News and History from Heritage Hall
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 …
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 …
You never know where a story is going to take you. One that I read as a child led me to a digitization project in the Heritage Hall Archives at Calvin University. Now I am working on the collections associated with Albertus C. Van Raalte, …
For the past half year, I’ve been doing re-photography posts on Heritage Hall’s Facebook site. Usually it is two pictures, one from the deeper past and a more recent image, sometimes a photograph I’ve taken. Some of the posts include a story about the congregation, …
During the early spring of 1911, leading Dutch Reformed folk in Chicago and Michigan were fighting about a professor. The issue was not, as you might think, unorthodox theology or dangerous ideas. It was who should be the new professor of Dutch history, language, and …
The mythology of the frontier West is that it was a place to escape to and start over. Nicholas Zandstra’s story seems to fit that mythology. Columbus, Montana, gave him his chance. In 1916, he wanted to escape work in Chicago factories. His one true …
The Dutch know muck. And they know how to grow vegetables and flowers in it. At least that was my experience growing up. “Muck farms” refers to agriculture in areas where wetlands were drained and the “muck” turned into productive “garden farms,” typically producing vegetables …
My title — “Play ball?” — really should have two question marks. I picked this topic because I’ve been watching to see whether North Americans will get major league baseball this Covid-19 summer. That’s one question. The other is whether Christian athletes should play on …
“Diphtheria in Paterson” the headline read. The article announced that School No. 12 in the city’s New Holland neighborhood was closed after twelve students had died from the infection. The building stood at 33-41 Bergen St., the center of an area city officials described as …