Robert Swierenga established one of eight branches of the Jan Swierenga family, which emigrated to Chicago in 1893.  This account relates the history of his family both in Holland (briefly) and in the United States.

The Name Swierenga

    The families Swierenga (also spelled Swieringa) are "echte Groningers," although the name points to Frisian origins.  In ancient and medieval times the Frisian peoples inhabited the entire northern region of the Netherlands, as well as the North Sea coastal region of western Germany up to the border with Denmark.  The -a ending in Frisian signified "son of," as did the -ing ending, which also could mean "belonging to."  These two types of suffixes were combined into the -inga ending in the Middle Ages.  Swier is the Frisian and Groningen contraction of the germanic name Sweder: swind meaning "strong, fast," and her, meaning "army."  The compound name Sweder or Swier likely has no actual meaning.[i]

     The name Swierenga (Swieringa) first appeared in the Dutch records in 1811, when under government edict of the Napoleonic regime, all families were required to adopt surnames.  The reason for selecting the name Swierenga is unknown.  It seems that the inga and enga name endings originated in the 1820s when the widower Barteld Hindriks remarried and his second set of children wished to distinguish themselves from the first set.

The Swierenga Genealogy

     At least since the year 1600 the ancestors of Robert Swierenga lived in the northern Dutch province of Groningen, in the Fivelingo region lying north-northeast of the capital city of Groningen.  The progenitor of the paternal line was Barteld Jans, born before 1600, followed (after a gap in the records) by Jan Bartolds (b. ca. 1665), Bartelt Jans (b. 1691), Barteld Jans (b. 1729), Hindrik Bartels (b. 1760), Barteld Hindriks (b. 1798 and the first to adopt the family name), Hindrik Bartelds Swierenga (b. 1816), Jan Swierenga (b. 1847), and Bouwko (Robert) Swierenga (b. 1888).[ii]

     Some Swierengas gained sufficient prominence to have named after them a small polder (land reclaimed from under water) and a short street.  "Swieringa-polder" lies a mile or two southwest of Ten Post along the old Stadsweg (State road) to Ten Boer.  The street named "Swierengapad" is one-block long and leads to the gemeentehuis (courthouse) in Ten Boer, which is the renovated home and barn of Jan Bartels's grandson Jan Geerts Swierenga.  The large building, built in 1882 and housing both the barn and home under one roof as is the Dutch custom, was bought by the municipality in 1961 and modified at a cost of $1.25 million for use as the courthouse and government center.  The mayor's office is in the former living room.  The street honors Jan Bartels Swierenga, who served as the first "wethouder" (councilman) of the municipality of Ten Boer following the end of the Napoleonic occupation of the Netherlands in 1815.

     Robert Swierenga's heritage is a goodly one.  His descendants were a humble, peasant folk of Reformed religious persuasion who devoted themselves to family and faith.  They quite frequently married cousins and even in-laws, which suggests that the clan shared a social life together.  Over the generations the family moved southward closer to Stad Groningen.  They lived in the following villages: Middelstum (early 1600s), Zandeweer (late 1600s-mid 1700s), Minkeweer (late 1700s), Huizinge (1750s-1760s), Oldenzijl (1790s-1809), Stedum (1780s-1830s), Lellens (1840s-1870s), and Kroddeburen, a hamlet one half mile northwest of Ten Post (1880s-1893), from which Jan Swierenga and family emigrated to Chicago in 1893.

     The Population Register of the municipality of Ten Boer, 1880-1920, lists the address of Jan's rented home as Kroddeburen No. 20. It was a substantial red brick house located next to the famous windmill "Olle Widde" (Old White, because it was painted with a white lime), which stood at No. 20a, according to the 1834 plat map. The area was surrounded by rich farmlands where the farmers raised grain, mainly wheat and rye, so the mill was always busy. The house and restored mill remain today in good repair.

     The Swierenga family also shared a common faith.  Until the nineteenth century they belonged to the Hervormde (Reformed) Church, but after the spiritual revival in the Netherlands in the 1830s, known as the Afscheiding or Separation, some joined the more orthodox Christelijke Afgeschieden (Christian Separatist) and later Christelijke Gereformeerde (Christian Reformed) Church and served as elders and deacons.  Bouwko's father Jan transferred from the Hervormde Church to the Christelijke Gereformeerde Church in 1876, probably at Ten Boer, since the church in Ten Post has no record of the family.

     The men over the centuries worked as farm laborers, farmer operators, and in the last three generations in the nineteenth century as grain commissioners and canal bargemen, hauling wheat and other grains to the market in Stad Groningen.  The wheat producing region of Groningen and Friesland suffered a severe depression in the 1880s, due to falling prices in world markets from the glut of new production on the rich American and Canadian prairies.  The agricultural crisis forced Dutch farmers to mechanize and consolidate land holdings in order to compete with North American growers.  Farm laborers and small farmers were cast off in the tens of thousands and emigration to America offered the best long-term opportunity.

Decision to Emigrate

     The precipitating event in the decision of Jan Swierenga and his wife Katrijn nee Koning to emigrate to Chicago was a financial blow caused by a canal shipping accident.  Daughter Hillechien (Alice) Miedema of Des Plaines, Illinois recalled the tragedy in the early 1930s.[iii]  While hauling a full load of wheat to the Groningen grain market, Jan had to pass through a sluis or lock on the Damsterdiep Canal. He followed the usual procedure of tying his barge to the side of the sluis, but failed to allow enough slack line. When the water level in the lock dropped suddenly and unexpectedly, the rope became taut and caused the boat to tip and the entire load, about 20 tons, was soaked and ruined. This disaster drained Jan financially and he decided to start over in Chicago, where his older brother Barteld and family had emigrated in 1882 and his uncle Friedus had settled in 1867 and was well-established. Barteld agreed to sponsor Jan.

     Economic pressures had also forced Barteld to emigrate. A canal bargeman like Jan, he had resorted to having his horses inspected by government officials on Sundays, so as not to lose a day's work, which he needed to survive. This failure to keep the Sabbath day holy caused a guilty conscience and also brought the condemnation of the church elders. To free himself from the necessity of violataing the fifth commandment of the Law, Barteld decided to emigrate to Chicago. All this is told in the consistory minutes of the First Christian Reformed Church of Chicago (June 26 and August 1, 1882).

     The emigration of the Swierengas had a bearing on the lives of every descendent. Instead of hauling grain in Groningen, for example, Jan's sons and grandsons became teamsters and produce commissioners in Chicago.

The Immigration Experience

     Jan and Katrijn emigrated to Chicago with eight children: Kornelia (Kate) age 16, Trientje (Catherine) age 14, Hendrik (Henry) age 12, Hillechien (Alice) age 11, Eppe (Edward) age 10, Bouwko (Robert) age 5, Hendrika (Henrietta) age 3, and Bartelda (Tillie), a baby of 6 weeks.  The family originally had nine children, but sometime before emigrating, their third son Hendrikus died in childhood.  In the same year of 1893 seventeen families and eleven single men (116 persons) emigrated to America from the municipality of Ten Boer.  Most were farm hands and day laborers.  They were headed (in order of importance) for Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Chicago, eastern South Dakota, and northwest Iowa.

     The Swierenga family went by canal boat from Groningen to the port city of Rotterdam and probably stayed in an emigrant hotel for a night or two while awaiting passage.  Around May 10 or 11, 1893, they boarded the S.S. Veendam, a large passenger steamship of the Netherlands American Steamship Company, a forerunner of the Holland-America Line.  The Veendam was en route to New York via the French port of Boulogne, where it took on more passengers.  This was the usual route of N.A.S.M. vessels and the complete voyage took about six days, arriving in New York on May 17.  The Veendam was built in the early 1870s by the famed shipbuilders Harland & Wolff at Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the British White Star Line.  In 1889 the N.A.S.M. bought from the British company at second hand the Veendam and six sister ships for its rapidly growing immigrant business.  The Veendam was a quick-sailing fourmaster of shallow draft, 460 feet in length with 4500 tons displacement, that served the Holland-America Line well until it sank in the Atlantic Ocean in the late 1890s, only a few years after it carried the Swierenga family safely to New York.

     The Veendam passenger manifest, which the captain provided to U.S. customs officials at New York harbor according to law, listed the Swierenga family as follows: Jan Swierenga age 46, occupation "shipper," wife Katrina (Katrijn) age 40, and children Kornelia 17, Trijntje (Trientje) 15, Hendrik 13, Hiltchie (Hillechien) 11, Eppe 10, Bouwke (Bouwko) 5, Hendrika 3, and Bartelda 2 months.  The family travelled, as did all but the wealthiest immigrants, in steerage class (the cheapest fare), and were assigned to the main deck, compartment 3.  They had six pieces of luggage.  There were more than 700 passengers aboard, most of whom were Dutch, and they were heading primarily for places in Michigan, but some stated Paterson or Passaic, New Jersey; Randolph, Wisconsin; Fulton, Illinois; and Orange City, Iowa.  A few intended to go to Chicago and to Roseland or Kensington on the far south side of Chicago.  Other Groningers on the Veendam were the families of Renne Bronkema, Sieke Dykstra, Auke Kampen, Evert Faber, Hendrik Vander Schaaf, Sybrandus Wiersum, Haring Wallenga, Haring Havinga, and Ruurd Boltjes.  

     Jan Swierenga's destination, according to government emigration records in the municipal courthouse of Ten Boer, was Grand Rapids, Michigan.  But the ship passenger manifest listed Chicago as the intended destination.  Jan apparently changed his mind after registering to emigrate and decided to settle in Chicago near the family of his older brother, Barteld, who had immigrated eleven years earlier in 1882.  According to family tradition, Barteld had agreed to be Jan's sponsor and had offered to help him find housing and a job.  Jan's uncle, Friedus Swierenga, who had immigrated in 1867 (26 years earlier) was also well established in Chicago.  The Windy City was a focal point for Groningers.  The pastor of the Christian Reformed Church reported in 1893 that his congregation "expected seventy five families of immigrants to join them this summer."[iv]  The growing city of Chicago seemed to offer more economic opportunities than Grand Rapids, but as it soon became apparent, Jan and Katrijn must have wondered if they had made the wisest choice.

     Problems began from the outset.  Already on the ship, Katrijn, weak from childbirth became ill and never fully recovered.  Nothing else is known of experiences en route.  The family arrived at the new Ellis Island Reception Center in New York Harbor near the Statue of Liberty which had been opened the year before (1892).  All ten members of the family passed the feared medical examination and were permitted to enter the United States.  That Katrijn passed the exam was a blessing, because she may have been in the early stages of the incurable disease tuberculosis, which if the doctors had detected it would have barred her from entry.  The family no doubt left for Chicago by train as soon as possible, taking either the New York Central or the Erie Railroad, both of which linked New York City and Chicago.

     As they neared the downtown Chicago terminal, they could see from the train windows the futuristic, gleaming white buildings of the World's Columbia Exposition, which had opened that year on the lake front.  The Fair symbolized Chicago's rebirth from the Great Fire of 1871.  A bust of a woman with the slogan "I Will, Chicago, 1893" emblazoned across her breast, was chosen by fair officials as the most suitable expression of the Chicago spirit.

