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

Some of the Walters Gardens farms today are located in the Hamilton, Michigan area, located alongside the Rabbit River.

Long before the European settlers arrived in America, a prehistoric mound building people, later called the Hopewell Indians, settled along rivers and streams and in valleys and forests of the midwest. They arrived around 100 B.C., and their culture existed until around 400 A.D., and then it disappeared. They were traders, hunters, and farmers. They liked the warmer climate of Ohio for raising crops and many of their settlements are found there today. They were also known as the mound builders. These mounds were used to bury important people and their artifacts. The greatest concentration of burial mounds is found near the town of Chillicothe, Ohio where the mounds are preserved in a U.S. National Park. The Hopewell name was given to their culture because a farmer in the Chillicothe area by that name had many burial mounds located on his farm there.


The Hopewells moved around over the years going north from Ohio and entering Michigan from the south and moving north along the lake shore. They also moved into the Grand River Valley, establishing burial mounds along the Grand River near Grandville. These mounds were later called the Norton Indian mounds. Some of these mounds were excavated by the Grand Rapids Museum as early as 1878. Many of their artifacts were recovered and destroyed there.

The burial mounds honored their chiefs when they died. The items buried with the bodies reveal information about their lives, their travels, and their culture. These items included many tools, weapons, jewelry made of copper, and pottery. The sub floor of these mounds were often lined with bark or logs. It is estimated that it took 200,000 man hours to complete a 30 foot high burial mound. The Hopewell mound in Hamilton is 20 feet high and 150 feet long.

In later years, the Ottawa tribe occupied the Hopewell territory in Allegan County and also parts of Ottawa County. They may have descended from some of the earlier Hopewells. The Ottawas remained in this area for a number of years after the treaty of 1836 was signed.

Pictured are some of the artifacts that Jason Walters collected while working on his Allegan and Ottawa farms.

Artifacts cannot speak, yet they tell us much about the lives of the Native American people who made and used them.

Photo Credit: Chantal Elise Photography  Chantal's webpage is at www.ChantalElise.com

Building roads through the dense forest was almost as necessary for the new settler as building his first log cabin. Roads were needed to bring in necessary supplies and to travel from place to place.


When the Klanderman family moved to Borculo in 1868 as the first settlers in the area, there were very few improved roads in the area. In fact in 1876, eight years later, there were only two improved roads leading to the Borculo Crossing. One road came from the south and the other from the West. There was no Ottawa County Road Commission at this time to build roads. When Olive Township was organized in 1857 one of the first elected officers was that of Highway commissioner. He had the power to raise road taxes and to contract the construction of local roads. Road building for the early settlers was a difficult task with no heavy equipment like bulldozers or road graders or even chainsaws to cut down the many trees. The lower areas often had to be filled with logs and then covered with dirt. This was called a Corduroy Road. The settlers did however have axes, crosscut saws, horse-drawn earth scrapers, and horse-drawn wagons to haul gravel. The farmers, who often worked on the roads in the winter months, were paid $1 a day or $2 a day if they brought their oxen or horses with wagons to haul gravel. Many farmers paid their property taxes by working on the township roads.

When my maternal grandfather, Martin Elzinga, purchased his farm on Tyler Street, there was only a wagon trail in front of his property.


Travel on the local roads became more of a problem with the coming of the automobile. The autos would more easily get stuck in the muddy ruts than a team of horses and a wagon.

My grandfather, Roelof Essenburg, bought a 1913 Model T Ford. In the winter months he would often park it in the garage until the roads dried out. He would jack up the car and put blocks under the axles to preserve the tires while it was stored.


The minister of the Borculo Christian Reformed Church, Rev. E. Krohne, bought a Model T Ford in 1916. One day as he was driving down the north slope of the Borculo hill on 96th Avenue, his front wheel got caught in some deep ruts in the muddy road. He lost control the car and it flipped over on top of him. He suffered a broken arm and four fractured ribs.

Lavern Luurtsema remembers traveling from his home located ¾ mile west of Borculo on Port Sheldon Dr. one afternoon in his Dad's Model A. As his father Gerrit approached a deeply rutted stretch of this road just west of Koop's store, he stepped on the gas and the car rocked back and forth from side to side with mud flying until they finally made it to Borculo.

