DEAR FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Heritage
Hall
| Heritage Hall
of Calvin
College Archives in Grand Rapids, Michigan has gathered no less than
4,970
letters concerning Dutch emigrants of which 2,793 were American
postings
and 2,179 were from the Netherlands to the United States. The
collection
is known as "The Dutch Immigrant Letter Collection". To assemble the
collection,
the Archives conducted four major manuscript collection campains in the
Netherlands and the United States between 1976 and 1990. These efforts
accumulated at least eight thousand items: letters, travel accounts,
emigrant
memoirs and photographs. Half of the letters from emigrants cluster between 1873 and 1893, accurately reflecting the numerical configuration of Dutch emigration. Moreover, emigration peaks in 1848-1857 , 1867-1888 and 1892-1915 are followed a year or two later by peaks in correspondence. Some of the letters were
sent to or from Ferwerderadeel and
give
us a glimpse of how the emigrated family was doing or what had been
going
on in their hometown in Ferwerderadeel. These letters are
published thanks to the kind cooperation and
courtesy
of Heritage Hall: |