Jan and Katrijn in Chicago

     Upon arrival in Chicago, the Swierenga family settled among their fellow Groningers in the "Groninger buurt" (Groningen neighborhood) on the near West Side.  Their sponsor, brother Barteld, apparently failed to have a home ready so they had to live temporarily in the basement of their church, the First Christian Reformed Church of Chicago, known popularly as "The Old Fourteenth Street Church," because it was located at 423 (new numbering 1324) 14th Street between Troop and Loomis streets. The church had been purchased from the Presbyterians in 1882 and was razed in 1941 to make space for government public housing.  The building stood on the north side of the street exactly in the middle of the block.  Soon Jan found a rat-infested basement flat a few blocks west at 15th Street and Wood Street, where they lived for a short time.  Then the family moved to a house at 692 (new numbering 1645) West 14th Street, between Ashland Avenue and Paulina Streets, one block west of church.  There they lived until at least 1897, when they moved again a half mile east to 398 (new numbering 1131) West 14th Place, two blocks east of the church.  What a contrast these places were to their commodious free-standing, brick home with its large garden in the rural community of Ten Post!

     The harsh living conditions and difficult economic times brought on by the financial panic of 1893 and ensuing depression in the years 1893-1897 bore heavily on the family.  This was known as the "Cleveland hard times," because Grover Cleveland was president in those years.  Jan worked as a laborer, according to the Chicago city directory of 1899, the only directory in which he was listed.  (He was incorrectly listed as John H. Swieringa; but it is interesting to note that he had Anglicized his given name and took on the middle initial H., after his father Hendrik, in order to distinguish himself from Friedus's son John F. and Barteld's son John B.)  Although we do not know what kind of work Jan did or if he was self-employed, he was clearly at the bottom of the labor force and suffering from the language barrier as well as culture shock.  This lowly position was a far cry from his status as a canal bargeman and grain commissioner in Groningen.

Death of Jan and Katrijn Swierenga

     Katrijn and Jan both contracted the feared disease tuberculosis, for which there was no known cure.  Katrijn, listed as Katrina on her death certificate, took sick shortly after their arrival and died of "consumption" on May 5, 1897 only four years after moving to Chicago.  Jan, listed as John on his death certificate, became ill in 1896 and followed his wife in death two years later on November 20, 1899.  He died of pulmonary tuberculosis, according to the death certificate.  At the time he was a laborer and he and the children were living in a rented flat at 398 West 14th Place, where they had moved after his wife's death.  Undertaker John Cermak of 604 (new numbering 1653) S. Troop Street handled both funerals and the couple were buried in the original "Dutch section" of the Forest Home Cemetery located west of South Des Plaines Avenue in Forest Park, Illinois, a far western suburb.  Katrina is buried in Lot 201 and Jan in Lot 482, both in Section HL, which is just west of the Des Plaines River.  Both graves were unmarked, but in 1995 Robert and Jack Swierenga placed a headstone on Jan's grave, which is located immediately to the right of brother Barteld's grave, which also has a headstone.  The Swierenga memorial stone states the names and dates of Jan and Katrina and includes the phrase "By faith they came."

The Progeny

     Jan and Katrijn had 43 grandchildren and 123 great grandchildren.  Kate and Nicholas Tillema had 8 children, Keimpe Miedema and Alice 8, Edward and Effie Wiersum 10, Henry and Mary Wiersum 5, Robert and Grace Dykhuis 5, Frank Fokkens and Rika 3, and John Tameling and Tillie 4.  All lived in the Chicago area except Kate and Nick Tillema and family, who moved to Platte, South Dakota, and Henry and Mary Swierenga, who first joined the Tillemas in Platte and then after Henry's death there, Mary and her five children moved to Prinsburg, Minnesota.  In the 1930s and 1950s, three of Mary's children married into the Breems family of Prinsburg.  Then in 1996 Robert Swierenga's great-granddaughter Suzanna Swierenga, daughter of John's son Robert, married Brent Breems, a grandnephew and nephew of the Prinsburg Breems.  See Appendix I for the names of all Jan Swierenga family spouses.

Forest Home Cemetery

     The Forest Home Cemetery was more than ten miles from the "Old West Side" Dutch settlement, far beyond the reach of the street car line, and it required an entire day to make the trip by wagon.  A tavern on the corner of Roosevelt Road and Des Plaines Avenue, near the entrance to the cemetery, was the customary noon stopping place after the committal service at the grave side, before the long homeward journey.  The apparent reason that the Dutch had to travel so far to bury their loved ones was that private city cemeteries were snobbish about selling graves to poor immigrants and the Christian Reformed and Reformed churches in the Dutch neighborhood did not have churchyard cemeteries, as did the Catholics, Lutherans, and other denominations.  Forest Home, which had its first interment in 1877, and the adjacent Waldheim (German Masonic) cemetery, which opened in 1873, were willing to accept immigrants, and Forest Home maintained a convenient downtown office at 88 W. Washington to transact business. The two cemeteries merged in 1969 as Forest Home Cemetery.

The Orphans

     Jan's death left seven orphans, since the oldest daughter Kate, age 23, had in 1897 married Nicholas Tillema.  The orphans were Catherine or Katie age 21, Henry age 20, Alice age 18, Edward age 16, Robert age 11, Henrietta or Rika age 9, and Tillie age 6.  According to Robert's oldest son, John R. (my father), when Jan died, the younger orphans moved into the parsonage of the First Christian Reformed Church, which was vacant at the time, and their sister Alice, aged 18 years, cared for them.  They lived in the parsonage for several months.  Jan's older brother Barteld had become the church janitor in 1894, after working for years as a laborer and then a chairmaker.  His family now resided on the church property.  The older sister Catherine married John Nienhuis in 1902 (she died of T.B. six months later in 1903).

     When the children had to vacate the parsonage, they were taken in by their oldest married sister, Kate and Nick Tillema, who lived on a small farm in West Town (now Maywood), at 26th Avenue and Madison Street--the exact address (old numbering) was 2647 West Madison Street.  On June 14, 1900, when the U.S. census marshal visited the farm on his appointed rounds, he reported a household of eleven: Nicholas Tillema, age 32, a market gardener on a rented farm, wife Katie 24, son John l, daughter Aggte 8 months, and the in-laws Katie 21, Henry 20, Alice 18, Eddie 17, Robert 12, Henrietta (Rika) 10, and Tillie 7.  Katie, Henry, and Eddie were working on the farm; Alice worked for a cutlery company; and Robert, Henrietta, and Tillie were in school.  Later the Tillemas rented a farm in Bellwood at Mannheim Road and Madison Street.

      Henry and Edward first, and then Robert, subsequently went back to Chicago.  Robert worked as a teamster delivering fresh milk from house to house with a horse and wagon.  He lived with Alice, now a widow since her husband, Henry (Hendrik) Dykema, had died shortly after their marriage.  Alice lived temporarily in the vacant parsonage of the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church located immediately north of the church at 1333 South Harding Avenue, where she had the job of cleaning the church.  When Alice remarried Keimpe Miedema, a farmer, and moved to the western suburbs, she took in the youngest sister, Tillie, age 17. Robert went to live with Alice's first husband's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Klaas Dykema, in their home at 173 (new numbering 311 E.) West 22nd Street and later at 1315 S. 40th Court.  The Dykemas were charter members of the Douglas Park Church and had a warm Christian home, as Robert's son John recalls.  But the couple suffered much; their son Henry died early and a younger teenage son left home and was never heard from again.  Robert was treated as a son and remained with the Dykemas until his marriage in April, 1910 at age 22 to Grace Dykhuis.

     Robert's early work record is not altogether clear.  From about age 17 to 19 he worked for the Haywood-Wakefield Company at 2600 West Arthington Street, a manufacturer of wicker furniture and baskets.  Around 1907 or 1908 Robert bought his own horse and wagon and delivered coffee beans in bulk sacks to retail stores and wholesale outlets.  "Be your own boss" was his adage.  Perhaps he worked for the canned milk company and delivered door to door before buying his own horse and wagon.  From coffee beans, Robert began delivering fresh fruit and vegetables from the Chicago farmers' market and commission houses on South Water Street to retail grocery stores in Chicago.  There is also a photograph of unknown date showing Robert and his oldest brother Henry as teamsters hauling large limestone slabs.  Robert's son, John, recalls that his father and uncle were hauling the rock from a quarry at South 39th Street and Halsted Street to the lake front for the construction of breakwaters and retaining walls.  This indicates that Robert and his brother were general teamsters.  Indeed, the 1910 city directory lists Robert as a "driver," and the 1910 census reports Henry as a self-employed teamster.  Henry and his wife Mary were then living in a rented home at 2821 West Twentieth Street on the southwest side. 

Swierenga Bros Commission House

     Eventually, around 1914 (during World War One), Robert, with his older brother Ed, who also had a fruit and vegetable route, together opened a produce commission house on West Randolph Street.  In 1922 or 1923 Louis and Henry Smit of the Archer Avenue Reformed Church, who had their own fruit and vegetable routes, became partners until 1928 or 1929.  The Chicago City Directory of 1928 listed the firm as Smit & Swierenga Bros.  At first, Swierenga Bros was located in a three-story building at 937-939 West Randolph. Later, around 1925, they moved next door to 943 West Randolph Street, when a new building was constructed on the site. The essential equipment was a big walk-in refrigerated cooler in the rear of the main store.  The egg candling operation was on the second floor.  An advertisement of the firm on a promotional thermometer from the 1940s reads as follows:  "Swierenga Bros., Wholesale Butter, Eggs, and Cheese, Fruits and Vegetables.  943 W. Randolph Street, Chicago, phone Monroe 2374-2680.

     The food products came from far and wide.  Robert went at dawn to buy fruit and vegetables at the wholesale auction at the South Water Street Market, where products arrived by rail from coast to coast and area truck farmers sold their produce from the tailgates of their vehicles.  In later years Swierenga Bros. specialized in distributing butter, cheese and eggs.  Their high quality butter came by refrigerated truck twice weekly from a creamery in Newall, Iowa.  It brought premium prices and was in demand by grocers.  The creamery packaged the butter in 1 lb and 1/2 lb wooden boxes, each stamped with the Swierenga Bros. label, which were shipped in 50 lb crates.  Fresh eggs came in each Tuesday and Friday from Randolph, Wisconsin.  Harry Vander Meer collected them from Dutch-American farmers in the Randolph, Waupun, and Friesland region, crated them, and trucked them to Chicago, leaving at 2 am. in order to arrive on Randolph Street by 6 am.  Later, Swierenga Bros. cut his deliveries to once a week because chain stores such as Kroger and Atlanta & Pacific (A & P) took customers away from the neighborhood grocers.  Chains over time proved to be the death knell of the small grocery stores and wholesale commission houses that fed them.

     In the heyday of the business, the 1920s through 1940s, Swierenga Bros. delivered to 60-65 stores in the western and northern parts of Chicago.  They also did a wholesale cash and carry business.  Some retail merchants from outside the city came to the firm's outlet on Randolph St. to buy and pick up produce from as far as Elgin, Aurora, and Fox River Grove (20 to 35 miles west).  Stanley Totura of Fox River Grove and Edward Vinicky of Elgin were the firm's largest customers, as the photograph of the Swierenga Bros. store attests.

