Three Dutch colonies began in the Chicago area in the 1840s.  In 1846 and 1847 several dozen families from the province of Zuid Holland developed the farming colony of South Holland 20 miles south of the city (see Figure 1).  Then, in 1849 several dozen families from the province of Noord Holland opened another farming colony in Roseland about 8 miles closer in, but still 20 miles from the city center.  The third settlement was on the West Side in the heart of the city that became the Groninger Hoek (corner) after 1865.  The South Holland and Roseland colonies are well known, but not the Groninger Hoek, which was called after 1920 the "Old West Side."[1] Yet, as Amry Vanden Bosch stated in his book, The Dutch Communities of Chicago (1927), the diverse westsiders are "in almost every respect the most interesting of them all."[2] 

     The West Side settlement did not begin with the group migration of a dominie and his congregation, such as the Reverend Willem Coenraad Wust, who led the group to South Holland.  It even lacked a dominant lay leader such as "Meester" Pieter De Jong in Roseland, although Lucas Van Der Belt (Bilt) and his son Hiram somewhat played that role on the West Side.[3]  The city Dutch were a polyglot population from all strata of Dutch society and from all parts of the Netherlands.  They were also religiously diverse, and included Calvinists, Catholics, Lutherans, Unitarians, liberal Socialists, Jews, and the nominally churched.

     From such unpromising beginnings, the West Side Reformed immigrants evolved into a socially homogeneous, religiously orthodox, and economically prosperous community that has continued for more than 125 years.  Henry Stob, who grew up in the Groninger Hoek in the twenties, recalls that it was a "tightly-knit colony of Netherlanders who spoke Dutch at home, worked hard, and harbored intense loyalties for their Dutch churches."[4]  In Vanden Bosch's mixed metaphor, the colony at the time was a "handful of Hollanders in a sea of Jews."[5] 

This pithy statement reminds us that the westsiders, unlike the South Holland and Roseland colonies, lived as a small minority interspersed among other immigrant peoples.  But while they shared their neighborhoods and rubbed elbows on the job with "outsiders," culturally and religiously they lived their lives from the cradle to the grave within the cocoon of their families, churches, Christian schools, social organizations, and Dutch shopkeepers and professionals.

     This paper describes the origin and development of the West Side settlement, noting particularly the diverse beginnings and then the emergence of the Groninger Hoek in the years after the Civil War.  Out of cultural diversity came unity, out of spiritual indifference came Calvinist orthodoxy and intense loyalty to the Reformed churches, and out of poverty came middle class respectability and even prosperity for some.  But general prosperity took several generations.  The 1900 census, for example, reveals that only 15 percent of Dutch families owned their own homes.  Economic prosperity for most did not come until after the First World War.

 

Origins

     The first Hollander to live in Chicago is unknown but Dutch settlers drifted into the "Windy City" in ones and twos as early as 1839, only two years after the city's founding.[6]  The first city directory, published in 1839, listed Leonard Falch (Valk), a soap maker and chandler on La Salle Street, who is identified in the 1850 federal population census as Dutch-born.  (The 1850 census was the first to record the nationality or state of birth of all inhabitants.)  Falch and his Dutch-born wife had four children, the first (Charles) was born in Chicago in 1840.  Falch was worth $10,000 in 1850 and was the wealthiest Hollander in Illinois.  Falch was still a soap maker in the 1860s, living near the north city limits at Hubbard and Fullerton Streets.[7]  Leonard Falch and his wife was likely the first Dutch family in Chicago and their son Charles was the first Dutch child born in the city.

     By 1850, the federal census enumerator registered one hundred Dutch-born, including at least five families who definitely arrived in Chicago in 1847, when the city was barely ten years old.  None were from the province of Groningen.  These included Henry Pelgrim, Herman Van Zwol, R. G. Kroes, Lucas Van der Belt, and Ale Steginga (Stegenga).[8]  Van Zwol was a carpenter and Kroes a blacksmith; both entered the same trades in Chicago.  These two families lived north of the Chicago River between La Salle and Wolcott (now State) Streets. Van der Belt and Steginga, both bargemen in the Netherlands, were making shingles in Chicago, along with their unmarried sons.  Pelgrim, who had been a merchant, was also a shinglemaker.  Van der Belt lived in a houseboat moored on the River at Canal Street.  Steginga and Pelgrim lived west of the River north of Randolph Street near the lumber yards and forest products factories that lined the River.  All of these "first families" had been members of the national Hervormde (Reformed) Church, except Kroes who was a member of the Seceder Church that had begun in 1834 in a schism.  Isolated as they were in Chicago from a Reformed Church, in 1848 they organized an informal group and began worship services with lay leaders. In 1852 they took the next step in founding a Reformed Church. Seven men, including Kroes, Van Der Belt, and Van Zwol, formed a steering committee that asked the Reverend Albertus Christian Van Raalte, leader of the Holland (Michigan) colony, to come and formally organize their nucleus as part of the Reformed Church in America.  He did so early the next year.  Kroes opened his home for the place of worship until the congregation rented an empty store at Randolph and DesPlaines Streets in 1853.[9]  This choice of location indicates that the center of the small Dutch Reformed community in the early years was immediately west of the city center.[10]

