There were numerous church fires in the past, especially at the time when most churches were constructed of wood and wood shingles. What was unusual was to have a church building catch fire during a worship service! This is what happened to the Borculo Christian Reformed Church building on April 10, 1927. This fire left an unforgettable memory in the minds of the members who were there on that day.

When my father, Martin Essenburg, and his family entered the church that morning, they had no idea that on that day the church would be reduced to a pile of burning embers. My father was 20 years old at the time and would often talk about the day the church burned. It was probably one of the most memorable services he attended there!
My father’s oral history, the memories of Gerrit Bos, and the Borculo CRC church records (although written in Dutch!), make up the source of this story. The Zeeland Record also published a news article about the fire on the following Thursday of that week.
My father recalls that it was a very windy day when he entered the church and took his seat in the very back row, where many single young men of his age would sit. Although it was no longer winter, the janitor of the church struggled to get the auditorium warm on that cold and windy morning, and used lots of wood to heat the area quickly.
The hot wood fire caused sparks from the chimney to land on the roof, and the soot, fanned by strong winds, started the shingles on fire. With the chimney located on the east end of the building, the downdraft from the east wind first started the singles on the west end of the roof on fire and the fire then moved eastward against the strong wind.
The burning shingles on the church roof were discovered during the worship service by a nine-year-old girl, who I have been told was Irene Vollink, the daughter of Simon Vollink whose house was located just south of the church. The young girl happened to be staying home that morning. She wisely ran to the church, entering the back door of the church and yelling “the roof is on fire!”
This caused the young men sitting in that back row to jump out of their seats and start milling around. The Pastor, Rev. K.W. Fortuin, unaware of the situation, stopped preaching and upbraided them for the disturbance and told them to sit down and be quiet. He then continued on with his sermon in Dutch. Soon a member of the church walked up to the pastor and whispered to him that the roof was on fire. He then wisely and quietly announced that the church would be dismissed early that day. All 500 members walked out of the building safely, many not even knowing the church was on fire until they saw flames on the roof when they arrived outdoors.
As soon as everyone had safely left the burning building, a call went out for all able-bodied members to reenter the building to carry out pews, furniture, books, and other items. The fire had not yet broken through the ceiling of the sanctuary.
The pews were attached to the floor with wood screws. Two men would grab on to each end of the pew and lift it up, pulling the screws right out of the floor. Others were standing by to carry them outdoors. In a short time, all of the pews had been removed from the sanctuary. Some items like books and dishes from the kitchen received some rough handling and were damaged.



The Borculo Fire Department, with its two-man pumper, concentrated on saving the parsonage located 40 feet north of the church.

Calls were also sent to the Zeeland, Holland, and Hudsonville Fire Departments to help fight the fire. Only Hudsonville responded with their two-man pumper, as there was no water source for the larger Zeeland and Holland fire trucks. In fact, water was often brought to fires in milk cans, by wagon, and then dumped into a larger barrel for use by the pumper.

On Monday, April 11, the day after the fire, the consistory met to discuss the loss of the church building by fire. Under the capable leadership and great organizational skills of Rev. Fortuin, the church quickly made some immediate decisions. A large tent was to be rented and erected for the next Sunday’s morning service. And a decision was made to build a new church.
A building committee was appointed, consisting of the following members: Gerrit VanBeek, Paul DeGroot, Luke Luurtsema, Louis Vollink, Ben DeRoo, Harm Stremler, and Henry Wesseldyk. The building committee decided to have the new church designed by a professional church architectural firm and chose the G&J Daverman Company of Grand Rapids. The church buildings they designed were known to be both functional and economical to build. Bids were let and later the church builders were chosen. Herm TenBroeke was chosen to build the structure and finish the upstairs and John P. Lamer to finish the full basement. They both encouraged volunteers to help. The economy was good at this time and they decided to build a new and even finer church building with a full basement and a new Hinners organ, to meet their needs in the coming years.
During the summer months the large tent collapsed, and the congregation met in the vacant large horse barn located just east of the church. In the horse & buggy days, a horse barn was an important building on the church property. Nearly every rural congregation needed one to protect the horses who brought people to church each week from the weather. The horses needed a place to be stabled for the length of the service.
Usually the family would enter the front or south side of the church from their buggy or surrey, while the father would continue on to tie up the horses in the church barn. This took some time and the father would enter the church a little later, often after his family was seated. But with the coming of the Model T, fewer and fewer folks used the horse barn anymore. I can only remember one couple who came to church with horse & buggy – they were John and Alice Kieskamp.
On November 8, 1927, a new and very functional church building, with a new organ, was solemnly dedicated. It was nearly all paid for by the many hours of donated work and also donated building materials. The Daverman design is still visible when looking at the church as it stands today, even after renovations.

