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 …
See previous blog post for part I of this story. As assistant to the secretary of the Calvinist Resettlement Service, Agnes Flonk handled a good deal of the correspondence between potential sponsors and the necessary bureaucratic organizations. Many of the applicants she worked with were …
On August 27, 1955, Pieter Duinkerken showed up at the offices of the Calvinist Resettlement Committee to speak with Miss Agnes Flonk, the assistant secretary. The committee was created by the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), whose headquarters were in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mr. Duinkerken himself …
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, …
Last week, Calvin University got word that alumnus and long time librarian Conrad Bult had passed away. Conrad was a periodicals and reference librarian and a historian, and he was much loved in Hekman Library, Heritage Hall, and the history department. This morning I was …
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 …
“Immigration is taking place under greatly changed situations, and in a different land. So in that very real sense, history is not repeating itself.” If you read this quotation with current headlines in mind, you might have wondered whether it is about debates over immigration …