staatsmachine" in a pamphlet titled "Aan de Geloovigen in de Vereenigde Staten van Noord-Amerika" (Amsterdam, 1846) 42 Janet Sjaarda-Sheers, "The Struggle for the Souls of the Children: The Effects of the Dutch Education Law of 1806 on the Emigration of 1847," in Robert P. Swierenga, Donald Sinnema, Hans Krabbendam, eds., The Dutch in Urban America: AADAS Fourth Biennial Conference Papers (2004), 38. Janet Sjaarda Sheeres, Son of Secession: Douwe J. Vander Werp (Eerdmans, 2006). 43 Hendrik Scholte, "Een Woord over Landverhuizing", in De Reformatie: Tijdschrift ter Bevordering van Gods Koningrijk in Nederland, 3rd Series, 2nd Part (Amsterdam: Hoogkamper & Comp., 1846), 88-97.

34 The Seceders most persistent struggle was for the right to assemble for worship. Because the Dutch constitutions of 1814 and 1815 omitted this right, the Dutch government of the 1830s and 1840s felt justified in using old Napoleonic Law to persecute those who were accused of disrupting the "brotherly harmony" of the country. Specifically, the Seceders were accused of breaking articles 291 through 294 of the Code Pénal. Article 292 declared that leaders of assemblies larger than 19 persons could be punished from 16 to 200 francs. Article 293 added that if criminal action resulted from an assembly, the leader of said assembly would face a 100-300 franc fine and 3 months to 2 years in jail. Lastly, article 294 stipulated that those who allowed their property to be used for a gathering would face a fine of 16 to 200 francs.44 The punishments thus sound like they come from a Victor Hugo novel. As written, the law even required fines to be paid in francs, although authorities apparently had no trouble collecting guilders instead. Groen van Prinsterer complained that the Napoleonic law was never intended to disturb the assemblies of religious practitioners, but only political protestors. Furthermore, he argued, the more recent constitution nullified the old laws. The Seceders naturally looked for ways to circumvent the unjust law. To avoid fines levied on their gatherings, Seceder ministers preached in small "conventicles" of under 19 persons, and then simply gathered more frequently to meet the needs of the congregations. Under Dutch law, any member of the NHK could naturally leave the church without harassment. But, as the government interpreted the constitution, only existing, recognized churches had the freedom to worship. The reasoning followed that if the state did not recognize the Seceders, they could make no claim on the privilege of freedom of worship. And while the state wanted to deny the existence of the Seceder church as a recognized entity, the Seceders pretentiously called themselves the "ware gereformeerde kerk", or "true reformed church." By declaring that they were the only true church, the Seceders implied that the NHK had become a "false" church, similar to the mis-led Catholics. When the government ruled to prevent Seceders from using the word "gereformeerd" in their title, they chose the name "Christelijk afgecheidenen." Yet, the "Reformed" nature of the secession was essential to the Seceders identity.45

44 W.G. Groen van Prinsterer, De Maatregelen, 79. 45 W.J. Wierenga, "De Afscheiding," in Bakker, et al. (eds.), 199.

35 The Seceders believed that as true Reformed Christians they were God's chosen people. They were fond of comparing themselves to the Jews who kept God's covenant with .46 They believed further that personal, inner Christianity was what had made the Netherlands strong in the seventeenth century, but that piety had fallen aside in the present day and the country was suffering the consequences of abandoning God. In their own eyes, only the Seceders had remained true to God's calling for the nation, as the nation became an inhospitable place. A word they often used to describe the Netherlands was "sinking."47 The Netherlands was sinking, slowly but surely going down.

The Seceder-led Migration For the Seceders who identified strongly with the Dutch nation, it was difficult to think of leaving the fatherland behind, even in the inhospitable climate. Patriotic and mercantilist arguments encouraged the Seceders to first consider emigration to a Dutch colony like or the Dutch . This way, the emigrants could seek freedom in other lands, but remain loyal subjects of the crown. In a pamphlet titled ""Waarom Bevorderen Wij de Volksverhuizing en Wel Naar Noord-Amerika en Niet Naar ?" (Why We Support the Emigration to North American and Not to Java) A.C. Van Raalte and his brother-in-law and fellow Seceder minister Anthony Brummelkamp rejected the idea that Dutch migrants would be free to establish a colony in a Dutch possession. The government that persecuted the Seceders in the Netherlands was the same government that ruled the colonies. Besides, the Dutch government made no effort to show that they would aid the passage of migrants considering relocation in the colonies. As wages at home were falling, and poor relief rolls rising, Seceder ministers saw a dark future for the Dutch nation and its colonies.48 The Dutch government and the press treated emigration rumors and restlessness as a consequence of the Afscheiding, and indeed the two became forever linked in the popular consciousness, despite the Seceder's minority status in the migration. Both liberals and

46 Writing years after the migration, Henry Scholte explained that the charges in the church were a rejection of God's covenant with Israel. Compleete Uitgave van de Officeele Stukken betreffende den uitgang uit het Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerkgenootschap van de Leeraren H.P. Scholte, A. Brummelkamp, S. Van Velzen, G.K. Gezelle Meerburg, en Dr. A.C. Van Raalte. (2nd edtion, Kampen, G.Ph. Zalsman, 1884, original 1863), 24. 47 Scholte says the country is "diepzonken." (sunken deeply) H.P. Scholte, Nieuwjaarsgeschenk aan Nederland, een Ernstig Woord aan Vorst en Volk (Amsterdam, Hoogkamer, 1847) iv. 48 A. Brummelkamp and A.C. Van Raalte. "Waarom Bevorderen Wij de Volksverhuizing en Wel Naar Noord- Amerika en Niet Naar Java?" (Amsterdam: Hoogkamer & Comp. 2nd edition, 1846).

36 conservatives saw the rising emigration fervor of 1846 as a social protest, and as an unpatriotic turning away from the fatherland.49 For their own peace of mind, Seceders had to be convinced that leaving the Netherlands did not mean being untrue to the fatherland. Scholte, for one, spent much effort defending the patriotic character of the true Christian Dutchman who saw migration as a freedom, although not a necessity, if one's country was no longer fit ground for Christian practice. The Hervormde minister and philanthropist O.G. Heldring likewise tried to put the anti-patriotic fears to rest by claiming God's hand was at work in the matter of populating the earth. Heldring pointed to a whole province in , as large as Gelderland, which was devoid of people. And North America, he said, was empty. "The Lord spreads His people across the earth, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes on hard, sometimes on soft ways."50 Some Dutch Christians had asked for patience, saying that the situation in the country would improve, and that potential overseas migrants should remain and wait for the difficult years to pass. But the 1840s brought continued hardship for the nation and continued persecution for the Seceders. In 1840, King Willem II replaced his father on the Dutch throne and relaxed the state's stance against the new church. The quartering of soldiers against the Seceders, for example, stopped in 1841.51 But fines continued, and what Van Raalte described as a "tyrannical public opinion" did not abate. The "brotherly" Groen van Prinsterer, as Van Raalte called him, was then an exception among men with political weight.52 In 1848, Groen van Prinsterer complained to the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, Gerritt Graaf Schimmelpennick: "The complaints of the Christians remain unanswered; one would rather see a number of decent countrymen leave for North America than one would address their difficulties."53 Neglect had become another form of persecution. Natural disasters contributed further pressures for emigration and especially affected the rural population. There was potato blight, wheat rust, and cholera in 1845-1846 followed by a

49 P.R.D. Stokvis, "Afscheiding en Emigratie", in A. de Groot and P.L. Schram, editors, Aspecten van de Afscheiding (, Wever, 1984), 57-63. 50 O.G. Heldring, "Eenige Gedachten over Colonisatie", in De Reformatie, 3de Serie, 2de deel, 1846, 260-264. Translation of "de Heer Zijn volk verspreidt over de aarde, soms vrijwillig, some op hard, soms op zachte wegen." 51 W.J. Wierenga, "De Afscheiding" in W. Bakker, De Afscheiding, 199. 52 A.C. Van Raale to S.Van Velzen, 1862. In Compleete Uitgave van de Officeele Stukken (2nd edition, 1884, original 1863), 523. 53 Groen van Prinsterer to Graaf Schimmelpennick. "...de klagten der christenen blijven onbeantwoord; men ziet liever een aantaal brave landgenooten naar Noord-Amerika vertrekken dan dat men aan hun bezwaar tegemoet komen." in J. Zwaan (ed.) Groen van Prinsterer, Schrijftelijke Nalatenschap, Deel II: 1842-1876 (1848), 170. Schimmelpennick was in 1848, simultaneously the prime minister of the new cabinet and the minister of foreign affairs. The exact date of van Prinsterer's correspondence is not provided.

37 strong winter of 1846-1847. As the momentum for emigration picked up, Scholte managed to turn the argument around on those who called emigrants traitors. He asked if those who wanted to stay in the Netherlands did so for reasons of the flesh, for fear of suffering elsewhere, rather than for God's calling. "We know only one people on the earth," wrote Scholte in 1847, "namely the people of Israel, who have a holy calling to stay where they find themselves, in the land of their fathers."54 Were Christians like plants, he asked rhetorically, that forever had to stay in one place?55 Even if the Seceders could be convinced of the merits of migration, Scholte faced a strong resistance if he thought he could change public opinion about the nature of emigrants. The Dutch public long view migrants in a negative light, and many saw America as a false lure. Dutch frustration with immigrants dated back to the spring of 1817, when some 250 Wurtemburger Separatists and 2000 Swiss arrived in Amsterdam, bound for America. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, and in the devastation that they had left, people across Europe migrated to recalibrate society. But Dutch officials thought these "landverhuizende vreemdelingen" (migrating strangers) were misled. Speculators, working in secret, the officials believed, were leading simple- minded folk out of their homes with promise of free passage to the new world, but when the migrants arrived in the Netherlands, the guides to direct their further journey were nowhere to be found. Without enough food, provisions, or money, thousands of Germans were caught in the Netherlands, begging for relief. Even German migrants with sufficient funds encountered long waiting times for passage, since Dutch-U.S. shipping had not recovered from its nearly complete extinction under Napoleon's Continental System.56 From the Hague, the Dutch Minister of Justice worried that food shortages would result that year, and wondered if room could be found for these migrants to work in . More migrants continued to arrive in 1818 and 1819, by which point the Dutch had set up controls along the border. Germans let into Gelderland in 1819, for example, had to pay a deposit, and show proof of means.57

54 "Wij kennen slechts een volk op aarde, dat, waar het zich ook bevindt, eene Goddelijke roeping heeft om aan het land hunner vaderen gehecht te blijven, namelijk het volk Israels." in De Reformatie, 1847, 3de Serie, 3de deel, 17-33 (quote, 30). The Seceder minister J. Hasselman made the same argument that the Dutch are not bound to their land as are the Jews. J. Hasselman, Zedige Bedenkingen Omtrent Het Vertrek der Geloovigen in Nederland naar Noord-Amerika (The Hague: J. van Golverdinge, 1847), 24. 55 H.P. Scholte, "Beantwoordt dit Tijdschrift Tegenwoordig nog aan Deszelfde Opschrift", De Reformatie, 3de Serie, 3de deel, 31. 56 L.A. van der Valk, "Landverhuizervervoer via in de Negentiende Eeuw", Economisch-en- Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek, 1976, vol. 39, 150. Peter Hoekstra, Thirty-Seven Years of Holland-American Relations, 1803-1840 (Eerdmans-Sevensma, 1917). 57 National Archief, Ministerie van Justitie, 4799.

38 The Dutch emigration tradition to the United States, meanwhile, was exceptionally weak compared to the overseas migration traditions of the German states or Ireland. Dutch migrants were much more likely to move regionally, to , for example. The United States was unknown territory for the Dutch, and what image they had of the country was usually negative. The Dutch spoke of America as a land of scoundrels and thieves.58 But the emigration societies established by the Seceders found warm reception among the Dutch peasants, indicating that some entertained a positive image of America as well. Three emigration societies, all formed in 1846, restricted their membership to Protestant Christians. Van Raalte's "Vereeniging van Christenen voor de Nederlandsche Landverhuizing naar de Veerenigde Staten" (Union of Christians for Dutch Emigration to the United States) organized in April, 1846. Scholte's immigration society, meanwhile, formed in the summer of 1846, and a Frisian emigration society organized in on October 1st, 1846.59 In the spring of 1846, Scholte made a call in his De Reformatie journal for letters of interest from all non-Catholic Christians who would like to join in establishing a "Hollandsche Vrije Colonie" (Free Dutch Colony).60 Those who could afford the migration on their own were classed into one category, and those who needed support into another. Over the next few months, the mail came flooding in. From the formation of the society, it was clear that non-Seceders were welcome to join. In June, Scholte noted that the majority of the "behoeftigen," or "needy" members of his society did not belong to the Seceder church.61 Scholte called on the rich to aid the poor as a Christian duty and to therefore contribute to the migration funds.62 Poverty, he knew, was a cause of discontent and a stimulus for migration, but it could also prevent the migration of the most desperate.

58 Cornelius Steinigeweg, Amerikaansche Levenservaring Amerikaansche levenservaring. Schetsen en lotgevallen uit het leven van een oud-hollandsch emigrant, met eene gids voor den landverhuizer naar Amerika. Amsterdam (1892). KB. Steinigerweg recalls an earlier period when America had a more negative connotation. 59 "Overwegingen en Grondslagen der Vereeniging van Christenen, voor de Vriesche-Landverhuizing naar Noord-Amerika." 60 Articles about emigration appear regularly and at length in this journal in 1846 and 1847. First-hand views from Scholte and other contributors show what was on the minds of those planning to migrate. The remarks and announcements concerning emigration also provide a timeline for Scholte's organized group migration. 61 H.P. Scholte, "Opmerking in Betrekking tot de Landverhuizing naar Noord-Amerika" in De Reformatie, 1846, 3de series, 2de deel, 296-299. and "Aanmerkingen betrekkelijk de Landverhuizing naar Noord-Amerika", in De Reformatie, 3de Serie, 2de deel, (June) 1846, pg 356. 62 H.P. Scholte, De Roeping der Rijken in Betrekking tot de Armen: Een woord over Colonisatie alsmede Aanmerkingen Betrekkelijk de Landverhuizing naar Noord-Amerika en Verslag de Vergadering den 26 Augustus ll. gehouden (Amsterdam, Hoogkamer, 1846)

39 Conditions in the rural corners of Netherlands in the 1840s were far from ideal; without emigration societies, many would have had trouble gathering the resources to afford a trans- Atlantic voyage. Life expectancy for men was just 36 years and for women, 38.63 Middling persons could expect a life of toil with few rewards beyond shelter and sustenance. Food was bland and monotonous, and consisted mostly of wheat, rye, peas, and potatoes. In many homes, meals consisted mostly of potatoes, eaten three times a day, with little else. Along the coasts, one could expect some fish, but everywhere meat was rare, as was fruit. Drinks were somewhat better and included coffee, tea, buttermilk, beer, and jenever. In 1846-1847, fifteen percent of the Netherlands population received poor relief. Regionally, the numbers could be much higher.64 But as difficult as the situation in the Netherlands was, the Dutch public generally opposed emigration as a solution and questioned whether the problems in the country were indeed so dire. The Leeuwarder Courant warned that emigrants were destined to make a bad situation worse. The newspaper argued that those who sought freedom from work and responsibility were bound to be miserable regardless of where they lived. The warning reported that hospitals and poor in America were full. Many immigrants who had planned to arrive in the New World with money in hand had spent it all in passage and were reduced to begging in the streets of New York. The newspaper reminded its readers that America was a different country, with a different language and a different system of laws. Why would a Dutchman move there when land for cultivation was still available in the Netherlands?65 In some instances, warning became ridicule. A Dutch pamphlet published in 1847 stereotyped the religious leader who ushered "God's children" onto an Ark bound for Canaan. The leader, named Bram Onrust (Unrest), was made to speak in a ridiculous colloquial and provincial tongue, heavy in religious vocabulary and pretenses of academic life. His followers were from places like Graafschap, , Gorkum, , and Altena, in short, the remote corners and backwoods of the country. In this fictional emigrant tale of high expectations and deep disappointed, a fire on the prairie destroys the Dutch colony and leaves the migrants dispossessed.66

63 Michael Wintle, An Economic and Social History of the Netherlands, 1800-1920. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000 ), 12. 64 Richard T. Griffiths, Industrial Retardation in the Netherlands, 1830-1850. (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 10. 65 Leeuwarder Courant, 15 Dec. 1846. 66 Eene Kermisprint waarop wordt Voorgesteld Het Droevig Relaas der Miserien op eene Reis van Geestelijke Landverzhuiers naar Nieuw-Luilekkerland door Hocus Pocus. (: C. Campagne), 1847. (Leiden Univ. Library)

40 Organized group migration helped alleviate fears of dispossession and failure. Individuals could fail in America as they could anywhere, but if rumors of America's abundance were at least partly true, the economic gains of a group would certainly more than offset their collective losses. The initial isolation of a Dutch colony would also prevent outsiders from abusing the immigrants. The desire for isolation can be seen in the articles of incorporation for Scholte's emigration society, which had some 800 members by December, 1846. Most of the articles concerned society membership, the cost of transportation, and the desire to establish a Christian school upon arrival in the United States. But article twenty-six is peculiar in that it expressed a desire to cultivate a colony isolated from Americans. The article stated that during the first ten years in the United States, the members of the society were to sell no land to those outside of the society without first getting permission from the society's administration.67 But, if the names of the settlements are any indication, Scholte's Pella was to have a different role than Van Raalte's Holland. Van Raalte envisioned a "City on a Hill", which he named after Holland and in remembrance of the Netherlands. Scholte's Pella, however, was named after the city to which Jesus' disciples fled when the Romans occupied Jerusalem. Pella was literally a refuge, and Scholte did not plan for it to remain exclusively a Dutch colony, forever isolated from the outside world. He believed that in Pella this group of immigrants would be protected long enough to establish new lives for themselves. The concentration of Dutch would also allow himself and other ministers to preach the Gospel in their native language.68 Van Raalte set sail on September 24 and arrived in New York on the 17th of November, 1846.69 Scholte departed for the United States in April, 1847, with 800 to 900 followers in four ships. As the two leaders organized in the United States, their colleague, Anthony Brummelkamp encouraged the emigration from the Netherlands and kept correspondence with the immigrant leaders in America. Brummelkamp saw the success of the initial migration as proof of God's hand in the process. In 1847, he published letters from the Dutch in America to encourage further migration.70 He studied English, and considered making the move to America himself, but

67 Henry Lucas, "De Artikelen van Scholte's Vereeniging ter Verhuizing naar de Vereenigde Staten" Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 36, (1952), 179-187. 68 Hendrik Scholte, "Beantwoordt: Dit Tijdschift Tegenwoordig nog aan Deszelfs Opschrift" in De Reformatie, 1847, 3de Serie, 3de deel, 17-33. 69 Henry Lucas, Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789-1950 (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1955), 70. 70 A. Brummelkamp, Stemmen uit Noord-Amerika met Begeleidend Woord (Amsterdam, 1847).

41 remained nevertheless in the Netherlands. As editor of the Bazuin (1853-1888), Brummelkamp provided a voice of support for the pioneers of 1847.71

Dutch Americans of Seceder and Hervormde Backgrounds As heirs of a tradition of pietism in European , the Seceders emphasized biblical study and personal knowledge of the faith. Pietism was influential in the Lutheran Church in particular and accordingly among German and Scandinavian immigrants to the United States.72 For some ethnic groups, like the widely-dispersed Danes in America, pietism found little foothold.73 Concentrated Dutch settlements, however, enabled the Dutch to imagine themselves as a united group. It was common for the Dutch Seceders to see themselves as God's chosen people, and they compared themselves to the Israelites. From West Michigan in 1850, Jacob Dunnink wrote his family in Overijssel, "I think that the Lord has brought many of his children to this place, because the language of Canaan is heard widely here....It seems that the Lord has preserved this place for the Dutch people."74 The feeling that God had a special role for the Dutch to play on the American scene was particularly strong in orthodox Calvinist circles and formed a central idea of later Dutch American neo-Calvinists as well.75 But Dutch Americans of non-Seceder backgrounds shared with the Seceders many of the same beliefs and concepts of identity. The emigration registers in the Netherlands, for example, note that many Hervormde emigrants sympathized with the Seceders.76 The early Hervormde migrants from Gelderland, writes G.H. Ligterink, were rather sympathetic and understanding of the Seceders.77 While all Seceders were conscious, pious Christians, the Hervormde immigrants represented a range from the orthodox who did not join the Afscheiding - but who were nevertheless sympathetic or at least ambivalent - to those who had only marginal religious attachments. Many Netherlanders remained officially registered as Hervormd, despite frequenting

71 Melis te Velde, Anthony Brummelkamp (Barneveld: Vuurbaak, 1988). 72 William Hoglund, Finnish Immigrants in America, 1880-1920 (New York, NY: Arno Press, 1979), 41-42. 73 Frederick Hale, ed. Danes in North America (Seattle, WA: University of Press, 1984), 165. 74Jacob Dunnick to family, 24 Jan. 1850, in Herbert Brinks, Dutch American Voices: Letters from the United States, 1850-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995), 31-32. 75 Henry Zwaanstra, Reformed Thought and Experience in a New World: A Study of the Christian Reformed Church and Its American Environment 1890-1918. (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1973), 30-31. 76 P.R.D. Stokvis, De Nederlandse Trek, 37. 77 G.H. Ligterink, De landverhuizers: Emigratie naar Noord-America uit het Gelders-Westfaalse grensgebied tussen de jaren 1830-1850 (Doetinchem: Walburg, 1981), 32.

42 Seceder church services.78 Therfore, Hervormde immigrants who settled in Dutch American communities were unlikely to have had as much animosity for the Seceder minority as did their average countryman. And finally, because the theological differences between the churches were minor, the two groups could merge in the United States as long as they could agree on church structure and policy. Seceders, likewise, did not set up any undue barriers for church membership. There were even non-Seceders who studied at the Seceder's theological school in during Van Raalte and Brummelkamp's time there as professors. Divisions at the school were drawn instead on provincial lines. Students were known to be of a "Zwollse", "Gelderse" or "Scholtiaanse" (Utrecht) position. The school provided a strong nucleus of the early ministers in Dutch American communities; seven of the fourteen students at the academy in 1847 left to lead churches in the United States.79 Students influenced by Van Raalte might even have been hoping for denominational reconciliation in the United States. Elton Bruins has argued, for example, that Van Raalte was never a Seceder at heart and saw the RCA as a continuation of the Dutch church of his father.80 Early Dutch Americans were often loyal to a particular minister rather than a larger church body. This explains the hesitation of many in 1850 to join Van Raalte and his ministerial colleagues in union with the Reformed Church. Scholte explained already in 1847 the mistake of such a union. As an ecumenical pastor, Scholte said that it would be better "to have a few more expenses in the beginning, than to have to break away later from what one has already begun."81 From 1857 to 1900, all 114 ministers ordained in the CRC came from a Seceder background. From 1846 to 1900, only twenty-five percent of RCA ministers in the midwest had a background in the Afscheiding tradition.82 In the RCA, Hervormde and Seceder immigrants and ministers came together.

78 Melis te Velde, "The Dutch Background of the American Secession from the RCA in 1857", in George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam (eds.) Breaches and : Reformed Subcultures in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States (Amsterdam: VU Press, 2000), 85-100. 79 Melis te Velde, Anthony Brummelkamp, 161-164. 80 Elton J. Bruins, "An American Moses": Albertus C. Van Raatle as Immigrant Leader, in George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam, (eds.) Sharing the Reformed Tradition: The Dutch-North American Exchange, 1846-1996 (Amsterdam: VU), 1996) 26-27. 81 Scholte on joining the RCA, "Liever in het begin eenige onkosten meer, dan wel later te moeten afbreken, wat men begonnen heeft." (H.P. Scholte to J. Hospers, Hoog Blokland, 7 June 1847) in Stellingweg, Amsterdamse Emigranten, 78. 82 Robert P. Swierenga, "True Brothers: The Netherlandic Origins of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, 1857-1880" in George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam, (eds.) Breaches and Bridges: Reformed Subcultures in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States (Amsterdam, VU, 2000), 62. See also Herbert J. Brinks, "Religious

43 Dutch immigrants who choose not to settle among the Seceders in the Midwest often did not identify with the lower-class, religious element. The letters of Charles Liernur, a young engineer from illustrate these cultural differences. Liernur stumbled upon the Seceder dominee Huibert Budding at a Dutch immigration society meeting in New York in the fall of 1848. Liernur described Budding as a "dominetje", a "little minister" with thin glasses and thin legs. Liernur had heard of Budding and was interested in talking to him further, so he walked three miles in the rain to visit Budding at his temporary quarters in the city. Budding invited Liernur in, and after some small talk, opened a Bible, read some verses from it, and began to tell his guest that he was on the wrong path and needed to confess to the Lord and be saved. Liernur objected. He explained that he was already a Christian, that he believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation of all sins. Yet, Budding, unfazed by Liernur's words, continued with additional Bible verses and evangelizing. Before Liernur departed, Budding gave him a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, one of the Seceders favorite books, and one that he hoped would set Liernur on the right path.83 Liernur moved to the American South, worked as a railroad engineer, raised a family, and fought for the Confederacy, but in his dozens of extant letters from the 1850s and 1860s, he never mentioned the immigrant Dutch or the Seceders again. Liernur represents one of the many Dutch immigrants who did not fit the model of Dutch ethnicity then forming in the Midwest. The first wave of Dutch Protestant immigrants to the Midwest saw themselves as simple church folk who opposed liberal elites. While national identity was important, it was secondary to religious identity. Provincial divisions in religious matters were more divisive than regional linguistic or cultural differences. The contrasts of poverty versus plenty and of persecution versus freedom also impacted the immigrants' self-image. With a generally positive image of the United States, the immigrants were pleased to be a part of the new world and invest in their new communities. The orthodox Dutch immigrants made a strong impact on the minds of outsiders looking in to the Dutch colonies. This core of orthodox Protestant Dutch in the Midwest set a pattern of religious devotion and ethnic cooperation for future generations of Dutch Americans.

Continuities in Europe and the New World," in Robert P. Swiereng, ed. The Dutch in America: Immigration, Settlement, and Cultural Change (New Brunswick: Press, 1985), 209-23. 83 Charles Liernur (New York) to Parents (, the Netherlands), 25 October, 1848. Noord-Hollands Archief, Collection 3934: 22.

44 CHAPTER 2: IMAGINING A NEW IDENTITY: THE DUTCH AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY, 1847-1875.1

The last chapter showed that many Dutch Protestant immigrants intended to settle together as families and reconstituted religious communities. The common bond for these immigrants was a Protestant faith within an ethnic context, an emphasis on religious orthodoxy and allied maintenance of Dutch culture. Studies of nineteenth century Dutch American immigration abound. Additional studies discuss Dutch American subculture more specifically; these, however, engage the topic in a period after its formation.2 For example, in the best work on the Dutch American subculture, James Bratt investigated the theological underpinnings and flavors of Dutch American Calvinism. Bratt's contribution is substantial, but his work largely neglects the period before 1880, jumping instead from the Dutch American subculture's ideological antecedents in the Netherlands to the introduction of Abraham Kuyper's neo-Calvinism in Dutch American circles in the 1880s. 3 But how did Dutch American identities first form in the nineteenth century and what views of "Dutchness" did they originally incorporate? This is the leading question this chapter addresses. Historians have recognized, of course, that an independent Dutch American identity did not develop ex nihilo, but they have yet to explain that this identity developed in the earliest years of settlement, and indeed in the migration process itself. For Dutch immigrants in the United States, a general freedom of physical movement replaced the provincial and national restrictions of the old country. In the absence of restrictive political borders, Dutch immigrants often drew mental borders, circumscribing their family or community within an imagined sphere. By the 1870s, these initially tenuous borders had become evident as Dutch Americans imagined themselves as a local and regional community and as a unique entity within American culture.

1 An earlier version of this chapter has been previously published as Michael J. Douma, "Imagining a New Identity: The Dutch American Immigrant Community, 1845-1875," Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Gescheidenis Vol. 7, No. 2 (2010), 32-55. 2 Similarly well-researched and informative is Henry Zwaanstra, Reformed thought and experience in a new world: A study of the Christian Reformed Church and its American environment 1890-1918 (Kampen 1973). Other volumes which discuss the persistence of a Dutch American subculture in the twentieth century include: Rob Kroes and Henk-Otto Neuschafer (eds.), The Dutch in North America, their immigration and cultural change (Amsterdam 1991); Rob Kroes, The persistence of ethnicity: Dutch Calvinist pioneers in Amsterdam, Montana (Urbana 1992); George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam (eds.), Morsels in the melting pot: The persistence of Dutch American communities in North America (Amsterdam 2006). 3 James D. Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: The History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids, 1984).

45 Dutch Americans promoted religious and cultural orthodoxy, and with it an ideal of being “true Dutch.” As immigrants, they were greeted by the open arms of Reformed Church ministers in New York, Americans like Isaac Wyckoff and Thomas De Witt, who thought the new arrivals were a gift from heaven, a dose of orthodoxy from the old country and the best of potential . The Dutch American network grew in the 1850s with two bases in the Midwest, the mostly Gelderland- colony of Pella, Iowa, and the more diverse Holland, Michigan. Its connections stretched like a comet’s tail east into and through New York State, inviting new immigrants to follow the road west. In the decades to come, Dutch immigrants founded more settlements, daughter colonies on the plains and in the Far West that made space for additional migrants from the Netherlands. And as the Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Wisconsin Dutch communities grew they reinforced the network’s religious and cultural linkages.4 As nineteenth century American immigrants negotiated their personal identities and formed communities, they also chose their national allegiance. Not only was this true in the literal sense, that one could choose to be a citizen of, for example, the Netherlands or the United States, but it was also true in the active, psychological sense that national identity was becoming a more influential sphere of personal identity. Immigration officials required national identification; census authorities demanded a country of origin. But for many immigrants, national identity had yet to take shape, or at least it had not superseded regional, religious, or local identities. Those who kept themselves in an old-world mindset had trouble conceiving of a common identity in the new world. For example, Andries N. Wormser, an immigrant of 1848 who would after a few years return to the Netherlands out of disappointment,described his countrymen abroad by their provincial origin as “Zeeuwen” and “Overijsselaren.”5 This was in distinct contrast to the trend of other Dutch American immigrants of the 1840s and 1850s, who began to refer to themselves collectively as “Hollanders” regardless of provincial origin.6 In other words, Dutch American identities formed by eliding provincial distinctions. Dutch immigrants imagined and spoke of a common homeland that drew them together in America, and which continued to influence them through transnational flows of information and people.

4 Hans Krabbendam, Vrijheid in het verschiet: Nederlandse emigraie naar Amerika 1840-1940 (Hilversum 2006). 5 J. Stellingwerf, Amsterdamse emigranten: onbekende brieven uit de prairie van Iowa, 1846-1873 (Amsterdam 1975), 149-222. 6 A.C. van Raalte to J.A. Wormser. 7 Jan.1848. In Stellingwerff, Amsterdamse emigranten, 93.

46 The hybrid and contested nature of immigrant identity has led scholars to propose various ways of thinking about immigrant identity that downplay the role of national borders. Indeed, the study of immigration has undergone a paradigm shift from a national to a “transnational” approach, often highlighting the role of in the process.7 Thomas Bender suggests that this approach is necessary to challenge the "unexamined assumption that the nation [is] the natural container and carrier of history."8 Immigrants might be said to have a “transnational” identity when they freely operate between two or more nations and their respective cultures.9 Scholarship on the “transnational” begins with the assumption that national identity has been paramount in the study of the past, but that often a migrant culture transcends national identities. In order for transnational identity to be a useful term of analysis, we must remember not only that local and regional identity may precede or supersede national identity, but that the many reference points of identity work in concert with each other.10 However, because of its ambiguity, the term "transnational" has many detractors. Some point to the unfortunately common elision of "transnational" with "international" or even with "multinational" in the politically charged context of modern day globalization.11 Others have attempted to use the term "translocal" to help explain how immigrant identity navigates between multiple points of reference. But this term as well suffers from a lack of a clear definition. Elliot Barkan, for example, uses "translocal" to mean a moderate or symbolic attachment to multiple foci of old country identity, a sort of watered-down transnationalism.12 Robert Zecker, however, employs "translocal" as an adjective for far-flung social networks linked together without being adjacent. Zecker's "translocal" Slovak American communities must make a concerted effort to maintain their connections.13 Both uses of "translocal" may apply to the Dutch American

7 John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, 1985). 8 Thomas Bender, A Nation among Nations: America's Place in World History (New York, 2006) 5. 9 David G. Guitierrez and Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo, 'Introduction nation and migration,' American Quarterly, 60:3 (2008) 503-521. 10 Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. In addressing the overseas Chinese, McKeown explains that ethnic identities are informed by nation-states but not centered in them. He proposes a global approach to migration studies to foster comparative study of ethnic group identity as it develops at the local level. 11 Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick, and J.T. Way, 'Transnationalism: A category of analysis,' American Quarterly, 60:3 (2008) 625-648. 12 Elliot Barkan, 'American in the hand, homeland in the heart: transnational and translocal immigrant experiences in the American West,' The Western Quarterly, 35:3 (Autumn 2004) 331-354. 13 Robert Zecker, 'Where everyone goes to meet everyone else: The translocal creation of Slovak immigrant community,' Journal of Social History 38:2 (2004) 423-453.

47 community, a network with moderate but inconsistent attachments to the old country. Nevertheless, a more thorough explanation of Dutch American identity is in order. Despite their disagreements over the correct historical approach, most scholars would agree that migration in the age of nationalism caused many an identity crisis in which the demands of national identity competed with the legacies of other social, religious, and political identities. The concept of "immigration" itself reinforced national identity; it was a nationalist model. Immigrant identity in the nineteenth century, therefore, must be considered in light of this rise of national identity, but not to the exclusion of other foci of identification that existed prior to the rise of the nation-state. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson wrote that the nation-state, viewed as sovereign over a community and limited territory, has been the dominant political form since the nineteenth century. E.J. Hobsbawm adds that nationalism was born in the eighteenth century and was developed in the nineteenth. According to Hobsbawm, the state preceded national identity and created nationalism from above.14 National identity was a product of the age, and immigrants were the intermediaries who tested the boundaries of early nationalism. According to Anderson and Hobsbawm, national identity must be promoted by the state but accepted by the people. A nation, after all, is a strange kind of group. Not one member of a national community, Anderson wrote, could possibly know all the others, and thus for a nation-state to exist, one has to “imagine common linkages.”15 A nation is born in the process of imagination, of mythmaking and the invention of tradition; a nation is an imagined community. Like an “imagined nation”, the Dutch American community existed in the mind. Since it was not a political unit, its borders were not clearly drawn, nor could they be, since each member perceived the community's boundaries based on their own knowledge and experience. Because this community was “imagined” and constantly renegotiated does not make it any less real. Rather, the Dutch American community was real because it was imagined.16 Unlike Hobsbawm's nations, with their impetus from the state - their design from above - the Dutch American subculture was established from below. This community derived from and was shaped by the aggregate expressions of individuals who considered themselves a part of it. Dutch Americans were linked by the idea that they shared a

14 E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality (Cambridge 1990). 15 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism ( 1983). 16 I would argue that a community which is not 'real' is one which is imposed. That is, simply by defining and labeling a specific geographic or political unit a 'community' does not make it such. For example, a 'retirement community' might be no community at all.

48 common past. They organized and segregated by choice. Their churches, newspapers, schools, and kin networks united them across space and time. Instead of placing immigrants solely within a national or transnational framework, then, it is useful to see the boundaries of immigrant communities on their own terms, in the ways they envisioned them. A few themes help to explain the early development of an “imagined space” and an “imagined identity” belonging to Dutch Americans. First, in the earliest years of immigration, the Dutch established themselves in the West, at a distance from American culture and institutions. Writings from Dutch immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s show a conscious distinction between established native or “Yankee” Americans and newly arrived immigrants. Dutch Americans only briefly saw themselves as foreigners in a new country, but long imagined a divide between their cultural communities and the country at large. Geography at the local and regional level provided easily recognizable physical boundaries that helped circumscribe and protect their communities. These communities were then connected through common channels of information diffusion, particularly in letter exchanges and newspapers that built a common sense of purpose. The Civil War Americanized Dutch immigrants and reinforced an allegiance to the new fatherland. Dutch Americans developed a sense of dual allegiance to their country and to their fellow immigrants from the Netherlands. The subculture formed in these years would endure into the twentieth century. Dutch Americans of the period 1847 to 1875 were already imagining themselves as a common people.17

The Dutch-Yankee Inferiority Complex The term "Yankee" possibly originated in the seventeenth century when the two generic Dutch names, "Jan" and "Kees" were combined to form a term for Dutch New Netherlanders. In the antebellum years, however, the word denoted New Englanders more generally. Dutch immigrants were partly in awe of their fellow Americans, somewhat jealous of their successes and abilities, and overall desirous of similar material and social comforts. The disenfranchised Dutchmen appealed to Americans for guidance, employment, and financial aid, thus establishing themselves as junior partners in a shared American experience. In the first years, everything was new and needed

17 This chapter makes used of the papers of the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs, collection number 2.05.13, at the Dutch National Archives in the Hague. Civil war letters of Jan Nies can be found at the Holland Michigan Museum archives (collection T88-0138). The letters of Willem Roon (collection H04-1535.5) and Walter Weener (collection

49 understanding: the forests and the prairies, the soil composition, language, geography, and climate, American traditions and holidays, and the procedures of local democracy. An immigrant Dutch-Yankee inferiority complex developed around the desire to talk like the Americans. "Confident and self-assertive enough among themselves and in their own tongue," wrote Dutch American novelist and historian Arnold Mulder (1885-1959), "the Dutch folk were likely to display a too great humility in the presence of Americans."18 Part of the inferiority complex of nineteenth century Dutch immigrants, Mulder noted, was an inability to speak proper English. Primary sources confirm Mulder's view. Sent as a scout in advance of the proposed Iowa colony, Hendrik Barendraft reported from St. Louis in 1846, "I can not advise everyone enough to really learn the ."19 In letters that followed in the 1850s, immigrants continued to stress the necessity of learning English. They repeatedly implored family members and other potential immigrants to learn the language. Language acquisition was not only practical, but the ability to speak and write properly was a mark of class. For this reason, the immigrant leaders Hendrik Scholte and Albertus Van Raalte worked hard to learn the language as quickly as possible. Some of the more well-to-do immigrants to Pella had even taken English lessons while still in the Netherlands. Immigrants with more contact with Americans, those who lived in American cities for example, naturally learned English more quickly, as did men generally more than women (except young women who learned it faster than anyone). A mixed "Yankee Dutch" developed in urban areas among those who spoke Dutch at home but needed to express American thoughts in public.20 The immigrants were also attempting to rise out of a low socio-economic standing. Many Dutch immigrants of the 1840s and 1850s had escaped positions of relative weakness and persecution in the Netherlands. They tended to come from distressed regions of the country where the agrarian crisis of the late 1840s was most acute, and where, for that very reason, cholera could do the most damage. The Dutch term for immigrant "landverhuizer," literally "one who moves to another country," had a negative connotation. In the province of Friesland, explains historian

H07-1659), as well as the newspapers De Grondwet, The Holland City News, and De Hollander are available at the Joint Archives of Holland, Michigan. 18 A. Mulder, Americans from Holland (Philadelphia 1947) 245. 19 Hendrik Barendregt (St. Louis, 14 Dec. 1846) printed as 'Brief uit Noord Amerika' in De Reformatie (Amsterdam 1846) 367. Translation of 'Ik kan dus een ieder niet genoeg aanraden om toch de Engelsche taal te leren.' 20 Jaap van Marle, 'Yankee Dutch literature as a marker of acculturation,' in: Robert P. Swierenga, Jacob E. Nyenhuis, Nella Kennedy (eds.), Dutch-American arts and letters in historical perspective (Holland MI 2007) 61-67; Suzanne Sinke, Dutch immigrant women in the United States 1880-1920 (Chicago 2002) 183.

50 Annemieke Galema, young emigrants were seen to be abandoning their social responsibilities.21 Dutch officials who noted the low socio-economic status of the emigrants could only conclude that they were those who could not make it in the Netherlands on their own or who did not fit in.22 The Seceders had been consistently ridiculed in the 1830s as movement of uncultured The Dutch immigrants of the 1840s and 1850s were mostly middling farmers, handy and hard-working laborers, with a few ministers and a handful of minor businessmen. Only 13 percent of Dutch immigrants to America were "well-off" and only 22 percent were very poor. Seceders, who were no poorer on average than other Dutchmen, migrated at a rate ten times the national average.23 En route to the promised land in the American Midwest, they passed through American cities without learning much about their inhabitants except that the Americans appeared active and successful. Although Americans - particularly those Dutch-descent Reformed New Yorkers - were kind to the new arrivals, and helpful, few Yankees made any official notice of one additional little group of Europeans filling in America's backcountry. On the frontier, however, Democratic politicians keen to pick up immigrant votes befriended the Dutch, and the Dutch returned their support in kind. Identifying with this "people's party," an anonymous Dutch American in 1854 wrote of the opposition as "monarchical Whig oppressors."24 Some Dutch immigrants carried with them the negative experiences of being rebuffed by Yankees, or as they sometime called them, "the English." They took seriously the ridicule of the Americans. James Moerdyke, for example, never forgot the day his American coworkers laughed at him for using the wrong tool on the job.25 There was always the potential for threat and ridicule, and American nativism in the 1850s was at a peak. The Dutch, like any other immigrant group, could be targeted. Immigrant Andries Wormser, for one, got the distinct impression that the Dutch were not "highly regarded" in America. Visiting St. Louis, Wormser explained that some Dutch had to hide their connection to their minister, Hendrik Scholte, who had apparently built himself

21 Annemieke Galema, 'Frisian emigration to America in the 19th century,' in Peter de Haan and Kerst Huisman, (eds.), Famous Frisians in America (Leeuwarden 2009) 31-46. 22 Pieter Stokvis, De Nederlandse trek naar Amerika, 1846-1847 (Den Haag 1977) 29.; J.C.H. and E. Lamberts (eds.), History of the Low Countries (New York 2006) 396. 23 Robert Swierenga and Harry Stout, 'Socio-economic patterns of migration in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century', in: Paul Uselding (ed.), Research in economic history: An annual compilation of research (Greenwich CT 1976) 298-333. 24 Sheboygan Nieuwsbode, 18 Apr. 1854. 25 James Moerdyke, 'Autobiography', in: Henry S. Lucas, Dutch immigrant memoirs and related writings (Grand Rapids 1997) ii 424. (Original published in 1955).

51 something of a poor reputation among the Americans.26 But Scholte had problems among the Dutch in Pella as well. He often identified more with the upper class Americans than with poor immigrants. Having heard Dutch farmers call each other by the title "sir" or "gentleman", Scholte's wife could not resist laughing. Scholte himself ridiculed the absurdity of these terms: "Our farmers have not become gentlemen yet; they are still just farmers."27 In the 1850s, the Iowa Dutch voters reacted against the Know-Nothingism of the Republicans and switched to the Democratic Party in spite of Scholte.28 Americans could be suspicious or fearful of the Dutch as they could of any immigrant group that might carry a threatening disease. In 1849, the residents of Grandville, Michigan, discovered a group of Dutch immigrants to be carriers of cholera. The responded to the threat of disease by building a shanty town along the Grand River to physically separate the sick Dutch travelers from the established residents.29 Within a few days of their arrival, no less than eighteen Dutch people had died while sequestered along the river. The orphans resulting from this catastrophe were then adopted by other Dutch immigrant families, not by the more numerous and stable Americans.30 F.H. Cummings, an inhabitant of Grand Rapids wrote to his son in Peru, Illinois on July 2, 1849, noting the possibility of further troubles. "No case of cholera here yet – but one has occurred at Grandville, a Holland emigrant just arrived. That colony [Holland] is increasing very fast; - 500 are expected soon."31 Nevertheless, the vast majority of interactions between the Dutch and the Yankees appear to have been positive. In addition to the New York Dutch, Americans from Buffalo to Detroit and Kalamazoo identified Van Raalte's followers as modern-day pilgrims and gave their leader friendly welcome and occasional aid.32 Americans in west Michigan admired the work ethic, generosity, and cleanliness of the local Dutch. In Grand Rapids, the Dutch were known as responsible debtors, and Americans wanted to do business with them, especially to get their hands on gold coins. To an

26 A.N. Wormser to H. Wormser, 20 Jan 1849. In: Johann Stellingwerf (author), Robert Swierenga (ed.) Walter Lagerwey (trans.), Iowa letters: Dutch immigrants on the American frontier (Grand Rapids 2004) 278-279. 27 H.P. Scholte to J.A. Wormser, 4 Aug. 1848. In: J. Stellingwerf (ed.), Amsterdamse emigranten, 110. Translation of 'Onze boeren zijn nog geen gentlemen geworden het zijn nog boeren.' 28 Robert P. Swierenga, "The Ethnic Voter and the First Lincoln Election," Civil War History, Vol. 11 (March 1965), 27-43. 29 Lucas, Dutch immigrant memoirs and related writings, Vol. I, 350. 30 John W. McGee, Bend in the river, The story fo Grandville and Jenison, Michigan, 1832-1972. (Grandville 1973) 57-58. 31 F.H. Cummings Papers, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University. 32 Henry S. Lucas, Netherlanders in America: Dutch immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789-1950 (Ann Arbor 1955) 70-80.

52 American boy who had seen little currency on the Michigan frontier, the arriving Dutch appeared "overflowing with sacks and bags of gold."33 Any wealth in gold was a short-lived advantage. The immigrants quickly used up their currency reserves, and for most of the early decades, hard cash among Dutch settlers in Ottawa and Allegan counties was "scarce as feathered pigs."34 Because the immigrants lacked institutions in general, and because little aid arrived from state or national sources to aid their early building projects, they appealed to the Reformed Church in America (RCA) for funds, and thus initiated another kind of dependency relationship. The RCA was then centered in New York and New Jersey. The church was founded by Dutch immigrants of an earlier century, the New Netherlanders of 1628, and many of its members in the mid-nineteenth century still boasted of Dutch roots. Although Van Raalte and his immigrant flock were idealistic in many regards, Van Raalte's decision to lead his followers into the church reflected an understanding of practical economics. Van Raalte was in the unfortunate position of a petitioner who had little to offer the church except a promise of zeal and denominational growth in the Midwest. A second religious body, the Christian Reformed Church began in 1857 in a secession from the RCA, but the new denomination remained small and fairly insignificant until the 1880s. In the meantime, there was among the Dutch Protestant immigrants practically one church, the RCA. On the one hand, the RCA was an Americanizing influence, but the immigrants' reliance on the churches in the East reinforced in some ways the mental divide between immigrant and American. For example, in the summer of 1858, Jan Roost, a delegate of the Holland Harbor Committee, went east to solicit funds. Roost's task was to convince eastern RCA members that the growing settlement of Holland was destined to be a great city and the capitol of the Reformed Church in the West. Only through "indefatigable perseverance" did Roost return with $5000 worth of bonds.35 Roost returned to the East in 1859 and encountered difficulties. Friends out east, like Dr. Thomas DeWitt and the particularly supportive Isaac Wyckoff, provided Roost letters of introduction as he presented his case before the American congregations. But, Roost wrote Van Raalte, "I find it verry hard to sell bonds. I have not sold anny in New york or , nothwithstanding I tried verry hard." [sic for all] Roost, with his shaky English, and homesick for

33 Lucas, Dutch immigrant memoirs, i 387. 34 Albert Kampferbeek, 'De oude koloniale dagen vergeleken bij de dagen die wij thans beleven,' in: De Grondwet, 22 July and 9 Aug. 1927. 35 Grand Rapids Daily Eagle, 4 Oct., 1858.

53 his wife and children, was losing patience. He reported to Van Raalte, "if there is a person of ambition he might have mine place and I shall be glad to go home and leave the hard working of begging for someboddy else."36 Later that year, Van Raalte went east to take over the fundraising efforts.37 Van Raalte's action reflected the obvious, that for the Dutch to prosper, they needed aid from the Americans, and they needed guidance from leaders like himself.

Geography as a Determining Factor of Isolation The cultural or mental distance between the Dutch and the "Yankees" was matched by a moderate kind of physical separation from each other. Historians have long seen spatial concentrations of immigrant or ethnic groups as a measure of integration and community formation. A recent article by Marlou Schrover and Jelle van Lottum indicates that this relationship is not universal. In a study of immigrants to nineteenth century Utrecht, the Netherlands, the authors show that concentrations do not necessarily form lasting communities. Communities, of course, can benefit from spatial concentration, but they can also exist outside of spatial concentrations.38 The strength of the Dutch American community was due in part to a few areas of high concentration. Geography clearly provided recognizable physical boundaries that helped circumscribe Dutch American communities. Spatial boundaries and concentrations, as well as physical and political borders were useful in forming "mental maps" and delimiting Dutch American territory. Yet, the imagined Dutch American community ultimately superseded definite borders and existed in an ever-changing and dispersed form. The imagined Dutch American world began in the mind prior to immigration. Migrants in the 1840s and 1850s traveled in groups and relied on word of mouth for finding a reputable shipper. By the 1860s, Dutch shipping agencies had specialized in carrying migrants to the new world. These emigrants were not fleeing imminent danger and had time to plan.39 In explaining how to travel to the United States and then from one Dutch community to the next, immigrants relied on verbal and written directions and formed mental maps. The humanist geographer Yi-Fu Tuan explains that immigrant's mental maps were crucial for motivation and logistics of

36 Jan Roost to Albertus C. Van Raalte, 11 July 1859, Albany, NY. Van Raalte Institute Collection. 37 De Hollander, 19 Nov., 1859. 38 Marlou Schrover and Jelle van Lottum, 'Spatial concentrations and communities of immigrants in the Netherlands, 1800-1900,' Continuity and Change 22:2 (2007) 215–252. 39 Robert P. Swierenga, 'Going to America: travel routes of Zeeland emigrants', Nehalennia: Bulletin van de Werkgroep Historie en Archeologie, 114 (1997) 19-30.

54 immigration. Immigrants "did not go blindly. They had images of their new homes based on hearsay, letters from relatives, and immigration literature. These attractive images were a cause of their desire to move."40 Immigrants, of course, probably did not have well-developed maps in their heads, but they used landmarks and metaphors for explaining locations, giving directions, and storing information. Verbal and written news from cities with Dutch settlements made those locations appear more prominent than their actual population figures would indicate. Van Raalte's Holland was the first colony founded by the new group of Dutch immigrants and the first space to be imagined as belonging to the Dutch. The Grand River and the Kalamazoo River served as ultimate boundaries to the north and south, respectively, while the Black River in the middle was a somewhat navigable waterway whose basin was roughly congruent with the limits of the colony. To the west, the border of the colony was drawn naturally by sandy soils and ultimately by Lake Michigan. To the east, the Dutch came into contact with marginal swamplands or property already claimed by Americans. As the colony grew, the Dutch claimed some of this "American" land through purchase. Holland, all the while, served as a local market center, with villages radiating out up to nearly twenty miles away, but always within a day's walk or ride. Language helps explain how the immigrants conceptualized their new home, and this new colony. Holland, Michigan itself was known in local parlance as "de stad" or "the city." In the earliest years, this term carried a somewhat cynical tone as immigrants discovered how small and "village-like" was the Holland they had imagined as a real Dutch city.41 In addition to "de stad", immigrants also spoke of "de kolonie", the imagined sphere of all Dutch immigrant property and relations in Ottawa and northern Allegan counties. The sense that this was Dutch dominion was predicated on individual land ownership and the application of labor to re-shape the landscape and to claim the wilderness. Both Holland and Pella were routinely described as settlements in the wilderness. The wilderness was also a metaphor for the unknown and for the foreign. By controlling the land, the Dutch believed they controlled their destiny. Progress was measured in the number of trees felled and acres cultivated. The geographer Henk Aay has shown how Dutch American land ownership formed and defined the Ottawa-Allegan colony. In addition, research indicates substantial overlap

40 Yi-Fu Tuan, 'Images and mental maps,' Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 65: 2 (Jun., 1975) 205-213. 41 Engbertus Vanderveen, 'Life reminiscences', in: Lucas, Dutch Immigrant Memoirs, i 490, and Anne de Vree, 'My experiences', in: Lucas, Dutch Immigrant Memoirs, ii 196.

55 between Dutch-owned landed property and wealthier patrons who built houses. These studies attest to a dense and expanding pattern of Dutch immigrant land ownership.42 In the Ottawa-Allegan colony, the Dutch had the necessary space and time to incubate a new culture. There had been Americans in Holland from its humble beginnings, but there were more Americans in the Pella colony, both proportionately and in real numbers. The Reformed Church first attracted immigrants in Holland, and there the Christian Reformed Church was born. In addition to having less contact with Americans than did their kin in Pella, the Ottawa-Allegan colony had more zealots, and therefore displayed more of the quarrelling, secessionist attitude that characterized Dutch American inter-denominational politics in later years. If we can employ another metaphor and say that Holland, Michigan, was the largest Dutch "cultural island," then it is also well to say that Dutch American communities were scattered across the frontier like the islands of an archipelago. Together these islands formed a network of safety, common heritage, and family and religious connections. In 1854, the Dutch Consul in Milwaukee, G. van Steenwijk, explained that the Dutch settlements in Wisconsin were communities of mostly Protestant, honest, hard-working immigrants. The number of Dutch varied by settlement: Holland Township (1500-2000), Brown County (1000-1500), Milwaukee (500-600), Milwaukee Township (80-100), Franklin Township (80-100), and Waupun (300), but all had regular church services and subscribers to the Sheboygan Nieuwsbode. Van Steenwijk noted however that "Every now and then one meets a countryman who does not belong to a Dutch settlement, and lives in the country."43 Pieces of these Protestant communities were reassembled parts of earlier communities in the Netherlands. The act of religious secession in the Netherlands (the afscheiding of 1834) had already established a sense of community, with congregations linked across provinces by ministers, publications, doctrine and shared piety. Seceders, again, were a minority in America, where Dutch Protestants of all stripes joined together in new ecclesiastical bonds. In addition to their religious connections, the immigrants were now connected by the shared experiences of migration and survival in a new land. Perhaps the best indication that the scattered Dutch immigrant settlements were aware of each other comes from the extensively detailed listings of local people and places

42 Henk Aay, 'The making of an ethnic island: initial settlement patterns of Netherlanders in west Michigan' The Great Lakes Geographer 2:2 (1995) 61-76; Michael Douma, Veneklasen brick: A family, a company, and a unique nineteenth century Dutch architectural movement in Michigan (Grand Rapids 2005). 43 Minister Consul G. van Steenwijk to J.C. Gevers, Washington D.C. 16 June 1854. Netherlands National Archive, Netherlands Department of Foreign Affairs, U.S. Legation. Collection 2.05.13. Translation of 'Eindeljk ontmoet men nu en dan een landgenoot die tot geene Nederl. nederzetting behoort, en op het land leeft.'

56 that community leaders recalled and related for the 1897 semi-centennial celebrations. Authors could recall how many miles separated one settlement from another, the names of the original inhabitants, their occupations, and often an anecdote about their character. They kept tabs on the number of colonists, but also the number of churchgoers. They knew when Van Raalte had visited, when the settlement had called on a minister, and when the first Dutch church service was held.44 Because of distance and isolation, the Dutch could imagine themselves a separate people within the borders of the United States but on the periphery of its cultural influence. And while they were subject to the laws and restrictions of the land, they were without representation in the political process, because immigrants had to wait five years to become naturalized citizens and voters.45 The immigrants could vote in local elections, however, after filing first papers. The arrival in 1849 of a U.S. topographical survey team sent to chart the potential of opening Holland's harbor illustrates the tone of the encounter between the Dutch and Americans. Hoyt Post, one of the few Americans then in Holland, described in his diary the majestic appearance of a "mysterious fleet" in the harbor. Like an expedition to the uncivilized ends of the earth, two little black sailboats each with a "broad stripe of white and a narrow stripe of red" painted below the gunwales sent ripples through the waters of the tranquil bay.46 The official representatives from Washington were welcome visitors, whose appearance was a symbolic recognition of Holland's existence as a colony that had been struggling for two years to sustain itself in the wilderness. It was not only a sign of economic prospects, but also a symbol of ambassadorship, the American nation welcoming a Dutch colony within its borders.47 The Dutch were thrilled to be recognized by their new countrymen and have Holland placed on an official map. From the Ottawa-Allegan kolonie, the Dutch came to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1848 and 1849 for provisions and employment. By 1853, there were perhaps 600 Dutch in that city, including some one hundred families and many domestics and hired hands working for American families. But the Dutch families settled apart from the Americans, with a tendency at first to organize along provincial lines, proud Groningers near proud Groningers, and stubborn Frisians near stubborn Frisians, for example. In time, however, the Dutch churches and schools made Dutch

44 Lucas, Dutch immigrant memoirs, 1997. 45 Sinke, Dutch immigrant women, 51-52. 46 Hoyt Post Diary, 1 June 1849. Holland Michigan Museum Archives. 47 Village of Holland daybook, April 1847 - Feb.1850. Original in the Van Raalte Collection, Heritage Hall Archives at Calvin College, B-13, Folder 218. Entry for 1 Dec., 1849.

57 Americans of provincial Dutch immigrants.48 The Dutch community of Grand Rapids showed that even without the leadership of a Van Raalte or Scholte, the Dutch desired to keep one foot in American territory, and another foot firmly planted in their own communities. The letters of immigrant Jan Wonnick from the early 1870s indicate the attractiveness of the established Grand Rapids Dutch community for new immigrants. Religious instruction was strong in Grand Rapids, wrote Wonnick, and the Dutch farms around the city had grown prosperous.49 A similar pattern developed in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where there were by 1852 some 52 Dutch families and 300 members of the Dutch church. From Zeeland, Michigan, a Dutch carpenter came to Kalamazoo for work in 1851. Once there, the Dutchman continued to read De Hollander, and in letters back to his family in Leiden he reported on events in the other Dutch settlements in Michigan.50 This young Dutch carpenter was typical of the members of the early Dutch American community in Kalamazoo, who initially dispersed to earn money from American employers. Another was Cornelius Hillegonds of Calumet, Illinois who in the early spring of 1855 came to Kalamazoo seeking work. Hillegonds sought a Dutchman named "Bleiker" - most likely the relatively well-to-do Paulus den Bleyker - whose name he had learned of in Illinois. Hillegonds reported, however, that he could find no fast employment in the area. He relied on the local Dutch channels of communication to find short-term housing and various types of day labor.51 The Kalamazoo Dutch community become more concentrated by the 1870s, as Dutch immigrants moved into more clearly defined ethnic neighborhoods.52 Like Holland, the settlement of Pella, Iowa met its natural boundaries between two rivers, the Des Moines to the South, and the Skunk to the North. In 1851, in a letter requesting a Dutch consulate in Pella, Hendrik Scholte described the colony as the central point of the Dutch in Iowa, with a strong link to the settlement of Amsterdam (only a paper town) on the Des Moines River.

48 David G. Vanderstel, 'Dutch immigrant neighborhood development in Grand Rapids, 1850-1900', in: Robert P. Swierenga (ed.) The Dutch in American: immigration, settlement, and cultural change (New Brunswick 1985) 125- 155. 49 Herbert J. Brinks (ed.), Dutch American voices: letters from the United Sates, 1850-1930. (Ithaca NY 1995) 242-252. 50 Leydsche Courant, 15 Aug. 1849, 6 Jan. 1851, and 25 Oct. 1852. The newspaper does not identify the author by name. 51 Cornelius Hillegonds (Kalamazoo, MI) to Cornelius Kuijper (Calumet, Illinois), 27 Feb. 1855. Paper of William H. Pen, JAH, Colleciton H02-1477. 52 John A. Jakle and James O. Wheeler, 'The changing residential structure of the Dutch immigrant population in Kalamazoo, Michigan', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59:3 (Sep., 1969) 441-460.