The firm of G&J Daverman had already designed eighty churches in the Midwest, of which sixty-seven were CRC churches. The former Jamestown CRC (pictured below), was built one year after the new Borculo church and is almost identical except for opposite towers. Now the building houses the Noel Restaurant.

Organs were a very important part of worship services at the time when the church was rebuilt, and a Hinners organ was purchased and insured for $4,000, while the church building itself was insured for $10,000.
The organ was rebuilt in 1950 and again in 2017, at which time the Borculo CRC held an organ dedication (from https://borculocrc.org/organ-dedication):
“Worship is our highest calling and public worship of God’s people is the clearest expression of this eternal purpose. One of the central ways that God calls us to respond to Him is through music. Martin Luther said, ‘Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts, and spirits.’”

My father continued to sit in the back row of the new church until he got married and graduated to the family pews in 1935. He later had 8 children and his family filled a whole pew!

After touring some of the rural villages and cities of the province of Friesland, we started in a south-westerly direction into the province of North Holland. In order to reach this province by auto, we crossed the Afsluitdijk, a barrier dike.

This dike, which crosses a portion of the North Sea, is 20 miles long and was completed in 1932 in order to further protect the country from flooding and to reclaim land from the sea bottom. It was built by depositing rock and boulder clay for a width of 300 feet. The dike includes four lanes of roadway and bike lanes and a pedestrian walkway.
The dike is a very popular tourist attraction with many turnouts to observe how it was constructed beginning in 1928 with Cornelis Levy as chief engineer.

Today the Afsluitdijk is undergoing a major change because of the projected effects of global warming, raising the dike by six feet over the next three years, as well as adding more powerful pumps and reinforcing locks.

Travelling through the North Holland countryside, we still were able to see a few operating windmills. In 1850 there were over 20,000 windmills in operation in the Netherlands. Today most of the windmills have been replaced; first by the steam engine and later by electric pumps.

Haarlem
Before leaving the province of North Holland, we wanted to spend one night in a larger city, so we headed for the city of Haarlem, a city of 150,000 people.

We stayed in a hotel overlooking the town market square with the huge St. Bavo Church across the street. The other side of the square was lined with restaurants and outdoor cafes. We wondered where we would find a parking place until we found the entrance to a huge parking garage located beneath the old public market square.

We found the tour of the St. Bavo Church to be one of the highlights of our visit to Haarlem. The church was formerly a Roman Catholic cathedral and has been a Reformed Protestant church since 1578. It reaches a height of 260 feet and is beautiful both inside and outside, with stained glass windows and one of the largest pipe organs in the Netherlands.

The Muller pipe organ was built in 1738 and has over 5000 pipes. Famous musicians like Mozart, Handel, and Mendelson visited Haarlem to play this organ.

The entire floor of the church consists of 1500 marble grave stones covering the graves of those buried there.

The city of Haarlem is often described as one of the most photogenic destinations in the Netherlands. We would certainly agree!

After Haarlem we drove to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to wait for our plane and head back home to Michigan.

It was a wonderful trip visiting the Netherlands.

