Worship and Work: The Dutch in Chicago

 

Robert P. Swierenga, Research Professor, A.C. Van Raalte Institute, Hope College

 

Paper presented to the Holland Historical Society, January 8, 2002

 

 

     In the 1980 census some 250,000 Chicagoans claimed Dutch birth or ancestry, compared to 300,000 in the Grand Rapids area. This makes the Windy City second only to Grand Rapids as a Dutch center. But the Dutch in Chicagoland comprised only 3.5 percent of the population, compared to 20 percent in the Grand Rapids region.

     No wonder that the Chicago Dutch have remained an invisible people to historians and journalists. A search of the collections of Chicago libraries turned up one lone file, at the Chicago Historical Society, and it contained a single unimportant newspaper clipping. The Rev. Peter Moerdyke of Trinity Reformed Church of Chicago lamented already in 1893, in his weekly column in the Christian Intelligencer, the denominational weekly, that the Dutch "unhappily remain unknown in this metropolis."

     Now this was 50 years after the first Dutch settlement and the founding of a dozen Reformed churches. Some were large. Both the First Reformed and First Christian Reformed churches of Chicago had more than 1,000 souls at the time and stood less than a mile west of the downtown.

     Yet the Dutch Reformed lived their lives under the public radar screens, so too speak. Most remained by choice in their  cultural cocoon, intermarrying and living from the cradle to the grave within the Dutch Reformed community. The church was the center of their existence, and its educational programs and mid-week societies and clubs filled many of the leisure hours. For the Christian Reformed, the programs of the Christian day schools and their fund raising societies took up whatever free time was left. Only at work did the Dutch have to venture out, but even in this many ran their own businesses and hired fellow Dutch, preferably relatives. 

     My topic is large. It requires a big book to tell the full story. I can only hit a few highlights tonight.

 

1. Diversity

     The Dutch in Chicago came from all social strata, regions, and religions of the Netherlands. Most had no interest in religious life and didn't want to live in a Dutch colony. Big cities tended to attract immigrants who were the rolling stones, the very poor, the nominally churched, or the overly ambitious seeking the main chance.   

     The religious situation among Dutch Reformed immigrants in the central city was very tenuous at first. Van Raalte visited Chicago in 1852 and reported "the ravages wrought by error, worldliness, and quarrels to be great. Some had joined the so-called Spiritualists, one young man had gone over to the Romanists, others dispersed themselves among all kinds of denominations, many lived in indifference and sought the world, while others who confessed the name of the Lord lived in isolation. One of the chief causes of all these woes," Van Raalte continued, "was to be sought in the lack of the ministry of the word and pastoral care."

     Religiously, about three quarters of the Dutch in Chicago came from the State Church (Hervormde Kerk) or the Seceded Church (Afscheiding of 1834). The rest were Catholics, Jews, Unitarians, and Socialists. Many State Church immigrants were nominal churchgoers who took the opportunity to drop out of church entirely; others wanted the fast road to Americanization and joined English-speaking Protestant churches, usually Presbyterian. Only the relatively few Seceder immigrants, plus a few devout State Church members, made the effort to established Dutch Reformed congregations and maintain the mother tongue for several generations.

     In 1847, within months of coming to Chicago, several Seceder families began meeting for worship every Sunday morning as a "lees kerk," first in the home of Herman Van Zwol and then of Albert Kroes. The Revs. Van Raalte and Cornelius Vander Meulen, his faithful associate at the Zeeland, Michigan church, would preach for the little flock whenever they came to Chicago or were passing through, but the group had to survive on its own. Finally, after more immigration, in 1853, they asked Van Raalte to come and organize them as the First Reformed Church of Chicago.

     Elders led the congregation until 1859 when they obtained the first regular pastor, Rev. Vander Meulen. His challenge was to increase the numbers from the twenty-four families that greeted him. "My father was surprised that so few came to hear him," son Jacob Vander Meulen recalled,

     for there indeed were many Netherlanders in that great city who, generally referred to as 'Hollanders of the Groninger Section,' were quite indifferent in the matter of religion. It was said that these people would have nothing to do with it.

          Father decided to call on these people and invite them to his services. Their answer was evasive: the church was too far distant, etc. He therefore suggested that he preach in their neighborhood in one of their homes. He went to this place every week, one week conducting evening service, the following giving catechetical instruction to the grownup folk. Soon there were conversions, and many joined the congregation.