58 Among the Dutch in Pella, it was difficult to imagine that one was in the center of America.53 By 1870, the Pella Dutch had claimed all the available farmland in the area. It grew from a population of 1,057 in 1850 to well over 4,000 by 1870, as some 1,526 new immigrants arrived in the city in a twenty-year period.54 Immigrant Jan Nollen described Pella in the 1860s as a beehive of activity ready to send out its bees.55 In other words, the active capitalist Dutch had taken possession of the lands around Pella and were prepared to establish granddaughter colonies further west. Those who stayed in Pella showed a desire to remain in a homogenous, church-dominated community.56 This atmosphere encouraged the persistence of a Dutch cultural enclave. In the early 1980s, when Philip Webber conducted interviews of remaining speakers of "Pella Dutch," he found that many described the local landscape in terms of "ours" (Dutch) and "theirs" (Americans).57 The mental map of Pella was also shaped by its location on the frontier. The landscape was open and in need of landmarks and division. Dutch American historian Jacob Van Der Zee, writing in 1912, explained:

It was indeed a unique experience for these Hollanders to come from a foreign land, where they had spent their lives closely confined in cities and and on small well-kept farms, to the solitude and isolation of life up on the American frontier.58

Property lines helped the Dutch establish mental maps defining their territory, but as Van Der Zee perceptively notes, there were "irregular, imaginary lines" which created the boundary between farmland and the "unused West."59 In Sioux Center, Iowa, the Dutch immigrants of the 1870s spoke of the West Branch of the Floyd River as the end of civilization. "Hier houdt het menschdom op" (here ends civilization) was an apt description.60

53 Hendrik Scholte to unknown recipient, 29 Jan. 1851. Netherlands National Archive, Netherlands Department of Foreign Affairs, U.S. Legation. Collection 2.05.13, No. 59. 54 Richard L. Doyle, 'Wealth mobility in Pella, Iowa: 1847-1925,' in: Robert P. Swierenga (ed.), The Dutch in America: immigration, settlement, and cultural change. (New Brunswick 1985) 156-174 (157). 55 J. Nollen, De Hollanders in Iowa: Brieven uit Pella van een Geldersman (Arnhem 1858) 142-167, cited in: Lucas, Netherlanders in America, 331. 56 Doyle, 'Wealth mobility in Pella, Iowa: 1847-1925', 156-174. 57 Philip E. Webber, Pella Dutch: The portrait of a language and its use in one of Iowa's ethnic communities (Ames IA 1988) 46. 58 Jacob Van der Zee, The Hollanders of Iowa. (Iowa City 1912) 68-69. 59 Van der Zee, The Hollanders of Iowa, 78. 60 Seventy Year Anniversary Book, First Reformed Church, Sioux Center, Iowa (1947), 8. JAH, Church file collection.

59 Concentrated settlements and ethnic networks were a salve for the wound of separation. Scholte and Van Raalte chose rather uninhabited sites where they could claim a distinct township, plant a church, and "maximize ethnic solidarity."61 Holland and Pella established the model of a Dutch American community. The physical boundaries of each Dutch immigrant community were unique, but followed the established pattern of requiring at least one church building to survive. The church was the central meeting place that tied the community together. As the nineteenth century progressed, Dutch settlements came into closer contact with each other. The papers of Christiaan VanderVeen, a student at the RCA's seminary in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the 1850s indicate further connections between the Dutch settlements. VanderVeen received letters from fellow Dutch students, friends who had moved back home or on to ministerial positions in the field. VanderVeen's friend P.J. Hoedemaker, for example, reported in the spring of 1857 that he was busy teaching English and Dutch among the immigrants in Kalamazoo, while living with his parents and taking on the requirements of work on the farm.62 J. Baay wrote from Alto in 1859 about his excitement in seeing "our Dear Hollanders" back together in New Brunswick the following semester. The following year, Baay inquired jokingly about the "."63 The founding of Holland, Michigan's Hope College in 1866 reflected a desire for Dutch American ministers from the Midwest to be educated in the Midwest. When much of Holland, Michigan, burned to the ground in 1871, the editors of the Pella Weekblad were distraught about their "sister colony" and the sufferings of their "countrymen of the same Orange roots." Reporting on the tragedy was, they explained, "the most difficult and saddest task." 64

Information Networks The flowering of letter exchanges and the proliferation of Dutch language newspapers indicate a desire among the Dutch Americans to remain connected in the new county. Early immigrant letters were filled with names, places, prices, and instructions on traversing and living in the new land. Letters were addressed to individuals, but were often read aloud or passed on to

61 Brinks (ed.), Dutch American voices, 2. 62 P.J. Hoedemaker to Christiaan VanderVeen, March 1857. Heritage Hall, Collection 285, Papers of Christiaan VanderVeen. 63 J. Baay (Alto, Wisconsin) to Christiaan VanderVeen (Holland, Michigan) 20 Aug. 1859, and J. Baay (Keokuk, Iowa) to Christiaan VanderVeen, 19 Nov. 1860. Heritage Hall, Collection 285, Papers of Christiaan VanderVeen. The "Batavi" (Latin) or Batavians were the ancient inhabitants of the lands that became the Netherlands and were often used in the nationalistic 19th century as an example of the origin of the Dutch. 64 Pella Weekblad, 21 Oct., 1871.

60 friends and relatives. Since information was at a premium, Dutch immigrants spent much effort in establishing links for mail delivery. Mail service was intimately linked with the roads, and was a driving factor in road development and improvement. The mail linked Dutch immigrants and helped formed their sense of community. The postal service was also a nationalizing force, integrating the immigrants into a national system.65 Following an 1848 treaty between the U.S. and Britain, a U.S. – Dutch convention in 1850 agreed that mail between the two countries would go through Boston and New York to Great Britain. Senders could pay the cost themselves or leave the cost to be paid by the recipient. Documents from 1856 show that Dutch-American mail went via Liverpool and Southhampton, being exchanged there every Wednesday in a "closed mail" agreement between the Netherlands and the United States. The entire mail cache between the two countries amounted to only around 50,000 pieces per year. Statistics for the period October, 1856, to September 1857, for example, indicate 44,298 pieces exchanged, with 38,390 sent through England and 5,909 processed through at La Havre. A small number of pieces also were delivered through Bremen annually.66 Letters were particularly important during the first years of migration, when much had to be learned about the lay of the land and when Dutch immigrants sought help being directed to their ethnic kin. Information exchanges also enabled many immigrants outside of the major Dutch settlements to feel connected to the Dutch American community. Immigrant G.H. Veldhuis first settled in Syracuse, New York, but kept in touch with the Dutch in "Missagant" (Michigan). In a pair of letters from 1848, Veldhuis explains that his minister in Syracuse had been corresponding with Van Raalte. Veldhuis planned to move to Michigan's Allegan County because he had learned that a friend of his had already established himself.67 Information about the settlement patterns of the immigrants filtered back to the Netherlands, where by 1855, a booklet describing the Dutch in the United States could adequately summarize the locations of settlement: Rochester (New York), Michigan, Wisconsin.68 Each additional trip and piece of correspondence added to the collective weight of information about the settlement patterns. When a Dutchman living in Lancaster, New

65 David Henkin, The postal age: The emergence of modern communications in nineteenth-century America (Chicago 2006). 66 New York, 17 July 1856, Du Bois to Baron Hall., Minister in Den Haag, in Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, 2.05.13, Gezantschap V.S. No. 138. 67 G.H. Veldhuis (Syracuse, New York) 30 Jan. and 25 Apr. 1848. HMA, Collection T88-0244. 68 M.D. Teenstra, Mentor: De Getrouwe Leidsman en Raadgever voor Landverhuizers die naer Noord- Amerika Willen Vetrekken (Groningen: J. Oomkens, 1855), 273. New York Historical Society.

61 York traveled through the Midwest in 1857, he apparently had little difficulty finding and visiting ministers in west Michigan and the Dutch consul in Wisconsin.69 "Bacon letters" sent back to the Netherlands boasted of abundance in the new fatherland, and a sense of collective well-being. In 1849, the Reverend Gerrit Baay wrote of the safety and abundance in his community of Alto, Wisconsin. There were no beggars to be seen and goods could be left outside at night because it was a given that none would steal.70 Gerrit Bouws wrote that in Michigan in 1847, all those who wanted work could find it. The colony lacked bread, but not piety.71 Teunis van den Hoek wrote in 1866 that not a single Hollander in his city, Englewood, Illinois desired to return to the Netherlands.72 And when these types of letters were published, or their contents used to inform pamphlets, it further encouraged migration and the development of national and international networks. From Pella, Iowa, Henry Hospers led settlers to northwest Iowa in 1871 and established "Orange City," after the color of the Dutch royal family. In a pamphlet used to recruit Dutch Protestants to the new settlement, Hospers glorified the advantages of his state. According to Hospers, Dutch immigrants would find countrymen in "Oranjestad" who were helpful and willing to educate newcomers in American ways.73 The primitive nature of the national mail system naturally delayed the flow of information. In the earliest years, Holland, Michigan's mail was carried in on foot from a post office at Manlius, fifteen miles to the south. William Notting and his wife Jenneke were responsible for the route, which brought the mail downtown to the store of Henry D. Post. Years later, Anna Post, Henry’s wife, recalled the sight: "Poor Vrouw Notting, how tired she was and how the perspiration ran down her face as she sat down to rest."74 In the early 1850s, mail came to the city once or twice weekly by a stagecoach whose arrival caused quite a commotion.75 The "postwagen," as the Dutch called it, delivered more than just mail; it was also a transport service for bulk goods. The first driver on the Allegan-Grand Haven route, P.F. Pfanstiehl, advertised that one could even "ride

69 Leydsche Courant, 16 Nov. 1857. 70 Gerritt Baay, Alto, Wisconsin. 4 Jan. 1849. HMA, Collection T88-0007. 71 Gerrit Bouws (Manlius, Michigan) 30 July 1847 to Harm Bouws, Emmelenkamp, Graafschap Bentheim. HMA, Collection T88-0020. 72 Teunis van de Hoek, Junction Station (Englewood, Ill.) to parents in Goudriaan, Zuid Holland, 25 Sept. 1866. Brinks (ed.), Dutch American voices, 116. 73 Henry Hospers, "Iowa: de vraag: zal ik naar Noord-Amerika gaan? Kort en praktisch benatwoord door een geboren Nederlander," 1875. 74 Mrs. H.D. Post, Response at Century Club banquet, April 15, 1898. Holland Michigan Museum Archives, collection T88-0160. 75 William Van Eyck, 'Transportation in colonial days', in: Lucas, Dutch Immigrant Memoirs, i 444-445.

62 along" with the coach, if one paid for the service.76 Not until 1870, when the Allegan and Grand Haven Railroad ended the need for stage drivers, did the mail arrive on a regular and frequent basis.77 Meanwhile, Dutch language newspapers allowed for the reprinting of letters and the wider dissemination of ideas. Benedict Anderson explains how newspapers play an important role in establishing community.78 The newspaper's date, he says, provides a linkage through time. Thousands of other Dutch immigrants across the country were weekly engaged in the same ritual of filtering through common stories. Newspapers announced whose mail was still waiting pick-up, when ships had arrived and what provisions they brought with them. They also carried news from the Netherlands, particularly regional and provincial stories, which allowed the immigrants to feel a continued connection with what they had left behind. The first Dutch American newspaper in the Midwest, the Sheboygan Nieuwsbode was first printed in 1849. Its owner, Jacob Quintus made it cheap and with an easy style to appeal to the masses. It introduced the Dutch to American politics and acquainted them with the issues of slavery, alcohol laws, and the death penalty. Quintus switched it from a Democratic to a Republican paper in time to express his support for Fremont in the 1856 presidential election. This changeover, and the paper's return to a Democratic persuasion in 1857 led to a loss of subscribers. Quintus sold the newspaper in 1858 and it ceased publication in 1861.79 Holland's De Hollander, begun in 1850, was the only Dutch American sheet until De Stoompost of Grand Rapids in 1858, and The Pella Gazette from 1855 to 1857. All of these had been local efforts, but the readership would occasionally include Dutch from other colonies. Van Raalte wrote in 1850 that among other benefits of a local paper, De Hollander, would "promote the colony" and "bind the outlying settlements together."80 It accomplished both tasks, but De Grondwet, established in Holland in 1860, became a more national Dutch American newspaper. While the advertisement revenue came only from local sources, the readership dues trickled in from across the country, and later from Canada. The birth and expansion of De Grondwet in the 1860s, with its personal interest stories and reports from Dutch settlements, both caused and was a cause of the growth of long-distance

76 De Hollander, 15 Dec. 1853. 77 Holland City News, 23 Oct.1875. 78 Anderson, Imagined communities, 34-36. 79 J. Breur, "De Sheboygan Nieuwsbode : Het eerste Nederlandstalige Nieuwsblad in de Verenigde Staten, 1849-1861" (Ph.d. dissertation, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1991), 14. 80 Albertus C. Van Raalte, 'Address', De Hollander, 30 Nov. 1850.

63 connections among Dutch Americans.81 The Volksvriend of Orange City, Iowa, likewise served in the years to come as an information exchange for the new Dutch communities on the Great Plains.82

Letters and the Civil War In addition to forming local, ethnic, and religious institutions and identities, the Dutch immigrants were also actively becoming American, and the Civil War was a major catalyst in assuming this new national identity. Dutch American soldiers and civilians relied on each other to keep informed. Hollanders also fought together and sought each other's company during the war. For example, W. van Appeldoorn of the Michigan 25th infantry wrote that Jan Nies and other Dutch soldiers had visited his company while serving in Kentucky.83 The Civil War correspondence of Zeeland, Michigan's soldier Willem Roon, indicates that the pious Dutch felt alienated from the "sinfulness" of camp life and sought comfort among those with similar religious beliefs. Roon wrote home about the particular sermons preached in camp and was excited to have met a Dutch minister while visiting Cincinnati.84 Dutch soldiers wrote letters to each other and these circulated through the camps or were read aloud. Some letters home were even published in De Grondwet. Jan Nies of Holland, MI provides an example of how a Dutch soldier imagined his home, his home village, and the larger Dutch American community. In 1864, Jan Nies wrote home from Tennessee to his mother in Michigan that he could still envision the family farm. "Although we are divided from each other by a great distance, and now for a long time as well, yet house and home can not, and shall never, I think, be forgotten."85 The mental image of his home and of his community provided Nies with a sense of purpose and identity as he marched through the South.

81 Donald Sinnema, “Dutch American Newspapers the Network of Early Dutch Immigrant Communities” in The Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, 12th Biennial Conference Proceedings: Dutch Enterprise: Alive and Well in North America, 43- 51. 82 Robert Schoone-Jongen, "Dateline Orange City, Iowa: De Volksvriend and the Creation of Dutch American Community in the Midwest, 1874-1951" in The Annals of Iowa 69 (Summer 2010), 308-331. 83 W. van , to H. van Lente. Bowling Green, Ky., 5 Feb. 1863. Janice Van Lente Catlin (ed.), The civil war letters of Johannes Van Lente (Okemos MI 1992) 151. 84 Willem Roon Letters, 23 July, 1863. JAH, Colleciton H04-1535.5. 85 Jan Nies Letters. HMA Collection T88-0138. Camp near Cleveland, TN. 12 April, 1864. Translation of 'Al is het dat wij een grooten afstand van elkander geschieden zijn en nu al een langen tijd doch het huis (home) kan en dunkt my zal nooit vergeten worden.'

64 In many ways, Jan Nies was typical of a Dutch farmer in Michigan, and his views of the Dutch community might be considered representative. He was sixteen years old in 1852 when he traversed the Atlantic with his family and helped to cut trees to clear a farm in the Michigan forest. His reason for immigration was in line with many others in the Holland, Michigan area: his family belonged to the separatist Calvinists who had faced persecution in the Netherlands and who sought religious freedom in America. Encouraged or reinforced by pro-Union sermons of Albertus C. Van Raalte, Nies felt a patriotic stirring. Ray Nies, one of Jan Nies' sons, later explained: "At the very start of the war, Father immediately enlisted at Grand Rapids in the second Michigan cavalry (a company almost exclusively of Hollanders) and stayed with it till the end of the war."86 Although he was hundreds of miles away, Nies still offered advice to his family; he tried to run the family farm through the mail.87 Nies also regularly sent money home (usually in ten dollar increments), and had considerable worry that the money would not reach its destination. Soldiers, in general, would rather entrust their letters to a homebound comrade than to the mail service. The American mail service, however, was often the only option. Because the whole enterprise operated on trust, there was plenty of opportunity for dishonesty and thievery among postal employees, and room, in turn, for patrons to find loopholes to abuse the service.88 The chance that a letter could "miscarry" was very real. By repeating important phrases in subsequent letters, Nies hoped that the most crucial information would come through. Letters containing cash were commonly addressed to Aldred Plugger, a businessman in Holland who ran his store as a bank and a focal point for all news coming from or going to the front. This explains why Nies could write that he had sent the money to Plugger, and that Plugger "knows what to do with the money."89 On more than one occasion, the West Michigan Dutch soldier Walter Weener sent mail home via furloughed soldiers in his company, addressing the mail to the trusted Kalamazoo businessman Paulus Den Bleyker.90 While soldiers like Nies and Weener had little choice but to put their faith in the US mail service, they knew that everything would be all right as soon as their soldiers pay reached the hands of hometown Hollanders. It appears that the Dutch American soldiers imagined the Dutch community as a "safe sphere", which would take care

86 Ray Nies Manuscript, Chapter 1. HMA, collection T88-0138. 87 Jan Nies letters, Camp near Rienzi, MS. 30 Aug. 1862. 88 Wayne E. Fuller. The American mail: enlarger of the common life. (Chicago and London 1972) 238-240. 89 Jan Nies letters, Camp near Cleveland, TN. 28 March 1864. Translation of 'Dus weet Mr. A. Plugger wat hij met het geld doen moet.' 90 Papers of Walter Weener, JAH. Collection H07-1659.1.

65 of its own. The letters having been written in Dutch meant that no one else but the intended audience was likely to decipher the script or understand the contents of the letter. As a soldier Nies "learned much about his new country, its size, its people, and the language, customs and other matters which proved useful to him in years to come."91 The dozen other Dutchmen in Nies' company provided a nucleus of support and comfort, in an American, English-speaking world. Letters were an intimate link to the home culture; they helped alleviate the pressures of assimilation.

Conclusion This chapter has addressed the question of how Dutch Americans communities initially formed and came to share cultural elements. Many of the Dutch who migrated to the United States came from isolated Dutch communities. This is especially true for the Seceders, who formed a small proportion of the Dutch migrants, but managed to influence to a very large extent the construction of Dutch American ethnic identity. In the United States, these migrants again sought isolation, because they thought this would guarantee the religious freedom they sought. They concentrated in remote areas and distanced themselves from others in American society. They did not establish ties with Dutch immigrants, who were Catholics or Jews. They did try to preserve an identity, but this was not necessarily a Dutch national identity, nor a Dutch regional identity, but an identity rooted in a religious Dutch Protestant culture. The remoteness and isolation of the communities did not mean that they were disconnected from each other. People traveled between the communities, while newspapers and letters connected them on purpose. Dutch Americans did not seek to reproduce Dutch society, but did want to reproduce the religious atmosphere of Protestant communities in the Netherlands. This pattern applied in both urban and rural settlements.92 Transnational identities have become a new paradigm for immigrants who have an interconnected social experience, who feel equally at place in a home nation and a host nation.93 The concept of "transnationalism" has been useful in migration studies to help explain migrant

91 Ray Nies Manuscript, HMA. 92 For a description of how an urban Seceder community took shape in Chicago in the 1840s and 1850s, see the first chapter of Robert P. Swierenga, Dutch Chicago: A History of Hollanders in the Windy City (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002) 93 Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Gordon and Breach, 1994)

66 identity, even for nineteenth century groups. For instance, H. Arnold Barton has argued that took great efforts to project a positive image of themselves in the old country, and that their identities were constantly negotiated in a dialogue between Swedish and American life.94 Historian Diane Vecchio wrote about "transnationalism" in her investigation of social networks and the role of gender in establishing Italian American communities. 95 Because of high return migration rates among Italians, "transnationalism" seems an apt term for this group. Through the example of the Jantje Enserink van der Vliet family, Suzanne Sinke demonstrated how Dutch migrants could move between the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, and . The Dutch followed larger migration webs and economic incentives, but tended to maintain family ties even when crossing borders.96 Like Swedish or , Dutch Americans connected with each other, developed new identities in an imagined community, and also sought to maintain ties to the Netherlands. Transnational networks tended to derive from family connections, and reflected an effort to keep in touch with local communities and extended networks of relatives and friends. These networks contributed to ethnic awareness. They were responsible for directing migration flows, bringing family members to the new world, and even supported an international marriage market.97 Compared to other groups, however, Dutch American immigrants seldom operated between the Netherlands and the United States. Instead, their identities were formed in a discourse between American society and an imagined Dutch American sphere within it. While others have shown that migrants can operate between nations, or beyond national borders, none have shown that migrant communities can imagine their own borders and interpret their multiple identities within at least one non-national frame of reference. The term "translocalism" might be used to explain the origins or organization of the Dutch American network, but as the term has been used previously, it fails to incorporate the function of a primary source of identification forming within such a network. Dutch immigrants, although they were from various provinces, imagined themselves as a community with common roots and a common future. In this case, fractured identity in the country of origin did not result in fractured identity in the country of settlement. The Dutch in America did not all know

94 H. Arnold Barton, A folk divided: homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840-1940 (Uppsala 1994). 95 Diane Vecchio, "Ties of Affection: Family Narratives in the History of Italian Migration" in Elliot Barkan, et al., eds. Immigration, Incorporation & Transnationalism ( New York: Transaction, 2007), 105-120. 96 Suzanne M. Sinke, "Crossing National Borders: Locating the United States in Migration History," OAH Magazine Vol. 19, No. 3 (May 2005), 58-63.

67 each other, nor could they have since there were too many spread across too great a distance. But while logistics limited their physical interaction, Dutch Americans were aware of each other's presence. They became loyal Americans symbolically attached to their roots in the Netherlands while constructing and maintaining another kind of imagined identity, an imagined Dutch American community.

97 Suzanne M. Sinke, "I Don't Do Windows: Gender Roles in International Perspective, A Turn-of-the- Century Dutch Example", in the Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 17, no. 2 (Winter 1998), 3-20.

68 CHAPTER 3: MAKING PATRIOTIC AMERICAN CITIZENS (1850-1900)

The previous chapter showed how a core group of Dutch Americans in the nineteenth century imagined themselves as a common people. As immigrants, they settled together in family groups and formed church congregations that encouraged ethnic group loyalty. More than anything else, Dutch Americans of Calvinist backgrounds wanted to remain Reformed Christians. In their letters to family and friends, they boasted of their new situation, the strength of their churches, their growing farms and families. But early Dutch Americans lacked a basic understanding of American history, laws, or democracy. For them, religious, family, and community identity were essential, but their own sense of American national identity had yet to develop. This chapter, then, investigates how Dutch Americans in the nineteenth century dealt with ideas of American national identity and citizenship. It contrasts their historical struggles of civic Americanization with the later ethnic mythologies that avoided talk of any conflict or difficulty in their history of becoming citizens. This chapter demonstrates that Dutch Americans went from seeing American citizenship first as utility-maximizing choice in the 1860s and 1870s, to a characteristic of their identities which by the turn of the century was essential and as unquestioned as their Reformed heritage. Pride in becoming American citizens, however, did not exclude the immigrants from maintaining symbolic bonds with the Netherlands. Indeed, the Dutch consular network looked after immigrants in America encouraged a conscious Dutch heritage. A key development in this theme concerns a change in understanding of the nature of citizenship, affected by the migration. The definition of citizenship and the requisites for its acquisition vary across time and place. In Europe, the common citizenship tradition is known as ius sanguinis (literally, the law of blood), in which a nation-state grants citizenship to all offspring with descent from an ethnic nation. Another form of citizenship, ius soli (literally, the law of the land), grants citizenship to all those born within a certain territory. In a common interpretation of the 14th amendment, the United States is an example of this kind of nation, where a child born to foreign citizens on American soil is granted American nationality by nature of the place of his or her birth alone. But it has also been argued that American citizenship is of a third type, in which

69 membership in the nation requires an allegiance to certain principles. Barbara Franz refers to this as "constitutional patriotism." 1 Dutch citizenship laws during most of the nineteenth century were officially in line with the ius soli tradition, but showed particular characteristics of the ius sanguinis tradition as well. The Dutch nation was thus defined both by soil and by blood. In constitution of 1814, the Dutch people were simply defined as the inhabitants of the Netherlands, yet those who had immigrated into the country were labeled as "non-Dutch" inhabitants. The Citizenship Laws of 1838 clarified the matter by stating that all those born in the territory of the Netherlands were Netherlanders, except for the children of the foreign-born, who could seek Dutch citizenship when they reached adulthood. The Nationality Law of 1850 stipulated further that children born abroad to Dutch-born parents were also Dutch citizens, but that the indigenous populations of Dutch colonies were to be excluded from citizenship. By mid-century, therefore, Dutch citizenship right corresponded not only to one’s birth or habitation within a territorial domain, but it also reflected an ethnic element which united the Dutch beyond geographic borders.2 Ethnicity thus played a significant role in the common understanding of Dutch citizenship. Dutch immigrants to the United States transitioned from a nation (the Netherlands) with a significant ius sanguinis tradition, to an American citizenship tradition not based on blood right, but on the defense of constitutional principles. What this means is that the Dutch immigrants were not only exchanging citizenship of one nation for that of another, but were in fact also exchanging citizenship of one type for that of another as well. A tension developed here in that American citizenship laws demanded one renounce allegiance to a foreign monarch or elected government. In the European mind, where the ius sanguinius tradition held sway, it was difficult to renounce nationality, because nationality was an integral part of ethnicity. But, in the American understanding of citizenship, ostensibly free of any ethnic requirement, one's membership in the nation was justified by action, not accident of birth. Naturalization required an oath of dedication to principle and , and the act of naturalization was intended to foster a symbolic or emotional bond with the new homeland. In the language of “contributions”, ethnic groups in the United States

1 Barbara Franz, "Fortress America? Efforts in Fence Building, Controlling Migration, and the Creation of a New Managed Migration System", in Institut fur Migrationsforschung und Interkulturelle Studien (IMIS) Beitrage 30 (2006), 23-28. Margarita Sanchez-Mazas and Olivier Klein, "Social Identity and Citizenship: Introduction to the Special Issue," Pscyhologica Belgica, 2003, 43-1/2, 1-8. 2 Marlou Schrover, ed. Broncommentaren 5: Bronnen betreffende de registratie van vreemdelingen in Nederland in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw (Den Haag: Institut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 2002) 9-11.

70 spoke of the actions that served to justify their group's place within the nation. Jacob Van Hinte explained that Dutch Americans felt that they "morally earned their American citizenship through the pioneering struggle or through participation in the war."3 Van Hinte also wrote of a Dutch American "moral debt" which had been "paid in blood."4 For much of the nineteenth century, Dutch Americans saw the benefits of citizenship as situational. In a Democratic society, advantages of citizenship included the right to participate in local elections and qualify for well-paid government positions on the frontier. Citizenship granted status and power; it differentiated the established members of society from the recent arrivals. The process of becoming a citizen took time, effort, and money. It meant relinquishing the rights one enjoyed as a Dutch national to return to the Netherlands without difficulty. It meant renouncing allegiance to the old country and promising to defend the new, even if called upon in battle. Many Dutch immigrant men, however, avoided citizenship to escape conscription during the Civil War. Dutch immigrant women, following a law of 1855, acquired the citizenship status of their husbands, although citizenship was of little practical value in an age before universal suffrage. Only after 1922 could married Dutch immigrant women pursue American citizenship independently.5 Through their participation in the Civil War, in the passing of generations, and through Americanization in school and society, Dutch Americans began to see American citizenship and an associated patriotic nationalism as essential components of their identities. In the twentieth century, Dutch Americans emerged from their struggles with Americanization as the most pro-American of all. Even then, by 1920, only 56 percent of the Dutch-born in the United States had been naturalized. An additional ten percent had taken over first-papers for citizenship.6 Citizenship remained situational.

Citizenship and Property, 1847 to 1860 The Dutch American pioneer generation was initially uncertain about acquiring American citizenship, but learned to appreciate its benefits. On the eve of the migration of 1847, Hendrik Scholte discussed the nature of American citizenship in the pages of his Seceder journal, De Reformatie. For the potential Dutch emigrant, American citizenship was no selling point or "pull"

3 Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America, 382. 4 Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America, 437. 5 Suzanne Sinke, Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States 1880-1920 (Chicago 2002) 51. 6 Niles Carpenter, Immigrants and their Children 1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1969 – original 1927), 263.

71 factor for migration, but it instead presented a rather frightful dilemma. Scholte reassured his readers that what they had heard rumored was true, that one who lives in the United States for five years "ceases to be a Netherlander." This line must have shocked many a Dutch Protestant, for whom being Dutch and being Reformed were essentially the same thing, the concepts having grown up together. The migration promised to split the tightly bound Dutch concepts of religious, ethnic, and national identity. Scholte calmed fears of the resulting potential loss of religious identity by explaining that naturalization in a foreign land was not necessarily an impediment to the Reformed life. The attachment to a fatherland on earth, he wrote, should not be so strong as to redirect one's view away from a heavenly kingdom.7 Scholte recognized further that the United States was a constitutional republic, a liberal state influenced by the same enlightenment principles active in France, the same principles Seceders had been striving against. But all Western nations were so influenced, he reasoned, and the United States was no worse than any other nation whose government "belongs to this world."8 In recruiting potential emigrants, Scholte explored the positive aspects of life as an American citizen. He noted the absence of and aristocracy in America and the lack of class war or heavy taxation. Most importantly for his followers, he described the United States as a land where "the State doesn't trouble itself with how one educates one's children."9 The belief that Christian schools would be left to their other devises in the United States certainly appealed to the Seceders. Nevertheless, there was no hiding the fact that there was to be trouble ahead, for a foreign people in a foreign land. Scholte recognized this and put the difficulties into perspective with a biblical, pastoral metaphor that all could understand. "Dutch sheep will not find it more difficult among American wolves than among Dutch ones."10 American civil democracy promised a radically new life for the Dutch immigrants. Considering that at mid-century only about 2.5% of people in the Netherlands could vote, and that most of these were upper-class men, few of the emigrants had ever directly participated in

7 Hendrik Scholte, "Beantwoordt: Dit Tijdschrift nog aan Deszelfs Opschrift?" in De Reformatie, 1847, 17-33 (quote, 28). Translation of "ophoudt Nederlander te zijn." 8 De Reformatie, 1847, p 20. Translation of "tot deze wereled behoort." 9 De Reformatie, 1847, p 21. Translation of "De Staat bemoeit zich niet met hetgeen men aan zijne kinderen laat onderwijzen." 10 De Reformatie, 1847, p. 22 Translation of "dan zal het Hollandsche schapen onder Amerikaansche wolven zeker niet moeijelijker vallen dan onder Nederlansche."

72 democracy before.11 Couple this with a body of American laws and legislation available only in English, and it is no wonder that the early Dutch immigrants were bewildered by the political system of their new country. Concerning politics, the Dutch "knew next to nothing during the first years," wrote Jacob Den Herder of Zeeland, Michigan.12 Den Herder recalled that in the first township elections of 1849 and 1850, only the Americans could vote, and thus only 6 and 3 votes were cast, respectively. But in the Zeeland Township election of 1852, some 93 Dutchmen, now with their first papers for citizenship, participated.13 Certainly, more local Dutch would have voted had they been naturalized. But even to be registered, those in the Michigan kolonie had to make an arduous trip to the county seat in Grand Haven, some fifteen miles away, north along poor roads and Indian trails. Recognizing the opportunity to gather a fee from each Dutchman who wanted to sign his first papers, County Clerk Henry Griffin left his office in Grand Haven and traveled to Holland in 1848 to register the immigrants en masse and for a discounted fee.14 When the immigrants first exercised their voting rights at the 1851 Holland Township elections, tensions for political control nearly lead to blows at the voting booth at the First Reformed Church of Zeeland.15 Elsewhere, the struggle for voting rights and political power appealed to Dutch immigrants. The Frisian Sjoerd Sipma, whose letters home were published in the Netherlands in 1849, claimed that his Dutch community in Iowa did not even have to wait five years for citizenship.

We are no longer strangers in America: we all have citizenship like the Americans. Immediately on our arrival we registered with the State, in order to live as good citizens of Iowa. Citizenship, which otherwise is given after the passing of five years, was immediately granted us by the State, so that we could have the right to vote.16

11 Michael Wintle, An Economic and Social History of the Netherlands, 1800-1920. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 252. 12 Jacob Den Herder, "History of Zeeland Township", 1876. JAH - H09-1692. Translation of "Van politiek wist men gedurende de eerste jaren nagenoeg niets." (11) 13 Jacob Den Herder, "History of Zeeland Township," 18-19. 14 Detroit Free Press, 10 July 1848. 15 Jacob van Hinte, Netherlanders in America, 243. 16 Sjoerd Aukes Sipma (Pella, IA,) to Citizens of Bornwerd, Westdongeradeel, (Translated by Rev. C. Greenfield) 16 March, 1848. (Calvin College, Heritage Hall) Brief van Sjoerd Aukes Sipma aan de Ingezetenen van Bornwerd in Westdongeradeel uit Wier Midden hij, in het Voorjaar van 1847als Landverhuizer is vertrokken naar Pella in de Vereenigde Staten van Noord-Amerika, Voorzeien met Ophelderende Aanmerkingen door N.N. (B. Schaafsma, , 1849); and Belangrijke Berigten uit Pella in de Vereenigde Staten van Noord-Amerika of Tweede Brief van Sjoerd Aukes Sipma; van dar Geschreven aan de ingezetenen van Bornwerd (B. Schaafsma: Dokkum, 1849).

73 Although Sipma spoke of "citizenship" in a general sense, he was in fact only referring to the right to vote in state and local elections. The immigrants had to wait five years to vote in congressional, senatorial, and presidential elections. Stories of such Dutch adaptation and success in America such as Sipma's were published as booklets in the Netherlands to encourage additional migration.17 One "boekske" (booklet) published in Groningen in 1855 included chapters on the history, government, and politics of the United States. The author described a high general welfare among Americans and a great demand for workers. He noted, however, that despite their successes, many Dutch Americans felt homesick and longed to see "het vaderland," the Netherlands, again.18 The desire to become American citizens was furthered by the chance to prosper from the fruit of the land. Dutch immigrant letters show an obsession with land, money, and progress. The immigrants measured success in bushels of oats, corn and wheat, by heads of cattle and hogs, and by the size of their farms and the fertility of their soils. Immigrant letters relating this knowledge have come to be called "bacon letters" because of their consistent references to (and occasional exaggerations of) the fat of the land and to dinners with more than enough meat to go around. An example of such a letter come from Pieter O. , who arrived in Iowa in September, 1847. In the traditional method of measuring distance by the time traveled on foot, Viersen described his property as lying one full hour from Pella and its church services. It was a desirable location of which Viersen was proud. He had traveled through mountains and valleys across the country to find land that was flat and fertile. He had spent considerable coin in getting started in America. In Iowa, he had red-haired cows, a team of horses for the plow, and dogs to keep away the wolves. He also raised "Oestijnse wiet" (Corn) and grain, and was confident that the "de mon ribber" (Des Moines River) would soon be navigable and allow him to bring his crops to market. In each aspect, Viersen compared the land favorably to his home in Friesland.19 Account books from era indicate, furthermore, that it was common, even among simple farmers, to make a written record of what was the family farm bought and sold. Cornelius Kuijper's account book from mid-1850s Chicago contains a mix of scribbled calculations, names of personal debtors and creditors, lists of purchased

17 There were also positive reports from early Frisian emigrants. T. Telenga, Tiental Brieven Betrekkelijk De Reis, Aankomst en Vestiging naar en in Noord-Amerika van eenige Landverhuizers vertrokken uit De Grietenijen en in Vriesland (Franeker, 1848). 18 M.D. Teenstra, "Mentor; De Getrouwe Leidsman en Raadgever voor Landverhuizers die naer Noord- Amerika Willien Vertrekken" (Groningen, the Netherlands: J. Oomkens, 1855). New York Historical Society, E184.D9T44.

74 goods (tobacco, a hat, pants, a galloon of syrup (kalloon zyroop), and even a pancake recipe for sick children that included a few drops of port wine. 20 By controlling the land, the Dutch put down their roots and staked a claim in their new nation. The attachment to the soil and its cultivation encouraged identification with America as a new fatherland. Built into the Dutch mindset was a Lockean type of property rights in which the application of labor justified the ownership of land. That the land was open and available for the Dutch appeared to be a sign from God. Writing about the Dutch settlements in West Michigan, Holland's Peter Moerdyke said: "This region was unoccupied except by a few scattered Indians, but these aboriginal tribes were of no account as real inhabitants. God gave [the Dutch] room, liberty, and a free hand."21 In this, the Dutch could again draw a parallel to the Pilgrims at Plymouth.

Civil War Citizenship Most Dutch American communities in the 1840s and 1850s were agricultural, dominated by small farms (40 to 180 acres) and large families. The inhabitants were intimately acquainted with the land around them and knew all the members of their communities, but few had voyaged far from home. On the eve of the Civil War, Dutch Americans were mostly foreign-born farmers who spoke little or no English, who were thoroughly acquainted with the Bible and with theological debates, and who cared about their families, their communities, and their ethnic kin. However, they identified only vaguely with the American nation at large. By forcing issues of national loyalty and identity, the Civil War marked a major turning point in the relationship between Dutch Americans and their new country. Stories of Dutch American participation in the war left an important legacy that served later generations as mythologies of sacrifice and which reinforced Dutch American claims for acceptance as citizens. In the efforts in Holland, Michigan, to recruit soldiers to fight the Kaiser in World War One, Civil War veteran Gerrit Van Schelven used war contribution mythology to great effect. Van Schelven was a respected old-timer who had served as alderman, postmaster, and justice of the peace, as well as holding a number of other respectable positions in the city. He was also the accepted local authority on all matters historical. In his speech at Holland's military recruitment rally in 1917, Van

19 Letters in the author's possession. Received from Kor Postma in Damwoude, Friesland. There are three surviving Viersen letters, with no clear date of composition, but with dates of their receipt in the Netherlands. This first letter was received on 13 Oct., 1848 and the second letter, written in December 1848, was received 24 Feb. 1849. 20 Account book of Cornelius Kuijper in the papers of William H. Pen. JAH, Colleciton H02-1477.

75 Schelven made clear the undoubting patriotism and courage of the boys of ’61.22 For Van Schleven, the memory of the War Between the States had become a pedagogical example of a good war with the Dutch Americans unequivocally on the side of justice. Van Schelven and other soldiers remembered proudly the waves of Dutch volunteers early in the war. This prompted local politician Gerrit Diekema to use a similar line in 1918. About Dutch American communities, he said, they had "furnished their full quota of brave soldiers."23 Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, histories of the participation of Dutch Americans in the Civil War were written with the belief that the Dutch had high rates of volunteership and were overwhelmingly in support of the Union.24 When historians stopped listening solely to the oral traditions of Dutch Americans and instead consulted primary sources, however, they discovered traces of an alternative narrative, one in which the Dutch Americans were not entirely sympathetic to the cause of the Union.25 The most substantial work on this topic, an unpublished, 1989, Dutch-language doctoral dissertation by Willemien Schenkveld found that the Dutch were underrepresented in the Union military both nationally and locally in West Michigan. Schenkveld's important work provides some answers and disproves one-sided histories common to Dutch American writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She shows that in 1861, 50 men of an eventual 410 by war’s end volunteered for military service from the Holland, Michigan area. In the fall of 1862, when the draft threatened to take a quota of soldiers from the area, more Dutchmen volunteered, following the original 50. But volunteerism among the Dutch was not overwhelming, and it fell short of the local quota.26 War volunteers had practical as well as patriotic reasons for signing up, and Dutch Americans were far from unanimous in their support of the war effort. By voluntarily joining the military before being drafted, volunteers not only saved other loved ones from the draft and fulfilled social pressures to contribute to the war cause, but they also earned a $65 enlistment

21 Papers of Peter Moerdyke, HMA, Collection T88-0131. 22 Holland City News, 4 July 1917 23 Gerrit J. Diekema, "Holland Emigration to Michigan: Its Causes and Results", 1918. HMA T88-0055. 24 In addition to the major works by Van Hinte, Lucas, and Mulder, other writers addressed the issue more specifically. Dwight Grotenhouse, 'The Hollanders in the Civil War", 1941. JAH, Colleciton H88-0441. And Wynand Wichers, "The Dutch Churches in Michigan During the Civil War (Civil War Centennial Observance Commission, 1965). 25 Christine Jacobs, "The Western Michigan Dutch During the Civil War: Patriotic or Apathetic?" 1987 (Hope College Student Paper, JAH, Collection H88-0441). 26 Willemien M. Schenkeveld. En Er Werd Een Groote Storm Van Wind: Reacties uit de Nederlandse immigrantenkolonie in Michigan op de Amerikaanse Burgeroolog (1861-1865) (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1989).

76 bonus. Volunteer service was also appealing because there was a good chance to fight alongside other local soldiers, or in Dutch units such as Company 1 of the 25th Michigan Infantry Regiment. In Holland, a series of powerful sermons by Van Raalte explained the causes of the war and convinced Hollanders it was their duty to fight. A son of one of the Civil War veterans wrote that the war "became a CAUSE to them."27 Writing from Louisville in the fall of 1862, soldier William G. Ledeboer explained "Sometimes I wish that I was in Holland again, but when I think for what reason I am here, afighting [sic] for the defense and my love for our country, I am satisfied."28 But after an initial wave of patriotism and volunteerism, many Dutch avoided the draft and spoke ill of the war effort.29 Van Raalte's son Ben complained of Copperheads in the colony who would do anything to stay at home, even pay for blacks as substitutes.30 Dutch Americans settled almost exclusively in non-slave states, and few, if any, supported the Confederate cause. The majority of them remained Democrats during the war and voted against Lincoln in both the 1860 and 1864 elections. The major Dutch American newspaper at the time, De Hollander, was also a Democratic sheet. For many, then, the bonds of local community outweighed those of the nation. In one unambiguous example of this, seventy-five Dutch Americans left Pella, Iowa, to fight for the Union, but 138 others fled during the war to seek comfort and safety in and elsewhere in the West. Many of these out-migrants left in duress, but returned in 1866 to Pella and Marion County by ship to central America, by wagon across the Panamanian isthmus, and again by sail to New Orleans. Others returned to Iowa in 1869 via Sacramento and aboard trains on the recently finished transcontinental railroad.31 In this instance, the war could only temporarily disrupt the sense of community that had already been established and wished to reconstitute itself. The papers of the Dutch foreign service in the United States confirm that a substantial number of Dutch Americans were actively avoiding American citizenship to escape the draft and remain with their families. The Dutch Consul General in New York, J.C. Zimmerman, for example,

27 Ray Nies Manuscript, HMA. 28 Heritage Hall, Collection 455, Box 1, Folder 4. William G. Ledeboer to Father and Mother in Holland, Michigan, 14 Nov. 1862. 29 Michael Douma, 'Dutch American identity during the Civil War and the Boer War', in: Hans Krabbendam, Cornelius A. Van Minnen, and Giles Scott- (eds.), Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, 1609-2009 (Amsterdam 2009) 375-385. 30 Ben Van Raalte (Atlanta, ) to A.C. Van Raalte, 24 Aug. 1864. Van Raalte Institute Collection. 31 Brian W. Beltman, 'Civil War reverberations: exodus and return among the Pella Dutch during the 1860s', in: Hans Krabbendam and Larry J. Wagenaar (eds.), The Dutch-American experience: essays in honor of Robert P. Swierenga (Amsterdam 2000) 117-142.

77 reported in the summer of 1862 that requests from Hollanders for certificates of protection, forwarded from regional consul offices, arrived on his desk daily. Some of these requests came from persons who had not declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, while others had indeed made such declarations. The issues of citizenship and war avoidance were complicated. In some instances a father had filed first papers while his son, who had progressed to the age of conscription, had not. Zimmerman forwarded this concern from Wisconsin and Michigan via his desk in New York to the Dutch embassy in Washington D.C. "Now the question is," he wrote, "to which persons can we provide a certificate of protection, and what is the form thereof?"32 The Dutch case shows that when citizenship required service of the citizen, it was no longer as attractive. The economic recession of 1857 and the war years of the 1860s contributed to a decrease in migration from the Netherlands to the United States. The number of recorded immigrants declined from an average (mean) of 1,826 per year from 1847 to 1857, to just 459 per year from 1858 to 1864.33 Return migration to the Netherlands was an option for those seeking to avoid conscription. In the summer of 1862, a 41-year old Dutchman, signing his name "L. Smith", wrote to his consul in Wisconsin, questioning whether it would be necessary to leave the country to avoid the draft. A friend in Chicago had explained to Smith that foreign-born men who had not declared their intention to become U.S. citizens could not be forced to serve in the military. Smith elaborated upon his story, saying that four years earlier, in 1858, he had merely stated his "intention" to become a citizen. He was not yet a full citizen, and the country had no right to make him serve, he felt. At any rate, he excused himself, his body was weak and he would not be able to withstand marching and training.34 Questions of this kind were apparently difficult to address since the laws on these matters were opaque and constantly changing. A year and a half after Smith's correspondence, it was still not clear to the Dutch consul in Wisconsin whether those young men who had not applied for citizenship, but whose fathers had, could receive a certificate of protection. The consul had actively sought an answer on this matter because another round of conscription in the year following Smith's request had led to additional inquiries for letters of protection.35

32 Zimmerman in New York to Roest van Limburg, in Niagara Falls. Netherlands National Archive, Collection 2.05.13. New York, 5 Aug. 1862. 33 Based on the statistical table of Robert P. Swierenga, Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000), 39. 34 L. Smith to Voswinkel Dorselen, Sheboygan to LaCrosse, 26 July, 1862. 35 Milwaukee, 16 Dec. 1863. Voswinkel Dorselen to Roest van Limburg, Washington.

78 Many of the Dutch Americans who served in the war left their communities only reluctantly. Jacobus Hendrink van Ouwerkerk of Cedar Grove, WI, spoke of conscription as an unfortunate fate. L. Berens Jr., who declared to his consul that he was still a citizen of the Netherlands, was taken into service against his wish. Berens had immigrated four years previously and worked as a farmer in Iowa. While in service in Memphis, he sent to the Dutch consul in Keokuk, Iowa, for a certificate of his Dutch citizenship. The consul Nicholas Anslyn sent Berens a certificate, stating that the man had never renounced allegiance to the King of the Netherlands; he had never filed his first papers for citizenship. Nevertheless, Berens' military superiors continued to refuse his request to be released.36 Another Dutch American, Abraham Pieter Brill of Milwaukee, was conscripted in 1862, only to be turned away by a military board because an injury which occurred years prior had left a finger on his right hand crooked and swollen. Brill returned to his wife and children with a great sense of relief. He was, however, selected in a later conscription and served eight months in the military in 1865.37 Others paid for their release by providing substitutes. Apparently because this process was so common, three correspondents of soldier Willem Roon, all living in West Michigan, thought that the government conscription agents were no better than collectors.38 For those who served, the war was a grand adventure, a coming-of-age experience, which helped bring the small Dutch communities into closer contact with greater America. The men at arms returned to become business leaders and often progressive-minded thinkers who challenged local orthodoxy. Historian Herbert Brinks has written that Dutch American soldiers, by participating in the war, became “more unreservedly American than their relatives and friends on the home front.”39 The Civil War Americanized the Dutch soldiers, but their new American ways were sometimes unwelcome in their home communities. Holland's Ray Nies put it another way:

I recall two brothers, sons of a prominent, pious citizen, who returned home, the one minus an arm, the other, with no body disablement, but enriched with a great vocabulary of America cuss words, which he constantly employed. The good father must have felt as

36 N. Anslyn to Rud Burlage, 11 Jan. 1864; N. Anslyn to Berends, Memphis,18 June 1863; N. Anslyn to Berends in Memphis, 11 Jan, 1864. Nationaal Archief, Collection No. 2.05.13: Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Gezantschap V.S. B.H. (Folder 62). 37 A.P. Brill (Milwaukee, WI) to brother and sister, 3 Dec. 1862, and 4 Sept. 1865. Gereformeerde Kerken in Nederland, Archief-en-documentatie Centrum in Kampen, Collection D.J. Oggel, Emigratie Naar Amerika, 1820-1916. 38 Douwe R. Bouma, P. Peesk, and P. Hoekstra (Vriesland, MI) to Willem Roon, 24 Dec. 1863. JAH. Willem Roon Collection, H04-1535.5. 39 Herbert J. Brinks, “Dutch American Reactions” in Origins. Vol. VI, No. 1, (1988), 17.

79 much sorrow over the one as the other. One had both arms and swore, the other had but one arm, and did not swear.40

The soldier with the new "American" vocabulary was undoubtedly Albertus Van Raalte's son Ben, the other was his brother D.B.K. Van Raalte, who had lost an arm. The Civil War posed a dilemma of allegiances for the Dutch. For many, the commitment to family and community demanded more allegiance than their nation. Indeed, a root cause of avoiding the draft was to stay home and help on the farm. On the whole, the contribution of the Dutch in the Civil War should not be celebrated without reserve, but seen rather as a struggle in the development of Dutch American identities. In regards to the Dutch American understanding of citizenship, the Civil War also marked an important turning point. The soldiers who fought for the Union were fighting for a cause. They were not fighting for an ethnic nation, but indeed a nation which allows citizenship for those of non-white races. The war was fought in defense of a territory and its Constitution, while the memory of the war served to further the concept of citizenship as resting in the principles of the nation, and in one's actions to defend those principles.

Citizenship and Nationalism Migration to the United States continued to be free, without restrictions for Europeans during the nineteenth century, although the U.S. federal government took greater control of supervising the process. In democracies, where citizenship involves participation in the exercise of sovereignty, the relationship between the citizens and that state is an important source of identity. In their relationships with the state, Dutch Americans viewed the United States as a protective force, a source of freedom and rights. Their views of citizenship developed in the public sphere, through their interactions with the state and with each other. The closer ties between immigrants and the nation-state reflected the growth of nationalism more generally, and the increasingly common interactions between government and citizens in daily life. This was particularly the case in the Netherlands, where in the second half of the nineteenth century, a tremendous change lifted the country into modernity. Historian Auke Van de Woud believes that the key variable in ushering in this new era was a turn towards systematic thinking about nature, humankind, and society. The western world categorized, measured, poked

40 Ray Nies Manuscript, Chapter 15. Papers of John Nies, Collection T88-0138. HMA.

80 and prodded nature. Railroads and communication lines were built to control time and space, and governments set to regulate national life by implementing reforms in education, sanitation, and health care. The Netherlands entered its industrialized phase later than neighboring countries, but it could adapt the technologies of others in a game of catch-up. A national rail network was laid in the 1860s, and villages were awakened and brought into contact to outside world through the telegraph and telephone. The Netherlands was measured down to the inch, time was standardized, rivers and were improved, roads were paved. The growing infrastructure also linked peoples internationally. International conferences on technology and health became popular, as did exhibitions for mechanical wares. Trans-Atlantic steamers brought migrants to America and returned to Europe with cargoes of cotton and grain. Although the Netherlands had fallen behind in passenger shipping, the Nederlandsche- Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij (later the Holland-Amerika Lijn) formed in 1873, and by 1900 had delivered over 400,000 European emigrants to North America.41 Whereas the America- bound emigrants of 1847 sought passage on wooden ships with irregular departures and unknown arrival times, migrants from the mid-1870s onwards traveled by steamships and could be more or less assured of their travel schedule. In the new organized world, immigration became regulated by the state. In 1882, two instances of alleged misconduct by shipping agencies drew the attention of the press in the United States and in the Netherlands. One target of the media attention was the British steamship Surrey, which had been found to have had 1055 and 1/2 passengers on an Amsterdam-New York run. With children counting as "half passengers," the ship was 254 and 1/2 passengers over its legal limit. In the same year, the Nemisis of the Royal Netherlands Steamship Co. was also found to be over its limit with 1194 passengers aboard a 16-day voyage to New York. The drinking water aboard the Nemisis spoiled six days into its voyage, but the captain did not address the issue until the twelfth day. According to later testimony of the prosecution, some ten children died on board the Nemisis in a single run. The victims died of measles and diarrhea. An additional eleven passengers died in hospitals in New York during the week following the voyage. The court acquitted the Royal Netherlands Co. all charges. The immigrant passengers, most of whom were Dutch and German immigrants, among an English and Dutch crew, were apparently

41 Auke van de Woud, Een Nieuwe Wereld: Het Onstaan van Het Moderne Nederland (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2010) (original 2006)

81 unaware that they had any rights in the matter, and had filed no official complaints when arriving at Garden. This had damaged their later case. A business newspaper in New York argued:

If these passengers were so ill-treated, why did they not lodge a complaint against the treatment, it is alleged they received, immediately on coming ashore? It is not to be supposed that out of one thousand four hundred steerage passengers seeking homes in this free land there was not even one with sufficient intelligence to make a complaint. The sturdy Hollander is not the man to allow himself to be ill-used without seeking redress…42

Yet despite such words, public opinion during the trial sided with the immigrant testimony against the shipping company, even when the testimony appeared contradictory. For example, some protested the mixing of the sexes aboard ship, but others noted that passengers had been divided by groups into unmarried males, unmarried females, and married couples. Complaints that the ship's doctor displayed negligence and a lack of care in treating ill passengers, that the water was unhealthy and the food insufficient, were insufficient for punishment. Newspaper headings like “A Floating Coffin” naturally put the shipping companies in a bad light. In response to these issues, the U.S. Congress passed in 1882 an “act to regulate emigration” in which the Collector of the Port of New York was charged with inspecting immigrant ships and in return would charge a per-person fee on passengers brought into the U.S. In 1884, the law was tested in a Supreme Court Case, Henry W.O. Edye and William Volckens v. William H. Roberston. The plaintiffs claimed the law was an unfair tax on immigrants. They argued that “It is not the duty of the Federal Government to care for immigrants, or to relieve them in distress. The United States Government is not established for any such purpose.”43 They questioned the constitutionality of uninformed duty (which did not apply at the Canadian or Mexican border) and the application of laws that ran counter to the spirit of the founders, who they believed felt immigration was not a business to be taxed, but a right of free peoples. The new law, they argued, would also put an excess financial burden on the shipowner, not the passengers. The justice of the case ruled however that the appropriate regulatory powers did lie with the Congress and not with the states, and that the law was humane and beneficial to the immigrants. Congress, he ruled, has power to regulate immigration as if were commerce with another country. In the years

42 The New York Bulletin: A Commercial, Manufacturing, Mining, Agricultural, Literary and Scientific Journal. 17 June, 1882. 43 Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1884, No. 772. Brief of Edye and Volckens v. Robertson. Page 14. Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Gezantschap V.S., nr. 210.

82 following the introduction of the new tax, the Dutch foreign affairs legation in Washington D.C. described repeated struggles between the passenger ships that sought to make a profit, and the federal authorities who increased their supervision each year. 44 Further regulations gave governments greater control of migrants and migration. An extradition treaty between the U.S. and the Netherlands was signed on 22 May, 1880, after nearly a decade of regular diplomatic correspondence on the subject. A proposed U.S.-Dutch extradition treaty of 1857 failed to be ratified, but the interested diplomats of the 1870s were unsure exactly why. In writing up the new treaty, the two nations relied to some degree on the language and content of the Belgian-American extradition treaty of 1874. The U.S. had previously signed extradition treaties with the Kingdom of and Norway (1860), France, (1843), Bavaria (1854), and (1853). These laws ensured that immigrants alleged of committing crimes in their land of origin would no longer have a free pass into the U.S.45 Regulations also prevented immigrants from arriving as contract laborers, and required them to show papers of family connections (if applicable) upon arrival.46 Migration could now hardly be an anonymous affair. Dutch immigrants to the United States not only entered a new land, but a new system of regulations in a nation-state.

American by Deed Dutch immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s praised the quality of the American soil and American freedoms, but they had little to say about the value of the United States as a nation-state. This changed considerably in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as Dutch Americans increasingly praised their new nation and the benefits of American citizenship. Dutch Americans saw the United States as a land of democracy and liberty, safe from the aristocracy and injustices of Europe. The term "naturalization" had originally meant the converting of a foreigner into the King's natural subject. It was derived from the idea of the times in which the king regarded the natural increase of his subjects as his natural property. But in the American context, naturalization created citizens from whom the government had to take its consent. Ostensibly, citizens were in control of

44 Nationaal Archief. 2.05.13 nr. 1158 Gezantschap V.S., Legatie Washington. 3 June 1888. To the Minister of Buitenlandse Zaken. 45 Nationaal Archief. 2.05.13 Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, 160.) 46 (Mededeelingen van de Nederlansche Vereeniging Landverhuizing No. 3: "Eenig aanwijzingen voor hen, die over landverhuzing naar de Vereenigde Staten van Amerika en Canada denken (1915 NA: Voorloper N.E.D. 1913- 1953, Inv. nr. 13-26.

83 the state and their actions determined its successes and failures. Immigrant letters in this period show a general trend from speaking of the Netherlands as "home" to speaking of it as the "old country." This transition reflected a growing identification with the new nation. Younger generations of Dutch Americans also learned American history in public schools and became believers in the doctrine of . The Americanization of the Dutch immigrants and their children prepared them to seek stories of their ethnic group's contributions to the nation. The American centennial of 1876 provided the Dutch a chance to reflect on the history and meaning of their new nation. Writing in De Hope, Rev. Hendrik Uiterwijk described that Fourth of July as having much importance for the American citizen. It was the anniversary of "our Republic", established in love of freedom and faith in God. Uiterwijk reminded his readers not to forgot God's role in building the nation as a Christian refuge.47 Churches in the city of Holland held special religious services of thanksgiving for the enduring nation, and nearly all local villages held their own ceremonies. In the following issue of the newspaper, Rev. W.P. DeJonge added a poem that extolled freedom. Freedom was a gift from God, he wrote.48 While both authors wrote about faith and freedom, neither gave space to listing Dutch American contributions or achievements. Also in 1876, J.A. Van de Luyster, a student at Hope College, penned a short history of the city of Holland for a student publication. Van de Luyster wrote only from memory, from what he had gathered in oral tales. For this reason, his facts and dates were often mistaken. The importance of his writing is not in its historical accuracy, however, but in what it shows about what the common understanding of the history of the Dutch in the area. For example, Van de Luyster's statistics about the war were entirely invented and exaggerated. "Over one thousand sturdy farmer boys went forth from Holland and vicinity, to aid in crushing the rebellion - only three hundred ever came back alive."49 In Van de Luyster's view, such a sacrifice cemented the place of the Dutch in the nation. Likewise, in an article on the Centennial, student J.M. announced that "we have a right to feel a pride in saying 'We are Americans'." Doesburg listed the accomplishments of Americans: patents for mechanics, literature, the growth of American cities. Examples of the past

47 De Hope, 5 July 1876. 48 De Hope, 12 July 1876. 49 J.A. Van de Luyster, "Local History of Holland City" in The Excelsiora, Vol. 6., No. 10 (24 Mar. 1876). JAH, Collection H88-0427.

84 were to be taken from those who had acted justly and aided progress. 50 Unlike Uiterwijk, who focused on God's blessings on the American nation, the two students highlighted the actions of people who made the nation great. While the two views are hardly contradictory, they represent a shift towards seeing actions, not accident, as important justification for national belonging. The "Plugge Case" highlighted the evolution of Dutch American views on citizenship. In 1889, the deputy U.S. Marshall of New York "kidnapped" Cornelius Eduard Plugge from Grand Rapids. Plugge had allegedly defrauded a Middelburg bank for 500 guilders before leaving for the United States with his wife and children. The Dutch court had convicted Plugge in absentia, and American officials working through reciprocity laws had found Plugge and taken him away. These events upset and frightened Dutch Americans. "The courts of the Netherlands are not 'of a most barbarous nature' but thank God! America is at least civilized enough not to permit a man to be sentenced and imprisoned without having any opportunity to defend himself against his accuser." wrote I.A.R. van Dugteren of Grand Rapids.51 Plugge was taken away from his home before he could even change his clothes or wish his family farewell. He took out papers to become an American citizen, but he was being prosecuted by a foreign power.52 Michigan Senator Sybrant Wesselius went to N.Y. to secure Plugge’s release. But despite his efforts, and those of lawyers and concerned citizens, Plugge was returned to the Netherlands for trial. The Plugge Case demonstrates how Dutch Americans saw the United States as a protectorate, or at least as a line of defense against past inequities. The case recalled the anti- liberty of Europe. The law-abiding Dutch saw the migration as an absolution, which shed some past responsibilities and obligations. Whether Plugge was guilty or innocent, was not in question. Dutch Americans deemed his extradition unjust and un-American. A Dutch government law of 1892, which took effect in the summer of 1893, redefined the boundaries of Dutchness. Dutch consuls across the United States sought to inform their constituents of a sweeping change. The message went out in fourteen Dutch American newspapers: Those who wanted to retain Dutch citizenship had to report to the mayor or local official of the last place of residence in the Netherlands, or otherwise their citizenship would be lost after a period of ten years

50 J.M. Doesburg, "The Centennial" in the Excelsiora, Vol. 6., No. 13 (9 June 1876). JAH, Collection H88- 0427. 51 Grand Rapids Herald, 18 March, 1889 52 De Nederlander 15 March, 1889.