     That the Reformed immigrants started holding worship services shortly after their arrival, and that without the benefit of clergy, belies the contention of the noted Dutch-American historian Henry Lucas that the West Side Dutch "manifested little interest in religion and church life" and that they were "different from the majority of Dutch immigrants" elsewhere.[11] 

     Other early Dutch arrivals in 1848 and 1849 were Maas P. Vander Kooi, a dairyman from Tietjerksteradeel, Friesland, who painted houses in Chicago and also served as the first treasurer of First Reformed Church; William Goosen, a house painter from Goes, Zeeland, who followed the same trade in Chicago; Isaac Vanthof, a tailor from Brouwershaven, Zeeland, who also tailored in Chicago; Gosse Vierstra, a ship carpenter's hired hand from IJlst, Friesland, who advanced to become a ship carpenter; Adam Ooms, a village policeman from Krimpen a/d Yssel, Zuid Holland, who had to accept a common laborer's job in Chicago; and Jannis Schaap a workman from Stad Oostburg, Zeeland.  All these emigrated with wives and children.

     Other pre-1850 immigrants (who I can not yet trace to their communities of origin) were J. De Glopper, a cabinet maker; Marion De Jong, a farmer; Henry Muller, a laborer; Isaac Schelling, a mechanic; William Carson, a grocer; and five unmarried hired hands: Philip Van Nieuland (another of the founding seven of First Reformed), Henry Handkolk; Isaac Schryter; and the brothers Harry and John Roelofs.  Finally, there was a Mr. Prins (or Primus) whose wife and two oldest children died of cholera in Chicago, leaving the widower with three young children.

     In the decade of the 1850s the Dutch population of Chicago increased four-fold from 100 to 400.[12]  The middle years of the decade saw the greatest influx, including the first known families from Groningen who arrived in 1853.  These were Nicholas (or Harm) Ronda, with his wife and daughter, and his younger brother Henry and his wife, both farm laborers from Ulrum.  The next year, 1854, three more Groningen families arrived, plus at least nine families from other provinces.[13]  The 1854 arrivals from Groningen were Cornelius Bos of Ulrum, and Peter Kooi of Uithuizermeeden; both blacksmiths, and John Evenhouse (Evenhuis) from Uithuizen, a shoemaker.  All practiced the same trades in Chicago.  These three are family names familiar to any westsider.  Thus, 1854 was the premier year for the Chicago settlement prior to the Civil War, especially for the nascent Groninger Hoek.  But the number of Groningers remained few.  Most immigrants in the middle fifties came from the provinces of Zeeland, Friesland, Zuid Holland, Noord Holland, Gelderland, and Utrecht.[14] 

     Groningers also had no hand in the founding of the First Reformed Church of Chicago.  When the seven-person committee that founded the congregation met in late 1852 and formally requested Classis Holland to help them organize a church, not a single Groninger had yet settled in Chicago.[15]  But this was soon to change.  Although the full list of charter members of First Reformed is unknown, it is likely that the four Groninger families--Ronda, Bos, Kooi, and Evenhouse--joined the congregation as soon as they arrived in 1853 and 1854.  They were the first of many.  Indeed, by the 1870s and 1880s, Groningers came to dominate the Reformed churches of Chicago.

    

Chicago, the "lightning city"

     The infant city that received these newcomers was still very primitive but it was on the verge of a massive growth spurt.  The English visitor, John Lewis Payton, who visited the city in 1848 described it in dismal terms:

     The city is situated on both sides of the Chicago river, a sluggish, slimy stream, too lazy to clean itself, and on    both sides of its north and south branches, upon a level    piece of ground, half dry and half wet, resembling a salt   marsh, and containing a population of 20,000.  There was no pavement, no macadamized streets, no drainage, and the three thousand houses in which the people lived were almost       entirely small timber buildings, painted white, and this    white much defaced by mud. . . .  To render the streets and sidewalks passable, they were covered with deal boards from house to house, the boards resting upon cross sills of heavy timber.  This kind of track is called "the plank road." Under these planks the water was standing on the surface over three-fourths of the city, and as the sewers from the houses were emptied under them, a frightful odor was emitted in summer, causing fevers and other diseases, foreign to the climate. . . .[16]

Not only was the city unhealthy, its highways were impassible and there was not a single mile of railroad track.

     Nevertheless, said Payton, "a kind of restless activity prevailed which I had seen no where else in the west except in Cincinnati. . . ."  Within six years, Chicago had become the hub of the nation's transportation systems by water and rail; it was also a center of meatpacking, grain elevators, and farm implement factories such as the McCormick Reaper works.  In 1850, Chicago already had 30,000 inhabitants, half foreign-born, primarily Irish and Germans.  By 1870 the population had grown ten-fold to 300,000 and more than half of the increase was foreign-born.

     Streets, such as State Street, extended up to 8 miles long, traversed by horse-drawn street cars in all directions.  In one generation, Chicago passed from Indian territory to large metropolis.  One foreign visitor called it "the lightning city."  Another reported: it seems that "a great part of the west side of the city [had been] heaved out of the void by a benevolent earthquake."  Chicago's location made it the market of the Midwest and the jumping off point for immigrants from Europe and the East Coast.  By 1856, ten trunk rail lines ran into Chicago, with 58 passenger and 38 freight trains arriving daily.[17] 

     Chicago harbor also became a vital place that received 300 ships daily by the 1860s, carrying lumber from northern Wisconsin and Michigan, iron ore from Lake Superior, and manufactured goods from the East.  Timber vessels choked the harbor and lumber yards extended for miles along the South branches of the Chicago River from Halsted to Western Avenues.  In 1867, 50 million pine boards were sold, and the total of all wood sales was 1.5 billion feet.

