News and History from Heritage Hall
The First Annual Conference of the League of Evangelical Students was held in Grand Rapids at Calvin College and Seminary in late 1925. The event made the cover of December 4 edition of The Banner, the flagship English language magazine of the Christian Reformed Church …
Part I of this story began by describing the founding of the Calvin Seminary Dames club in 1927, when a few of the wives of seminary students began meeting to socialize and discuss “such topics as might later prove helpful in our station as wives, …
“In the month of October 1927, Mrs. C. Bouma entertained the ladies of the married men of the Calvin Seminary.” So reads the first sentence “in the “Record Book of Calvin Seminary Dames” (aka, the club’s minutes book). “At this gathering they spoke somewhat carelessly …
The 1946-1947 school year saw the opening of the “Alexander Lodge” as a dorm for Calvin College men. It was located at 1010 Alexander Street SE. Ninety men started out the year in the dorm. “Army cots, cold showers, bleak rooms, and workmen still on …
The Spring 2023 issue (Volume 41, Issue 1) of Origins: Historical Magazine of the Heritage Hall Archives has been mailed to subscribers. If your not yet a subscriber you can order a copy by emailing Heritage Hall (crcarchives@calvin.edu) or subscribe online. This blog post includes …
In the 1920s, the Christian Reformed Church debated the doctrine of common grace. Synod’s affirmation of this doctrine led a small group to separate from the CRC and form the Protestant Reformed Church. But the theological defense of the potential good of non-Christian— “worldly” —culture …
This blogpost continues the story of Paul Jones. He had become connected to Christian Reformed Church in the early 1900s, as a boy and young man at the residential school and CRC mission in Tohatchi, NM. He had lived in New Jersey with a CRC …
This blogpost is part one of two on Paul Jones, a Calvin College preparatory school student from 1917-1918 who became chairman of the Navajo Tribal Council in 1955. But first a few observations about the photo that inspired the two blogposts. *** The “cover” image …
On 21 March 1956, my grandparents, Arie and Martha Verhagen boarded KLM flight 603 with their two small children from Amsterdam to New York City. A week earlier they had received visas under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, allowing their immigration to the United …
Even as a kid I was a history nerd. It started with the American Girl dolls and branched into Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables. My sister, our friends, and I would dress up in …