     By 1915 there were a total of nine Reformed and Christian Reformed churches on the West Side, five in Englewood (8 miles south of downtown), and eight in Roseland (12 miles south). Eventually, there were 45 throughout the Chicago area. In each locale, the first all-English congregation was RCA--Trinity (1891) on the West Side, Hope (1903) in Englewood, and Bethany (1891) in Roseland.   

     Dutch Catholics joined German parishes--the Latin Mass was universal, and the few devout Dutch Jews affiliated with German synagogues, under the Ashkenazic rites. Most Dutch Jews were Socialists who never darkened the doors of any synagogue. One Dutch Catholic parish, St. Willibrord in Roseland-Kensington, was established about 1900, for some 200 families from Noord Brabant who began as garden farmers. Before 1900 a Holland Unitarian Church existed briefly on the West Side and also a Holland Presbyterian Church. 

     If it wasn't for the Reformed churches and Christian schools, the Dutch would have rapidly Americanized, intermarried, and disappeared as an ethnic group. Indeed, this happened to those in American Protestant churches, and to Jews and Catholics.

 

2. Provincial enclaves

     Initially, in the 1840s, Dutch immigrants settled in three places--on the northwest fringe of the city center along the Chicago River, in Roseland (Hooge Prairie), and in South Holland (Laage Prairie). The "Prairies" were true Dutch Reformed colonies, like those in and around Holland, Michigan, and remained so for several generations until after the Second World War. The Dutch enclave in Englewood developed in the 1880s, made up of immigrants fresh from the Netherlands, and westsiders who wanted a nicer place to live.

     The Dutch in Englewood and the West Side were concentrated in a single neighborhood, covering one square mile at most, and they shared that space with other groups. The West Side, for example, had the biggest Jewish ghetto in the city with 60,000 Russian and Polish Jews. They outnumbered the Dutch by 20 to 1. Rev. Evert Breen of First Christian Reformed Church of Chicago (1903-09) described it as living "like an island in a sea of Jews." He reached out to them as children of Abraham and often preached at the interdenominational Chicago Hebrew Mission.

     The 1900 census counted 3,000 Dutch on the West Side, 3,000 in Englewood, and 7,000 in Roseland. The rest were scattered across the city center and North Side. Beyond the city boundaries were 1,000 in South Holland (20 miles south), and several hundred farming along the Ridge Road in Lansing-Munster-Highland.

     Each region was settled by people from a different province. The West Side and Englewood were mainly Groningers. Roseland was founded by Noord Hollanders in the 1840s; then Frisians came to dominate in the 1880s. South Holland, as the name implies, was settled by immigrants from Zuid Holland. The Ridge Road truck farmers were also mainly from Zuid Holland.

 

3. Mobility--suburbanization or white flight

     The Dutch of Chicago were always on the move. Every generation relocated to newer neighborhoods, first within the city, then the suburbs, and finally beyond Cook County itself.

     The West Side Groningers were the most mobile. They began near the city center and relocated five times, due to the encroachment of noisome factories and ethnic groups they considered uncouth and threatening. The West Side was a congested working class district, with the highest proportion of immigrants, the least attractive housing, and the slowest and least developed public transportation. Thus, the Groningers relocated almost every generation, building new churches, homes, schools, stores, and shops.

(1850s Randolph & Des Plaines, 1860s-1870s Harrison & Des Plaines; 1870s-90s Harrison and May (west of Halsted); 1880s-1940s Ashland Ave & 14th St; 1910s-1970s Cicero, Berwyn and Oak Park; 1970s-   Elmhurst, Lombard, Downers Grove, and Wheaton.)

     By contrast, Englewood's Dutch enclave was stable for 75 years (1880s-1950s), Roseland's lasted for 125 years (1840s-1970s), and South Holland's for 150 years (1840s-1990s). But there was always a circulation of families between the Dutch neighborhoods--from the West Side to Englewood, Cicero, Berwyn, or Roseland; from Englewood to Roseland, Evergreen Park, or Oak Lawn, etc. Truck farmers especially had to move often, as the city encroached and developers built new subdivisions on their land. There were clusters of Dutch Reformed truck gardeners in Maywood, Western Springs, Summit, and Des Plaines by 1900. After 1960, the westside Dutch left Cook County for Du Page County to the West (Elmhurst, etc.). The Englewood and Roseland Dutch also went west as far as Palos Heights, Tinley Park, and Orland Park. Yet others went southeast toward the Indiana border, to South Holland and Lynwood in Cook County, and to Munster, Highland, Dyer, and Shererville in Lake County.