     The partners each owned a team and wagon and the horses were kept in a barn at the rear of Robert's home at 1404 South Kedvale Avenue.  Edward with his wife Effie and family lived nearby at 1320 S. Keeler Avenue. (Both houses and the barn are now gone.)  Soon the firm boasted a motor truck, a 1914 King-Zeittler (see photograph), one of the first hard tire trucks made in Chicago. (The firm later merged into the Available Company).  Once around 1927 or 1928 the wooden barn caught fire at midday from sparks that escaped from a neighbor's burning trash can in the alley.  Fortunately, the vehicles were on the road but drums of oil and hay in the loft fueled the fire.  Teenage son John happened to be home and called the fire department from Barn No. 77 at Roosevelt Rd. and Komenskey Avenue four blocks away.  The fireman saved half the structure but the doors, roof, and back wall were destroyed and had to be rebuilt. 

     Robert made deliveries while Ed remained in the store.  The merchants ordered by phone or placed new orders when they received their deliveries.  Perishables not sold by closing time on Saturday noon were brought home by the partners for family eating or canning. The central city that Robert and the other Swierenga men crisscrossed as teamsters was congested, bustling, dangerous, and noisy.  Streetcar accidents were commonplace.  Citizens complained about the smoke pouring from coal furnaces and the locomotives of hundreds of trains that converged on the city every day.  Street vendors, clanging streetcar bells, the whirring of industrial machinery, and the crush of humanity on the sidewalks added to the din.  Street vendors literally choked the sidewalks, and mud, horse manure, and trash cluttered the streets.  Debris and building materials lay everywhere from the frenzied pace of building construction.  Slowly, Chicago cleaned up its act, prompted by Daniel C. Burnham's Plan of 1909 which created a lake front park and completely revamped the central city.

     To help out in the Swierenga Bros. store as business volume increased, Ed and Rob hired a salesman, Mike Venterelli, a second-generation Italian who is pictured in the photograph of the warehouse.  This was a wise decision, since Italian-Americans dominated the Chicago wholesale food provision business and Italian neighborhoods dotted the near west side of Chicago.  Mike Venterelli eventually joined the firm as a full (one-third) partner and continued with Swierenga Bros. until it ceased business in 1959 with the death of Edward.  Robert had already died in 1949.  Between 1939 and 1942, Robert's second son, Ralph, worked behind the counter and also was bookkeeper, until Ralph's older brother John R. persuaded him to come to work for him as a driver in his trucking business.  Edward's sons Joe and John E. also worked for the company for five or six years-- Joe in the office and John E. on the truck. Edward's married daughter, Kathryn Rispens, worked in the office.  The Second World War, with its food rationing system, presented the partners with a major moral challenge.  That was to resist taking advantage of the lucrative black market for dairy products and eggs.  But Robert refused to sell above the government-set price.

     Robert's wife's uncle, Omke Groot, also owned a large fruit and vegetable commission house on Randolph Street across the street from Swierenga Brothers.  Groot bought fruit and vegetables directly from farmers and frequently Swierenga Brothers bought their produce from him.  Groot was a very successful merchant. In the 1920s he purchased a luxurious home in the upscale suburb of Oak Park on Lombard Avenue; he was also one of the first in the family to own a car.

Robert Swierenga and Grace Dykhuis

     On April 27, 1910, Robert married Grace (Gerritdina) Dykhuis (aged 21 years) in the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church of Chicago.  Reverend Cornelius De Leeuw (1876-1963), pastor of the church (1905-1910), officiated.  Grace was born on July 3, 1888, in her parents' home at 692 (new numbering 1749) West 15th Street near Wood Street, which was later a B. & O. Railroad yard.  Grace's first grade teacher suggested the name Grace for Gerritdina.  This was the customary way that children's Dutch names were Anglicized.

Immigration of the Roelf (Ralph) Dykhuis Family

     Grace's parents were Roelf (Ralph) Dykhuis, born in April 1856, and Hendrika (Henrietta)--known as Rika--Groot, born in August 1857.  They had been married in Baflo, Groningen on February 28, 1879.  Two year's later, in 1881, after the birth of son John on April 5, 1880 in Den Andel (two miles north of Baflo), and with Rika again pregnant, they emigrated to the United States.  In early April the Dykhuis family took passage in steerage from Rotterdam on the W.A. Scholten, Captain Y.G. Vis, which was the second oldest fourmaster (a combined sail and steamship) in the fleet of the Netherlands American Steamship Company.  The family included Roelf, age 25, a carpenter, his young wife Hendrika, age 21, and infant son John, age 10 months.  The ship, which had a capacity of 650 passengers, carried only 465 passengers, 370 being Dutch.  It arrived in New York on April 16, 1881.  The family tradition reports that the vessel was antiquated and required three weeks to cross the ocean.  This may be true, but usually the ship used its steam engine to augment the sails and crossed in less than two weeks.  (The W.A. Scholten was built by the British firm, R. Napier & Sons, in 1873.  It was 3,529 registered tons and 370 feet in length.  The ship was named after a Groningen industrialist who spearheaded the founding of the Holland-America Line and provided much of the initial capital.  The W.A. Scholten had a tragic accident at sea in September 1887 and sank with great loss of life).

     The official Groningen emigration list of 1881 reports that Roelf was 25 years of age, a day laborer (dagloner) by occupation, and the family lived in Baflo (two miles east of Eenrum).  They emigrated for economic betterment ("verbetering van bestaan") and were of middling social status ("mingegoeden"). In the same year Roelf's older brother, Gerrit Dykhuis of Eenrum also emigrated to Chicago with his wife.  He was 28 years old, a day laborer, and very poor.  Hendrika Groot's uncle, Pieter Omkes Groot, had already emigrated to Chicago in 1855 from Warffum, Groningen, as a 28 year old unmarried carpenter.  Gerrit Dykhuis (often listed as George in the city directories in the 1890s) became a peddler and Peter Groot owned a grocery at 666 (new numbering 1335) South Fairfield Avenue for many years. The family lived next door at 664 (1331) Fairfield.  Gerrit's family resided directly across the street at 606 (1365) Fairfield.  Gerrit in 1899 took over the grocery and Peter opened a very successful produce commission house at 190 (new numbering 733) West Randolph Street, which street had become a major wholesale produce center in Chicago along with the South Water Street market.

     The Ralph Dykhuis family settled initially in the Dutch colony of Holland, Michigan, no doubt travelling by train from New York City to Detroit and then on to Holland, where son Lambert was born on August 3, 1881. Soon the family moved to the Groningen section on the Old West Side.  It is recalled by daughter Ann that the family was inadvertently separated when they moved to Chicago.  Ralph went ahead to seek work and when Rika and her two young sons soon followed, she could not find her husband for several anxious days. The youngest daughter, Henriette Vos, recalls that the kindly ticket agent at the train depot took the forlorn family home for the night when Ralph did not meet them there.

R Dykhuis & Son Grocery and Meat Market

     Grace's father, Ralph, had been a day laborer and sailor in the Netherlands.  In Chicago he was mainly a peddler with his own horse and wagon, selling straw and hay and later delivering fruit and vegetables to retail grocery stores.  He also farmed for two years in 1895-1896, when the family moved temporarily to a vegetable farm on the west side of South Kedzie Avenue near 32nd Street on what was then the city's far southwest side.  Later he was a contractor and carpenter for a time, serving as the general contractor for the building of the Douglas Park Church in 1900.  Thus, Grace's father and her husband Robert were both teamsters.  Later, from 1907 to 1911 Ralph ("Grandpa") Dykhuis owned and operated a grocery store and meat market with oldest son John R. under the name "R Dykhuis & Son." The store (see photograph) was located in a German neighborhood at 1361 (new numbering 3310) West Ogden Avenue between Homan and Spaulding Streets in a rented building (the site is presently a vacant lot).  Son Lambert, then in his twenties, was a salesman and teenage son Peter clerked in the store, as did Peter's twin sister Anna and older sister Grace.  The family of nine lived above the store.  By 1909 John Dykhuis opened his own grocery at 2294 (new numbering 4255) West 12th Street; his wife Dean helped in the store besides caring for three young children.  Grandpa Dykhuis sold his store to two of his employees, Bill and Otto Rudolph, and returned to his fruit and vegetable delivering business.

The Ralph Dykhuis Family

     Ralph Dykhuis's entrepreneurial skills provided a good income and enabled the family in 1888 to leave their rented home at 692 (new numbering 1749) West 15th Street and to purchase their own home at 652 (new numbering 1327) South Turner (now Christiana) Avenue, where they moved in August when Gerritdina was 6 weeks old.  It was an eleven room cottage that they subsequently enlarged by putting a full basement under it. (The site is now a vacant lot.)  Ralph's brother-in-law, Omke Groot, married to his step-sister Gertie nee Brands, later lived on the same street about a half block north at 599 (new numbering 1232) South Turner.

     Ralph and Hendrika Dykhuis had 15 children, of whom 3 died in infancy. They were John R., born April 5, 1880 in Den Andel,  who married Dean Bere on March 16, 1903, a grocer and food wholesaler, died May 16, 1957; Lambert, born August 3, 1881 in Holland, Mich., who married Rika Bond on Jan. 9, 1916, an insurance salesman, died Jan. 13, 1958;  Mary, born Oct. 20, 1882 in Chicago, who married Ben Buikema, died Oct. 19, 1976;  Jennie, born March 25, 1884 in Chicago, who married Frank Clinton, divorced, remarried Charles Scholtens (a brother of his sister-in-law Elizabeth, wife of Peter Dykhuis), died Dec. 23, 1949;  Berendina (Dean), born August 11, 1885 in Chicago, who married Nick Jongsma May 24, 1907, died April 8, 1973;  Kate, born Feb. 28, 1887, who married Jelke (Jake) Nauta July 6, 1909, died Apr. 8, 1973 (the same Sunday as sister Berendina); Grace; Peter and Anna, twins, born July 11, 1894 in Chicago--Peter served in France in the First World War, who married Elizabeth Scholtens June 13, 1919, was a bookkeeper and dispatcher for Landon Cartage Company of Chicago, and died May 2, 1956; Anna, a nurse, who married Anton Schermer, a minister in the Reformed Church of America, on June 18, 1928, and died Dec. 13, 1984; Gertrude (Gertie), born June 5, 1896, who married Jake Vander Schaaf June 22, 1921, died Oct. 19, 1967;  Ommelina (Emily), born June 5, 1898 in Chicago, who married Jake Dykstra Sept. 13, 1922, died Jan. 26, 1965;  and Henrietta, born Jan. 18, 1901, who married Art Vos Nov. 26, 1924.  She was the last of the children to die on ???  after living for several years in the Rest Haven Christian Convalescence Home in Palos Heights, IL. These 12 children produced 41 grandchildren and 109 great grandchildren!