     Chicago's seventeen grain elevators in 1870 bulged with 60 million bushels of grain.  As early as 1856, some of the wheat went directly to England by ship via the Mississippi River.  Already in 1865 the Union Stockyards on the southwest side sprawled over 355 acres (one-half of a square mile) and soon it became the slaughter capital of the world.  On the North Branch of the River in the 1860s stood the McCormick Reaper and Mower Works and the steel works of the North Chicago Rolling Mills.[18]

     Chicago's three fashionable neighborhoods in the 1860s and 1870s were south along Indiana, Prairie, Calumet, and South Park

Avenues around 22nd Street, west along Washington Boulevard around Union Park and Ashland Boulevard between Monroe and Harrison Streets, and along north La Salle and Dearborn Streets.

     While the wealthy lived along the avenues and boulevards, "workers districts" consisted of huddled, pine cottages in poor neighborhoods: west of Wells Street on the north side, west of Ashland from Kinzie to Harrison on the west side, and west of State Street on the south side.  The West Side population quadrupled between 1863 and 1873, thanks in part to new Dutch arrivals after the Civil War.  In the workers districts there were often two houses per lot--one facing the street and one on the alley.  In contrast, the avenues had spacious lots.[19] 

     The Chicago fire of 1871 devastated the city center and north coast from Halsted Street to the Lake, because the winds were from the southwest (see Figure 2).  But the Dutch westsiders were spared.  Only two Dutch Reformed families suffered losses and perhaps twenty other Dutch families were burned out, according to Reverend Bernardus De Bey, pastor of the First Reformed Church at the time.  Rebuilding the city, said De Bey in a letter to the homeland, created all the more job opportunities for unskilled laborers who knew how to work.[20]  After the fire, Chicago became a modern metropolis--with modest skyscrapers, railroad stations, and cable cars running in all directions into new subdivisions, as Chicago became an "exploding metropolis." 

     But the West Side expanded outward at the slowest rate.  It was always the most congested area, with the highest proportion of immigrants, the least attractive housing, and the slowest and least developed public transportation.  The West Side was the quintessential working class district.[21]  This was where the Dutch community formed and matured.

 

Geographic Dispersion

     The federal manuscript censuses of Chicago from 1850 to 1880 show that the Dutch initially settled throughout the city but over time they were concentrated more and more on the West Side where the Reformed churches were located.  In 1850 two-thirds lived west of the Chicago River and the rest were scattered east of it, mostly north of the city center.  Of those west of the River, half lived north of Randolph Street (Ward 6) and half south of it (Ward 5).  See Figure 3.  By 1860 the southwest side (old Ward 5 divided into Wards 5 and 10) contained over half (53 percent) of all the city's Hollanders (see Figure 4).  Most lived in the area bounded by Harrison Street on the north, 12th Street (later Roosevelt Road) on the south, the South Branch of the Chicago River on the east, and Loomis Street on the west.  The First Reformed Church, which was erected on South DesPlaines Street between Polk and Harrison in 1856, anchored the community. Another one-fifth of the Dutch lived on the northwest side and the remaining quarter were again scattered east of the River and north and south of the city center.

     The 1870 Chicago census, which counted 2,095 Dutch-born and their native-born children, reveals a much greater concentration on the West Side where the Reformed Dutch resided  (old Ward 5 divided into Wards 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13).  See Figure 5.  Over 60 percent of Chicago's Hollanders lived west of the River and south of Lake Street; only 20 percent were north of Lake Street.  Two small areas were nuclei:  one was the same region as in 1860 between Harrison and 12th Streets to Loomis (Ward 9) with 403 Dutch (20 percent); and the other was a vast newly opened region south of 16th Street to the Illinois-Michigan Canal and west to Crawford Avenue (Ward 7) with 304 Dutch (15 percent).  The area in between, from 12th to 16th Streets (Ward 8), which by the 1880s was the center of the Reformed settlement, had only 194 Dutch (9 percent).  West of Loomis between 12th and Lake Street (Wards 12 and 13) had another 259 (12 percent).

     Apart from the westside wards, which were heavily Reformed, Dutch Jews lived in the city center and immediately west of the River (Wards 10 and 11).  In the central business district they owned second-hand clothing stores and pawnshops on South Wells Street, several cigar shops on West Washington, and tailor shops on West Randolph.  Henry S. Haas, a retail clothing merchant located at 718 S. Wabash Avenue, owned $37,000 worth of property in 1870 and was by far the wealthiest Hollander in Chicago.  About 4 percent of the Dutch in Chicago were Jews, which was twice the percentage of Jews in the Netherlands. 

