Albertus van Raalte in Deutschland - pagina 12

church’s parishioners had gone to North America by the 1880s. This loss crippled the church to such an extent that it could no longer support a pastor… Neermoor’s first pastor, Nicholas M. Steffens, left East Friesland in 1872 and became an important leader in the RCA, while the ministers, Klaas B. Weiland, John Plescher, Herman Potgeter, Gerrit K. Hemkes and Frederick Schuurmann formed a virtual procession leading from the German border to the CRC.” xii … The before mentioned elders and deacons of the year 1845 from Hoogstede and Emlichheim were from Emlichheim: Steven Lucas (1793-1863) and Jannes (Hendrik?) Rutgers (1806-1856) as elders, Albert Poppe (1794-1884) and Gerrit Bouws (1810-1851) as deacons. From Hoogstede came Geert Zaalmink and Lambert Tinholt (1806-1849) as elders, Jan Steffen and Hindrik Nakken as deacons.xiii All of them except Jan Steffen emigrated in 1847. Maybe Steffens followed in 1865. If one looks at a list of the first consistory members of the Graafschap CRC, founded in 1857, he finds some of these names appearing again. There were two Lucases in the consistory at that time; Jannes Rutgers also belonged to it. More and more emigrated members of the County of Bentheim set the tone of the consistory of Graafschap. In 1902 all of the elders of Graafschap Church except one were born and raised in the German County of Bentheim. Only one elder and two deacons were Dutch.xiv So 45 years after the founding of the ruling body of Graafschap Church, more than 75 percent of the members were born in Germany…. The emigration movement to the US from Bentheim took off in the years 1847 and 1848 when 224 people left, against an average of less than ten people in the previous decade. This spur melted down to an average of 27 persons a year from 1849-1863, while it increased again to 611 people in the five years between 1864 and 1869. The next wave started in 1880 till 1884 when an average of more than 150 people a year departed.xv The total population of the County of Bentheim in 1880 was 30996 people.xvi An average 0,47% of the population left in 1847. But there have been villages like Tinholt, where 20% left, or Kalle or Hoogstede where about 5% left. This means that in 1847 the County of Bentheim had an emigration rate almost as high as the provinces with the highest rates in the Netherlands: Zeeland (0.6 percent), Overijssel (0.3%) or Drenthe (0.27%).xvii Zwenna Harger has listed 3197 names of people emigrating to the US from the County of Bentheim between 1832 and 1978. Especially the two highs of 1864 to 1869 when two percent of the population emigrated to the US and 1880 to 1884 when an unprecedented 2.5 percent left, stand out.xviii Of these 3197 people 2034 went to Michigan. 155 went to Ohio, 55 to Canada, 34 to Illinois, 20 to Kansas, 16 to Iowa, 14 to New York. The rest went to other or unidentified places. An estimated 50 percent of these emigrants from the County of Bentheim were Oldreformed in the years between 1847 and 1850. The following years 1851 till 1853 mostly Roman Catholic inhabitants from the village Wietmarschen emigrated. They did not come to Michigan. In the next years, 1854 till 1857 about one third of the emigrants belonged to the ORC. Though social degradation and perhaps legal punishments scared people in Germany to join the ORC, in 1880 to become Oldreformed in the County of Bentheim, these obstacles were not present in the U.S. Therefore the Oldreformed congregations in the U.S. increased more than the ORC in the County of Bentheim…. Reformed and oldreformed people coming both from the County of Bentheim settled down in Michigan next to each other. From 1847 to 1857 they were able to belong to one church.xix 1857 the CRC was founded at Graafschap, Noordeloos, Grand Rapids and Polkton, places in Michigan.xx Despite the mass of emigrants from Bentheim, the first ordained ORC ministers did not emigrate from the County of Bentheim but from Eastfriesland. The first minister to emigrate, was J.B. de Beer who left Emden in 1866, in 1868 followed by K.B. Weiland also from Emden; in, 1872 N.M. Steffens lef Neermoor and in 1877 G.K. Hemkes Bunde.xxi These ministers had had no connections with Albertus van Raalte or Hendrik de Cock. Both of them were gone for these ministers too early. The one emigrated in 1847, the other died in 1842. Nearly half of the Eastfriesian oldreformed ministers went to America, the other half mostly went back to the Netherlands. Except Reverend L. Stroeven, who was in Bunde 1881 till 1919 no Oldreformed minister in the past century was longer than ten years in Eastfriesland. Most of them even were less than five years. Again and again young theological students started their career as a minister in Eastfriesland and pretty soon moved on….

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