Few people have served with Forgotten Man Ministries as long and as faithfully as Gordon Geurink. And at 95 years
young, he doesn’t think there is any reason to stop now.
Gordon was born and raised on a farm in Michigan. Like many men of his generation, he enlisted during WW2 and was sent
to serve in Italy. While at war, he prayed to God, “If you spare my life, I will spend my life in your service.” He says he is still
honoring his end of that covenant today.
God “officially” called him into the ministry as a church planter, planting churches in the Kalamazoo and Paw Paw area. During this time, he heard about the work of Forgotten Man Ministries.
In 1980 Gordon became the first chaplain in Ottawa County where he served until 1996 when he moved to the Kalamazoo
County Jail as their full-time chaplain.
While Gordon has been working in the jail part-time since 1998, he is still in the jail three days a week mentoring inmates and training volunteers in how to best do jail ministry.
“Above all, I just love the Lord and I really have a heart for the lost. Maybe some people won’t understand why I still go in the jail at my age, but I see no reason why I should retire from God’s work. I want to be faithful to the end.”
We are so grateful to Gordon for his many years of service to the incarcerated. Well done good and faithful servant!

One of the most impressive buildings in the city today is the Broederenkerk Church, built in 1307, but serving since 1983 as the city’s public library. It is the most beautiful library I have ever visited!

The colony town of Zutphen, Michigan was named after Zutphen, the Netherlands.

Staphorst
After visits to the Borculo and Zutphen areas, we headed north to the town of Staphorst, which has a population of 17,000 people.

Staphorst has long been known as a rather conservative and traditional town. Their buildings, customs, and religious beliefs reflect this. In fact, they are located in a narrow area located across the middle of the Netherlands called the “Bible Belt”. This name probably came from the United States, since the people who live in this area have the highest concentration of conservative orthodox Calvinists in the county.

The churches there play a central role in the lives of their members and they are often at odds with the liberal practices of Dutch society today. Weekly church attendance in these areas on Sundays are the highest in the Netherlands. Many immigrants to America from these areas also took their beliefs and traditions with them when they settled in America.
Staphorst has a nice museum in town that traces the local history of the town its people. The museum reminds me of the Dekker Huis Museum in Zeeland, Michigan.

The town has quaint farm houses and barns, as well as restaurants with tasty food.

Friesland


Our next destination was the province of Friesland located in the northernmost area of the Netherlands. Many people living today in Zeeland, Borculo and Blendon townships in West Michigan descended from immigrants who once lived the small towns in this province.
The capital of the province of Friesland is a large city named Leewarden. It has canals running through the city and a large Fries Museum which tells the history of the people and the area.

It also has many old churches which were Roman Catholic before the Reformation. One very old church tower still standing in the city today is called the Oldehove. It is also called the leaning tower of Leewarden as it leans more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.

While the tower was being constructed, beginning in 1528, the muddy soil on which it sat began to settle and the tower began to lean.
The tower was later stabilized, but construction was halted at 48 meters, even though it had been planned to reach 120 meters. The rest of the church building was never completed, and the tower stands alone.
Today climbing to the top of this old 128-foot tower is a popular tourist attraction. You can reach the observation deck at the top by climbing 183 steps on a narrow spiral staircase.
I was encouraged by my daughters to make this climb and made it to the top. I was rewarded with spectacular views of the beautiful city of Leewarden.

Friesland today has many dairy farms located on the heavy, rich clay soil. There are many drainage ditches in the pastures that make them tillable.
The immigrants from these areas were quite successful at draining the swamps they encountered in Borculo, Michigan and were able to make the land productive when they arrived here.

Many of my mother’s relatives, the Elzinga family, lived in a town called Blija (pronounced Bli-ya), bordering on the North Sea.

Before turning to farming, they were linen weavers, making cloth from flax. It is said that Blija was the first village where flax was grown and processed into cloth. In later years cotton cloth from the cotton grown mostly in America replaced the labor-intensive linen cloth produced in Europe, putting these people out of work. The farmers in the villages then raised other crops on the rich productive clay soil.
Unfortunately, the land they worked was not owned by the people who lived in the village; Instead, large tracts of land were owned by wealthy absentee owners and most of the profits went to other areas – not to those who lived in the towns.
Poverty was widespread and that is one reason so many people left for America.
Saint Nicholas Church (Hereformde) in Blija is very old. Parts of the lower church date to the thirteenth century, while the main structure dates to the sixteenth. The church was built on a terp, or manmade mound.

