Scope and ContentExcerpts from "Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings" by Henry S. Lucas (1889-1961), published 1997. "Our household consisted of eight people, grandmother, father, mother, and five children. We left our relations in the Netherlands on the 17th or 18th of March, 1847, and remained in Amsterdam for six weeks on our ship, before she sailed for New York, where we arrived in the month of July. From there it went by steamer to Albany, from Albany by canal boat to Buffalo – a whole week. From Buffalo by steamer to Milwaukee – almost two weeks. On that trip we saw something of the American spirit; one Sunday morning, as the boat was loading firewood in Cleveland, farmers came to sell milk. There was also a German on the boat who bought milk, but once he had the milk he would not pay for it, whereupon the farmer became so angry that he threw a whole bucket of milk over that German's head! When we arrived in Milwaukee, we looked for a sailing ship to take us over to the Dutch Colony. Instead of going to the Colony, the captain took us to Saugatuck. There were about forty or fifty compatriots on the ship, who soon dispersed to Chicago, Holland, and environs. We, who stayed there, had obtained the promise to lodge in a warehouse. We used that in a real American way. For at evening time, when we were ready to begin the night's rest, the beds were spread on the floor at one end of the building, and on these we lay down, one next to the other, in a row, with a little space between the families, which - when we had been photographed - would have been a nice photograph if those forty or fifty people were lying there side by side on the floor. But it should have been done with a flash light, because there was no gas light - there were only candles. Thus our family was six or seven weeks in that warehouse, and were the last of the emigrants to depart, for father and mother were both stricken with fevers, and, owing to weakness, could not be transported. We, as children, had a pleasant time, however, amusing ourselves in playing in the woods and rolling in the sand, which today would be called an outing. As children we also had neighbors, namely the children of Indians who lived with their parents in the area in so-called wigwams. A local inn was then unknown, so that the Indians with their squaws often crossed the river in their canoes in a highly drunken state to their wigwams. The Chief of the Indians was a man named Pritchard, who spoke French, English, and Indian, and who claimed to be a phrenologist [a phrenologist believed that aptitude and character are determined by the growth of certain parts of the brain]. On one occasion he gave an explanation of the head of my youngest brother, and also of the head of Jelte Bakker's son, and gave a description of their characters, charging ten cents for each child. He had a son about twelve years old, and told us that son was Protestant, but that he himself was Catholic. When we got there at the warehouse in Saugatuck, we had to start cooking and baking right away. There was a shop nearby, belonging to a Nichols, where a certain Kibble was a servant. In that store we could buy some things, but not stoves, among other things. Needing a stove, therefore, father and mother went to Singapore to buy one from Stockbridge and Carter, who had a large shop there; moreover, they had a boarding house and a sawmill, and they paid their laborers half in cash and half in merchandise. We could get almost everything we needed from them. There my parents bought a stove, a barrel of white beans, a barrel of dried apples, a barrel of crackers and other things to start with. The company delivered everything for free to the mouth of the Kalamazoo River by rowboat. That boat was so heavily loaded that when it arrived at our warehouse the greatest care had to be taken in unloading it. In spite of this, a small accident occurred. For Jan Kerkhof, who gave us a helping hand in unloading, had the misfortune to step a little to one side of the boat, and before it could be prevented the boat was half full of water. That was the first accident. Father had bought two barrels of so-called white flour in Milwaukee. When the first one was opened, it was rye flour instead of white flour! That was the first deception that hit us in America; the other barrel was good. Then the cooking and baking began. Our first loaf, not being acquainted with leaven, was as heavy as a stone when it came out of the oven, but we hungry children ate it like a cake. My father, before he fell ill, had bought a farm in the middle of the woods on the shore of Lake Michigan, about a mile west of Douglas. My father took Jelte Bakker and his family with him, including four young men whom he had brought over, and there were eighteen people who had to spend the winter in a house measuring about fifteen by thirty feet. So no room for a parlor [a living room]. In the spring of 1848 we began to make sugar and syrup, for we had many maple trees. In the month of April 1848, Bakker and his