Sim Vollink, who was following a distance behind with his peddle wagon that day, wasn't so lucky. His truck got stuck in the muddy stretch as the wheels sank down to the axles. Sim was returning to Vollink's Store located on Borculo's northeast corner, from his peddle wagon route west of Borculo bringing groceries to his customers who lived along their route. I'm sure the Borculo Garage had to pull out his truck with their wrecker.

In the spring of 1950, my Dad got a job as an enumerator taking the 1950 US Census. His assigned territory was the western half of Olive Township. Nearly every road in this are was still unpaved. Fortunately he still had his Model A Ford with its high clearance and got the job done on time visiting every home in his district.

In the early 1950's, Port Sheldon Street west of Borculo was always a muddy stretch of road when the frost came out of the ground. For years logs had been placed across some of the lower areas. Six inches of sand or gravel was then placed over the logs. The poor drainage and the high water table was the main cause of the road problem at this time.

In 1949 the Ottawa County Road Commission decided to correct the problem of the road. It needed a lot of fill dirt to raise the level of the road and put in drainage ditches on each side.  On March 16, 1949, the road commission acquired a sand pit on Blair Street northwest of Borculo to provide all the fill dirt needed. Soon a small lake developed. The small lake became a very nice place for the local kids to go swimming. Lavern Luurtsema and Don VandenBosch remember using this lake as they lived nearby.

The lake on Blair Street brings back memories of the building of the Borculo Community Center building in 1954. My father was one of the original members that raised funds and helped promote the building., It was built in a rather low area north of Borculo which required a lot of fill dirt around the footings. The committee found they could get free fill dirt from the Blair Street site which had piles of dirt left over from the original mining purpose.

The committee decided to set aside one evening for the hauling of dirt from Blair Street to the site of the new Community building. Farmers came out that night with tractors and wagons and also trucks to haul dirt. Others came with shovels. My father had just purchased an Allis Chalmers WD with a front end loader and he volunteered the tractor to do the loading. He told me he wanted me to operate the tractor and loader. There were so many people who showed up with shovels we didn't even need a dump truck. In one evening all he dirt needed was hauled to the site.

I also remember after the building was completed the second Borculo Community play was held there in 1956 moving there from the Bussis Implement building the previous year. The community building was used and enjoyed by the Borculo community for many years to come.

The WD tractor was also used and enjoyed on our farm, especially the front end manure loader. We used it until the engine finally died. We sold it in 2004, fifty years after we purchased it

                                        Borculo Community Play

                                                      “The Calamity Kids”

          Presented in 1955 in the Bussis Implement Building, Borculo, MI


(This story is contributed in 2018 by Alice (Zuverink) Stowie, one of the participants in the play.)

I have no idea who got the idea to have a play, probably our directors, Mrs. Henrietta Koop and Mrs. Beatrice Overweg. They must have picked out the play and got permission from the company that published it, as well as permission to practice at the School House, and then also got the Bussis Bros. to agree to let us use their building to present the play for three nights!

I remember getting a phone call asking me if I was interested in being in a play to be presented in Borculo. I said I would definitely enjoy doing that. We all met at the schoolhouse. It seemed the parts were already planned, because we just tried out for a part and if they approved of our performance and we wanted the part, it was ours. There were eleven of us and we started practicing already in January, once a week for quite awhile, but toward the end much more often.

The play was presented on May 17, 18, and 20, according to my photo book. The first night the place was filled up. We all got pretty nervous, but the directors calmed us down and most of us remembered or parts, when to go on stage, when to get off, etc.. There were a few mistakes, but we did better the next night. The play was definitely a very funny comedy and the audience enjoyed it, at least it appeared that way to us!

The Calamity Kids were twins, Micky and Midge Starr, (Glenn and Marilyn Geurink), being cared for by Uncle Hez Hoskins, (Bill DeWys) and Aunt Em, (Alice Zuverink). Also Brad Rivers, (Harvard VandenBosch), a college student, and Bonnie Blue, (Gladys Bussis), a hitch hiker, are being cared for by the Hoskins. Clara Clagg, (Alma Geurink), a gossipy spinster, also lives with them. The twins had an uncle Gideon Garvey, (Herschel Weaver), an aunt, Opal Ludlow, (Duetta Luurtsema) and her two teenagers, Lorraine Ludlow, (Gayle Bussis) and Elmer Ludlaw, (Lee Gebben).