85 had expired. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Hague spoke of "buitenlands blijvende Nederlanders" (Dutchmen residing abroad) who would be subject to the change. Thus, before 1893, the Dutch in American retained Dutch citizenship by inertia alone; with the new law, they had to express interest and actively seek confirmation of their Dutch citizenship. From 1893 to 1903, they retained, as the law put it, the "quality of a Netherlander", which was summarily snuffed out in 1903. In 1903, the Dutch foreign service again advertised the change in Dutch American newspapers. In 1893, the general consul in New York explained that few would be effected; ninety-five percent of the Dutch who came to the United States left their fatherland for good.53 But overnight on July 1st, 1903, perhaps hundreds of Dutch men and women in the United States were, at least officially, no longer Dutch.54 This law signaled a partial death of the ius sanguinus tradition. Dutch citizenship was no longer passed on by blood right alone. In a similar way, Dutch Americans who in the 1890s hoped to remain Dutch in culture were swimming against the tide. A new generation of Dutch Americans was more open to American cultural influences. Immigrant Sears Riepma describes that when he arrived in Kalamazoo in the fall of 1894 he soon discovered a distinction between himself and the Americans. "My ideas and outlook differed vastly from that of Dutch people who had been in this country for years, but had always lived among Hollanders. They were trying to be American Hollanders, and I was on my way to become a Holland American." said Riepma.55 For Riepma, the distinction between an American Hollander and a Holland American had to do with attitude. American Hollanders continued to act Dutch, and while they were patriotic citizens, they didn't adopt American customs. A Holland American, however, endeavored to be an American through and through, while yet conscious of a heritage in the Netherlands. After Americanization experiences in Benton Harbor, and life among the Dutch in Kalamazoo, Riepma attended Hope College and Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He found the students at the college narrow-minded. "I am practically the only one who broke away or overcame the narrow grooves of Dutch life and religion" he wrote.56 As an insider-outsider figure, Riepma discovered that some Dutch Americans

53 Cnsul Van Planten to Ministry in the Hague, 8 July 1893. Netherlands National Archive, Collection 2.05.13. 54 J.R. Planten to Gevers, NY to Wasington, 13 May, 1903. Netherlands National Archive, Collection 2.05.13. 55 Autobiography of Sears Riepma: 1878-1977: My Ancestry, Life and Ministry H88-0130, 91. 56 Ibid., 122.

86 had not Americanized well. The legacy of the Dutch language proved his case. "The tongue consecrates the immigrant who would be a citizen. He can never be a real citizen without that."57 An observer of Pella's 50th anniversary festival in 1897 also drew a distinction between an "old fashioned" Dutch element that occupied the city center against a liberal and "thoroughly Americanized" periphery. "Theology is blue at the center, but it grows paler towards the circumference," he wrote. "The home language is still the Dutch in most places, but the public language is always English which alone is taught in the schools."58 Pella was an example of the joint heritage of Dutch blood and American citizenship. The resulting mix meant something new was afoot for coming generations. “Evolution here is working out a new type of man. In Pella many of the good old customs have survived the first half century – may they survive forever. Religion still lives in that sacred soil, but theology is less flourishing; it intracacies no longer perplex men and its controversies are becoming memories.” 59

Citizenship and the Consul Network Dutch consular agents in the United States consulted immigrants about issues of citizenship and shaped the Dutch American identities. Individual consuls promoted a collective historical consciousness through their participation in commemorations and festivals, or through sponsoring Dutch representation at exhibitions and fairs. Their reports and advice helped also to organize the flow of migration. While consuls did not generally take an active, direct role in the lives of individual Dutch Americans, they did occasionally seek out distant or lost members, reminding them of their obligations to other Dutch men and women or to the Dutch nation. The consuls handled inheritance claims and issues concerning citizenship and military service. A Dutch consulate was often a center of knowledge about Dutch American communities, a sort of information exchange for those interested in reestablishing connections with friends and family. The cumulative effects of Dutch consular activities exerted a minor, but not insignificant influence in shaping Dutch American identities. In the 1850s and 1860s, the Dutch consuls in the United States were passive, organized around trade, and not entirely interested in serving Dutch immigrant needs. By the 1870s, the scene had changed. Consuls now focused on aiding immigrants and reuniting them with the Dutch nation.

57 Ibid., 131. 58 Cyrenus Cole “A Bit of Holland in America," Annals of Iowa, Vol III, No. 4, Jan 1898. T88-0035, 20. 59 Cyrenus Cole “A Bit of Holland in America," Annals of Iowa, Vol III, No. 4, Jan 1898. T88-0035, 30.

87 In the Midwest and the West, consuls were informed about Dutch history, and they promoted concepts of Dutch culture that drew on historical themes. Consuls used their positions not to dominate or direct immigrants, but to nudge them in the right direction. Like the remnants of the immigrants' pasts, the consuls remained a distant reminder of Dutch national identity. They felt it was important that the Dutch did not get lost in America. The consular network wanted immigrants from the Netherlands to remember that they were members of a Dutch community. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Dutch consular network changed shape and also changed function as it interacted with the rapidly developing United States and a growing population of Dutch American immigrants. The Dutch foreign service, as a wing of the state, took a fairly passive and classically liberal stance in its interaction with the United States. While the main tasks of consular activity remained basically the same throughout the nineteenth century (promote trade, protect Dutch interests), the relative importance of these duties gradually reversed. Once primarily an impersonal agency obliged to collect economic data and report on business prospects, the Dutch consular network in the United States became by century's end a more personal network concerned with tracking, documenting, and occasionally aiding individuals connected to the Dutch state. This diplomatic superstructure kept tabs on Dutch Americans. It treated them as subjects of His Majesty abroad, and not as Groningers or Frisians, or as Calvinists or Catholics, per se. As Netherlanders, the immigrants had equal privileges for representation. And yet, in the West and Midwest, consuls were chosen from and placed in Dutch American Protestant communities. The consular network was at times a unifying influence on Dutch American identity. It was a subtle reminder that ethnic identity was built on a nation-state model.60 In the second half of the nineteenth century consulates in the Midwest came to serve immigrants before merchants. The change, in fact, was quite abrupt, as the Dutch broke the trend of port-city consulates in the 1850s. In the half-century to follow, Dutch consulates or vice consulates

60 For a brief general overview of Dutch consular history see: H.J. de Muy-Fleurke and S. Plantinga, “Hulp in het buitenland. De consulaire dienst,” in R.E. van Ditzhuyzen a.o., eds., Tweehonderd jaar Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken (Den Haag: Sdu, 1998), 124-142. The vast majority of the source material for this chapter comes from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs collection housed at the Netherlands National Archive in the Hague. This material has long been accessible to researchers, yet for the study of the Dutch in America it has been almost entirely neglected. The correspondence and memoranda that comprise this collection are written in Dutch, English, and occasionally, French. This includes both the incoming and outgoing correspondence of the consuls, the Consul General, and the Minister Resident. Much of the material is redundant and bureaucratic, thus presenting a diminishing marginal return for the researcher. However, personal letters written by Dutch immigrants to their consuls provide an interesting look at the relationship between the two.

88 were established in major cities like Chicago, St. Paul, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, but also in smaller communities like Keokuk, Winona, Newport and LaCrosse. Some of these posts were temporary, or traveled with the consul agent. It was less important precisely where a consul lived as long as he could provide services for the immigrants. Although the consuls hoped for direct trade between the Midwest and the Netherlands, little was forthcoming. And while consulates were established with trade in mind, by the end of the century it was overwhelmingly clear that looking after Dutch citizens in America would be their main task. Dutch immigrants actively sought to establish consuls near their settlements. Some immigrants even volunteered their service. The first of these was Hendrik (now Henry) P. Scholte who in two separate letters from 1851 and 1852 appealed to the Dutch government to be installed as a consul in Pella, Iowa. A word of warning from the consul in St. Louis, Frederick R. Toewater may have injured Scholte's chance, however. Toewater gave three reasons why Scholte should not be installed as consul. First, there was no need for a separate consul in Pella, as enough communication already existed between St. Louis and the Dutch immigrants in Iowa. Scholte, he continued with a second point, had been a minister of the peace in Pella, but had lost this position in a recent election, and was now just a public notary. Toewater surmised that Scholte wanted to be the consul primarily so that he could maintain his power in Pella, even though the local Dutch were growing weary of him. Toewater's most condemning remarks, however, were that Scholte, it was to be remembered, had not always been a friend of the Dutch government, despite his recent words of cooperation.61 Indeed, Henry Scholte of Iowa was the same Hendrik Scholte who in the Netherlands had led the separatists away from the Hervormde church. With this, Scholte's appeals were denied. The Iowa Dutch received their first local representation when Nicholaus Anslyn was installed as vice consul of Keokuk in 1857.62 While the consulates on the East coast had difficulty finding competent staff, Dutch immigrants in the Midwest gladly volunteered and competed for positions. When cities like Milwaukee or Chicago appealed for the establishment of a consulate, they sent to the Minister Resident petitions signed by up to 200 persons.63 B.B. Haagsma, a Frisian immigrant to Wisconsin in 1854, who replaced Toewater as consul in St. Louis in 1862, visited Chicago in the summer of

61 NA, 2.05.13. Frederick R. Toewater to J. Testa, Charge d'Affairs in Washington D.C., 15 April 1852. 62 NA, 2.05.13. Frederik Toewater (St.Louis) to Roest van Limburg (New York), 22 July 1857. National Archief, 2.05.13. 63 NA, 2.05.13. Petition of Dutch in Chicago to Roest van Limburg, Chicago, 1 Feb. 1866.

89 1863 and was repeatedly asked by the Dutch in that city to help establish a consul there.64 Dutch immigrants saw the advantage of having a consul nearby. A Dutch consulate was also established in Milwaukee as early as 1854. The consul agent there, G. van Steenwijk first arrived in the American West in 1849. In 1854, he described the Dutch settlements in Wisconsin for the Minister Resident in Washington. He estimated that somewhere in the range of 4,000 Dutch lived in Wisconsin. These were mostly Protestant, honest, hard-working immigrants belonging to medium-sized communities which held regular church services. "Every now and then," Van Steenwijk wrote, "one meets a countryman who does not belong to a Dutch settlement, and lives in the country." 65 In 1856, Van Steenwijk again reported on Dutch immigrants. There were now 10,000 between Wisconsin and Michigan, he wrote. Most were poor in their home country but were progressing well.66 Neither Ansyln or Van Steenwijk could report on any trade between their regions and the Netherlands for the simply reason that there was nothing to report. This was certainly frustrating for the consuls. Steenwijk complained in 1856, "My consul which nevertheless covers the interior states of Michigan & Wisconsin and the Territories of Minnesota, has to the present no direct trade relations of any meaning with the Netherlands."67 Ansyln reported similar difficulties. Attempts to establish trade between the Netherlands and the western states were fruitless. Firms in the Netherlands, wrote Ansyln, wanted to sell Jenever, cigars, tobacco, and Leiden wool in the Midwest, but the new American tariffs prohibited their import. In 1861, Ansyln asked if he could move south and re-establish his consulate in Tennessee or , where trade might flourish because of a lower tariff in the Confederacy. Anslyn never realized this desire. He remained in Keokuk throughout the Civil War. In 1874, General Consul Burlage reported that Ansyln had died and his post remained vacant.68 When Van Steenwijk stepped down from his post in 1859, his cousin J.P. Voswinkel Dorselen took over the region's consular duties from LaCrosse, WI. Voswinkel Dorselen then

64 Haagsma, a Frisian who came to Wisconsin in 1854 had met Toe Water in St. Louis then. Henry S. Lucas, "The Founding of in La Crosse County," The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Sep., 1947), pp. 42-60); Washington Star (D.C.), 11 1862. NA 2.05.13, B.B. Haagsma (St. Louis) 21 Nov. 1865. 65 NA, 2.05.13, G. van Steenwijk to J.C. Gevers (Wasington D.C.), 16 June 1854; G. van Steenwijk (Newport, Ill.) to H.C. DuBois (Washington D.C.), 24 July 1856. 66 NA, 2.05.13, G. van Steenwijk to To Dubois (Washington D.C.), 20 May 1856. 67 NA, 2.05.13, G. van Steenwijk (Newport, Wisconsin) to Dubois, D.C., 20 May 1856. Translation of "Mijn Consulair ressort nogthans hetwelk zich tot de Binnenstaten Michigan & Wisconsin en het Territories van Minnesota bepaalt, heeft tot heden geene directe handelstrekkingen met Nederlands die van eenige betekeekenis zijn. 68 NA, 2.05.13, Rud C. Burlage to Westenburg, 3 Apr. 1874; Ansyln, Keokuk, 20 March 1861.

90 moved to Milwaukee in 1863, and from Milwaukee to Winona, Minnesota in 1864, remaining the consul all the while. But a consulate in Minnesota seemed too distant for the Dutch in a region that included Wisconsin and Michigan. In March of 1869, when Voswinkel Doreselen requested a six- month furlough to visit Europe, the Dutch citizens of Milwaukee, believing, or interpreting to their benefit that Voswinkel had "resigned", petitioned for the consulate to be moved to their city. General Consul Burlage supported the move, explaining that Milwaukee would be better choice than Winona, but he cautioned that Voswinkel Dorselen had received permission for a furlough.69 In rare times of distress, the Dutch foreign service came to the aid of the immigrants. When the Dutchman F.P.A. Becler arrived in Chicago in 1871, just after a great fire had ravaged the city, he found that there was yet no Dutch consul in the city. Becler's story shows that while the Dutch Foreign Service was without the resources to provide their consuls with salaries, they were concerned to aid Dutch immigrants in trouble. Fearing that his luggage had gone up in the flames, Becler appealed to the consul Voswinkel Dorselen for aid. He recieved $200. But just days later, Becler's baggage turned up at the in Danforth, Illinois, where he was staying with a friend. Though spared from the flames, the luggage had been ransacked and pilfered. Becler asked the General Consul whether he would now be required to give the aid money back, considering that he wasn't, in fact, a victim of the fire. Becler tried to use the promise of returning the money as an example of his character. It was not cash that he needed, but a job. Becler was no laborer, but a man of letters. Although most Dutch immigrants in the Midwest were farmers or laborers, there were a few white collar workers like himself who at times struggled to find suitable employment. Becler explained that he had appealed to the Dutch-language newspapers for a position, but only the editor of the Pella Weekblad had responded to his inquiries, stating that the newspaper had no openings. Could he perhaps be hired by the General Consul, Becler wondered? While he had no proficiency with English, he was familiar with French, willing to copy English, and able to write from morning to night.70 Although the growth of consulates in the Midwest was rapid, and reflected a need to serve immigrants, the consulates were not necessarily established in the centers of Dutch immigration, but in locations suitably nearby. For example, Grand Rapids, Michigan was clearly a dominant Dutch American center by the 1870s, but it did not have a consulate until 1884. The only female

69 NA, 2.05.13, Rud C. Burlage to A. Mazel, (Washington D.C.), 6 April 1869. Rud C. Berlage to Roest van Limburg (Washington D.C.), 16 Feb. 1863. 70 NA, 2.0.5.13. F.P.A. Becler (Danforth, Illinois) to General Consul, 8 and 13 March, 1872.

91 nominee for a consul post, Cornelia Wagemaker, had turned down an appointment for Grand Rapids in 1858, while a entirely separate request to establish a consulate in 1873 was denied.71 The growth of Chicago and Grand Rapids, however, convinced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish consulates in those cities. But the new consulates were not well connected to the Dutch immigrants, and not very active in promoting trade. In the twentieth century, they came to have an increasingly symbolic significance.72 But even the symbolic acts of consuls reminded the immigrants of the Dutch state's presence. In the twentieth century, midwestern consuls followed Torchiana's example to become promoters of Dutch ethnicity and culture. Grand Rapids consul Jacob Steketee felt it his duty to lead "Holland-Americans" in recognizing their cultural roots. For two decades, beginning in 1915, Steketee endeavored to establish a chair in Dutch history, literature, and arts at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He worked to raise funds for the project locally and in the Netherlands, but was ultimately unsuccessful.73 Steketee's call for the promotion of Dutch culture in the United States and especially among Dutch Americans was more direct than the efforts of earlier midwestern consuls in this regard. For example, when George Birkhoff, Jr., helped organize the Dutch exhibit for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, he spoke first of the importance of the event for promoting Dutch trade. That is, Birkhoff justified using the resources of the consulate primarily for Dutch national aims, and only secondarily for the "thousands of Hollanders living in the Western States, who are still taking pride in the old Fatherland."74 Dutch Americans, particularly those in West Michigan, admired the work of the consuls. Ministers Van Swinderen and Loudon made well-publicized and well-attended visits to the region, in which they spoke of the deep bonds between the Netherlands and the Dutch Americans.75 Minister J.N. de Beaufort traveled through the Midwest in 1920. He was particularly impressed with his reception in Michigan. He wrote: "From all sides it was noticeable that visits from official

71 NA, 2.05.13. Rud C. Burlage to Roest van Limburg 16 Oct 1858. 72 Hans Krabbendam, "Consuls and citizens: Dutch Diplomatic Representation in American Cities, 1800- 1940." Paper for the AADAS 2003 conference in Chicago, June 6, 2003 Hans Krabbendam, "Capital Diplomacy: Consular Activity in Amsterdam and New York, 1800-1940," in George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam, eds., Amsterdam-New York: Transatlantic Relations and Urban Identities since 1653 (Amsterdam: VU Press, 2005). 73 2.05.13, No. 707. Jacob Steketee (Grand Rapids, MI) to A.C.D. de Graeff (Washington D.C.) 13 Feb. 1925; Jacob Steketee to J.H. van Royen (Washington, D.C.), 27 Jan. 1931. 74 2.05.13, No. 1207. George Birkhoff, Jr., (Chicago) to Weckherlin (Washington, D.C.), 4 Dec. 1890. 75 De Grondwet, 20 Feb. 1912.

92 representatives of the Netherlands have a great meaning for this region." 76 In 1928, a fourth Minister, J.H. van Roijen, visited Michigan to receive an honorary degree at Hope College. The proceedings of the event indicate the importance of Dutch history and ethnicity for those responsible for organizing the event. Hope bestowed the degree

In consideration of deep interest in and untiring effort for the men and women of Netherlands lineage scattered far and wide among the nations, who...count themselves fortunate and blessed in their heritage from the noble and high-minded Netherlanders...and in particular, because of such interest in and effort for the citizens of the United States of American of Netherlands descent. 77

Dutch Americans were thankful for the actions and symbolic meaning of the consular network. They called on the consuls to serve their own needs for ethnic identity. Dutch in the American West, East, and South, were isolated from each other and were more likely to relinquish ties with their Netherlandic heritage, but Dutch immigrants in the Midwest came together to preserve a sense of Dutch identity.

The Most Patriotic Americans The ethnic pride promoted by the Dutch consular network contributed to Dutch Americans self-portrayal as valuable members of the American nation. Viewing their ethnic group in light of recent immigration from southern and eastern Europe, Dutch Americans in the early and mid- twentieth century often downplayed their ancestors struggles with cultural adjustment in the United States. The same mythologies exist for most groups, with variations for non-whites. The Dutch praised their pioneer forefathers for their supposedly unparalleled and steadfast adherence to the American principles of individualism, hard work, and thrift. Frank Wakener wrote about the settlers of 1847.

The secret, from which their perseverance and their success must indirectly be explained, [is] that they had brought along a great spiritual capital from the old fatherland. Their spiritual capital was much greater than their material capital. And while the capital of money quickly diminished in the early days, and they sometimes suffered external poverty, they increased the capital of belief and perseverance and wisdom. Although they

76 Netherlands National Archives, Collection 2.05.13. No. 1117. Beaufort, 12 July 1920. Translation of "Van alle zyden werd er met nadruk op gewezen dat bezoeken van officieele vertegenwoordigers van Nederland eene groote beteekenis voor deze streken hebben." 77 2.05.13, No. 1119.

93 were they in those early days materially poorer, in the spiritual sense they felt more dependent on God, and through that they became richer by the day. From belief they received the strength to defeat the giants of the forest, to persevere through trials, to defy menacing dangers, and to bare privations.78

Dutch pioneers were thus pictured as great American patriots and as the leading contingent of a model immigrant group. In 1960, Adrian Van Koevering, the editor of the Zeeland Record, and a descendent of early settlers to Zeeland, Michigan, summarized a common mythology of the Dutch pioneers when he said:

It is doubtful that there ever was any other people who lifted themselves, as it were by their own bootstraps, out of the slough of oppression, ignorance, and poverty into the realm of civilization, independence, and affluence as quickly and thoroughly as did these Dutch folk of unique dress, custom, and manner.79

In Van Koevering's view, one was Dutch by blood, faith was required to be Reformed, but hard work made an American. Similar overtures to the good deeds and American character of Dutch pioneers were routine at commemoration festivals and in ethnic publications. At Holland, Michigan's Founder's Day celebration of 1937, Rev. Samuel Zwemer (RCA) described the Dutch Americans as the most worthy, patriotic, and hard-working of the nation's immigrant groups. "The Pilgrim Fathers of Michigan," he said, "were loyal, one-hundred per cent Americans from the day when Van Raalte met Judge Kellog of Allegan. The Hollanders were never hyphenated Americans, but loyal citizens with only one flag - the Stars and Stripes."80 With these words, Zwemer forwarded the half-century old metaphor, which likened the Dutch pioneers to the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. His use of "one- hundred per cent American" reflected a linguistic legacy of the World War One era, when the national loyalties of U.S. ethnic groups had been questioned. In a few short paragraphs, Zwemer

78 Frank Wakener, “Aan mijn Vriend Dutchman” in De Gereformeerde Amerikaan, (1897), 284-286 (285). Translation of "Het geheim, waaruit hunne volharding en hun welslagen middelijk moet verklaard worden, ligt daarin, dat zij een groot geestelijk kapitaal uit het oude vaderland hadden medegebracht. Hun geestelijk kapitaal was veel grooter dan hun stoffelijk kapitaal. Er terwijl het kapitaal aan geld in den eersten tijd spoedig verminderde, en zij uitwendig soms armoede leden, vermeerderde het kapitaal van geloof en volharding en wijsheid. Werden zij in den eersten tijd stoffelijk armer, in geestlijken zin gevoelden zij rijker van dag tot dag. uit het geloof hebben ze kracht gekregen om de reuzen van he woud te overwinnen, om in de beproevingen te volharden, om de dreigende gevaren te trotseeren, om de ontberingente verdragen." 79 Adrian Van Koevering, Legends of the Dutch: The Story of a Mass Movement of Nineteenth Century Pilgrims (Zeeland Record Co. 1960), xiii. 80 Samuel Zwemer, "Perpetuating our Heritage" (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1937). Zwemer Family Papers, H88-0212.

94 brushed aside any consideration of struggle or conflict on the Dutch immigrant path to American citizenship and identity. It was natural for Zwemer, as it had been for others before him, to join the narrative of American exceptionalism with the pre-existing belief of the Dutch as God's chosen people. The story of Dutch immigration could then be painted in the simple terms of a flight from religious persecution into the arms of American freedom. But these proclamations of ethnic achievement and patriotism pale in comparison to the rhetoric delivered by Holland, Michigan's Gerrit J. Diekema. Never was there a more unambiguous defender of Progressive Republicanism than Diekema, a lawyer turned politician who even bore a superficial resemblance to his hero, . Diekema believed deeply and completely in the superiority of the Dutch race and the American nation, and local Dutch Americans loved Diekema because he told them what they wanted to hear. "The Hollander", he declared, "is naturally a conservative patriot." A Diekema audience also learned that the Dutch American pioneers were not only "Pilgrims" but were "Puritans" who were "worthy successors of William of Orange.81 In one of his more creative flourishes, Diekema described his deep admiration for the character of early Dutch Americans. "Courageous, patriotic men they were; the word "fear" was not in their vocabulary. They were not policy men, good-Lord, good-devil men, namby-pamby men, smooth, oily, crafty, pliable men, small-talk, parlor men; they were strong, stern and rugged men, men who gave battle, men who did things, irresistible men." 82 With words like this, Diekema made sure no one misunderstood his message about the patriotism and contribution of the Dutch. Van Koevering, Zwemer, and Diekema represent just a few of the scores of Dutch American speakers and writers whose stories of their ethnic group's participation and contributions to the nation gave Dutch Americans a sense of acceptance and place. According to Norwegian historian Orm Overland, immigrant groups in America have used three types of myths (foundational, ideological, and sacrificial) to form the backbone of their calls for acceptance. Foundational myths emphasize a group's participation in the origin of the nation, and ideological myths stress acceptance of the founding principles of the nation, while sacrificial myths retell the story of ethnic

81 Gerrit Diekema, "Holland Emigration to Michigan: Its Causes and Results", 1918. HMA, Colleciton T88- 0055. 82 Gerrit Diekema, "Fruits of the Colonization for the Present Generation", undated. HMA, Collection T88- 0055.

95 blood spilt in a nation's formational wars. The Dutch Americans have been known to use all three types of myth.83 By the early twentieth century, Dutch Americans had almost entirely rejected the belief that citizenship had an ethnic component. However, ethnic identity still played an important role in national identity, since it was the contributions of the ethnic group which justified its place in the nation. Migration had split the ethnic component of national identity from the civic. Scholte's comment, that yes, a Dutchman in America ceases to be Netherlander turned out to be true. And Dutch Americans also learned that ceasing to be a Netherlander did not entail a rejection of Reformed identity. Again, Scholte had been right on this second point. Indeed, the Reformed faith thrived on American soil. By appealing to the actions of past generations, Dutch Americans sought to justify their group's status as true patriots. With citizenship conceived of in terms of "constitutional patriotism", an group need to highlight its actions. The question that mattered was not, "Who are you?", but "What have you done?" The zealous application of mythologies of contribution reflected the sense that Dutch Americans now viewed citizenship in terms of their ethnic group's past actions and behavior, and not in terms of ethnicity itself. Like other European immigrant groups at the time, they sought acceptance as Americans who contributed to the nation.

83 Orm Overland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities: Making the United States Home, 1870-1930 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000). Hans Krabbendam, “Dutch-American Identity Politics; The Use of History by Dutch Immigrants” Lecture Presented at the Van Raalte Institute, 18 September, 2003.

96 CHAPTER 4: A BLACK DUTCHMAN AND THE RACIAL DISCOURSE OF THE DUTCH IN AMERICA, 1865-1920

Sometime in the early twentieth century – the source is not clear exactly when – an old black man watched a late evening locomotive arrive at the Holland, Michigan station. With a screech, the train came to a rest. The release of its air brakes produced a soothing hiss, followed by a short “all clear” burst from the conductors’ whistle. The passenger doors jerked open and two travel-weary Dutch immigrants stepped through them to the dimly lit platform below. They had arrived at a small Midwestern city, which, as one might presume from its name, consisted for the most part of immigrants from old Holland and their descendents. On that dark evening, as the train moved out of the station, and its disembarked passengers entered waiting cabs or walked towards the glow of the new arc lights in the city center, the two newcomers scanned the emptying station for their uncle, the person they hoped would lead them to a new life in America. But the uncle was nowhere to be found. The anxious Dutchmen paced back and forth along the wooden-plank platform, arguing with each other about having missed an earlier train, maybe the 6:15 from Detroit or the 7:30 from Kalamazoo. Fortunately, an old baggage handler sitting quietly in the shadows had been listening to the two Dutchmen. In fluent Dutch he told them their missing uncle had been around earlier in the evening but he had left for home, and that he, the kind old porter, would take them to their uncle’s home. The Dutchmen accepted the offer, and the three started off. They had not walked a hundred yards when they passed under a street light and the two travelers saw for the first time, with astonishment, that their guide was a black man, his skin nearly as dark as the keys of a piano. This story of a Black Dutchman was passed down by a perceptive and witty second generation Dutch American named Ray Nies, who was fascinated with the peculiar characters of his hometown. Born in 1877, Nies was the fifth child of eight growing up in the all-American village of Saugatuck, a community along the Lake Michigan shore. The family eventually moved north to Holland, where Nies’ father Jan, a veteran of Sherman’s march across the deep South, decided to relocate his hardware store. Ray Nies, a keen observer and writer, grew up in his father’s store, selling hardware, fixing appliances, and watching generations of Holland citizens pass by his storefront window. As the years passed, “Nies’ Hardware” became “Nies and Sons”, and of the five sons once employed Ray was the only one who stayed on as his father dropped the final “s”

97 from the title. In time, father Nies retired, and passed on, Ray himself grew old, his wife died, and he retired and sold the family store. It was probably soon after that, around 1939, when Ray Nies sat down alone behind his typewriter in his rural home to recall the stories of his life. Among them was the tale of the black porter. The more Nies thought about the story, about how it had been passed down, the more he remembered. When the two Dutchmen noticed that their guide was black, Nies recalled, they asked him how it was that a black man could speak Dutch so well. The porter was well-prepared with a response. Yes, he thought, the black man’s answer, the punchline. Nies typed.

"Ja, jongen," he [the negro] said in their own language, "Yes boys, you see it's this way – America is such a wonderful country – when I first came here I was only a little boy, and I was just as white as you boys are. As I got older I began to turn first dark, and then black, and now, you see for yourselves how I am. And that's how you boys will be if you live here long enough. It's the way everyone gets who lives here a long time. The longer you stay the blacker you get. Yes, America is a wonderful country. Now, your uncle is not so black as I am, Ja, and I have learned to speak English too. Your uncle has not lived here as long as I have, but wait till you see him."

Stunned by the reply, the gullible immigrants entertained second thoughts about America, but the porter convinced them to go on and at least meet their uncle. Of course, when they got to their uncle’s house, they found that he had not turned dark after all. The porter’s joke played on an old theme about European misunderstanding of America. Since the Enlightenment, Europeans had entertained prejudiced notions of the new world based on the idea that geography and climate were responsible for shaping the physical health of living beings.1 By the twentieth century, these prejudices had given way to theories of social Darwinism and racial supremacy. For the black porter, this joke was a convenient way to get one leg up on the foreigners and to avoid telling his real life story, one almost as unbelievable as the myth he propagated. Nies's story derived from his own experiences. Although Nies does not give the porter a name, he does provide some clues about his identity. The black porter, he says, had begun his life in the South, but the ravages of the Civil War left him a lost, confused, perhaps orphaned child. A Union soldier, a Dutch immigrant from West Michigan, happened upon the boy and took pity on

1 Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism. Translated by Sharon Bowman. (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

98 him. When the soldier returned home to his Dutch immigrant family, he brought the young child along and then raised him as one of his own. The porter was an African American who had been raised as a Dutch immigrant. He had not arrived in the North through common channels, however, and he faced sharp challenges to his identity. Through the story of Siras Sill (Nies' black Dutchman) and his life in Holland, Michigan, this chapter explores the participation of Dutch Americans in a national discourse about racial and ethnic identity. Americans in the late nineteenth century showed tremendous interest in issues of race and ethnicity; they categorized people into racial hierarchies and debated which groups contributed the most to the nation. Class and race often combined in a volatile mixture. The Irish and Germans, for example, transitioned from a mildly sympathetic, accommodating stance towards blacks at mid-century to an opposition to blacks as a threat to their own status as "white workers."2 Unlike the Irish, the Dutch were seldom challenged on race or citizenship, nor did they develop much of a working class consciousness that demanded an opposition to blacks as a threat to their prosperity as wage workers. Suzanne Sinke notes astutely that for Dutch Protestant immigrants, "their background at the lower end of the economic scale in the Netherlands contributed heavily to a rapid adjustment to more fluid class relations, and a positive evaluation of the loss of standen [classes]."3 In short, Dutch Americans had little desire to reestablish any class distinctions that mirrored what they had experienced in the old world. Their interactions with African Americans reflected a combination of their traditional views on race combined with an American racial ideology that explicitly placed whites over blacks in the development of class consciousness. Dutch Americans, as Calvinists, spoke against the evils of slavery and avoided overt in the public sphere. Yet, by contrasting themselves with African Americans, Dutch Americans sought a stronger claim on a national identity shaped by race.

Blacks in the North Unlike antebellum blacks who had trickled into the Midwest as fugitives via the Underground Railroad, the child Siras Sill did not rely on aid from abolitionists or . He was different because he arrived in the North through an uncommon cross-racial adoption. In the

2 David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. (London: Verso, 1991).

99 immediate aftermath of slavery, freed blacks left their masters and wandered great distances across the South in search of relatives and loved-ones. Black domestic migration following the Civil War was a mass, confused movement to southern cities, to plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, and to new lands in and the West. In the midst of this movement, some blacks found their way to the North, albeit through diverse channels. For many, the army served as a conduit for migration. While the war raged and Union soldiers marched through the Confederacy, freed slaves and runaways attached themselves to Northern units. To avoid property rights entanglements, the military labeled these blacks “contraband” and put them to work. By 1864, some 40,000 “contraband” blacks were working for the Union military as cooks, laborers, and soldier’s servants.4 The congestion that blacks formed in some camps led officials to promote black resettlement schemes in the North. Some Union soldiers degraded blacks and repeatedly called them lazy and repugnant “niggers” who were unprepared for freedom. Indeed, as the war progressed, blacks became scapegoats for Union soldier’s frustrations. But Yankees were also humanitarians. They sympathized with stories about the evils of slavery and were curious to learn about the lives of freedmen. In a symbiotic relationship, Southern blacks aided Union troops by providing them with food and information about the enemy. In return, soldiers taught freedmen to read and write; they welcomed black storytellers and entertainers, and were drawn to African American spirituals. Some soldiers, usually officers, picked up young blacks as personal servants, and formed student/teacher or older brother/younger brother type relationships.5 Dear mother and father, the soldiers wrote, what wonderful companions the Negro boys were.6 But when the war ended, so too did these friendships. However, some soldiers adopted their black servants and brought them North. A Dutch American soldier from west Michigan, probably a devout Calvinist, could not bear to leave his assistant behind, and he took moral responsibility for caring for him. When the soldier returned in 1865 to live in a village near Holland, Michigan, his black child presented an obvious anomaly. First, rumors began to circulate that the returning soldier was a sodomite and had abducted the boy

3 Suzanne M. Sinke, "Transnational Visions of Gender and Class in Dutch Migration," in Hans Krabbendam and Larry J. Wagenaar, eds. The Dutch-American Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert P. Swierenga (Amsterdam, VU Press 2000), 4 Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (Washington D.C., 1918), 114. 5 Joseph T. Glatthaar. The March to the Sea and Beyond: Sherman’s Troops in the Savannah and Carolina Campaigns. (New York: New York University Press, 1985), 62-63. 6 Bell Irvin Wiley, “Billy Yank and the Black Folk” in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1951), 35-52.

100 for sexual purposes. Eventually, the soldier married a local girl and together they began a family. At that time, the couple’s adopted son was the only non-white person living among the five thousand Dutch immigrants in West Michigan. The absence of blacks or other non-white persons was not a result of Dutch intolerance, but was characteristic of the region. Fueled by immigration from Northwest Europe, New England, and Canada, the state of Michigan had experienced tremendous growth in the two decades leading up to the Civil War. Michigan’s black population had always been minor, however, at just under 2,400 in 1850. It climbed to 16,000, or 2.7% of the population in 1860, and then halved by war’s end. During the entire nineteenth century, there were never more than forty blacks in the Dutch-dominated Ottawa County at one time, and most of them were in the city of Grand Haven, fifteen miles away from the nearest Dutch immigrant village.7 The black child entered a Dutch immigrant community intent on maintaining its Calvinist religion and associated lifestyle, while yet becoming part of the fabric of its new fatherland. The general region of Dutch settlement, the “kolonie”, was a patchwork of cultivated fields, thick woods, and nascent villages laid out in a ten mile radius from the city of Holland. The children of Overisel, perhaps the most isolated of the Dutch villages, still made annual Christmas sleigh rides to the city. The villages of Drenthe and Vriesland could in 1871 witness the arrival of an “iron horse”, the first locomotive on Holland’s new rail line. Each village would have provided the boy with a similar upbringing full of hard work and biblical piety. Every Sunday his family attended church. In the 1870s, the Reformed Church of America (RCA) was the most dominant presence. At Sunday school, the children learned the Heidelberg Catechism, they read the Bible, they were taught the tenets of Dutch Calvinism as laid down in the Synod of Dordt. His family might have been members of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), a more conservative branch of Dutch Calvinism, which warned of the influence of American practices, stressed Dutch language services, excluded all worship songs but the , and in refusing to send its children to public schools, built its own Christian ones. As early as 1855, just eight years after the first immigrant wave landed, the still cash-starved Dutch gave liberally to foreign missions and laid the keel of a missionary ship. They continued to support missionaries abroad, famine relief, and other benevolent causes. At any rate, religion was central to the lives of these Dutch immigrants, and it played a substantial role in the relationship between the black child and his adopted family.

7 Negroes in Michigan During the Civil War. Published by the Michigan Civil War Centennial Observance Commission. (Lansing, Michigan, 1966,) 20-21. Census Report of Michigan, 1864: 606, 633.

101

Historical Memory of Dutch Relations with Blacks The Dutch had some experience with blacks, but adoption across racial lines was unprecedented. The Dutch might have been aware that in centuries past their historical countrymen in the Netherlands had controlled the slave trade. The Netherlands itself had never been an importer of slaves, however, and the country’s traditional views of blacks were more based on images of North African “moors” than sub-Saharan blacks. Besides, most of the Dutch immigrants in America had belonged to provincial farming families in the old country, and were not merchants in the ethnically diverse and religiously tolerant Amsterdam. Jacob Den Herder recalled Zeeland founder James Vande Luyster hiring a "negro" to instruct the pioneers of 1847 in how to properly chop down trees. Den Herder mentions that the black man was quiet but a good teacher. Den Herder and his Dutch friends must have been nervous about his presence, however, as they were "glad to see him move away after only a few week's stay."8 Like other European immigrant groups, the Dutch settled in the Midwest, and not the South, for the economic benefits of open land and rich natural resources, but also because they wanted to avoid the issue of slavery. The Dutch view of the South, and subsequently Dutch diplomatic interaction with that region, was shaped by views of slavery, blacks, and black labor. The Dutch consular agents in the South encouraged their countrymen to avoid emigrating to that region. The Dutch were not used to the weather, they said, the soil and the crops were foreign, and competition with the black labor would prove an impediment to a successful colony. Although the South had moments of attraction for Dutch investors, the Netherlands foreign service was content to maintain consistently minor relations in the region, urging caution throughout.9 In the 1840s, Hendrik Scholte had considered leading immigrants to , but turned against the idea because he wanted to avoid the "unholy" slavery.10 Writing in 1866, the Dutch consul in Galveston was more positive about his state of Texas. He was of the opinion that blacks were lazy and that white labor in Texas

8 Jacob Den Herder, "Life Sketch of Myself," at http://www.macatawa.org/~devries/JacobDenHerder.html. 9 Augustus J. , Jr., Slow Train to Paradise: How Dutch Investment helped Build American Railroads (Stanford Univ. Press, 1996) 10 J.A. Wormser, Een Schat in Aarden Vaten, Vol. II: Het Leven van Hendrik Peter Scholte (Nijverdal: E.J. Bosch, 1915), 192. Scholte considered Texas a strong candidate, but noted that those who find slavery unchristian, would be disappointed. See "Aanmerkingen betrekklijk Landverhuizing naar Noord-Amerika" De Reformatie, 1847, p. 63

102 would be rewarded.11 But before the Civil War, all other streams of Dutch immigrants also avoided slave territory. In 1857, a woman from , who was apparently of some means, was traveling around the United States when she came upon the idea of establishing a Dutch colony in Tennessee. From the house of the Frisian Worp van Peyma family in Lancaster, NY, she wrote that the prospects were strong in convincing New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin Dutch to move to the South. The winter lasted eight months in Lancaster, she said. Naively, she explained that the example of free laborers would bring civilization and Christian virtue to the South, perhaps defeating slavery in the process.12 The Dutch view of the South was shaped by a general condemnation of American slavery. The editor of the Schager Courant (of Schagen in ) drew on historical imagery to compare Lincoln to William of Orange, whose life and martyrdom served God's will of fighting against slavery. "Everyone feels presently that the Americans are also our brothers," he wrote.13 In an earlier article, the same editor had blamed slavery not on Americans, but on their predecessors, the English, French, and Spanish, who had introduced it into the new world.14 The role of the Dutch as slave traders he conveniently ignored. Before the Civil War, the Dutch Reformed churches had taken no clear position on the subject, but during the war they became increasingly influenced by the anti-slavery movement. Albertus Van Raalte, founder of Holland, Michigan, and minister at Holland’s First Reformed Church, used his pulpit to denounce the joint evils of slavery and secession. Some felt Van Raalte had overstepped his bounds as a religious leader addressing political issues. But religion, politics, and slavery had become increasingly intertwined. Since the early 1830s, abolitionists had tried and largely failed to win over Northern churches as vocal opponents of slavery. Religious institutions like the Reformed Church of America recognized that they would have to respond to the humanitarian crisis of emancipation. Although most mainstream Northern churches came to the aid

11 J. Kauffmann in Galveston followed his younger brother to the U.S. in the 1840s, settling in Charleston before moving to Texas. E. Kaufman had planned on going to California for a year in 1848, and left his brother as acting Consul. But the brother never returned; it was rumored he had died. As of 1854, J. Kaufman, who was serving as the Consul for Bremen, Saxony, and , also held the Dutch consul in his brother's stead. Wanted to be named full consul and take a leave of absence in Europe and name an acting consul in his place. Rud C. Burlage to Roest van Limburg, 18 May 1866. Burlage believed white immigration would do well and Texas would grow. J. Kaufmann to Rud C. Burlage, 20 April 1866. 12 Ms. Storm writing 15 Dec. 1857, republished letter in Leeuwarder Courant, 14 Oct. 1857. 13 Schager Courant, 4 May 1865. Translation of " Allen gevoelen thans weder dat ook de Amerikanen onze broeders zijn." 14 Schager Courant, 20 April 1865.

103 of freedmen during the war, the roots of their support were often not deep enough to sustain aid through reconstruction.15 When the war ended, abolitionists and an assortment of philanthropists, churches, and benevolent societies came to the aid of the freedmen, but the newly empowered federal government, through the Freedman’s Bureau, took over the largest share of responsibility for aiding blacks. Therefore, the war did not lead to a greater role for Christian institutional humanitarianism, rather it signaled a victory for expansive federal government. Before the war, charity and aid to the unfortunate was largely in the realm of private organizations and religious groups. By 1866, when Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull presented a Freedman Bureau bill before congress, opinions on this matter had changed. A supporter of the bill explained in a New York Times article that federal government aid to Negroes would be an unprecedented use of central power. Although this “national almshouse”, the writer noted, would be inefficient, it was absolutely necessary because existing aid societies could not possibly take care of four million blacks thrown into dependency. The answer, the supporter argued, was for individual, societal, and governmental aid to address the problem jointly and in such a way that blacks didn’t become forever dependent on aid.16 Northerners largely agreed that part of the new deal of emancipation would be to keep blacks from migrating north. The Freedman’s Bureau encouraged blacks to remain in the south. Those who came north despite this met mixed reactions, from unwelcoming to sympathetic. Post- Civil War migration did not break down racial boundaries, but in many ways established them even deeper. In the three years following the war, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and Michigan voters all rejected Negro Suffrage referenda.17 Despite African Americans political gains in the 1870s and 1880s, Northern whites “abandoned their commitments to civic nationalism” and returned to a society based on racial segregation.18 An emphasis on “whiteness” marginalized blacks who could only labor in certain prescribed fields. The first black immigrants to the North were servants of a kind that fed old-south nostalgia. In many cases a Northern black as the sole representative of his

15 John R. McGiven, The War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830- 1865. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). 16 New York Times, 11 March 1866. 17 Robert R. Dykstra and Harlan Hahn, “Northern Voters and Negro Suffrage: The Case of Iowa, 1868” in The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 32, No.2. (Summer 1968), 205. 18 Edward J. Blum. Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 6.

104 or her race in a city or county. In 1870, even the black population of Chicago, roughly 3,700 persons, comprised less than one percent of the city.19 Meanwhile, Northerners and foreigners hoped to invest capital in the South and profit from a new market economy. Although wages were low in the South, there was a significant demand for skilled labor, a niche that perhaps European immigrants like the Dutch could fill. But any attempt to settle Dutch immigrants in the South had to overcome the conventional wisdom that labor there was better suited for blacks than whites. John W. Lapsley, an Alabama iron company owner who tried in 1869 to convince Albertus Van Raalte to establish a colony in the South, sought to put such claims to rest. He described blacks as having a "well-disposed" nature, content and without avarice and ambition. Laplsey also opposed the conventional wisdom that the West was more suitable for growth. The South, he said, had a healthy climate, the land was better for agriculture there, and industriousness was rewarded. 20 The consuls were fairly positive about the chances for trade with the South in the Reconstruction, but they continued to oppose migration to the area. When asked about the potential of Florida as a region for immigration, Consul General J.R. Planten explained that Florida was one of the last places in the Union that he would recommend for Dutch immigrants. Florida's soil was poor, he said, and the opportunities there were more conducive to black labor than white.21 The consul in New Orleans, meanwhile, wrote that "What is said of Florida applies equally to all the Gulf States."22 He urged extreme caution because speculators were quite active in promoting land booms. Immigrants should view the lands themselves before purchase. Immigration agencies in the Netherlands echoed the same warnings. Even the Northern half of the Southern region could be too hot for Netherlanders to work during the day, and some parts were unfit for settlement because of the "black problem." 23

The Life Course of Siras Sill

19 Reed, Black Chicago’s First Century, Vol. 1: 1833-1900, 178. 20 Frank E. Dykema, "An Effort to Attract Dutch Colonists to Alabama, 1869," The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 14, No. 2 (May, 1948), 247-261. 21 Buitenlandse Zaken, 2.05.13, No. 1176. Consul General J. R. Planten (New York), 15 April, 1890. 22 A. Schieber, 1 Jan 1890. 23 "In de noordelijke helft van deze zone [South-East] zijn enkele zomerdagen afmattend warm en voor Nederlanders ongeschikt om in de middaguren te werken....Enkele deelen zijn ongeschikt voor vestiging door het negerprobleem" (Mededeelingen van de Nederlandsche Vereeniging Landverhuizing #6: "Landverhuizing naar de Vereenigde Staten van Amerika" (1915: NA Voorloper N.E.D. 1913-1953, folders 13-26)

105 In 1873, Siras moved to the city of Holland.24 Years pass, however, before any record appears of Holland, Michigan’s adopted black child. The 1880 census lists just one African American in Holland. He was Siras Sill, thirty-five years of age, born in New Jersey, and a farm worker. Could this be the Dutch-speaking porter, the child who had become a man? If so, this Siras Sill was born in the wrong state to have been a slave. He was also slightly too old to fit Nies’ story exactly, since at thirty-five years of age, the Siras of the census would have been born in 1845, and thus a teenager during the Civil War. But there are good reasons to speculate that this source is not a red herring. First of all, Siras could have been younger than what the census taker noted. Perhaps the census taker had only guessed his real age. Or, more probably, Siras himself might not have known his real age, a likely story if he were indeed an orphaned child and a former slave. Even the well-educated former slave Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, was uncertain about his own true birthday. The census indicates that Siras also did not know where his parents had been born. His parents’ birthplaces are listed as “unknown”, which fits his orphan status. The 1880 census gave options for race, limited to the contemporary ethnic understanding: “Asian”, “Indian”, “Chinese”, “Mexican”, “Mulatto” and “Black.” Next to Siras’ name is a thick, capital B for black. As an adult Siras Sill learned how to navigate this Dutch American town. To earn a living, he became a trusted live-in servant of Manly Howard, a Yankee entrepreneur who had come to Holland as a young married man in 1854. Although his eyesight was failing him now in 1880, Howard remained an important businessman in the community. He once ran a lumber business and mill. He had helped to get funds to dig a harbor and bring a railroad to town. He was known as a lawyer, an insurance agent, and in general, one of the respected and successful western renaissance men of the period. He was elected to the Michigan State House of Representatives in 1862 and 1864, and as a war Democrat he earned the ire of his party by voting for the abolition of slavery and supporting the 15th amendment. Representative Howard refused, however, to support a bill granting Congress the power to enforce the new anti-slavery law.25 Such were the mixed emotions and political considerations of the period. At any rate, Manley Howard didn’t object to having a black man live on his farm and work for him. He had had domestics in the past, and the arrangement fit well his capitalistic mindset.

24 Holland City News, 8 June, 1889. 25 American Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men with Portrait Illustrations on Steel, Volumes I-II 1878:

106 The Manley’s must have welcomed Siras and trusted him. Siras lived with Howard, his English wife, their fifteen year old daughter Saddie, and a sixteen year old servant girl, Katie Klaus. In 1881, Howard made repairs on his house and tidied up his property. For an aging man with poor eyesight, a servant would have been most helpful. Indeed, Siras would likely have done most, if not all of the actual physical work.26 The Manley house sat on a ridge on the north side of Black River, just as it opened up into Black Lake. The river marked the boundary, both physical and political, between Holland City to the south, and the more rural Holland Township to the north. It was a slow-moving river, dark as befitting its name. Siras probably learned the flow of the river, and with it, the rhythm of the town. Most every Spring, when rains came and the snow melted from the rooftops and the corn fields, the river filled to its banks, and the lumber dealers, who owned sawmills upstream, found it easier to navigate their bark-laden scows down the river. But when the freshet was too severe, the current battered the River Street Bridge threatening to destroy the only link across the river. When Siras went into town to pick up some nails or a bag of flour, or just to deliver his boss’ mail, he always followed the same route, always crossing the bridge. The sawmill, the hardware store, the butcher shop, everything in short, was in town, just across the river. The bridge itself was a wooden structure, and needed frequent repairs. Its wooden ramps were constantly sinking in the mud, and the boards showed wear from horseshoes and wagon wheels. In 1882, a new bridge was built under the fundraising efforts of William H. Beach, a Holland mill owner. For Beach, this was a calculated move. If the bridge was out, the north side residents could not patronize his mill. Crossing the new bridge for the first time, Siras stopped to read a new sign. Since he had been educated in a Dutch community, his literacy, especially his biblical literacy, was quite strong. The sign on the bridge carried the words of a new ordinance, declaring that there would be a fine of five dollars for “driving over the bridge across Black River at a pace faster than a walk.”27 Siras came down from the bridge and followed River Street through the industrial section of town. Most days, as he entered town, Siras could be sure that many sets of eyes were following him: grungy-looking sailors at the wharf awaiting an arrival from Chicago, an errand boy on a bicycle carrying the mail uptown, and a stock room clerk peering out of a factory window. Siras

26 Holland City News, 14 May 1881. 27 Holland City News, 8 Dec., 1883.

107 then shuffled passed the terrible stench of the tannery, where pig-skins were dipped in tannic acid derived from Hemlock bark, the familiar factory whistles signaling the hour, and a couple of horses tied up at the livery. When he reached the main street, Siras turned left, or west towards a row of red brick merchant buildings. If school was out, he had probably already attracted a gang of small boys who followed him as a curiosity. Although he was accepted, Siras was daily reminded that he was different. As the decade of the 1880s began, Siras turned thirty-five, nearly the same age as his Dutch city. Since its founding in 1847, the hard-working Holland had served as a market town for the region, but on a regional scale, it was admittedly a backwater. As Siras entered middle age, a series of lakeshore resort hotels opened to the west of Holland and promised to quicken the step of the city. Siras also learned that the hotels would recruit black waiters. There is no indication that he ever worked there. In 1880, a year after the Lyceum Hall opened downtown, it hosted a minstrel show with a cast of former slaves, but Hollanders were disappointed in their ability to display the Southern life. Before automobiles made for a quick day in the countryside, west Michigan lakeshore resorts provided white-collar Chicagoans with a welcome escape from the fast-paced Windy City. The Graham and Morton Line steamers plied daily between Chicago and Holland, and tickets cost only a dollar. The summer season at the hotels ran from May to September, or as long as the warm weather and cool lake breeze allowed guests to enjoy themselves. Every summer from the 1880s until the late 1920s, Holland’s normally quiet, cold, and barren lakeshore was transformed into a gossipy hive of sunbathers and children with dripping ice-cream cones. From on top of dunes, one’s eyes could follow the Lake Michigan steamers as they slipped through the channel into Black Lake and unloaded their passengers, some on the north side where a hotel had been built at Ottawa Beach, others on the south side, at Macatawa Park. If Siras ever visited he would have seen an environment completely foreign to the pious village of his youth. Tucked in on the leeward side of the sand dunes that run along the coast, 100-room resorts, Ottawa Beach Hotel and Macatawa Park Hotel offered relaxation, freshwater bathing, entertainment, and excellent dining. Merchants of all kinds came to serve the guests’ appetites. There was “Professor Baily” a man who fashioned himself a “world famous swimming teacher” one summer and a “ King” the next. Chautauqua series kept interested the intellectual crowd. Chicagoans who could afford extra luxury, like L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of , formed

108 neighborhoods of cottage-dwellers in the forested sandy soil apart from the hotels and public beaches. The Chicago and West Michigan Railroad, whose railroad spur fed the resorts from the east, with daily shipments of fresh guests and fresh produce, proudly called Macatawa Park the “” of Michigan.28 In 1885, the first blacks arrived at the resorts. The “colored camp” set up in a shady grove next to the gardens, skating rink, and vegetable tents. If Siras visited the camp, he might have seen flashbacks to his childhood in southern black churches: a strong-voiced revivalist preacher and a full choir praised the Lord each day for two hours in the morning and again for an hour and a half in the afternoon. The traveling congregation requested ten cent donations which would be passed on to church construction project in Allegan, MI. As one might expect, the southern revivalists were greeted as a curiosity and received large crowds. 29 Contrast this image of white, middle-class Chicago and Michigan vacationers, lounging on the beach of a Dutch immigrant community, gladly pausing to watch black visitors sing gospel, with nearly any image of black/white relationships in the post-war south. Southerners in the nineteenth century had tried all sorts of schemes to rid themselves of black workers, including recruiting immigrants to till their fields and hiring native whites to serve as domestics. But immigrants struggled to adapt to the Southern environment and they demanded more compensation than black workers. Meanwhile, white domestics were difficult to find because of a stigma to servant labor.30 Northern whites had a more romanticized ideal of race relations, one that often conflated hospitality and racial hierarchy. The revivalists were not the last of their race to visit the lakeshore resorts as the nineteenth century came to a close and new one began. Instead of barring blacks, resorts recruited them to serve as waiters and hosts. Like the revivalists, the seasonal black servants at Macatawa and Ottawa Park hotel had probably passed through Chicago on their way to Michigan. In fact, while Holland was in Chicago’s orbit as a resort community, the Tulip City was also influenced by the culture and changing demographics of the Windy City. As the center of the Pullman Railroad network, Chicago had the largest black population in the Midwest. By 1890, one half of Chicago’s black men, and three-quarters of its black women worked as servants in white establishments or

28 Holland City News, 4 July 1885. 29 Holland City News, 22 August 1885. 30 Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm so Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 352-353.

109 households. Fashionable hotels hired blacks as doormen, while restaurants hired them as waiters.31 Black women worked in laundries. Between 1880 and 1890’s Chicago’s black population grew from 6,500 to nearly 15,000. Blacks settled as families, often restricted to certain areas of the city, and by 1900, segregation was almost universal. Blacks in Chicago lived in a parallel world. They could shop where they pleased if they could afford it. Chicago was friendlier, more tolerant than the rest of the state. Chicago’s black civil war veterans provided leadership, but many were worn out, wounded or crippled from service. A small black elite consisted of physicians, barbers, and store-owners. Freedmen in Chicago, however, generally had low expectations and readily accepted jobs as servants.32 On the one hand, Siras was different from the new blacks in the North: he was raised in a Northern community and knew no other home. Although he was an accepted member of society, his job opportunities were limited to those of a servant. Like the black revivalists, Siras was a curiosity. The 1904 state census indicates that there was still just one black man living in Holland. Surely it was Siras. He lived in the first ward, downtown, perhaps near the train station where he had found employment as a porter. The resident was male, between fifty and sixty years of age. His city had grown a bit more diverse. In addition to the Americans, the Dutch, some Germans, a few and Poles, there was one Chinese. Holland was still overwhelmingly white. Siras remained until his dying days the only permanent black resident of Holland. In 1918, the controversial film “The Birth of Nation” came to the Holland theaters. Partial to the Ku Klux Klan and a white supremacist view of history, the film fed racial prejudice across the country. In some Northern cities, African Americans had filed complaints against the overtly racist piece. But the Holland City Council rested in their leather chairs knowing that no blacks in town would file a petition against the film’s showing. The reason for this was simple: there were no blacks in town. In fact, as a town of 12,000 persons, Holland stood out in all of the country for the only city of its size with not a single person of color. The editor of the Holland City News, the local weekly, could recall only one permanent black resident in recent memory. He was an “old grey-haired darkey” named Siras, and he was the “buss driver” for the City Hotel. The editor noted that “The traveling

31 Charles Braham, “Black Chicago: Accommodationist Politics Before the Great Migration”, in Melvin G. Holli, and Peter d’A.. Jones, editors. The Ethnic Frontier: Essays in the History of Group Survival in Chicago and the Midwest (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 214. 32 Christopher Robert Reed, Black Chicago’s First Century: Vol. 1, 1833-1900. (Columbia, : University of Press, 2005).

110 public all knew him quite well, and joked with him to their hearts content, and the citizens all had a good word for him.” 33 The image presented in this 1918 newspaper account fits that in Nies’ story of the black orphan who grew up to be a porter. The newspaper editor called Silas (a.k.a Siras) a “buss driver”, which is a porter who also steered a horse and buggy, whip in hand down the dirt road. Siras was responsible for greeting hotel guests at the station and then carrying their luggage to the six bedroom wood-framed City Hotel. When someone broke into the Hotel and stole a box of cigars, not only was Siras not a suspect, but his absence at the scene was noted as a reason for why thieves were able to succeed.34 Built in 1872, the hotel was one of the first structures to appear downtown after the city burned down the year before. It was located downtown on Eighth Street, a quarter mile from the train station. The hotel purchased its first “buss” - as the editor called it - in 1882. The wooden, six room structure caught fire once, but that was put out quickly by the firefighters stationed just a block away. It was renovated in 1880 and again in 1892. It changed owners frequently. Siras might have been the longest serving employee, a fixture during these changing times. By 1889, when the newspaper report that he celebrated his 16th year in the city, he was already known as “the popular driver” of the City Hotel.35 By 1915, he had certainly labored long enough to be a recognizable figure not to just some, but all regular travelers to the city. Years later, the editor of the Holland City News remembered “a happy old colored man named Siles [sic] driving that bus and his hearty laugh could be heard all along quiet main street.”36

Conclusion: Acculturation and Segregation Although Siras was raised in a Dutch American immigrant community, he could not escape the racial stereotypes and prejudices of the Midwest. Nies noted that Hollanders generally treated blacks well, but for some reason, he thought, blacks never seemed to come to Holland or prosper there. The hard-working and independent Hollanders, Nies suggested, never had any need for black servants, and thus there was never the proper kind of employment for blacks in the area. Nies could not get past the that blacks were fit for certain work, either as waiters, servants, or porters. Blacks were supposed to serve whites, he felt, but Hollanders didn’t need any servants.

33 Holland City News, 7 March 1918. 34 Holland City News, 30 July 1887. 35 Holland City News, 8 June 1889. 36 Holland City News, 30 Jan. 1936.

111 Siras was unable break out of the role of servant. He had been a soldier’s servant, a household servant, and lastly a railroad porter. According to racial hierarchies of the period, this final occupation suited him well. In fact, the largest employer of black servants in America was the Pullman Car Company, founded in 1867. Originally, most trains in the country had seats but no place to recline. As passengers went on longer trips across the country, they demanded a place to sleep on the trains. Pullman gained success in operating trains with cars fitted with beds. When he began his train car business in 1867, Chicago’s George Pullman hired only blacks to fill the positions of porter, the onboard “Ambassadors of Hospitality.” Pullman recruited Southern blacks who could smile and bow; they also had to don uniforms and speak kindly. Pullman maintained this racial policy into the twentieth century. For many blacks, a position as a porter meant escape from poverty, a busy work life, and an improved social status. By 1917, Pullman employed twelve thousand black porters. Siras did not work for Pullman, but visitors to Holland could easily make the mistake of assuming such. From an economic standpoint, it is true, Holland never really needed African American laborers. Until the First World War, the city received a steady stream of immigrant labor from Northwest Europe, by and large Dutch. Indeed, the North in general was reluctant or perhaps relieved to rely on immigrant labor while poor blacks remained in southern fields. And Northerners were stubborn to change their ways. During and after the Great War, over one million Southern blacks, often in family units, participated in the “Great Migration” a domestic flow away from the failing farms, boll weevil destruction, and Jim Crow discrimination of the South and towards the promise of higher wages in wartime industries in Northern cities.37 But few blacks made their way to Holland, and none stayed for the long term. During the Second World War, when Holland’s factories won lucrative federal contracts and the city faced a labor shortage, business owners and the Chamber of Commerce purposely avoided recruiting African American laborers.38 It was limiting, but the occupation of porter fit Siras perfectly. It was a stereotypical occupation for a black man at the turn of the century, but it provided a steady income. More importantly, the job gave Siras a sense of power as an insider/outsider figure. Here at the train station, Siras could see people come and go, and no one would suspect his unorthodox upbringing. He could understand the Dutch immigrants in town, and even get a laugh at their expense once in a

37 Carole Marks. Farewell – We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. 1989), 2. 38 Holland City News, 29 Apr. 1943; 13 May 1943.