The Dykhuis Conversion   

     After seven children were born, sometime in the early 1890s, Rika first and then Ralph experienced a spiritual renewal or rebirth.  In the Netherlands they had been members of the national church (Hervormde Kerk).  In Chicago they joined the First (Fourteenth Street) Christian Reformed Church and had their children baptized by the Reverend John Riemersma, pastor of the church from 1893 through 1899.  Thereafter they tried to live by a strict code of obedience to the Christian faith.  In 1899, Ralph Dykhuis, together with his father-in-law Lammert (Lambert) Groot, who had immigrated from Baflo to Chicago in 1882 at age 48 and had also experienced a spiritual rebirth, led in the organization of a daughter congregation further west.

Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church

     Founded on April 19, 1899, the new Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church met temporarily in a store at 1732 West 12th Street (now 3410 W. Roosevelt Road) just west of Homan Avenue. On September 29, 1900, the congregation dedicated their new church building at 1329 (old numbering 616) South Harding Avenue near Douglas Park Boulevard, and Ralph served as elder in the first consistory.  The building (now numbered 1333 S. Harding) was sold in 1927 for $40,000 cash and became a Jewish synagogue.  It currently is a Black church, affiliated with the Church of God, and was completely remodeled by its congregation in the early 1980s.  Douglas Park's members were mostly blue collar workers in cartage, construction, shopkeeping, and truck farming.  They eschewed factory work and went into business for themselves.

     In November 1899, the year that the new congregation began, Rev. Riemersma of First Christian Reformed Church was deposed from the ministry.  As a result, several families left First Church to join the Douglas Park Church, but it is not known to what extent these troubles in the mother church affected the new congregation.  Regardless, "the future was West," where building lots were larger and cheaper and people of a better class.  The Dutch migration continued and the churches followed.  In 1927, the congregation removed to the nearest western suburb of Cicero and built a new church at the southwest corner of 14th Street and 58th Court where Klaas Wezeman, an influential grocery merchant and church leader, had secured three 50 foot lots.  The congregation took the name Second Christian Reformed Church of Cicero but later changed it to Warren Park, in order not to play "second fiddle" to its daughter congregation, the Third Christian Reformed Church of Chicago, which had moved to Cicero in 1925 as the First Christian Reformed Church of Cicero, located four blocks away. In 1973, the  congregation again followed its members west to Elmhurst and in 1976 dedicated a commodious brick church with the name Faith Christian Reformed Church.

Grace Dykhuis Growing Up

     Grace Dykhuis went to the local public school on Sawyer Avenue through the fifth grade and then began doing housework for her Aunt Gertie Groot for three days a week for $1.25.  From age 19 until she married at age 21, she helped out in her father's store on Ogden Avenue, but mainly she helped her mother at home.  All of the children had to turn over their earnings to their parents except for a small allowance.  The Dutch language was spoken in the home and in church.  Only the two youngest girls, Anna and Henrietta, graduated from high school.  Henrietta was the only child to attend Timothy Christian School, the Dutch Reformed day school at 4224 West 13th Street built in 1912, but she transferred to the William Penn public school because father Ralph was dissatisfied that Timothy had only one teacher and an inadequate building.  Another memorable event in the family history is that once a bad storm blew in the windows of their home on Turner Avenue and flood waters stood a foot or more deep in the street and carried away the outdoor privy.  In the early years, they kept horses, chickens, and cows in the basement of the home--a practice similar to that in the Netherlands where the home and barn were under one roof--but later they built a separate barn.  In 1907 when Grace was 19 years old, the family sold their home on Turner Avenue and moved into a flat upstairs of the store.  Here she was married in 1910.  In 1911 or 1912 her parents built a two-story brick home at 1420 South Avers Avenue on the west side, where they lived until their deaths.  Grandson John recalls visiting Grandpa and Grandma Dykhuis there and Grandpa Dykhuis cutting his hair.

     Grace as a youngster and teenager attended Sunday school, the girls society at church, church choir, and catechism (doctrine) classes.  The life of the family clearly revolved around the church and its programs and activities.  Each child gave a penny or two in the church offering plate.  Daughter Ann recalled that "often Ma Dykhuis gave her last penny for the offerings, so she testified, but the Lord always provided and there was always enough to eat and to clothe her children."  Ann also wrote:  "Mother Dykhuis had a very definite conversion after she had five [seven?] children.  Pa Dykhuis was converted a few weeks after Mother's experience.  They did their best to raise their family in the true Christian faith and the Lord heard and answered their prayers because all of the children publicly professed their faith in church in their teen years and married Christian men.

Grandma Brands

     Grace's paternal grandfather was John Dykhuis, who was born in the small village of Noordhorn, Groningen Province, a few miles west of the provincial capital, Groningen City.  Noordhorn was on the Van Starkenborgh Canal, one of the main canals radiating into the capital city.  John Dykhuis married Maryka Schuiteboer in Noordhorn.  She was born September 27, 1823, and died on May 16, 1921 in Chicago at 98 years of age.  At 84 years, she successfully underwent an appendectomy.  She lived alone in her home on Lawndale Avenue near Washington Boulevard until age 87 or 88 and then moved in with her daughter Gertrude Groot in Englewood until her death.  Grace and the other Dykhuis children regularly walked over to Grandma Brands on Lawndale.  Maryka Brands was buried at Forest Home Cemetery.  Her first husband, John Dykhuis, died in the Netherlands and Maryka remarried John Brands.  The four children of the first marriage were Gerrit, Ralph, Peter, and Berdien (who married a Workman), and her two children with John Brands were Fred and Gertrude, who married Omke Groot.  John and Maryka emigrated to Chicago in 1882, a year after stepson Ralph Dykhuis.   Son Fred Brands followed in 1885 with his new wife Laura and in 1910 the family lived at 1247 S. Harding Avenue.

The Lambert Groot Family

     Grace's maternal grandfather was Lambert Groot who was born in Warffum, Groningen Province, and owned a tavern and inn at Warffum and later at Pieterburen.  Both were small farm villages on the North Sea coast of northern Groningen.  In the Netherlands he was a member of the Hervormde Church but was not a practicing Christian, unlike his first wife, Jantje Spoelma who died of diabetes at the age of 40 in 1869.  According to her grand- daughter Ann Schermer, Jantje Groot was a "real Christian woman who loved the Lord and aimed to serve him."  The family with five children emigrated for economic betterment and were of middling social status.  Lambert and Jantje had four children:  Hendrika, born September 6, 1888, who was 11 years old when her mother died; Antje (Annie) who married George Knol; Trijntje (Kate) who married Hendrik Berends; and Omke who married Gertie Brands, Ralph Dykhuis's step-sister.  Widower Lambert emigrated to Chicago in 1882, shortly after son Ralph.  He lived for a time with Ralph and Rika but then remarried. Lambert's second wife was Jantje (      ?).  Lambert died in October, 1885, at age 62. He and Jantje are buried in Forest Home Cemetery, as are John and Maryka Brands, and Ralph and Hendrika Dykhuis.  Indeed, all of the Swierenga, Groot, and Dykhuis families in Chicago are buried in the Forest Home Cemetery.

Death of Ralph and Rika Dykhuis

     Ralph Dykhuis died on June 8, 1914 at age 57 years at Robert Burns Hospital where he had a mastoid operation.  He suffered from mastoiditis, an infection of the temporal bone of the skull, but died of septicemia, a bacterial infection of the blood.  (John Swierenga recalls that Grandpa Dykhuis died of Bright's disease.)  Six children were still at home, and the youngest, Henrietta, was 13 years old.  Hendrika Groot Dykhuis died on December 29 (or 27?), 1927 at age 69 years in the Jane Lamb Hospital in Clinton, Iowa. She suffered from cancer of the female organs but died of T.B. perontinitis.  She had remarried John Wiersma of Fulton, but it was not a happy union.  Her body was returned to her former home on Avers Avenue for the wake, which home was then owned by her daughter Henrietta and son-in-law Arthur Vos. The funeral service was held on New Year's Day of 1928 and was the first in the new Second Christian Reformed Church of Cicero.  Rika was buried beside her first husband Ralph at Forest Home Cemetery in Section 49 west of the River. 

The Family of Robert and Grace Swierenga

     When Robert and Grace were married on April 27, 1910, they lived for a few years in an upstairs flat at 1346 South Crawford Avenue (now Pulaski Road).  The building was near the city limits (4000 west) at the end of the streetcar line. It is today one of the few buildings on the block still standing and inhabited.  Robert earned $15 a week and paid $10 a month rent.  Here John was born on January 21, 1911, Henrietta on March 8, 1913, and Katherine on October 17, 1914.  Before the end of the year the couple bought their own home at 1404 Kedvale Avenue near 14th Street in the Lawndale neighborhood.  They upgraded the bungalow by having a basement put under it with a new coal furnace.  The house had three bedrooms upstairs and one on the main floor.  It stood on a 25 foot lot augmented by a vacant lot on the south side planted in a garden.  A side driveway led to the two-vehicle garage/barn at the rear.  The last two children, Ralph (born February 13, 1919), and Henry (born July 16, 1924), saw the light of day at the Kedvale Avenue home.  The building was destroyed in the turbulent Chicago riots of the 1960s.

Swierenga Family Naming Pattern

      The naming pattern of the children exactly followed the traditional Dutch custom.  The oldest son, John, was named after his paternal grandfather, Jan Swierenga; the oldest daughter Henrietta, was named after her maternal grandmother, Henrietta Groot; the second son, Ralph, bore the name of his maternal grandfather, Ralph Dykhuis; the second daughter, Katherine, was named after her paternal grandmother, Katrijn Koning; and the third son, Henry, carried the name of his paternal uncle (who had died of Bright's disease as a young husband and father of five children) and his paternal great grandfather, Hindrik Bartelds Swierenga.  As was then the custom, none of the children bore a second or middle given name.  John was baptized as Jan by Rev. Jacob Manni (1859-1935), pastor of the Douglas Park Christian Reformed Church from 1910 to 1916.  John slept on corn husks covered by ticking in a crib made by his grandfather Ralph Dykhuis, who earned extra income by making ticking and cribs.  John's crib was covered with oil cloth to keep it dry.

     Because the Swierenga family had favored the name Jan for more than 300 years--the earliest known progenitor before 1600 was Barteld Jan, every male line in America had a son named Jan.  To distinguish them and avoid confusion, each as adults took as a middle initial the first letter of their father's given name.  Hence, John of Robert was known as "John R.", and his first cousins were John E. of Edward and John H. of Henry.  Second and third cousins were John F. of Fred, John B. of Barney, etc.   

The Move to Cicero

     Robert and Grace moved again in the spring of 1934 to a modern brick bungalow at 1534 South 59th Court in Cicero.  They had become more affluent by then and wanted to live nearer the church which in 1927 had relocated in Cicero about three blocks from their new home.  A fellow church member, Ben Huiner, a building contractor, and his son John, built the house.  (Ben's wife was a Wierenga and the Wierenga family also emigrated from the area of Ten Post and knew the Swierenga family.)  The house was first rented by Nicholas Davids, the father of daughter Katherine's husband, John Davids.  Robert lived here until his death in 1949 and Grace until she moved into a convalescent home in 1965; then the house was sold.