     Dutch Catholics were under-represented in Chicago.  They comprised about 10 percent of the Dutch, whereas in the Netherlands, Catholics numbered over 36 percent of the population.  Chicago's Dutch Catholics lived mostly north of the River (Wards 16-20) where they affiliated with St. Michael's German Catholic Church of the Holy Redeemer located in the Lincoln Park area on Hurlburt and Linden Streets, which was served briefly by a Dutch priest, Father Frederick Van Emstede.[22]

     Five other Dutch priests lived on the West Side, three in a Jesuit community, the Church of the Holy Family, located among the Reformed Dutch on West 12th at May Street, but few Dutch Catholics lived in that area.  One of the priests was Arnold Damen, the most famous of the Dutch Jesuits in America.  Damen Avenue and Damen Bridge were named in honor of Father Damen's pioneering work in developing the city.[23]  St. Francis Assissium Church on West 12th Street at Newberry Avenue also had two Dutch priests, Ferdinand Kalvelage and Bernard Baak, and a few Dutch Catholics lived in that locale east of Halsted Street.  The largest Dutch Catholic parish in Chicago, St. Willibrord's Parish, took shape in the 1890s in Kensington on the far south side.  This 200 family parish remained predominantly Dutch until the 1950s at least.[24] 

 

 Reformed Congregations

     There were two Reformed congregations on the West Side by 1870--First Reformed (number 3 on Figure 6), which worshipped in a new frame building erected in 1869 on the southwest corner of Harrison and May Streets, a mile west of their original building, and First Christian Reformed (number 5 on Figure 6), which was founded in 1867 by fifteen families (about 75 souls) who seceded from First Reformed.  It was located a short half mile away on Gurley Street at Miller, two blocks west of Halsted Street.  This location was midway between the original and second sites of First Reformed.  Most of the Christian Reformed church members were from the province of Groningen, according to the Reverend De Bey.[25]         

     The Christian Reformed Church struggled through frequent vacancies in the parsonage in the first decade, but after eight years, by 1875, the congregation had 427 souls.  The major growth spurt occurred in the 1880s when mass emigration from the northern Netherlands brought many Christian Seceder (Christelijk Gereformeerde) families to Chicago.  Then the congregation quickly outgrew its 40 by 60 foot sanctuary on Gurley Street and in 1883 they relocated one and a half-miles south and west in a spacious building purchased from the Presbyterians located on West 14th Street between Troop and Loomis Streets.  The new church building became known affectionately as "The Old Fourteenth Street Church" and it served the congregation until 1923.  Some members who lived north of Chicago Avenue tried to convince the congregation to relocate around Erie Street on the near northwest side but they failed.[26]  No Reformed church was ever planted in that area.

     Meanwhile First Reformed flourished under the capable leadership of Reverend Bernardus De Bey who served the congregation for 23 years from 1868 to 1891.[27]  In response to a "call" from First Reformed, De Bey emigrated in the summer of 1868 from his pastorate of the Christian Seceder Church at Middelstum, Groningen.  The previous year two dozen Middelstum families had emigrated in the midst of a famine in the northern Netherlands due to crop failure, more than half coming to Chicago.  The next year they called their beloved pastor to follow.  De Bey accepted and another 17 families joined him in the move.  Several dozen more families followed in the next five years.

     De Bey had pastored the Middelstum congregation for 22 years. He was a strong person mentally and physically, with great leadership abilities and vision.  Critics accused him of behaving like a pope, but his Middelstum congregation grew by leaps and bounds under his "pious and practical" direction, until it numbered almost one-third of the population of the town. Altogether, nearly 20 percent of the Middelstum congregation emigrated, with more than half coming to Chicago.[28]

     De Bey was a wealthy man and his parsonage became the headquarters for the resettlement of Dutch immigrants, some of whom he provided with small business loans.[29]  For twenty years De Bey also wrote a series of letters for the Provinciale Groninger Courant, the major newspaper of the province, in which he urged those with "an iron will and a pair of good hands" to come to Chicago where laborers were urgently needed, especially after the Chicago Fire of 1871.[30]  Those who work with their heads--clerks, bookkeepers, small merchants, teachers, and gentlemen--should stay at home, De Bey warned.  "Our new Hollanders are cutters of wood and drawers of water. They perform the roughest and heaviest labors."[31]  Only farm hands, day laborers, craftsmen, and maids need apply.  De Bey's letter of June 1870 catches the flavor:

     Those who belong in America are those who understand from the beginning that they are just like a tree planted in rich soil; first they have to live through a life struggle and also have the desire to do so.  The ones who can and want to work and do not hesitate to take on anything, be it unusual or strange, or of little attraction, will succeed very well here.  Later they have the opportunity and capability to improve themselves after they have learned the language, customs, and have obtained some financial reserves.  Many, even hundreds, who were impoverished when they arrived here would not like to change their situation with the well-to-do farmers in the Netherlands.  This does not happen, however, in two or three years.[32] 

De Bey thus became the most influential link between the Old and New World, and his America letters left little doubt that Groninger farm laborers would greatly benefit by immigrating.