Hegebeintum

The small, low-lying country of the Netherlands has always faced the challenge of keeping the land from flooding and its people from drowning. Sixty-five percent of the country is below the level of the flood-tide.
One of the earliest methods of protection from flooding began already in 500 B.C., when the people living in the lower areas began building survival mounds – or “terps” – to protect themselves from the surges of water from the North Sea.
About five miles from the town of Blija is a small village called Hegebeintum. Over the centuries the largest survival mound in the Netherlands was built here. It was 30 feet tall and covered 26 acres. We stopped at the Hegebeintum Visitor’s Center to learn about is long history.

The mound was built by piling up animal and human waste, grass, sod, or anything that villages wanted to get rid of. It was like building a landfill, with waste brought up the hill in buckets and wheelbarrows. Some mounds were built and then enlarged for years, even over a 1,000-year period. Later a church and cemetery were often built on top of a mound.

As barrier dykes were constructed over the years, the survival mounds were no longer needed. Around the year 1900, much of the rich soil of the mound was mined and sold for land reclamation projects as fertilizer.

Our travels then took us back towards Amsterdam, coming soon in Part III.

9/29/2019
 
For many years it was a wish of mine to visit the Netherlands, but over the years it just never happened. On September 13, 2019, this wish did come true. I was invited to take this trip with my two daughters, Gayle Ermer and Beverly Harkema, and my daughter-in-law Jill Essenburg.

This castle called the Essenburgh was built in 1652 by one of the wealthy families living in the area. Later it was owned by wealthy barons who owned much of the farmland in the area. For many years my great-great-grandfather was the castle gardener on the castle grounds when it was owned by the Sandburg family.

Today the castle has been converted into an event and conference center, with rooms available to stay overnight in the actual castle as well as in the annex. Pictured is the castle, the hotel annex and the Catholic seminary on the left, now owned by the Norbertine Order of the Catholic Church.

A detailed history of the castle and its former owners as well as more pictures can be found in a story published 1/2/19 on this website: https://borculo.weebly.com/blog/the-essenburg-family-a-journey-from-a-castle-in-the-netherlands-to-a-log-cabin-in-borculo-michigan-part-i-by-robert-essenburg-with-beverly-essenburg-harkema.

We learned of a replica of the Essenburgh castle in the Hierden area located in the nearby town of Ermelo. At one time there seems to have been a family quarrel as to who was to occupy the castle, so one family built a nearby replica for himself.

On Sunday night we were joined at the Castle by my wife’s brother, Gary Bos and his wife Marcia, from Yakima, Washington. One week before we left on our trip, we found out that they were also going to visit the Netherlands the same week we would be there, so we made arrangements to have a reunion by staying together at the Essenburgh Castle and traveling together for a few days of our tour of the Netherlands.

Most histories of old territories include two prominent structures:  a castle for the Lord of the Manor, and a church for his constituents.  That was also true for Borculo. One meaning of the name Borculo is “Castle in the Forest.”  In the twelfth century a castle called “the Hof van Borculo” was built.  It was a large castle with five turrets.  This castle would stand for 400 years and served as a home for the Lords of Borculo and their families.   In the year 1348 a defensive wall was built around the city limits.

These are a few pictures of the streets of Borculo, the Netherlands. It was quiet on a Monday since most businesses and government buildings are closed on Mondays in the Netherlands.

Some of the milk haulers who hauled to the local creamery and milk processors that I remember were Peter VandenBosch, Egbert Machiela, Peter Boetsma, Delbert Hoffman, and John Luurtsema. John’s son Anthony used to pick up the milk on our farm. He later formed a large trucking business of his own called ALTL, located in Hudsonville, MI.
Fairview Dairy was one of the older businesses in Borculo, operating in the 1950’s and founded by Clarence DeVries. Clarence and his family operated this dairy east of Borculo for a number of years, buying their milk from local farmers and bottling the milk.