Religious Life

     Robert Swierenga was active in the church and he took life seriously.  In the Douglas Park Church and later Second Cicero Christian Reformed Church, he was elected first as deacon for one term and then as elder for seven terms.  Once he served as vice-president of the consistory.  Altogether he was a member of the consistory for a total of 25 years, with brief intermittent breaks between terms.  He also led the Men's Society.  He never taught Sunday School.  Consistory members filed in when the minister mounted the pulpit and sat on separate platforms at the front of the sanctuary--elders on the left and deacons on the right.  Grace and the children tried to sit as close as possible in a nearby pew.

     Robert and Grace always tried to live their Christian faith in daily life and to maintain a high spiritual level in the home.  Often Robert would quietly bring 100 lb. sacks of potatoes to needy families in the church, especially widows with small children.  Robert led in prayer before each family meal to thank God for the food and for His loving care.  After the evening meal (and noon meal on Sundays) Robert read a passage from the Bible, going verse by verse from Genesis to Revelation, and closed in prayer.  He used the Dutch language for devotions until John began school and then for the sake of the children switched to English, which he spoke without an accent.  When the children learned to read, they each received a Bible and followed the daily reading, sometimes finishing the last verse.  As young teens, the sons especially were taught to pray at the table.  Use of the radio in the home was monitored and Christian programming favored.

Making Music to the Lord

     The Swierenga family was always interested in music.  Besides church activities, Robert devoted his spare time to music.  He was self-taught. He played an accordion and a harmonica for his own enjoyment and a cornet in public forums.  On Sundays he loved to play the parlor organ (later piano), gather the children around him, and sing simple hymns. He also sang in the church choir, under his brother Edward who was the director for many years.  He later sang in the Knickerbocker Male Chorus, a community choir composed largely of Christian Reformed men.  Robert played the cornet and was a charter member of the Excelsior Band, which like the male chorus was drawn from the church community.  The Band, fully uniformed with hats, held midweek concerts in the church auditorium and played on the bandstand at the summer Church Sunday School picnic.  The people especially enjoyed the hymnsing, accompanied by the Band and led by the conductor.  Occasionally the Band members provided special music on charter boat excursions on Lake Michigan to St. Joseph and elsewhere. 

"Our Own Kind"

     Life revolved around church programs and Christian school activities.  There was little intermingling with non-Dutch neighbors.  As John recalled, "We were rather isolated.  We found our friends amongst our own kind and our own people.  And marriage partners the same."  Even sporting competition, such as softball and bowling, was organized as church teams.  For recreation and holidays, the family almost invariably visited relatives who lived on farms near Chicago, such as the family of his sister, Kate Tillema and her husband Nicholas in De Motte, Indiana, and his sister Alice Miedema and her husband Keimpe, who rented a farm in Des Plaines, Illinois, at Touhy and Wolf Roads, near present-day O'Hare International Airport.  Evenings were often spent in church activities or in visiting relatives.  For many years the Swierenga and Dykhuis reunions on national summer holidays brought the extended family together.

Vacationing by Car

     The family's first car was a 1925 Overland sedan with iceinglass curtains, purchased in 1926.  They used the car to commute the two miles to the new church in Cicero.  Son John learned to drive with this car.  In 1930 Robert bought a new Buick and Etta learned to drive with this car.  Twice in the 1930s, the family traveled with the 1930 Buick to visit relatives in Corsica and New Holland, South Dakota.  Both times Robert fell asleep at the wheel and caused an accident.  The first accident, a minor one, occurred when the car went into the ditch and scraped along a barbed wire fence.  The second accident was severe enough that Robert made no more long distance auto trips thereafter.  On a secondary road near Trip, South Dakota, the wheels sank into the soft gravel shoulder of the road.  The car, moving at about 15 mph, first turned on its side and then flipped over on its top.  Robert quickly turned off the ignition to prevent a fire and the whole family climbed out of the windows unharmed.  The windshield was broken and so they drove back to Chicago with no windshield.  The next car was a new green 1940 Pontiac that carried them through the War years.  In 1949, only five months before his death, Robert purchased his last car, a 1949 DeSoto, from John Smit, a Chrysler-DeSoto dealer in Summit.  All of the children learned to drive, but Grace never wished to get behind the wheel.  

Bringing Up the Kids   

     Within the family, Robert was the head and ultimately made the key decisions, although Grace's recommendations and wishes were carefully considered.  Grace had the responsibility for housekeeping, shopping for all clothes, shoes, and food, except the groceries that Robert brought home from the store.  Grace also ordinarily disciplined the children, although in severe cases Robert meted out punishment with a wide paint stick or a pinch on the arm.  But the eldest son, John, recalls that "mother was quicker to use the stick."  Once when John was 12 years old he took his father's prized Overland car for an unauthorized joy ride in the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, at the corner of the block, he struck Mr. Pribble's parked candy truck and dented the fender of the car.  His father was furious and gave John a real tongue-lashing.

     John's offense was the greater because as the oldest son he carried the greatest obligations and privileges.  His place at the dinner table was directly across from father.  He was also expected to work to support the family as soon as possible.  Until marriage all earnings of the oldest children were turned over to their parents, but as the family finances improved, the younger children were permitted to retain their earnings. John and Katherine worked for the Western Electric Company of Cicero, the city's largest employer, but John soon quit to get out of the confining and smelly plant. Etta worked briefly for the nearby Victor Gasket Company of Chicago located on Roosevelt Road, but she preferred helping out at home.  The children married between 22 and 26 years of age except for the youngest, Henry, who was almost 28 years at marriage.  None of the children received a cash wedding gift or dowry from the folks.  After marriage the daughters were expected to be full-time homemakers and mothers.

Education

     Robert and Grace believed in Christian education for their children, despite the high cost of tuition, but they did not encourage higher education or professional careers.  All attended the new Timothy Christian School on Tripp Avenue and 13th Street.  Ralph, the second son, was the only child to finish secondary school, graduating from Chicago Christian High School.  Katherine completed the two-year certificate program at Christian High.  John, Henrietta, and Henry quit Christian High after one or two years, when they reached age sixteen, as the law allowed.  Henry, the youngest son, was the only family member to serve in the armed forces.  He was drafted during World War Two and was assigned to the Army Signal Corps as a signalman in the Pacific theater from 1942 to 1945. 

     Robert's goals were, first, to establish a Christian family based on mutual love and respect, and secondly, to achieve a decent standard of living and a nice home in a good neighborhood.  He reached both of these goals and reflected on his life with satisfaction before his death.  All of his children became professing Christians in the Christian Reformed Church and married Christian wives who were also members.  Robert and Grace had 20 grandchildren and many more great grandchildren.

Death of Robert and Grace Swierenga

     Robert became ill with esophageal cancer sometime in the mid-1940s.  He had long suffered from indigestion and for more than ten years drank a glass of caustic baking soda and water every day after dinner to quell heartburns.  This no doubt aggravated his illness, if it did not cause it.  In the final two months he wasted away in great pain and died at age 61 on December 17, 1949 at the West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, Illinois, following a two-week hospitalization.  To augment the pain medication, which was as strong as could be prescribed, his family gave him whiskey mixed with sugar.  His son-in-law Paul Tuitman, who lived with daughter Etta in an apartment in the basement of the home, sat with Robert throughout most of the long nights.  The sons and daughters, especially Etta, took turns during the day to relieve Grace.

      Robert, who lost his mother at age 9 and his father at age 12, got much comfort from the Bible.  On the day before he died, his sister-in-law Rika Dykhuis read Psalm 116 and Paul had to assure him from Scripture that his salvation was guaranteed.  "He was a Christian man," Paul recalled, but he "had struggles" with the prospect of facing God.  After Paul read verses of assurance, Robert declared: "Now it's closed."  Shortly before he passed away, Paul asked, "Are you going to Jesus?"  "Yes" was all Robert had the strength to reply.  He was conscious to the end.  After a thronged three-day wake at the Mulder Funeral Home in Cicero, owned by a fellow Hollander and church member George Mulder, and funeral services at the Warren Park Christian Reformed Church, where Robert had worshipped for so many years, his body was interred in the "Dutch section" (Section 75) of the Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois. 

     Grace lived for another 17 years, 15 of which she spent in her home at 1534 South 59th Court.  Then early in 1965, due to arteriosclerotic heart disease, she suffered a cerebral thrombosis and was hospitalized for three weeks at the West Suburban Hospital.  Her memory was temporarily affected, but she recovered sufficiently to be discharged to the Rest Haven Christian Convalescent Home in Palos Heights, Illinois. Here after thirty months she died peacefully on June 11, 1967, following another cerebral thrombosis that had occurred ten days earlier.  During these months she improved considerably and was able to move about in a wheelchair.  She died only three weeks shy of her 79th birthday.  Following a wake at the Mulder Funeral Home and a funeral service on June 14 at the Warren Park Christian Reformed Church, she was buried beside her husband.  All of her children survived her.  Twenty years later, son Ralph passed away unexpectedly from heart failure on January 15, 1987, a few weeks before his 68th birthday.  He too died in the West Suburban Hospital and was buried in the Forest Home Cemetery near his parents' grave.  The other four children continue to live in the Chicago area.

The Second Generation

John R. Swierenga and Marie A. Hoekstra

     Robert and Grace's children came of age in the 1920s and 1930s and remained within the tight family circle.  All resided after marriage within a half mile radius of the parental home in Cicero.  Life continued to revolve around church, school, and family.  Each family worshiped at the Cicero II church and the children and later the grandchildren participated in Sunday School from age 5 and catechism from age 9 or 10, until joining the church by making public profession of faith at age 18.  As teenagers they were active in young men's and young women's societies, which prepared them for the adult societies.  Timothy Christian School activities, including drama, musical programs, and sports, took up leisure time.  The parents meanwhile were occupied raising funds for the school and setting broad policy at organizational meetings, since the school was owned by a society of parents.

John R. Growing Up

     Robert and Grace presented their six weeks old son for baptism at the Douglas Park Church on March 5, 1911 by Rev. Jacob Manni.  Six years later he began Sunday school and was enrolled in first grade at Timothy Christian School located three blocks from home at the corner of Tripp Avenue and 13th Street.  On reaching the 5th grade he also began attending Saturday morning catechism classes at the church on Harding Avenue four blocks east.  Elders Tromp, Bulthuis, and Dykema assisted Pastor John O. Vos as teachers of the graded classes.  John graduated from Timothy in 1925 in a class of 16 (see class photo), 7 boys and 9 girls.  The school principal was Nicholas Hendrikse.  All church and school instruction was in English but worship services continued in Dutch until the late 1920s when English was introduced in the morning service.  As a result the oldest children, John, Henriette, and Katherine became fluent in conversational Dutch. They also picked up the Groninger dialect, which was spoken at wider family gatherings with uncles, aunts, and grandparents.  Later in life they enjoyed conversing in the "Hollandse taal" with oldtimers, fresh immigrants, and real Netherlanders when traveling in the Old Country, which John and Marie did four times.  Henrietta put her language skills to good use after she met and married Paul Tuitman, a 1930 Dutch immigrant, in 1938.

