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.
Traveling on an airplane for nine hours seemed like a long time to get to your destination but then I thought of some of the Dutch immigrants who sailed in 1847 in the steerage on sailboats that took 40 days to cross the ocean, followed by 9 days on the Erie Canal. They then still had another week on the Great Lakes before they arrived in Holland, Michigan.
After arriving at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, we rented a car and drove 40 miles to our destination, which was the small village of Hierden, where we had rooms reserved at the Essenburgh Castle. Hierden is a village of 2700 people, beautifully located along the Veluwemeer, with drifting sand, farmland, and forests. It is located 5 miles from the larger city of Harderwijk, founded in 1231.
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.
On Sunday morning we attended church services at the Netherlands Reformed Church in Hierden, one mile from the castle. The services were in the Dutch language. Sitting through this service jogged my memory back to the time when I was a young boy in Borculo, and the morning services at the Borculo Christian Reformed Church were still conducted in the Dutch language, up until 1946 when it changed to English.
After worshipping at the Hierden church that morning, the Pastor, Dr. M. van Leeuwen, gave me a list of names compiled by a member of the church, Gerrit Hop. The list included people from the Hierden village and from the church, who left for America in the 1860’s and 1870’s, which included Essenburg family members who left for America. Most of the people during this period headed to Holland, Michigan and its surrounding colony towns. It included names of families like Weenum and Jacobson, who along with the Essenburgs settled in Borculo, and the Hop and Brandsen families who settled a little further west of Borculo. The emigration had quite an impact on the village of Hierden as they lost 300 of their 900 members.
Much of the land around the Hierden area was owned by the Sandburg family who also owed the Essenburgh Castle. Wages for those who worked on these farms was only thirty-five cents a day. Others rented small parcels from the large land owners, as tenants. The Essenburgs, like most immigrants from Hierden, left the Netherlands for economic reasons.
Our first destination on Monday was the town of Borculo, the Netherlands. Borculo is a beautiful town of 10,000 people, with brick buildings and paved brick streets and tile roofs reminding us of an historic past. Borculo is located in the Province of Gelderland on the eastern side of the Netherlands. It was the home of the Klanderman family before they immigrated to the U.S. and became the first settlers in Borculo, Michigan in 1868. Compared to Borculo Michigan, this town is very old. The name Borculo is first recorded in a land transaction whereby Otto I of Germany (Holy Roman Emperor) obtained rights to the territory on August 29, 959.
The area was ruled by a succession of individuals with the title of Lord of Borculo. The first Lord of Borculo was a certain Rotholfus de Burclo (1151-1163).
There were endless quarrels and wars between the bishops of Munster, Germany and the dukes of Zutphen, Netherlands over the right to rule this territory. The town finally gained city rights in the year 1375 and celebrated its six-hundredth anniversary as a town in 1975.
Mr. Kappe grew up in the small town of Staphorst, and knows a lot about the Kooiker family, who are the ancestors of my wife Carol. Many branches of the Kooikers still live in Staphorst, and we were given the address of a Kooiker relative’s farm to visit the next day.
To be continued . . .