112 while. This was the ultimate role reversal. In a time when blacks were expected to doff their cap, ignore stares and hoots, look aside, not speak to white women, and stand aside for whites on the sidewalk, here was a black man who played a power game with white visitors. Society would not accept him outside of such roles, but he could use his own ingenuity and personality to make the best of it. What could be more pleasurable than that? To listen in on Dutch conversations and amaze foreign visitors. What a perfect occupation for a black man raised as a Dutch immigrant! By 1918, Siras was no more, and there were no blacks in this quintessential Dutch immigrant city. According to the city's newspaper, Siras had “moved out to a sand farm on the lake shore and died.”39 Not a particularly clear or endearing ending. By 1930, the census attests, the hotel had found a fitting replacement. John Smith, an African American born in Kentucky in 1877, was found listed as a hotel porter.

39 Holland City News, 30 Jan. 1936

113 CHAPTER 5: DENOMINATIONAL IDENTITIES AND THE PEAK OF DUTCH AMERICA, 1900-1920

In the early twentieth century, many Dutch Americans defined themselves by which Christian denomination they belonged to. Denominational identities were all-encompassing worldviews, which incorporated religious, ethnic, and national identities within an institutional framework. The two main Dutch American institutions, the RCA and CRC, defined themselves in reference to each other. Those who were not in these two churches were considered "lost." This was, at least, the language used in the CRC's weekly periodical, The Banner, upon its re- publication of data from the federal census of 1910. The census showed that the number of Americans having either been born in the Netherlands, or born of parents born in the Netherlands was 293,574, with 88,031 in Michigan, of which 58,341 lived in Grand Rapids. After subtracting the Dutch American Catholics, the editors of The Banner concluded that there must be approximately 100,000 "lost" Dutch in America. This was surprising and disconcerting.1 By "lost" the editors meant "assimilated into the society", hence lost to the Dutch Reformed community. For Dutch American Protestants, it was important to belong to a denomination, even if it was not the "correct" one. From the RCA perspective, Gerhard De Jonge agreed that nothing was worse than "op de fence te zitten", to sit on the fence between the two denominations. Reformed Christians after all were supposed to have solid fundamental beliefs. 2 The RCA was a larger, older denomination than the CRC, but if one subtracted the RCA congregations in the East (in New York and New Jersey), then the two Dutch American denominations began to match up in size and influence. In 1905, the RCA-West had 190 congregations with 177 ministers and 13,024 families. The CRC in the West, meanwhile, counted 141 congregations with 98 ministers and 10,834 families. As published in De Hope, these numbers ignore a few CRC churches in the East, which had joined that denomination in result of a union in 1890 between the CRC and the small "True Protestant Dutch Reformed Church," a body that had formed in a 1822 secession from the RCA.3 This omission partially explains the discrepancy between that figure and the data below.

1 The Banner, 5 Nov. 1914. 2 De Hope, 5 Feb. 1907. DeJonge, a minister at Vriesland, Michigan, at the time, was also an associate editor of De Hope. 3 De Hope, 11 Jan 1905. In 1906, the RCA West had 197 congregations, 195 ministers and 13,700 families, while the CRC West counted 143 congregations, 130 ministers, and 11,275 families. De Hope, 11 Dec. 1906.

114 Table 2: RCA West and CRC Membership Statistics Compared4

Churches Total Members RCA West CRC RCA West CRC 1875 78 26 n/a 8,065 1880 86 39 19,903 12,001 1885 92 65 21,555 21,156 1890 127 79 35,900 33,964 1895 166 121 46,888 47,349 1900 179 144 51,730 53,794 1905 191 165 54,021 62,572 1910 211 177 60,132 78,427 1915 240 223 69,310 86,799 1920 257 245 73,616 94,843

As the data show, the CRC in the 1870s and 1880s lagged behind the RCA West in the total number of congregations. CRC membership, however, more than doubled in the 1880s and equaled the numbers of its sister denomination in the West. The two churches competed for new members. New immigration from the Netherlands benefited the CRC more than the RCA. In choosing church affiliation, immigrants from the Hervormde Kerk tended to join the RCA, while Seceders and neo- Calvinists, whose churches merged in the Netherlands in 1892, both sent their members towards the CRC. Partially, this was because the Seceder church in the Netherlands had in the 1880s condemned the RCA for its position on Freemasonry. The immigrant’s choice between the RCA and CRC was oftentimes more practical than theological or doctrinal. The CRC, for example, was focused on local domestic issues, while the RCA promoted foreign missions. Able to choose from two denominations, Dutch immigrants could determine which lifestyle fit best for themselves, the more Orthodox CRC, or the more Americanized RCA.5 Some localities had only one Reformed church, and therefore did not allow immigrants the choice between the denominations. Dutch American women, however, often had little choice in the matter. In marriage, they followed their husbands to church. In Arnold Mulder's fictional Dutch American village, Harlem, a stereotype of the ethnic culture, "The day of the New Woman had not yet dawned...and the women religiously kept their hats on in church because St. Paul had said something about it not being

4 This data is taken from James Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1984), 222. 5 Hans Krabbendam, Vrijheid in het Verschiet: Nederlandse Emigraie naar Amerika 1840-1940 (Hilversum, the Netherlands: Verloren) 2006.

115 seemly for a woman to appear in public with head uncovered."6 Harlem ostracized women who married against the wishes of their fathers. And once married, the women obeyed their husbands like they obeyed the "Thirty-nine Articles" (sixteenth century Anglican doctrinal statements incorporated into Calvinism). As ministers, college professors, and writers, men dominated in the power structure of both the RCA and CRC. They thereby played a strong role in shaping Dutch American identities to match their gendered conceptions of ethnicity. Church doctrine encouraged traditional gender roles and male-headed households. The RCA's Women's Board of Foreign Missions, begun in 1875, was integral in supporting missionary activities the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Missionary zeal among RCA members peaked at the turn of the century, and Dutch American women served at missions in China, India, and the Middle East. The "more American" RCA first allowed female deacons and elders in 1921 but opposed the ordination of female ministers until 1979. The orthodox CRC, on the other hand, did not officially consider the issue of women in church office until 1970 and only came to a conclusion on the matter after twenty-five years of debate, stating that individual churches were justified in deciding the manner for themselves. This same 1995 decision in the CRC allowed individual congregations to appoint female ministers, although this has remained a hot topic of debate ever since. 7 Dutch Americans lived within denominational circles and sometimes behind denominational walls. Both the Dutch American understanding of the outside world, and the outside world's understanding of Dutch Americans was obscured by these religious boundaries. Henry E. Dosker, a Presbyterian who had grown up and was educated in Reformed Church circles, wrote about the Dutch American myopia: "Sometimes, I feel that the smallness of our Dutch life has given us a narrow understanding of all sorts of things. We forget that the Reformed movement is the Calvinist one, and that the Netherlands and Dutch Calvinism, while influential, hardly amounts to a drop in the bucket when compared to the whole."8 Calvin Seminary's Professor Foppe ten Hoor explained the dim view from the other side of the equation. "The American world hardly

6 .Arnold Mulder, The Dominie of Harlem (Chicago: A.C. McClurg Co., 1913), 337-338. 7 Information found on www.rca.org and www.crcna.org/pages/positions_women_office.cfm, Accessed 4 Feb. 2011. Edwin G. Mulder, "Full Participation A Long Time Coming" in Reformed Review vol. 42, no. 3 ( Spring 1989), 224-24 8 De Hope, 1 March 1905. Translation of "Soms gevoel ik dat de kleinheid van ons Hollandsch leven ons bekrompene begrippen gegeven heeft van allerlei dingen. Wij vergeten dat de Gereformeerde richtig de Calvinistische is en dat Nederland en het Nederlandsche Calvinisme, hoe invloedrijk ook, toch slechts een druppel zijn aan den

116 knows that our School [Calvin] exists. And how small she is in comparison to the great American world. Yet, she can indeed have meaning for this world."9 In the first decades of the twentieth century, Dutch Americans were strongly aware of their unique Dutch background and Calvinist calling within an American context. Their attitude for interaction with the world outside of denominational borders was directly influenced by the revolutionary ideas of the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was one the most famous Dutchmen of his era. He was a Protestant theologian, the founder of Amsterdam's Free University, and a professor and author who led the Anti Revolutionary political party. In 1901, he even became the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Kuyper's thoughts, particularly his concept of "sphere sovereignty", of the distinct responsibilities of the church and state under the design of an all- powerful God, profoundly affected the structure of Dutch society. Kuyper's influence came to Dutch Americans through his teachings, but arrived also in the immigrants who carried his vision. Continued migration from the Netherlands in the 1880s and 1890s allowed for the founding of dozens of new Dutch American communities, usually formed with a mix of fresh immigrants and second or third generations Dutch Americans. In an atmosphere of conscious Calvinism, influenced by Kuyperian currents, Dutch American communities grew and thrived. As Kuyper rose into the position of the Netherlands' prime minister, the Dutch looked outside of their borders to call on common ethnicity with the Boers in South Africa and with the Dutch descendents in colonial Indonesia. They celebrated flag and fatherland, the house of Orange, Dutch capital and progress.10 This capped a half-century progression towards national unification. In the first half of the nineteenth century, says the Dutch historian Hans Knippering, "the Netherlands was a state, but its inhabitants did not yet make up one nation."11 In 1900, Dutch nationalism and imperialism reached its zenith. New immigrants and letters from the old country provided the motivation for Dutch Americans to draw on a rising Dutch , a form

emmer, vergeleken bij het geheel." From 1903 until his death in 1926, Dosker served as a professor of church history at a Presbyterian seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, but kept in correspondence with colleagues in the RCA. 9 De Wachter, 17 April 1901. Translation of: "De Amerikaansche wereld weet nauwelijks, dat onze School bestaat. En wat is zij klein in vergelijking met die groote Amerikaansche wereld. Toch kan ze daarom voor deze wereld nog wel beteekenis hebben." Foppe Ten Hoor, born in Friesland, the Netherlands in 1855, graduated from Kampen Theological University in 1880. He accepted a call to a church in Grand Rapids in 1896 and joined the faculty of Calvin's Seminary in 1900. 10 Martin Bossenbroek, Holland op zijn Breedst: Indie en Zuid Afrika in de Nederlanse cultuur omstreeks 1900. (Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Bert Bakker, 1996). 11 Hans Knippenberg and Ben de Pater, De eenwording van Nederland : schaalvergroting en integratie sinds 1800. (Nijmegen, the Netherlands: SUN), 38.

117 of identity that paradoxically superseded national boundaries. With the Boer War as a rallying call, turn-of-the-century Dutch Americans experienced a rejuvenation in Dutch pride, an arousal of “ethnic consciousness.”12 For three years, from 1899 to 1902, news from South Africa dominated the headlines of Dutch American newspapers. In relating to the Boers struggle against the British, the Dutch Americans saw themselves engaged in a similar struggle to withstand the forces of the secular American society that threatened their Calvinist institutions.13 Dutch Americans imagined themselves as part of an international Dutch ethnicity, while simultaneously boasting the advantages of the loyalty to the American political nation. Overlapping demands on identity (American, Dutch, CRC, RCA, Christian, Calvinist, Republican, Democrat, mother, father, and fellow citizen, etc.) gave Dutch Americans in the early twentieth century much to think about and argue about in defining themselves. For Dutch Americans of this period, technological advances such as the telegraph, steamship, and railroad had brought the world to the village, and the Kuyperian response was to bring the faith of the village to world. By encountering the outside world head on, Dutch Americans developed a heightened sense of self-importance and self-identity. Within Dutch American circles, denominational identity remained of primary importance, and conflicts between the denominations helped keep alive debates about the nature of Dutch American identity.14 As the social psychologist Henri Tajfel explains, categorization sets the parameters for conflict, and in- group membership is itself sufficient in generating favoritism.15 The denominational division among Dutch Americans was a strategy for competition, for sorting each other out. When women married within the ethnic group, they typically followed the denomination of their husband, even if it meant switching Reformed Churches. The differences between the RCA and CRC were minor, almost invisible, and yet, these differences meant everything to those involved in the competition between the denominations.

12 R.P. Swierenga and J.W. Schulte, A Bilaterial Bicentennial. A History of Dutch-American Relations 1782- 1982. (Amsterdam: Octagon Books and Muelenhoff, 1982), 144. 13 Michael Douma, Holland, Michigan's Reaction to the Boer War (Unpublished B.A. thesis) JAH; Michael Douma, “Dutch American Identity during the Civil War and the Boer War,” in NL - USA: Four Hundred Years of Dutch American Relations, 1609-2009 (Albany, New York University Press and Uitgeverij Boom, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2009), 375-385. 14 Rob Kroes, The Persistence of Ethnicity: Dutch Calvinist Pioneers in Amsterdam, Montana (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992). 15 Henri Tajfel, Human groups and social categories: Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981).

118 Kuyper Visits Dutch America In October of 1898, Kuyper visited Princeton University and delivered a series of six lectures in which he expounded his thoughts on politics and religion. In the summer before Kuyper's arrival in the United States, leaders of Dutch American communities had solicited his appearance, asking if he could continue his East Coast tour with a visit to the Midwest. Kuyper responded in the affirmative. At his speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Kuyper met a "hearty and unbounded applause."16 In Grand Rapids, and in Holland and Chicago, Kuyper spoke before crowds of up to two thousand each. He gave well-received speeches in smaller Dutch American communities as well. For Kuyper, the tour of the American Midwest was a personal success. Writing from his room at the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, Kuyper spoke of the "Gloeiend ethousiasme" (glowing enthusiasm) shown him by the Dutch Americans. Only in the city of Pella had Kuyper been disappointed with a lackluster audience.17 Dutch Americans adored Kuyper because he provided them with an answer in their search for identity. Kuyper taught that the United States was founded upon Calvinistic principles, and that these principles had been born in Holland and delivered to colonial America by earlier Dutch immigrants and other true believers. Kuyper placed Dutch Americans center-stage as a world- historical people whose task was to deliver the true gospel message to the United States and the world. He encouraged Dutch American audiences to seek and defend American citizenship and freedom, and to recognize the hand of God at work in both nations, the United States and the Netherlands. Kuyper also freely mixed state and religion in his speeches. Flanked by two flags, one Dutch, one American, Kuyper told a Grand Rapids audience to defend the stars and stripes with their lives, "with the same devotion that your Holland ancestors were willing to defend their liberty and their religion."18 He also drew parallels between Dutch and American history, and addressed contemporary issues in light of these histories. He declared that as a Hollander, he was proud that the Americans had whipped the Spanish in the recent war in the ; William McKinley he compared to William the Silent.19 Newspaper reports of Kuyper's appearances in Midwestern cities indicate that the Dutch Americans were attracted to Kuyper and his message about the special role of the Dutch in

16 Grand Rapids Herald, 29 Oct. 1898. 17 George Harinck, ed. Mijn Reis was geboden: Abraham Kuyper's Amerikaanse tournee (Hilversum: Verloren, 2009), 55. 18 Grand Rapids Herald, 29 Oct. 1898.

119 America. Kuyperian thought shaped the denominational doctrines, but also helped define the boundaries of the churches. Dutch Americans heard in Kuyper's message what they wanted to hear, even when this meant interpreting an unclear message to their own ideological advantage. For instance, in the wake of Kuyper's speech in Grand Rapids, Dutch Americans in that city began debating their respected visitor's political persuasion. It began when The Grand Rapids Herald printed a few lines to the effect that Kuyper was most certainly not a Democrat, in the sense that he did not condone the views of the Democratic Party. The newspaper described Kuyper as a statesman from the old country who applauded democracy in the general sense of the term, Jeffersonianism, and the progressive spirit. The Chicago Tribune however probably more accurately represented Kuyper's views when it reported a week later that the respected Dutchman had expressed a dislike of Jeffersonianism and was more a of Hamiltonian.20 The Grand Rapids Democrat also disagreed with the Herald's earlier pronouncement. "He is a democrat", the paper declared unambiguously. According to the Democrat's editor, Kuyper had even stated that Hollanders should not vote for the Republican Party.21 But, despite these claims to the contrary, Kuyper's political positions were not clearly in line with either the Republican or Democratic Parties. For example, he often spoke of free trade - a long-standing Democratic platform - but then suggested protective agricultural tariffs for the Netherlands, something more in line with the Whig tradition carried on in the Republican Party. When the Grand Rapids Democrat followed with another article about Kuyper's political persuasion, titling the piece, "This Settles It" the article did not, in fact, settle anything. Neither political party drew Kuyper's full allegiance. The Democrat concluded, nevertheless that "...if [Kuyper] could study American politics for six months he would be the hottest kind of Democrat."22 Kuyper's tour increased his stature in the United States and bolstered his image among the Dutch Americans. It also awoke a Dutch ethnic consciousness. R.H. Joldersma of Chicago explained the effect of Kuyper's visit: "I recognized it fully: as Hollanders in this great city, we were indeed somewhat proud, and our Dutch blood flowed quickly."23 The Dutch American hosts also played up their "Dutchness" for their visitor. In a letter to Kuyper, dated June 30, 1898, Henry

19 Holland Daily Sentinel, 28 Oct 1898. 20 Chicago Tribune, 6 Nov. 1898. 21 Grand Rapids Democrat, 27 Oct. 1898. 22 Grand Rapids Democrat, 29 Oct. 1898. 23 De Hope, 12 Nov. 1898. (letter dated then...De Hope date unclear) Translation of " Ik erken het gul weg: we waren hier in deze groote stad als Hollanders wel ietwat trotsch, en ons Hollandsch bloed vloeide snel."

120 E. Dosker explained how a committee of six CRC and seven RCA members had together concluded to call Kuyper to the area. To encourage Kuyper, Dosker referenced the "Pilgrims of 1847", "Van Raalte's Kolonie", and the "Hollandsch-Amerikaansche landgenooten" (Dutch American countrymen), indicating a common national bond with the Dutch in the Netherlands.24 In Holland, Michigan, a banquet held in Kuyper's honor offered menu items such as "Coquilles of Sweet Breads a la Vrije Universiteit" and "Migon Filet aux Pomme de Terre Hollandaises." Holland's Gerrit van Schelven gave an address on the Pilgrim Fathers, and Rev. K. van spoke of the "Ge-amerikaanseerde Hollander" (Americanized Hollander).25 The long-term effects of Kuyper's influence on Dutch American thought were profound. Dutch Americans had traditionally stressed experiential piety, and ministers of both the CRC and RCA had taught their congregations to reject the world for a life in Christ. At the end of the nineteenth century, a conflict emerged in Dutch American religious circles between the introverted pietists and the extroverted neo-Calvinists. This conflict was "all-absorbing" and dominated pre- WWI Dutch American life.26 Both schools of thought believed in a distinction between Christians and unbelievers. Christians, they taught, should act militantly and be suspicious of others. But where previous generations of Dutch Americans had avoided contact with the secular, the modern, and the worldly when it threatened their faith, the Kuyperian or "Neo-Calvinist" position saw modernity as an opportunity for the growth of the Reformed faith in the world. From Kuyper, Dutch Americans learned to advocate a distinctively Christian approach to life, with the influence of Christianity in every sphere. The Reformed faith would no longer play defense; it would go on the offensive.27 The RCA and CRC competed for influence in spreading the Calvinist message.

The Nature of the RCA/CRC Divide In the early twentieth century, both the RCA and CRC faced rapid changes and struggled with the transition from Dutch to English. While the eastern branch of the RCA liberalized, its Western counterparts "sought to remain faithful to their theological and ethnic heritage while

24 Protestant Documentation Center, Kuyper, Colelction 154. Dosker (Holland, MI) to Kuyper, 30 June 1898. 25 Holland Daily Sentinel, 28 Oct. 1898. 26 James Bratt, The Reformed Churches and Acculturation, in Robert P. Swierenga, ed. The Dutch in American: Immigration, Settlement, and Cultural Change. (New Brunswick, Rutgers, 1985), 198. 27 James Bratt, "The Dutch Schools", in David F. Wells, ed. Reformed Theology in America: A History of It's Modern Development (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 135-152. James Bratt, "Abraham Kuyper: 150th Birthday Anniversary," Origins Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1987).

121 adjusting to the demands of modernity and American culture."28 The western RCA introduced hymns, gave women voting rights in the church, and updated its liturgy with a more joyful, less didactic form. For the CRC, continued migration complicated language issues and created layers of internal conflicts concerning Americanization and theology. Historian Henry Zwaanstra identified three types of CRC mindsets. Starting in 1890, the strongest group was the Confessional Reformed, who were critical of Kuyper. The second group, the Separatist Calvinists demanded separate schools and a degree of isolation. The American Calvinists, or Kuyperians, were more open to American life, and grew into dominance in the church as immigration continued. Zwaanstra places in the last category Henry J. Beets, J. Groen, and B.K. Kuiper.29 Henry Beets was a historian of the CRC who saw the years 1900-1915 as the "golden age" of his denomination. According to Beets, this was still a period of relative isolation for the church, the "little world in which our people lived."30 After 1915, Beets wrote, denomination loyalty was broken by schism, worldliness and American influences came into the church, and followers lost patience with deep theology and questions about fundamental truths. The church also became more English-speaking. The CRC first introduced hymns in 1935 and used an English-language hymnal. During the First World War, the church expressed an interest in national political affairs for the first time.31 While theological differences between two denominations were minor, there were significant differences in attitude, mentality and worldview. CRC members consistently described parts of the denomination with the possessive plural "our" as in "our school" for Calvin College. This collective perception is a key feature of a well-defined social group.32 Members of the RCA sometimes also employed the collective, possessive, pronoun, but had to justify the choice of language. For example, in referring to Western Theological as "our" seminary, the editors of The Leader wrote of a "profound feeling of gratitude [that] prompts us to the use of this possessive

28 Eugene P. Heideman, The Practice of Piety, xii. 29 Henry Zwaanstra, Reformed Thought and Experience in a New World: A Study of the Christian Reformed Church and its American Environment, 1890-1918. (Kampen, J.H. Kok, 1985), 69-70. H.J. Brinks, "The CRC in the 1930s: The Era of Henry J. Kuiper" Origins, Vol 12, No. 1 (1994), 34-41. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the dominating presence in the CRC was H.J. Kuiper. Kuiper took over this role from Henry Beets, the positive Americanizer. Kuiper in the 1930s feared the CRC's institutional weaknesses. The Depression and the Second World War limited institutional growth. As editor of the Banner, Kuiper took over as the authoritative voice of the CRC. He defended traditions, often without considering how to adapt them. 30 Zwaanstra, Reformed Thought, 86. 31 Henry Beets, The Christian Reformed Church: Its Roots, History, Schools and Mission Work A.D. 1857 to 1946 (Grand Rapids, Baker Books House, 1946), 85-86. 32 John C. Turner, "Social identification and psychological group formation." In Henri Tajfel, (ed.), The Social Dimension: European developments in social psychology, Vol. 2 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), 51-538.

122 pronoun."33 All in all, the CRC was perhaps more interested in following RCA news than vice- versa. This was because every time the CRC held a commemoration, it recalled the church's foundation through secession from the RCA. Historical commemoration in the RCA meanwhile naturally avoided talk of the events of 1857. Instead, Reformed Church writers divided their historical story-telling between a number of topics, including the formation of the RCA in New York in 1624 and the afscheiding in the Netherlands in 1834. The churches knew each other well. The CRC's Rev. W. Stuart, a guest at the RCA's general synod in 1912, said in this regard that "We need no introduction one to the other. Neither is there any need of telling of the work in the coming of the Kingdom either one of us has been doing, as we are constantly observing each other, though not always with the purest motives in the past."34 Novelist Arnold Mulder called the struggle between the two churches a "a civil war without an Appomattox", a one-hundred year verbal and literary contest on the frontier. "Endless books and pamphlets and magazine articles - endless in number in sometimes in word-yardage - have been published in two , with sometimes a liberal addition of Latin for impressiveness, to prove that one or the other was 'right' or 'wrong'."35 In refusing to again go over the arguments of the past, Nicholas Steffens36 (RCA) stated, "I think, that after the days of A.D. 1857 and A.D. 1882, we know where we stand, especially in regards to ecclesiastical positions. Who does not know it yet, shall never know it.37 As Steffens indicated, the two firmly established churches no longer had any need to debate the history of secession. Indeed, neither denomination gained from further debate, neither in their membership numbers nor in refining their doctrine. The churches continued to engage in conflict not so much because they were different from each other, but because they were so similar; they knew each other too well, and could hardly avoid each other. The conflict between the denominations no longer revolved around justification for the CRC, as it had in earlier decades, but it did draw on consistent themes that arose through historical interaction between the churches. When the Rev. John J. Hiemenga represented the CRC at the RCA Synod in 1914, he summarized the denominations' commonalties:

33 The Leader, 20 March 1907. 34 The Banner, 20 June 1912. 35 Arnold Mulder, Americans from Holland, 194. 36 Born in Emden, Germany in 1839, Nicholas Steffens emigrated to the United States in 1872 and served at RCA churches in Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa, before teaching at Western Theological Seminary from 1903-1912. In 1901, Steffens was a professor at Dubuque Theological Seminary.

123

We are one in faith. Our standards are the same. We all boast of our Calvinistic principles. Our history of the past is the same. Your ancestors were our ancestors; your children and our children grow up together and all become Americans. We look upon the Ref. Church as a manifestation of the body of Christ in this world; you look upon us as another part of that body. These facts have been mentioned repeatedly by our representatives at your meetings, and they have been emphasized by your esteemed delegates to our Synods. In the most important points we are one. Why then should we make so much of our differences and so little of our common heritage?38

Perhaps the best answer to Hiemenga's final question came four years later in an article by the RCA's Prof. J.E. Kuizenga, who stated that the real difference between the churches was not theological or doctrinal, but psychological and administrative.39 Members of the two churches were conditioned for suspicion. The leaders of the denominations, meanwhile, were unwilling to make serious calls for a church union because it would threaten the life of denominational institutions. Even though the CRC faced a severe shortage of ministers in the first decade of the century, none of their churches would consider calling a minister trained in the RCA.40 Too many lives and occupations were organized around the persistence of church buildings, denominational offices, and college professorships. Denominational loyalty meant never apologizing for one's faith. Few could admit the mistakes of the past. What confused outsiders, therefore, was that there were essentially no theological disagreements between the churches. Even Americans of Dutch descent today have little sense of the old arguments and have trouble explaining the division or why its persists. The CRC formed out of a secession which opposed giving up local control to a synod in New York, and out of a fear of American religious influences such as hymn-singing and public schools. The church grew because Dutch immigrants were turned away by the RCA's casual acceptance of members who belonged to secret societies. The rate of Americanization between the two churches differed greatly. But what did the RCA and CRC argue about during the era of peak Dutch-American consciousness? Answering this question is essential in understanding the boundaries of how the two denominations defined each other. Fortunately, denominationally-based periodicals from the

37 De Wachter, 18 Sept. 1901. Translation of "Mij dunkt, dat wij na de dagen van A.D. 1857 en A.D. 1882 wel weten waar wij staan, wat het bijzonder Kerkelijk standpunt aangat. Wie het nog niet weet, zal het wel nooit te weten komen." 38 The Banner, 18 June 1914. 39 The Banner, 14 Feb. 1918. 40 De Hope, 8 Jan. 1907.

124 era provide extensive commentary on the inter-denominational debates. The CRC and the RCA- West each supported their own English and Dutch language periodicals. The RCA's primary periodicals were the Dutch-language De Hope and the English-language The Leader, both published in Holland, Michigan. The Leader appeared for the first time in 1906, as a western counterpart to the RCA East's Intelligencer.41 In the CRC, De Wachter, published in Dutch first in Holland then in Grand Rapids, and The Banner, published in English in Grand Rapids, were the top defenders of the faith. All in all, these periodicals were more concerned with fighting the general trend (richting) of secularism in America than in fighting each other. For every article or editorial on the "sister" denomination, these periodicals published dozens of articles on topics such as world missions, Mel Trotter, Dwight Moody, and the anti-saloon leagues, indications that the underlying issue of the day was Americanization. It also shows that these periodicals were not obsessed with engaging each other in debate, and did so with some reluctance. The editors of De Wachter, for instance, essentially never mentioned the CRC's sister denomination themselves, but left the feuding to the "ingezonden" (sent-in editorials) section. At times, contributing writers tried to calm the dispute between the denominations. But a single article dealing with the division between the churches could have significant reverberative effects. According to De Hope, the conflicts in the Dutch American press represented the English saying "Hit 'm agin" [sic]. The editors of De Hope complained that the misinformation about the Reformed Church found in The Banner reappeared in De Heraut in the Netherlands, so that many Netherlanders thought the Reformed Church was full of Arminians and Methodists.42 Conflict begot conflict. In general, the CRC questioned the purity of the RCA's doctrine and church order, while RCA members accused the CRC-ers of a pharisaical attitude. Was Hope College not good enough, that the CRC had to form its own college? questioned the RCA. Was the union with the Reformed church in the East so troublesome that these seceders had to form an entirely new church body? From the RCA view, Calvin College was redundant, "as little needed as a fifth wheel on a wagon."

41 Until 1906, The Christian Intelligencer was the main English-language newspaper read by members of the RCA in the West. But news in the Intelligencer focused on New York. It did indeed print letters from RCA churches in the West, but as Nicholas Steffens said, these often appeared as "brieven uit den vreemde tot inlichting van de kerken in de Oosten." (letters from aboard informing the churches in the East). De Hope, 24 Oct. 1906. Other periodicals included De Gereformeerde Amerikaan published in Grand Rapids. 42 De Hope, 18 Jan. 1905.

125 [original in bold].43 And when the CRC criticized the RCA, the typical RCA response was to say that the CRC was no better, just twenty-five years behind in its development.44 Two church denominations sharing a common heritage could judge each other with pinpoint accuracy because they could see each other's smallest faults and hypocrisies.

Topics of Conflict The debate about Freemasonry remained a persistent source of friction between the RCA and CRC early in the twentieth century. The original Dutch American Freemasonry debate took place in the early 1880s. It was a bitter, drawn-out war, which led many orthodox RCA members to "convert" to the CRC. The issue resurfaced as the CRC witnessed in disbelief the RCA's continued acceptance of members who belonged to secret societies. When Hope College gave a honorary degree to Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, who, it had been made evidently clear in the press, was a Freemason, the CRC Minister Peter Jonker, took note. As a graduate of Hope College, Jonker questioned the decision of his alma mater. Roosevelt was of Dutch blood, and a member of the RCA in the East. Ministers in the RCA in the West called Freemasonry an evil, but none spoke out against it, or made any issue of Freemasonry in Roosevelt's nomination. Jonker complained that even a member of the board of trustees at Western Theological Seminary was a Freemason. He questioned whether the RCA no longer denounced Freemasonry at all. Jonker wondered, might secret societies now be welcomed in the RCA?45 Writers in the CRC were indeed concerned that the RCA Synod had passed over the issue of secret societies, allowing local churches to make their own decisions about them. The CRC summarized the events as follows: in 1880, the RCA had banned members from being in secret societies, in 1881 the church only declared that it had no sympathy for such, and by 1883 the church simply did not want to discuss the matter any more and called it an issue of agitation.46 The continued acceptance of Freemasonry was so odious to the Christian Reformed because it represented a threat to church authority, which the RCA refused to recognize or take seriously. If the RCA took an increasingly accommodating stance, it showed that it was also becoming less concerned with its own authority over the lives of its members. Reporting on the RCA in 1904,

43 The Banner, 28 Feb. 1918. 44 The Leader, 27 March 1907. 45 De Wachter, 31 July 1903. 46 De Wachter, 9 July 1902.

126 M.J. Bosma complained that "secret oath-bound societies are not alone tolerated, but actually helped and openly recognized and honored by office-bearers of the denomination."47 Fellow CRC minister, Jacob Noordewier feared the political influence of Freemasons and recommended readers of De Wachter to subscribe to the Christian Synosure, an anti-lodge periodical.48 As the debate about Freemasonry showed, it was important to patrol the boundaries of church order Writers of the two churches spent much time engaged in defense and covert offense of these boundaries. They often clothed their words in a spirit of outward cooperation but designed their attacks to uncover holes in the bulwarks of church order and authority. Perhaps the worst offense was to suggest the other church was approaching a secession within its ranks. The Leader showed concern with the "exceedingly modern, progressive, and startling" sounds of the CRC congregations, whose choirs and singing societies began signing Cantatas instead of traditional Psalms in weeknight concerts. "The Progressive element in that church," the paper noted, "may so crowd matters as to make it uncomfortable for others, and cause serious disagreements, if not a split among them."49 Naturally, the editor of The Leader, for his part, stated that he did not want to cause harm of the CRC, but these editorials tended to open old wounds. Even discussion about the possibility for denominational cooperation and ecumenicity, was, ironically, a chance to renew former disagreements. With the line "the Reformed need each other," John Van der Mey concluded an article in De Wachter in 1903 that called for greater cooperation between the churches. Particularly in Christian schools, Van der Mey said, there was opportunity to work together, and recent efforts in that regard appeared to be a positive new trend.50 The following year, Van der Mey suggested rules for cooperation between the churches. The new pattern of church organization, he said, should be to draw clear boundaries of control, as Christian missionaries abroad did with their concept of comity. One rule would be that if a Reformed or Christian Reformed denomination was already present in a community, the other church should not force itself into that community and compete for members. The churches should also be careful about calling ministers to communities, and by all means not support any malcontents. Van der Mey felt sorrow for conflicts of the past. "Nothing has been sadder," he said, than "to see than two

47 The Banner, 15 July 1904. 48 De Wachter, 3 June 1903. 49 The Leader, 27 Feb. 1907. 50 De Wachter, 12 Aug. 1903. John Vander Mey (1869-1933), born in Friesland, the Netherlands, graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1894, was minister at CRC churches in Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and Montana before returning to Calvin College and Seminary as an educational secretary from 1913-1932.

127 small congregations in one place, both wrestling to keep their feet in place, and therefore living in quarrel with each other."51 But Van der Mey was one of the most common critics of the RCA. In 1907, he spoke out against revivals and RCA participation in them. The RCA's De Jonge countered that, not all revivals are bad, nor were they necessarily of Arminian or Methodist character. A revival meant also a stress on doctrine, something like during the afscheiding of 1834.52 In 1908, Van der Mey engaged the RCA's Rev. John M. Van der Meulen53 in a newspaper controversy which indicated little of this spirit of ecumenicity. Van der Mey criticized Van der Meulen for allowing his church to host a social event. Van der Meulen responded with a full two- page editorial in The Leader, which stated, not without some irony, that he did not want to deal with a newspaper controversy. In the editorial, Van der Meulen countered that he knew of CRC churches in the neighborhood, which held frequent social events so late and so loud that neighbors of the church could not sleep. And yet after this jab, Van der Meulen also called on ecumenicity. About the CRC writers such as Van der Mey, he said "There is much better business possible for them than to be trying to pick flaws in a sister denomination which is also trying to save souls."54 Talk of ecclesiastical cooperation or reunion was usually accompanied by appeals to common ethnicity and heritage, and this appeared to offer the best chance for overcoming conflict. Yet, discussion of heritage was wrought with dangers because it inevitably led to a resurrection of past conflicts. Ethnic events such as the 60-year anniversary of Zeeland, Michigan, in 1907 provided occasions for common ethnicity to trump denominational divisions.55 As in 1907, the Christian Reformed Church celebrated the half-century anniversary of its birth, and drew on Dutch history and heritage in the process. But The Leader saw the CRC's Gedenkboek van het Vijftigjarig Jubileum der Chr. Geref. Kerk published that year as a renewed attack on the RCA, presenting an entirely new version of re-written history. After a few years of increasing talk of cooperation, the "line of battle" between the churches had to be drawn anew in 1907.56 It appeared to the RCA at this juncture that the CRC simply condemned all changes, and all progressive movements within the RCA, since their criticisms were so minor, yet so frequent. Was all change necessarily evil?

51 De Wachter, 16 March 1904. Translation of "Niets heeft droeveriger aanzien dan tween kleine gemeentjes op eene plaats, beide worstelende om op voeten te blijven en juist daarom gedurig met elkaar in onmin levende." 52 De Hope, 5 Feb. 1907. 53 John Marinus Van der Meulen born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1870, was a Hope College graduate of 1891. He served at various churches in Michigan, and as a missionary in Oklahoma. In 1908, he was a professor at Hope College and a minister at Hope Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan. 54 The Leader, 25 Nov. 1908. 55 The Banner, 29 Aug. 1907.

128 questioned the editor of the De Hope. "It is a wonder," he wrote, "that De Wachter does not demand that one can only count as Reformed if one follows the example of the fathers in clothing and manners."57 Many in the RCA must have been relieved that the leader of the CRC, Henry Beets, was an avowed Americanizer of the church, who held back little in his attempts to pull the denomination out of its isolation from others, and who did not fear change in itself. Beets was the most connected and powerful voice in the CRC, and he knew the CRC world inside and out. He had emigrated from the Netherlands to the Dutch hamlet of Luctor, Kansas in 1886 and became a dedicated Christian during his time there. After graduating from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1895, he spent four years pastoring in Sioux Center, Iowa, before returning for twenty years of service to churches in Grand Rapids. As editor of The Banner, Beets promoted Americanization of the CRC and sometimes called on cooperation with the RCA. In 1908, for example, Beets suggested that the Michigan RCA and CRC hold a joint mission festival, as the two denominations in the Great Plains states were known to do.58 The Leader wished Beets had been born fifty years earlier, so that he could have served to influence against the members of the early CRC who complained about such now-accepted practices as the singing of hymns. "We sincerely hope that our sister denomination will be spared a Secession on account of 'hymn-singing." The Leader continued, "Better consider how that one of fifty years ago can be healed"59 But yet the RCA still had plenty of displeasure for Beets, and none were as openly hostile to him as William Van Eyck. A local historian in Holland, Michigan, Van Eyck had aided Gerrit van Schelven in gathering historical materials and memoirs for the 1897 semi-centennial events. He had read the RCA's minutes, and had thought long and hard about the secession of 1857. In a book published in 1922, Van Eyck defended a view of the past partial to the Reformed Church. Van Eyck's polemical writings illustrate the RCA position at its most extreme, completely devoid of any restraints, and might give an idea of what others sometimes thought or felt but were unwilling to put into print. Van Eyck complained first of all that most writers defending the CRC merely assert that the schism of 1857 occurred, a fact which did not prove the correctness of the event. Further,

56 The Leader, 7 Aug. 1907. 57 De Hope, 1 Jan. 1907. Translation of "Het is een wonder dat De Wachter niet eischt, dat men alleen dan voor gereformeerd kan gelden, indien men ook in kleederdracht en manieren het voorbeeld van der vaderen volgt." 58 The Banner, 19 Aug. 1908. Pella also celebrated the 400th year of Calvin's birthday with a gathering of RCA and CRC. (De Hope, 27 July 1909. 59 The Leader, 24 July 1907.

129 Van Eyck ridiculed the CRC for claiming that it was the only true church on earth. Early CRCers, Van Eyck carried on, were "untutored, narrow-visioned radicals or extremists." Van Eyck sarcastically called Beets an "ambassador of Christ." About Beets and the CRC's Gerrit R. Hemkes, he wrote, "It is not possible to make a bigger failure of the work than those black-clothed writers have done..." In describing Beet's work, Zestig Jaren, Van Eyck such words as "ignorance," "slander", "libel", and "carelessness," and that in just one sentence on page 28-29.60 The literary war between the denominations was one manifestation of a divide that could be felt in many Dutch American communities. Clashing personalities were also to blame for the persistence of local conflicts. In Orange City, said Steffens, a "voortreffelijke harmonie" (excellent harmony) reigned between the two churches until a despotic CRC dominee and his church council refused to recognize the RCA as a sister church and accept member transfers from that church. According to Steffens, this was against the CRC's church order. RCA churches would not do this to CRC members who wished to transfer.61 Chicago's Henry Stob summarized a historical trend of the twentieth century, when he said that his ethnic kin in the CRC believed American religion was Methodistic, and that "Americanization of the church could only mean the dilution if not the dissolution of the Calvinistic faith." Members of the RCA, meanwhile, viewed Christian schools such as those of the CRC as separatistic and un-American.62 Troubles also existed at higher levels of church administration. Rev. Peter Moerdyke had been attending the RCA General synod for decades, and said that in the past, representatives of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches were welcomed and received in Christian spirit. But then came a day with CRC representatives arrived and interfered with the reigning harmony. Now, RCA representatives at CRC Synod were treated poorly.63

Who is More Calvinist? Another persistet source of discord between the churches was a debate about the nature of Reformed Calvinism. For both sides, "Reformed" was a sacred term. When the "Nederduitsche Gereformeerde Kerk" formed in Muskegon in 1907, The Banner stated "what a misnomer that

60 William O. Van Eyck, Landmarks of the Reformed Fathers. H88-0169. Van Eyck, William O. (1869-1935). quotes on pages 31, 33, 38. 61 De Wachter, 30 Oct. 1901. 62 Henry Stobb. Autobiography. Grammar School Days, 1914-1922. 63 De Hope, 25 July 1916.

130 "Gereformeerd" is! It is entirely uncalled for and an iniquitous piece of business."64 Ministers in the RCA and CRC also debated the contributions of Kuyper. Those who opposed neo-Calvinism, like the RCA's Jacob Van Houte, felt Kuyper simply complicated matters for the Reformed faith. The division between church and state was clear enough, said Van Houte. One was called to maintain law and society, the other to serve in spreading God's word. Neo-Calvinists, De Jonge charged, wanted theologians to rule the country and politicians to rule the churches.65 The Kuyperian currents that flowed strongly in the CRC encouraged Dutch Americans to question the nature of Reformed Calvinist identity. One persistent point of contention concerned the Reformed character of Hope College. The issue began in 1903, when B.K. Kuiper, then a 22-year old Calvin student, produced a brochure about Hope College called "The Proposed Calvinistic School," in which the author flatly denied that Hope was a Calvinist institution. When RCA readers discovered this brochure almost then years later, they were outraged, and let the CRC know it through editorials in RCA periodicals. Kuiper naturally felt obliged to defend himself. "Who ever thinks of Hope as a Calvinistic school?" he wrote, "Who has ever heard of it that Calvinism is its distinguishing feature?"66 Kuiper explained that Hope presented a general Christian character, but was not overtly Calvinist. He warned against his interlocutors using the ad hominem in further debate, and offered a closing word for the well-being of the RCA. But Hope College Dutch-language Professor Albert Raap saw Kuiper's assertion as an uncalled for attack on his college. Whoever thinks of Hope College as a Calvinistic school?" Raap repeated the words of Kuiper, "Hundreds of people do." Raap continued, "Prof. Kuiper does not like to be reminded of the fact that the Chr. Ref. Church owes so much to Hope College." Raap said that Kuiper could speak of ecumenicity all day, but articles such as his most recent only caused greater separation between the denominations. Raap summarized: "We often say, What is the matter with the Chr. Ref. and the people? But we may as well ask: What is the matter with some of the leaders in these churches?"67 During the following year, the discussion about Hope's commitment to Calvinism spread. The President of Hope College, Ame Vennema condemned Kuiper's articles, labeling his assertions

64 The Banner, 18 July 1907. 65 De Hope, 11 Apr. 1916. 66 The Banner, 19 Sept.1912 67 The Banner, 26 Sept. 1912.

131 "ridiculous." And so Kuiper decided to test his proposition with some empirical research. In Hope's 1911-1912 yearbook, Kuiper found no mention whatsoever of Calvinism. Hope professors, he said, were not to be found in any local Calvinist movements, and some of the Professors were even openly hostile to Calvinism. Yet Kuiper said he wanted to give Hope the benefit of the doubt, and he declared that after a thorough investigation, he could conclude that Hope College was indeed a Calvinist institution, but that it took a thorough investigation to discover this Calvinism. "Hope's Calvinism is of such a very peculiar kind that the existence of it in the Institution can be suspected by but very few. It is a silent, slumbering, hidden, latent Calvinism."68 Kuiper's tongue-in-cheek description of Hope College reflected the CRC's continuing accusation that the RCA was confused, watered-down in doctrine, and neglectful of the Reformed heritage. In 1916, The Banner praised Hope on its semi-centennial in 1916, but with a mixed voice.

At times Hope College has been criticized for not sufficiently emphasizing Calvinism, and we dare not deny that this has been one of the weak spots of Hope, which we sincerely wish is going to be remedied, because we believe that our great calling and only future in America is the enunciation and development of the great principles for which our common ancestry wrought and fought, and bled and died.69

Gerrit Hendrik (G.H.) Hospers added in an article in 1918 that "Whatever these sentiments of the Western leaders may be, in the East there certainly appears to be a very vague conception of what the Reformed Church in American really stands for." Hospers could state clearly what his denomination, the CRC, stood for and what justified its separate existence: a covenant of grace, a special emphasis on the doctrine of total depravity, and consistent preaching on the sovereignty of God and the need for atonement.70 The inability of the RCA to define itself remained an issue in the life of the church going forward. RCA minister and historian Gerrit ten Zythoff wrote in 1965, that "The CRC knows itself to be the only true church and acts that way. The RCA has managed to mystify everybody concerning the doctrine of the church."71

68 The Banner 27 March, 1913. According to the authors of a more recent work, Hope College has throughout its history sought a "via media," a middle way in facing social and cultural challenges. Hope's and compromises have allowed the college to grow, but at substantial risk to its traditional character. See James C. Kennedy and Caroline J. Kennedy, Can Hope Endure?: A Historical Case Study in Christian Higher Education (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2005). 69 The Banner, 22 June, 1916. 70 The Banner, 14 Feb. 1918

132 Conclusion The Dutch American world of the early twentieth century was defined by a split denominational loyalty, with members in steadfast defense of their own church, and in a suspicion of the other. RCA and CRC leaders never denied the salvation of the other, nor did they claim the other church was not part of the true church, of Christ's body on earth. Kuyper's neo-Calvinist thought further contributed to the myth of the special role of the Dutch Americans in American history, and calls of common ethnicity were important in dulling the acute pains of denominational conflict. For the fifty year anniversary of the CRC in 1907, M.J. Bosma wrote that Dutch institutions had been important in the founding of the United States and that Hollanders had quickly Americanized. He could conclude that "God has given the Dutch to America" so that they could be a blessing to the country.72 Idzerd van Dellen had a similar message. Our church folk (ons Volk), he said, are but "kleine luyden" (small people) but they have a great task to spread their faith across the country.73 The RCA also accepted much of what Kuyper prescribed, and the church agreed with him that "the principles of Calvin lay behind the American principles of freedom and democracy."74 De Wachter could state without hesitation that "the Reformed church founded two nations: the republic of the United Netherlands and the United States of North America."75 Kuyper offered the Dutch Americans a vision of taking their religion and culture onto the world stage, of encountering the world head-on. According to the CRC's L.J. Hulst, the young generation of Dutch Americans was losing knowledge of the faith because of too little reliance on family teaching of the catechism, and too much reliance on societies and Sunday schools. If it were not for the influence of Dr. Kuyper, said Hulst, Dutch Americans would have forgotten the doctrines of the Reformed faith.76 But with Kuyperian thought as a motivation for encountering the

71 Gerrit Ten Zythoff to Elton J. Bruins (4 Sept. 1965), in Bruins Papers, unprocessed, correspondence with TenZythoff. JAH. 72 M.J. Bosma, "Our American Churches" in Gedenkboek Viftig jarig Jubilem Chr. Geref. Kerk A.D. 1857- 1907. (Grand Rapids, MI: 1907), 80-84. 73 I. van Dellen, "Het Karakter van ons Volk nar Schaduw-en-Lichtzijden" in Gedenkboek Viftig jarig Jubilem Chr. Geref. Kerk A.D. 1857-1907. (Grand Rapids, MI: 1907), 191-197. 74 Eugene Heideman, The Practice of Piety: The Theology of the Midwestern Reformed Church in America, 1866-1966. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 158. 75 De Wachter, 4 June 1913. Translation of "De Ger. kerk heeft twee natien gesticht: de republiek der Ver. Nederlanden en de Ver. Staten van Noord Amerika." 76 L.J. Hulst, De Wachter, 4 Sept. 1901)

133 world, Dutch Americans were keenly aware of their religious and denominational identities. Persistent discourse, often as conflict, helped define these identities. The tension between the RCA and CRC continued on in later generations, but was much muted.

134 CHAPTER 6: ARNOLD MULDER'S ALIENATED SECOND GENERATION

In 1913, a young Dutch American named Arnold Mulder wrote the first novel ever set in Dutch West Michigan. This book, which Mulder titled The Dominie of Harlem, elicited instant controversy. It presented an image of a regressive Dutch America and a young generation of Dutch Americans hoping to break free from the burdens of their parents' cultural tradition. Mulder’s fictitious rural village of “Harlem” (which was also the name of an actual village outside of Holland, MI) was a stronghold of Dutch Calvinist conservatism. In Harlem, “farmer-theologians” dueled with Bible quotations. Every villager was known for their degree of piety and where they stood in relation to the two Dutch denominations, the Reformed (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). An exclusively male, old guard consistory dominated each of the respective churches. Mulder’s villagers were gossipy, constantly quarrelling, and stubborn. They were also ignorant, anti-intellectual, and resistant to change. Like many actual Dutch villages, Harlem had just one church building, used by both the RCA and its CRC rival. They were forced to share the church building because Immanuel Sommers, the village’s lone Episcopalian, and the only one in town who did not understand the difference between the two Dutch Reformed denominations, had bequeathed the building to both congregations. In Mulder's story, the protagonist is Dominie Van Weelen, who, raised in New Jersey and fresh from a university and seminary education, brought a youthful spirit to the strict, dull Dutch hamlet. 1 With his canoe, typewriter, and bicycle, he was a strange sight for a people who thought ministers should always dress in black and be outfitted with a heavy frock coat, suspenders, and a beard. The young "dominie" [sic throughout] came to Harlem because as an undergraduate he had developed a passion for social service, only to realize that he could best serve society as a minister in the countryside. After all, Mulder tells us, a “rural slum,” a neglected, sparsely populated area, was just as deprived as an urban slum, except that the former’s shortcomings were accentuated by isolation from new advancements in areas like transportation, healthcare, and education. The dominie was then, in large part, a social worker as well as a minister.

1 The Dominie was educated at a “great western university”, which probably coincides with Mulder’s alma mater, the University of Chicago. But the university in question is also “the only university in America where there was a regular chair in the language of Queen Wilhelmina,” which would have been Rutgers University in New Jersey or Columbia University in Manhattan. Therefore, Mulder seems to have formed an amalgamation of multiple institutions.

135 As an outsider without any ties to long-standing local , Van Weelen solves the community’s problems. He teaches exercise, recreation, abstinence from tobacco, and the importance of ventilation in preventing illness. His good deeds are shown in particular through his affects on the Harmdyk family. Jan Harmdyk, the stern father whose wife has died, struggles to keep his family together and pious. The eldest son, Ezra, has become a blasphemer; the daughter, Nellie has gone off to university and risks too much education; while the youngest son, Baby Johannes, is a weakling in need of constant care. The conflict for change is generational, and in the end, only the father is unchanged, alone in his old ways. The dominie befriends Baby Johannes and helps build his self-confidence. Nellie returns from university, expecting to meet another old- fashioned minister, but finds the youthful, educated, and handsome Van Weelen, whose hand she accepts in marriage by the story’s end. Ezra is saved as well, when the dominie gets the upper hand in an argument between the two. Ezra believes if someone so admirable as the dominie can be a Christian, then he can be as well. Thus Dominie Van Weelen, a young, progressive man like the author Mulder, reclaims a community, and most of a family, from prejudice, and in the final scene, the snow, both real and a metaphor, begins to melt away. Arnold Mulder (1885-1959) was a son of Dutch immigrants to West Michigan, a newspaper editor and novelist. In his work Mulder criticized the failure of the Dutch to modernize and be more like “the Americans.” He also lampooned the conservative Dutch Americans and what he perceived as their “stuffy” Calvinism. Indeed, The Dominie of Harlem and Mulder’s later writings served as a polemic, adding emphasis to an ideological division between conservative and liberal Dutch Americans. For some Dutch Americans, Mulder was spot on in his criticisms, but for others, especially those of the conservative strain, his writings were nothing less than inflammatory. Why would an insider, a fellow Dutch American, and a favorite son like Arnold Mulder, attack his own people? What can be learned from his literary rebellion? Historians have presented two visions of Arnold Mulder. Jacob Van Hinte argued that Mulder held a special position as a guiding light for the development of a liberal Dutch American character, but James Bratt painted Mulder as a rather insignificant and failed product of Progressive Era currents. The importance of Mulder, however, is not necessarily to be found in his influence on Dutch Americans, but in the story of his development as a Dutch American. Mulder is in many ways representative of a generation of Dutch Americans whose traditional faith came into conflict with the modern ideological trends associated with Americanization. Van Hinte, who interviewed

136 Mulder while doing research, noted that “In short, the novels are not only an autobiography of Mulder, but of the entire younger generation of Holland Americans.2 A product of traditional Calvinist thought and educated in modern movements in sociology, Mulder was a Dutch American who could bridge the worlds of the American immigrant and the American intellectual. While Mulder never felt completely at home among his fellow Hollanders, he managed to temper his criticisms of the conservative Dutch with the occasion adulation, and as he established for himself a unique role as critical observer of his own people, he gradually came to an acceptance of their ways and even promoted their Dutch culture. This chapter focuses on the experiences and changing views of Arnold Mulder in order to describe the changing identities of second generation Dutch Americans. In 1910, the number of Americans with at least one Dutch-born parent numbered over 184,000; in 1920 it was 234,000.3 The children and grandchildren of Dutch immigrants could choose to accept or reject parts of their cultural heritage, but it was difficult to escape it entirely without abandoning their home communities. In Mulder's era, scholars saw second generation immigrants as representing a temporary stage in the inevitable assimilation of ethnic groups. The emerging literature on transnationalism shows a renewed interest in second generation American immigrants, now with a focus on the connections between these children of immigrants and the cultural homelands of their parents.4 Transnational second generation identities today are located primarily in urban settings, which serve as nodes of cultural transference and promote the persistence of a culturally pluralistic set of ethnic identities. Supporters of cultural pluralism see advantages in these transnational identities not only because they can reinforce support for a tolerant, multicultural nation, but because they can help ground potentially alienated youth in a social structure.5 A long-term shift of support for cultural pluralism in the late twentieth century continues an evolutionary development of ideas about the nature of American identity. Arnold Mulder converted from critic to defender of the Dutch because of a change in the way he and other Americans viewed the role of immigrants in America. In Mulder’s early years, drives towards Americanization meant relinquishing ethnic culture, or “loosing the Dutch accent” as it were. But as the century progressed many Americans

2 Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America, 950. 3 Niles Carpenter, Immigrants and their Children 1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1969 – original 1927), 340. 4 Philip Kasinitz, et al, eds. Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009). 5 Deborah Dash Moore, "At home in America?: Revisiting the Second Generation," in Elliot Barkan, et al, eds. Immigration, Incorporation & Transnationalism (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2007), 143-154.

137 (Mulder included) recognized that ethnic culture had an important role to play in determining what it meant to be an American. By the 1940s, Mulder had grown more supportive of Dutch American identity that incorporated Dutch ethnicity within American patriotic nationalism. Gradually, it become clear to Mulder that ‘Dutch’ was no longer a dirty word. Dutch Americans could embrace both foci of identity without embarrassment or worry. Children of Dutch Protestant immigrants, like Mulder, grew up in a world dominated by the RCA and CRC, and they frequently heard stories about the Netherlands, even if they were not entirely sure where the Netherlands was. In one comical example of this, immigrants Ulbe and Maaike Eringa wrote that when their children had heard about a visit to the Netherlands, they had asked if they could travel there by buggy. 6 Religious issues complicated cultural differences between generations. Henry Zwaanstra described the position many CRC youth found themselves in at the turn of the century.

That the younger generations did not have the same principles as their parents was frequently and generally stated. It was also probably true. Many of the young people in the church, at least so it was reported, indiscriminately and uncritically accepted everything called America. Some of them felt that Calvin had something good to offer in other times and places but that his teaching was not relevant for the American world.7

Dutch American identities evolved as the children and grandchildren of immigrants engaged the world outside the immigrant community. Immigrant children do not remember the "old country" wrote Louis Hartz, "They have lived inside the fragment all their lives, their battles have been the battles of its unfolding. The younger generation then discovers their new national essence outside of the fragment, "amazed that its novelty has never been recognized before."8 Many children of Dutch immigrants wanted to break away from their parents' generation, and freely interact with modern American culture. About his childhood as a son of Dutch Americans in South Dakota, Henry VanderPol wrote, "The "stress on 'family background' or on 'respect for rank' smacked of what seemed to us 'old country stuff.' Like most children of emigrants,

6 Ulbe and Maaike Eringa to Jikke and Minne Sjaarda, Running Water, South Dakota to Oosterend, Friesland, 30 Nov. 1899) Herbert Brinks, Dutch American Voices: Letters from the United States, 1850-1930. (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1995), 186-188. 7 Henry Zwaanstra, Reformed Thought and Experience in a New World: A Study of the Christian Reformed Church and its American Environment, 1890-1918. (Kampen, J.H. Kok, 1985, 51). 8 Louis Hartz, The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1964), 12.

138 we were afraid of being old-fashioned."9 A series of twenty-two editorials appearing in The Banner in 1910 were signed by the pseudonymous Max Americanus. Americanus (the pen name of Henry Beets) wrote about the difficulties of the second and third generation in escaping their heritage and traditions. No matter how they tried, it was impossible for the children of Dutch immigrants to deny completely their Dutch blood. Americanus provided a manifesto for the second generation:

Even though I was born and brought up here, I want to confess to you here in public that I am not entirely happy in America. I am not entirely happy, because I do not fit here, I am under the influence of two forces that drive me in contrary directions. I wonder if our older generation realize how their children feel, and what they have done to their children by coming to this country?10

According to Mulder and Americanus, the second generation struggled on alone. The parents hardly realized what the children endured, and later generations forgot the sufferings of the generation caught between cultures. Mulder's life work relates this neglected story.

Arnold Mulder’s Early Life When in 1906 the Dutch American , editor of the Ladies Home Journal, offered a cash prize to the Hope College student who could pen the best essay on “The Hollander and His Descendents in the West of the United States,” Arnold Mulder took attention.11 A local boy at the Holland, Michigan college, Mulder had grown up in the Christian Reformed Church and had lived among Hollanders all of his twenty-one years.12 He knew how Reverend Albertus Van Raalte in 1847 had led a group of religious seceders to settle in the Michigan woods, and how successive waves of immigration from the fatherland reinforced a Dutch cultural presence in West Michigan. Mulder knew the Dutch; he knew their language, their religion, and all their peculiarities. It was not surprising, then, when Mulder won a $50 prize for his third-place essay.

9 Henry VanderPol, On the Reservation Border - Hollanders in Douglas and Charles Mix Counties (Stickney, South Dakota: Argus Printers, 1969), 307. 10 The Banner, 1 Sept. 1910. 11 Hans Krabbendam, The Model Man: A Life of Edward William Bok, 1863-1930 (Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Rodopi, 2001). 12 Indeed in 1929, Bouwke Mulder was a member of the North Street CRC in Zeeland. Holland City News, 4 July 1929.

139 This historical exercise introduced Mulder to archival work, if he was not familiar with it already, and further inspired him to pursue a literary career.13 But the seeds of Mulder’s literary career were planted already in his early childhood. Mulder was a dreamer, and he dreamt of becoming a famous writer. Before reaching twelve years of age, he had already written a romance novel called The Sailors Escape, set in the War of 1812.14 This, along with his other adolescent writings, were never published. The twelfth of fifteen known children, Arnold Mulder was born on a farm on the eastern edge of Ottawa County's Holland Township on November 12, 1885 to Bouke and Jenneke Mulder, both of whom had been born in the Netherlands. It appears that in 1881 his parents had “converted” from the Reformed Church (RCA) to the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) in opposition to the former’s toleration of Freemasonry, a secret society which the Dutch immigrants felt threatened the authority of the church.15 Mulder took his first steps away from the Christian Reformed conservatism of his parents when he became a student at Hope College (an RCA school). After graduating from Hope in the spring of 1907, Mulder was unsure of his future course. He first worked for two years in the editing offices of the Holland City News. He then attended the University of Michigan and subsequently the University of Chicago, where he received a master’s degree in English Literature in 1910. His time away at university would prove influential in his later novels. He had felt confined in Holland, but the university and American culture, carrying with it the knowledge and virtues amassed over centuries of western civilization, offered so much to the young man. Mulder had already felt a disassociation with home, but this feeling grew stronger in Ann Arbor and Chicago, as he entertained the idea that he was not only different, but better, than the people back home. Added to his love for English and classical literature, which he had studied at Hope College, Mulder now developed an interest in sociology and social problems. At the University of Michigan, Mulder encountered the influential Sociology Professor Charles Horton Cooley, who convinced Mulder to put into fiction the Dutch immigrants about whom he displayed so much

13 Mulder attended Hope College Preparatory prior to entering the college, and was a frequent contributor of poetry and prose to the student newspaper, The Anchor. De Grondwet, 5 Jan. 1908; Holland Evening Sentinel, 29 March 1959; The Bookman; A Review of Book and Life (New York) Feb. 1914, Vol. 38, No. 6, p. 719. 14 Gertrude Rose Dunbridge, Biographical Sketch of Arnold Mulder, 31 March, 1932. (Biographical file at the Grand Rapids Public Library Special Collections (GRPL-SP). 15 This claim is based on the fact that all of the Mulder children born prior to 1881 were baptized in Zeeland First Reformed (RCA), and thereafter the Mulder family attended church at North Street Christian Reformed (CRC) in Zeeland.