     At age 15 John could join the Young Men's Society at Douglas Park Church. He did so eagerly; it was a "very live organization," he noted.  He remained active until his marriage at age 23, rising through the officer ranks as secretary, treasurer, vice-president, and president.  Elder D.T. Prins was the capable leader and mentor who instructed the young men in Reformed church history and taught them to evaluate all of life from a Calvinist world view.  Since John dropped out of school at age 15, the Young Men's Society provided his continuing education.  It also ensured valuable social networking with Christian Reformed young men from greater Chicagoland and even beyond the region, because each society was affiliated  with the Chicago Chapter of the National League of Reformed Young Men's Societies, which held semiannual city-wide meetings and annual national conventions. Through the society John began lifelong acquaintances with all the Christian Reformed men his age in Chicago and beyond, many of whom he worked with later in life in various organizations.

The Lawndale Neighborhood

     The Lawndale neighborhood where many Dutch lived was predominantly Russian Jewish and Slavic Catholic. John's childhood friends included Bernie and Samie Basner who lived across the street. Mrs. Basner always had a pot of kosher chicken soup simmering on the stove, which John enjoyed sampling. He played softball with both Dutch and Jewish boys on the playgrounds of Bryan Public School and, after a building addition covered the ball field, at the Mason Public School field at 18th Street and Keeler Avenue. John and his Dutch Reformed buddies were fascinated as teenagers to observe Jewish culture and worship, especially the "bedlam" of chanting in the "shule" (synagogue) and the deft skills of the "shuker" in slaughtering chickens at the local butcher shop for 10 cents each. In mere seconds with a sharp knife the shuker slit the throat in such a way as to leave the head dangling but not entirely severed. The kosher chickens were certified as premium in quality and brought higher prices as they hung by their feet on hooks in the shop window.

     These neighborhood experiences enabled John to appreciate and understand Jewish ways and thinking, which was a great benefit later in his trucking business when most of his customers were Jews. John won their goodwill by honest dealings and by kibitzing in broken Yiddish about their culture, so that they jokingly called him a "Yiddischer Goy" (Jewish Gentile).  Amazingly, Samuel Basner, John's orthodox Jewish friend, later converted to Christianity at the Nathaniel Institute, the Jewish Mission of the Chicago Christian Reformed churches, located in the 1300 block on Crawford Avenue. His parents disowned him. For years Basner and his Dutch Reformed wife, Carol Lubben, resided in Elmhurst near his friend John. He affiliated for a time with the Elmhurst Christian Reformed Church, and shopped at the same Jewel store on York Road where they occasionally conversed. In 1987 John observed Samuel trip and fall at the store and subsequently testified in Samuel's successful court suit in the Du Page County courthouse in Wheaton. So after 75 years their paths continued to cross in remarkable ways and they will spend Eternity together.

Continuing to Making Music

     For recreation John turned to music, since he had an ear for it.  At age 10 or 11 he began playing cornet alongside his father in the Excelsior Band, the band of the Douglas Park CRC, taking the second and third scores.  He switched to a slide trombone at age 17, which he mastered and played for 60 years.  He also learned to play hymns on the piano respectably well and he sang baritone alongside his father in the church choir and later in the Knickerbocker Male Chorus, along with brothers Ralph and Henry, who sang first tenor until the choir disbanded in 1970.  John was self taught and learned to read music and master the techniques of the instruments.  On trombone he could easily transpose notes for piano accompaniment or shift to any key as needed.  Beside the Band, which disbanded in the late 1930s, John used the trombone to lead singing at family reunions, church programs and picnics, Easter sunrise church services, the Helping Hand Gospel Mission on skid row at 848 West Madison Street, and many other places.  The Mission was a joint outreach of the Christian Reformed churches of Chicago, and Robert began conducting Sunday evening worship services there once a month in the 1920s.  Robert led the singing with his cornet and later John joined him on his trombone. In the 1940s when failing health forced Robert to give up this ministry, John took his place and later introduced his own children to this music ministry.  John and Marie encouraged each of their six children to take up wind instruments and piano and organ, and the family regularly played together in the living room following Sunday morning worship and Sunday school.  Robert and Grace had established this pattern in the 1920s, as noted above.

John R.'s First Jobs

     John's working life began early.  At age 10 or 11 he delivered the Chicago Daily News, an afternoon daily with no Sunday edition.  John quit high school at age 15, during the tenth grade.  "I didn't like school," he recalled, but more importantly, he added, "my Dad said I wasn't going to become a minister or a teacher, so he would not continue to pay Christian school tuition."  Until he reached age 16, however, John had to attend "Continuation School" one day per week on Wednesdays.  Once that was completed John took a full-time job polishing furniture with pumice at a furniture factory.  The work was disagreeable and he quit after some months to become a messenger boy at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Cicero.  But this job proved even worse because John had to walk through buildings all day where the air was pungent with smoke from burning insulation on electric wires and phone cables.  "I hated it."  Western Electric was "like a jail," he declared. 

     John held on for only four or five months until at age 17 in 1927 he found a prized job as an insurance file clerk in downtown Chicago at the Royal Group of London & Lancashire Insurance Company.  The firm was located on the tenth floor of the twelve-story Brooks Building at 223 West Jackson Boulevard, where coincidentally in the 1950s and 1960s John's trucking company, the Excel Motor Service Company, had its rented office in a small room off of the rear loading platform of this same building.  John rose within the company to the position of head "map clerk," being responsible for rating fire insurance on residential policies in the three-state region of Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas.  The position offered security but only slow upward mobility and a meager salary.  John approached his boss early in 1934 and asked for a raise: "I want to get married and I'll need more money," he said, demanding an increase of $20 a week.  "You have great potential," the boss replied and offered $5 more, with the admonition to be patient and grow with the company.  "No," John replied. "You and I have to part company."  He resigned and became a fruit and vegetable peddler.  

John's Spiritual Life and the Labor Day 1929 Drownings

     John Swierenga made public profession of faith in the Second Cicero CRC in 1929 at age 18. He was motivated by a "shattering disaster," a drowning of several close friends, from which he was providentially spared. On Labor Day 1929 he and his best friend Evert Veldman had arranged to take their steady dates, Anna Meyer and Marie Hoekstra, respectively, for an outing to Long Lake north of Chicago where they would join eight other couples from area churches, including Harry Wezeman and the brothers Thomas and Peter Huizenga of Cicero, Cornelius Gelderloos and John Hoving of Chicago, and George Ottenhoff of Hinsdale. The men were between 19 and 23 years old. Marie Hoekstra took sick and canceled her date that morning, much to John's chagrin. He had to stay home and spend the holiday with the family.

     Later that evening John learned the awful news that five of the men including Everett Veldman and Harry Wezeman, his classmates at Timothy Christian School for eight years, had drowned when an overloaded boat with an outboard motor capsized after the motor caught in weeds and swamped the boat in 15 feet of water. Six were in a boat designed for four and none could swim. Thos. Huizenga, who was driving the boat, clung to the boat seat until being rescued by his older brother Peter, who was following in a second boat.

     Two Chicago newpapers carried the tragedy. The heading of the Chicago Daily Tribune article read: "Boys Tip Boat, Five Drown in Tragic Outing" (Sept. 3, 1929). The bold, black, front page headline of Onze Toekomst cried out: "6 Hollandse Jongelingen op 'Labor Day' Verdronken," (Sept. 4, 1929). The Tribune said witnesses among the 3,000 people at Stanton's Resort enjoying the holiday reported that the men were "frolicking in an overloaded boat,.. standing up and rocking their boat to amuse Miss Helen Brower, 1642 West 14th Place, and Miss Jennie Dekker, 1413 South Ashland Avenue, who were in another boat close by." The editor of Onze Toekomst disputed the frolicking charge. "One of the girls strongly denies [it] ... and we readily believe her. Moreover, all five boys had a good reputation and in some respects exhibited exemplary behavior," said the editor.

     The Tribune reported there were ten men and ten women at the Dutch outing, but named only the five victims and the two women. The Onze Toekomst account states that "many young people came too" and identified the seven men noted here plus five women, namely Brower, Dekker, Anna Klem, Bertha Holtrust, and Thomas Huizenga's wife Jennie. Possibly, Peter Huizenga's wife Betty was present too. Dekker, Brower, and Klem had rented a cottage at Long Lake for the prior week, and this was the base for the holiday party.

     The disaster traumatized the West Side Dutch Reformed community like few events in the twentieth century, because it impacted many congregations and their interrelated family clans. "We suddenly all feel that same shudder, all our nerves are touched with compassion, and our hearts express real sorrow and sympathy," wrote the editor of Onze Toekomst, as he struggled to find words of comfort. The funerals were the largest and most unforgettable in the history of the churches, and friends who served as pallbearers and indeed that entire generation carried the emotional scars for the rest of their lives. Many feared water and avoided swimming and even boating. Others took their Christian faith more seriously.  

     The close call with death and loss of his friend Evert certainly had a profound effect on John, one of the pallbearers, who also could not swim. Veldman was a "leader with great potential," John recalled. Even forty years later, in 1989, he testified: "I was moved to see these young men taken out of life so suddenly. It made me aware that I should be more consistent in my Christian life. God had other plans for me. This gave me motivation and incentive."

Dating Marie Ann Hoekstra

     John met Marie Ann Hoekstra while her father, the Reverend Peter A. Hoekstra (known by colleagues as  P.A. or "Pa"--an acronym Alice disliked) served as the first pastor of the newly relocated Second Cicero church from 1927 to 1940. The family arrived in the new parsonage at 1406 South 58th Court in June.  "When she saw me and I saw her, we saw something in each other," John admitted coyly years later. They began dating casually by taking walks on Sunday evening after the church service, as was the custom among Dutch-Americans. After agreeing to "go steady," they sat in church together during the evening worship. This signified to the congregation that the relationship was serious.  Following a courtship of about five years, John and Marie were engaged on Christmas day 1933 and married in the church on August 8, 1934.  Both were 23 years of age and the first in either family to marry.  The Great Depression was at its worst in these years and it required much faith to marry and raise a family.  John even quit his insurance clerkship after six years to go into business for himself in order to support a family.    

John and Marie's Wedding

     The wedding, at which Dad Hoekstra officiated, fell on one of the hot (100+ degrees), humid "dog days" of August.  During the traditional congregational singing and wedding sermon, the wedding party sat down on a bench in front of a church full of family and friends.  The bridal party included Marie's sister Winifred (bridesmaid), John's sister Henrietta (maid of honor), and John's friends Edward Wezeman (best man) and Abe Van Kampen.  The reception and program, which followed the wedding and receiving line at church, was held in the decorated basement of the Swierenga home, with Uncle Nick Jongsma as toastmaster.  The newlyweds honeymooned for several days at the Wisconsin Dells and then John returned to the vegetable route.