Delbert Hoffman, Borculo milk hauler
Delbert Hoffman was a Borculo milk hauler who grew up as a boy on the Hoffman farm that was located 1.5 miles south of Borculo at 9281 Barry Street in Blendon Township. He attended the Borculo school which was located two and one-half miles from his home – one way. When the weather was good he took a bicycle. In the winter months he usually walked to school, and I used to walk with him when he got to our farm, which was located one mile from the schoolhouse. There was no bus service for kids in those days.
Delbert’s grandfather, Nick Hoffman, always kept some dairy cows on his farm. As a young man, Delbert’s father, Claude became interested in owning a retail milk route that sold milk to customers in Zeeland, four miles away in the year 1920. He built a small brick milkhouse on the Hoffman farm in Borculo to bottle milk that he bought from his neighbors. He purchased a milk wagon and a team of horses to deliver the bottled milk to his customers living in the city of Zeeland, four miles away from his farm, going down the streets from house to house. He called his milk business the Lily Dale Dairy.
In the warmer Summer months, Claude would deliver milk on Saturday evenings so that the milk would stay fresh, without refrigeration, until he came back on Monday. There was no milk delivery on Sundays in Zeeland in those days! Claude could often be found courting his girlfriend, who he later married, while delivering milk on Saturday evenings. She enjoyed accompanying him on his route, and he enjoyed the company!

The heavy glass milk bottles filled with milk were sealed with a cardboard cap and then stacked in crates and loaded into the milk wagon each day. Empty bottles were also collected each day and then washed and reused.
Claude Hoffman operated this dairy in Borculo from 1920 to 1930, until stricter milk regulations forced him to discontinue the dairy on his farm.
Delbert’s sister Isabelle Jeurink, later wrote a couple of stories in the Zeeland Record under the column “Yesterday”, about some of her father’s experiences delivering milk in Zeeland. Following is one of her stories, dated 1995.

1/30/19
America is known as a country made up of immigrants, and many of us are the descendants of those immigrants. One question many of us ask today is - where did our ancestors immigrate from?
This is the continuing story of the Essenburg family who immigrated from a small village in the province of Gelderland, the Netherlands, to America in 1868. A few of the family members also immigrated from nearby towns like Harderwijk, a very old city founded on the sea coast of the Zuiderzee, which was a walled city established in 1231.
A genealogy and history of the Essenburg family was published in 1980 as a 660-page book titled A Castle in the Trees, co-authored by my brother, Richard W. Essenburg and Dr. G.J. Westerink, an ancestor from the Netherlands. A copy of this book can be found in the reference room of the Herrick Public Library in Holland and also the Gary Byker Memorial Library in Hudsonville. For this story, I will be using some of the information from the family histories that are recorded in this book.
Another question many of us ask is why they would leave these old established towns in the Netherlands to settle in the primitive forests of Michigan?

One of the answers to that question is that by the 1840’s, certain areas of the Netherlands were either in an economic decline or were experiencing an economic depression. The shipping industry had moved to larger cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The fishing industry was also experiencing a sharp decline on the Zuiderzee. Diseases had invaded two of the mainstays of their food diet – potato blight and a fungus in the rye crop used to make their bread.
By the 1850’s, 27% of the population in these areas were living on government assistance. Unemployment was at an all-time high. When a new house was to be built, there were 20 unemployed carpenters bidding against each other for the work. Many young couples found themselves living in dire poverty, unable to find work to support their families. Some folks had already left for America and many others were discussing immigration as well.
The story begins with the first recorded Essenburg family member – Jacob Janse, born 11/9/1736. This would be generation I, and his son Jan Jacobs Essenburg would be generation II. But I would like to focus on generation III, which begins with the family of my great-great-grandfather Jan Jansen Essenburg, who was born in 1806 in Harderwijk, the Netherlands. He and his wife had a family of 10 children. They, and eight of their children, many of whom were living on the grounds of the Essenburg Castle (see Part I of this story), immigrated to the United States in the late 1860’s. They came by 6 different trips over a period of 5 years.

