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 […]
On November 30, 1892, on a train from Hoboken, NJ, to Alamosa, CO, Marinus Aalbers glanced at his wife and children sitting across from him in their seats. They had left the Netherlands 23 days ago and expected to arrive at their last stop in […]
Edward Becenti (1882-1929) was a Navajo who converted to Christianity and worked with the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) as a missionary. We don’t have many of Becenti’s own words on record. But we know that his was a fluent, compelling voice. I first came across […]
Last week’s Origins Online blog post explored views expressed in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) about the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Women winning the right to vote was itself a revolution. It undermined the idea that men represented their families in public life. […]
It has been a century since the United States ratified and certified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution–in August 1920. The 19th Amendment was in one sense the culmination of more than a century of activism, perhaps most famously associated with the “Declaration of Sentiments” […]
The peaceful protest against police brutality Saturday evening in Grand Rapids, and the vandalism and looting that followed over the night of May 30-31, reflected the histories of race, poverty, policing, segregation, and riots in the city. At the national level, “race riots” have left […]
Our traditions usually feel age-old, as if we’ve always done them that way. But those traditions often are recent in origin or at least recent in the peculiar way we celebrate them. This is true of our “liturgies” of Christmas and the New Year. In […]
The fall 2019 issue of Origins: Historical Magazine of The Archives (vol. 37, no. 2) is now available in print! It focuses on Dutch immigrants and the furniture industry in Grand Rapids. You can access one of the articles for free, below. As Janet Sjaarda […]