These relatives were from the big city and they wanted to adopt the twins and make them their servants, each taking one. The twins did not want to be separated and were very leery of these rich relatives.

The Hoskins invited them all over for dinner and after dinner the decisions were to be made. Uncle Hez knew about the twins dilemma and encouraged the twins to put their wits together and come up with some tricks to play. This they did very well. Some very funny mean things happened and eventually the relatives decided they did not want the kids at all. They could stay with Uncle Hez and Aunt Em, which made them very happy. There were lots of funny scenes with Brad and Bonnie, always fighting and bickering, but then along comes Loraine, who thinks she is going to get Brad!

In the end Brad and Bonnie find out they really love each other and want to get married some day.

Clara Clagg kind of had her eye on Gideon Garvey, but he wanted nothing to do with her, a sworn bachelor.

I think we all had a very good time and enjoyed being in the play. It was a very good experience and we had lots of fun. Maybe sometimes our directors wondered what they had gotten themselves into, but most of the time they seemed to enjoy it too.

The following year I received another call asking me to be in another play, but I turned it down knowing I was going to be for too busy to take it on. I surely would have liked to. I do remember attending that play, but can't recall what it was all about.. As far as I know there was never another play done in Borculo.

In the early years Michigan and some neighboring states were covered with a huge glacier one mile thick which slowly moved across the land. Th glacier leveled hills and scraped out valleys. The landscape was flattened and river valleys widened from the power of the southward moving ice. Then, the glacier began to melt and the ice retreated northward. Around 12,000 years ago West Michigan and North America saw a warming trend that caused the retreat and the last of the glaciers. Around 10,000 years ago the temperature had risen enough for cone bearing trees and other vegetation to start growing. Around 8000 years ago deciduous trees and other plants began to grow. By 7000 years ago the North American climate and geography had pretty much evolved to what it is today. What the retreating glacier left us changed the nature of our state forever. The glacier deposited many low hills of clay, sand, and gravel, which blocked the outlet of melting water, forming our Great Lakes. Most of these deposits were ground up small pieces of rock, but sometimes a glacier would carry huge boulders from Canada and drop it in Michigan.

Pictured here is a huge rock lying along the bank of Rush Creek as the creek flows through my backyard in Georgetown Township. It measures about 8 feet x 12 feet x 14 feet. My daughter, Dr. Cheryl Essenburg Verbree, who is an adjunct professor in geology and soil science at Calvin College, is in the picture with my two grandsons, Peter and Joshua. She told me that during this glacial melting many of our streams and rivers were changed. The Grand River used to flow from the central part of Michigan through Grand Rapids and then through Hudsonville toward Zeeland before emptying into Lake Michigan. It became blocked by glacier deposits then switched course to empty at Grand Haven. The abandoned channel in Hudsonville filled in with organic material to form Tamarack swamp, the place where the main branch of Rush Creek starts. When this blockage took place Michigan water levels rose and many Ottawa County areas including Borculo where underwater. The lake reached as far as Blendon before retreating. The soils that formed from the sand deposits after this retreat are not that productive for corn but great for blueberries. The muck land was drained and used for growing celery and onions.

She also told me that Rush Creek would have been bigger and full of all kinds of fish that we do not see today. The Native American tribes would have seen more rainbow trout than just the one that was found on my property in the 2016 Rush Creek Watershed Management Plan study.

Cold water fish like trout were plentiful long ago. Since then the clearing of forests for farming and suburban development have warmed stream temperatures. Erosion, excessive sediment and nutrients and bacteria like e-coil now threaten the quality of smaller streams like Rush Creek, something that the management plan hopes to raise awareness about and get funding from the government to fix.

The Ottawa Indians lived in small villages often along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, many in Ottawa and Allegan counties with a large village near Holland Michigan. Many of the village Indians lived in semi-permanent housing consisting of wigwams built with poles and covered with bark. Others lived together in a long house made of logs or poles covered with bark. The rooms were separated by partitions of blankets between the family groups.