The first of the Jan Jansen Essenburg family to immigrate to America was daughter Jannetje, born in 1838 and married to Gerrit VanHeuvelen. They left for America on March 25, 1867. This is Jannetje’s story, but it also describes the experiences common to many Dutch immigrants at that time, some of whom also settled in Borculo, MI.
The transportation across the Atlantic Ocean was better than that experienced by immigrants even twenty years earlier. The ships were now powered by steam instead of sails and wind. The voyage now took only 16 days. There were still three classes of travel on a ship – the first-class and second-class cabins, and then the steerage area located below the deck.
Ship owners could make a lot of money by crowding passengers into this area at prices that were reduced from first class tickets. What passengers did not know was that sometimes the living conditions down there were terrible. Often ships that could accommodate 100 passengers in cabins would have five times that amount or up to 500 people below deck.
The area was often poorly ventilated. Passengers would build large bunks to sleep on or many would sleep on the floor. There were toilet rooms with no privacy. Often buckets were used as toilets which were emptied overboard. Water was scarce and food was of poor quality.
Immigrants who were used to high standards of cleanliness were packed in with others who smelled like their wells must have run dry long before they boarded the ship! And then there was the problem of getting seasick. About all the people could do was eat, sleep and talk about better days ahead. For some, it was a blessing to travel in groups of family, friends, and neighbors on this journey.

How glad they were when they arrived in New York Harbor. After being checked out for health reasons at Castle Gardens or Ellis Island, they continued on their journey to their destination.

When the VanHeuvelens arrived in New York City, they took a river boat on the Hudson River to Albany, NY. By this time, they did not have to take the 363-mile boat trip on the Erie Canal that took 9 days, but could now take a train from Albany to Buffalo, through Niagara Falls and into Detroit, MI. From Detroit they boarded the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad which took them across the state Westward, to the depot located in Grand Haven, MI on the Grand River.
From Grand Haven they took a boat to Holland. The VanHeuvelens then rented a log cabin located 1.5 miles west of Borculo, on Port Sheldon Road, in 1867. A son was born the next year in their one-room cabin, which had 2 doors and 2 windows (their son, Bernard VanHeuvelen, later became a minister in the Reformed Church of America, serving congregations in the Dakotas).
That year they received some bad news that the farm and its log cabin had been sold and they would no longer have a place to live. They did not know where to go.
The family that bought the property was the Berend Kuyers family. Being concerned that the young family renting the cabin would be homeless, they came up with this solution: divide the cabin in half with a heavy curtain, so both families could live in the cabin until a new home could be found for the Van Heuvelens. Soon Gerrit VanHeuvelen found 20 acres of heavily wooded property located nearby, which he purchased and then built a log cabin of his own. He lived in this log cabin until 1882 when he replaced it with a wood frame home.
In 1889 he sold this farm and moved to a larger farm in Thule, South Dakota, near the North Dakota border, probably because of the cheaper land there. One big advantage of this prairie land was that it did not have to be cleared of all of the trees, like in Michigan; the disadvantage was that there was very little lumber to build houses and other buildings. The people in the community were actually worshiping in a sod church!

Some people were also living in houses constructed with sod walls and roofs. They suffered many of the hardships suffered by other settlers. The soil there was not as productive, and the rainfall was less than in Michigan. Temperatures were colder, with severe snow storms in winter. Gerrit sold his farm to one of his sons and moved back to Holland, MI in 1920 to retire.

The next Essenburg family member to immigrate was the third daughter, Hendrikje, who had married Jan Jacobson. They left one year later than Jannetje, in 1868, and headed for Holland, MI. The bought a 40-acre farm one mile west of Borculo and lived for a time in a log cabin there until they build a frame house, where they lived for many years. Hendrikje Essenburg Jacobsen and her husband had two daughters. One of the daughters married Enne Kraai and the other married John Bowman, Sr. Thus, John Kraai and John Bowman of Borculo are their grandchildren.
Later that year in 1868 the parents, Jan Jansen and his wife and three more children (Teunis, Jannes, and Jacob) settled in the city of Holland. They were living there during the great fire of October 9, 1871.
By this time, the city of Holland had grown from 40 persons in 1847 to 2,400 residents in 1871. The entire towns’ buildings were almost all built of wood. Weather conditions on this date were extremely dry. Some fires had already started Sunday afternoon, October 8, but were thought to be extinguished. Early Monday morning, from 1:00am to 3:00am, two-thirds of the city was reduced to ashes. The entire business district, comprised of 75 shops and offices, was destroyed. Five of the cities’ 7 churches were also destroyed. And 200 of the 300 homes were destroyed by the fire. Most of the buildings were not insured.