     This outmigration was both a case of white flight and upward mobility. Affluence played a larger role on the West Side, especially the migration into Cicero after 1900 and to Elmhurst and Lombard after 1960. The more affluent wanted new homes on larger lots with tree-lined streets and nice public parks. But the need to flee the spreading black ghetto and its muggings, rapes, and robberies, was also a strong motive, especially on the Old West Side in the 1940s. The Dutch in Englewood and Roseland also clearly fled from the encroaching South Side ghetto. 

     Only in retrospect did the Dutch Reformed reflect on the practice of selling their churches to blacks or Jews and building new ones in the suburbs. The Englewood Christian Reformed churches first seriously considered the issue in the 1950s; they formed a committee to explore keeping one church for a new ministry to blacks. But the commitment was lacking until twenty years later, in Roseland, when Roseland Christian Ministries was begun in one of the Reformed churches. It also continued Roseland Christian School, which has nearly an all-black enrollment.

 

4. Christian education  

     Christian school supporters used a number of metaphors; they  spoke of Christian schools as the "feeder of the church," the "nursery of and for the church," and a crucial link in a "chain." As one Chicago area CRC consistory put it: "We love to speak of the chain consisting of three links--home, church and school; regarding it as a chain which cannot be easily broken."

     Most Christian school advocates were Christian Reformed, but in the 19th century many Reformed families were also supportive. They sent their children to Christian schools in the Netherlands and would do so in America too. The First Reformed Church of Roseland gave birth to the 104th Street Christian School in 1891. The First Reformed Church of Chicago took collections for and sent children to the local Ebenezer Christian School (1893).

     But the General Synods of the Reformed Church in America went on record in 1892 and again in the 1950s in favor of public schools and this changed the equation. RCA parents were still free to choose Christian schools, but the leadership threw its full support behind public education. So by the 1930s, fewer than 10 per cent of RCA children attended Christian schools. The CRC, on the other hand, made Christian schools virtually mandatory. The Christian school "question" thus became the major issue dividing the two immigrant churches, and the consequences were far reaching. 

     By 1915 the Dutch Reformed had established Ebenezer and Timothy (1911) on the West Side, Englewood Christian (1900), and two in Roseland--Roseland Christian (111th Street and later 108th Street)(1883), and the School for Christian Instruction (104th Street)(1891). Eventually, every major CRC center had its school. Chicago Christian High School (1918) was the capstone of the system, until Illiana Christian began in 1948 and Timothy Christian High School in 1952.

     The commitment to Christian schooling in Chicago far surpassed that in West Michigan. The seventeen Chicago-area Christian Reformed churches in 1940, according to statistics compiled by the National Union of Christian Schools, averaged 89 percent attendance, compared to only 70 percent in Grand Rapids. Berwyn Christian Reformed Church had a perfect record of 100 percent. Thus, the few CRC teens in public high schools were almost guaranteed to be cut off from their peers at church.

     Schooling also had an impact on the churches. In 1900 the RCA and CRC congregations on the West Side were equal in membership. But today in the western suburbs, RCA membership is less than one-fifth that of the CRC. The success of the CRC in gathering in most of the new immigrants is certainly a factor. But even in the past fifty years, long after immigration ceased, Reformed congregations continued to lose members at a rate five times greater than that of Christian Reformed congregations. From 1950 to 2000, RCA membership declined by half (from 1000 to 500), while CRC membership fell by less than a tenth (from 3000 to 2675). Could it be that Christian day schools made the difference in maintaining CRC church membership? This conclusion seems warranted.

 

5. Scavenging

     Along with new immigrants generally, the Dutch entered the workforce at the bottom and had to work their way up. The second generation enjoyed the benefits. By the 1920s, as Henry Stob recalled, "Some heads of families in the community worked in shops and factories, others held office jobs, and a number ran their own businesses." They were an "industrious and thrifty" lot, but "few of them were rich." At least not until the unexpected windfall in the 1970s, when the garbage industry conglomerates, Waste Management and Browning Ferris (BFI) bought their routes, which were cash cows, for a million dollars each, paid mostly in stock that went up in value. Waste Management split its stock so often that one share multiplied into eleven shares.

     Teamstering was the perfect occupation for the West Side Dutch. They were accustomed to back-breaking work on the land,  they wanted to be their own boss, and they could indulge their love for horses by bringing a bit of the farm to the city. Hauling ash and garbage, general freight, ice and coal, and peddling produce and milk, became mainstays of Groninger employment. Buying a team and wagon took very little capital and hauling ash and garbage was steady work that Americans did not want to do. Every downtown building burned coal for heat and every restaurant and apartment house generated garbage. Someone had to pick it up.