     Needless to say, the Groninger Hoek and the Reformed Churches grew by leaps and bounds with such effective appeals from a trusted native who had himself worked as a farm laborer before entering the ministry later in life.  There were 100 Groningen families in Chicago in 1869.  First Reformed could seat 500 and it was overcrowded, so a new church was built with twice the seating.  In 1877 alone, there were 120 confessions of faith. By 1878 the congregation had 400 communicant members and  perhaps 1000 souls.[33]

     When De Bey retired in 1891 the church was so overcrowded and the neighborhood had become so industrialized that they decided to relocate two miles southwest, to a vacant site at 1533 West Hastings Street just east of Ashland Avenue, barely two blocks from the First Christian Reformed Church. De Bey was a wealthy man and his parsonage became the headquarters for the resettlement of Dutch immigrants, some of whom he provided with small business loans.[34]

     For twenty years De Bey also wrote a series of letters for the Provinciale Groninger Courant, the major newspaper of the province, in which he urged those with "an iron will and a pair of good hands" to come to Chicago where laborers were urgently needed, especially after the Chicago Fire of 1871.[35]  Those who work with their heads--clerks, bookkeepers, small merchants, teachers, and gentlemen--should stay at home, De Bey warned.  "Our new Hollanders are cutters of wood and drawers of water. They perform the roughest and heaviest labors."[36]  Only farm hands, day laborers, craftsmen, and maids need apply.

     De Bey's letter of June, 1870, catches the flavor:

      Those who belong in America are those who understand from the beginning that they are just like a tree planted in rich soil; first they have to live through a life struggle and also have the desire to do so.  The ones who can and want to work and do not hesitate to take on anything, be it unusual or strange, or of little attraction, will succeed very well here.  Later they have the opportunity and capability to improve themselves after they have learned the language, customs, and have obtained some financial reserves.  Many, even hundreds, who were impoverished when they arrived here would not like to change their situation with the well-to-do farmers in the Netherlands.  This does not happen, however, in two or three years.[37] 

De Bey thus became the most influential link between the Old and New World, and his America letters left little doubt that Groninger farm laborers would greatly benefit by immigrating.

      Needless to say, the Groninger Hoek and the Reformed Churches grew by leaps and bounds with such effective appeals from a trusted native who had himself worked as a farm laborer before entering the ministry later in life.  There were 100 Groningen families in Chicago in 1869.  First Reformed could seat 500 and it was overcrowded, so a new church was built with twice the seating.  In 1877 alone, there were 120 confessions of faith.

      By 1878 the congregation had 400 communicant members and perhaps 1000 souls.[38]  When De Bey retired in 1891 the church was so overcrowded and the neighborhood had become so industrialized that they decided to relocate two miles southwest, to a vacant site at 1533 West Hastings Street just east of Ashland Avenue, barely two blocks from the First Christian Reformed Church.

      Thus, the heart of the Groninger Hoek by the 1890s was at Ashland Avenue and 14th Street, and this remained the hub until the 1940s.  Gradually, the more affluent and upwardly mobile moved into new neighborhoods--Englewood in the 1880s, Douglas Park in the 1890s, Lawndale after 1900.  In the 1920s, the Old West Siders moved into the near western suburbs of Cicero, Berwyn, and Oak Park, and after World War Two they continued moving out to the far western suburbs, to Western Springs, Bellwood, and Maywood in the 1940s and 1950s, and in the 1960s and 1970s to Elmhurst, Lombard, and Wheaton.

      Always they were escaping from the press of newer ethnic groups--Italians, Greeks, Jews, Slovaks, Bohemians, and after World War Two, blacks.  "Westward Ho!" was the motto of Chicago's Groningers until they had left the city entirely for the upscale suburbs.  Each generation went through the turmoil of relocating the community--selling their homes, churches, schools, and shops, moving 3 to 6 miles westward, and rebuilding in a newly-opened neighborhood.  The Dutch shopkeepers, merchants, morticians, lawyers, doctors, and dentists followed their customers and clients. 

      Other Groningers, including new immigrants, who wanted to continue farming, opened vegetable farms beyond the suburban limits, moving outward as the city encroached.  Englewood, 8 miles south of the West Side, was the first Groninger farm settlement in the 1880s.  Summit (Archer Avenue), Bellwood and Maywood followed in the 1890s and DesPlaines (30 miles distant from the Chicago Center) in the 1920s.  Whether within the city or just beyond its borders, the Dutch Calvinists clustered around their churches and Christian day schools.  They could virtually choose the way of life they preferred--urban, suburban, or rural--without jeopardizing their ethno-religious solidarity.  In this way they maintained their Dutch identity for five generations and more.

 

Work and Wealth

      Novelist Peter De Vries in The Blood of the Lamb, his renowned autobiographical novel about growing up Dutch in Chicago in the 1920s, recites this street rhyme:

      "Oh, the Irish and the Dutch

      Don't amount to very much."[39]

      The census manuscripts provide a factual picture of the economic status of the Dutch in Chicago.  Unlike most immigrant groups, they did not begin at the bottom of the job market.  In 1850, almost 40 percent (10) of the Dutch breadwinners were skilled craftsmen (carpenters, cabinetmakers, blacksmith, etc.), and one, William Carson, was the first Dutch grocer in the city. Another 30 percent (8) were wooden shingle makers, a semi-skilled job that offered ready work in the lumber industry of Chicago.  Only 20 percent (6) were laborers and hands.  Eight young women, ages 12 to 22, were boarding out as maids, which was a common way to augment the family's income until marriage.  Only three families reported owning property, a farmer and a shingle maker each owned $500 worth, and the chandler, Leonard Falch, Chicago's first known Dutch settler, owned $10,000 in real estate.  Wages in Chicago at the time ranged from 75 cents a day for unskilled labor to $2.00 a day for skilled craftsmen.