140 knowledge.16 After a semester at the University of Michigan, Mulder transferred to the University of Chicago, where he wrote a master’s thesis investigating the of William Morris, a nineteenth century British poet and writer who promoted a return to traditional handicrafts.17 This work, and Mulder’s later novels, clearly demonstrate an inspiration from new intellectual currents brewing in Chicago. A major source of Chicago’s turn-of-the-century intellectual renaissance was the philosopher John Dewey, who taught at the University of Chicago from 1894 to 1904. Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism, which taught that social environments shaped individuals, was a dominant influence on the Chicago school of sociology, and strongly affected the thought of Charles Cooley at the University of Michigan.18 Under the influence of pragmatism, and supported by sociological research, there arose a national revolution in social thought focusing less on reforming individuals, as had been the trend of the nineteenth century, and attempting instead to engineer society en masse by changing social environments.19 Armed with this philosophy of large- scale progressive reform, Mulder returned to Holland in 1912. An educated, liberal man like Mulder might have forever left his conservative hometown behind him, had he not been compelled to return for work and love. Waiting for him in Holland was his love interest of six years and fiancée, Kathryn Kollen, and a position as editor of the city’s daily newspaper, the Holland Sentinel, which shared offices and news stories with his former employer, the Holland City News. The city’s Dutch language newspaper, De Grondwet, welcomed Mulder to the business and called him “ambitious, capable, diligent, and scrupulous.”20 Mulder and his new wife, the niece of the president of Hope College, settled into a house on Nineteenth Street, on the south side of town.21 He must have begun work on his first novel fairly soon thereafter, since it was finished and ready for publication in 1913. Mulder’s novels, as will be shown, were very much products of the Progressive Era. This period, generally reckoned from 1900 to 1920, was essentially a reaction to American

16 The material for Mulder’s The Dominie of Harlem was originally a short story that he had written for Hampton’s Magazine, which went bankrupt before it could run the story. Dunbridge, Biographical Sketch (GRPL-SP). 17 Arnold Mulder, “William Morris’s Socialism: An Artist’s Revolt,” Master’s Thesis. University of Chicago, 1910. 18 The Chicago school of sociology, which reached its height of influence from 1915 to 1935, but had been active already in Mulder’s time at the University, was the first major collaborative network of researchers focusing on both empirical research and theory in thinking about sociological issues. 19 Martin Bulmer, The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 20 De Grondwet, 4 Oct., 1910. (Translation of “ambitieus, bekwaam, ijverig, en nauwgezet.”) 21 Holland City News, 6 Apr. 1911.

141 industrialization. Progressives thought unfettered economic competition inherently unfair and exploitative; they feared the marginalization of the worker and argued that government needed to play a role in protecting the individual from society. Progressive political philosophy was optimistic, believing that through evolutionary science and philosophical relativism a new, more just society could develop. But the Progressive Era did not signal a sharp break from traditional beliefs to a faith in science and secularism. Rather, the era witnessed a conflict of interests, with intellectuals typically at the front end of a gradual change in orientation. The Progressive Era was marked by a philosophical conflict in the minds of intellectuals, by a conflict between trend and tradition.22 Mulder in his life and works exemplified this tension.

Reaction to The Dominie of Harlem The Dominie of Harlem received substantial recognition in the local and national media. As a literary piece, it was generally praised. National reviews of the book appeared in the Boston Journal, Chicago Inter-Ocean, San Francisco Bulletin, Chicago Record Herald, New York Sun, and Boston Globe, among others. The Boston Journal editorial was particularly full of praise: “So far as the present reviewer has learned, this is the first work of its author. It would be highly creditable in any writer, but as a first effort it is remarkable.”23 This review, coming from an established American periodical, was just the kind of positive reinforcement Mulder had hoped for. Contemporary critics, especially at the national level, were kind to the book’s literary merit, but as a cultural criticism, The Dominie of Harlem met a mixed reaction in the local press. The Holland City News, a proponent of Mulder, ran a front-page article about the book just prior to its release. The “prejudices,” the editorial said, “are described in an amusing way and the book has a good laugh on almost every page.”24 In fact, Mulder was at his best with insider Calvinist and Dutch language jokes. Like one of Mulder’s characters, many West Michigan Dutch had legitimately discussed “the relative merits of the Holland and the English languages as vehicles of orthodox religion,” and might have found some truth in the “total depravity of the English.”25 Some

22 Robert W. Schneider, Five Novelists of the Progressive Era (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1965), 1-3. 23 The numerous editorials from around the country were reprinted as news of local concern in the Holland City News, 25 Dec. 1913. 24 Holland City News, 28 Aug. 1913. 25 Arnold Mulder, The Dominie of Harlem (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1913), 30, 31.

142 Hollanders would have also been shocked to hear that “Calvin did not preach or write in Dutch.”26 Local readers could identify with such criticisms, since they knew that Mulder had identified two sensitive subjects for the Dutch: their language and their religion. Not everyone in the Dutch community agreed that the book was benign, however, and the Holland City News later changed to a more neutral assessment of the work. The Dominie of Harlem, it said, “was widely read in all communities where Hollanders and descendents of Hollanders live, and it received both condemnation and praise, depending on the views of the persons reading the work.”27 Periodicals of the CRC, The Banner, De Wachter, and De Calvinist, came out against the book, accusing Mulder of mischaracterizations.28 De Wachter could not recommend the book because, it said, the author had purposely singled out the CRC for ridicule.29 A reviewer in The Banner genuinely thanked Mulder for pointing out areas of improvement for the church, but noted that “Our foibles are big enough. They need not be exaggerated.” The reviewer continued with a warning that “…an author also must reckon with Him who entrusted talents, including literary talents – to uplift, to ennoble, but not to deal unjustly with any man or set of men.”30 Dutch American critics of The Dominie of Harlem were concerned less with Mulder’s ethnic put-downs than they were with his attacks on traditional Dutch Calvinism and its associated politics. Progressives like Mulder preached a “social gospel,” a new movement in American Protestantism that stressed Christian social action. Walter Rauschenbusch, whose Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) was one of the defining tracts of the social gospel, argued that evangelism required an emphasis on both moral and institutional reform.31 Those who advocated a social gospel typically worked in social service positions in impoverished immigrant and African American communities in major cities like Chicago and New York, where they hoped to alleviate the ills of industrialization and urban growth. Mulder redirected this doctrine onto the rural districts of West Michigan; he emphasized the possibility of progress in the “rural slums,” the areas of the countryside which were just as dilapidated and blighted as the urban boroughs. “The

26 Mulder, Dominie of Harlem, 24. 27 Holland City News, 21 Jan. 1915. 28 Holland City News, 22 Jan. 1914; 21 Jan. 1915. 29 De Wachter, 24 Sept. 1913. 30 Reprint of a review from The Banner in Holland City News, 16 Oct. 1913. 31 Paul M. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1988); James T. Kloppenberg. Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 279.

143 dwellers in the rural settlements,” he wrote, “are earnest and have in them great possibilities; so do the Hollanders of Harlem.”32 However, many Calvinists, especially the rural Dutch conservatives, were skeptical about the effects of a social gospel that promised to revitalize the environment without first addressing personal salvation or God’s free grace.33 Mulder was not alone among contemporary authors in his rejection of Calvinist social ethics. Rather than attacking Calvinism for its theology, many American novelists in the early twentieth century employed themes of independence from the strict moral code of Calvinism to contest the faith’s relevance in modern America.34 Although Calvinists in America could agree with practical progressive measures like improved sanitation, vaccinations, and industrial safety reforms, they feared Progressivism’s strands of modernism and secularism because these latter threatened Christianity itself. Dutch Calvinist immigrants felt that Americanization inevitably meant the adoption of the newly espoused secular values of scientific reasoning, tolerance, and freedom from a moral authority. Mulder’s Dutch characters ignorantly assured readers that “modernism, whatever it might be, was a dangerous tendency.”35 If the Dutch immigrants “Americanized” too quickly, many conservatives thought, they would wholly abandoned their fear of God for a life of sin and a pursuit of material riches.

Life as an Editor and Writer As a newspaperman in the Progressive Era one had to keep astride of the latest social issues and explain them to an anxious audience. Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote: “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Progressive mind was a journalistic mind, and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.”36 In 1912, Mulder wrote that “perhaps the greatest joy of the work [of editor] is the opportunity for social service.”37 In content and cause, Mulder’s novels took inspiration from his journalistic background and reflect his opinions on social reform. Mulder also used his newspaper education to develop fictional characters based broadly on traits he saw in local Hollanders.

32 Mulder, The Dominie of Harlem, 170. 33 Gary Scott Smith, The Seeds of Secularization: Calvinism, Culture, and Pluralism in America, 1870-1915 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 145. 34 Aliki Barnstone, Michael Tomasek Manson, Carol J. Singley, The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era (, NH: University Press of New England, 1997), xiii-xix. 35 Mulder, Dominie of Harlem, 95. 36 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 186. 37 Arnold Mulder, “Holding Down a Newspaper Job” in The Anchor, March 1912.

144 But as the editor of the Holland Sentinel, Mulder had many responsibilities that took him away from the written word, and in 1915 he made an important career decision to devote more time to writing novels. When Mulder took a respite from his position as editor of the Holland Sentinel from 1915 to 1917, he worked as publicity director of the Michigan State Health Commission. He also managed to apportion a substantial amount of his time writing his next two novels, Bram of Five Corners (1915) and The Outbound Road (1919).38 In The Outbound Road, Mulder wrote of the difficulty of choosing between a professional career and a life in his hometown.

A writer of stuff to be printed may live anywhere; usually the farther he stays away from New York and the closer to the soil and traditions and the spirit that produced him the better for his work. But a man who writes stuff to be acted upon must be on the ground where the acting is done – in New York, in short.39

But with the success of his first book, Mulder made a commitment to his life as a writer and a commitment to stay in Holland and reaffirm his message of social reform.

Bram of the Five Corners Mulder’s second novel, Bram of the Five Corners (1915), with its politically charged narrative, built on issues introduced in The Dominie of Harlem. In this novel, Mulder used the fictitious Five Corners, a village outside of De Stad [the City] as the hometown of Bram Meesterling, a young student at Christian College who is studying to be a minister. Bram is engaged to a girl from his village, Hattie Wanhope, who is three years his elder but giggly and immature. Meanwhile, however, Bram develops an attraction for Cordelia Eliot, an “American” girl who has moved to De Stad from Chicago.40 As Bram matures, he realizes that his relationship with Hattie must fail since she is simple-minded and does not share his aspirations for a life beyond the village. But for Bram, Cordelia could not do either, because she knew nothing about the Dutch, the people whom Bram still deeply cared for.

38 “Arnold Mulder Dead,” New York Times, 29 Mar. 1959, 80. Arnold Mulder, The Kalamazoo College Story: The First Quarter of the Second Century of Progress, 1933-1958 (Kalamazoo College, 1958), inside back flap. 39 Arnold Mulder, The Outbound Road (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919), 294. Mulder indirectly added to this idea in a later article in which he wrote that “It is doubtful if any orator, no matter how eloquent, could go into an empty auditorium and deliver an impassioned address. He needs the audience to draw out his eloquence. Power goes out from audience to speaker…” Arnold Mulder, “Co-Creative Writing” in Outlook (New York), 21 March, 1923. 40 There is likely a connection between the fictional Cordelia, a Baptist from Chicago, and Mulder’s association with The University of Chicago, a nominally Baptist institution.

145 The major ideological conflict of the work is the traditional antithesis of Calvinism and . Mulder’s characters, for instance, resist the teaching of "evolootion,” and Bram’s mother’s salutation to her son often includes the anti-intellectual, "You mustn't learn too hard,…mijn jongen [my boy]."41 The main issue surrounding humanism, however, is a question of eugenics and social Darwinism. In the novel, Hattie’s family has a history of feeble-mindedness, and Hattie herself has never progressed past the mental age of sixteen. Bram’s major objection to marrying Hattie is his fear of perpetuating mental illness in his children. The consistory of the Christian Reformed Church of Five Corners censure Bram because he believes science and God, and not God alone, are responsible for the birth of feeble-minded children. There are obvious parallels between Mulder and his protagonist, Bram Meesterling. Bram, a lover of books, feels trapped in his country village but finds inspiration for learning from the newly arrived Dominie Wijnberg. Wijnberg mentors Bram and encourages the latter in his desire to become a famous poet.42 Like Dominie Van Weelen in the previous novel, Dominie Wijnberg has come from the East (this time it is New York) and brought light into a dim childhood. Bram and Cordelia attend lectures hosted by a sociology club. At one particular meeting Bram comes under the influence of a powerful speaker for social reform, a sociologist from Chicago.43 Consequently Bram chooses to forego a seminary education and instead he considers a career in social work. But because of a lack of opportunities in social work, Bram ends up working as a reporter for the local newspaper. The Dutch community, in turn, denounces Bram for having rejected his “calling” for the ministry, and local Calvinist periodicals devote a number of columns to call into question the logic and trustworthiness of Bram’s newspaper articles. Mulder continued to be controversial. In Bram of Five Corners, Mulder replaced the “Synod of Dordt” with the arbitrary and generic pseudonym “Synod of Middleburg” to present the

41 Mulder, Bram of the Five Corners, 67. 42 One of Mulder’s favorite scholarly subjects was the blind English poet Milton. 43 In 1901, the well-known social reformer, Rev. Graham Taylor, presented an address at the Hope College commencement. It seems probable that Mulder, then a sixteen year old student, a member of the “C” class of the Hope Preparatory School, was in attendance, or at least heard about the speech. Certainly Taylor fits the profile of a number of characters in Mulder’s later novels. Taylor, a graduate of Rutgers, had been ordained in the RCA but became a minister the Congregational Church before becoming, in 1892, the head of the Department of Christian Sociology at Chicago Theological Seminary. Taylor had more than a fleeting appearance in Holland. In the 1890s and 1900s, Taylor regularly vacationed at the resort community of Macatawa Park on Holland’s lakeshore. See Holland City News, 13 Sept. 1901; and Louis C. Wade, Graham Taylor: Pioneer for Social Justice, 1851-1938 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), 123.

146 religious decisions made centuries ago as irrelevant for today’s world.44 Also, while the Dutch conservatives were not of one political mind, Mulder presented them as generally in opposition to women’s suffrage, prohibition, and revival meetings; the worst of them were “constitutionally opposed to change.”45 The Holland City News responded to this second novel in less than favorable terms, "there has been a great deal of controversy, some alleging that the pictures Mr. Mulder drew are caricatures, others contending that they are drawn with absolute fidelity."46 Mulder’s younger audience, however, found comfort in these less-than-positive portrayals of their elders. In 1927, when Mulder presented a guest lecture for the English department at Hope College, he read character sketches from his novels, and “smiles came slowly over the faces of the students as they recognized some of the characters portrayed.”47

The Outbound Road In 1919 Mulder released, to welcoming reviews, The Outbound Road, his third novel and final addition to the Dutch American literary genre that he had pioneered.48 The Outbound Road once again drew a distinction between a conservative rural Dutch community, "East Nassau," and a modernizing "stad." In the story, a country couple, the stereotypically Dutch Foppe and Sarah Spykhoven, adopt a Polish child, name him Teunis, and try to raise him as a responsible, obedient youth. Teunis' frequent misbehavior is met by Foppe's strict punishment and Sarah's sympathy. The Spykhovens have their work cut out for them in raising Teunis, as they consider the County Fair to be "schandalig" (scandalous), they disapprove of horse-races and "opra-houses," and consider non-religious literature like Shakespeare and Dickens "verderfelijk" (pernicious). When Teunis becomes a student at Christian College, he struggles between his strict upbringing and “loose” surroundings, becoming something of a hybrid of the two. In the final scene, an older, wiser, and changed Teunis returns to the Spykhoven home, where he sees Foppe, worn thin in his later years, still at the family table, clutching his large Dutch bible. Father and son shake hands,

44 The Synod of Dordrecht (or Dort) was a national gathering of Reformed ministers in the Netherlands in 1618 and 1619 which established orthodox Dutch Calvinist doctrine. 45 Mulder, Bram of the Five Corners, 96. 46 Holland City News, 27 May 1915. 47 The Anchor, 9 March 1927. Hope College also presented Mulder with the degree of Doctor of Letters (Litt. D.) in 1923.

48 Grand Rapids Press, 5 Sept. 1919. Grand Rapids Herald, 21 Sept. 1919.

147 knowing that while their ideals will never be the same, their love for one another and bond of friendship can never be broken.49 Mulder’s second and third novels continued on the same prescriptive tone used in The Dominie of Harlem. Ultimately, Mulder was arguing for a change in religious attitude. What he wanted of the Dutch, the local newspaper reported, was “not to chide them, not to hurt them, not to rebuke them, but just to let them see how far away from the true reason for Christ’s mission to earth, they have permitted themselves to stray.”50 Historian Henry Lucas thought Mulder had missed the mark. “A Dutch rural community was, in fact, morally austere, but this was the natural consequence of serious religious convictions.”51 Mostly absent from Mulder’s works, however, is a discussion of a new ideology that came to play an important role in twentieth century Dutch American Calvinism. This new thinking, known as neo-Calvinism or Kuyperianism for its leader, Abraham Kuyper, offered the Dutch an alternative strand of social thought. Kuyper (1837-1920), a towering religious and political figure in the Netherlands, warned against “worldliness” and taught a familiar refrain that the secular and religious worlds were fundamentally at odds, or in “antithesis.” Rather than reject the world and draw into isolation, however, Kuyper taught Calvinists to exert their influence in all areas of life, including politics, and re-shape the world according to Calvinist values. Neo-Calvinism proved particularly influential in the CRC, and since neo-Calvinism’s literature came mostly from the Netherlands, it reinforced the need for Dutch language skills among Dutch American intellectuals.52 The only mention of neo-Calvinism in Mulder’s works comes in a passage in Bram of the Five Corners, in which Bram’s American female interest, Cordelia Eliot, introduces neo- Calvinism as an example to argue that the Dutch do not have to be of one mind, and that Calvinism is not necessarily a monolithic “ism.”53 While Mulder did not subscribe to neo-Calvinism, he accepted it as a relevant challenge to local orthodoxy.

The Sand Doctor and Interpretations of Mulder’s Role as an Author

49 Arnold Mulder, The Outbound Road (Boston and New York: Hought Mifflin Company, 1919). 50 Holland City News, 20 Nov. 1919. 51 Henry S. Lucas, Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789- 1950 (University of Michigan Press, 1955), 628. 52 Bratt. Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, 14-33. George Harinck, “A Triumphal Procession?: The Reception of Kuyperin the USA (1900-1940)” in Cornelis van der Kooi and Jan de Bruijn, eds. Kuyper Reconsidered: Aspects of his Life and Work (Amsterdam, Netherlands: VU Uitgeverij, 199), 273-292. 53 Mulder. Bram of the Five Corners, 140.

148 In his final novel, Mulder abandoned the Dutch American genre. The Sand Doctor (1921) was an exclusively American tale, a story of young professionals set in Finley (Holland) and the sand dunes along Lake Michigan’s eastern shore. Reaction to the book in The Nation was wholly negative. The reviewer, who was obviously unaware that Mulder had already published three novels, wrote that Mulder “goes badly to pieces in his second novel, ‘The Sand Doctor.’… [He gives] rather watery synapses…and he ends his story most depressingly by a series of occurrences so shamelessly miraculous that they destroy whatever was originally sound and pertinent in his hero’s predicament.”54 Whether Mulder felt disgraced or simply ran out of material for another novel – or some combination of the both – this moment marked the end of Mulder’s career as a novelist.55 Jacob Van Hinte, whose Netherlanders in America (1928), is a study of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Dutch American immigrants, met Mulder while on a dissertation research trip in America in 1921. With his stay in the U.S. limited to a mere six weeks, the determined Van Hinte raced from one Dutch settlement to the next, scouring archives, making interviews, and taking notes along the way. Just prior to Van Hinte’s arrival, Mulder wrote an article for the Holland Sentinel, alerting the city to the Dutchman’s visit.56 Van Hinte interviewed Mulder, describing him as “gifted.” It was natural that Mulder and Van Hinte would get along. Mulder was only four years his senior (in 1921 Mulder was 36 and Van Hinte 32), and they were fellow intellectuals who promoted Americanization. While Van Hinte was strongly nationalistic (for his own Netherlands), he believed Americanization of the Dutch immigrants was for their best interest. Therefore, when Van Hinte wrote about Mulder, he praised his works and offered no objections to Mulder’s themes of change from “a strictly intellectual and theoretical Calvinism to a real American practical Christianity.” Van Hinte also provided an explanation for the cessation of Mulder’s career as a novelist: “…[His characters] are already thoroughly American. Probably as a

54 “More American Chronicles,” in The Nation, 20 April 1921, 597. 55 In 1925 Mulder noted that he was struggling in his work on another novel. He apparently never finished the book or sent it to a publisher. The Bookman; a Review of Books and Life (New York) Feb. 1925. Vol. 60, 6. 56 Van Hinte Diary, 5 Aug. 1921. (Elton Bruins Collection, Van Raalte Institute Hope College). , Nella Kennedy, and Earl Wm. Kennedy, eds. The American Diary of Jacob Van Hinte (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 69, 80.

149 result, Mulder’s own conflicts relating to the Americanization process have been overcome…”57 I will return to this theme in my final analysis. James D. Bratt, in his book, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture (1984), provided the most complete study of Mulder to date. Bratt sees Mulder’s criticism of the conservative Dutch as an aborted crusade of progressivism and modernism perpetrated by a relatively untalented rebel. For Bratt, Mulder is a false elitist; one whose idealist, progressive doctrines became failed clichés. He explains that Mulder ended his career as a novelist with the 1921 publication of The Sand Doctor; thereafter Mulder could no longer support his own progressivism:

His work’s simplicity reflects the Progressive Era’s confidence in these virtues [noblesse oblige, militant idealism, mild Protestantism, and emasculation of ethnic culture]; his silence after 1920, when that confidence was shattered, indicates that such a resolution was neither good for art nor likely in life.58

Not only did Mulder fail as a writer and a social critic, Bratt continues, he also failed to live up to his own dreams of glory, while his desire for power and self-importance could only be satisfied in preaching his own politics through a professorship at Kalamazoo College. 59

Mulder the English Professor and Mulder the Historian What Van Hinte was incapable of undertaking since he wrote in the 1920s, and what Bratt voluntarily neglected, is an investigation of Mulder’s life after his days as a novelist. An explanation of Mulder’s actions in this later period is crucial in understanding Mulder’s role in the West Michigan Dutch community, and his sense of Dutch American identity. In 1929, after nearly two decades as editor of a newspaper – all the while publishing his novels on Dutch American culture – Mulder was approached for a position as Professor of Creative Writing at Kalamazoo College, a premier Baptist institution some sixty-five miles from Holland. He took the position with some reluctance but fell in love with his role as a teacher, a position from

57 Jacob Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of the of America. Robert P. Swierenga, ed. and Adriaan de Wit, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), 949-50. 58 Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, 163. 59 Bratt is incorrect in attributing to Mulder an M.A. from the University of Michigan, and an honorary Ph.D. from Chicago. It is the latter school rather, from which he received an M.A., while his honorary degree came from his alma mater, Hope College in 1923.

150 which he would retire in 1953, but remain as an adjunct until his death in 1959. While at Kalamazoo College, Mulder published two more books, both historical in nature: Americans from Holland (1947) and The Kalamazoo College Story (1958). In his role as an English professor, Mulder was transformed from the youthful protagonists of his stories to his other major literary character, the insider-outsider figure who guides the protagonist. In this latter role he remained a presence in his hometown. For one, his syndicated column, “Adventures in the Library,” appeared in the local newspapers.60 As an educated Hollander, he was also in demand to give presentations at various social events. While he may not have been a committed member of the more “Americanized” of the two Dutch churches, the Reformed Church in America (RCA), he was on friendly terms with that institution. In 1934, at a men’s league dinner at Third Reformed Church in Holland, he entertained his audience with a presentation about his travels through Europe.61 As well, he wrote most of his Americans from Holland, at his lakeshore cottage just outside of Holland.62 Despite his move away from Holland, Mulder’s interest in the Dutch culture persisted. He continued to write and publish articles, some about the Dutch, but others about the teaching of English, to which he now applied most of his energy. Naturally then, he combined his two areas of study; when discussing the Dutch, he addressed the issue of language and language acculturation. Again he emphasized progress and generational change: “To the [Dutch] pioneers those…[Dutch] songs and national heroes and historic deeds of valor were native; to their children they were sometimes no better than faintly ridiculous, at best only secondhand.”63 Mulder considered Dutch as a first language an unfortunate occurrence for immigrant children, since they would then be unlikely to learn either English or Dutch well. Mulder, the English professor and editor, was somewhat of a purist. Yankee Dutch, the amalgam of Dutch and English words and grammar, perturbed him.64 Speaking of language patterns of the Dutch in Michigan he wrote,

60 Mulder’s Column began syndication in 1923. Arnold Mulder to Stanley D. Mayer. 5 April 1939. (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University). 61 Holland City News, 19 Apr. 1934. Mulder traveled to Europe in 1931. New York Times 19 June 1931, page 27. Kalamazoo College Index, 29 May 1931. 62 Holland City News, 30 Oct. 1947. 63 Arnold Mulder, “Noah Webster’s Prophecy,” College English, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jan. 1944), 196. 64 A recently reprinted example of West Michigan Yankee Dutch is Dirk Nieland’s, ‘n fonnie bisnis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005 (1929).

151 …they did not know what they were doing – men sometimes of deep theological erudition. They were pronouncing English words, [but] they were not speaking the English language, or the American language; to a reasonably sensitive ear their locutions were often ludicrous. They had been deprived in youth of a precious possession – a native language.65

But if Mulder was such a supporter of American culture and language, why did he spend so much time studying the Dutch? I argue that Mulder was affected by a new trend in the understanding of America’s origins. The editor’s preface to the “Peoples of America” series, of which Mulder’s Americans from Holland (1947) was the first publication, explained this new current. They wanted a book in which

[t]he emphasis would be on people, on their variety… The aim would be to help influence our national atmosphere in the direction of unity within diversity, as distinct from the old and still widely approved “Americanization” drives toward a homogeneity based on uniformity which had mainly negative results…66

In short, they (the American audience) wanted a book to explain who they were as Americans. The book arrived just in time for the centennial celebrations in Holland, Michigan. Historian Jon Gjerde wrote that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rural Middle West was an immense battleground of competing cultural claims, of multi-layered ethnic, religious, and cultural identity existing under American pluralism. But what then did it mean for an immigrant to become an American? Did it require a renunciation of one’s transplanted ethnicity, culture, or religion? Gjerde explains that immigrants often “valorized their allegiance to American citizenship as they reified their ethnic affiliation.”67 This apparent paradox explains well the situation of many Dutch Americans, who by the turn of the century believed that they were true Americans, but who at the same time promoted a Dutch ethnic consciousness. For the Anglo-Saxon dominated America of the early twentieth century, this dual allegiance and refusal to fully assimilate seemed unacceptable. By mid-twentieth century, however, Americans were beginning

65 Arnold Mulder, “Noah Webster’s Prophecy,” College English, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Jan., 1944), 198-200. One of multiple examples of this cross-over of interests is Mulder’s Review of a book by Dr. Lucius L. Hubbard of the University of Michigan. Arnold Mulder, “Was ‘Robinson Crusoe’ written by a Hollander?” Outlook (New York) 17 Oct. 1923. 66 Mulder, Americans from Holland, 5. The book was advertised in and sold at five dollars a copy, (New York Times, 9 Nov. 1947, page BR34). 67 Jon Gjerde, The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 229.

152 to see their country not as a melting pot that necessarily stripped its component parts of their unique qualities, but as a mosaic of peoples, each contributing to the whole something valuable and more or less permanent. As a student at Hope College in 1907, Mulder had supported the idea of the American melting pot. The Dutch immigrant, Mulder wrote, “day by day fulfills part of what seems to be the plan of history, namely that America shall be the gathering place of nations where the nations of the earth shall be welded in one people.”68 Nevertheless, Mulder later embraced the idea that all of America’s contributing ethnic strains had an equal right to influence the country. In 1947, in tune with the new multicultural paradigm, Mulder wrote that the Dutch can “add something to the term ‘American’ that men of no other race can give, not even the nationals of purest English stock.” Mulder believed that in the course of the twentieth century the Dutch immigrants had unconsciously become Americans of their own type. He wrote that Dutch Americans had been “inclined to feel that the very essence of Americanism is progressive change, that it is not of the true nature of Americanism to freeze social or political institutions.” But Mulder turned this idea on its head, arguing that Dutch institutions, and religion in particular, had an important role to play in the lives of the Dutch Americans. “Without their realizing it consciously,” Mulder wrote, “the great stories and poems and essays and chronicles [of the Bible] became part of them, of the mental furniture of their lives.”69 With these two realizations – that the Dutch ethnics were worthy Americans, and that they need not sacrifice their religion – Mulder no longer needed to rebel. The Dutch ethnic culture and American culture were not diametrically opposed; rather Dutch ethnic culture, for Mulder, was a part of American culture as surely as American culture was a part of Dutch ethnic culture. In Americans from Holland, Mulder, it appears, explained his earlier literary revolt against the Dutch conservatives through a more general exposition of the rebellious Dutch of his generation.

When he [the youthful critic] had been told from the cradle up that his people were the chosen people; that the institutions of all other communities should be judged – and largely condemned – in terms of the Dutch norm; that the Dutch home life was the most desirable – when he had learned to accept all that as a matter of course, he not infrequently

68 Arnold Mulder, “The Hollander and His Descendents in the West of the United States” Holland City News, 10 Nov. 1909. 69 Mulder, Americans from Holland, 278, 277, 255.

153 lost his bearings and swung about to an extreme of revolt that was as ridiculous as his father’s parochialism had been.70

Radicalism, then, was for Mulder a misguided rejection of one’s social environment when what was needed was an ideological compromise between past and present. As early as 1930, Mulder had encouraged the reading of literature to bring back the virtues of an early period. The required virtues, he wrote, were those of the Jeffersonian Era, of tolerance, scientific inquiry, and most importantly, faith.71 Americans from Holland provided Mulder a means by which to express his ideologies, and its publication indicates Mulder’s affirmed status as a member of the West Michigan Dutch community. Not trained in historical research, Mulder may not have been the best available candidate to write a history of the Dutch Americans, but he was an insider and an established writer.72 Probably for these reasons he exhibited considerable influence over the editors and publishers of the “Peoples of America Series.” A comparison of his hand-written first draft of Americans from Holland with its final published copy shows that the publishers required only minor grammatical revisions and little change of content.73 Like his earlier novels, Mulder’s historical Americans from Holland had its admirers and its critics; yet Mulder seemed to take the criticisms in stride. About the criticisms, he wrote, “Such things don’t bother me too much. When the Lord God issued the Ten Commandments, I’m sure there were some people who were certain they could have done it much better.” One such person had written to the book’s publishers, complaining that the book failed to devote enough space to the affluent New York Dutch. To this criticism, Mulder reacted more harshly and displayed his frustration with “…those Easterners who think we in the West are still living in danger of red Indians. They,” Mulder continued, “are the most provincial creatures in the American population.”74 Unlike in his university years, Mulder no longer aspired to become an Eastern intellectual. Instead, he found comfort in his adopted hometown of Kalamazoo and enjoyed time at his lakeshore cottage outside of Holland.

70 Ibid., 273. 71 “Study Writing of Present Day Dr. Mulder Says” Kalamazoo College Index, 24 Jan. 1930. 72 Mulder had established his reputation among the Dutch in New York in particular with his 1944 article, “Grootmoeder's Hundred Years" in the Knickerbocker Weekly, Vol. 3, No. 46. 73 Hand-written copy of Americans from Holland, dated 15 June 1946, available at Kalamazoo College Archives. 74 Arnold Mulder to William De Kleine, 24 Jan. 1948. William De Kleine Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

154 While James Bratt's interpretation of Mulder’s works as the failings of a liberal reformer is somewhat attractive, there is therefore another more likely explanation for the end of Mulder’s literary career and another interpretation of his time as a professor of English. While Mulder was never embraced by the Christian Reformed Church or even the ideological center of the Dutch American community (if you will permit me to assume such), he was by no means an outcast or a failure. The religious dynamics created by the opposition of the RCA to the CRC presented Mulder with the ability to ridicule the Dutch while still remaining a member of their community. In the years following World War One, Progressive Era mentalities like Mulder’s proved shortsighted, but they left a legacy of social reform and encouraged self-reflection. Reforms, already well underway when Mulder published his first novel, had clearly changed the social landscape, and had even transformed the character of Mulder’s “rural slums.” Following some success with his Americans from Holland, Mulder applied for a Fulbright appointment as guest lecturer in the Netherlands. In 1953, he wrote his friend William De Kleine, that the Fulbright committee had denied his request, probably, he thought, because of his age. However, Mulder added jokingly, “[I]f they had known how I feel, they would not have held the years against me. Most of the time I don’t even feel grownup. But of course they had no way of knowing that.” Still Mulder could be content in this failing, his final attempt at recognition outside of West Michigan. In their regular correspondence, Mulder and DeKleine, a fellow Hope College alumnus (1902) and a physician who served one term as State Health Commissioner from 1944 to 1947, often reminisced about their days in Holland, Michigan, and showed concern for keeping in touch with other educated Dutch Americans scattered around the state. In 1955, the recently retired DeKleine asked Mulder to author a book on the De Kleine family, which had grown some three hundred strong in America. Mulder respectfully declined his friend’s offer, noting other commitments. For example, Mulder had already begun work on his last book, The Kalamazoo College Story, which was commissioned by the college and published in 1959. He had labored at Kalamazoo College for twenty-four years and in his “so-called retirement,” he wrote, he was “working as hard as [he] ever did, but enjoying every minute of it.” 75

75 Arnold Mulder to William DeKleine, 8 July 1953; William DeKleine to Arnold Mulder, 20 May 1955; Arnold Mulder to William De Kleine, 17 May, 1955 (Bentley Historical Library) For DeKleine’s genealogical work see “Derk De Kleine and his Descendents: 100 Years in America” by William De Kleine, May 1956 (Hope College

155

Conclusion Mulder’s life and works stand as a testament to the search for self-identity common to Dutch Americans of the early twentieth century. Historian Betty Ann Burch has written that, “Pre- occupation with identity is self-evident in the large number of ethnic novels that focus on adolescent development. The children of immigrants who turned to fiction used this genre to detail the marginality of an ethnic childhood caught between two cultures.”76 Even in his first novel, Mulder knew that hatred of the Dutch was childish, and that acceptance was the proper course. His Nellie Harmdyk, college-age daughter of a Harlem farmer says, “It seems to hate one’s childhood, but, oh, how I hate it! And the Dutch, the race that gave me my name, I loathe them!” Later on in the book Mulder gives a more mature interpretation. “Why had [Nellie] not seen the essential features that distinguished the Hollander instead of seeing only his foibles and prejudices?”77 For Arnold Mulder, the author of The Dominie of Harlem, it also took quite a while to come to the same realization: there was nothing wrong with being both Dutch and American.

Archives, Collection H04-1526.5). DeKleine (1877-1957) was born in the rural village of Forest Grove, outside of Holland, MI. From 1928 to 1941, he served as Medical Director for the American Red Cross in Washington, D.C. 76 Betty Ann Burch, “Us and Them: Personal Reflections on Ethnic Literature.” In Immigrant America: European Ethnicity in the United States, edited by Timothy Walch (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1994), 56. 77 Mulder, Dominie of Harlem, 118, 186.

156 CHAPTER 7: TULIP TIME AND THE INVENTION OF A NEW ETHNIC IDENTITY

In the 1930s, the Dutch American immigrant community of Holland, Michigan underwent a cultural re-awakening through its Dutch heritage Tulip Time festival. Tulip Time started in 1929 as a city beautification project, essentially a horticultural festival, with 100,000 tulips imported from the Netherlands. Each year it added new cultural features, a Dutch market, Dutch-language church services, Dutch cultural parades, and regular performances by “klompen” (wooden shoe) dancers dressed up in the most colorful traditionally Dutch costumes, so that it continued to grow in popularity. By the mid-1930s, over a half million visitors per year came to see the tulips and partake in the traditions of old Holland.1 But while the festival, and the new generations of Dutch Americans that organized it, attempted to recreate and promote authentic Dutch culture, the portrayals of the Dutch, like the braided blonde-haired klompen dancers pushing brooms to scrub the streets, often equated to stereotype and caricature that hardly represented the Dutch Americans of history. The festival’s “Dutchness," wrote Dutch American author Arnold Mulder, “was less a matter of nationality and blood than of an American flair for effective community publicity.”2 According to historian Suzanne Sinke, Tulip Time in later years was neither completely Dutch, nor wholly American, but a peculiar hybrid, born and continuing to be reinterpreted in a dialectical process between cultures and shaped by an all too apparent subservience to the demands of commercialism and consumerism.3 Ethnic movements in 1930s America were led by descendents of immigrants who sought to reconnect with their European heritage. In 1937, speaking before the audience of a Swedish American historical society, historian Marcus Lee Hansen explained that there was an “almost universal” phenomenon among immigrant groups in the United States, in which the third generation seeks to remember what the second forgot. The alienated second generation, he argued, feels caught between cultures, and has little patience for its parents’ ways and little interest in telling their stories. But third generation immigrants speak fluent vernacular, feel at home in the land of their birth and consider recent immigrants to be of the inassimilable hordes. To explain and justify their own group’s rise from poor immigrants to respectable citizens, third generation

1 The Holland Sentinel, 27 May 1937, estimated a record 750,000 visitors at that year's festival. This was likely to peak year in the festival's history. 2 Arnold Mulder, “A Special Stake in the War,” Common Ground, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Winter 1943) 87-88.

157 immigrants research history and genealogy, study language, and in it all develop a pride in their heritage. Hansen welcomed the "third generation interest", but he warned that it must lead to serious scholarship and avoid prejudice, nationalism, and self-laudation. Like the progressive Chicago School, epitomized in the work of Thomas and Znaniecki's The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Hansen proposed inevitability in history. "Hansen's Law," this broad and Hegelian account of generational change as the engine of ethnic development, became a popular tool for explaining the past.4 In Holland’s Tulip Time, Hansen would have noticed the telltale signs of third generation interest taken to its extreme. Historians study specific and unique changes over time, whereas sociologists generalize about the structure of human society. Contending with Hansen's proposed "law" of social science, historians have sought examples to contradict its central premise. Nathan Glazer, for example, has stressed that the law should be considered within its historical circumstances, that contingency and experience will shape each individual’s and group’s perceptions of ethnicity in a unique way.5 Glazer therefore reduced Hanson’s principle from a law to a guide. H. Arnold Barton criticized Hansen’s law from another perspective, pointing out a weakness in defining a generation. Barton wrote, “the continuous flow of births and deaths tends to make any effort to single out distinct generations problematical and at best arbitrary.”6 In this spirit, Thomas J. Archdeacon pointed to later arriving immigrants who “experience a telescoped process of assimilation.” According to Archdeacon then, there are immigrants who are “biologically and genealogically members of the second generation” but feel more akin to the third “because their parents joined an existing subculture.” In this instance then, the second generation can be more like the third and just as likely to express interest in its roots.7 Presumably then, this phenomenon could work in reverse or in any number of ways to form generations from complicated arrays of persons across space and time. A generation, it seems, is so entirely malleable a category as to serve any purpose. Certainly,

3 Suzanne Sinke, “Tulips Are Blooming in Holland, Michigan: Analysis of a Dutch-American Festival” in Michael D’Innocenzo and Josef P. Sirefman, eds. Immigration and Ethnicity: American Society - “Melting Pot” or “Salad Bowl” (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 3-14. 4 Marcus Lee Hansen. “The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant.” [Delivered to the Augustana history Society, Rock Island, ILL., May 15, 1937] in Peter Kivisto and Dag Blank, editors. American Immigrants and Their Generations: Studies and Commentaries on the Hansen Thesis after Fifty Years. (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 191-203. 5 Nathan Glazer, “Hansen’s Hypothesis and the Historical Experience of Generations,” in Kivisto and Blank, American Immigrants, 104-112. 6 H. Arnold Barton, “Marcus Lee Hansen and the Swedish Americans,” in Kivisto, American Immigrants, 114. 7 Thomas J. Archdeacon, “Hansen’s Hypothesis as a Model of Immigrant Assimilation” in Kivisto, American Immigrants, 45-46.

158 this poses a problem for Hansen's analysis. While it has become clear that Hansen's Law should not be considered a social constant, it can still be useful in understanding generational change and ethnic evolution. In the previous chapter, Arnold Mulder was shown to be a representative of the alienated second generation, and as one who eventually found his way back into the ethnic fold. Mulder admitted that the second generation was difficult to define temporally. It was a group without a group consciousness, and "it was spread over half a century or more in time…One youngster might belong to it while his twin brother did not ever understand his trouble. Or a father might feel himself a member of the ‘lost generation’ while his son might fit perfectly into the background of the Dutch frontier.”8 It is important to contrast Mulder's view of a generation with Hansen's. Mulder used 'generation' as a descriptive category only, while Hansen attempted to establish generations as agents of change in a theory of progressive and inevitable alienation, rejection, and recovery of traditional culture. Hansen's definition of a generation is so loose that it makes his theory impossible to refute, and consequently impossible to verify.9 While there can at times be substantial overlap between the passage of one generation and the change in attitude towards traditional culture, the two are not entirely congruent, nor is the passage of generations in itself the agent of changing attitudes. Hansen has confused correlation with causation. Each immigrant experiences alienation and recovery in their own way, and the long term trend which Hansen recognized as stemming from generational change can be better explained as the result of competing tensions among individuals at different levels of the assimilation process. In other words, individual and group identity is always being contested in a discourse about ethnicity. It is precisely the lack of consensus between competing interpretations of ethnic identity, and the lack of clear generational boundaries, which leads to change over time and the emergence of new individual and group identities. Tulip Time, this chapter shows, is a prime example of how individual tensions of assimilation, including alienation and recovery, competed to produce new concepts of "Dutchness," new forms of identity for Dutch Americans. In a recent scholarly investigation of the traditions of Tulip Time, Deborah Che argued that the festival is “a celebration of diasporic Dutch heritage in Michigan, not the heritage of the

8 Arnold Mulder. Americans from Holland. (Philadelphia, PA: J.P. Lippincott Co., 1947), 273. 9 Empirical studies show that the "third generation recovery" model fits some American immigrants groups (Jewish, Swedish, Scottish, etc.) better than others (Polish, Italian). Eugene I. Bender and George Kagiwada, "Hansen's

159 Netherlands.” 10 According to Che, Dutch America as a diasporic community developed Tulip Time to help hold on to a sense of distinctiveness in the face of outside pressures, i.e. Americanization. Although unaware of Suzanne Sinke’s earlier work, Che saw in the festival a similar hybridization of Dutch and American themes. But she also added to the dialectic of cultures the idea of “emergent authenticity," stating that inauthentic Dutch traditions became or “emerged” as authentic Dutch American traditions through their perpetual application. Thus Che justified Tulip Time traditions as locally authentic in the sense that they originated in Holland, Michigan in the 1930s and played an important role in defining Dutch American culture in the later half of the twentieth century.11 While Che’s “emergent authenticity” thesis is compelling, she was incorrect to see the festival, at least in its early decades, as primarily a celebration of Dutch American heritage. The festival was originally an attempt to promote foreign Dutch culture, a “revival of old Netherlands customs and traditions” wrote 1930s-contemporary amateur historian Peter Moerdyke.12 It was not, however, primarily an attempt to relate the immigration experience or glorify the deeds of Dutch American pioneer leaders like Albertus Van Raalte or Hendrik Scholte, nor did it much express the Calvinistic creed central to the Dutch American spirit. The beginning of Tulip Time signaled a coming-of-age in the assimilation process of Dutch Americans. Unlike German American festivities, which dated to the mid-nineteenth century, Tulip Time was not based in tradition and had little precedent; much had to be made up on spot. Stereotypical images of the Dutch, their supposedly traditional costumes, their wooden shoes, windmills, and, of course, their ubiquitous tulips, combined to reinvent and promote a new view of Dutch America. Consequently, Tulip Time became an unintentional caricature of Dutch culture and an affirmation of how Americanized the Dutch Americans had become. By investigating the role of assimilation, traditions, and ethnicity in Tulip Time, this chapter adds to the growing literature from scholars who have come to see the tradition and ritual in ethnic festival as more than a form of fun and expression, but also a powerful force in shaping ethnic identity. In an article in Sollors’ The Invention of Ethnicity, Kathleen Neils Conzen argued that German American festive culture, with its invented rituals, played a central role in establishing

Law of "Third-Generation Return" and the Study of American Religio-Ethnic Groups", Phylon (1960-), Vol. 29, No. 4 (4th Qtr., 1968), pp. 360-370. 10 Deborah Che, “Reinventing Tulip Time: Diasporic Dutch Heritage Celebration in Holland (Michigan)”, in Tim Coles and Dallen J. Timothy, eds. Tourism, and Space (New York: Routledge, 2004), 261. 11 Ibid., 261-278. 12 Peter Moerdyke “The Story of Tulip Time”, Peter Moerdyke Papers, HMA, Collection 0132.

160 communitas, unifying multi-denominational German Americans, and defining an immigrant culture under a set of common traditions.13 April Schultz sees Norwegian American festive culture as a process of cultural change and a “negotiation among various forces in the community,” forces like romanticism, nationalism, and a reaction to World War One Americanization drives.14 Lon Kurashige, in a more recent investigation of the Japanese Nisei week celebrations in , also identified tradition’s role as a means of “promoting and policing group boundaries.”15 It is rare to quote the dedication of a book, but Kurashige illustrates the process of cultural change best when he thanks his parents for “teaching me about my ethnicity and then letting me figure it out for myself.”16 Kurashige seems to be making a point that everyone, to an extent, must “figure out” their ethnicity. How did the Dutch Americans “figure out” their ethnicity through Tulip Time? Was it almost inevitable, as Hansen would have it, that it would fall upon the third generation of Dutch Americans to reestablish its ethnic roots in such a manner? I argue that an essential force behind the birth and development of Tulip Time was tension between immigrants at different levels of assimilation and their associated ideas of what it meant to be Dutch, and that these tensions can only loosely be correlated with generations. Tulip Time was initiated and promoted by Americans with no Dutch blood at all and by more fully assimilated Dutch Americans, those whom Hansen would have recognized as members of the third and fourth generation. Dutch Americans who were more familiar with but shunned Dutch culture in order to better assimilate, thought the festival a poor and rather absurd representation of the Dutch. Immigrants who had been born in the Netherlands, although recognizing little of their home culture in the festival, often accepted the mischaracterizations as benign while hoping to capitalize on their own status as “truly Dutch.” The early development of Tulip Time depended on the competition between these no less than three types of Dutch-Americans: those who promoted, those who criticized, and those who capitalized on the promotion of Dutch culture. This chapter, therefore, continues to present an argument for the evolution of immigrant ethic identities based on the competition of ideas, with forces both endogenous and exogenous to

13 Kathleen Neils Conzen, “Ethnicity as Festive Culture: Nineteenth-Century German America on Parade.” in Werner Sollors, ed. The Invention of Ethnicity, 44-76. 14 April R. Schultz. Ethnicity on Parade: Inventing the Norwegian American Through Celebration. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 9. 15 Lon Kurashige. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival in Los Angeles, 1934-1990. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), xiv.

161 the immigrant community. In this instance, Tulip Time was a forum for competing images of Dutch ethnic identity. The festival also became an essential contributor to the city of Holland's financial well being during the . As city leaders and Tulip Time organizers developed the festival, and as Dutch American chose to participate or contribute, they identified essential elements of a new Dutch American identity, always with an eye for community promotion. Players in the festival sought their own financial or psychological benefit. Tulip Time was in this way a market for ethnicity, and the spread of this festival to other Dutch American communities shows that it was a successful ethnic product.

Dynamic Dutch America Tulip Time was born in a tumultuous period when the forces of Americanization, modernism, and secularism shook the foundations of Dutch America, a scattered but networked community of Protestant Dutch immigrants in the American Midwest.17 When the thirty-two year old Dutch historian, Jacob Van Hinte came to the United States for six weeks in 1921 to research the American Dutch, he discovered first hand the forces shaping their communities. With his stay in the U.S. limited to a mere six weeks, the determined Van Hinte raced from one Dutch settlement to the next, scouring archives, making interviews, and taking notes along the way. After returning to the Netherlands, it would take him seven years to complete the dissertation which became his published masterpiece in 1928. The work was nearly comprehensive, since Van Hinte, a social geographer by training, worked with the rigorous scientific methodology of professional European historians epitomized in Leopold von Ranke, the nineteenth century German historian who would, as the proverb goes, cross the ocean to verify a comma.18 While Van Hinte was strongly nationalistic (for his own Netherlands), he believed Americanization of the Dutch immigrants was for their best interest. Yet, he feared Americanization’s threat to the Dutch immigrants’ religious life. Americanization, he said, is

16 Ibid., v. 17 While the majority of Dutch immigrants to America were Protestant, there were also substantial numbers of Dutch Catholic, Jewish, and non-religious immigrants. These later groups, however, appear to have been less cohesive. For examples see: Yda Schreuder, Catholic Immigrant Settlement in Wisconsin, 1850-1905 (New York: Garland, 1989); Robert P. Swierenga, The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American Diaspora. (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994). 18 James D. Bratt. Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984); Jacob Van Hinte. Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of the of America. Robert P. Swierenga, ed. and Adriaan de Wit, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985).

162 “naturally most strongly expressed by the younger generation and is accompanied by an equally strong secularism.” It was the “degenerate” behavior of the youth, their liking for card playing and dancing, short skirts and bobbed hair that he found most offensive. Nevertheless, Van Hinte was well aware that the culture was changing and that it was of no use to promote old Dutch traditions, which in many cases could no longer be properly understood. In discussing Dutch habits still alive in the settlements, Van Hinte noted that “In a few instances one gets the impression that a custom, which had practically died out in the Old Country, was revived in America, or at least kept alive…in an exaggerated and even in a wild, disorderly form.”19 In tracing the history of the Dutch Americans, Van Hinte recognized the loss of belonging, the growing alienation experienced by later generations. As he explained it, the first wave of Dutch immigrants were religious separatists, primarily orthodox Calvinists who fled official persecution in the Netherlands. It was the hope of the leader of the Holland colony, Albertus C. Van Raalte, that the immigrants would build a city on a hill, a frontier Christian community held together by religion and family. But the local orthodoxy in Holland and other Dutch American communities met a growing resistance in the post-Civil War period. For one reason, religious separatists were a minority in the new waves of immigrants from the Netherlands. In addition, their children, trained by Yankee schoolteachers and with increasing frequency coming into contact with native-born Americans, questioned the strict Calvinism and cultural presuppositions of the early settlers. Van Hinte identified the cultural and spiritual components of the struggle that continued in the minds of many immigrants throughout the Dutch-American Midwest.

…it happened that some educated Dutch-Americans revealed their deepest feelings to me and confessed that they actually did not feel at home in America even through they had lived here since their childhood and admitted that they “had it very good here.” They felt it was impossible for them to become wrapped up in Yankee life, but they could not return to the Netherlands and to its spiritual atmosphere that they felt they needed. They felt therefore unbalanced, without a real identity, for they were no longer Netherlanders and actually they were not American either.20

In Van Hinte's eyes, Dutch Americans were longing for identity but knew not where to look. For young Dutch Americans, the “old country” was full of “old folks.” After all, it seemed that most correspondence from the Netherlands was written by old aunts and uncles, and their letters tended

19 Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America, 981, 988.

163 more often than not to discuss the illnesses and deaths of elderly relatives. The Netherlands, one could despair, was an economically backward, pre-modern and aged country.21 Tulip Time presented an alternative view of Dutch ethnicity, absent the memories of struggle and the paradoxes of ethnic identification in America. For some Dutch Americans, the new portrayal of "Dutchness" was an unwelcome development. . The attempted “ethnological connection with the people of the Netherlands" wrote Arnold Mulder, "was almost as stagey as the festival itself.”22 Mulder described the festival as a “reflection of the innate romanticism concealed beneath the shell of Dutch practicality” and as “evidence of a continuing pride of race.”23 As a second generation immigrant, Mulder spent much energy and a significant portion of his professional career promoting assimilation and reform among the Dutch Americans. In his view, Tulip Time was a setback in these efforts, a regression from rational modernism to emotional primitivism. Other local Dutch Americans shared in Mulder's assessment. Bill Plumert, who had migrated from the Netherlands in 1923, described the festival in 1946, in Dutch, as "Allemaal reclame." [All advertisements]. He complained about the "Wooden shoes and Volendam costumes and yokes with buckets of water to scrub the streets. And from Hollywood come the film stars to be photographed with a broom in their hands. It is nice to see, but it is all publicity-nonsense." Plumert punctuated his assessment in English, "I don't like it." 24 Nevertheless, Tulip Time became a popular and important forum for expressing solidarity and common identity. Despite the competing interpretations of Dutch on display, the citizens of Holland, Michigan were widely supportive of the general presentation. In a quite literal way, the seeds of Tulip Time were sown in the home front efforts of the First World War. In the summer of 1918, high school biology teacher Lida Rogers supervised a garden club movement in Holland, which encouraged boys and girls between the ages of ten and eighteen to raise vegetables, keep account of their expenses and profits, and prepare for a special prize contest at the county fair the following year. Holland’s youth-led “victory garden” movement was a widespread success. It helped to alleviate pressure on the local agriculture sector during the

20 Ibid.,1015. 21 Herbert Brinks, “Impressions of the ‘Old World’: 1848-1940”, in Rob Kroes and Henk-Otto Neuschafer, editors. The Dutch in North-American: Their Immigration and Cultural Continuity. (Free University of Amsterdam Press, 1991), 35-47. 22 Ibid., 289. Arnold Mulder, The Dominie of Harlem (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1913). 23 Mulder, Americans from Holland, 289.

164 war, while providing exercise and a wartime purpose for the children. Over the next decade, Rogers organized Arbor Day tree plantings and other activities for students. Rogers’ progressive drive towards mass participation and out-of-doors education led her to propose, as a beautification measure, the large scale planting of tulips throughout the city. In a speech before Holland’s Women’s Literary Club in 1927, Rogers, who was not of Dutch ancestry (in fact she was a Daughter of the ), and who was not raised in Holland, promoted the Tulip as a symbol befitting a festival in the Dutch city. Rogers identified an opportunity for civic growth and tourism. Tulips, after all, were already common in the city; as many as 18,000 had been planted there in 1925. But by combining Dutch cultural themes with the appeal of a flower festival, Rogers envisioned Tulip Time as a rival to the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena.25 For Holland to pull off a successful festival, the city would need an incredible amount of tulips and unprecedented civic participation. In her speech, Rogers even offered her students’ labor for the project.26 Americans of non-Dutch descent, who were amused by the strength of Dutch culture in America, were crucial in organizing the festival during its early years. Earnest Brooks, the New York-born mayor of Holland from 1928-1932 appropriated city funds to order tulips from the Netherlands, and William Connelly, a Holland citizen of Irish descent, led the Chamber of Commerce efforts from 1933 to 1938 to publicize the event.27 Much was made of the fact this leader of a Dutch American festival was of Irish ancestry. In 1934, Holland Sentinel editor Ben Mulder reprinted a line about Tulip Time which had appeared in a newspaper in the Netherlands. “Hollandsche meisjes in ‘nationaal’ costuum bij het bloemenfest in de Americaansche stad Holland”, he wrote, “Connelly, please translate.” 28 Later that season, when the News received a Tulip Time article clipping from a St. Louis German-language newspaper, Mulder lamented that Connelly was unable to read it because of all the gutturals, and that the exercise left his throat sore. This kind of ethnic banter was all in good fun. What made these ethnic jokes acceptable was that all those involved were Americans. Like most in 1930s Holland, Connelly was born in America and had American habits. He was as Irish as any third or fourth generation Hollander was Dutch.

24Nieuwe Leidsche Courant, 19 March 1949. Translation of "Klompen en Volendammerkleren en jukken met emmers water en dan worden de straten geboend. En uit Hollywood komen de filmsterren om zich te later fotografen met een bezem in de hand. 'Het is aardig, om te zien, maar het is allemaal publiciteits-onzin. I don't like it.' 25 Holland City News, 11 Mar. 1925. 26 Holland City News, 28 Mar. 1918. Lida Rogers Papers at HMA, Collection T89-1032. Mulder, “Special Stake,” 88. 27 Peter Moedyke, “The Story of Tulip Time“, 1939. 28 Holland City News, 12 April. 1934.

165 But the ethnic contrast made a good headline. In 1934, cartoonist Robert L. Ripley’s nationally syndicated column “Believe it or Not” featured Connelly as “the only Irishman” in a Dutch immigrant city. Whether this was true that Connelly was the “only“ Irishman, and it probably wasn’t, was for readers to decide.29 But as an outsider to Holland and as an American attracted to Dutch culture, Connelly keenly recognized the potential of ethnic tourism. According to the opinions of Holland’s elite, William Connelly was Holland’s savior during the Great Depression. His strategy for the city addressed three major areas. First and perhaps most important, he ran public relations for the city and helped make Tulip Time a nationally-known event. Next, he got state and national funds involved in local highway construction projects, which aided traffic to the festival. And third, he encouraged industry to move to Holland. By the end of 1936, Connelly’s formula “transformed a town badly crippled by depression into one of the busiest industrial centers in Michigan.” 30 By 1938, twelve new industries had come to Holland, bringing over $2 million in payrolls and 4 million man-hours of labor.31 An additional grand proposal for pulling Holland out of the Depression also included the exploitation of the city's unique ethnic heritage. Connelly's logic was clear enough. Holland had an increasingly popular ethnic festival. It also had hundreds of men walking the street in search of jobs. Connelly’s equation was simple addition. He proposed using welfare workers to clean up the swamp at the mouth of Black River, shaping the land and building an environment that recalled the Netherlands: canals, dykes, windmills, and even Netherlandic houses and barns. The new attraction was to be known as “Klein Nederland.” Connelly and his supporters reasoned that Black River was essentially useless as it stood. “Reclaiming” the river would be a massive undertaking, but that is exactly what Holland needed. Initial cost estimates were set at $600,000, and Connelly assured the city that the National Relief Agency (NRA) would grant funds for one-third of the cost. The rest of the money the city would have to borrow in loans. The project was promised to keep 300 to 400 workers busy for 2 years, enough time to whether the depression and begin to reap rewards in tourism.32

29 Holland City News, 5 April 1934; 17 May 1934; 17 Oct. 1935, 24 March 1938. 30 Holland City News, 3 Dec. 1936. 31 Holland City News, 19 Nov. 1936; 28 July 1938. 32 Holland City News, 17 Aug. 1933.

166 A skeptical city council first voted 7 to 5 against the project. It was too big of a risk they said. Some questioned whether the construction of the dykes along Black River was even feasible. After all, weren’t there sink holes in the area, and didn’t Black River experience spring freshets? In addition, Black River had mosquitoes and was foggy a good deal of the time. Then the National Relief Agency turned down the project as well. Holland’s Johnny Hyma joked “it looks like NRA funds now stand for “No River Appropriation.” 33 But the idea of a “Klein Nederland” and the potential for greater ethnic tourism refused to pass away. In September of 1934, the city council voted 11 to 1 for a more modest version of the project. When the mayor cast a veto, stressing his opposition to the $350,000 loan the project required, the council still voted 10 to 2, thus overriding the Mayor. Enthusiasm for the project faded, however, and after three months of considering the costs of the plan, the councilmen gradually and reluctantly rescinded. Klein Nederland was no more, but Tulip Time would proceed without it.34 While a few politically powerful men may have been at the forefront of promoting Tulip Time, local women were primarily responsible for organizing the festival and ensuring its success. Gender roles of the period encouraged women’s involvement in civic organizations. The Women’s Literary Club, with an overrepresentation of American-born members, often hosted Tulip Show contests at its organization’s building.35 Female klompen (wooden shoe) dancers also drastically outnumbered male dancers and were a large draw. “When they did that Dutch dance, boy people went crazy,” remembered a long-time Holland resident in 1995.36 When professional newsreel crews documented the dances in 1931, they meticulously noted the names of all ten girl dancers appearing on camera, but failed to record the names of any male dancers.37 A 1942 Hollywood film based on Tulip Time, titled Seven Sweathearts, had the protagonist fall in love with the youngest of seven Dutch daughters, only to learn that the elder daughters would have to be married first before he could get the hand of his bride.