Fortunately, only 1 person died because of the fire. The winds that fanned the fire spared the Hope College Campus and the original Pillar Church (the First Reformed Church at that time), which still stands on 9th street.
The Essenburg family oral history also includes the story of their fighting the fires on that early Monday morning. A few days later, one of the family members bought a now vacant lot, covered in ashes. At the same time of the Holland fire, the city of Chicago also burned, incurring 200 million dollars in damages and the loss of 250 lives.
Back to the story of the Essenburgs as they immigrated to America. The 5th child of Jan Jansen Essenburg, Jan, left in 1873. The 6th child, Lubbertje, married to Reint Franken, left in 1884, and they eventually settled in Holton Township, near Fremont, MI.
The 4th group to immigrate to Michigan, in 1869, included my great-grandfather Gerrit Essenburg, his wife and 2 children, of which the oldest son Roelof was my grandfather. They settled in Allegan County in a village called Oakland, which is near Drenthe. My grandfather Roelof was 2 years old at the time and he grew up on a 40-acre farm, eventually with 8 younger siblings.

Many of the immigrants were not rich in money, but they were rich in children! Teenage children often got jobs in towns away from their homes and turned over the money they earned to their parents, who used it to help pay off their mortgage and other expenses.
When my grandfather finished the fourth reader at school, he was ready to be hired out, at the age of 14, to work on a farm nearby on a one-year contract. He worked on a couple of different farms for the next four years until he was 18 and was able to work for himself.
At the age of 18 in 1885, my grandfather heard they were hiring young men to work at the Moeke sawmill located in Borculo, MI, which had been in operation since 1883.

Then he worked as a teamster hauling logs from nearby farms to the mill. He also operated the farm machinery, powered by stationary engines to fill silos, bale hay and other custom work before the self-propelled farm tractor was invented. In 1889, Roelof left the sawmill and bought a farm in Borculo on Van Buren street.
Two of my grandfather’s brothers moved to Borculo to get a job at the sawmill there as well: John (b. 1868) and Gerrit (b. 1878). John continued working there until the mill closed in 1905 and moved to Zeeland. At that time, he and his family moved up North and settled on a farm in Atwood, MI. Gerrit married Katie Steigenga (1881 – 1873) and settled on a farm in Borculo. They had 11 children: Dina (Geurink), Jacob, Ella (VandenBosch), Gerrit, Maria (Elenbaas), Roelof, Emma (Driesenga), Grace (Vollink), Herman, John, and Jessie (Mast).

My grandfather later served on the Borculo school board for 9 terms, which was 27 years. Six of his children purchased 80-acre farms in the Borculo school district and 39 of his grandchildren graduated from the Borculo school. His brother Gerrit’s son, Gerrit, Jr. also stayed in Borculo with his wife (Bertha Diepenhorst) and children – Glenn, Floreen (Horstmanshof), and Ruth. Gerrit Jr. and my dad, Martin Essenburg, often worked together on their farms, and later for the Ottawa County Road Commission.

And so the story continues on today in the lives of the many children and grandchildren of the families who made the journey from the castle in the Netherlands to live in towns like Borculo, MI and other areas around the United States.