      By 1860 the Dutch had considerably improved their status.  Three-fourths of all households had reportable wealth ($50 or more) and the average surpassed $500 per household.  Even most of the fathers who were laborers reported owning property, one had $2,000.  The actual tasks of these laborers is not indicated, but it did not include teamstering.  Only three Dutch were so employed in 1860.  The general teamsters and garbage collectors (or akki-pieuws, as scavengers were humorously called), came later.[40]  Craftsmen comprised nearly one-half of the Dutch workforce, led by carpenters (15) and painters (8).  Laborers and other semiskilled jobs included another third of the workforce.  Only one shinglemaker continued in that task since 1850.  The others had left the city, died, and shifted to other jobs.

      White collar positions were held by 20 percent, such as shopkeepers, dealers and brokers, clerks, police and firemen, a physician, and a ship captain.  One of these pencil pushers was Henry Hospers, 30 years old, a son of Jan Hospers of the Pella, Iowa Dutch colony who was surveying in Chicago.  Henry Hospers became a prime mover in the Orange City colony in northwestern Iowa a decade later.  Two other notables were Albert Malefyt and Theodore G. Kimman, both master carriage builders, who with a third partner, John D. Doyle, owned and operated a carriage factory at West Madison and Green Streets.  Malefyt was worth $1,200 and Kimman $1,000 in 1860.  Most of the Reformed immigrants were carpenters, painters, masons, and a few laborers.      The Civil War era brought a revolutionary change to the Dutch community.  The Dutch profited from the economic build up of the war effort, along with the economy of the city generally.  The total value of the real and personal property of the Chicago

Dutch in 1870 surpassed $500,000, and the average property per household had doubled in ten years to $1,013 (from $530 in 1860).

      DeBey slightly exaggerated when he reported that "many own a house or will soon own one," but he correctly stated that most "earn a good living."[41]  In addition, hundreds of new immigrants arrived from the Netherlands as soon as the war ended in the spring of 1865.  By 1870 Chicago's Dutch population had jumped five-fold over 1860 (from 400 to 2,095).

      Most of the newcomers were farm laborers from northern Groningen who joined the ranks of the city's unskilled workers.

Of the 655 Dutch males in the labor force in 1870, one-third were day laborers, the same proportion as in 1860.  This included 19 teamsters and drivers, which type of work was destined to become the road to economic success for the Chicago Groningers, although we only catch a faint glimpse of this in 1870.  Laborers earned $1.50 to $2.00 a day or $36 to $48 a month.[42]

      As in 1860 skilled craftsmen--carpenters, house painters, masons and bricklayers, and building contractors--comprised the largest group of Dutch workers.  Such tradesmen numbered 39 percent, down 8 points from 1860.  But white collar workers, especially clerks, dealers, and retailers of all kinds, had increased from 19 to 24 percent.  The Dutch were clearly upgrading themselves.  Only 10 Dutch (plus 5 in the suburbs) were farming, market gardening, raising flowers, and dairying.

      By necessity or choice, the Chicago Hollanders exchanged Dutch dirt under their fingernails for Chicago soot, grime, and ash.  But the trend toward teamstering reveals a love for horses and the smell of manure that enabled the Dutch to bring a bit of the farm to the city.  The occupational data reveal another Dutch characteristic--the desire to be "one's own boss."  Only 35 persons (5 percent) were working in factories, foundries, mills, and the like.  Approximately one half of the Dutch male workforce in 1870 was self-employed.

      Another Dutch adage was that a "woman's place was in the home."  In 1870 when census marshals for the first time were required to report the occupation of all persons in the workforce, including females, no Dutch wives were in the workforce, except for two widows, one a washerwoman and the other a boarding house operator.  But 82 unmarried young women were working full-time.  Three-fourths were boarding out as servant girls, 15 were seamstresses and dressmakers, one was a professional singer, one was peddling perfume ("Avon calling"?), one was a store clerk, another a hairdresser, and one worked in a factory stripping tobacco.  The pattern, of course, was to leave the workforce when they married.

 

Intermarriage

      While attending Chicago Christian High School, Peter De Vries in his autobiography tells of seriously dating an Italian girl, but finally he broke the relationship.  Why?  "Religious reasons," he says. "Our faith doesn't allow us to intermarry." [43]  De Vries is correct.  Among the Reformed emigrants in Chicago, the 1870 census reveals little intermarriage, but a trend in this direction was developing among the second generation.  Of 114 first-generation Reformed couples in Chicago in 1870 (which includes all whose origins were traced back to the Netherlands), all had Dutch-born and presumably Reformed spouses.  But among Dutch-born children and young people who married in America, 6 out of 44 (13.6 percent) had married non-Dutch spouses.

      All who "outmarried" were young men, not women.  The nativity of the 6 wives were Prussian (2), Irish (1), Scotch (1), New Jersey (1), and Vermont (1).  The New Jersey woman probably had Dutch parents in the Paterson area since her husband had met and married her there and the couple had two children there before moving to Chicago in 1868 or 1869.  Thus, only 5 of the 44 or 11.4 percent had intermarried.  Nevertheless, the upward trend in outmarrying is already evident within the first 20 years.  Studies of later census will likely show that this trend continued.

