News and History from Heritage Hall
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 …
The fall 2022 issue of Heritage Hall’s print magazine, Origins, included a story by Jane E. Griffioen. Her book London Street: A Memoir has been read widely by people who grew up in Dutch immigrant communities connected to the Christian Reformed Church. London Street is …
Some of the Calvin College students in the cover image of this post look like they could be rascals; one or two look studious. There were troublemakers of various sorts on campus in the 1920s and 1930s, as at pretty much any school. But what …
In November 1928 Sadie Roelofs set off a “November Revolution.” Editor-in-chief of the Calvin College student newspaper, Chimes, she criticized apathy among students and implied the same about faculty, all in a short editorial entitled “Self-Satisfaction.” Other Chimes writers followed her lead. One urged toleration …
In a presentation at the 2021 meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies, Mary Risseeuw made the case that women have been neglected in the writing of Dutch North American history. There are some important books and noteworthy articles. But she …
This blog post summarizes, excerpts, and links to a story done by Chimes, the student newspaper at Calvin University. The Chimes story is based on a summer research project done by student researchers Gabby Freshly and Natalie Sytsma and supervised by art history professor Craig …
Dr. Wiebe Boer is the __________ president of Calvin University. a) Second b) Tenth c) Eleventh d) Twelfth The answer to the multiple-choice question is trickier than you might think. Anyone who tells you that facts are facts is half wrong. The answer depends less …
While researching the origins of the Calvin-Hope men’s basketball rivalry, I was intrigued by references to a group of Calvin students around 1920 who played basketball under the name “The Rivals.” Who were these guys? Who were they rivals for (if anyone)? And was the …