     By the 1930s the Dutch monopolized the waste hauling business in Chicago and suburbs, except for homes in the city proper that were served by city crews. I counted more than 450 Dutch scavenger and cartage companies, who together employed several thousand fellow Hollanders (city directories, yellow pages, and ads in printed programs of Christian school and cultural events).

     The South Side Dutch specialized first in market gardening, then in the building trades. In Roseland, many left truck farming for factory work when George Pullman in the 1880s opened his Pullman Palace Car Works. In time, some southsiders also started garbage and cartage companies, but trucking was never as predominant as on the West Side.

     The Dutch made their way in Chicago with a good deal of pluck and a little bit of "luck." The pluck they had to find within themselves, aided by their fabled work ethic, which for a hundred years and more put food on the table, their children through school, and their church tithes paid in full. The "luck" seemingly fell from the sky. As they went about making a decent living, which was all they wanted from their daily labor, the capital markets suddenly rained down cash in exchange for their garbage routes. But give the haulers credit; they seized the opportunity when it came.

     And with the success came not only the good life but remarkable works of charity and benevolence that benefitted the Christian schools and colleges, the churches, and the institutions of mercy. The bottom line is that many were not in it for the bottom line.

 

6. Religion and Americanization

     The cohesion of Chicago's Dutch Reformed community and their clear sense of identity came from their religious faith. Churches organized their own men's and women's societies and feeder groups for young people, choirs and bands, mission clubs, Sunday school fests and church picnics, men's softball and bowling, and many similar activities.

     RCA congregations were always more open to the surrounding culture, which put them on the faster track to Americanization. They were first to begin Sunday schools and mid-week prayer and revival services, to adopt English in worship, and use choirs and organs. Thus, they were largely assimilated by the third and fourth generations.

     CRC congregations held more tenaciously to the Dutch language and customs and they channeled their children into Christian schools. Outside of school, the Young Calvinist League served CRC high schoolers, as did the Calvinist Cadet Corp for boys and Calvinette Club for girls. By contrast, RCA youth joined Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops at church, and on Sunday evenings high schoolers participated in Christian Endeavor, an interdenominational organization. These affiliations speak volumes. The CRC stressed Dutch Calvinist roots, while the RCA "endeavored" to be simply Christian, whether in scouting or in church life.

     The differing approaches to schooling and social life resulted in Reformed youth more often marrying non-Dutch. Both churches, however, sternly warned against intermarriage with Catholics, which was the greatest perceived threat. Peter De Vries tells of seriously dating an Italian girl while attending Chicago Christian High School, but finally he broke the relationship. Why? "Religious reasons," he quipped with tongue in cheek; "Our faith doesn't allow us to intermarry." By "faith" he meant Dutch Reformed, and by "intermarry" he meant Protestant-Catholic. De Vries was correct. Both Reformed and Catholic clerics counseled strongly against such marriages, largely because of the issue of which church would baptize the children.

     For the successful professional and business elites, social clubs such as the Holland Society and the General Dutch League provided an opportunity to boast of one's heritage. Such outward and often shallow displays of ethnic pride, however, ultimately testified more to the extent of assimilation than it did of "Dutchness." Political life conveyed the same message. The Chicago Dutch were passive Republican voters who supported the party ticket and seldom ran for office themselves. And the few  Dutch candidates could not count on the support of their fellow ethnics unless they ran as party-backed Republicans. The editors of Onze Toekomst, Chicago's Dutch-language weekly, tried repeatedly to generate bloc voting for "our" Holland candidates, but they found a spirit of cooperation "non-existent among our people."

     In the workaday world, the Dutch accommodated quickly; they had to earn a living. They easily became part of the fabric of American society. To the non-Dutch they appeared, at least by the 1940s, to be indistinguishable in dress and speech, in the work place, the voting booth, and the rows of neat brick bungalows.    But secondary associations and even language are not the prime markers of ethnicity. One must look to primary associations--churches, schools, clubs, and marriages. Here the Dutch still cling together, although the ethnic glue has loosened since the 1950s. Many young adults have left the community or succumbed to the city's allure. Yet, today, against the overwhelming forces of secularization, there are still 23,000 members in Reformed congregations in greater Chicagoland and they remain intensely loyal. Don't count the Dutch out just yet.