      The contrast is striking between the Reformed Dutch and other Dutch in Chicago.  In 1870, of 288 first-generation Dutch couples (excluding the Reformed) 78 percent were married to Dutch-born spouses, compared to 100 percent among the Reformed.  Among the children of non-Reformed Dutch is where the Americanization process is really evident.  Of 122 couples, only 25 percent had Dutch spouses.  Three-quarters had outmarried.  Of the mixed marriages, Dutch men married non-Dutch wives twice as often as Dutch women married non-Dutch husbands.  Which nationalities did they select?  Sixty percent were German-born, mainly Prussians, 14 percent were U.S. born, 7 percent English or Scottish, 6 percent Belgian, and the remaining 15 percent were scattered among 12 European nationalities from Ireland to Italy, Sweden to France. 

      The areas of the city with the highest outmarriage rates were outside of the Old West Side Reformed hub (Wards 7, 8, 98, 12, 13).  The north side (Wards 1-6) and south side wards (Wards 10, 11, 16-20) both averaged 67 percent outmarriage in 1870.  The northwest side north of Lake Street, which contained both Reformed and Catholic Dutch, only had an 8 percent rate of intermarriage.

 

Literacy, Schooling, and Citizenship

      The Dutch have always been committed to education.  The 1870 census registered only 14 Dutch-born adults in Chicago who could not read and write; 10 were women and 4 men.  Most school age children were in school, especially the Reformed.  Of 193 Reformed children, ages 6 through 15, 72 percent attended school during the 1869-70 school year, 18 percent remained at home, and 10 percent worked full time.  Only 3 of 25 five-year old children attended school but half of the six-year olds (14 of 27) and almost all seven-year olds, did so.  So the normal age of beginning school was 6-7 years.  Among teenagers no sixteen-year old was in school, nor were two-thirds of fifteen year olds, over half of fourteen year olds, and a third of thirteen year olds.  However, all eleven and almost all twelve-year olds were in school.  Most teens not in school were boys who were working part-time as apprentices, clerks, and laborers; the girls were domestics.  The normal age of school leaving was thus about age fourteen.

      The Reformed community compares very favorably in school attendance with the other Dutch in Chicago.  Compared to a 72 percent rate of attendance among the Reformed, the other Dutch had a 63 percent rate, 12 points less.  Correspondingly, more non-Reformed youth were working (15 percent compared to 10 percent) or staying at home (22 percent compared to 18 percent).  School beginning was delayed, but school leaving was the same.  Only a quarter of the six-year olds were in school, compared to half for the Reformed.  Among teenagers, only half of non-Reformed youth ages 11 through 16 attended school, compared to two-thirds among Reformed teens.

      The proportion of girls in school was also higher among the Reformed--46 percent compared to 40 percent for the other Dutch.  Of the working teens, three-fourths were males in both populations, but of those "at home," 90 percent were females among non-Reformed Dutch and only 25 percent among Reformed teens.  Clearly, the Reformed sent more of their teen girls to school or to work and left fewer at home.  Whether this was an economic necessity, a cultural phenomenon, or a demographic factor is unclear.  Dutch young women were in high demand as domestics and Dutch culture dictated that idle hands were the devil's workshop.

      Another mark of socialization in America is the pace of naturalization among Dutch immigrants.  The 1870 census first reported for all adult males whether they were naturalized citizens and hence potential voters.  Newcomers had to reside in the United States for five years before being eligible for citizenship.  In 1870 exactly half of all Dutch-born males were naturalized, but among the Reformed only 43 percent were citizens.  This reflects the fact that many Reformed Groningers only arrived in Chicago after 1865 and were not yet eligible.

 

Summary

      Dutch settlement in Chicago began as early as 1839, if not before, and by 1847 there was a Reformed community of at least five families.  Although these pioneers lacked a preacher's leadership, they organized an informal Reformed fellowship within a year of their arrival (1848) and as soon as feasible, in 1852, they asked Reverend Van Raalte to cross the Lake from the Holland colony and lead them into a formal relationship with the Reformed Church in America. This pattern of behavior suggests no lack of spiritual fervor among a small core group.  Indeed, it indicates a strong desire to nurture the historic Reformed faith under very adverse circumstances.

      The Dutch Calvinists in Chicago for the first twenty years did not live in an isolated colony of Hollanders from the same Old Country villages.  They came from all over the Netherlands, and Catholics, Jews, and Lutherans accompanied them.  In Chicago the Dutch Reformed felt the social distance between themselves and the rest of the inhabitants, which inclined them to preserve their Old World traditions, language, and faith. They had an alternative.  In 1854 Old Dutch from the East, descendants of the colonial Dutch who had also settled in Chicago, founded Second Reformed Church about a mile west of the immigrant church at Monroe and Sangamon Streets.  John M. Farris of New York pastored this English-speaking congregation, which was disbanded in 1880.[44]  Thus for 26 years the Reformed immigrants had a choice, but few joined the American church, preferring instead the Dutch way.