Authenticity and Invention

33 Holland City News, 24 Aug. 1933, 31 Aug. 1933. 34 Holland City News, 28 Sept. 1933; 8 Feb. 1934. 35 Woman's Literary Club Papers. HMA Collection T88-0317. Holland City News, 10 May 1945. 36 The quote is from a participant named only “Mrs. Bonenberg” in an oral history interview of Hattie Grigsby. JAH, H88-0234. Hope College Living Heritage Oral History Project, 1995. 37 Randall VandeWater, Holland Happenings, Vol. 1 (1994), 54. In 1995 oral history interview, Jack Leenhouts of Holland claimed that there were few male Dutch dancers at first because the conservative Dutch

167 In attempting to revive ethnic culture, Dutch Americans through Tulip Time created new traditions that appealed to an American audience. In 1983, Eric Hobsbawm made the important observation that some cultural practices or traditions are not genuinely traditional, but can be invented to serve ideological ends. Hobsbawm’s term, “the invention of tradition”, also the title of his book, quickly gained currency in social science scholarship. Three years after Hobsbawm’s book was published, Werner Sollors, in an introduction to a collection of edited essay’s The Invention of Ethnicity (1989) built on the theme of invention to assert that ethnicity, too, is invented. Ethnicity is not “invented”, Sollors says, in the sense that it appears out of thin air or is superficial, but it is invented because it is a dynamic and constantly developing categorization, often shaped to serve a desired sense of collective consciousness.38 The early stereotypes and mischaracterizations of traditional Dutch culture arising from Tulip Time were the result of a failure to study Dutch culture. To remedy this, the promoters of the festival from the 1940s forward attempted as much as possible to represent authentically the culture of the Netherlands. Wiliard Wichers, director of the Netherlands Museum, was often called upon for his advice about Dutch culture. It was rather a misapplication of knowledge, a zeal to satisfy tourists and their own ethnic longing that caused Hollanders to invent new traditions. Tulip Time was not Dutch tradition per se, but a tradition built on Dutch themes. Therefore, when the costumed klompen dancers learned to shuffle in their wooden shoes, they were not learning a Dutch tradition but a Tulip Time tradition. Schoolteacher and early participant in Tulip Time, Margaret Van Vyven, recalled that “We taught Tulip Time in all the elementary schools.”39 Van Vyven was right, Tulip Time had to be taught before it could be learned. Those who had never been to the Netherlands could be easily confused as to the nature of Dutch culture, since the festival displayed multiple views of "Dutchness." Some hoped to represent the seventeenth century , when business and arts flourished in the Netherlands. Thus, the city councilmen could be seen on the streets, as one observer noted, “looking for all the world as if they had just stepped out of a canvas.”40 Ridiculing the situation, alderman Peter Huyser thought “that, rather than make council members look like native Netherlanders, the

disapproved of boys and girls dancing together. This is probably apocryphal. JAH, H88-0234. Hope College Living Heritage Oral History Project, 1995. 38 Eric Hobsbawn, The Invention of Tradition, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Werner Sollors, ed. The Invention of Ethnicity. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 39 Oral history interview of Margaret Van Vyven, 21 June, 1995. JAH, H88-0234. Hope College Living Heritage Oral History Project, 1995.

168 gowns worn by the ‘city fathers’ made them look like ‘clowns.’”41 Representations of the Dutch also drew on the popular turn-of-the-century American art-based stereotypes of the Dutch, an interest labeled “Holland Mania” by art historian Annette Stott. During Holland Mania, American artists portrayed the Dutch as quaint relics of the Golden Age, akin to figures from the paintings of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals.42 Artists also favored the image of the pipe-smoking little Dutchman or the Dutch child with a speech impediment (like the Germans, he could not pronounce a “W”), images which were accepted for their stereotypical simplicity and their easy employ in paint-by-number postcard images. Holland Mania themes in Tulip Time were common and included an emphasis on the dress of the fishing town of Volendam, a sort of non-industrialized romantic relic of a bygone era, and a village little representative of the Netherlands as a whole. Indeed, the Volendam costume was and has remained a dominant image of Tulip Time. Such popular images proved commercially successful. “The tourists eat up the propaganda as readily as the food,” wrote Arnold Mulder.43 The city of Holland and its Tulip Time organizers were concerned with marketing the festival as an authentic representation of Dutch culture. The new ethnic identity was shaped by the promotion of authenticity for an American audience willing to pay. “More than one visitor was heard to remark that the chief charm of the festival is the note of authenticity that runs through the whole affair”, wrote a correspondent for the Grand Rapids Herald in 1937.44 The editor of the Chesapeake and Ohio Pere Marquette Magazine, a publication of a railroad that would stand to gain from the transportation of visitors to the festival, wrote in 1938 that Tulip Time was successful because of “its adherence to the authentic” and lack of “commercialism, ballyhoo and .”45 This wording had been seen before. “Holland’s festival is devoid of commercialism," the editor of the Holland City News wrote in 1936, “there is nothing tawdry or low about the spectacle. All ballyhoo and side show features are simply not a party of Tulip Time.” On the one hand, the writers were correct, Tulip Time in the 1930s was different from some rowdy American festivals. It was wholesome and family-oriented with no outside vendors or circus atmosphere. But to say that the festival had “no taint of commercialization,” as did the

40 P.T. Moerdyke, “The Story of Tulip Time”, 1939. 41 Holland City News, 19 May 1938. 42 Annette Stott. Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Culture and Art (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998). 43 Arnold Mulder, Americans from Holland, 287. 44 Holland City News, 27 May 1937. Reprint of article from Grand Rapids Herald.

169 Studebaker Wheel Magazine in 1937, was an either uninformed or intentional mischaracterization.46 In 1936, Tulip Time added a Dutch Marionette show and a well-researched miniature model of a Dutch village, known as Little Netherlands. “Folk like changes and we must have money,” the local newspaper reported. “These new attractions were the saving grace of the festival’s strong box.”47 Authenticity was important in name, but not always in deed. Newspaper advertisements during Tulip Time took advantage of Dutch themes. One could find Dutch Kraft varnish with a windmill image, or other similar images of products marketed with Tulips or wooden shoes. Holland Furnace Company, the largest financial contributor to the festival hoped that the novelty of the Holland name would help in sales. Through its employees and salesmen around the country, the company marketed the old country warmth of its “Warm Friend” furnace.48 Dutch Americans contributed to an idealized Tulip Time version of their ethnic group. The Holland Sentinel carried the lines that at Tulip Time, the “sun shines as bright as the golden hair of the dancing maidens, and skies are as blue as the breeches of the clattering Dutchman.”49 Costumes in particular were essential in establishing the atmosphere of the festival. In 1953, Esther Veen Huis, a native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, finished a Home Economics master’s thesis on the costumes worn by the Tulip Time klompen dancers. Veen Huis’s study was primarily concerned with the fabrics of the costumes and their material authenticity. According to Veen Huis, the costumes during the early years of the festival were not authentic, and were just layered blue and white fabrics based on images from pottery. In essence, these patterns were a perpetuation of Holland Mania themes. “This was a popular but unfortunate conception of Dutch coloring.” Veen Huis related. Yet Veen Huis was proud of how far the costume designs had come in the following decades. She had been involved in the festival since the late 1930s and could attest to the progress made in authentic costuming. Girls who were responsible for buying fabric and sewing their own costumes now had to “pass rigid inspection” to verify the authenticity of their

45 Holland City News, 12 May 1938. Reprint of article from Chesapeake and Ohio Pere Marquette Magazine. 46 Holland City News, 13 May, 1937. Reprint of article from Studebaker Wheel Magazine. 47 Holland City News, 14 May, 1936. 48 Holland City News, 13 May 1997. 49 Holland City News, 18 May, 1939. Reprinted from Grand Rapids Herald.

170 dress. The goal of Veen Huis’ study was to introduce to the festival another “authentic” costume to give the girls more options for costuming. 50 Veen Huis’s parents had migrated from the Netherlands to West Michigan in the late nineteenth century, but they had arrived in their youths: her father was seventeen and her mother just nine upon entering America. As the sixth of couple’s six children, and educated in American schools, Esther required translation assistance for her study, and it is likely that she lacked or had only a rudimentary education in the Dutch language. Her primary criteria for selecting a new costume were aesthetic and physical. In designing a new costume for the festival, Veen Huis settled on a blue/purple/orange pattern from the Dutch Island of . She introduced the costume “to make the dance even more colorful and interesting.”51 But the costume also had to be flexible enough to dance in, lightweight and not likely to shift too much while wearing. Her design was accepted by the organizers of Tulip Time and worn by ten girls in the 1951 festival. As authentic as the costumes may have been materially, they were not representative of the provenance of the Dutch American immigrants, few of whom, if any, actually hailed from Volendam, , or Urk. Thus, traditions from certain minor villages in the Netherlands were used to represent traditional Dutch dress in general.52 Also, Veen Huis mistakenly refers to the costumes as provincial, when in fact they were native to specific villages and not provinces more generally. Moreover, the costumes were, of course, not contemporary, but based on paintings and images from the nineteenth century or earlier. Harry Hoekstra, a first generation immigrant from the Netherlands recalled the irony of his experience as a volunteer in the festival the 1940s. “One of the funny things was that I thought that they didn't want me to participate unless I had a Dutch costume, and so I had to come from the Netherlands to America, before ever I wore a Dutch costume.” 53 This was the new authenticity.

Influence of the Dutch-born

50 Esther Veen Huis, “Historic Dutch Provincial Costume Adapted to Klompen Dancers of the Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan,” 1953. (Submitted as her thesis in earning a Master of Science Degree from Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Colorado State University. Original is held at the Sage Library at CSU), 33, 34. 51 Veen Huis, “Historic Dutch Costumes,” 143. 52 Ibid., 143. 53 Oral History Interview, Harry Hoekstra, 28 June 1995. JAH, H88-0234. Hope College Living Heritage Oral History Project.

171 Because of the demand for authenticity, some first generation Dutch American immigrants saw the festival as an opportunity to exploit their status as “truly Dutch.” For example, a first generation immigrant might express interest in recovering ethnicity by altering a Tulip Time tradition to bring it more into line with his or her memory of a tradition in the Netherlands. Or he or she might introduce a new tradition altogether. In the 1930s, for example, tulip plantings were under the direction of Jan Van Bragt, a first generation immigrant who learned from his father in the Netherlands the “proper” way to plant a Tulip.54 Dutch-born Peter Buis, who had recently returned from a trip to the Netherlands, was able to verify the accuracy of Holland‘s painstakingly constructed model of “Little Netherlands.”55 Likewise, Jennie Van Eerden, who had grown up in the province of Zeeland, influenced the development of the “street scrubbing” tradition by providing the participants with her memory of the chore. Street scrubbing was introduced in the 1931 festival and like the klompen dancing, it too was recorded for newsreels. Van Eerden wanted to make sure the street scrubbers behaved in an authentic manner. The key to cleaning the streets in the “old country," she taught, was to bend over with the broom but not to rest on hands and knees. While Van Eerden’s advice about technique may have had some been rooted in real tradition, the use of Dutch Cleanser, a popular American household cleansing product picturing a fastidious Dutch woman, most definitely was not. The cleanser left a soapy residue on the streets and was never used in street scrubbing again after its appearance in 1931, although street scrubbing continued to be a popular Tulip Time tradition. The act of drenching fellow participants with a bucket of water was an added tradition.56 First generation immigrants were in highest demand, however, not for advice on traditions, but for their ability to speak Dutch. According to linguist Peter Veltman, the chance that one might hear the Dutch language was one of the primary tourist attractions of Tulip Time.57 Holland advertised that coming to Tulip Time was like visiting a piece of Europe in the United States. In one particular instance, a family from the Netherlands took advantage of the newfound interest in the Dutch and toured the breadth of the United States, dressed in Dutch garb, riddling off Dutch proverbs, and selling Dutch novelties along the way to pay for the trip.58 With the introduction in

54 P.T. Moerdyke, “The Story of Tulip Time”, 1939. 55 Holland City News, 19 May 1938. 56 Randall Vandewater, “Street Cleaning Started as Stunt” in Holland Sentinel, 19 Oct. 2003. 57 Peter Veltman, “Dutch Survivals in Holland, Michigan.” American Speech, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Feb. 1940), 80- 83. 58 Holland City News, 13 May 1937.

172 1941 of the position of “town crier”, first played by first generation immigrant, Clarence Jalving, visitors were more likely to hear the foreign Dutch language. The position of town crier, it was explained, was “reminiscent of the old days when the communications in the Netherlands were less modern." The town crier’s main duty was to walk the streets and declare in the Dutch language the opening of the festival.59 In Dirk Gringhuis’s fictional children’s story, Tulip Time, published in 1951, we learn that language denotes authenticity. The story begins one day in May when an old wooden shoe maker, the unsophisticated, old immigrant “Uncle Klaas” steers his equally out-of-date car to Tulip Time, bringing along his curious nephew and niece, Gerrit and Greta. At the festival, Gerrit laughs amusingly at the street scrubbers, but Greta is stern-faced, concerned because as the children are caught up in the crowds, they become separated from their uncle. When Gerrit spots Uncle Klaas in the parade, the children are amazed to learn that their Uncle Klaas is the town crier. “You didn’t know your old uncle was Town Crier, did you?” Klaas later asks the children. When the children visit the Netherlands Museum, Klaas points out the recognizable artifacts from the old country. The story ends when the children, who have entered a flower arrangement in the Tulip Show, win a first award. Their display consists of a small garden planted in a wooden shoe with a cut-out picture of their Uncle Klaas. The children whisper to Uncle Klaas “Now everyone will remember you.” 60 Gringhuis’ story explains the various roles Dutch Americans played in Tulip Time. The old immigrant Klaas is eager to show off his Dutch culture, while the immigrant children who have been raised in the American culture are interested in learning about their heritage. Curiously, the children’s parents, perhaps not as interested in their heritage, are mostly absent. That Uncle Klaas no longer has any customers at his wooden shoe shop is also indicative of the declining interest among immigrants for the traditional Dutch culture. But the young children are captivated by what they learn about the Dutch at Tulip Time and they want everyone to remember Uncle Klaas. Holland’s “Dutch Village” benefitted from the arrival of Tulip Time. Since the 1920s, the Nelis family had operated a farm and nursery and supplied tulips for the Tulip Time festival. In 1957, Harry Nelis opened a Dutch souvenir shop near the highway in Holland Township, hoping to gain from the tourist traffic and direct people to the festival. In 1965, the tourist shop was replaced

59 Holland City News, 14 May 1941. 60 Dirk Gringhuis, Tulip Time (Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company, 1951).

173 by "Dutch Village", a collection of buildings and bridges that imitated a scene from the Netherlands. The village grew in the 1970s.61 From 1960 to 1999, the Nelis family also operated a Dutch-themed "Queen's Inn" restaurant on the property.62 Like the organizers of Tulip Time, Dutch Village sought the elusive "authenticity" that would draw visitors. Netherlands-born Swenna Harger began working at Dutch Village in the summer of 1972 and was called upon to help decorate the property's Dutch farmhouse in a style that met her sense of authentic. Harger, who worked at Dutch Village for thirty years, reported in 2008 that it was becoming difficult to keep Dutch Village relevant in recent years.63

Conclusion Tulip Time was not designed as a salve for the Great Depression, but it was an important factor in seeing Holland through these rough years. With the advent of automobile culture and the shortages of the depression, Holland could market itself as a European destination within financial and geographical reach of the average midwestern American. The new Tulip Time image of Dutch America was influenced and promoted by financial gain, both individual and civic. An oral history project conducted in Holland in 1995 recorded the memories of a number of those who as children participated in the festival in the 1930s. When asked about the early years of Tulip Time, they recalled a sense of excitement, fun, and, notably, opportunity. One memory in particular is illustrative of how Dutch themes, regardless of their progeny, could be used for financial advantage even by those who were not first generation immigrants. Hattie Grisgy remembered two childhood friends who dressed up exactly like the children picture on the package of Holland Rusk (a type of Dutch biscuit). “[T]hose kids could go out and make more money at Tulip Time. Everybody'd give you a dime or a quarter or fifty cents or a dollar to have your picture taken.”64 Holland, Michigan’s Tulip Time festival was a forum for the expression of traditions as developed and maintained by all stripes of individuals. Although some Dutch American immigrants turned up their noses at displays of Dutch heritage, by the 1930s, acceptance and promotion of this new cultural representation became a dominant force in the Dutch American community. With the organizational help of non-Dutch-descent Americans, and fueled by the

61 Mike Lozon, "Dutch Village remains big attraction in hub of retail", Holland Sentinel, 26 Oct., 1997. 62 Mark Sanchez "Village now the focus with Queen's Inn closed", Holland Sentinel, 24 Oct. 1999. 63 Myron Kukla, "Nelis' Dutch Village celebrating 50 years" Grand Rapids Press, 20 Apr. 2008. 64 Oral History Interview. Hattie Grisgby, 2 June 1995. JAH.

174 desire to appease thousands of tourists, Dutch Americans from various generations approximated the pattern described in Hansen's principle of third generation interest. First generation immigrants from the Netherlands added their own correcting “expertise” to the festival and enjoyed the special status and attention provided by thousands of Tulip Time visitors. Economic incentives allowed the new image of the Tulip Time to flourish. Gone were the days of the nineteenth century Dutch immigrants, those pious folk whom the novelist Arnold Mulder had described as wearing plain dark clothes and reciting Bible verses on the street. The new image of Dutch America was much more colorful, quaint, and commercial. It has had a lasting impact on Dutch American identity. The secularization of Dutch American identity through Tulip Time also popularized it. What used to be an isolated, insular identity now opened itself up for the world to view. Isolation was seen as quaintness. The festival has spread to other settlements of descendents of Dutch immigrants. In Iowa Pella and Orange City began their own festivals in 1935 and 1936, respectively. Other Dutch heritage festivals, such as Fulton, Illinois's Dutch Days, and Edgerton, Minnesota's Dutch Festival incorporated themes appropriated from the original Tulip Time.65 Further Dutch heritage festivals organized in Cedar Grove, WI (1947), Albany, NY (1949), Clymer, NY (1953), Redlands, CA (1953), Holland, NY (1954), Oak Harbor, WA (1969), Nederland, TX (1973), Little Chute, WI (1982), Denver, CO (1982), Baldwin, WI (1983), Hempstead, NY (1983), Lynden, WA (1986), Wamego, KS (1987), and Palos Heights, IL (1996). 66 These festivals typically serve Dutch food, invite politicians and Dutch royalty, and promote history and heritage. Dutch "authenticity" continues to be an important theme of the festivals. The words of the Pella, Iowa Tulip Queen of 1979, Mindy Roozeboom, illustrate this fact. "I wasn't the only pretty girl, and I wasn't the only girl with poise. But we each had to give a little talk about our most unforgettable experience. I told about my grandmother, who was a very valiant woman. She was a diabetic, and when I was just starting high school she had to have her leg amputated. But she didn't give up. She had herself fitted with an artificial leg, and she was walking in no time. They say the Dutch are determined. Well, my grandmother was very Dutch. She used to say 'You can do

65 Terrence Schoone-Jongen, The Dutch American Identity: Staging Memory and Ethnicity in Community Celebrations (Albany, NY: Cambria Press, 2008). 66 Janet Sjaarda-Sheeres, "Klompendancing Through America" Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies: 12th Bienniel Conference, Dutch Enterprise: Alive and Well in North America, 1999), 71- 82.

175 it if you try.' So I told about her, and when I came to her motto I said it the way she used to say it, in Dutch: 'Je kan het wel als je wil.' I think that appealed to the judges."67

67 The New Yorker, 24 Dec. 1970, 61.

176 CHAPTER 8: THE MYTH OF ALBERTUS C. VAN RAALTE AND THE IMPACT OF HISTORICAL MEMORY ON DUTCH AMERICAN IDENTITIES1

Across the United States, numerous statues commemorate pioneers and the founders of American cities and towns. These memorials honor the doctrines and deeds of exceptional men and, less frequently, women. They are also manifestations of various ideals, promoting such virtues as individualism, sturdiness, sacrifice, leadership, and vision, all essential qualities on the American frontier but thought to be lacking in today's society. John Bodnar observes that "the pioneer was a popular historical symbol in midwestern commemorations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [The pioneer symbol's] appeal to ordinary people resided in its vernacular meaning of sturdy ancestors who founded ethnic communities and families, preserved traditions in the face of social change, and overcame hardship. These defenders of vernacular culture were especially important to midwesterners who were anxious about the pace of economic centralization and the impact of urban and industrial growth upon their local places."2 John Higham added that the social elites who controlled local historical societies in the early twentieth century sought "demonstrable continuity of descent and civic leadership" between the city's early settlers and themselves.3 Bodnar and Higham argued that public memory forms through the interplay of the vernacular culture (the interests of the people) and the official culture (the interests of the state and political leaders). Business leaders and politicians profit from burnishing an image of a city's past that justifies their own positions and actions. But citizens must also agree that the official representation of the city's past is factual, plausible, or at least beneficial to their own goals. Cultures form foundation mythologies though a complex exchange between those who propagate myths and those who choose whether to accept them. A foundation mythology, furthermore, tends to form when a society faces the threat of cultural change. In New England, the critical period of mythmaking was the 1830s, when the Revolutionary War generation was passing and large numbers of Irish and German immigrants poured into the United States, causing Americans to question the nature of their national identity. The Founding Fathers and the Puritans were enshrined in the pantheon of American heroes,

1 An earlier version of this article was published as Michael J. Douma, "Memory and the Myth of Van Raalte: How Holland, Michigan Remembers its Founding Father," Michigan Historical Review Vol. 36, No. 2 (2010), 37-62. 2 John E. Bodnar, Remaking American: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 17. 3 John Higham, "The Ethnic Historical Society in Changing Times," Journal of American Ethnic History 13 (Winter 1994): 31.

177 representing true Americanism. As time passed, the stories of their great deeds became more idealized, according to Michael Kammen.4 In the Midwest, the age of foundation mythology came two generations later. Southern Michigan, for example, was settled in the 1830s and 1840s as an extension of Yankee culture relocated westward along migratory paths.5 Waves of Yankees and , then Northwest European immigrants followed the original settlers. By 1900, the pioneer generation had almost entirely passed, and as Frederick Jackson Turner told an audience of historians in 1893, so had the frontier. Like the American East of the 1830s, the Midwest at the turn of the twentieth century sought to honor its origins by erecting statues of city founders and great men. For example, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, honored its founder, Solomon Juneau with a statue in 1896; in 1904 Indianapolis, Indiana, unveiled a statue of Revolutionary War General George Rogers Clark; Peoria, Illinois, erected a status of politician and scientist Robert G. Ingersoll in 1911; and St. Louis, Missouri, unveiled a statue of its namesake, King Louis of France, in 1906, and in 1916 erected a statue of the city's founder Pierre Laclede as well.6 This activity was so pervasive, in fact, that one historian has labeled this phenomenon "statuomania."7 Cities also honor their founders and important citizens by preserving their homes as museums, or by dedicating parks of schools in their memories. Seldom has a historical figure in the American Midwest been as heavily commemorated in his home community as Albertus C. Van Raalte, the founder of Holland, Michigan.8 Van Raalte was a dedicated leader of a group of Dutch religious separatists; he spearheaded a mid-nineteenth century mass migration from the Netherlands to the United States. In the winter of 1846 to 1847, Van Raalte had to choose a suitable place for his many followers to settle as well as guide them to that site. He called the place he

4 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991), 28. 5 Susan E. Gray, The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 6 Nancy Oestreich Lurie and Patrick J. Jung, The Nicolet Corringenda: New France Revisited (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2009) illustrates how compounded historical errors and misinterpretations in the 19th and 20th centuries built the myth that the explorer Nicolet reached Wisconsin in 1635 wearing a "Chinese robe," in the anticipation of meeting with natives of the orient. 7 Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 67. A regular viewer of might recognize the show's ridicule of this phenomenon. In season 7, episode 16, Jebediah Springfield, the purported founder of the fictional Springfield, is revealed to have been a rogue pirate whose great deeds were inflated or entirely bogus. The "revisionist" historian, Lisa Simpson, challenges the orthodox interpretation of the city's founding when she discovers that Springfield's popular foundation myth completely distorts the truth. 8 In Holland, one may find Van Raalte Park, Van Raalte farm, Van Raalte Avenue, Van Raalte Elementary School, and a statue of Van Raalte. Holland's Hope College once had a Van Raalte Hall, which was built in 1903 but burned down in 1980.

178 chose Holland, because he said he could not think of a better name. During the settlement's first few years, Van Raalte played an instrumental role in the religious, political, and business spheres of the community, and despite some setbacks - difficulty in constructing a harbor, the turmoil and loss of manpower occasioned by the Civil War, and a major fire in 1871 - Holland flourished. As the city grew, however, Van Raalte gradually lost significance and became less important to the city's politicians and businesspeople. Van Raalte's followers split into two irreconcilable camps, the Reformed and Christian Reformed denominations. Van Raalte was involved in many controversies during his lifetime, and his legacy was a point of contention between opposing parties after his death in 1876. Over time, however, Van Raalte came to be regarded in a more favorable light, and this positive view of his legacy achieved nearly total consensus locally. Van Raalte became and remains an iconic figure in Holland. This chapter will illustrate how religious, civic, and ethnic components played a role in inventing and building the myth of Albertus C. Van Raalte as the source of Holland's most cherished traditions. In the late nineteenth century, partisans of the Reformed Church in American (RCA) claimed exclusive use of Van Raalte's religious legacy and promoted his image as a defense against the positions of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). In the twentieth century, however, the CRC began to see advantages in coopting Van Raalte's image and legacy, leaving behind the religious quarrels that had once divided the popular Dutch minister and that denomination. In civic matters, the city of Holland used Van Raalte's memory to create consensus and promote its vision of a good community. When using the founder's name, civic and business promoters in Holland avoided any mention of conflict. Perhaps most importantly for the viability of Van Raalte's enduring image outside of Holland, filiopietistic historians and proud Dutch American remade the Dutch dominee (minister) into a "Great Man," an energetic leader into a legend. Using Van Raalte as an example, this chapter will show how over time a particular community and Dutch Americans more generally sought their origins and built a foundation myth. Those making the myth were historians, family members, newspaper editors, city promoters, and all those who had an interest in shaping history to serve an end, however benign. Such a mythology required the backing of those in power and its embrace by the community's citizens. Having led hundreds of individuals to the United States and helped establish a settlement in Michigan in 1847, Van Raalte worked tirelessly to provide for the spiritual life of the Dutch immigrants. Although he had many loyal followers in Michigan, he had critics as well, who called

179 him a theocrat, a dictator, and worst of all, a "."9 Their chief complaint stemmed from his successful efforts in 1850 to orchestrate a union between recently arrived Dutch immigrants in the Midwest and the old (Dutch) Reformed Church that had been established in the eastern United States. His opponents argued that in forging this union Van Raalte has turned his back on the spirit of the Afscheiding. Critics pointed out that the Reformed Church in American supported public schools, sang hymns in additional to psalms, and tolerated Freemasonry. Seceder immigrants feared losing local church control to a distant church synod (the controlling denominational body), as had happened in the Netherlands. In 1853, in a sign of future difficulties, Van Raalte fought bitterly with Roelof Smit, a minister in Drenthe, Michigan, whose congregation voted to leave the Reformed Church for the United Presbyterians. A larger secession movement in 1857 resulted in the formation of the Christian Reformed Church. Members of the CRC were determined to maintain Dutch identity, preserve a strict religious piety, and avoid the influences of American religion, in particular the free-will, results-oriented evangelism of the Methodists. Although Van Raalte envisioned a religious "city on a hill," he encouraged the use of English in daily life and never faltered in his support for Union with the Reformed Church in the East. He was thus more of an assimilationist than were many of his critics.10 In business and political matters as well, Van Raalte actively promoted the interest of Dutch immigrants, but once again his actions were criticized. During the Civil War, Van Raalte openly supported Lincoln and the Union side from his pulpit, but in the 1864 presidential election the majority of his townsmen voted for the Democratic candidate, George McClellan. Van Raalte's failed attempts from 1869 to 1870 to establish a new immigrant colony in Amelia, Virginia, led many to scorn him. Peter Zuidema, who was just eight years old when he moved from the Netherlands to the Amelia colony with his parents, explained that when the venture failed, some "avenged their wrath on Dr. Van Raalte and threatened bodily harm, blaming him for their own mistakes." Zuidema also noted that "the dissatisfied settlers raised so much ado about their disappointment that Dr. Van Raalte, fearing mob violence, went back to Holland, Michigan.11 Holland, however, was not always a for its founder. In the 1850s Van Raalte faced local

9 Robert P. Swierenga, "Press Censorship: Albertus C. Van Raalte and Hermanus Doesburg of De Hollander," in Dutch-American Arts and Letters in Historical Perspective, ed. idem, Jacob E. Nyenhuis, and Nella Kennedy (Holland, Mich.: Van Raalte Press, 2008), 171-90. 10 Robert P. Swierenga and Elton J. Bruins, Family Quarrels in the Dutch Reformed Churches in the Nineteenth Century: The Pillar Church Sesquicentennial Lectures (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1999).

180 opposition when he solicited funds for the Holland Academy, and in the early 1860s a controversy about using hymns in church led him to consider going to South Africa as a missionary. Despite these controversies and conflicts, Van Raalte managed to gain and hold the respect of most of his fellow citizens. His dominant personality seemed to preclude forming many close friendship, but his intelligence and his devotion to civic and religious matters won him many admirers. The immediate response to Van Raalte's death in 1876 typified the respect shown a man who had held an honored position in his community. His funeral cortege consisted of eighty carriages, as well as a "large concourse of people on foot."12 Additional signs of respect and admiration soon followed: The Holland Classis of the Reformed Church, a regional assembly, recorded in their minutes the death of "the founder of the colony," a "good and faithful servant" of the Lord.13 The Particular Synod of Chicago voted to raise funds to establish an A.C. Van Raalte endowed chair at Holland's Western Theological Seminary. Although some church members protested, the decision was appealed to the General Synod, which allowed the fundraising to proceed. However, the seminary was closed in 1878 and it did not reopen until 1884. In the end, the attempt to endow a theology chair in Van Raalte's honor was abandoned.14 In the years immediately following Van Raalte's death, his staunchest supporters recalled his many accomplishments and commemorations reached an unprecedented, almost embarrassing, level. On Decoration Day in 1877, veterans decorate Van Raalte's grave despite the fact that he had not been a soldier. The Holland City News reported that as the "fatherly chaplain" of the Civil War veterans, Van Raalte was considered one of their own.15 In 1879 Rokus Kanters bought a black- marble tablet in Chicago, which he had engraved as a memorial to be placed inside Van Raatle's First Reformed Church in Holland. Meanwhile, B.P. Higgins displayed a life-size portrait of Van Raalte in the window of his photography shop downtown. Twelve years after Van Raalte's death, the editor of the local Dutch weekly, De Grondwet, suggested that the growing communities along the lakeshore in Ottawa, Allegan, and Muskegon counties should jointly be called the "Van Raalte

11 Peter Zuidema to Willard Wichers, June 14, 1941, folder 1, T88-0271, Peter Zuidema Papers, Holland Historical Trust Collection, HMA, Holland, Mich. 12 Holland City News, February 21, 1880. 13 Acts of the Classis of Holland, Convened at Zeeland, Mich., April 4-5, 1877, vol. iv, 89. Heritage Collection, JAH, Mich. 14 De Grondwet, May 2, June 18, 1878; The Act and Proceedings of the Seventy-Second General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, Convened in Regular Session at Utica, N.Y., June 5-13, 1878. (New York: Reformed Church in America, 1878), 117-19. 15 Holland City News, June 2, 1877.

181 Colony." When popular opinion failed to support this idea, the editor suggested commissioning a statue of Van Raalte for Centennial Park; this proposal proved to be somewhat premature.16 It appears that many Holland residents were not prepared to support such enthusiastic early attempts to commemorate Van Raalte. His power over the religious affairs of the city's inhabitants had waned since the early years of the colony and was especially marginal later in his life. Holland's businessmen and politicians had gradually accrued more influence in the community, especially after 1867, when Holland incorporated as a city, a move which Van Raalte had bitterly opposed. Van Raalte's final years were full of tragedy and loss. His wife died in 1870, and he nearly lost Holland itself in a fire the following year. He turned down a professorship at the local seminary but continued as a moderately influential minister. Still, Van Raalte's name retained its authority, and it was a powerful appellation to invoke when controversies arose about church policy. In the 1880s, a few years after his death, contention flared regarding the role of Freemasonry in the Reformed Church. In the Netherlands, the Freemasons were held to be a secret society opposed to Christian practices; however, in the United States it was the custom for men of status to belong to that organization as well as to the church.17 Koenraad Van Leeuwen of Muskegon lamented in 1881 that Van Raalte and the Reverend Cornelius Van der Meulen, the founder of nearby Zeeland, Michigan, were not around to solve this issue.18 Apparently Van Leeuwen felt that words from the dead leaders of the Dutch immigrants could solve conflicts that had raged even during their lifetimes. In 1881 and 1882, as the RCA reaffirmed its tolerance of Freemasonry, many midwestern Dutch left the RCA for the CRC. The Freemasonry debates brought out bitter feelings and resulted in numerous accusations of unorthodoxy from both sides of the conflict. The Van Raalte family was disgusted to find that Van Raalte was being cited as an authority on both sides of the controversy. In 1881, Van Raalte's oldest son, D.B.K. Van Raalte, spoke for the family in De Grondwet: "In recent days we have been deeply grieved by the manner, in the current struggle, in which the name of A.C. van Raalte is being used by certain persons who lack both knowledge and sensitivity. We politely ask that individuals no longer make references to van Raalte. We have too much respect and love for his sacrificial and frequently innervating labors bestowed on church and school to remain indifferent

16 De Grondwet, March 11, 18, 1879; April 22, 1879; December 18, 1888; February 5, 1889. 17 Harry Boonstra, "The Dutch Equation in the RCA Freemasonry Controversy: 1867-1885," Van Raalte Institute Visiting Research Fellows Program Lecture Series, 2008, available upon request from the institute. 18 De Grondwet, September 6, 1881.

182 when, either indirectly or more directly, groundless accusations are made against him. We believe that he has earned the right to a peaceful cessation of his labor."19 Apparently, the public D.B.K. Van Raalte's request and for the next few years the written references to Van Raalte's beliefs subsided. Albertus Van Raalte was the subject of a county biographical sketch in 1882, and the Reverend Seine Bolks referred to his guiding light in a speech upon the installation of Nicholas M. Steffens as Professor of Theology at Western Theological Seminary in 1884, but there were no more grand proposals to memorialize him or attempts to exploit the Van Raalte name.20 Outside of the watchful eye of the Van Raalte family, settlers in South Dakota in 1886 established an A.C. Van Raalte Church (R.C.A.), built of sod, measuring 16 x 30 feet. Many of the founding members of the congregation had moved to South Dakota from the Holland, Michigan area, and wished to honor Van Raalte.21 Beginning in the late 1880s, a few writers sympathetic to the RCA drew on the memory of Van Raalte to support their version of the rift between the two Dutch American denominations. Thus it was a religious element which first contributed to create the myth of Van Raalte. Writers who were members of the RCA wanted to remind Dutch Americans of Van Raalte's important role in funding a settlement of Dutch Reformed pilgrims.22 "The driving spirit of this whole movement," Van Raalte's acquaintance Nicholas Dosker wrote in 1888, "was Dr. Van Raalte. Those who knew him, knew that his royal character was too great for his relative size."23 In a book about the history of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, Dosker heaped praise on Van Raalte, stating that God had chosen him as the leader of hundreds, even thousands of immigrants. In addition, Dosker's book includes perhaps the first written attempt to present Van Raalte as a visionary: "Behind my parsonage, there was a piece of land that used to be a Swamp. When the fever-ridden owner complained to Van Raalte about the property, the [minister] walked over fallen trees and said...'you shall harvest wheat here yet.' 'Harvest wheat,' answered the man, 'harvest frogs is more like it.' And yet, during my time there, Van Raalte's prophecy was fulfilled many times."24

19 Ibid., August 30, 1881. 20 De Hope, December 16, 1884. 21 The congregation disbanded by 1904 and the church was taken down. JAH, Church file, South Dakota, Campbell County, Van Raalte (The Sod Church). 22 The earliest biographical sketch, published in 1877 in a Dutch periodical, also influenced later writings about Van Raatle's religious role. See Anthony Brummelkamp, "Biographical Sketch of A.C. Van Raalte," in Zalsman's Jaarboekje voor Kerk, School, en Zending in Nederland voor het jaar (1877), vol. 12: 91-116. 23 Nicholas Dosker, De Hollandsche Gereformeerde Kerk in Amerika (Nijmegen, The Netherlands: P.J. Milborn, 18880, 271. 24 Ibid., 270.

183 In this passage, Van Raalte is portrayed as having the ability to determine the colony's success of failure through his commanding words and vision. Those who listened to him would succeed in America. On the other hand, some in the Christian Reformed Church viewed Van Raalte as a hypocrite because he had opposed the centralized power and liberal views of the state church in the Netherlands but then had promoted the 1850 union between the immigrant churches and the established Reformed churches in New York. In the years after Van Raalte's death, the CRC gained members relative to the RCA, and while the RCA's seminary in the Midwest closed temporarily, the CRC opened its own Theological School in 1876. Reformed Church members like Nicholas Dosker and his son Henry Elias Dosker felt it their duty to set the historical record straight and thereby aid the stumbling RCA in the Midwest. In the Dosker's view, the Christian Reformed Church separatists had committed theological errors in 1857 by rejecting denominational unity for little reason besides a demand for local control over their churches. Van Raalte had done all that was possible to convince them of their mistake. Thus, Henry Dosker decided in the early 1890s to publish the first biography of Van Raalte. George Harinck argues that Dosker wrote this biography in Dutch because he was interested in convincing the church in the Netherlands - and thereby potential immigrants to America - that Van Raalte had been in the right and his Reformed Church was the proper defender of Calvinist doctrine in America.25 Whether or not this is true, the book did not sell well either among Dutch Americans or in the Netherlands. The younger Dosker had been twenty-two-years old when Van Raalte died, and although the two were friendly, they did not have a close relationship. Much of what Dosker learned about Van Raalte came from conversations with his father, who was a far from unbiased source, and this appears to have influenced his opinions and writings.26 The Doskers were not alone among RCA members who wanted to commemorate Van Raalte and claim his legacy. At a 1903 meeting in Zeeland, Holland's neighboring colony, the minister of the Second Reformed Church of Grand Rapids, Matthew Kolyn, presented a paper titled "Reasons for the Success of Our Settlements." Kolyn's explanations included the people's character,

25 George Harinck, "Henry Dosker, between Albertus C. Van Raalte and Abraham Kuyper," Origins 19, no. 2 (2001): 34-41. Henry E. Dosker, Levenschets van A.C. Van Raalte (Nijkerk: The Netherlands: C.C. Callenbach, 1893). 26 Additional writings from this period affirm Van Raalte's status. See, for example, his biographical entry in Portrait and Biographical Record of Muskegon and Ottawa Counties, Michigan (Chicago: Biographical Publishing, 1893), 243-245. See idem, "Life and Labors of Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte," Reformed Historical Magazine 3 (February 1895), 1-9.

184 their ability to manage, their persistence, and the quality of the men who led them. Of the last point, Kolyn remarked: "They were not men without faults, but they were especially called by Him to serve us, and I for one shall never allow their names to be stained without raising my voice against it....As Moses and Aaron were given to Israel, so these brethren and fathers were assigned by the Lord for wholly special tasks: for this reason they have no successors."27 In 1909, the Reverend Seth Vander Werff (RCA) reiterated Kolyn's judgment when he said that Van Raalte "was mighty in words and deeds like Moses, and led his people from bondage into a land of freedom."28 William O. Van Eyck offered another defense of Van Raalte and consequently the heritage of the Reformed Church in 1922. He wrote that "the secession of 1857, in Michigan, was largely based on error, caused by ignorance of what is really 'Reformed,' as Dr. Van Raalte also, in 1857, actually said it was." Van Eyck asserted that "the claim that Van Raalte and others misled their people is an invention of later days, as is also shown by the fact that very few in the colony before 1882 paid the least attention to the claims of the Seceder [CRC] leaders."29 Van Eyck seems to have believed that because Van Raalte was correct in his teachings and actions, the CRC had no justification for existence. The RCA found that Van Raalte's memory was a useful tool with which to bludgeon the CRC in their ongoing battles. This method may have made some RCA members happy, but it did not win many converts. The real reward the RCA reaped from its promotion of Van Raalte was success in elevating the popular view of the former leader. People came to admire the man, even without having known him, and felt he should be seen as Holland's foremost citizen. As such, his purported views could be invoked regarding secular as well as religious issues. Various writers claimed to understand Van Raalte's vision for the city and critiqued the development of Holland when it strayed from this plan. Therefore, they justified the city's political, cultural, and social structures by how well they fit their own interpretation of Van Raalte's dream. Henry D. Post, an American who befriended Van Raalte in 1847 and moved with his wife and younger brother to Holland, had long touted Van Raalte's genius. In an 1896 editorial, Post argued that Holland's growth had been accomplished with an eye toward the realization of Van

27 Matthew Kolyn, "Reasons for the Success of our Settlements," folder 1, T88-0103, Matthew Kolyn Papers, Holland Historical Trust Collection, HMA. 28 Missionary Monthly, January 1909. 29 William O. Van Eyck, Landmarks of the Reformed Fathers; or What Dr. Van Raalte's People Believed (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reformed Press, 1922), 18, 19.

185 Raalte's dream.30 But what was Van Raalte's "dream"? This question was broad enough to be answered in many ways. If progress was all that Van Raalte had hoped for, then his vision had been fulfilled. But economic growth was at best only a corollary of the community's religious growth and at worst an obstacle to the city's spiritual life. For example, Egbert Winter wrote that some developments in Holland's history had not been welcome or "in harmony with the noble principles of our early history."31 In 1927, Holland's John De Bly suggested building a toboggan slide and a winter resort in Holland. He said that this would make Albertus Van Raalte proud of how far the city had come.32 When William Elliot Griffis spoke at Hope College in 1910, he noted that sometimes a man's best work occurs after his death, referring particularly to Van Raalte.33 It seems likely that Griffis's remarks were meant to indicate that Van Raalte's vision was being realized. But one could also say, with equal validity, that a person's great deeds are sometimes exaggerated after his or her death. Van Raalte increasingly became a symbol whose name was invoked not only to serve one side of an argument or the other but also to lend prestige to anyone who was fortunate enough to have been in his presence. For example, by the 1890s obituaries of Holland-area residents began mentioning the deceased's connection to Van Raalte. A short statement like "he sailed on the same ship that brought Van Raalte" or "he was one of the original members of Van Raalte's group," certified the deceased's role as a pioneer. As the "old settlers," the members of the pioneer generation of 1847, passed on, the children in the generation who had been baptized by Van Raalte earned the right to have this mentioned in their obituaries as well. Well into the 1930s and 1940s, Holland's newspaper obituaries, although no more than a few sentences long, often included the information that the deceased had been baptized by Van Raalte.34 Firsthand anecdotal memories about Van Raalte also appeared in print. Anna Broadmore Walter, a Florida resident, had lived in Holland as a child. In 1914 she related that she had seen Van Raalte celebrate the end of the Civil

30 Holland City News, August 1, 1896. 31 Egbert Winter, "Rev. Albertus Christiaan Van Raalte, D.C," folder 25, box 8, Gerrit Van Schelven Collection, HMA. The 1897 semicentennial speech was reprinted in The Anchor in October 1903, and in De Grondwet on August 11, 1911. 32 Holland City News, January 20, 1927. 33 The Leader, November 16, 1910. Griffis was the author of works that promoted the idea that the Dutch Republic influenced America's Founding Fathers. 34 Holland City News, October 15, 1915; October 26, 1916; December 5, 1918. For example, the deceased "had the distinction of having been [for two years] the hired man of Dr. A.C. Van Raalte, founder of the colony."

186 War by cutting a five-foot cake with a sword.35 Meanwhile, organizations also adopted the Van Raalte name: the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic was known as the A.C. Van Raalte Post No. 262; a Hope College Dutch language club was called the Van Raalte Society, and during the First World War, the A.C. Van Raalte Women's Relief Corps was based in Holland.36 In the twentieth century Van Raalte became a figure of legend, a man chosen by God and given exceptional strength. Writers frequently compared him to the Pilgrim Fathers. This particular association had a long history. In 1886, Dingman Versteeg published one of the first histories of the Dutch in the Midwest, called De Pelgrim-vaders van het Westen.37 In 1894 Henry Dosker again drew a parallel between the Pilgrim Father of Massachusetts and the Dutch in Michigan, whom he called the Pilgrim Fathers of the West.38 In the Netherlands, J.A. Wormser published a Van Raalte biography in 1915 with the cover title Een Pilgrimsvader. In the book's introduction, Wormser warned that biographies tended to be untrustworthy. If a writer had not know the subject personally, he or she could not completely trust the views of others and needed to consult primary sources. Wormser's own memories of Van Raalte were too weak to be of much use. He had met the man just once, in 1866, when Van Raalte visited the Wormser household in Amsterdam. Wormser visited Michigan in 1899, stood at Van Raalte's grave, and wondered what he did not know about the man who had been his father's associate. Using letters Van Raalte wrote to his father, and accessing church records, Wormers composed a biographical paean to his father's friend, whom he had grown to admire and venerate long after his death.39 In their attempts to compensate for the lack of new sources or original interpretations, many twentieth-century biographers of Van Raalte told readers how praiseworthy their subject was in stronger and stronger terms. By reinforcing the then-established myth, authors guaranteed sales, avoided controversy, and earned the community's respect. In 1923 Aleida J. Pieters attributed the success of Holland to one man whose activity was "almost incredible."40 Pieters was surely

35 Holland City News, July 10, 1914. Because Van Raalte had owned the original titles to most of the land in the area, Hollanders whose property deeds bear his name cherish them. 36 Holland City News, December 13, 1898; April 16, 1914; Van Raalte Society, Hope College Topical history file, JAH. 37 Dingman Versteeg, De Pelgrim-vaders van Het Westen: Eene Geschiedenis van de Worstelingen der Hollandsche Nederzettingen in Michigan, Benevens Eene Schets van de Stichting der Kolonie Pella in Iowa (Grand Rapids, Michi.: C.M. Loomis, 1886). 38 Henry E. Dosker, "The Pilgrim Fathers of the West," The Independent 46 (February 22, 1894), 13. 39 J.A. Wormser, In Twee Werelddeelen: Het Leven van Albertus Christiaan Van Raalte (Nijverdaal, The Netherlands: E.J. Bosch, 1915), 1. 40 Aleida J. Pieters, A Dutch Settlement in Michigan (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans-Sevensma, 1923), 171.

187 influenced by her father Roelof, who had been Van Raalte's successor in the pulpit at First Reformed Church. As Dean of Milwaukee-Downer College, Aleida Pieters stressed the role of education in the assimilation process. In her filiopietistic rendering, Van Raalte was "loved, revered, and remembered in the hearts of his people."41 Repeating a theme of previous writers, Pieters complained that "people are still very ignorant as to how much they have to thank this benefactor at his true worth."42 Pieters felt it was her duty to explain just how important Van Raalte was to those who had not learned of his greatness. Even Jacob Van Hinte, a professional historian from the Netherlands, believed that Van Raalte was a hero, which after all was what all his contacts in America told him. Van Hinte dedicated his seminal 1928, Netherlanders in America, to Van Raalte.43 Romantic tales of how Van Raalte and his followers pioneered in a forested wilderness were essential to his image. For example, a 1932 newspaper article about the arrival of American surveyors to the colony in 1851 described Van Raalte and his community in the most picturesque of terms: "The surveyors began a search through the forests, hoping to find some sign of life. They were rewarded when they heard music, old Dutch psalms, which sounded very strange to their ears. They followed the sounds and broke into a clearing where they found Dr. Van Raalte preaching to his little band from a stump, the remains of a tree recently cut. Around him were gathered all the villagers together with several peaceful Indians, and it was a happy meeting in nature's beautiful amphitheater when the surveyors and Holland's first settlers met on that ideal Sunday morning."44 Nostalgia for pioneer simplicity and ingenuity appealed to a society where automobiles and time-saving machinery were becoming a normal part of life. This veneration is reflected in another story that the Reverend Henry Dosker recalled in De Hope. He related how Van Raalte and some volunteers transported the first thieves the colony arrested twenty-five miles north to the Grand Haven County jail. While Van Raalte's colleagues followed a winding path through the woods, he

41 Ibid., 175. 42 Ibid., 178-79. Similarly, the Holland City News of May 18, 1938, notes in regard to the strength of the Reformed Church in the Midwest that "there is little doubt about it that much of the credit must go to this rather little known Dutch pioneer." 43 Jacob Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in the United States of America, ed. Robert P. Swierenga, trans. Adriaan de Wit (1928; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1985). 44 On the subject of Waukazoo, Local History topical file, JAH.

188 created a makeshift sailboat by using a bedsheet for a sail, and surprised the company by reaching their destination first.45 Holland's anniversary celebrations in 1897, 1922, 1947, 1972, and 1997 all drew upon the memory of Van Raalte as the city's great founder. For the seventy-fifth anniversary in 1922, a committee proposed erecting a statue of Van Raalte. The committee chose a sculptor who produced a wax model in his Chicago studio and mailed a photograph of the model to Holland. But with the city's budget in mind, civic leaders reluctantly cancelled the project. John J. Cappon, an industrialist and the son of Holland's first mayor, set aside enough money to fund a statue in his 1931 will, but his finances took a heavy hit in the Great Depression.46 For decades the sculpture project languished, even as the myth of Van Raalte grew. In 1936 Holland established February 9, the anniversary of Van Raalte's arrival, as "Founder's Day." On Founder's Day in 1937 the city opened a Netherlands Museum. This interest in Dutch history coincided with the growing importance of Holland's Tulip Time festival, which was a boon to the local economy and drew as many as half a million visitors to the city every May. The festival relied on tourists, whose easy arrival by auto contrasted with the rigors the pioneers faced as they ventured into the wilderness in horse-drawn wagons. In 1939 one of the city's newspapers noted that "those hardy Dutch pioneers" planned for the growth of Holland when they had "nothing but a wilderness for a background."47 Cornelius Vander Meulen, who chaired the 1957 Founder's Day celebration, wrote a pamphlet about the pioneers, complete with an image of wooden-shored Volendammers busily hacking down trees: "As they met the challenge of their day so may we meet the challenge of our day."48 Marvin Lindeman's explanation in 1947 of Van Raalte's influence on Holland's development combined these two themes of industrious pioneers and an inspired leader. Lindeman judged that the Dutch pioneers were hard workers, but the only dreamer among then was Van Raalte. "Had the Dutch who settled in Holland been left to carry out their plan of living [without Van Raalte], the city would have struggled on with resolute steadfastness, but certainly without distinction."49 Van Raalte's aspirations for the city, his vision and his dream, made all the

45 De Hope, December 9, 1894. 46 Jacob E. Nyenhuis et al., A Dream Fulfilled: The Van Raalte Sculpture in Centennial Park (Holland, Mich.: Hope College, 1997), 1-3. 47 Holland City News, February 2, 1939. 48 Founder's Day, subject file, HMA. 49 Marvin Lindeman, "A Non-Hollander Looks at Holland," Michigan History 37 (December 1947): 411.

189 difference to Holland's development. The Van Raalte myth lent itself to perpetuation and repetition because it was so simple and easy to understand. Brochures, newspaper articles, and pamphlets of all kinds repeated the tale of the beloved leader who came from the Netherlands, founded and named the city, built its schools and churches, and selflessly defended his church, the Union, and God.50 In the 1930s and 1940s, the Holland Chamber of Commerce included images of Van Raalte in its municipal advertisement campaigns for the nationally recognized Tulip Time festival. During World War II, a branch of the Netherlands Information Bureau (NIB) opened in Holland to promote the Netherlands as a modern ally of the United States. David Zwart has shown that the NIB was unsuccessful, however, in its attempt to overturn the locally entrenched view of the ethnic homeland, which envisioned a quaint, old-fashioned, and repressive Netherlands based largely on the narrative of Van Raalte and his followers.51 By 1947, as the Van Raalte myth grew, there were plans to save the Van Raalte homestead and turn it into a "national shrine."52 Albert Hyma, another Van Raalte biographer, was at the center of the events of 1947, Holland's centennial year. Using what some have called questionable methods and benefiting from an unlikely series of events, Hyma acquired Van Raalte's personal papers from the Van Raalte family. The publication of Hyma's biography of Van Raalte coincided with the centennial, and the author promised to deliver new insights into the life of the city's founder.53 Hyma's book, however, presented a fulsome defense of Van Raalte as a faultless Pilgrim Father, and the work is saturated with hero worship. Hyma saw Van Raalte as a "modern Moses," an indispensable leader of an ignorant and helpless flock that was unprepared for democracy. According to Hyma, Van Raalte became "a man of national importance," and his detractors were largely uneducated buffoons.54 In addition, Hyma noted that Van Raalte's dream was to build a "center of orthodox Calvinism" in West Michigan. Orthodoxy, however, was a more flexible concept to Hyma than it was to Van Raalte and his contemporaries. Thus, Hyma could attribute the achievements of the Christian

50 Holland's 125th Anniversary, Holland's Sesquicentennial Papers, T97-0316.1, T88-0312, Holland Historical Trust Collection, HMA. 51 David Zwart, "Constructing the Homeland: Dutch Americans and the Netherlands Information Bureau during the 1940s," Michigan Historical Review 33 (Fall 2007): 86. 52 Newspaper clipping, undated. Holland Centennial Celebration (1947), T88-0306.1, Historical Trust Collection, HMA. 53 Elton J. Bruins et al., Albertus and Christina: The Van Raalte Family, Home, and Roots (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 53-63. 54 Albert Hyma, Albertus C. Van Raalte: His Dutch Settlements in the United States (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1947), 254.

190 Reformed Church to Van Raalte's inspiration. Would Van Raalte have agreed with Hyma's claimed that the members of the breakaway Christian Reformed Church were his "spiritual heirs"?55 Hyma's biography of Van Raalte did not appeal to everyone, but it helped leaders of the Christian Reformed Church who sought consensus among Calvinists in the Reformed tradition to create a narrative that was favorable to a man who had been the church's adversary. As early as 1898, Foppe M. ten Hoor, a CRC minister, had written that "Van Raalte is, to a certain extent, the common possession of all Reformed Hollanders in America."56 In 1918 Henry Beets agreed that Van Raalte had been a "Moses," but added that, like Moses, he had serious weaknesses. Beets felt Van Raalte made grand but shortsighted plans, saw himself as above others in religious matters, and was inflexible in exerting control over the churches.57 Indeed, the CRC's justification for its own existence, its raison d'etre, was that the union of the immigrant churches with the Reformed Church in the 1850s, as encouraged and brokered by Van Raalte, was detrimental to the spirit of orthodoxy expressed in the Afscheiding (secession) of 1834.58 In 1924 E.J. Tuuk, another CRC minister, described Van Raatle in similar terms, but without Beets' caveats: "Van Raalte was a much greater man than some or many of our Reformed people both of the Reformed and the Christian Reformed churches think or thought him to be. It took some time before it dawned upon the people that a great leader had been provider for them by God to lead them in their colonization enterprise.59 Tuuk was one of a long line of writers to credit Van Raalte's arrival to Providence.60 He complained that plans to erect a statue to Van Raalte in Holland had been given too little publicity and were not "vigorously agitated" And he chided the authors of a controversial recent work on Calvinist theology because they had referred to Van Raalte as an autocrat.61 Why would a minister of the CRC have defended Van Raalte? A cursory answer might relate to the CRC's views on education. The Christian Reformed Church always stressed that private Christian education was essential and non-negotiable. The Reformed Church, however,

55 Ibid., 189. 56 F.M. ten Hoor, "Rev. Albertus Christiaan Van Raalte, D.D.," in De Gereformeerde Amerikaan 2 (1898): 75- 80. The original can be found in the Western Theological Seminary pamphlet collection, JAH. 57 Henry Beets, De Christelijke Gereformeerde Kerk in Noord Amerika: Zestig Jaren van Strijd en Zegen (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Grand Rapids Printing, 1918), 84-86. 58 D.H. Kromminga, The Christian Reformed Tradition: From the Till the Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1943), 107-11. 59 E.J. Tuuk, "Some Ideals of Dr. A.C. Van Raalte," part 1, Religion and Culture 6 (May 1924): 180-82. 60 For example, the Reverend D.R. Drukke wrote, "God brought Van Raalte here." See The Leader, September 11, 1907. 61 E.J. Tuuk, "Some Ideals," part 1, Religion and Culture 6 (May 1924): 181; H. Danhof and , Van Zonde en Genade (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Dalm Printing, 1923), 23.

191 allowed the children of its members to attend public schools, which in the nineteenth century were usually controlled locally and commonly incorporated locally acceptable Christian content in their curricula. Tuuk argued that Van Raalte's true vision was to establish a Christian community with Christian education as its unifying force. All his efforts were bent toward achieving this goal. Tuuk argued that Van Raalte's emphasis on Christian education had been overlooked in the Dosker biography. Van Raalte, Tuuk continued, had "singular ability" and was "gifted." He was not just the leader of Holland, but of all the Dutch people in West Michigan.62 Immediately following the publication of Hyma's biography in 1947, the CRC's Jan Karel Van Baalen, who was related to Van Raalte, echoed Tuuk's comments, saying that Van Raalte "would rejoice in our [CRC] Christian school system."63 In their published comments, both Tuuk and Van Baalen recognized that Hyma, who was a member of the CRC, had taken care to portray his church in a positive light. But Hyma created controversy with his claim that Van Raalte was in a sense the founder of the CRC. This assertion elicited a number of responses. Holland's Albertus Pieters (RCA) rejected Hyma's position in an editorial he wrote for the Church Herald, the RCA's weekly magazine. Henry J. Kuiper (CRC) responded with a defense of Hyma in The Banner, the CRC's weekly publication. Hyma felt compelled to clarify his opinion, and did so with an editorial in The Banner, where he argued that Van Raalte's emphasis on Christian education was maintained by the CRC and that his spirit was carried forward by that church.64 A more important reason why the CRC could now embrace Van Raalte may have been that the church no longer feared Americanization. The divisions among the Dutch in America had their origins in the 1834 Afscheiding in the Netherlands, and provincial divisions and personal alliances accentuated longstanding theological differences. It was in the nature of these Dutch immigrants to uphold religious orthodoxy at any cost, even if it meant disunion. And maintaining religious orthodoxy seemed to the CRC to require preserving the Dutch culture in which it had been rooted. From 1890 to 1918, however, according to Henry'z Zwaanstra's study of the Christian Reformed Church, the CRC reinvented itself. Prior to the 1890s, the CRC had found success in isolation. But it had become apparent by the 1890s that Americanization was inevitable and that the Dutch could not form a "little Netherlands" in America. Isolation would lead to decay and the inevitable death

62 E.J. Tuuk, "Some Ideals of Dr. A.C. Van Raalte," part 5, Religion and Culture 6 (September 1924), 52-53. 63 Jan Karel Van Baalen, review of Albert Hyma, Albertus C. Van Raalte, in The Banner, May 2, 1847, 568; James Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984), 110.