This is a story of a historic Dutch castle and the Essenburg family who lived there, working as caretakers and gardeners of the castle grounds for many years in the Netherlands. Like many other immigrants to America, the Essenburgs left their home county to “improve their circumstances” (as written in their emigration records of 1868). And like other Dutch immigrants, this led them eventually to the small colony town of Borculo, Michigan.
The story begins with the history of Kasteel de Essenburgh. It was built in 1652 during the “Dutch Golden Age” – the century in the Netherlands when the country’s merchants, bankers, and far-flung trading companies were thriving around the world. They were establishing colonies in the East Indies, South Africa, and even in America, as New Amsterdam in New York.
At this time in the Netherlands there was an assembly of wealthy men known as Knights. The country’s wealth at this time allowed squire John Coolwagon to build Kasteel de Essenburgh in an attempt to earn a place within the Knighthood of the Veluwe. Belonging to this group had social and financial benefits. It also required the members to meet stringent requirements to join. However, after the castle was built, his attempted knighthood was met with rejection and he was forced to surrender his property to his creditors who then sold it to a rich nobleman.

For the next 300 years the castle was owned by several wealthy families who used it as a personal residence, desirous for its location in one of the most scenic areas of the Veluwe region, rich in forests, heathlands, and wildlife. After a series of ownership changes, in 1818 it was purchased by the wealthy Sandberg family. They restored the castle and its grounds to its original splendor, also purchasing large tracts of land surrounding the castle, which they then rented tenants and sharecroppers.
In 1834 my great-great-grandfather Jan Jansen Essenburg became the official caretaker of the castle grounds for Baron Samuel Sandberg. He was given a converted/abandoned paper mill on the Ottemolen Inlet as his home to live in near the castle, as one of a number of paper mills located on Hierden Brook, the river that flowed through the property at that time. His 10 children were all born there from 1834 to 1852, and they lived there until they immigrated to America in 1868. There was a schoolhouse nearby where the children attended and were also taught the catechism. The family attended the Netherlands Reformed Church in the village of Hierden, where all of the children were baptized.

Hierden was located 5 miles from the larger city of Harderwijk. This old city was founded in the year 1231. In the early years it was a prosperous city located on the shore of the huge body of water known as the Zuiderzee. It was an important trading, shipping, and fishing city. The early city was fortified with brick walls. The first church built there was called the Grote Kerk and was built around 1335. It was a Roman Catholic Cathedral as the country of the Netherlands was still Roman Catholic, as this was the time before the Protestant Reformation. Sometime after the Reformation the Netherlands chose the Reformed faith as the state religion.

My great-great-grandfather Jan Jansen was born in the year 1806. At this time many of the common folk did not have a family or last name. In 1811 the Netherlands became part of the French Empire, ruled by Napoleon. He ordered all the people who didn’t have a last name to obtain one. The Essenburg family chose the name of the castle for their family’s name, as it was common to choose a geographical place, such as a region, city, castle, or farm as the basis for a surname. My great-great-grandfather then became Jan Jansen Essenburg.
When the Essenburg family left for America in 1868, the Sandbergs continued owning and operating the castle and the huge estate until 1926 when family differences and financial difficulties forced them to sell the castle and surrounding farmlands. One of the later owners added an “h” to the end of the name Essenburg, and this spelling remains to this day.

During World War II the castle was taken over by the Hermann Goring Division of the German army and used as a command post until 1943.
In 1950 Kasteel de Essenburgh was purchased by an order of the Roman Catholic Church called the Norbertine Abbey of Berne. The order extensively restored the castle and its grounds once again. Soon it became a popular event center for weddings and retreats. The castle was then further expanded and renovated into a hotel to host the people who attended these events.

Today the Norbertine order consists of a luxury hotel, as well as a monastery and a seminary on the castle grounds. Folks can now go online to book a night’s stay at the old Kasteel de Essenburgh. A few of my relatives have done this, including my daughter Beverly Essenburg Harkema, who contributed to this article.

The next story will continue the account of the Essenburg family as they left the castle in the Netherlands for a log cabin in America.

The emphasis she put on Ford was because my dad was a Chevy guy. That trip today via I-96 E and I-69 E takes 2 hours and 32 minutes to cover 166 miles according to Google Maps, but with the Model T and without the highways it took her 7 hours and 15 minutes.

In the 19 years the Model T was manufactured, October 1, 1908 to May 26, 1927, 16.5 million were produced!

Here is the video showing how to start and drive the Model T:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfHMtgg2d8