In the early spring many of the women of the village would plant corn and other crops on their land surrounding their homes. This was also a time when many of the natives collected maple sap from the maple wood lots in the area. They would boil it down to make maple sugar and would sell or trade it with local store keepers. In 1845 the Indians from Holland Village sold 15,000 lb of sugar cakes they had made that year. Most of the children from the village in Holland would move for the summer months to the Grand Traverse area in northern Michigan to go hunting and fishing up there. For their food supply the natives depended on venison, fish, turkey, wild rice, cornbread, nuts, and berries. They traded deer hides and other furs from trapping for guns, cloth, iron cooking pots, tobacco, and sometimes whiskey. They also sold cranberries which grew wild in bogs along the rivers and lakes.

Some Indian tribes made birch canoes for travel on the lakes and rivers and streams. Some of them used a canoe to harvest wild rice that grew in the water. One person would paddle the canoe while another person, usually a woman, would knock the rice into the canoe with a stick as they moved along until the canoe was filled with rice.

The Indians believed that the land on which they lived was for the good of all and should be shared by all. They believed there was no need for individual land ownership, The settlers moving into their territories from New England and from Europe had a different view. To accommodate the many settlers moving into these areas the United States government began making a series of treaties with the Indian tribes and their chiefs living there. In the future state of Michigan treaties were signed with the Ottawa tribe living in the western part of the state. They were called the Treaty of Chicago in 1821 and the Treaty of Washington in 1836. For agreeing to cede their hunting grounds to the federal government, they would receive cash payments for the next 20 years and also other benefits like lifetime fishing rights on the Great Lakes, schools for educating their children, and agricultural agents to teach them how to farm. After the Chiefs sign the treaties the land was then sold to settlers moving into the area. The Ottawa Indians would receive their payments in Grand Haven, Michigan for the next 20 years.

Later, in 1855, the Ottawa Indian tribe made their final treaty with the federal government, called the Treaty of Detroit. This treaty established reservations for all Ottawa Indians who did not wish to be removed from the state of Michigan. Reservations were to be set up for them in Mason and Oceana counties and also at Grand Traverse and Little Traverse Bay. This land was to be divided among the Indian families. Eighty acres were to be given to a head of a family and 40 acres for each single person over 21 years of age. Many Indians took up this offer and moved to the reservation and claimed their land. There were many others would never received the land they were promised. There was much fraud trickery and outright theft to get this land away from the Indians. The lumbermen just went in and cut down valuable timber, squatters who settled on their promised reservation land and later claimed it, and also many unscrupulous Indian agents and politicians who kept changing the terms of the treaty. Some of the Indians were not ready or willing to accept the changes that were forced on them and let others take advantage of their situation. This was another sad chapter in the lives of the Ottawa Indians as they struggled to find a place in American society.

Some of the Indians who lived in West Michigan did not leave the area after the treaties were signed. They could later be found scattered around Allegan and Ottawa counties on vacant government land. There were a few of these encampments in the Borculo area.

The history of Borculo begins with the arrival of the Jacob Klanderman family in 1868. The family immigrated from a 600 year old town in the Netherlands called Borculo. On May 5, 1868 they purchased 80 acres of vacant wooded land one half mile south of the Borculo Crossing. The boundaries of the farm were 96th Avenue on the east side and 100th Avenue on the west side. The south Boundary was Bingham Street and the top of the Borculo hill on the North. They were the first white settlers in Borculo.

The Klandermans cleared some land on their wooded property to build a log cabin for their first home. They also started clearing land to raise crops. They built a barn for the livestock. Mr. Klanderman selected some white pines on his property, cut them down, and hand hewn them into square beans with a broad axe. We later measured them in our barn and found some that were 42 feet long. These buildings were the first to be erected in Borculo. In the early years the town went by the name of Klanderstadt or Klandertown after the Klanderman family. It went by this name until 1882 when Borculo got a US Post Office. It was then decided to change the name to Borculo, the town in the Netherlands where the Klandermans lived. When the Klanderman family moved into their log cabin, they soon discovered that they already had some neighbors. They were Native Americans living in an encampment across the road south and east of the present Borculo Cemetery.

These Indian families living in their wigwams on the south slope of the 20-foot Borculo hill had decided to stay in this area. At this time most of the Native Americans of the Holland area had left for a northern Michigan reservation. These Indians still lived off of land hunting deer and gathering food. There was an abundance of deer at this time in Ottawa County. There was this account of deer hunting in November of 1864 in the Grand Haven newspaper; There were four Indians who spent 3 weeks hunting deer in Olive Township in an area called White Oak Ridge near the big marsh located there. During this time they killed 172 deer and one bear.

