When these people arrived here they held their first worship service in a clearing in the woods as they had no church building.
Soon after Van Raalte arrived in the area, he began purchasing tracts of land to accommodate the large number of immigrants coming from the Netherlands who were willing to join him in America.
In the first years here, he purchased 12,000 acres of land in Ottawa and Allegan Counties surrounding the village of Holland, which would be the center of his new colony. Many tracts of land were still available from the U.S government at $1.25/acre. He also bought delinquent tax certificates and land warrants for much less than this per acre. He also purchased a few tracts of land from John Ball, a land dealer from Grand Rapids. John Ball had arrived there in 1836 and later owned 18,000 acres of timberland in Blendon Township that he purchased for the Blendon Lumber Company.
The most prized parcel of land that Van Raalte purchased that first year was a 261 acre tract located at the entrance of Black Lake into Lake Michigan. It was owned by a wealthy New England land speculator and Van Raalte had to pay $3.54/acre for it at $100 down and 6 years on the balance.
Seeing that many of the immigrants were poor and did not have funds to purchase land. Rev. Van Raalte would sell his land to them at $10 down and 7% interest on the balance. In his lifetime in Western Michigan, he purchased over 20,000 acres of land. Much of this land was developed into lots in the city of Holland and surrounding Black Lake. With all his land holdings, he was one of the richest men in Michigan when he died in 1876.
In spite of some criticism for his dual role in the colony and being the spiritual leader as minister and also as businessman and land dealer, he was highly esteemed for his leadership in developing the colony into a thriving city. He was also highly respected for his role in helping poor immigrants to own and establish productive farms of their own in the area.
As the number of immigrants increased, the most fertile land was settled first. Soon the colony expanded into small villages surrounding the Holland area. The village names and the years that a church was established are as follows: Zeeland 1847, Holland 1847, Vriesland 1847, Drenthe 1847, Overisel 1847, Graafschap 1847, North Holland 1852, Noordeloos 1856, Niekerk 1866, Zutphen 1880, Harderwyk 1882, and Borculo 1883. Some of the farmland near these villages was marginal and not yet desirable for raising crops. This included the poorly drained swampland the surrounded Borculo. This was on of the last areas developed for farming in Ottawa County.
An 1876 Ottawa County Plat Map of Olive Township shows a large tract of land that Van Raalte had purchased earlier but was still unclaimed 30 years later in the Borculo area. It was not until some years later that 2 drains were dug to drain the area: the Blendon and Olive Drain went north of Borculo and then west to connect with the Pigeon River was dug in 1891. The Bosch-Hulst Drain went south of Borculo and then west until it connected with the Macatawa River and Lake Michigan was dug in 1906.
There were 3 types of accommodations on a passenger ship. There were the first and second class cabins and the steerage area.
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 destinations, often to Western Michigan. The route they took from New York to West Michigan was often called "the immigrant route". This route used water as the principal means of transportation. From New Your, they took a river boat to Albany where they would take a canal boat on the Erie Canal for 363 miles to Buffalo, often pulled along the canal by horses. After arriving in Buffalo, they would again board a large ship on Lake Erie to Detroit, Michigan. From Detroit, they took the ship north on Lake Huron to the Straits of Mackinaw where they entered Lake Michigan. They traveled south until they arrived on the west side of Michigan at Grand Haven. There was no road through the wilderness to Holland so immigrants would take a river boat on the Grand River to Grandville and then go overland for the final stretch of the journey by way of the Dutch Road which took them west to the colony of Zeeland or Holland.
A description of the route along with a time frame is given in a summary of the Rev. Peter Moerdyki's life:
In 1849 the family emigrated to Michigan. Leaving their old home June 22, they sailed from Hellevoetsluis July 8, on the ship Leila, of Baltimore, with a large company of Hollanders, under the Rev. H.G. Klyn as leader. It was thirty-eight days before they landed in New York, having had the usual experience of storm and calm. After a trip up the Hudson, they boarded a canal boat, which brought them to Buffalo in nine days. A steamer then took them around the Lakes and ascending the Grand River to Grandville where they enjoyed the luxury of an ox-cart and a corduroy road to Zeeland, where they were to settle. The entire journey consumed more than two months, being completed Sept. 4.
I became interested in the history of this Dutch Road when I purchased a farm in 1965 at 4400 Port Sheldon Street northwest of Hudsonville. The owner of this farm told me that the Dutch Road went across the farm as the route from Holland to Grand Rapids as early as 1847. He stated that parts of the old road bed were still visible in some of the wooded areas that had never been cleared. When I walked on this old trail, I often wondered: "Who ere these people who traveled this route in the early days?" After researching its history, I wrote an article about it that was published in the August 10, 1976 issue of the Grand Valley Shoppers Guide.