192 of the church.65 In the early twentieth century, Dutch Americans became more confident of their identity as Americans. Maintaining their ethnic identity now seemed less crucial than preserving their "Reformed" (religious) identity and the two no longer necessarily went hand-in-hand. As a Reformed minister of Dutch extraction, Van Raalte's positive attitude toward Americanization and his union with the RCA appeared less threatening to the CRC than they had a half-century earlier. Twentieth-century appeals to Dutch ethnicity had less to do with preserving Dutch identity than they did with simply praising Dutch heritage. Van Raalte's biographers and the city officials who invoked his name in the mid-twentieth century focused on his democratic, enlightened, American side and marginalized his opponents as obstacles to progress. The resulting image of Van Raalte tended to be sentimental, simplistic, and romantic. Marian Schoolland's 1951 biography of Van Raalte was all three. In Schoolland's view, the Holland Colony, even its few dissenters, owed their very survival to the Herculean Van Raalte. She put much faith in his abilities. About the Amelia colony failure, she opined, "Had Van Raalte been able to give the colony such direction and support as he had given the Michigan colony, it might have succeeded."66 Schoolland ended her hagiography with one disclaimer: Van Raalte "was not perfect: there is no perfect life on record except that of the Christ."67 Even the cynic Arnold Mulder thought that Van Raalte was "Napoleonic" in his command of the colony, but that this trait was probably necessary to hold the people together. Mulder felt that Van Raalte's grand projects and grand failures were both part of his personality.68 In the developing historical memory, Van Raalte was perhaps credited with more accomplishments and virtues than he deserved. For example, Van Raalte posthumously acquired the title of "the founder of Hope College," although he had not been accorded this honor during his lifetime.69 Van Raalte had played an integral part in establishing the Pioneer School and Holland Academy, the precursors of Hope College, but by 1866, when the college was founded, Van Raalte was occupied with other pursuits. The principal of the Holland Academy, Philip Phelps, was the

64 Church Herald, July 11, 18, 1947; The Banner, August 15, 29, 1947. 65 Henry Zwaanstra, Reformed Thought and Experience in a New World: A Study of the Christian Reformed Church and Its American Environment, 1890-1918 (Kampen, The Netherlands: J.H. Kok, 1973). 66 Marian M. Schoolland, The Story of Van Raalte "A Man Strong and of Good Courage" (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1951), 104. 67 Ibid., 120. 68 Arnold Mulder, Americans from Holland (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1947), 182. 69 In 1877 the General Synod of the Reformed Church referred to Van Raalte as "a" but not "the" founding father of Hope College. See Acts and Proceedings of the Seventy-first General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, 1877 (New York: Reformed Church in America, 1877), 13: 700-701.

193 primary fundraiser, controller, and organizer of the new college, and he became its first president. Van Raalte, on the other hand, was notably absent during the college's founding period. He did not attend the inauguration or first commencement service. In 1866 he visited the Netherlands, and in 1869 he was in Virginia trying to set up a new Dutch colony. Meanwhile, he was still serving as a pastor. In its official publications, nonetheless, Hope College overlooked Phelps's role and granted the title of founder to Van Raalte, who after all had seemed to be present at every other important event in Holland's early history. According to Elton Bruins, the greatest living authority on Van Raalte, there was an additional reason for this decision. The major writings on the college's history had been penned by Holland insiders "who accepted the mystique and legend that developed around the figure of Van Raalte."70 Phelps's mismanagement of the school and his forced resignation in 1878 made it awkward to commemorate him as the college's rightful "founder." Bruins's convincing 2001 article crediting Phelps and not Van Raalte as the true founder of Hope College gave believer in Holland's folk history a great shock. To his own surprise, Bruins concluded that in regard to the title of founder of Hope College, "we have given too much credit to Van Raalte."71 John J. Brower made a more radical attempt to overturn the myth of Van Raalte.72 In a series of letters written in the early 1970s to Willard Wichers at the Netherlands Museum, to Randall VandeWater at the Holland Sentinel, and to Mrs. Arden Kiekover - indeed to anyone who would liste - Brower, (who was in his eighties at the time) explained why he felt such animosity toward Van Raalte. The ill will had begun 120 years ago when Brower's grandfather, the Reverend Roelof Smit, received a call to serve as a minister in Drenthe, Michigan, at a congregation already disposed against Van Raalte.73 First, Van Raalte questioned Smit's credentials. Two years later Smit and Van Raalte butted heads over how to deal with a case of alleged adultery in a neighboring

70 Elton J. Bruins, "Early Hope College History as Reflected in the Correspondence of Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte to Rev. Philip Phelps, Jr., 1857-1875," in The Dutch Adapting in North America: Papers Presented at the Thirteenth Biennial Conference for the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, ed. Richard H. Harms (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Calvin College, 2001), 10. 71 "Van Raalte's title as founder....is history with a spin," News from Hope College, August 2002, 13. It appears that the image of Van Raalte as the college's founder coincided with the construction and dedication of an A.C. Van Raalte Memorial Hall on campus in 1903. Hope College also put on historical pageants that included Van Raalte. For its 1928 tercentenary year, the Reformed Church sponsored a historical pageant in New York. Mrs. C.V.R. Gilmore, daughter of Albertus Van Raalte, watched as in episode nine a young girl reenacted scenes from Gilmore's childhood. Intelligencer, May 16, 1928. 72 John J. Brower (1891-1978) was a dentist in Holland for fifty year.

194 township. On May 15, 1853, at an all-important church meeting that Smit had called to address this issue, Van Raalte arrived uninvited and faced a hostile crowd. One called him a "baasje" (little boss), another a profiteer. A church elder spoke out and said that his people had not come to America to be with Van Raalte. What followed was an early secession movement among the Dutch immigrants, an event preceding the CRC's origin by four years. Smit's congregation voted by a two-thirds majority to break away from the Holland Classis and join the United Presbyterian Church.74 John J. Brower clearly agreed with his ancestor's disdain for Van Raalte. But his criticism went beyond those relevant to his grandfather's decision to secede from the Holland Classis. Searching his grandfather's papers, the Holland Classis Minutes of 1848-1858 (since translated into English), and letters between Van Raalte and Paulus Den Bleyker, a wealthy Dutchman from Kalamazoo, Brower felt that he had found evidence to discredit Van Raalte.75 He chided Van Raalte for leading immigrants to Michigan during the winter, and then staying at the house of a missionary named George Smith while his countrymen perished from exposure and disease. He agreed with an acquaintance's claim that one of Van Raalte's biographers, Henry Dosker, was the "most emotional liar" ever to speak from a pulpit. Brower felt that Dosker had taken too much liberty when he wrote that Van Raalte had knelt in the snow to pray and thank God for the immigrant's safe arrival in West Michigan. Thanks to Dosker, this image of Van Raalte became a centerpiece of Holland folklore. A diorama of this mythic event went on display at the Netherlands Museum in the 1930s and was featured in the Holland Evening Sentinel for Founder's Day in 1972, the city's 125th anniversary.76 Brower had further complaints, some quite trivial, such as that a bonnet on display in the city's museum had actually belonged not to Mrs. Van Raalte, as its label stated, but to another's pioneer's wife.77 Brower was certainly an individual who nursed a grudge, and he did not appear to represent any group of living critics of Van Raalte. He was disgusted because he believed that the myths surrounding Van Raalte were a mixture of falsities and exaggerations. Brower's more critical view, which a number of Van Raalte's contemporaries had once held, had come down through Brower's family but was by now distinctly a minority position.

73 Members of the congregation in Drenthe were upset because Van Raalte had taken funds from their church for the operation of the Holland Classis, a regional church body, and because Van Raalte allegedly had tried to profit from land sales in the area. 74 Bruins and Swierenga, Family Quarrels in the Dutch Reformed Churches, 72-76. 75 Brower had apparently written a full-length book on this subject, for which he could not find a publisher. 76 Holland Evening Sentinel, February 5, 1972.

195 For Holland's sesquicentennial in 1997, a private source of funding, a willing city council and mayor, and an accepting citizenry joined to honor Van Raalte with a new statue in Holland's Centennial Park. The statue was based on the model first made in 1922. The preacher who was 5 feet 3 inches tall in real life became a bronze giant, standing more than 9 feet tall. His left hand is placed firmly on top of a Bible, which lies on a tree stump. His right arm is raised, and his hand is half-open in blessing, while his eyes gaze on his church and school. Holland, Michigan accepted Van Raalte as the symbol of its reputation as a hardworking, religious, democratic American city. No longer is he mentioned in the debates between the Reformed and Christian Reformed churches. The myth of Van Raalte as the great pioneer had grown and flourished in the 120 years since his death. When a proposal for a statue first arose in 1889, not everyone in Holland had a positive opinion of Van Raalte.78 Some had known Van Raalte as an aristocrat, a borderline theocrat, and an uncompromising pedant. E.J. Tuuk provides a good description of Van Raalte's reputation as a controversial figure: "There were many who consciously recognized him as the general overseer [of the colony] and it thrilled some to a measure of hero-worship, while others were galled by it and could not condone it, and thus were prompted to resentment and even active, bitter opposition."79 In the nineteenth century, opposition to Van Raalte came from the most orthodox Dutch Calvinists. Particularly for the conservative farmers outside of Holland's city limits, Van Raalte appeared to be a proponent of too-rapid Americanization. Conversely, today he is honored by those who seek their Dutch roots. The Van Raalte Institute, established at Hope College in 1993, honors Holland's founder and promotes research in Dutch American history. The first president of the institute, Elton J. Bruins, has worked to create a respectful, but more nuanced view of Van Raalte, even if he has had difficulty at times hiding his admiration for this "American Moses."80 A popular biography, coauthored in 1996 by Bruins, Jeanne M. Jacobson, and Larry J. Wagenaar, is well-written, but it is nevertheless a somewhat romantic retelling of Van Raalte's life. It does, however, include recent

77 John J. Brower Papers, T88-0029, Historical Trust Collection, HMA. 78 De Grondwet, February 5, 1889. 79 E.J. Tuuk, "Some Ideal of Dr. A.C. Van Raalte," part 2, Religion and Culture 6 (June 1924): 8-9. 80 Elton J. Bruins, "'An American Moses': Albertus C. Van Raalte as Immigrant Leader," in Sharing the Reformed Tradition: The Dutch -North American Exchange, 1846-1996, ed. George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: V.U. Press, 1996), 19-34.

196 historical scholarship and is therefore more up to date.81 In addition, in Albertus and Christina: The Van Raalte Family, Home and Roots, Bruins and his coauthors provide a genealogy of the Van Raalte family and round out the story of his estate and descendents.82 Recently, Robert P. Swierenga had written an informative article that describes Van Raalte's business acumen and experiences.83 These last two works are examples of authors stepping away from focusing solely on Van Raalte as a religious leader. Future works, perhaps a collection of Van Raalte's letters or yet another biography, should not neglect the important role Van Raalte's image has played in the community after his death. The past is malleable; historical figures are often forgotten or reexamined and made larger than life. Historians commonly assess both a person's significance and influence and also his or her character. Either assessment can be positive or negative and may change over time. Pioneer leaders, who played many roles in their communities (minister, businessman, postmaster, notary, and so forth) are especially susceptible to the ebb and flow of praise and disdain.84 Both at the local and national levels, popular historical memory often favors an upbeat view of the past that bolsters a positive communal or national self-perception. In what amounts to a display of allegiance to the country, schoolchildren are often taught to adore wholeheartedly politicians who were controversial figures in their day. Such unquestioning veneration of select public figures may be evaporating, however, as we move farther away from the consensus views of the mid-twentieth century. What are we to make of "Great Men"? David Lowenthal wrote that the past is a foreign country and we can never understand it entirely. Much popular and even scholarly history assesses the past according to present-day concerns and uses it to buttress current ideologies. People seek identity in heritage, and because at our core we often lack a sense of

81 Jeanne M. Jacobson, Elton J. Bruins, and Larry J. Wagenaar, Albertus C. Van Raalte: Dutch Leader and American Patriot (Holland, Mich.: Hope College, 1996). 82 Bruins et al, Albertus and Christina. 83 Robert P. Swierenga, "Albertus C. Van Raalte as a Businessman," in A Goodly Heritage: Essays in Honor of the Reverend Elton J. Bruins at Eighty, ed. Jacob E. Nyenhuis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007). 84 Van Raalte's contemporary, Hendrik P. Scholte, the pioneer minister in Pella, Iowa, faced struggles similar to Van Raalte's. Of the more than two hundred letters of Dutch immigrants published in Iowa Letters: Dutch Immigrants on the American Frontier, at least a dozen are directly critical of Scholte. But the positive portrayal of Scholte written and published by his daughter Leonora remains the only readily accessible biography of this immigrant founder who was successful enough to be a Lincoln delegate in the 1860 election. Scholte's house in Pella is operated as a historic site. See Johannes Stellingwef, comp., Robert P. Swierenga, ed., and Walter Lagerwey, trans., Iowa Letters: Dutch Immigrants on the American Frontier (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005); Leonora R. Keables Scholte, A Stranger in a Strange Land: The Story of a Dutch Settlement in Iowa under the Leadership of H.P. Scholte (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1946); and Lubbertus Oostendorp, H.P. Scholte, Leader of the Secession of 1834 and Founder of Pella (Franeker, The Netherlands, 1964). Oostendorp's biography is very technical and difficult to read.

197 fundamental identity, we have to create one by inventing traditions and rituals, by praising the bones of martyrs or the deeds of heroes.85 Especially in the field of public history, there is a dialectical relationship, a discourse between the public and the historian, so that society supports those historians whose values or presentations it finds agreeable. In many ways, culture establishes and defines historical truth.

85 David Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

198 CHAPTER 9: THE FADING AWAY OF DUTCH AMERICA

The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga began his seminal work The Waning of the with the line: "History has always been far more engrossed by problems of origins than by those of decline and fall."1 Huizinga recognized that in the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations, it is as important to study decay as it is to study growth. Clear Dutch American identities, rooted in stories of the Afscheiding and in migration, defined by denominational boundaries, and having evolved through interactions with American society, eventually faded. The disappearance of a distinct Dutch subculture in America was evident to both those within Dutch American communities and those viewing them from outside. This loss of ethnic identity was not limited to one community or region, but was a ubiquitous feature of the Dutch American landscape in the mid-twentieth century. Outside observers, particularly those from the Netherlands, were struck by the changing culture and identities in the Dutch American world. When Netherlands Ambassador to the United States, Van Roijen, visited Michigan in 1928, he reported on the loss of connection with the Netherlands. Van Roijen wrote, "My impression is, that in general one is proud of his Dutch descent and holds Holland high. Yet, at the same time, I believe, that one in the Netherlands should entertain no image of dependence of these ex-Hollanders. The influence of the American 'melting pot' can also be felt here."2 As Van Roijen's comments illustrate, Dutch Americans were losing the battle to maintain their Dutchness, and they were quite aware of it. The consequences of Americanization, however, were unclear. Reports from the Dutch Consul in Chicago, J.I. Noest, indicate that by the 1940s, Dutch Americans had Americanized to such an extent that they were not much distinguishable from other Americans. Noest called the Chicago Dutch "ex-Nederlanders" for whom the Netherlanders was a "vroeger vaderland." (past fatherland)3 When Princess Juliana of the Netherlands visited Chicago in 1942, Noest invited all the local ministers of the Dutch

1 Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1996. (Dutch original of 1919, first English translation as Waning of the Middle Ages, 1924). 2 Netherlands National Archives, Collection 2.05.13. Minister Jan Herman Van Roijen in Michigan. 17 Dec. 1928 (D.C.) to hague. "Mijn indruk is, dat men in het algemeen trotsh is op zijn hollandsche afkomst en Holland hoog houdt. Doch tegelijkertijd geloof ik , dat men zich in Nederland geen droombeelden over overgroote aanhankelijkheid van deze ex-Hollanders moet maken. De invloed van den Amerikaanschen "melting pot" heeft zich ook hier doen gevoelen." 3 W. van Boetzelaar to A. Loudon,10 Apr. 1943. Netherlands National Archives NA, Collection No 2913: Archive of Diplomatic and Consular Posts.

199 Reformed churches to a reception in honor of the birth of Juliana's daughter, Margriet. Not one of the thirty-five ministers attended, however, and only one wrote to turn down the offer. According to Noest, the ministers in Chicago refused to use their pulpit to aid the cause of the Netherlands. This was, in their minds, in keeping with tradition of leaving politics out of the church. "The thesis could be defended that everyone in this country seems to like Holland, except the Dutch Americans," wrote Noest.4 Like Noest, a leading theologian of the Reformed church in the Netherlands, Dr. Gerrit.C. Berkhouwer, found the Dutch Americans uninterested in their bonds with the Netherlands. When Berkhouwer returned to his home country after speaking tour in the U.S. in 1952, he noted a "definite loss of Dutch-background-consciousness on the part of the Holland-Americans."5 The fading of conscious Dutch identity among Dutch Americans occurred in a number of ways. Perhaps most significantly, the passage of generations severed personal ties to the Netherlands, while immigration quotas set in 1924 restricted the flow of new blood and new ideas of "Dutchness" from the Netherlands. As second and third generation Dutch Americans became Americanized, they were more likely to marry outside of the ethnic group, move outside of traditional ethnic territory and blend into the American background. Meanwhile, the loss of the Dutch language contributed to a decline in the consciousness of ethnic identity. In 1927, Frederick Diemer of McBain, Michigan, wrote his brother in the Netherlands and informed him of changes among the Dutch immigrants in Michigan. The children, he said, understood Dutch, but no longer spoke it. "If a Dutch immigrant", he said, "were to arrive who knew absolutely no English he would feel very lonely, for the older generation is dying off."6 Twenty years later, Arnold Mulder wrote that no longer did the Dutch Americans use a hyphen. They were not Holland-Americans or Dutch- Americans anymore. They were instead "for the most part quite simply Americans, and nothing else," said Mulder.7 As far as Mulder was concerned, the assimilation process was almost entirely complete by mid-century. The American identity of the Dutch Americans bcame their unconscious default as the Dutch ethnic frontier faded. The two world wars further eroded the use of Dutch language. The third and fourth generation Dutch American servicemen who entered the war with some knowledge of the Dutch

4 J.I. Noest to A. Loudon, 31 March 1943, Netherlands National Archives, Collection No. 2913: Archive of Diplomatic and Consular Posts. 5 Missionary Monthly, September 1952, pg. 251. 6 Frederick Diemer to brother, 28 Jan. 1927. in Herbert Brinks, Dutch American Voices, 101.

200 language, generally lost it after a few years of immersion in an English-speaking military world. After the World War II, Dutch American soldiers often did not return to live in Dutch American communities.8 Dutch Americans became Americans of Dutch descent. The former actively identified as Dutch, indeed could not escape it, while the later only brought up Dutch identity in terms of heritage celebrations or explanations of their origins. Calvinism continued to appeal to Americans of Dutch descent, and the Reformed churches kept them together even when their claims for Dutch identity were marginal or absent. This chapter looks at three categories of Dutch American settlements to describe the persistence and fading of Dutch American ethnic communities in the twentieth century. These categories are (1) Dutch enclaves and neighborhoods within sizable cities (2) relatively isolated Dutch American rural hamlets across the Midwest, and (3) medium-sized cities whose Dutch American population made up a significant fraction of the total population. By the early twentieth century, more Dutch Americans lived in cities of 2,500 and greater than in rural areas. Dutch American enclaves in cities such as Rochester, New York, Cleveland, Ohio, and Denver, Colorado, generally did not maintain ethnic territory beyond the Second World War. In the relatively isolated Dutch hamlets, family bonds with the Netherlands endured through the middle of the twentieth century, but the passing of generations severely limited continued correspondence. In these rural villages, Dutch ancestry was almost taken for granted, and many married within the group and stayed in the Reformed church circles. But these communities lacked vibrant Dutch societies, schools, or other institutions that could promote continued use of the Dutch language or contact with the Netherlands. Medium-sized cities with dominant or near-dominant ethnic populations of Dutch Americans were able to longer maintain ethnic concentration. These communities (particularly Holland and Grand Rapids, and to some extent Pella) had a critical mass of Dutch Americans who were interested in supporting ethnic institutions, and therefore saw a greater awareness of Dutch identity and culture. Geography, concentration of Dutch Americans, and the variables in urban growth all shaped Dutch American identities, but the prevailing trend during the mid- to late- twentieth century was for active identification with the Netherlands to fade.

Dutch American Urban Enclaves

7 Arnold Mulder, Americans from Holland, 280. 8 Albert van der Heide, "Struggle of Dutch language influenced by armed conflicts," The Windmill Post, 7 Aug. 1996.

201 Dutch Americans settled in cities like Rochester, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio during the great wave of migration in the 1840s and 1850s. Urban Dutch communities also developed early in Detroit, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In each city, Protestant Dutch Americans clustered together around their Reformed Churches and formed ethnic neighborhoods. Although many of these settlements held a significant number of Dutch Americans, they were never at the center of the Dutch American network. Many Dutch in Rochester and Cleveland, for example, passed through those communities destined for West Michigan, Iowa, or Wisconsin. In the twentieth century, urban Dutch communities were absorbed by their host cities. In most cases, the ethnic enclaves struggled to hold geographical boundaries in post-World War II suburban growth and relocation. Third and fourth generation Dutch Americans grew up with little sense that they were the inheritors of an ethnic community. In some of these urban communities, Dutch enclaves were unable to hold ground even in the years before the Second World War. Abraham Kuyper's daughter Henriette toured the U.S. for six months in 1906, and although she did not visit the Dutch in the Midwest, she discovered the Dutch community of Rochester, New York. This community, she claimed, consisted of 2,300 families.9 But by 1936, when Ellery A. Handy wrote an article about the Dutch in Rochester, the Hollanders were difficult to locate. Handy explained that the Dutch had once tried to segregate themselves, but had now mixed thoroughly with the others in the city. Handy estimated 4,000 Rochester citizens of Dutch birth or descent.10 As well, the Dutch in Cleveland, Ohio, remained fairly segregated until the 1930s, when suburbanization led to the dispersal of their communities. The foreign-born Dutch population in Cleveland peaked at 1076 in 1910, and a combination of foreign and native born reached nearly 2,900 in 1920. This community endured throughout the nineteenth century. Dutch Reformed, Catholics and Jews settled in the city beginning in the late 1840s, with the Dutch Reformed originally clustering on the East side of the city. Yet, throughout the history of the enclave, there had been a high rate of transience. Many Dutch Calvinists in nineteenth century Cleveland stayed a few years before passing on to other communities. Chain migration from the Netherlands continued

9 H.S.S. Kuyper, Een half jaar in Amerika (Rotterdam, The Netherlands: D.A. Daamen, 1907) 181, 205. 10 Ellery A. Handy, "The Dutch in Rochester" The Rochester Historical Society Publication Fund Series, Vol. 14 (1936). Heritage Hall Geographical File: Rochester.

202 to draw new Dutch blood to the area, and the Dutch Reformed Churches, served as anchors that even kept many of later generations in the original areas of settlements.11 In another example, a distinguishable Dutch settlement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, remained viable only as long as the nineteenth century before it was overwhelmed by the city.12 By the 1940s, the Dutch Americans of Milwaukee apparently maintained few connections with the old country. Gerritt De Heus, President of the Knickerbocker Society and Netherlands Consul for Milwaukee, believed in 1943 that the 8,000 Dutch Americans of Milwaukee and an extra 2,500 in Oostburg, Wisconsin,, had an "apathetic indifference" to the fate of the Netherlands in the war. When General Consul J.I. Noest visited Wisconsin the same year, he found the Dutch Americans generally unaware of the starvation in the Netherlands.13 By the mid-twentieth century, many urban Dutch communities had ended geographical segregation and mixed into their host cities. In Detroit, Michigan, the Dutch American community experienced an ebb and flow in its population. Dutch immigrant Siers Riepma described the early twentieth century parishioners of Detroit's First Reformed Church as constituting a "small island of Hollanders in the midst of an ocean of Americans."14 The First Reformed Church was almost entirely Dutch until the 1940s as church members worked together and for each other in businesses.15 In addition, in the 1940s, West Michigan Dutch came to Detroit to work at Ford Motors and to labor for war enterprises. But Detroit's Dutch American community declined significantly from the 1960s onwards. From 4,400 RCA members in Detroit in 1965, church membership fell to 1,000 by 2004. As of 2004, seven of sixteeen Reformed churches in Detroit had been disbanded.16 The pattern of ethnic dispersal and assimilation of the urban Dutch was not limited to only the long-established Dutch American communities in cities in the Midwest, but included the Dutch American settlements in Denver, Colorado, and Southern California as well. The Dutch American community of Denver formed in 1910 around the CRC's Bethesda Sanitorium. In a 1981 oral

11 Robert P. Swierenga, "Religious Diversity and Cultural Localism: The Dutch in Cleveland, 1840-1990," Northwest Ohio Quarterly, 67 (Summer 1995), 1-29. 12 Herbert J Brinks, Dutch American Voices, 338. 13 J.I. Noest to A. Loudon, Minster in Washington D.C. 10 June 1943. Netherlands National Archives, Collection No. 2913: Archives of Diplomatic and Consular Posts. 14 Siers Riepma Autobiography, 1951, p 139. 15 .James Evenhuis, "Detroit's Motor City Dutch," in Robert P. Swierenga, Donald Sinnema, and Hans Krabbendam, (eds.) The Dutch in Urban America: The Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, Fourteenth Biennial Conference Papers (2004), 13-33. 16 Evenhuis, "Detroit's Motor City Dutch," 29.

203 history project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 15-year old Paige Seidel interviewed six elderly Dutch Americans who had witnessed the growth, development, and dispersion of the Denver Dutch community. There had once been a "Dutchmen's Row" along Emerson Street in Denver, with many Dutch settling along Pearl Street as well. One interviewee, Hilda Pasterkamp, estimated that the Dutch American community of Denver numbered some 1,000 families in total, or about 4,000 persons. But in the post-war period, these Dutch had scattered to the South and Southeast of Denver, leaving behind their former neighborhoods as these became multi-ethnic.17 By the 1980s, the Dutch community of Denver was hardly visible except to the well-informed insider. Denver's Rocky Mountain News labeled the Dutch, the "least-noticed" ethnic community in the city. 18 Prosperous, young Dutch Americans left the Midwest in the 1940s and 1950s to settle in California, where they reestablished ethnic communities. The CRC treated Southern California as a mission field and encouraged the Dutch to settle near each other and worship together.19 But, here again, by the 1960s, many of these Dutch Americans - who had worked as dairy farmers - sold their farm lands, profited from the sales, and moved to comfortable quarters in Californian cities and suburbs. Church membership in the 1960s California CRC faded. In the 1970s, the CRC schools became more ethnically diverse.20 Of all American cities with an urban Dutch Calvinist population, Chicago presents itself as an exceptional case in the loss of the ethnic identity. In fact, because the Dutch community in Chicago was much larger than the Dutch communities in other American cities, its fading and dispersal was the most dramatic, and perhaps the most difficult for its members. Into the 1920s and 1930s, the Dutch enclaves of Chicago were fairly well-defined. Communities organized around churches and were bound together in religious circles. The Dutch in Chicago also found companionship and unity in ethnic organizations and associations. This included everything from singing groups, literary clubs, and sports teams. Robert Swierenga argued that the strength of the Dutch community explains why the Dutch had the lowest crime rate among any ethnic group in turn of the century Chicago. Church and family encouraged responsible behavior, condemning its

17 Hilda Pasterkamp, interviewed on 12 Aug. 1981 in Paige Seidel, "The Hollanders: A Dutch-American Tradition" 1981, 69-76. Available at Calvin College, Heritage Hall, Subject File, Paige Seidel. 18 "Why Hollanders Came to Denver" Rocky Mountain News, 2 Aug. 1982, page 39. 19 David Zwart, "On the Periphery: Dutch Immigrants in California's ", in The Dutch in Urban America, 136. 20 David Bratt, "Dutch Survivals in Bellflower, California" Origins, Vol 10, No. 1, (1993), 2-10.

204 opposite as "sin." Henry Stobb, born a product of Dutch Chicago in 1908, described Dutch Chicago as a collection of mostly Groningers who "boasted no proud ancestry and laid no claim to culture," but for whom Calvinistic faith pervaded every aspect of life and produced a stern morality.21 The Chicago Dutch moral code was put to the test in the life and works of the most talented of Dutch-American novelists, Peter DeVries, who grew up in Chicago's south side in the 1910s and 1920s. In his largely autobiographical novel, The Blood of the Lamb, DeVries describes roaming the city with girlfriends, fearing the wrath of parents who would discover him in an illicit rendesvous with a girl of another ethnic group or faith. Like Arnold Mulder before him, DeVries ridiculed the Dutch Americans and their religion. But unlike Mulder, who accepted his people's faith and culture, DeVries' became a staunch atheist who used wit and comedy to point out the inconsistencies in the moral code of Dutch Chicagoans. "These displaced Dutch fisherfolk, these farmers peddling coal and ice in a strange land," he wrote, "must have had their reasons for worshipping a god scarcely distinguishable from the devil they feared."22 But this God, DeVries found he could not worship. DeVries moved away from the Dutch American world and on to a life in New York to work as an editor and novelist. Although he was therefore not present to witness firsthand the fading of the Dutch community of Chicago, he was perhaps more able to perceive this change clearly as an outsider who returned occasionally to his home city. In his 1962 novel, for example, DeVries wrote of the south side of Chicago as a "colony of the dead Dutch."23 What had happened in Chicago that divided the Dutch Americans, that caused them to lose their Dutch ethnic identity? In large part, rivalries with other ethnic groups for space in the city convinced Dutch Americans to move out into newer suburbs. To some extent, this was "white flight," an attempt to move away from inner city blacks and , whose numbers in the city were growing. The Dutch churches in Chicago had the choice of either (1) remaining in place, losing membership unto death (2) becoming community-minded churches that set aside ethnic heritage, or (3) moving with the ethnic group.24 In many cases, the Reformed churches followed the Dutch Americans in their move to the suburbs. Many Dutch Reformed churches founded in the nineteenth century attempted to follow their congregations from inner city areas into new settlements in the suburbs. In some cases, these churches have moved into their third or fourth

21 Henry Stobb, Autobiography, Chapter 2: Grammar School Days, 1914-1922. 22 Peter DeVries, Blood of the Lamb (Boston: Little & Brown, 1961), 25. 23 DeVries, Blood of the Lamb, 201.

205 church buildings.25 The Dutch American community of South Holland, Illinois felt the effects of Chicago's suburban expansion just as directly. Between 1950 and 1960, the population of South Holland soared from 3,242 to 10,412. Chicagoans flooded the traditional Dutch city, and many Dutch were willing to sell their lands and move out. South Holland became a "thriving, pulsating suburban artery of Chicago."26

Dutch American Hamlets Small Dutch American communities across the Midwest were bound to each other by family connections, through correspondence with family in the Netherlands, and through the Reformed Churches and their ministers. In many rural areas, Dutch ancestry and heritage was almost taken for granted. One had to leave the community to find the non-Dutch. For example, in Missaukee County Michigan, in the 1930s, "non-Dutch residents of the community were referred to, without a hint of irony, as 'Americans' or 'outsiders' those terms being synonymous." Ronald Jager remembers that at seven years of age, he made his first foray outside of the community, twenty miles away to Imlay City. "Our cousins, innumerable and very worldly-wise, talked knowingly of a place called Detroit, an important but distant suburb of Imlay City, as I got the picture," Jager wrote.27 Even though rural communities had some of the proudest defenders of Dutch identity and heritage, it was difficult for small communities to support lasting institutions. Cities like Holland, Michigan, and Pella, Iowa, used anniversary events as opportunities for reflecting on their Dutch ethnic heritage. These events served to promote ties with an ethnic background. But Dutch American rural hamlets lacked colleges, institutions, and historical societies to reinforce Dutch cultural identity. Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, recalled its Dutch heritage in its centennial celebrations of 1947 with a historical pageant with over 250 participants. Actors were grouped into categories "Hollanders", "Indians", "Girls in Dutch Dance," "Pioneers and Backwoodsmen", and "Psalm

24 David P. Blauw, "An Overview of the Reformed Church in Chicago: History, Characterisistics, Trends" Student Term Paper, Western Theological Seminary. W88-0758. 25 Robert P. Swierenga, "The Dutch Urban Expierence," in Swierenga, Sinnema, Krabbendam, eds. The Dutch in Urban America, 2004, 1-12. Robert P. Swierenga, Dutch Chicago: A History of Hollanders in the Windy City (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002). The decline in RCA growth in Chicago after 1900, Swierenga notes, might be linked to the acceptance of birth control. 26 Richard Cook, South Holland: A History, 1846-1966 (South Holland Trust and Savings Bank, 1966), 88. 27 Ronald Jager, Eighty Acres: Elegy for a Family Farm (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 7 and 37.

206 Singers," among others. In "episode one, scene one" ancestors in the Netherlands are discussing letters which encouraged the immigration. In "episode two" the Dutch immigrants arrive and meet Wisconsin's Sauk Indians. The immigrants struggle to build their homes and their churches as they wait for the ever-delayed mail to arrive. The pageant continued with scenes of entertainment from days gone by and with soldiers arriving home from the war in France. But this pageant was hardly an epic. It had no central theme or conflict. It did not recall the sinking of the ship Phoenix, nor apparently, the religious persecution of the Netherlands. Without a clear plot, the story could not be related to future generations.28 In another example, the city of Sioux Center, Iowa, almost completely neglected its Dutch heritage during its fifty year jubilee in 1941. The Sioux Center News titled its anniversary edition "Half Century of Progress." Although the names mentioned were almost entirely Dutch, the newspaper ran no stories of a Dutch founding, of Dutch ingenuity, or of the history and contribution of the Dutch in America. Instead, the city leaders focused on the hardships the city had endured, the blizzards, grasshoppers and heat waves that had plague their past. In this instance, legends of the pioneer spirit took precedent over tales of Dutch flight from persecution. According to the former editor of the Sioux Center Nieuwsblad (the forerunner of the Sioux Center News), C.H. Van der Meulen, the city was not even celebrating the correct date for its anniversary. As best as he could recall, Sioux Center was incorporated in 1890 and he had begun the Nieuwsblad himself in 1892.29 The preservation of few historical records from small communities often makes it difficult to trace identity formation. However, language transition can serve as a key indicator of the perseverance of ethnic identity. The general pattern of language loss among immigrants is that the first generation maintains the original language, the second generation is bilingual and the third generation loses the ethnic language. Some Dutch Protestants provide exceptions to this "three generation rule." According to Jaap Van Marle, Calvinist religion provided only one factor for language maintenance. When settlements defined themselves as "Dutch" and had a high concentration of Dutch immigrants or Dutch Americans, the Dutch language longer endured. In the isolated Dutch settlements in the Midwest, third and fourth generation Dutch Americans could sometimes speak their ethnic language. Dutch continued in the nuclear family even when the

28 Cedar Grove Centennial Homecoming Souvenir Program, August 14-17th, 1947. Sheboygan County Historical Center. 29 Sioux Center News, Vol. 50 No. 22 (31 July 1941). Heritage Hall Geographical File: Sioux Center.

207 church transitioned to English. The presence of and older relatives contributed as well.30 The transition from Dutch to English services in Reformed and Christian Reformed churches underlies a deeper loss of Dutch identity. Until the second decade of the twentieth century, most Reformed churches in the rural Midwest used Dutch exclusively. The younger generation, however, required a Christian education in English. The use of English was first seen in Sunday School and Catechism education. Only after that, in most cases, was English was gradually introduced in the pulpit. A common pattern in the 1920s and 1930s was to offer a Dutch service on Sunday morning and an English service in the afternoon. Some churches alternated from English to Dutch every other week. In Iowa, Dutch services were held in the morning, while English services were in the afternoon. In Wisconsin, the pattern was reversed, but it is not clear why. Language tensions required a compromise to be sought between the minister and the congregation. The arrival of a new, younger minister, often marked the adoption or greater use of English in the pulpit. However, many congregations took a vote to decide on language. For example, at the First Reformed Church of Harrison, South Dakota, in 1924 a vote of 29 for and 11 against confirmed that all services would be in English. Especially in Iowa, where a state law prohibited services in foreign languages, the atmosphere of the First World War contributed to the further use of English. But, the strong line of the Iowa legislation backfired in Sioux Center, where at the First Reformed Church, ministers preached in Dutch in protest of the law, willing to be arrested for their faith. Here the reaction was to avoid English and promote Dutch. The consistory of the First Reformed Church in Hull, Iowa, learned, however, that it was within the law to first preach in English and then provide a translation for the audience. The consistory complained, nevertheless, because some church members routinely left the service without waiting for the translation. New churches could form to support English or Dutch services. In 1919, the Trinity Reformed Church formed as an English-speaking congregation, in a break from the First Reformed Church in Orange City, Iowa. The First Reformed Church of Orange City did not offer English services until 1929, and finally dispensed of Dutch altogether in 1952. The First CRC of South Holland, Illinois began English evening services in 1919. Language difficulties lead to the

30 Jaap van Marle, "The Acculturation of Dutch Immigrants in the USA: A Linguist's View" Third Biennial Conference for the Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies: The Dutch Adapting in North America, 2001.

208 formation of a Second CRC in South Holland in 1925. The new congregation continued in Dutch for the time being, while the old congregation gradually transitioned into English, with Dutch and English on alternating Sundays in 1929 and English on every Sunday as of 1933. The First Reformed (RCA) of South Holland, meanwhile, adopted English on alternating Sundays in 1917 and continued with one Dutch and one English service each Sunday from 1922 to at least 1940. Since church consistories were dominated by members of the older generation, their minutes tended to be written in Dutch into the late 1930s or early 1940s.

Table 3: Language Transition in Rural Dutch American Churches31

Church Name Church Location English English equal or End of Regular Introduced predominating Dutch Services 1st RCA Dempster, S.D. 1909 1st RCA Harrison, S.D. 1921 1924 2nd RCA Lennox, S.D. 1917 Sandham Memorial Sandham, S.D. 1911 1939 (RCA) 1st CRC South Holland, Ill. 1919 1933 1st RCA South Holland, Ill. 1917 1st RCA Pella, IA 1923 3rd RCA Pella, IA 1902 1926 Pease CRC Pease, Minn. 1928 1943 Roseland RCA Roseland, Minn. 1920 Silver Creek RCA Silver Creek, Minn. 1914 Steen RCA Steen, Minn. 1934 1936 1957 Pella RCA Adams, Neb. 1915 1915 Holland RCA Hickman, Neb. 1912 1912 1935 Alto RCA Alto, WI 1924 1927 1945 1st RCA Oostburg, WI 1913 1923 1941 Hingham RCA Hingham, WI 1911 1919 Hope Reformed Sheboygan, WI 1898 1914 1933 1st RCA Cedar Grove, WI 1907 1924 1933

In all the rural hamlets, it was difficult for the elderly Hollanders to accept English services. For many, the Dutch language was an important medium for communicating their faith. Because some had never needed to learn more than rudimentary English in the ethnic enclave, they could

31 Information compiled from church anniversary booklets and further clippings in the individual church files at the JAH. See also, Fannie Hanenburg Smith, compiler. Pease: 100 Years (Princeton, Minnesota: Arnold Printing Co., 1994),150.

209 not understand the full meaning of the sermon. In Holland, Grand Rapids, or Chicago, Dutch Americans could transfer church membership to find services in the language of their choice. In smaller communities, there was no chance to do so. Some newer churches, like Steen (RCA) had a greater proportion of Dutch-born immigrants, and therefore regular Dutch services endured later into the century. But by mid-century, there was an almost complete loss of Dutch language in the church. An anniversary booklet of the Reformed church in Greenleafton, Minnsesota, described the long transition to English: "This change had come slowly, one part of the people wishing to cling to the mother tongue and the other wishing to adapt itself to the New World. Today [1967], though we are proud of our Dutch heritage, we know no racial barriers. People of many nationalities and from other denominations have become part of our church family."32 In many of these rural communities, the factors of the loss of ethnic identity were the same: intermarriage, television, the World War - all signs of entering a multi-ethnic, modern America. Gerald DeJong summarizes these changes: "The rate of disappearance of the Dutch "racial frontier" that had been established during the nineteenth century was accelerated by several developments after World War II. Tens of thousands of Dutch-American G.I.'s who had spent time in other parts of the United States or overseas brought with them on their return home a new outlook on life and society. Increasingly, too, young Dutch people began selecting marriage partners from other ethnic backgrounds - a practice that had been strictly taboo in many communities before the war. Finally, as happened in the Netherlands itself, the popularity of television helped to end the cultural isolation of many persons residing in rural areas." 33 More perhaps than in any other region, the Dutch in Wisconsin assimilated quickly and forgot their ethnic identity or heritage. There were a number of reasons for this. First of all, Wisconsin lacked religious leaders such as Van Raalte or Scholte who drew the immigrants together and who founded churches and established networks between communities. 34 Many a dominee in the foundational 1850s served their congregations only briefly. The Reformed Churches also place a muted role in holding the communities together. The CRC was slow to develop in Wisconsin and it failed to attract new immigrants. The Dutch in Wisconsin also lacked a critical

32 Greenleafton centennial anniversary booklet (1967), 7. JAH, Church file, Minnesota, Greenleafton. 33 Gerald DeJong, Dutch in America, 210-211; Gerald F. DeJong, "Four Generations of a Dutch American Community" in Herman Ganzevoort, Mark Boekelman, Dutch Immigration to North America (, 1983), 221- 238. In Orange City, intermarriage became more common after 1945. De Volksvriend ceased publication in 1951. 34 Robert P. Swierenga, "Building the Reformed Church in Early Wisconsin" Origins, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2009), 35- 44.

210 mass and assimilated rather quickly into the mainstream. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the dominant Gelderland origin of the immigrants also meant many could understand German and mix in with German immigrants. When the Frisians and Groningers settled in Dodge county in the later decades of the nineteenth century, they displaced other Welsh settlers and experienced strong isolation and subsequent language retention. But without institutional support, Dutch history and heritage in Wisconsin faded. Hope, Calvin, Central, Northwestern, and Dordt colleges all provided centers for Dutch Americans, but Dutch Americans in Wisconsin had to travel to Michigan for their theological education. Not only did the Dutch in Wisconsin have no Van Raalte or Scholte, they also did not have a Gerrit Diekema. Politicians who praised Dutch ethnic contributions to American history were common in Michigan but absent in Wisconsin. The editor of the Sheboygan Press, C.E. Broughton, appears to be one exception. In a speech at Hope Reformed Church in Sheboygan, Broughton spoke about the "characteristic thrift", the Dutch "capacity for hard work and sincerity in religious worship."35 But Broughton was an outsider to the community and this was a one-time event. In Michigan, this ethnic praise was a yearly political strategy. In Michigan, founding mythology of the struggle in the wilderness gave cause to reflect at historical commemorations. In Iowa and elsewhere on the prairies, Dutch Americans drew on pioneer heritage and stories of breaking the topsoil. In Wisconsin, the only foundation mythology was the story of the disaster of the ship Phoenix, although this story was seldom recalled in the press. Historians, furthermore, have neglected studying the Wisconsin Dutch because of the lack of preserved records. Until the 1990s, no local archive has actively collecting Dutch immigrant records. After the Sheboygan Nieuwsbode in the 1850s, the Dutch in Wisconsin never again published a Dutch-language periodical. Pella, Iowa, presents a slightly different case from other rural Dutch communities. Here, many inhabitants took "Dutchness" for granted and the number of non-Dutch in the community remained small throughout the twentieth century. An article on Pella in The New Yorker in 1979, describes this ethnic concentration: "The Pella telephone directory lists seven Smiths and four Joneses. There are, in contrast, fifty-one Vermeers (or Ver Meers), foty-nine Van Zeea, forty-five Van Wyks..."36 In the same article, Maurice Birdsall, the president of the Pella Historical Society explained "I've lived in Pella for over forty years - since 1938 - and I love it. I cam here as a

35 Sheboygan Press, 18 Feb. 1938. 36 Berton Roueche, Profiles, “OASIS,” The New Yorker, December 24, 1979. 46-58.

211 teacher, of course. Which was a most fortunate thing. I mean, I could have never made it as a businessman. This is a Dutch town, and those days, before the Second World War, it was even Dutchier. I knew a couple - I won't mention their names, except to say they weren't Dutch - who came here from somewhere and opened a little business on the square. And the second day they were open a man came in - he was Dutch, of course - and advised them to sell out before they went broke. It was good advice, and they took it and left."37 As Birdsall describes it, Dutchness was an essential quality of Pella. As "Dutchness" in Pella waned, the city looked for ways to revive interest in its ethnic heritage. Because Pella's Central College was a Baptist school, however, and not affiliated with either of the Reformed Churches, the city lacked an institutional base to collect, study, and promote Dutch history and heritage. In 1935, Pella copied its Tulip Time from Holland, and the following year city revived its dormant historical society. The city also received visits from Dutch royalty, including Princess Juliana in 1942, and Princess Margriet in 1997. These events gave the city cause to celebrate its Dutch heritage, but perhaps the most unique feature of Dutch identity in Pella, the retention of the Dutch language, received less attention. Despite the loss of Dutch church services, a community of Dutch-speakers endured in Pella into the final decades of the twentieth century. In a study of the local dialect of Pella Dutch, Philip Webber discovered in 1981 that approximately 200 to 250 speakers remained. Only eleven percent of the 150 Dutch speakers Webber contacted were descended from immigrants who arrived in the twentieth century; the rest were grandchildren of nineteenth century immigrants, with the most representative decades being the 1850s and 1870s. In short, the Dutch language had survived in some Pella families for over 125 years. In Pella, a city of 8,000, Webber also noted Dutch words in use and Dutch influences on grammatical structure. Residents of Pella and the neighboring villages seldom Americanization the spelling of their Dutch last names, and kept surname pronunciations in line with the Dutch manner.38

Why West Michigan was Different Unlike the Dutch Americans in other urban settings, those in Holland and Grand Rapids did not have to worry about maintaining ethnic territory, because here they were the dominant ethnic

37 Ibid., 48. 38 Phillip E. Webber, Pella Dutch: The Portrait of a Language and Its Use in One of Iowa's Ethnic Communities (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1988).

212 group. The Dutch American world endured the longest in Grand Rapids because of continued immigration, while Holland served as a center for Dutch American history and the reinvention of Dutch ethnicity through Tulip Time (see previous chapter). The critical mass of Dutch Americans in Grand Rapids made this "little Jerusalem" a Dutch American center, and made West Michigan the most prominent and most studied Dutch American region. The proximity of Holland to Grand Rapids, as well as the smaller Dutch communities across Kent, Ottawa, Allegan, and Kalamazoo counties made West Michigan a notable Dutch region. Dutch Americans in Michigan made conscious efforts to maintain ties with the Netherlands and to keep themselves organized as an ethnic group drawing on a shared heritages.39 The strength and persistence of a unique Dutch American culture was the clearest in Grand Rapids. New immigrants from the Netherlands found in Grand Rapids a distinct kind of Dutch culture and society. In his autobiographical novel, With a Dutch Accent, David Cornel DeJong describes his youth in Friesland, the Netherlands and the story of his migration and new life in the United States. In one scene from around 1910, DeJong recalls American visitors - cousins - who arrived in Friesland and spoke of the wonders of America. There were "insurmountable mountains of snow, incalculable degrees of heat, and stupefyingly tremendous spaces and distances." The houses were built of wood instead of brick. When these cousins spoke of their lives in America, they made it seem that "nearly everyone" was of Dutch origin. "Of course," DeJong writes "our cousins never hinted that their particular little corner might be quite different from the rest of America."40 These cousins were speaking about West Michigan. As a greenhorn in this new land, DeJong recognized the different attitudes and culture, and "started to hate the self-righteous Grand Rapids Dutch"41 The works of Dirk Nieland indicate the strength and uniqueness of the Dutch in Grand Rapids. In two books and dozens of articles in the 1910s and 1920s, Nieland delighted readers with comic portrayals of Dutch Americans, mostly written in an exaggerated form of "Yankee Dutch", a peculiar dialect of Grand Rapids that incorporated English words with Dutch grammar and spelling. Of Nieland's characters, one carried under his arm the latest copy of a Dutch American periodical, another attempted to purchase an automobile with payment in spices, and a third spoke neither Dutch nor English, but only the Groninger dialect ("As doe gain Hollansch proatst, ken 'k

39 The Banner, 29 July 1920, vol. 55, no. 1228) 40 David Cornel DeJong, With a Dutch Accent (New York: Harper, 1944), 122. 41 DeJong, With a Dutch Accent, 209.

213 doe nait verstoan"). 42 Unlike the writings of Arnold Mulder (too controversial), Peter DeVries (much too controversial), and Edna Ferber (completely off the mark), the Dutch American community generally supported Nieland's portrayal of themselves and spoke well of him in the press. CRC stalwarts like B.K. Kuiper and Henry Beets, along with Calvin College's Dutch Language professor, Jay Van Andel, all found something to like in Nieland. Writing for the CRC periodical, Onze Toekomst, Hans Hansen said of Nieland's writing style: "The 'mixup' of the "mixerij" is brilliant en echt."43 Even among the Dutch in Grand Rapids, however, the Dutch language was fading fast. Henry Van Andel's difficult tenure as Professor of Dutch Language at Calvin College illustrates this. When Van Andel began at Calvin in 1915, a majority of the students could speak or understand Dutch. In a letter to his successor, Walter Lagerwey, Van Andel explained that during the First World War, the government of Iowa had forbidden Dutch, but the effect of the ban went beyond Iowa. Schools everywhere began dropping foreign languages. "In ten years time [everything] changed,” he wrote, “1/3 to 1/2 of the students [at Calvin] knew no Dutch."44 Calvin required pre-seminary students to take two years of Dutch, but once in the seminary, students mostly neglected further study. When he could not motivate students to learn Dutch language, Van Andel also taught courses in Dutch history and art. Students remembered him for his positive attitude and ability to relate the history of the 17th century siege of Leiden.45 Local publishing houses, particularly that of William B. Eerdmans, contributed to the awareness of Dutch identity in West Michigan. Eerdmans's career was motivated by his Calvinism. Religious publications were his breadbasket, but he was also active in publishing books about the Dutch in America, and was particularly keen to combine the two subjects (Dutchness and Calvinism) in print. Born in 1882, Eerdmans emigrated to the U.S. when he was nineteen. He entered Calvin College within his first year in Michigan, graduate in due time, then took courses at the Calvin Seminary before deciding against pursuing a career in the ministry. To support himself as a student, Eerdmans had been importing books from the Netherlands to re-sell among the Grand Rapids Dutch. In 1910, Eerdmans began publishing books as well, first in Dutch then also in English. He pushed English language books because, he later said, he wanted to treat his audience

42 Heritage Hall, Collection 180, Papers of Dirk Nieland, Box 1, Newspaper clippings preserved by Nieland. 43 Newspapers clippings book, page 43. 44 Henry Van Andel to Walter Lagerwey, 24 April 1964. Heritage Hall, Collection 260, Box 1, Folder 5. 45 Henry J. Ryskamp, "Professor Henry J. Andel, 1883-1968: In Memorium", The Banner, 30 Aug. 1968.

214 not as Dutchmen but as Americans of Dutch descent. But for ultimate the success of his enterprise, English language publications were necessary to attract a larger reading public. While proud of his America identity, Eerdmans was fascinated with Dutch American history and particularly the character of A.C. Van Raalte. 46 In 1947, Eerdmans bought the Van Raalte house in Holland and had designs to use that edifice to construct a shrine.47 He also wanted to publish a popular, man-on-the-street book for the 1947 centennial commemorations, and he chose the University of Michigan's Albert Hyma for the project. The discovery and acquisition of the Van Raalte papers the year before meant a boon to Hyma personally. In 1946, the University of Michigan cut his teaching schedule in half, raised his salary, and gave him top priority to publish a Van Raalte biography.48 The Van Raalte family gave Hyma the papers, with his trust that they would avoid the hands of "certain persons in Holland" who had greivances against the family.49 Hyma, meanwhile suggested that Holland's Pillar Church be selected as a location for a Van Raalte shrine. In a public meeting of the Holland-Zeeland chapter of Calvin College alumni held at that church, Hyma chided the area residents for their lack of civic pride and their failure to recognize the value of their heritage.50 Hyma also expressed surprise about the lack of local history materials at the public library.51 The anniversary year of 1947 offered Eerdmans and Hyma an opportunity for publicity and self-promotion. Hyma emphasized and advertised that the newfound Van Raalte papers had given up many "secrets" about the city's founder. The Netherlands newspapers Trouw covered the story of how Van Raalte had been rediscovered.52 And Hyma visited the Netherlands to promote his new work.53 Eerdmans was elected president of the Albertus C. Van Raalte Foundation in 1947. The foundation included mostly Grand Rapids men as members: Hyma, Calvin Professor H.J. Ryskamp, Carl J. Riddering and James M. VerMeulen, August Lenger, and Edward Freyling. The only Holland representatives were D.B.K. Van Raalte, Hope College President Irwin J. Lubbers, and the Judge Cornelius VanderMeulen. Willard Wichers was notably absent.54

46 Fred Baker, "Fifty Million Volumes Can't be Wrong: Religion as a Binding Formula" The Knickebocker: The Magainze of the Low Countries (New York) Vol. 10., No. 1 (Jan. 1949) 20-21. 47 Grand Rapids Press, 14 Feb. 1947. 48 Hyma to Wichers, 26 Sept. 1946. HMA,T88-1089 Box 7. 49 Hyma to Wichers, t88-1089, 5 Oct 1946. 50 Holland Evening Sentinel, 14 Feb. 1947.. 51 Grand Rapids Press, 15 Feb. 1947. 52 Trouw, 9 Apr. 1947. 53 De Standaard, 19 Apr. 1947. 54 Grand Rapids Press, 22 May 1947; Holland Evening Sentinel, 23 May 1947.

215 Wichers' absence is remarkable because, at mid-century, he almost singlehandedly led Holland, Michigan's, Dutch history efforts. As a student at Hope, Wichers edited the college's 1930 yearbook, the Milestone. Intent on saving the college's history, Wichers collected information on all of the college's graduates since the first class of 1866. But Wichers' ambitious project ran over cost by $3,000, a sum which he and a co-editor were forced to pay off through their own labor in the follow year. In 1935, Wichers collected historical records in western Michigan as an employee of the WPA's historical records survey. Involved in the 1937 Founders' Day celebrations, he help steer the creation of the city's Netherlands Museum. In 1941, as the Netherlands Consuls were overwhelmed with requests for information about relatives in the war, a branch of the Netherlands Information Service (NIS) opened in Holland with Wichers as its director. He would hold this position until 1974. With involvement in the Michigan Historical Commission and on the Board of Trustees of Hope College, Wichers became a powerful figure in the city of Holland. He led the city centennial anniversary celebration in 1947 and helped establish Windmill Island in 1965. 55 Wichers was best known for his role at the Netherlands Museum, which formed in 1937 out of plans of the Netherlands Pioneer and Historical Foundation. Holland's chamber of commerce also supported their plans for a municipal museum. The museum moved from the Hope College Chapel to the former People's State Bank and to the Masonic Temple before settling into the former home of Dr. Kremers on 12th street in 1939. WPA funded a remodeling project before the spring, 1940 move-in.56 The Netherlands Museum combined West Michigan Dutch history with historical items from the Netherlands and Dutch Indies. Objects on display included Delft pottery, a diorama of Van Raalte, Dutch-made furniture, a Volendam room, Dutch skates, and a portrait of Queen Juliana. With connections to the Michigan Historical Commission, Wichers brought legitimacy. From its inception, however, the Netherlands Museum lacked space. Shortage of storage and workspace would be a continual complaint throughout its history. The Museum's archivist, Elton Bruins gathered materials during a Fulbright-funded stay in the Netherlands in 1973. "Archival space is now very critical. I am simply unable to place much more material in the vault." 57 In 1978 and 1979, the Museum failed a series of electrical inspections with overload switches, improper and "improvident" use of extension cords, loose fixtures, etc., that jeopardized the collections.

55 JAH, Willard Wichers Papers, H91-1118. Ben Beversluis, "Wichers is praised as 'statesman', 'diplomat'." Grand Rapids Press, Lakeshore Edition, 9 Feb 1987. Wichers retired in 1986. 56 Presentation of Willard Wichers to the City Council, 30 Jan. 1974. In Wichers, HMA. 57 Elton J. Bruins to Willard Wichers, 15 Aug. 1973 (Willard Wichers Papers, HMA.

216 The first "Holland Home", a facility for the elderly, was built in Grand Rapids (1892) and Pine Rest Christian Hospital was founded in 1910.58 These followed in the tradition of the Dutch Americans in West Michigan caring for each other. A H.O.H. (Hollandse Onderlinge Hulp Vereeniging) formed in Grand Rapids in 1874 and a Holland, Michigan branch of this “Dutch Dependents Help Society” organization followed in 1907 with 92 charter members. The H.O.H. was a combination of a worker’s compensation insurance fund and a Dutch cultural organization. In both of its functions, this organization stood in contrast to the Americanizing, nationalizing influences of other local clubs like the Social Progress and Exchange Clubs. The motto of the H.O.H. was “Voorwaarts Concordia” [Forward Concordia], meaning that the club was designed to promote harmony and concord among its members. Even rich members joined, not because they needed cash in times of ill-health, but because they cared about others in their community. By the mid-1910s, the society had over 300 members in Ottawa County. A "Zelf-Hulp" society had been initiated among the Dutch in Chicago in 1879 and incorporated in 1884. In 1937, the society was still going strong. It held capital interests of 151,000 dollars and had a staff of 9 field agents. In it's 58 year history, it had given out 873,000 dollars to those in need.59 In education, the Dutch in Michigan attempted for four decades to to establish a chair in Dutch history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Jacob Steketee, the Netherlands' consul in Grand Rapids, spearheaded the first movement to raise funds for the project. Writing to the Netherlands's Minister in Washington D.C. in 1915, Steketee said that he believed "the right moment has arrived here for this work, for a strong race consciousness and pride is developing among our Holland-American people."60 Steketee explained that he wanted to raise $25,000. In 1916, a committee led by Steketee and Henry Hulst of Grand Rapids, with G.J. Diekema of Holland began appealing for funds. Hulst's wife Cornelia, who was also Consul Steketee's sister, also played a role in organizing the movement. In a letter to the Minister in 1920, she said that the University of Michigan had purchased a library of books collected by Henry Lucas during his

58 Dutch Americans' medical care facilities also included a Holland Home in Patterson, New Jersey, built in 1905, a sanitarium in New Jersey (1911) and one in Colorado (1914). 59 Onze Toekomst, 25 Aug. 1937. 60 Jacob Steketee (Grand Rapids) to W.L.F.C. Van Rappard (Washington, D.C.), 21 July 1915. Gezantschap, Inv. No. 707.

217 research trips in the Netherlands. This library of Dutch books, she hoped, would provide the groundwork for further developments in establishing a Dutch chair.61 Progress on the project, stalled, but the Steketee's remained optimistic. First, the project had been delayed by the War, then the University president who was friendly and supportive had retired, and his replacement was less enthusiastic about the chair. In 1925, Steketee was without the "slightest doubt" that the chair would be established and Albert Hyma would first hold the position.62 Hyma continued on at Michigan, but the Dutch chair did not develop. In 1931, Steketee had a meeting with the University's president to discuss their aims once again. But the President gave a pessimistic outloook. Because the university was public, and supported by , it could not favor one ethnic group over another. The Polish in Detroit, he said, had also wanted the University to establish a Polish chair.63 Willard Wichers of Holland kept up the struggle in the 1940s. Wichers and Albert Hyma had become friends and Wichers naturally supported Hyma for the position in 1946. Eerdmans personal contacts contributed to Jacob Van Hinte being named as named the first chair in 1947, but this professor from the Netherlands died shortly before he could take the position in 1948.64 In 1950, the University of Michigan began welcoming visiting professors from the Netherlands with annual positions.

Coming to Terms with the Changes From urban Dutch American enclaves to rural Dutch American hamlets, and even in Dutch American centers like Holland and Grand Rapids, conscious Dutch American identities were fading in the mid-twentieth century. Some continued to defend the Dutch language, but they were a distinct minority, and it became clear that they were fighting a losing battle. Writing in the 1950s, Rev. Emo van Halsema defended the continued use of the Dutch language in the America. He declared the Dutch language to be poetic. It bound the Dutch Americans to their kin in the Netherlands and aided the development of their churches. He wrote, "If there is one people in the world, that doesn't need to be ashamed of its native language, then that is the people of Dutch

61 Cornelia Steketee Hulst (Grand Rapids, Michigan) to W.H. De Beaufort (Washington, D.C.), 2 Dec. 1920. Gezantschap Inv. No. 707. 62 Jacob Steketee (Grand Rapids, Michigan) to A.C.D. de Graeff (Washington, D.C.), 13 Feb. 1925. Gezantschap, Inv. No. 707. 63 Jacob Steketee to Van Royen, 27 Jan. 1931. Gezantschap, Inv. No. 707. 64 Van Hinte, Netherlanders in America, xxxviii.