The Indians living southeast of Borculo would often go to Gerrit Klanderman's store and trade there. They especially liked to get tobacco there..

The following is an account of Gerrit Bos's memories of his great grandparents and their Indian neighbors writtenfor the Borculo Christian Reformed church's newsletter “The Messenger” in 1882.




EARLY CHURCH HISTORY
1865 TO 1883    

by
Gerrit Bos 1904-1985, Great Grandson of Jacobus Klanderman
As told to him by his mother and grandfather




My great grandfather and family were the first settlers of Borculo.  Jacobus Klanderman had a wife and four children.  Shortly after my great grandfather arrived, a few more families came to settle in Borculo; namely:  Berend Kuyers, Waleverd Broekhuis, Ten Cate, and Peter Lamer, who became my grandfather by marriage.  All the information on the early history of Borculo was given to me by my mother and also by my grandfather Peter Lamer.

     When these early settlers would go for their homes after worship, they quite often would sing Dutch Psalms (68 and 10).  There was a lot of wildlife at that time--wild turkey, deer, bear, and sometimes the Indians would be watching them from behind the trees.  My great grandmother was always deeply concerned about these Indians, first in regard to their spiritual welfare, but was unable to talk to them, as she could only speak Dutch.  But their son of 8 years could speak the Indian language, learning the language by playing with the Indian children.  Many a time she would send young Dick over to the Indian encampment with a hot pot of soup if one of the Indian children would be sick.  She always drilled in Dick that he must tell them about God and that He gave His son Jesus who died on the cross, arose again from the grave, and is now in heaven that whosoever would believe on Him shall never perish but have eternal life--Indians, Dutch, or any nationality.  These Indians would listen very carefully what the young lad would tell them.  Tears would come in my grandmother's eyes when she would see these Indians walk bare feet in the snow the early part of the winter.  But she did not have to worry, they could take care of themselves fairly well.  They kept quite warm in their wigwams.  My great grandmother, Mrs. Klanderman's house was a log cabin with an open fireplace and a dirt floor.  Many a time the log cabin was filled with aroma of wild game she was cooking.

     How these early pioneers longed for their own place of worship.  They had to wait 18 long years before a church was established.  They would meet in the different homes for their Sunday worship.  Sometimes when the weather was favorable, they would walk to Zeeland.  They could quicker walk than take the oxen.  But walking also had it's dangers.  The swamp south of Borculo had many rattle snakes, mosquitoes, and you had to be on the lookout for bears.  But when the first school house was built, they would meet there.

     As the Klanderman family got older, the two oldest girls left home and went to work in Grand Rapids.  They also got married there.  The two boys also got married.  When great grandma died, Dick took over the farm, and Jacobus, his father, lived in with him.  Gerrit, the eldest son, started a business adventure by having a grocery store for 11 years.  But God took him home at the age of 37 years, leaving a wife and four children.  One of the three girls was my mother.  Dick had a good business head on him.  He knew how to make money and hang on to it.  He retired when he was 35 years old.  Before that he had a hired man on a 40 acre farm.  The old Klanderman farm is the first farm place south of the cemetery, west side of the road.  Dick and his wife spent several years of his retirement living 1/4 mile east of Borculo and later moved to Zeeland.



Years later the encampments in Borculo showed the evidence of the Indian's presence there by the number of flint arrowheads and other artifacts found there.

Pictured is the original ticket office and waiting room of the interurban depot that was used at the Forest Grove Station. It was built in 1901. It measured 12 feet by 22 feet with a thirty inch overhang on the roof.

There was a waiting room for passengers on the left side of the building with seats around the sides of the room and with a potbelly stove in the center to heat the building when needed.  The other half of the building included the office of the station manager and a room for the freight packages that were brought in.

When the railroad closed 1926, the building was moved to the Vander Kolk farm one third of a mile west of 40th Ave. Today the interurban depot has been relocated to the church property of Search Light Ministries at 4020 22nd Ave., Jamestown, MI.

The Forest Grove Station was used by many Hudsonville folks during the Interurban Era of 1901 to 1926. My Aunt Gladys Elzinga would board this train at the Forest Grove Station to attend classes at Hope College in Holland during the mid 1920;s.

This is the Vriesland Interurban Station which is now preserved on the Dekker-Huis Museum property.