News and History from Heritage Hall
The Spring 2025 issue of Origins is in print and in the hands of subscribers. Here is a free article from the Spring issue. In it, Robert Schoone-Jongen tells the story of the Wispelwey family. It migrated from the Netherlands to the United States in 1910, arriving in …
The spring 2025 issue of Origins magazine is in the works. Here is a free article from the Fall 2024 issue. Peter Bulthuis tells the story of Dick Veenendaal, a Dutch immigrant to Canada in the 1930s; after World War II, he helped meet the …
In 1917 there was a major debate ongoing among Christian Reformed folk around Prospect Park, NJ. They needed to decide if it was time to establish a Christian high school. Most people in the mainly blue-collar, immigrant community saw education beyond the basics of reading …
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 …
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 …
The Fall 2021 issue of Origins: Historical Magazine of the Heritage Hall Archives is in print and has been mailed to subscribers! The issue does not have a central theme. It explores a variety of topics related to Dutch North American and Reformed history. This …
Boys racing homemade bobsleds down the Bridge Street Hill in Grand Rapids hit Willem Hendrik de Lange in January 1874. “On the evening of this accident,” De Lange’s father-in-law reported, “he left our house in good spirits.” Shortly after, six to eight big boys on …