family left for Port Sheldon, half way between Holland and Grand Haven. Spring began with very warm weather, so that by May it was already too hot to work in the sun. It was a warm summer, but the cold set in at the end of September. Almost all of us were stricken with fevers. My grandmother died and my father the following week; my mother was left a widow with five children. In those days there were no ministers to deliver a eulogy. My grandmother and father were both buried on our farm by American friends. We had a good friend in Steven Morrison, the postmaster of Saugatuck, who took the lead in the burials. Mr. A. Steginga, a brother of the captain of the Colony Ship, was also present; he had also bought a farm about half a mile south of ours. Church Services: Shortly afterwards we began to hold religious services at our house on Sundays, led by a neighbor, a certain Van der Velde and later a certain Jan Poes. These devotions continued for a few years. My eldest brother and I would go on foot to the mouth of the river along the bank of Lake Michigan on Sunday mornings to attend the service. There were always canoes here, intended for general use, and with these we crossed the Kalamazoo River. From here we then crossed the sand mountains to Singapore; a distance of about three miles. The worship service consisted of reading a sermon [usually no minister was present] and singing psalms. Later Rense Polsma (who had also stayed with us in Saugatuck in the warehouse) came and led the worship service. This was maintained until about 1855. About that time Christiaan Van Der Veen accepted the post of clerk in F. Stockbridge's store. In the years from 1847 to 1856 I heard but one sermon delivered by a Methodist minister. This one came to celebrate the sacrament in the school house, where I went to school for three months. I have also been to church in Holland once or twice, on the occasion of a visit there from my sister, Geertruida Pfaff. That was a walk of about 14 or 15 miles on foot, and then back the same way on Monday. Rev. HG Klijn once preached [1793-1883; he emigrated to America in 1849] for the Dutch at Welch's tannery, two miles from Singapore, and three miles from our farm. My mother attended that sermon. It was the first she had heard in nine years. In the winter of 1848 and 1849, I and my youngest sister went to school near Singapore for three months. This was six miles walk every day, for not a day did I stay at home, though the snow was two feet or more deep, and though the woods were alive with bears, wolves, wildcats, &c. had in America. I was then 14 years old. The winter of 1848-1849 was the mildest I have ever experienced. The ice was no more than four inches thick in the Kalamazoo River and the daughters of Jelte Bakker used it to skate. That was something unusual for Americans back then to see women skate. At that time we had made a contract with the aforementioned Nichols for one hundred cord four feet of wood and deliver it to the mouth of the river. Cut first, then take it to the river by oxen, then load it on a flatboat, then take it down the river, unload it, and pile it four feet high. There we received $ 1.12 per cord in "store pay" [a credit to be able to buy in the store]. We were happy to get that. Later we shelled hemlock wood, for which we received $3 per cord. Then we got courage and saw an opportunity to move forward. It was a bit different then than it is now, and yet people still complain in our time. Postman: When I was 14 years old, I received the mail from mail carrier. It consisted in this: to go to the post office three times a week and deliver newspapers and letters to one of our neighbors three miles south of us. First I had to go to Saugatuck, then back and forth to that neighbor, about ten miles, and I got 6 cents for that, 18 cents a week. We also experienced a time when we had nothing but buckwheat flour for about six weeks and ate pancakes every day. One night a flatboat loaded with leather got stuck in the river and my brother was hired to help get that leather off the flatboat and carry it through the water ashore and afterwards (when the empty flatboat floated again wash) to recharge. This work took six hours, for which he never got a penny, in spite of the fact that we needed it so badly. There were no thieves then, but we were often visited by Indians. Once at ten o'clock in the evening two more came to ask for food, and after having filled their stomachs, left us with a 'bonjour'. In the winter of 1848, an approximately 80-year-old Indian woman came to ask for food and to be allowed to warm herself. Sometimes drunken neighbors came in, who couldn't get any further in the cold, and we had to put them up on beds on the floor for the night. We had several cases of this nature in the nine years we lived in Saugatuck. In order not to make these memories too long, I shall break off, in the hope that readers, thus seeing the difference between those times of the first settlers and now, will be grateful for the blessings now befalling them.”