      When Dominie De Bey arrived in 1868, the Groninger Hoek was already taking shape.  His coming merely speeded up the process, already well underway, of transforming the Old West Side from a "mixed" to a "homogeneous" Dutch community.  In 1870 more than 700 Groningers lived on the West Side and they comprised nearly half of the Dutch population there.[45]  All of these families fortunately escaped the great fire of 1871, even though several lived on DeKoven Street, barely a block or two west of Mrs. O'Leary's cow shed where the fire began.

      Because of their concentrated settlement among a "sea" of Jews, Germans, Irish, Bohemians, and others, the Groningers remained very Dutch.  Their community was also nourished by a steady stream of new arrivals until World War One and even into the Twenties.  Within this neighborhood, the churches were the institutional glue, the focal point of family and community life. Christian day schools soon added more cohesion.  In 1893 the first Dutch school, Ebenezer Christian, began with nearly 400 students.  It was located on 15th Street near Ashland Avenue, two blocks from First Christian Reformed Church.  In 1910, parents in the Lawndale area founded Timothy Christian School with 120 students.[46]

      The Groningers hailed from farms and rural villages, and their biggest adjustment in Chicago was to adapt to life in a teaming city.  Work opportunities demanded that they live near the city center and most did so, but 15 to 20 percent went into truck farming or market gardening at the city's fringe areas to raise vegetables for the Chicago market.  When De Bey in the 1870s proposed a plan to found a Groningen farming colony near Forest Home Cemetery, 20 miles west of the city, the Old West Siders rejected it out of hand.[47]  Teamstering, not farming, would bring them economic prosperity, especially if they could not afford to buy the farm land.  Hauling garbage, general freight, ice and coal, and peddling produce and milk became mainstays of Groninger employment, and the early evidence of this was clear in the 1870 census.

      Nevertheless, many Groninger immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s did take up farming, usually on rented land.  As late as 1932 16 percent of the families of the Second Christian Reformed Church of Cicero were farmer, who lived up to 25 miles west in Western Springs and Downers Grove and commuted to church by car. Very few of the farmers were able to buy their land; most were eventually forced to retire or move out of state when the land was platted in residential and industrial subdivisions. 

      The road to financial security was cartage and trash hauling.  The 1900 census recorded 75 Dutch teamsters on the Old West Side, or 16 percent of those gainfully employed. The Groningers typically bought a horse and wagon and for a dollar or two would haul freight or pick up refuse to take to the nearest dump, usually in the swamps along the Lake Michigan shoreline that were being filled in.  Useful furniture, clothing, wood, and dozens of other items, of course, were salvaged from the trash heaps and brought home.  Hauling garbage was unpleasant physical labor that required a strong back and, some wags would add, a weak mind.  But owners gained hefty profits that far surpassed craft and factory wages.

      Eventually in the 1960s and 1970s, refuse haulers became the first millionaires among the Chicago Groningers when the individual owners (such as Huizenga, Groot, Boer, De Boer, Van Tholen, Van Der Molen, Meyer, and Huiner) combined to form two large corporations--Waste Management, inc., the largest waste disposal corporation in the world, and Browning-Ferris Industries, the second largest company.  The Van Der Molen Brothers Disposal Company with a dozen trucks and suburban "routes," reportedly was paid $15 million for becoming a subsidiary of Waste Management.  In the Chicago suburban area alone in 1976, the two corporations had exclusive contracts with local governments that controlled 75 percent of all residential trash services.  And they operated throughout the United States, Europe, and even in Saudi Arabia.  The owners are often related to one another, they attend the same Reformed churches, and they rely on informal understandings and agreements to control city contracts and keep out interlopers.  Critics aptly call them the "Dutch Mafia."

      Professors Stob and Vanden Bosch had it right.  The Groninger Hoek was a tightly knit colony that was very distinctive in its work and worship.

Table 1: Dutch-born and Their Native-born Children in Chicago, by

          Ward: 1850, 1860, and 1870

 

          1850               1860                 1870                                                                     Percent

Ward Dutch Ch.  T   Dutch  Ch.  T       Dutch  Ch.  T Groninger*   

 1       3   0    3   13    7    20       40    21   61      0

 2       2   0    2   16    8    24       12    25   37      0

 3       6   0    6   11    4    15       50    38   88      0

 4       1   0    1    1    1     2       11    10   21      0

 5      27   0   29   43   18    61        9    10   19      0

 6      34   2   36   49   35    84       48    41   89     15

 7       7   0    7    7    6    13      257    47  304     46

 8       9   5   14   19    8    27      135    59  194     50

 9       3   0    3    4    1     5      258   145  403     10

10                   112   36   148       40    28   68      0

11                                        18    10   28      0

12                                       141    70  211     80

13                                        33    15   48     94

14                                        44    13   57     78

15                                       214    52  266     59

16                                        26    30   56      0

17                                        24    23   47      0

18                                        15     8   23      0

19                                        27    15   42      5

20                                        25     8   33     18

________________________________________________________________

        92   7  99   275  124  399     1,427   668 2,095    34

  

 

*Includes Groningen-born and their U.S.-born children, identified by linkage to Netherlands Emigration records and by family names.

 

Source:  U.S. Population Censuses of Chicago, 1850, 1860, 1870.