Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings

For fourty years, Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings has enlightened and stimulated readers interested in the Dutch heritage. This classic collection of nineteenth-century travel accounts and personal reminiscences by Dutch immigrant pioneers provides a unique perspective on the colourful history of Dutch immigration from the Netherlands to the United States.

Compiled by respected historian Henry S. Lucas in 1955, this anthology lets the immigrants speak for themselves through letters, diary entries, addresses, formal writings, and other direct sources. Beginning with the "new immigration" in 1846, this expansive volume explores the daily course of life during the early days of Dutch settlements in places like Holland, Michigan, and concludes by examining further Dutch migrations to states like lowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

The 114 first-person accounts collected here describe the immigrant experience as no simple historical study can do. The writers, who went forth in faith and trust in God, penned their captivating stores of the struggles, hardships, and triumphs of migration as a testimony to succeeding generations. These newcomers, few of whom had ever sailed the seas or even ventured more than a day's journey from home, recount in vivid detail their frightening experiences crossing the Atlantic Ocean and then being crammed like "herring in a vat" on Erie Canal boats en route to Michigan and the midwest. Some lost loved ones to the briny deep or buried them in the forests of Michigan in the first desperate years, but all attest to God's grace and blessings of peace and prosperity -1

With the inclusion of a new appendix of additional translations and of an introduction and index by Robert P. Swierenga, this revised edition of Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings will be an essential resource for all students of Dutch American history.