The Anne (Andrew) Hoekstra Family

     Marie was the firstborn of Peter A. Hoekstra (1886-1965) and Alice (baptized as Jacoba Alida) Clausing (1885-1993).  The paternal bloodline was pure Frisian, but the maternal side had no Dutch blood, it was Prussian, German, and French Huguenot.  Peter was born in the small village of Ee near Dokkum, Friesland on March 4, 1886, the seventh child of Anne Lolles Hoekstra (1843-1920) and Willemke Aagje Kloostra (1847-1921), a farm family. He was baptized in the Hervormde Kerk of Ee.  Anne was one of eight sons (a daughter had died when young) and his father's farm could not support eight families. Willemke also bore the stigma of being illegitimate.  When Peter was two years old, his parents decided to emigrate to Roseland, Illinois where many fellow Frisians lived.  They moved in two stages.  Anne went ahead alone, sailing from Rotterdam to New York on the Holland-America Line steamship P. Caland, arriving June 12, 1888.  After the train trip to Chicago, Anne boarded in Roseland and found work as a wood machine laborer at the nearby Pullman Car Works at 111th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.  The firm made the famous railroad palace sleeping cars.  Within four months he saved enough money to send prepaid tickets in steerage class for his wife and seven children.  They departed from Amsterdam on the SS Edam, arriving in New York on October 8, and then by railroad to Chicago.  Since Pullman required families of new hires to live in company housing in the company town of Pullman, the Hoekstras resided at 558 (new numbering 10706) South Fulton Avenue.     

Working at the Pullman Palace Car Works

     As soon as possible in the early 1890s, Anne Lolles, who Anglicized his name to Andrew Louis, moved the family to Roseland, where Pieter (Anglicized to Peter) began public schooling in 1892. Two events in 1893 stand out, one enjoyable and one devastating.  Andrew found extra monies to take the family to the Chicago World's Fair (the Columbian Exhibition) to see the wonders of the Midway and especially to experience the thrill of the ferris wheel.  Soon the great financial panic of 1893 and violent labor strife at Pullman in 1894 made the pleasures of the Fair a dim memory.  When the Company cut wages but not rents and prices at the company store, the 5,000+ Pullman workers went on strike, which quickly spread into a nationwide rail stoppage.  This brought federal intervention with 14,000 troops, state militia, and local police to open the plants and crush the union.  Andrew and his sons, as Christians and Republican in politics, did not condone the strike, but were powerless.  They were out of work for over a year and took up market gardening.  The family was cast on the city relief rolls and fish from the relief store was the only meat.

     After peace was restored and the plant reopened, the destitute Hoekstra family moved back to Pullman, residing several doors from their previous home at 544 (new numbering 10722) Fulton Avenue.  The oldest sons Louis and William also were hired, as were Richard and Thomas later.  Peter attended school but the neighborhood was rife with youth gangs and he had to join the Allen Block gang to protect himself; they fought the Foundry gang with fists and pitchforks.  

Peter Hoekstra in Roseland

     In 1896 or 1897, Andrew and Willemke moved back to the safety of Roseland, living briefly in Gano near 117th and LaSalle streets and then at 10707 South Wabash Avenue behind the First Reformed Church on Michigan Avenue, where they worshiped under Reverend Balster Van Es. By 1898 they settled permanently at 10503 South Curtis Avenue.  Peter completed his education at Van Vlissingen public school (108th and Wentworth Avenue) and enrolled in Auburn Park High School.  He had a good mind and, as the next to youngest child with older brothers working, the family could afford to keep him in school.  He graduated with honors in 1903 as salutatorian of his high school class, received a full scholarship to the University of Chicago, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1907.  The summer of 1902 the seventeen year old worked two months at the Pullman shops with his father, brothers, and uncles; he helped install inlaid wood (a task known as marquetry) in the palace sleeping cars.  Earlier after his sophomore year in high school Peter spent a summer on a vegetable farm earning $3 a week weeding and picking, but his agricultural career was cut short by the fact that he was color blind and could not distinguish green from ripe red tomatoes.

     In 1900, when Dominie Van Es left First Reformed, the Hoekstra family affiliated with the Second Christian Reformed Church of Roseland. The family was deeply pious. Willemke in simple faith regularly sang children's hymns to her toddlers.  Peter remembered "Scheepje onder Jezus hoede" (Sheep under Jesus care).  He attended Sunday school, catechism, young men's society, and being musically inclined and self-taught, played the organ in church and gave piano lessons.  He made public profession of faith at age 16 and decided to study for the Christian ministry, under the influence of Simon Blocker, a pre-seminary student at Rutgers University who he probably met while attending the University of Chicago.[v]  Peter's pastor, the Rev. Klaas Kuiper, who had served two churches in the Netherlands before emigrating in 1891, also inspired him with high ideals and introduced him to Dutch Reformed ecclesiastical and theological writings.  Peter found further stimulation from the pastor's son, R.B., who was his age and likewise aimed for the ministry.  They forged a lifelong friendship.  R.B. became president of Calvin Theological Seminary.  To hone his public speaking skills, Peter taught Sunday school and participated in debates and discussions staged by the young men's society.

     Andrew and Willemke had eight children: Pietje Nellie (1870-1949); Rigtje Rose (1871-1945); Lolle or Louis (1876-1960), Willem or William (1878-1957), Geeske or Gertie (1881-1964), Taeke or Richard (1883-1946), Pieter or Peter (1886-1965), and Theunis or Thomas (1891-1960).  Later in life Willemke became extremely overweight and sedentary.  She complained of headaches, cold stiff hands, and had little interest in life.  She spent her days sitting in a wicker chair by the window and Andrew had to care for her and do the housework.  In 1919 they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a reception at their home at 16 West 107th Street.  Andrew died of pneumonia in 1920 and Willemke followed ten months later of heart failure.

The Jacobus Clausing Family

     In his third year at the University in 1905-06, Peter Hoekstra met Alice J. Clausing, a member of the First CRC of Roseland and daughter of Jacobus Clausing (1844-1885) and Anna Maria Kiel (1845-1930).  The Kiels, who had been sausage makers for generations (kielbasa was the famed Kiel family product), migrated from Rastenburg, Prussia (now in Poland) to Amsterdam, where Anna's father, Pieter Cornelis Kiel (1812-??), M.D., practiced general medicine and pharmacology.  Family tradition is that King Louis Napoleon III, Emperor of France (1848-1870) and a grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte, ordered one of Dr. Kiel's famed secret-formula medicines.  Kiel's wife, Johanna Muller, a butcher's daughter, was of French Huguenot extraction.  The Clausings, originally cattle buyers from western Germany in the Twente area, lived in nearby Alkmaar, where Jacobus and his younger brother Cornelis Laurens grew up in a Lutheran orphanage after their mother died in 1854.  Orphaned at ages 10 and 7, Jacobus was apprenticed to a tailor and Cornelis to a painter.  Jacobus earned 35 cents a week in 1859.  Jacobus and Cornelis both married Kiel daughters; Jacobus wed Anna Maria on May 7, 1870, a year after Cornelis had wed Johanna Antoinette on Jan. 31, 1869.  These were not socially acceptable matches, because a doctor's daughter should marry one of her "state" and not a day laborer and orphan at that!  Anna's parents had selected a school teacher, but he had a long nose and she did not like him.  She had dark brown eyes.

     Three years later, in 1873, when Jacobus and Anna's child Peter was only 18 months, they emigrated from Warmenhuizen with Cornelius and his family of four to Roseland, Illinois, which was a center for Noord Hollanders.  Both families had caught the "America fever" and wished to get away from poverty and the Dutch social conventions. They took passage in steerage on the Dutch steamship Castor, 942 tons, from Rotterdam to New York, entering via the Castle Garden reception center on May 9, 1873, after three weeks at sea.  Anna became so sea sick they despaired of her life.  Jacobus found work at the Pullman shops as a laborer in the lumber yard, earning 13 cents an hour for ten-hour days.  The couple eventually had eight children and remained very poor, living in a string of rented houses until settling in a little red brick house at 46 West 111th Street across from the Roseland Community Hospital.  Here Jacoba Alida was born on December 2, 1885. She never knew her father, who died before her birth.

     The Clausing family, unlike the Hoekstras, were initially not religiously orthodox.  This was a legacy of Jacobus growing up in an orphanage.  They did not attend church in Holland, had no family devotions, and thought nothing of working on Sunday.  But in Roseland they were so starved for fellowship and entertainment that they began attending the only Dutch-language church in town, First Reformed.  The congregation had installed an organ in 1875 to lead in singing the good old Dutch Psalms.  Wondrously, the Clausings were converted under the preaching and teaching of the pastor, the Reverend H.R. Koopman, and Jacobus and Anna made profession of faith and joined the congregation, probably in 1876 or 1877.

     In late 1877 Rev. Koopman took a call to Paterson, NJ as the Roseland congregation became embroiled in the debate over freemasonry and other doctrinal issues that had been rocking the Reformed denomination for a decade.  The upshot was that sixty-one members, including Jacobus and Anna, seceded to form the "True Holland Reformed Church" of Roseland (later changed to First Christian Reformed Church).  The new congregation erected a building at the corner of 111th and State streets, within a block of the Clausing home.[vi]  Here in June, 1885 was the burial service for Jacobus, who died at age 42 of heart trouble, leaving his large family to struggle and live in great poverty.  Early in 1886 the widow Anna presented Jacoba Alida, born six months later, for the sacrament of baptism by the Rev. P. Koster.  Some urged her to put the baby up for adoption, but son Peter said "No, if seven can eat then eight can eat of it too."

     Jacoba Alida went to the Dutch Christian school for the first three years and then transferred to the same Van Vlissingen public school that Peter Hoekstra attended.  Her first grade teacher did not like her name and changed it to Alice, which she used for the rest of her long life. At first her classmates also shunned her because she had no father.  Once she went home at recess and asked if the coffee was ready, but mother sent her right back to school.  Anna worked as a birthing nurse, took in washing, and sent the oldest son Peter out to work.  Her vegetable garden kept the family relatively healthy; Alice ate as many carrots as she could. But they rarely ate fruit and only received an orange and box of candy at Christmas.  Apples were cut into eight slices.  The milk and homemade butter from their cow had to be sold for food.  As a result, Alice did not drink milk and was very thin.  One summer she was sent to relatives on a farm in Wichart and gained weight.  For birthdays she received a penny, which would be spent at the store for popcorn or candy.  Her only doll, made of plaster, was crushed when an old lady stepped on it. 

The Reverend Peter A. Hoekstra

     Peter and Alice's courting was curtailed when Peter went to Grand Rapids, MI in 1907 to enroll in the Calvin Theological Seminary as the first student with a four-year college degree, and that from the prestigious University of Chicago.  Peter thrived at Calvin.  The Board of Trustees licensed him to preach after completing the first year, as was the norm, and he was sent for the summer assignment of 1908 to small churches in the frontier west, in Minnesota, Montana, and Alberta.  At Farmington, MN he led worship services in a schoolhouse with a soapbox on the desk as a pulpit and an oil lamp for lighting.  He walked many miles and once rode a western pony across prairies and streams to visit parishioners living in dugouts and sod huts.  There were no paved roads.  In Lethbridge, Alberta, he hitched a ride on a loaded coal wagon without springs, with his suitcase slung atop the coal.  As adventurous as was this first assignment in the west, Peter's second summer was in the urban east, in Paterson, NJ near  New York City, which set his future course.  Peter took the opportunity to go to New York to visit his friend Simon Blocker, who pastored a Reformed church there. 

      During his years in the seminary and on the far-flung summer assignments, Peter faithfully wrote his beloved Alice letters and postal cards.  Occasionally he wrote in poetry, using her baptized name Alida, which he liked.  One birthday poem that Alice saved is entitled "Ad Alidam" (Latin, To Alida):

     Hail, Thou Alida, maiden calm and fair!