218 ancestry.65 Connections to the Netherlands and the promotion of Dutch language, culture, and heritage went hand-in-hand. The evolution of Dutch American identities always bothered older generations. Samuel Zwemer wrote about the superficiality of heritage bound up in Tulip Time and in the novels written by Dutch Americans. Zwemer was disappointed to see less emphasis on Calvinism in the developing Dutch American heritage "Our real heritage," he said, " can not be symbolized by wind-mills and wooden shoes and tulip-gardens and Dutch costumes. Its only symbol is the Bible from which our spiritual heritage was derived and on which it thrived."66 The cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead, described the view of social change in America from a member of the third generation. "Somewhere in his grandfather's day there was an epic struggle for liberty and freedom. His picture of that epic grandfather is a little obscured, however, by the patent fact that this father does not really respect him; he may have been a noble character, but he had a foreign accent."67 According to Mead, writing in 1965, nearly all Americans act as if they are members of the third generation. What matters to Americans is not their deepest roots, but the fact that they all have all made longs paths to get where they are. Common experience, not common ancestry makes Americans. Americans are always moving, changing, not clinging to the past, but recalling it whenever and wherever applicable. Their attitude about the country is like a membership in a society. They have just gotten in to the exclusive club. They want to do better than their fathers and move on. The search for identity is consistent, but the way it materializes changes. Social organization depends on historical circumstances. Tension arises because generations disagree about social identity, whether ethnic or otherwise. Every generation, and every individual in every era chooses their own identities. "Among primitive peoples," says Mead, "we find there is a mock battle between the young men and the old men: generation after generation the old men lose. An observer from our society, with an unresolved conflict with his father on his mind, might watch that battle in terror, feeling that the outcome was in doubt. But the members of the tribe who are fighting the mock battle consciously or unconsciously know the outcome and fight with no less

65 Emo van Halsema, "Een Woord over de Taal" De Wachter, Vol. 87, No. 29 (20 July 1954), 452-453. Als er een volk in de wereld is, dat zich niet behoeft te schamen voor zijn moedertaal, dat zijn het wel de mensen van Nederlandse stam. 66 Samuel Zwemer, "The Faith of Our Fathers: Our Heritage" in The Church Herald, 20 June 1947., 18. in H88-0212. 67 Margaret Mead, The Study of Contemporary Western Cultures, Volume 2: And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1965; republication, Berghahn Books, 2000), 30.

219 display of zeal for the knowing of it. The mock battle is no less important because the issue is certain"68 In the discourse on identity, no monolithic definition of ethnicity or heritage can remain constant.

68 Mead, 26.

220 CHAPTER 10: THE RISE OF DUTCH AMERICAN HERITAGE STUDIES

Dutch American identities were originally anchored in the social structure of the church, which served as a de facto ethnic institution. Dutch American ethnic identities today, however, are tied more closely to the family unit than to community or congregation. Indeed, ethnicity has lost its element of social control; it no longer necessarily determines one’s choice of marriage partners, occupation, or worldview. At the same time, the remnants of a Dutch American religious community continue on in the Reformed Church in America and Christian Reformed Church but with a near total loss of overt Dutchness. Dutch ethnic identification in America has been replaced with a strong interest in Dutch heritage and ancestry, both largely detached from religion. This toned-down, mostly secular application of Dutchness is rather remarkable considering the profoundly Calvinist origins of Dutch American identities. In short, Dutch Americans of previous generations were conscious of their Dutch identity; they were often literate and informed about Dutch culture and language. Americans of Dutch descent, however, call on their Dutchness only on special occasions. The latter category represents a new paradigm of those for whom Dutch heritage, i.e., the ritualistic glorification of the past, has become a powerful new form of identity. The rising interest in Dutch ethnic heritage was not an isolated phenomenon by any means; it was part of a larger ethnic revival across the United States. During the first half of the twentieth century, the dominant view among most Americans was that claims on ethnicity would dissipate as the national “melting pot” assimilated its European ingredients into a national mono-culture. In the 1960s, however, Americans became more accepting of cultural pluralism and showed an interest in distinguishing between and preserving ethnic identities. Universities added courses on ethnic and cultural history, while cultural historians found success marketing their monographs to a general public.1 Alex Haley’s book Roots,2 found millions of loyal viewers as a television miniseries in 1979 and inspired a generation of Americans to discover their own family heritage. Promoting ethnic heritage was for many a means of seeking an identity rooted in an ancestral past. According to historian Matthew Frye Jacobson, the search for “roots” is an enduring quest for those who wish

1 Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Cultures in the Seventies (New York: MacMillion, 1971). Historian Rudolph Vecoli identified ethnicity as a vital, creative force, and a "public phenomenon." Rudolph J. Vecoli, “Return to the Melting Pot: Ethnicity in the United States in the Eighties,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 5, no. 1 (Fall 1985): 7-20. 2 Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976).

221 to modify their “whiteness” with hyphenated identities.3 “White” Americans can be seen as calling on ethnicity as a means of locating themselves “against the panorama of American history, against the backdrop of what it means to be American.”4 If the growth of the Dutch American heritage movement was part of this larger movement, was it then at all unique? The answer, I believe, is “yes”; Dutch American heritage studies are unique for their relative visibility and strength. The Dutch American heritage movement derives its strength from the supporting role of institutions, the willingness of Dutch Americans to cooperate through these institutions, and ultimately through the flexibility of what it means to be “Dutch.” Institutions are mechanisms of social order and cooperation, organizations that govern and influence behavior. Important institutions for Dutch American heritage include Tulip Time, the Dutch International Society, the Holland Museum, Heritage Hall, the Joint Archives of Holland, AADAS (the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies), and the Van Raalte Institute. These institutions enable Dutch Americans to seek out their ethnic identities. Institutions played a dominant role in the rebirth of interest in ethnic heritage, in the rise of public history as a professional discipline, and in the democratization of the history profession more generally. From the 1970s forward, archivists, genealogists, preservationists, and family historians all carved out a niche in supplying the public with information regarding the past. Meanwhile, Americans grew passionate about studying the past. In 1998, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen published The Presence of the Past, 5 a study which presented statistical information gathered from numerous surveys about the role of history in American life. Rosenzweig and Thelen estimate that some seventy-six million Americans participate in historical hobbies, everything from collecting family photographs to restoring rusty, antique farm equipment. The study of history, they argue, has an important role to play in forming a civic identity. Institutions and networked organizations have enabled researchers to find answers about the past more readily than individual laborers alone could have hoped for. In creating an informed public, public historians have learned that it is not only the amount of knowledge about the past that counts, but the ability to store, interpret and disseminate it. All sorts of roadblocks impede the flow of historical information.

3 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 4 Richard D. Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 319. 5 Roy Rosenzweig and David P. Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

222 Public history institutions seek ways for individuals to bypass these obstacles. They enable the public to be consumers of history who are interested in the past for their own purposes. A rich and diverse array of institutions makes the study of Dutch American heritage accessible and personally rewarding.

Post-War Migration and DIS By far the most influential Dutch American organization during the 1960s and 1970s was the Dutch Immigrant Society (DIS). Although DIS began as an immigrant aid society and a provider of cheap flights to the Netherlands, it transitioned into a cultural heritage organization in the 1980s, and endured as a purveyor of all things Dutch. The society sometimes dated its founding to 1950, but this date is most certainly incorrect and served only as an approximate marker of the beginnings of a new wave of migration from the Netherlands to the United States.6 It appears from the minutes of the organization‘s first recorded meeting in 1957, that this group originally formed in that year, out of the companionship of four Grand Rapids men (Henry deLugt, Dick Bakhuyzen, John Witte, and Lucas DeVries) who gathered at each others’ homes to converse in Dutch. From its birth, DIS was a Dutch Calvinist society, acutely aware of its Christian and ethnic character. In the late 1950s, the organization remained fairly small, still just a circle of perhaps fifty young immigrant couples and their children.7 DIS was important because it comforted a new wave of Dutch immigrants who suffered from loneliness and feelings of isolation in America.8 A new migration from the Netherlands to the United States began in the wake of the Second World War. In contrast to its actions in the nineteenth century, the Dutch government in the post-war period promoted emigration, seeing it as a solution to overpopulation and housing shortages in the Netherlands. From 1946-62, over 77,000 Dutch immigrated to the United States.9 In the peak years of 1956 and 1957, the United States welcomed over 9,000 Dutch migrants each year.10 Because of the restrictions imposed by United States immigration quotas, however, a much larger stream of Dutch headed to Canada. In the

7 In 1990, DIS celebrated its fortieth anniversary. A press release noted that the society began as a Christian Immigrant Society in 1950, folder 24, box 13, collection 429, Calvin College. 7 DIS Magazine, September 1990, 10-11. 8 Katherine Roeghier, “Making a home in America's heartland: The Dutch International Society Observes 40 Years of Fellowship,” DIS Magazine, March 1990, 12-13. 9 Barend Peter Hofstede, Thwarted Exodus: Post-War Overseas Migration from the Netherlands (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 5. 10 J. H. Elich and P. W. Blauw, Emigreren (Utrecht, Netherlands: Het Spectrum, 1983), 22.

223 period from 1946 to 1962, for example, nearly twice as many Dutch—more than 145,000— immigrated to Canada. This post-war wave of Dutch migration reinforced a sense of Dutchness among Dutch Americans, re-established bonds between the Dutch American communities and the Netherlands, and led to increased attention to Dutch culture and heritage. In the past, Reformed churches served to keep Dutch language and identity alive, so that a society like DIS would have been unnecessary or redundant in 1900. But in the 1960s, the Reformed churches no longer used the Dutch language, and the new immigrants recognized that they did not entirely fit in with the established Dutch Americans descended from earlier migrations. The new immigrants sought community outside of the immediate geographical bounds of their new neighborhoods. Their Dutch heritage was different from the earlier immigrants, too. The people of the Netherlands had changed from an agrarian culture to an industrialized society, and they had weathered two world wars. For these new immigrants, DIS was the framework in which many built their early memories of life in the United States; Grand Rapids, the location of the DIS offices, became their capital.11 With a growing membership, DIS in 1960, began holding meetings at the Christian Labor Association building in Grand Rapids. It was in that year that a great change came over the society. The phrase “charter flight” stands out in the Dutch-language minutes of the society‘s meeting on 18 November 1960. At that meeting, a member of the society reported that Pan American Airlines was prepared to provide the society with an eighty-seven-seat passenger jet for a chartered flight from Grand Rapids to Amsterdam for the summer of 1961. The airline requested $325 per adult, $205 for children twelve and under, and thirty-five dollars for children under two years of age that could sit on a parent‘s lap during the flight. To sign the contract for the charter, DIS asked its members who wanted to travel to provide a deposit of one hundred dollars per person, noting that the first to respond would get tickets. Although the date of the flight had yet to be settled and the contract yet to be signed, DIS members responded immediately. The minutes of the meeting read that “checkbooks were drawn like pistols.”12 In 1960 DIS chartered four flights. In the 1970s and 1980s, the society organized between fifteen and twenty flights per year. Although airfare had fallen a bit in the previous decade, the charter flights—which would be the lifeblood of the organization for decades—still provided an unprecedented savings. A KLM

11 DIS Magazine, June 1992, 3-4. 12 DIS Minutes, 18 Nov. 1960, collection 429, Heritage Hall, “cheque boekjes gestokken als pistolen,” (trans. Michael Douma).

224 flight schedule for 1949, received by Willard Wichers at his office in Holland, Michigan, priced round trip airfare from Chicago or Detroit to Amsterdam at $750.13 These early flights took fourteen hours, with stops in Newfoundland and Scotland. Similarly, from 1953 to 1954, trans- Atlantic migrants from the Netherlands could chose between a one-way second-class ticket on the Holland-Amerika Line steamer for 636 guilders or a one-way Dutch government charter flight for 785 guilders.14 By the early 1970s, over 5,000 Dutch Americans per year took advantage of the DIS charter flights to return to the old country.15 The travel itineraries were usually set at four to six weeks, allowing one plenty of time to travel around the Netherlands and see other parts of Europe as well before returning to the United States. DIS officially incorporated on 11 September 1963 in Grand Rapids. The stated goals of the society were to serve and advance Dutch immigrants’ spiritual and religious interests, to promote cultural and social ties with the Netherlands, to aid and assist immigrants in need, and to promote Dutch heritage in the United States. The society put on plays, showed films from and about the Netherlands, and hosted special lectures. At meetings, members gathered around koffie en gebak (coffee and pie), sang Psalms [in Dutch] and took collections for local charities and churches. Many appreciated the religious character of the society, with its before-and-after-meeting prayers. In addition to appealing to new immigrants, DIS educated American-born descendents of Dutch immigrants whose views of the Netherlands were often of a stereotyped, romantic land where people walked around in wooden shoes but lacked electricity. Immigration had been light from the 1920s through the 1930s, so new images and information from the Netherlands had been scarce for a decade. The success of charter flights gave the society financial independence to offer these educational and social events for free. While the organization was based in Grand Rapids and found most of its support in West Michigan, it also received members from other states. The first issue of the bilingual DIS Magazine, issued in May 1970 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, contributed to the society’s growing national presence. DIS membership reached 11,000 in 1971 and peaked at 12,760 in 1976. Memberships were valid for an entire nuclear family, so the absolute number of individuals with membership was significantly higher than the peak figure. At the same

13 Box 11, Willard Wichers Papers, Holland Historical Trust Archives; KLM Dutch Airlines, 1949. 14 Enne Koops, De dynamiek van een emigratiecultuur: De emigratie van gereformeerden, hervormden, en katholieken naar Noord-Amerika in vergelijkend perspectief (1947-1963) (Hilversum, Netherlands: Verloren, 2010), 229.

225 time, however, membership numbers included those who were interested in the society only for its offers of cheap airfare, while concerning themselves little for the Dutch cultural events or publications of DIS. Charter flights continued to be popular until the late 1980s when the parents of the immigrants living in the Netherlands had passed away, and the post-war migrants themselves were becoming too old to want to travel. Also in 1979, deregulation of the airline industry resulted in an increase in competition; this drove down costs, and ultimately obviated the need for charter flights and consequently an organization to organize them. In November 1984, DIS decided it was time for a name change. The organization would keep the DIS logo and some of its stationary, but would replace "immigrant" with "international" to become the Dutch International Society. The name change reflected a deeper change in the identity of the members. The editor of DIS Magazine wrote: “Since the early fifties, an unavoidable change has taken place. Most of the Dutch-born members of the DIS are now for many years already settled and well-acclimatized citizens of the United States of America. They certainly don’t feel like Dutch immigrants anymore.”16 The change was also in recognition of a new challenge to promote Dutch and American connections in a new era. In his outgoing remarks following an eight-year presidency of the society, Gerald Knol said in 1986 that the society needed to make room for new faces. He called for the decentralization of DIS, with more chapters forming outside of West Michigan to promote heritage.17 Indeed, "cultural heritage" became the later-day mantra of the society formed originally around Christian aid, Dutch language and cheap travel to the homeland. But DIS membership rolls declined rapidly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For a decade from 1984 to 1994, the society lost an average of 400 to 500 members per year. By the 1990s, the situation had become critical for the future success of the society. The leaders of DIS became all too aware of the changes and the likely fate of a society built on the involvement of primarily a single generation. They sponsored study abroad programs for the new generation, but this kind gesture did little to aid the ultimate health of the society, as measured by its membership totals. In the early to mid-1990s, the identity crisis of DIS deepened. Membership fell by an average of 400 per year, from 5500 in 1990 to 3,590 in 1995. DIS now existed to serve the second and third generations. Part of its new strategy was to ask members what

15 Gerald F. DeJong, The Dutch in America, 1609-1974 (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975), 190. 16 DIS Magazine, March 1985. 17 DIS Magazine, March 1987. Published report from their annual meeting of 21 Nov. 1986.

226 they wanted from the society.18 But the problem was that members were calling for different, often contradictory things. Should DIS be more or less overtly Christian in its presentation? Should it have more or fewer articles written in Dutch? DIS Magazine editor Trix Carlson asked if it were only the cheap flights that kept members on the rolls. Were they not also interested in their Dutch heritage?19 Indeed this was the case. Many who ended their memberships claimed that without flight programs, there was no advantage to being a member. This kind of rhetoric troubled the board deeply. After all, the leaders of the society had worked hard to craft magazine issues and organize events. DIS offered a Landdag Heritage event each year, as well as Dutch church services at Easter and Christmas, choirs and entertainment events along with the magazine. While DIS officially discontinued flight services in 2004, the truth was that few charter flights had been organized for the previous decade. When Arend Vander Pols took over as editor of the magazine in 1996, he described the difficulty of appealing to a heterogenous following. About his early years editing the magazine, he later recalled, “There were plenty of mistakes and things the readers weren’t too happy about, and they let me know it. Too racy, too much religion, too Frisian, too many pictures, too few.”20 In this first decade of the new millenium, DIS reached a critical stage. The Internet provides information about the Netherlands much more quickly than the society can. Phone rates have gone down and families are able to communicate easily across the Atlantic divide. Children and grandchildren of the immigrant generation, the immigrants lament, show little interest in their heritage. But the core readership of DIS Magazine has remained true to the organization. For many in the older generation, DIS Magazine is their last link to the era of their youth and to their friends and acquaintances in Grand Rapids.21 Some have been members for up to fifty years, and are consistent in their support. John K. Bosker of Mattawan, Michigan, wrote that he was saddened that friends and relatives had ended their membership. "They said that you did a lot of good years ago with charter trips, etc.," Bosker wrote, "but you had not done anything for them lately and they did not renew their membership. I do not always read the DIS magazine right away, but even if it cost $20 per year I would still support you."22

18 DIS Magazine, December 1991 and March 1993. 19 DIS Magazine, December 1993, June 1993, March 1995, and September 1995, 5. 20 DIS Magazine, December 2006, 4. 21 DIS Magazine, September 2003, 4.

227 Professional Heritage Institutions Although DIS can be credited with doing much to encourage connections between Dutch Americans and the Netherlands, the society, however, never showed much interest in promoting professional study of the Dutch in America. The birth and development of archival institutions filled this gap and contributed to the growth of heritage studies. Dutch heritage archives first appeared in Michigan and then Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Institutions with collections that were open to the public aided professional and amateur researchers, enabled genealogists and family historians, and built networks of the heritage and historically-minded. The first archive of materials related directly to the Dutch in the American Midwest began at Calvin College in Grand Rapids when the publisher William Eerdmans brought “six cartons and one small trunk of A. C. Van Raalte documents” to the college.23 From the beginning the Calvin Archives was a joint venture, which combined the collections of Calvin College, Calvin Theological Seminary, and the Christian Reformed Church. But it was also designed to be a center of Dutch heritage, and in 1965 the archive was officially named “Heritage Hall” and given a separate place within the college’s Hekman Library. The three institutions which comprised the archives worked together rather harmoniously, but the staff of the library and archives in the 1960s struggled for control of the collections, as the structure of authority was not always clear. From 1962 to 1995, Herbert J. Brinks split his time between the Calvin history department and Heritage Hall, where he served as an archivist. Brinks brought professional training in the field, having worked at the Michigan Historical Collections (now the Bentley Library) on the campus of the University of Michigan. While Brinks worked to build the Colonial Origins (heritage) collection, Lester De Koster served as the archivist of the CRC’s denominational records as an aside to his full-time duties as director of the library. Brinks recognized, however, that the library staff had little idea about what to make of the archives. "A typical librarian does not have much historical horse sense," he wrote in 1969.24 De Koster recognized the need for a full-time archivist at Heritage Hall and supported Brinks, who became the CRC’s denominational archivist in 1971, but yet in a part-time role. In 1998 Richard Harms became the first full-time archivist at Heritage Hall,

22 DIS Magazine, June 2007, 4. 23 Lester De Koster to William B. Eerdmans, Sr. (16 Nov. 1961), folder 1, box 153, Papers of William Spoelhof, 1961-66, Record Group College, Heritage Hall. 24 Herbert J. Brinks to William Spoelhof, 14 Nov. 1969, folder 1, box 153, Papers of William Spoelhof, 1961- 66, Record Group College, Heritage Hall.

228 which now operates independently of the library, although the two institutions cooperate and share some basic costs. Heritage Hall was the prototype for subsequent Dutch American archival institutions, and in time, it set the pattern for cooperation and open access. Prior to open-access archives, those who possessed the historical records of Dutch Americans guarded them jealously and tended to grant access only to ranking professors who promised to write histories that would not betray traditional religious or historical viewpoints. It seemed clear even into the 1960s, that only professional men (and it was nearly always men) could have full clearance. The struggle to open up the archives to the general public and create access for all took decades. During the early 1960s, for example, Gerrit tenZythoff, then on the staff at the RCA’s Western Theological Seminary, was barred from using materials at Calvin College in writing his dissertation on the Dutch Reformed secession in the Netherlands. In the introduction to tenZythoff”s publication, his graduate school advisor Martin E. Marty explained that “some institutions and certain persons are averse and even unwilling to make their extant holding available for historical research.” These people, Marty continued, were “still embarrassed by the actions of their forefathers in the ecclesiastical controversies and quarrels of the time.”25 Indeed Heritage Hall, in the 1960s, had a fairly strict policy concerning visiting researchers. To see materials in the archives, a prospective researcher had to acquire the signatures of all nine members of Calvin’s Historical Resources Committee including the presidents of the college and seminary, the chairpersons of the college and seminary history departments, the college’s theology professor, the curator of the archives, the head librarian, and the CRC’s denominational archivist. The regulations of Heritage Hall stated in 1969: “As a rule of thumb...material collections should be used only by those who have a scholarly, or other legitimate use for the items involved. The collections are not maintained for random snooping, curiosity seeking, or even for classroom and student use as ends in themselves.”26 In 1970, a total of five researchers made use of the Heritage Hall archives. There were also access issues in Holland, where the ever-occupied Willard Wichers at the Netherlands Museum did not place a high priority on public archival access. While he was happy to provide help for researchers, Wichers did not see this kind of work as a primary function of his institution. Wichers redirected genealogy requests to Nico Plomp, a genealogy specialist in the

25 Gerrit tenZythoff, Sources of Succession: The Netherlands Hervormde Kerk on the Eve of the Dutch Immigration to the Midwest (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), xiv. 26 General Regulations, 1969, Heritage Hall Collections of the Calvin Library.

229 Netherlands.27 Photocopy requests, Wichers said in a letter from 1970, had been “onerous” and were “impositions on staff time and facilities.” Furthermore Wichers felt the result of all too much photocopying was that the Netherlands Museum had “lost control over the ownership and disposition of the material.” 28 As chief diplomat and organizer of the Dutch American Historical Committee (DAHC), however, Wichers hoped to encourage cooperation between West Michigan Dutch American heritage institutions. The DAHC which formed in 1963, included five contributing institutions: Calvin College, Calvin Seminary, Hope College, Western Theological Seminary, and the Netherlands Museum. The organization was an attempt to move beyond arguments over the control of documents—to allow copying and exchange of materials. The commission reasoned that neither a denomination nor an individual at an institution should limit access to historical materials. Only by thoroughly researching the past, could these individuals and institutions completely understand their place in the pageant of history. The DAHC noted in this regard that, “a people who have lost the knowledge of their beginnings have lost their treasured heritage.”29 Assisted by the University of Michigan archivist, Ruth Borden, Calvin’s Herbert Brinks in 1967 presented, “A Guide to the Dutch-American Historical Collections of Western Michigan.”30 The publication of this guide through the Dutch American Historical Commission indicated the ecumenical spirit of the new organization. As Brinks noted two years later, the archives at Calvin also had great, unforeseen potential in the “public, non-academic arena.”31 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the DAHC board met three times per year to discuss its aims and review the development of archival institutions and heritage campaigns. At times, it provided financial assistance to heritage projects. In recent decades, however, the DAHC was less active since many of its goals have been accomplished. Meanwhile in the academic arena, Robert Swierenga’s quantitative studies of Dutch American immigration data revolutionized the field and impacted the historical profession more generally. Swierenga, who was trained in land history at the University of Iowa, gathered and interpreted data from Dutch provincial emigration registers, ship passenger manifests, and federal

27 Willard Wichers to Henry Poikert (Crestwood, Missouri), 6 Feb. 1974, correspondence, box 32, Willard Wichers Papers, Holland Historical Trust Archives. 28 Willard Wichers to Alice C. Dalligan, 27 October 1970, correspondence, box 31, Willard Wichers Papers, Holland Historical Trust Archives. 29 DIS Magazine, vol. 1, no. 1 (May 1970), 23. 30 Guide to the Dutch-American Historical Collections of Western Michigan, ed. Herbert J. Brinks (Dutch American Historical Commission, 1967).

230 censuses. His first publication on the statistics of Dutch migration appeared in 1975, co-authored with Harry Stout.32 During Fulbright-funded stays in the Netherlands in 1976 and 1985, Swierenga gathered more raw data and spent years compiling and interpreting it. Pioneering the use of computers for historical analysis, he linked Dutch immigrants across the ocean and discovered the patterns and trends of migration. The key compilations of primary data fueled his studies. When the data was published, it also came into the hands of amateur genealogists who delighted in the lists of names in what came to be known as Swierenga’s "blue books," after the color of the book’s covers.33 Swierenga became known as the “dean” of Dutch American studies because he stood at the center of a network of professional historians who cooperated in their research. At Kent State, he taught a generation of scholars. Past historians of Dutch America, such as Van Hinte, Mulder, Lucas, Hyma, and DeJong mostly worked alone, sought little advice from others, and produced only a single-volume study in the field. Swierenga however, devoted his career to the study of Dutch Americans. He shared his information gladly and aided and encouraged other scholars rising in the field. In short, Swierenga played an important part in changing the general atmosphere of Dutch American scholarship in the 1970s and 1980s, from suspicious and competitive, to congenial and professional. Instead of history about “Who was right?”, Swierenga and a new generation of historians hit on the much more interesting story of what motivated the Dutch to immigrate and settle together. He asked factual questions about who immigrated, when, from where, to where, and why? Through the leadership of Herbert Brinks, meanwhile, the Calvin archives established itself as a recognizable presence among Dutch Americans. Brinks led letter collection efforts and published a selection of the new materials. Heritage Hall issued Origins magazine beginning in 1983, with the goal of promoting the archives. Originally this publication focused more heavily on the CRC, but gradually it shifted focus toward Dutch heritage studies more generally as its articles focused on ethnicity more than theology. Under the editorship of Richard Harms, the periodical has

31 Herbert J. Brinks to William Spoelhof, 14 Nov. 1969, folder 1, box 153, Papers of William Spoelhof, 1961- 66, Record Group College, Heritage Hall. 32 Robert P. Swierenga and Harry Stout, “Dutch Immigration in the Nineteenth Century, 1820-1877: A Quantitative Overview,” Indiana Social Studies Quarterly 28 (Autumn 1975): 7-34. 33 Harry Stout, “Robert P. Swierenga, Historian and Teacher: An Appreciation.” The Dutch-American Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert P. Swierenga, Hans Krabbendam and Larry Wagenaar, eds. (Amsterdam, Netherlands: VU Press, 2000), 19-32.Dutch Emigrants to the United States, South Africa, South American, and

231 brought in a wider base of authors on more diverse topics, and the standards in quality have increased. In 2011, Origins has a subscriber base of over six hundred. Until the 1980s, the archival institutions in Holland, Michigan lagged well behind the archives at Calvin in their collection and preservation efforts. Archives at the Netherlands Museum, Hope College, and Western Theological Seminary were small, independent, and operated by amateurs and volunteers who worked limited hours. At Hope College, an archive had been established in 1952 with Janet Mulder, a retired high school history teacher as the archivist. Western Theological Seminary, likewise, established an archive in 1967. Until 1986, the archive of the Netherlands Museum was held off-site in a vault at the city hall, next to Wichers’ Netherlands Information Service office. In the summer of 1968, Elton Bruins and Gerrit tenZythoff cleaned out the vault, and processed and archived the museum’s papers for Wichers. The professionalization of Holland’s archives came in the late 1980s with the establishment of the Holland Historical Trust and the Joint Archives of Holland. Upon the retirement of Willard Wichers in 1986, the board of the Netherlands Museum renamed itself the Holland Historical Trust. The trust recognized the need to find a larger building for the museum, and in 1992, the Holland Museum opened in the city’s former post office and replaced the Netherlands Museum whose building was renovated into a bed-and-breakfast.34 Joel Lefever, who had first worked alongside Willard Wichers as a Hope College student in the mid-1980s, worked for twenty-two years for the trust, serving as the Holland Museum’s curator for fourteen years before resigning in 2008. Today the museum operates with an annual budget of $500,000 (approximately ten times the annual budget of the Netherlands Museum during the 1970s), half of which comes from city funding.35 In 1988, the Joint Archives of Holland formed on the campus of Hope College. The archives combined the archival collections of Hope College, the Holland Historical Trust (Holland Museum), and Western Theological Seminary.36 An important voice for the formation of the Joint Archives was Hope College Blekkink Professor of Religion, Emeritus, Elton J. Bruins, the long- time volunteer archivist of the Hope College and Western Theological Seminary archives. The

Southeast Asia, 1835-1880: An Alphabetical Listing by Household Heads and Independent Persons. Comp., Robert P. Swierenga, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1982). 34 Ann Kiewel, “Holland Historical Trust Celebrates 10 Years with a Look at its Past and its Future,” Holland Sentinel, 28 July 1996. 35 Greg Chandler, “Holland Museum's President, Curator to Exit,” Grand Rapids Press Lakeshore Edition, 7 December 2008. 36 Larry J. Wagneaar, “The JAH: An Experiment in Cooperative Archival Preservation and Access,” Chronicle (Fall 2007): 6-12.

232 member institutions governed the Joint Archives cooperatively. The Joint Archives also became a regional archive, taking in papers from Saugatuck, Douglas, and Jenison, as well as records from other . By combining the three original archival collections, the participating institutions benefited from cost savings, and the Joint Archives could afford to be operated by a full-time staff. The board of representatives from the three institutions appointed the Joint Archives first director, Larry Wagenaar, a former student under Robert Swierenga at Kent State. When Wagenaar moved on from that position in 2000, the Holland Historical Trust announced its decision to remove its collections from the archives. The trust cited the need to house its own archival material on site, at the Holland Museum. These collections were physically removed from the Joint Archives in 2003, dealing a significant blow to the budget of the institution. The Joint Archives then became a department of Hope College, with the new director, Geoffrey Reynolds, answering to the Hope College head librarian. Despite the loss of one of its original collections, the Joint Archives has been a success by most measures. Materials relating to the Dutch founding of Holland, Michigan, to the Dutch influence at Hope College, and to Dutch Americans of the RCA are preserved professionally and are available to the public year round, five days a week. Institutions like the Joint Archives remove the physical and institutional barriers to access. Not only does the archives centralize the location of the materials, it limits the obstacles to access, removes any permission requirements for all but the most sensitive personal data, and erases rivalries and competition of ownership. An internet database brings previously unexplored collections to researchers around the world. Almost the entire register catalog of the Joint Archives is available online, and a Hadron gas fire protection system guarantees that collections will be safe from all but the most devastating catastrophes. Another Holland, Michigan-based institution, the Van Raalte Institute, was established in 1993, but first opened its doors to the public in January of 1994. A former member of the Hope College board of Trustees, James VerMeulen first proposed the idea for a research institute in a letter to fellow trustee Peter H. Huizenga. Both VerMeulen and Huizenga were interested in their Dutch roots and heritage and wanted to promote serious research in Dutch American history. An endowment gift from Huizenga established the institute as a department of Hope College, and Elton J. Bruins became the first director. In 1996, the institute persuaded Robert Swierenga to take an early retirement from Kent State University to serve as a senior research scholar. The mission of the institute is to study the life and work of Albertus C. Van Raalte, the history of the Holland,

233 Michigan, area, and the contributions of Dutch immigrants in America. The institute is primarily tasked with research, editing, and publication, but its fellows have also led translation projects, given presentations, and served the community in numerous other ways. Since the institute’s founding, its staff has produced sixteen original books, a number of edited collections, and scores of published articles, book reviews, pamphlets and dictionary entries. The institute promotes scholarship and cooperation between institutions in the United States and the Netherlands and has a particularly strong relationship with the Roosevelt Study Center in Middelburg, the Netherlands. It sponsors visiting research fellows from home and abroad with a visiting research fellows program launched in 2003.37 Dutch Heritage initiatives continue to sprout elsewhere in West Michigan. South of Holland, Graafschap CRC began its own heritage center in 2007, with William Systma as its project leader. The date of the center’s opening in 2007 coincided with the 150th anniversary of the CRC, and honored Graafschap as the first and largest of the original seceding churches of 1857.38 The center had been planned since 2000, when the 1862 Graafschap CRC church was demolished to make room for a new edifice. A group of amateur genealogists at the church had been collecting local and church history documents for years, and had bitterly opposed the demolition. The beams of the original structure, however, were saved for inclusion in the new heritage center, which occupies a series of rooms in the basement of the new church. 39 Dutch American heritage crusaders since the 1970s have been resourceful and driven, but outside of West Michigan, they have found less institutional support. The Dutch in Wisconsin provide ample evidence of this. Although there are certainly enough Americans of Dutch descent in Wisconsin to promote an archival or heritage institution in that state, the communities there are too spread out and not united by the local presence of an RCA or CRC college or seminary. An important event for the consciousness of Dutch heritage in Wisconsin occurred in 1997 with a four- day sesquicentennial commemoration of the disaster of the Phoenix, an immigrant ship that burned and sank in Lake Michigan in 1847, killing 151 of the 175 persons on board. Wisconsin’s Mary Risseeuw helped promote the event, which recorded 1,200 people in attendance. According to

37 Jacob E. Nyenhuis, ed., A. C. Van Raalte Institute, Annual Report, 2010 (Holland, MI: Hope College, 1997), 2. 38 Greg Chandler, “Graafschap Church Preserves its Heritage with Museum,” Grand Rapids Press Lakeshore Edition, 14 April 2007. 39 Kym Reinstadler, “Center Will Celebrate Church's Heritage,” Grand Rapids Press Lakeshore Edition, 24 Oct 2004.

234 Risseeuw, the commemoration event “was one of the turning points in changing peoples thinking about their heritage and raising awareness of our existence outside of Wisconsin.”40 Archival heritage centers have been founded at other colleges with Dutch American influences, including Iowa’s Northwestern, Dordt, and Central Colleges, and Chicago’s Trinity College. These heritage centers, however, are specific collections within college libraries and archives with limited hours of operation and access. Although the archives at Northwestern and Central were begun before the establishment of Heritage Hall at Calvin, they were small affairs, staffed by volunteers. Today the Central College archives contain some local history and genealogical records, as well as some primary source papers of Dutch Americans. But these records can be seen only by appointment, with two weeks advance notice, only in the afternoon on the second Wednesday of the month. In addition, the library’s website encourages local history and genealogical researchers to go elsewhere, noting that the college’s archives are primarily intended for Central’s own institutional history.41 In this city with a heavy concentration of Dutch-descent, the Scholte House serves as the city’s primary exhibition of Dutch American heritage. The Scholte House stands as a monument to the city’s founder, and was given to the Pella Historical Society in 1979 to be used as a museum. The Dutch Heritage collections outside of West Michigan are less well known to Dutch American researchers and have yet to be used extensively for professional research. West Michigan, in contrast, even boasts heritage institutions to supervise other heritage institutions. In 2009, the Dutch Heritage Coordinating Committee was formed with the goal of promoting Dutch heritage in the greater Holland/Zeeland Michigan area. The commission consists of the Holland Historic Trust, the Joint Archives of Holland, the Van Raalte Institute, the board of Holland’s Tulip Time Festival, and the Zeeland Historical Society. Cooperation between these institutions ensures their survival, while the myriad projections of Dutch heritage which they present give Americans of Dutch ancestry options in choosing their identities. West Michigan institutions strengthened Dutch American social networks and reinforced Dutch ethnic heritage. Dutch American Heritage Day (DAHD) is a local celebration of a national day of recognition established in 1991 through a proclamation of former President George H. W. Bush. A banquet in Grand Rapids is followed by speeches from businessmen, consul agents,

40 Mary Risseeuw, e-mail message to author, 13 July 2010. 41 http://guides.central.edu/archives.

235 politicians, and scholars of note, and the day concludes with the presentation of awards for successful Dutch Americans. At its peak in 2005 and 2006, the banquet seated over 600 people. Similar but less well-attended events are also held in Washington, DC, New York, Atlanta, and Chicago. Officially, DAHD commemorates the 16 November 1776 return salute of an American vessel by a Dutch ship off the coast of the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. The day also recognizes the diplomatic relationship between the United States and the Netherlands, which is the longest, unbroken friendly relationship between the United States and any other foreign power. For mid-western Americans of Dutch descent, ethnic heritage draws from the accidents of history to build a positive self-perception of a successful and flourishing in-group.42

Genealogy and Family History Genealogists and family historians benefited from the growth of Dutch American historical institutions like Heritage Hall and the Joint Archives, as well as from non-Dutch American institutions like the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, . The revolution in technology, particularly through personal computers and the Internet aided the growth of family history research and heritage studies. Dutch Americans took advantage of the rise of personal websites in the 1990s to reconnect with their roots in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, families in the Netherlands reciprocated with their own search for branches of their family tree on American soil. The computer age has offered greater access to options for ethnic research. For Americans of Dutch descent, it delivered increasing contacts with the old country, reunited families, and promoted an interest in Dutch heritage and identity. Genealogical requests began coming in to Herrick Public Library in Holland, Michigan, in the 1960s, and the Holland Genealogical Society was founded in 1973. The society’s newsletter gave advice on seeking out records in the Netherlands. Membership grew from an original core of twenty-five to seventy-seven in 197843 Herrick Librarian Ralph Haan led the work in the library’s genealogy room, and local amateur historian Don van Reken scoured primary sources for applicable local and family history data. With massive amounts of information to be scanned and exchanged, researchers could spend fruitless hours at work before finding their sought after data. The society’s newsletter and Herrick’s genealogy room served as an information exchange for the

42 Personal files, Jacob E. Nyenhuis, Van Raalte Institute, Hope College, Holland, MI. 43 Family Ties, Fall-Winter 1978, 31.

236 cumbersome data. In the 1980s, work continued and genealogy fever or “genealogy pox,” as the society called it, spread. Symptoms of the “pox” included “complaints as to need for names, dates, and places” and the compulsion to visit strange places like “cemeteries, ruins, and very remote country areas.” According to the society, this “pox” was incurable and the only medicine to calm a patient’s symptoms was to attend genealogy workshops, to subscribe to genealogy periodicals, and to “be left alone in a quite corner of the house.”44 The Holland Genealogical Society began sponsoring more frequent programs in the late 1980s and established an online presence in 1996.45 An early advocate of Dutch American family history research was May Lynn Spykerman of West Jordan, Utah, who began the Dutch Family Heritage Society (DFHS) in 1987. Spykerman explained why she started this organization: “Being descended from Dutch immigrants of the late 1870s, but being raised without any notion of our Dutch heritage, we are determined that the next generation will not have to struggle as we have to discover our ethnic heritage.”46 For thirty dollars per year, charter members of the society received a Dutch genealogical research booklet, a biannual newsletter, and two free searches in the society’s computer family history database. The society’s newsletter was an eclectic mix of anything and everything Dutch: recipes for Dutch food, reviews of Dutch books and articles on the history of Dutch names, adoption rules, and advice on researching in archives. Spykerman described her research trips, her attendance at professional conferences and her family reunions. Working from materials stored at the Salt Lake Family History Library and her own personal library, she showed a passion to connect Dutch Americans to their family members, both past and present. By 1988, Spykerman was receiving more family history research inquiries than she could handle. Many of these research requests came from descendents of the colonial Dutch in New York, but there were also many from the Midwest and Far West. In a society newsletter from 1995, Spykerman noted that she had connected into the online world and had joined a Netherlands forum on Compuserve.47 The first website dedicated to Dutch American genealogy (www.dutchgenealogy.nl) had gone online in 1993, preceding Spykerman by two years. Its designer, Yvette Hoitink, was a student of computer science at the Univeristy of . Hoitink’s groundbreaking website

44 Family Ties, 1987, 2. 45 Family Ties, 1996, 5-6. 46 Dutch Family Heritage Society Newsletter, Mary Spykerman, ed. (May 1987), 14. 47 Dutch Family Heritage Society Newsletter, Mary Spykerman, ed. (Fourth Quarter, 1995), 85.

237 focused on Dutch American genealogy because Hoitink knew that in the early years of the Internet few people outside of the United States were online, and for a website to attract viewers, it needed an American audience. She explained:

Typical for the early 1990s, I called it “Yvette’s Dutch Genealogy Homepage.” In the beginning, it was just one page with links to any website I could find that had remotely anything to do with the Netherlands and history and/or genealogy. I also included some tips on how to research your Dutch ancestors.

The response to Hoitink’s project was overwhelming. She recalls, “Many people thought they had found in me somebody who could do the research for them. Time and time again, I had to explain that I was willing to give pointers, but I would not actually visit archives or long-lost relatives for them.”48 In 1994, the first year of the website, Hoitink received a few dozen e-mails per week from people researching their “roots.” By 1995, it was hundreds of e-mails per week. Because Hoitink actively posted her information in internet newsgroups, those searching for family information soon found their way to her website. And because it was an early, established, and often updated website, internet search engines brought it to the top of search lists, reinforcing its digital presence.49 According to Hoitink, e-mails from American researchers during the 1990s were quite distinct from those received from people in the Netherlands. Dutch e-mails came from professionals who had more technical questions about internet webpage design and the sources of her information. Americans on the other hand, simply wanted to know how to do research. They were amateurs who had little or no experience in the matter. Both mid-western Dutch Americans and the New York Dutch descendents logged on, but differed in their approaches. Whereas the mid-western Dutch wanted basic information about family members of the past two centuries and had assembled incomplete family trees, the New York Dutch had well-documented trees and were often aided by professionals who worked to find links to the Dutch Golden Age. The relationship between the Internet and the researcher has changed since the mid 1990s: initially it was considered

48 “15th year anniversary, 28 Dec. 2008,” www.dutchgenealogy.com. 49 Others in the United States, like Luann DeVries of Michigan also caught on to this early wave. DeVries, who established a heritage website in 1996, cherishes the democratic aspect of history research on the Web. In addition to genealogical information, DeVries posts primary documents related to Dutch American history. Luann DeVries' website is www.macatawa.org/~devries/. De Vries, e-mail message to author, 15 February 2010.

238 a source for referral, a guide for further exploration at physical archives or historical research centers; now it is the expected avenue of research for genealogy, with mass storage, which allows sources to be posted online. Dutch genealogy websites in the Netherlands are most often designed in English, with the distinct intention of attracting American researchers. Anton Vedders of Overijssel became interested in his distant American cousins in 1981 when he heard a rumor about an emigrant in the family. Through his own research, Vedder learned that one family member had emigrated in 1855, and another in 1915. But with no other leads, he decided to mail letters of inquiry to the city halls of major Dutch American centers. Frustratingly, not a single letter came in response. Vedder then decided to contact historian Robert Swierenga, who had recently published emigration lists. Swierenga informed Vedder that his family had migrated to Grand Rapids. Vedder continued the research trail by hiring an amateur genealogist who discovered that the American Vedder family had made similar inquiries at the archives in Gelderland in 1977. The Vedder families finally came into contact in 1983. Anton Vedder visited Grand Rapids in 1987, and in 1994 the Americans returned the favor with a visit to the Netherlands. Friendly contacts continued, and in 2002, Anton Vedder went online with www.vedders.nl and began to receive more data about his family’s history.50 Debbie Mills of www.areyourelated.com, became interested in her Dutch ancestors in the 1970s after viewing the television miniseries Roots. Mills sought and saved materials related to the family’s history, and thereby became the historian of her immediate and extended family. Mills’ Dutch ancestors immigrated to the Sheboygan, Wisconsin area in the 1860s. As a child in the 1950s and 1960s, Mills made yearly visits to see family in Oostburg, and remembers being proud of her Dutch heritage even then. Mills’ website went online in 2005. Positive responses from family members encouraged her to visit family in the Netherlands in 2007. Despite her admiration for the advantages of digital content, Mills laments the misinformation and information copying between websites. It perpetuates mistakes and forces genealogists to weed through piles of false information. 51 The importance of the Internet for family history and Dutch American identity was most evident in the story of the Te Selle family, whose website went online in 2002. When the American

50 Anton Vedder, e-mail message to author, 16 March 2010. 51 Debbie Mills, e-mail message to author, 15 February 2010.

239 Norma Te Selle wanted to reconnected with her Dutch family in the 1959, she sent a letter of inquiry to the postmaster in , who was able to locate the correct family. Communication between the Dutch and American branches of the family was intermittent during the twentieth century, with a near half-century silence from the 1910s to 1959. Geert te Selle recalls that in 1981, two Americans showed up unannounced at his family’s door in Winterswijk. Geert, who was just fourteen years old, went with the visitors to the municipal hall for genealogical research. The difficulty in building the family tree at that time was in sorting out the various te Selle emigrants and how they were all connected. The two sides of the family continued genealogical research throughout the 1980s, but mostly independently and without knowledge of the progress of the other. In the late 1990s, the two branches of the family discovered each other through the Internet and visited each other. As Robert Te Selle of California recalls, the connections between the two branches “certainly germinated because of the internet and e-mail.”

Sometime in 1999 or 2000, Geert was trying to expand his records to include more family members from the American branch of the family. He sent out an e-mail “blast” to every person he could find on the internet with the name “TeSelle,” and somehow one of his e- mails landed in my mailbox.52

Initially suspicious of the motives of the e-mail, Robert proceeded carefully until he discovered its benign intent. Correspondence between the two sides picked up again. Coincidentally, Robert had planned a family biking trip in the Netherlands that coming summer, and took advantage of the opportunity to visit Winterswijk. It was an influential visit, as Robert recalled,

I was learning about my family ancestry for the first time, and my head was spinning with names, dates, places, family tree branches, etc! Dirk and Geert took all of us on a tour of Winterswijk, visiting the original te Selle ("de Selle") family farm, as well as a subsequent family farm (Fökkink) where my great-grandfather was living when he decided to emigrate to America. Dirk’s great-great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were brothers; mine went to America, Dirk’s stayed in Winterswijk. As a result of that trip, I got hooked on the family genealogy.53

52 Robert Te Selle, e-mail message to author, 12 March, 2010. 53 Robert Te Selle, e-mail message to author, 12 March 2010.

240 Dirk te Selle has continued to host American visitors, showing them ancestral sites—the churches, houses, and farms around Winterswijk where the families once lived. The visits in both directions had an emotional element. Contacts today are more frequent than ever. For his part, Dirk has visited family in California, Washington, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, and , and even joined the American Te Selles for a cruise to Alaska. For both sides, the reunions have helped fill a void of knowledge about the past. Dirk te Selle writes: “In the Netherlands, there was still a vague notion about the departure of a few family members to America around the middle of the nineteenth century, but there was nothing done about it. The same went for my family members in the United States: they often didn’t know that they had Dutch ancestors.”54 Dirk explains further that he found that Americans had much interest in their roots, and they were fascinated to find out that the traits of a parent or a were not idiosyncrasies, as had been suspected, but in fact “Dutchisms.”

Conclusion Since the 1980s, an interest in heritage contributed significantly to the identities of Americans of Dutch descent. Through institutions Dutch Americans gathered their strength and interest in their heritage. Americans of Dutch descent are discovering the religious and social networks that united their ancestors, and which in many circumstances continue to bind together current and future generations. Dutch American communities, they have learned, have benefited from a large amount of “social capital”—the value of personal and group interactions that help a community thrive and persist. A community with much social capital, for example, has a critical mass of people, a community center and institutions, leadership, trust, and a strong emphasis on education.55 Social capital creates institutions, and institutions in turn build social capital and reinforce social identities. Dutch American social identities are complicated and difficult for anyone to grasp entirely. Each person interprets uniquely what it means to be Dutch. A contributor to DIS Magazine

54 Dirk te Selle, e-mail message to author, 8 Mar. 2010, “In Nederland was nog wel een vage notie aanwezig over het vertrek van enige familieleden naar Amerika rond het midden van de 19de eeuw, maar daar werd feitelijk niets meer mee gedaan. Hetzelfde gold voor mijn familielede in de Verenigde Staten: ze wisten vaak niet eens dat ze Nederlandse voorouders hadden,” (trans. Michael Douma). 55 George Harinck and Hans Krabbendam, eds., Morsels in the Melting Pot: The Persistence of Dutch Immigrant Communities in North America, (Amsterdam: VU Press, 2006), 21-32.

241 described the complicated nature of Dutch identity in Grand Rapids as follows: “To outsiders the Dutch phenomenon may seem monolithic and forbidding; to an insider it is so diverse, so many- layered, so full of old skeletons and new faces, so wracked by inner tensions and so much in process, that it seems impossible to get a solid handle on it.”56 Within the complexity of Dutch American society, one thing is clear: Dutchness is constantly changing and being reinterpreted as it is called upon in the quest for identity. The latest development in the evolution of Dutch identities in America is the heritage crusade. How Dutch identity in America continues to evolve and whether it continues to be pertinent remains to be seen. One thing is clear, however, the institutions and networks which now serve to help define the boundaries of ethnic identity, will continue to have an important role in doing so in the future.

56 John Vriend, “Less Dutch, More America,” DIS Magazine, March 1985, 8-9.

242 CONCLUSION/ EPILOGUE

The previous chapter demonstrated that Dutch identities in America are symbolic, but not unimportant, and Americans of Dutch descent continue to appeal to their Dutch roots to explain themselves. Historians Mary Waters and Herbert Gans have written about the "symbolic" nature of ethnicity in America, indicating that ethnicity is a choice with the purpose of defining oneself and setting social boundaries.1 Dutch American displays of "Dutchness" are often symbolic, even superficial, as is the Dutch American understanding of the modern-day Netherlands. And yet, despite this, the growth of family and professional histories about Dutch Americans demonstrates that the need for symbolic, voluntary ethnicity persists. The Dutch American subculture has faded, and those who conscious identify as Dutch American are few, but the applications of "Dutchness" in America are common, and the evolution of Dutch American identities continues. Sociologist Peter Ester emphasizes this evolution when he writes:

New cultural manifestations do and will take form. Contemporary Dutch ethnic expressions reflect the way Dutch-American culture has assimilated into mainstream American culture. These expressions are cultural markers of what Dutch identity means in modern American society, more than one-and-a-half centuries after Van Raalte, Scholte, and their followers set foot on American soil. Each new generation of Dutch-Americans will stew its own morsels in the American melting pot.2

Other writers have pointed out steps in this evolutionary process, often with a sense of despair about the fading of traditions. Herbert Brinks thought that when a tourist "finds Amsterdam more familiar and attractive than the country villages of Drenthe, when that occurs, the Dutch Americans will have become something else" 3 Indeed, American visitors to the Netherlands today are rediscovering an entirely different world from that which their ancestors left behind. While the immigrants largely came from conservative villages in peripheral Dutch provinces, visitors to the Netherlands today encounter a liberal, urban populace in the provinces of North and South Holland. When Americans of Dutch ancestry are no longer conscious of their "Dutchness", when it no

1 Mary Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1990). 2 Ester, "Growing up Dutch-American," 33. 3 Herbert Brinks "Why the Dutch Are Different: Or Are They, An Overview of Dutch Cultural and Religious Heritage" West Michigan Magazine, (June 1982) Calvin College Archives, Collection 420: Netherlands America Bicenntennial Commission, Box 1, Folder 5.

243 longer plays a role in their decision-making, when the Netherlands no longer means anything as a place for them, then they will have shed the last vestiges of Dutch American identities. It might be said that because personal identity in the present is eroding, and people live without a clear perception of the future, they actively look to the past for identity. The result of this ongoing search for identity is the development of new forms of meaning shaped by images of the past and by tradition. Renowned folklorist Henry Glassie wrote that tradition is not the opposite of change; it does not imply stasis. Traditions exist as continuities in time. Traditions interact, die, are reborn, and replace each other. Tradition is culture in motion.4 New Dutch American forms are continually in the making. In 2004, Dutch immigrant and photographer Rene Clement discovered Orange City, Iowa. In a series of portraits and landscapes, Clement's juxtaposes various forms of Dutchness with Americana: a blond-haired girl with oorijzers (earrings) is draped in an America flag; children in Dutch dress wear Halloween masks. Clement also contrasts the old-fashioned with the modern. In one photograph, a woman in klederdracht dress sits in the pilot seat of a small airplane. Clement locates stereotypes and employs them to great use. There is something strangeness about seeing Dutch dress on the Great Plains. And yet, for all of the peculiarities of the what is out-of-place, Clement seems to be drawing out the Dutchness in these Americans. They appear somber and hard-working, but with motorcycles instead of horses. Dutchness does not need to fade away. Indeed, what was old- fashioned came be revived, as is seen in a picture of a young man who is getting a tattoo of a windmill on his back shoulder. 5 The intertwined web of Dutch American relationships is still on display in Holland, Michigan, where in 2008, Peter Ester interviewed twenty-one subjects, conducting a survey of the older generations of Dutch Americans. Most of these subjects had married within Dutch American circles and kept up regular . They could recall a few words of Dutch, but none could speak the language fluently. Ester concluded that for this group, Dutch identity was largely superficial. Most knew little about the Netherlands and did not keep up to date with events in that country. Their faith was more important than their ethnicity. This was a generation that grew up with significant civic engagement and awareness of being Dutch American. But this older generation is pessimistic about the future of Dutch American ethnicity. According to them, "their

4 Henry Glassie, "Common Ground: Keywords for the Study of Expressive Culture," The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 108, No. 430 (Autumn, 1995), 395-412. 5 http://www.reneclement.com/Text/OC-text.html. Accessed 30 November, 2010.

244 children and grandchildren are hardly or not at all interested in their Dutch ethnic background and heritage."6 As this generation passes, they believe, Dutch American identification will pass with it. Despite this, elements of evolved "Dutchness" are all around in Holland, Michigan, if one knows where to look. The younger generation includes a garage punk band called "Dutch Mafia"; the members of the Hope College Cross Country team can be seen wearing jerseys designed with Dutch themes; orange KNVB shirts are visible downtown during soccer's World Cup. Many in West Michigan feel that the Dutch have monopolized the claim on the West Michigan's cultural heritage. In 2004, a group of students calling themselves the "American Pirate Association" raided Holland's Tulip Time parade by donning pirate costumes and following closely behind a parade float of a Dutch ship. City officials were not pleased with the prank and the perpetrators were given $100 fines each in an effort to curb the non-conformity. A good place to find latent anger about the Dutch presence in West Michigan is in the online opinion section of the Holland Sentinel. Behind an anonymous name, local residents openly ridicule Dutch culture, or defend it. There is plenty of jest, and cursing, but none takes it too seriously. In the American atmosphere, "Dutchness" remains susceptible of interpretation. “Welcome to Holland for our very chilly Eve celebration,” said Holland's Mayor Kurt Dykstra, as he greeted a group of local children in Dutch, dressed up as Sinterklaas. Around Dykstra (Sinterklaas) were the traditional helpers, the Black Peters (Zwarte Pieten). In the Netherlands, these characters still appear in blackface, but in the racial climate of the United States, they would not dare such a display.7 Perhaps no metaphor better serves this conclusion than that of a wooden shoe. As a professional wooden shoe maker, Fred Oldermulders carved shoes in Holland, Michigan from the 1930s to the 1980s. He made his money through sales for Tulip Time klompen dancers and for souvenirs for visitors. Journalists were fond of Oldemulders because he provided a simple but wonderful story about romantic Dutch culture alive in modern America. Oldemulders was one of the last craftsmen of a dying art. But besides their use in ritual dancing, these wooden shoes were not being worn. "It gets pretty discouraging", said Oldemulders "People stuff my shoes with candy or flowers instead of putting them on their feet." Oldemulders explained to his customers again and again that there was no chance to get a sliver, that the shoes were warm and sturdy. But

6 Peter Ester, "Growing Up Dutch-American: Cultural Identity and the Formative Years of Older Dutch Americans" (Holland, MI: Van Raalte Press, 2008), 31. See also Peter Ester, "'It was very, very churchy': Recollections of Older Dutch-Americans on Growing up in Holland, Michigan" (Oral History Review, May 2008). 7 Holland Sentinel, 5 Dec. 2009.

245 Oldemulders' protests hardly mattered.8 The practical Dutch footwear had become a souvenir. For the descendents of the Dutch in America, "Dutchness" had evolved.

8 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 26 Nov. 1981.

246

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Newspapers, Newsletters, and Magazines

De Grondwet Holland City News De Hollander The Banner De Wachter De Hope Detroit Free Press Grand Rapids Daily Eagle, Sheboygan Niewsbode Leydsche Courant Onze Toekomst Leeuwarder Courant De Reformatie Pella Weekblad De Nederlander New York Times The New York Bulletin The Nation, Knickerbocker Weekly Leeuwarder Courant Schager Courant Nieuwe Leidsche Courant Windmill Post Missionary Monthly The Knickerbocker Grand Rapids Press Religion and Culture Dutch Family Heritage Society Newsletter DIS Magazine The New Yorker

264 De Gereformeerde Amerikaan Origins Leids Dagblad De Volksvriend Sioux Center News St. Louis Globe-Democrat Milwaukee Journal Family Ties

265 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (CV)

EDUCATION Ph.D. History Florida State University 2011 M.A., History Florida State University 2006 B.A., History, Philosophy, Dutch Hope College 2004

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

The Florida Heritage Foundation and Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Preservation Education 2011 Fulbright Scholar, The Netherlands 2009-2010 A.C. Van Raalte Institute, Hope College, Visiting Research Fellowship 2010 Florida State University International Research Dissertation Fellowship 2009 Institute for Humane Studies Fellowships (two separate annual awards) 2009-2011 Florida State University Kingsbury Writing Fellowship 2006-2007 Zeeland (Michigan) Historical Society Book Publication Grant 2005

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Book: Veneklasen Brick: A Family, an Industry, and a Unique Nineteenth Century Dutch Architectural Movement in Michigan (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

"Memory and the Myth of Van Raalte: How Holland, Michigan Remembers its Founding Father," Michigan Historical Review Vol. 36, No. 2 (2010), 37-62.

"Imagining a New Identity: The Dutch American Immigrant Community, 1845-1875," Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Gescheidenis [Netherlands and Belgium Journal of Social and Economic History] Vol. 7, No. 2 (2010), 32-55.

“Dutch American Identity during the Civil War and the Boer War,” in Hans Krabbendam, Cornelis A. Van Minnen, and Giles Scott-Smith, eds., NL - USA: Four Hundred Years of Dutch American Relations, 1609-2009 (Albany, NY: New York University Press and Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Boom, 2009), 375-385.

“Arnold Mulder as a Dutch American Novelist," in Robert P. Swierenga, Jacob E. Nyenhuis, and Nella Kennedy, eds., Dutch-American Arts and Letters in Historical Perspective (Holland, MI: Van Raalte Press, 2008), 43-60.

Book Reviews:

Nicholas Von Hoffman, Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky (New York, Nation Books, 2010). History: Review of New Books Vol. 39, No. 2 (April, 2011).

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Johan Schot, Harry Lintsen, and Arie Rip, eds. Technology and the Making of the Netherlands: The Age of Contested Modernization, 1890-1970 (Boston: MIT Press, 2010). The Journal of the Historical Association (Forthcoming, Spring 2011).

Other Academic Publications:

"Broers - Nederlandse Amerikanen en de Boerenoorlog," Zuid Afrika Maandblad, Vol. 86, No. 7/8, (July/August 2009), 140-141.

"When Holland had a Socialist Councilman," Origins Vol. 27, No. 1 (2009), 40-44.

“Jacob Maasdam’s Memoir, 1831-1840," Origins Vol. 24, No. 2 (2006), 22-30. [Robert P. Swierenga and Muriel Kooi, eds., Michael Douma, trans.]

Newsletter and newspaper publications in the Joint Archives of Holland Quarterly (six article publications), the Fulbright U.S. Grantee Student Newsletter, Holland Sentinel, News from Hope College, and Dutch International Society Magazine.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS Invited guest lectures for the Calvin College and Central College study abroad programs in the Netherlands, 30 November 2009, and 3, 4, and 11 May, 2010.

"Imagined Dutch Communities," Seventeenth Biennial Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, 3-5 June, 2009.

“Remembering a City Founder: The Afterlife of Albertus C. Van Raalte,” 33rd Annual Social Science History Association Conference, Miami, FL, 25 October, 2008.

"The Veneklasen Style: ‘Koloniaal’ Dutch Houses in Michigan,” From De Halve Maen to KLM: 400 Years of Dutch-American Exchange, American Association for Netherlandic Studies. Albany, NY, 10 June 2006.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL) Graduate Instructor (Courses Taught) AMH 2097: U.S. Race and Ethnicity Fall 2007-Spring 2011 (six semesters) AMH 2020: U.S. History since 1865 Spring 2009 Teaching Assistant AMH 2097: U.S. Race and Ethnicity Spring 2006 WOH 1023: Modern World since 1815 Fall 2005

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Van Raalte Institute (Holland, MI) 2005-2008 Research Assistant, Dutch-English Translator . Research and writing for a forthcoming book on the history of Holland, Michigan

267

New Bedford Whaling Museum (New Bedford, MA) Fall 2004 Curatorial Intern . Training and experience as conservator, curator, and archivist

Joint Archives of Holland (Holland, MI) 2001- 2004 Student Research Assistant/ Archivist . Experience in collections processing, oral history interviews and transcriptions

268