     May angels, ministering to thy care

       Thee blessings bring this day.

     Hail thou, my princess, dearest to my soul!

     May th'heavenly servants to the destined goal

       This happy wish convey.

     Blessed be this day, that in the year's sweet round

     Thou do'st hear voices round about thee sound

       Of greetings to thee brought.

     Blessed be this day, that richly doth abound

     In multitud'nous welcomes, and is crowned

       With this verse I have wrought.

     Count thyself blessed that the Lord did spare

     Thy mortal frame which th'Evil One would tear

       Asunder if he might.

     Ascribe all thanks and honor to the Lord

     That he so graciously thy conduct did reward

       Unworthy in his sight.

     Remember all Jehovah's tendrous love

     And loving care shed on thee from above

       And kneel before His throne.

     But sweet'st of all sweet things it is, below

     To be convinced that God's love fire doth glow

       In us who are his own.

     May many a birthday thee, Alida, greet

     May'st thy lips many a day be spared to meet

       The lips of him who loves thee.

     Above all, may thy life be consecrate

     To God's high cause, and may He thee await

       In mansions far above thee.

     Lovingly Yours,  Peter Hoekstra

To stymie the inquisitive eyes of the mailman and family members, in his postcards he used a Greek script, though in the English language, that only he and Alice could decipher.  They exchanged letters regularly for three years until Peter graduated in June, 1910 and returned to Roseland for the wedding set for August 2nd in the First CRC.  The Rev. John Walkotten married them and a reception followed at Alice's home.  They honeymooned for several weeks in Minneapolis and at Maple Lake, MN at the home of a cousin, and then moved to Moline, MI, because Peter had accepted a call as the first pastor of the newly-organized Moline Christian Reformed Church.  He was installed on September 11, 1910, following a successful examination by the Classis of Grand Rapids.  The congregation worshiped in the Dutch language.

The Moline, Michigan Church

     The move to this rural village required a big adjustment for the Chicagoans.  The parsonage had no indoor plumbing or electricity, but rather an outhouse, oil lamps, and a pump in the kitchen.  The Juffrouw (Dutch for "lady," a title of respect) had to wash clothes by turning a wheel on the side of the washing machine and bake bread on a kerosene stove.  The church furnished a buggy, harness, and sleigh, but it took most of their first year's salary of $700 to buy a horse and neither knew horses.  "Both of us were afraid of the horse.  When he heard a [rifle] shot, he would become unmanageable," said Alice, and "once we were both thrown into the snow."  As Alice recalled in a letter to the congregation in 1983 on its 75th anniversary (when she was 97 years old!): "I had never been so close to a horse before this and I was somewhat afraid, as I had to go into the stall to feed him during times when my husband had a classical supply," i.e., when Peter had to leave on Saturday to preach in vacant churches many miles away.  "Having been used to streetcars in Chicago, my husband had difficulty adjusting to the horse and buggy mode of travel.  He often walked miles to make a visit."  Coincidentally, Alice in her early nineties returned to the Moline church from California in 1978 and again in 1979 for the marriage ceremonies of two of her grandsons with sisters of the congregation (Dennis Dykstra with Elaine Rottman, and Andrew HetJonk with sister Jane).  Alice went by airplane and noted that 1978 was the 75th anniversary of the Wright Brothers maiden flight. "I was 18 years old & remember it, as though it happened yesterday.  No radio or TV, only the Chicago Daily News.  I remember no one believed it could be done."  No one believed her longevity either; Alice passed away in 1993 at 107 years of age!

Marie A. Hoekstra Growing Up

     On July 4, 1911 the young couple welcomed the birth of Marie Ann, who was named after her maternal grandmother.  Known as a "firecracker baby," Marie always enjoyed celebrating her day on the nation's birthday.  She had other distinctions.  Alice told the congregation in 1983: "We went to Wayland for a baby bed for our first child, the first to be born in your first parsonage."  In the fall of 1911, after a very brief pastorate of only eighteen months, Rev. Hoekstra accepted the call of the Fourteenth Street CRC of Holland, MI.  To leave Moline so soon was bad form, but the shortage of pastors able to preach in English in urban churches was acute.  The large Fourteenth Street church already worshiped in English, since it stood in the center of the mother Dutch colony and near the intellectual life of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary.  Here in the spacious frame parsonage with a side driveway for the horse and carriage, were born daughters Winifred Ruth on May 5, 1913 and Josephine May on New Year's Day in 1915. 

     In mid 1915, after nearly four years in Holland, Rev. Hoekstra took his family to the East Coast by accepting the call of the First Paterson CRC.  This was likewise a large, historic congregation in the heart of a dense Dutch settlement.  The church stood in a rundown neighborhood traversed by the Passaic River and surrounded by silk mills and saloons.  Marie recalls as a youngster being afraid of drunkards walking past the parsonage from a nearby saloon.  These were the years of the First World War, but the Dutch in Paterson did not suffer from the anti-German nativism as did their brethren in the rural midwest, where schools, churches, and barns were torched by super patriots.  The Hoekstras prospered and bought their first car, a Saxon, with which they toured all the scenic spots in the Hudson River Valley, the Catskill Mountains, and Long Island.  Alice's widowed mother Anna (Grandma Clausing) also joined the family at this time and remained with them until her death in Cicero in 1930 at the ripe age of 85 years.  She was buried at Mt. Greenwood Cemetery among the Clausings.

     Marie Hoekstra entered first grade in the Christian school in Paterson in 1917, but after completing the second grade her father in 1919 accepted the call from the Alpine Avenue CRC of Grand Rapids, MI, located in midst of the west side Dutch community.  Marie graduated from the Alpine Avenue Christian School in 1925 and continued her studies at the Grand Rapids Christian High School located on the east side near Calvin College and Seminary.  Rev. Hoekstra led this rising, second- generation immigrant congregation through the trauma and controversy of the language transition from Dutch to English in the post-war era. The old timers stubbornly held on the "langauge of heaven," but their minister was concerned for the souls of the children who could hardly understand the sermons in the native tongue. Despite the struggles, Peter enjoyed the labors here very much, and in 1981 when the congregation celebrated its centennial, his widow told them: "My husband often said that this was his busiest and his most beloved church."  Here, too, three more children were born: Andrew Louis on Nov. 26, 1919, Evelyn Dorothy on Sept. 11, 1923, and James Peter on Nov. 20, 1926. 

     In 1927, after eight years in the denominational center and home of its college and seminary, the Hoekstras moved to a very different setting, the Groninger congregation of Second Cicero CRC, a Chicago suburb.  This became Rev. Hoekstra's longest pastorate, 13 years, and all of the children except James completed secondary education at the Chicago Christian High School in Englewood.  Marie and Andrew also married in Chicago.

     Marie graduated in 1929 and went to work as an order clerk in the office of the Hurley Machine Company on 54th Street in Cicero, which manufactured Thor washing machines.  She continued to date John R. Swierenga and remained active, along with her sisters Win and Jo, in the church young women's society until marriage.  Andrew Hoekstra followed in his father's footsteps and enrolled at the University of Chicago, graduating with a B.S. degree in chemistry and physics. He then enrolled in the medical school of the University of Colorado. After graduation he accepted a residency in psychiatry under the auspices of the U.S. Army and practiced in the military for eight years.  At the University of Chicago he met Portia Kellog Rich and they were married in 1940 in the parsonage of the Rev. Frank Doezema of First Roseland CRC.  Andrew's father had several months earlier moved to the CRC of Hanford, California, so he could not marry them.  Witnesses at the private ceremony were the Rev. Doezema's married daughter Annette Boomker, who lived two doors away, and sister Marie, who traveled by streetcar from Cicero.  Curiously, sixteen years later Annette's daughter Joan married Marie's son Robert, and the women became mothers-in-law!

     Winifred studied nursing at Presbyterian Hospital of Chicago and earned an RN degree. She also taught Sunday school at the Cicero church.  In order to become a missionary nurse for Navaho and Zuni Indians at the Rehobeth Christian Hospital in Gallup, NM, Win enrolled at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.  So opposed were the church elders to the Arminian theology taught at MBI that they refused to reappoint Win as Sunday school teacher, fearing she might pass the contamination to the youth.  Being the PK (preacher's kid) cut no ice with these stijf kops (literally, stiff heads). 

John and Marie's First Years Together    

     The newlyweds made their home from 1934 to 1939 in a brick two-flat at 1625 South Austin Boulevard, where they rented the first floor.  The two-bedroom home was conveniently located only one half block south of Dad and Mother Swierenga.  Robert Peter (Bobby) arrived on June 10, 1935 and a year later Raymond Calvin on July 16, 1936. Both were born at Presbyterian-St Lukes Hospital.  Robert was named after both of his grandfathers; but "we just liked the name" Raymond, John explained.  Bobby sported a full head of blonde curls while Ray's hair was straight and a little darker.  Marie took the boys for almost daily walks to her parents or to John's folks.

     Aunts Etta (Henrietta) Swierenga and Evelyn Hoekstra helped as baby sitters and housekeepers.  Evelyn, then in high school, came every Saturday to clean the house, wash clothes, and play with her first nephews. In the summer she did the same on Wednesday as well.  Marie at first raised the boys according to Dr. Benjamin Spock, following a rigid four hour feeding regimen.  But this left Bobby and Ray hungry and fussy, until one day Etta put them on a three hour schedule and to Marie's amazement they were content and slept. Evelyn recalls taking Bobby and Ray to an ice cream parlor on Roosevelt Road and introducing them to the tasty treat for the first time, when she was babysitting them during the Saturday afternoon wedding of Paul and Etta Tuitman in 1939.       In 1936, shortly after Raymond's birth, the family faced a severe crisis when Bobby, then 18 months, took sick with the dread scarlet fever.  Since the disease was highly contagious, the Cicero health department by law quarantined the home.  For John to be able to work and Marie to care for the baby, Grandma Hoekstra agreed to be quarantined with Bobby for six weeks while the others moved in with the Swierengas.  Again in 1941 scarlet fever struck the third child, Alyce, a toddler of two years, but this time only she was confined to her bedroom.  By then sulfa drugs had lessened the scourge.

The Move to 1230 South 59th Avenue

     The birth of Alyce Joanne (named by custom after Grandma Hoekstra) on April 20, 1938, at Presbyterian-St Lukes Hospital, pushed the family out of the small flat and into their own home at 1230 South 59th Avenue, just four blocks to the north.  In March 1939, the Swierengas paid $4,500 for a two-bedroom, one story bungalow with a narrow side driveway, featuring two concrete strips for car tires, leading to the garage at the rear.  They borrowed the $1,500 down payment from both parents but primarily from Dad Hoekstra.  Monthly mortgage payments on the land contract from the seller were $30 a month at 5% interest, and real estate taxes totaled $107 a year. It was the only flat-roofed building on the block and faced the McKinley public school. 

     Before moving in July, John contracted with Peter Tazelaar to remodel the back porch into a third bedroom at a cost of $1,500.  Other major renovations in 1939 were a complete new roof and a coal-burning boiler installed by Edward Tazelaar.&n