Experiences of Gerrit (Geert) Simon De Witt.

The writer was born on the 10th day of April 1830; in Eenrum, Province of Groningen, Netherlands.

On the 20th day of March 1848, at the age of seventeen, I started for America in the sail ship from Zoutkamp to Amsterdam and then to Hellevoetsluis. There we had to wait a few days while the ship was made ready for the journey. Each passenger had to get his own food for the trip. The supply was checked so that there was enough for everyone and then it was weighed before being placed on the ship. The drinking water was supplied by the captain and was portioned out each day. This did not always work so well because all the passengers had to wait in line and sometimes the wait was almost too long to bear.

Two or three persons died on the trip and were buried at sea. The names I have forgotten.

We arrived at New York after bobbing around on the ocean for forty-one days. From there we went on a steamboat for Chicago. In Chicago we transferred to a sailboat for Holland, Michigan. When we had crossed the lake and neared Holland, we could not enter the channel because the wind and the waves were too strong, so we went on to Grand Haven. The next day we returned to the entrance of Black Lake. The channel was filled with sand so we had to place our belongings on a raft and pull it thru the channel to the lake. The lightened boat was then able to float thru the channel and we again boarded it and sailed on to Holland. We expected to see a city, but instead we found dense woods that were almost impassable. A passage large enough for an ox team to pass thru had been cut along River and Eighth Streets. We asked for the city and were told that we were in the middle of it. We turned around and went back to the edge of the lake where we put up a shelter of boards and remained for a day and a night. It was then about the 20th of June, the exact date I did not know after a trip of about three months. I then had Peter Naber as my guardian and was eighteen years old at that time.

The next morning we went with an ox team thru the woods to the place now called East Holland. A few families were living there at the time. Simon Sluiter, William Mulder, and Mr. Holman kindly welcomed us into their homes. The Molog family were also there at that time and were busy building a log house. (It took us a full day to get thru the woods with the oxen to East Holland.)

After looking around for a couple of days and sizing up the land, the older men walked to Grand Rapids to look over the conditions there and perhaps buy some land. Johannes Naber, Peter Naber, Egbert Pilon and John Kramer bought land in section 35 Holland Township, Ottawa County. Jacob Sluiter, Albert Kapinga with his engaged girl, Afkie, another girl named Cornelia - a sister to the wife of John Naber - Cornelius Noorhuis, Jan De Fuiter and myself decided to go to Kalamazoo. The first day we walked as far as Allegan where we stayed with a widow named Kok. The next day we got a chance to ride with a farmer as far as Cooper, which was six miles north of Kalamazoo. Here Cornelius Noorhuis, Cornelia and myself obtained work at a farmer's house where we stayed about a month. A short time later, Jacob Sluiter and I took the job of working for Gov. Rausow on his farm. About a year later, he sold the farm to Den Bleiker, a farmer from Texel, Netherlands.

In the fall, I worked for the Michigan Central R.R. for seventy-five cents a day. I had to pay twenty-five cents a day for board. When winter came everything was covered with snow, the railroad work was finished and I did not know what I was going to do next. I was alone and had no relatives here. I then experienced God's care and guidance. I heard that there was a farmer living fifteen miles from Kalamazoo that needed a hired man. I did not know the way or the name of the farmer, but started our traveling south and stopped once in a while to ask for South Prairie. I did not know that I should have asked for Round Prairie, which was located in the southern part of Kalamazoo County and that I was almost to Schoolcraft, a small village located there. I traveled on and at three o'clock I arrived at the village. I inquired the way to a farmer who had fifteen horses and wanted a hired man. They told me that it must be Andrew Moore. His boys were in school so I went to the school louse and asked for Mr. Moore's boys. They showed me the house which was one-half mile east of Schoolcraft. When I got there I was welcomed and given work. I stayed there until the following fall.

Mr. A. Y. Moore was the father of Colonel Moore of the 25th regiment, Michigan Infantry, well known to us Holland boys.

On the Moore farm I saw my first large machine. It was drawn by sixteen horses and threshed the wheat and put it in bags. Later the machine was sent to California because the fields were too small for its use. Here I first began to realize that the Lord was watching over me and caring for me.

In the summer, more Hollanders can looking for work.

We met on Sunday in the barn to worship the Lord. We had our bedroom in the barn and found there a place for prayer and to read our Bible, which became a great blessing to us.

My next place was a mile east at a farmer named Darnel Bruss, a good man show kept family worship and was superintendent of the Sunday School of the Presbyterian Church.

Four and a half years had passed since I came to Michigan and I had lived among strangers. I now had a team of horses of my own and started to work for myself on the land of a widow, a sister of the former farmer, Mr. D. Briggs.

I went once a year to the colony, or Holland settlement, to see my friends. The first time I took a team of oxen along for P. Naber and the following year a pair for John Naber. Another time I took a horse along which I traded for forty acres of land in Filmore, this later became my homestead.

There was no money in those days, so I did not get paid for my oxen. everything was in good faith, hoping for better times. Our hopes were realized even if our business was done entirely without notes and interest.

When I started working for myself, I had to find a new boarding place every once in a while. This became very tiresome so I started to look around for a suitable girl to become my wife. I went to Kalamazoo that winter to work as a teamster. I boarded at Albert Kapinga's. There I met Mary Maijaard and on the 10th day of April, 1853 (my 23rd birthday), we were married in the church of Rev. C. Vander Meulen. She was twenty years old.

We went to live thirteen miles southeast of Kalamazoo, in Climax Township, on the farm of a lawyer from Kalamazoo. There I lost all respect for a lawyer. He wanted his share all right but did not want to do according to the contract. We lived there two years.

As I had given up the farm, I had to find something else to do. I got in touch with a man named Kamfiel and we decided to buy a breaking team to plow land that never had been plowed. We used five yoke of oxen, with my team of horses as leaders. But Kamfiel was a wicked man, or a man without God. If you read the first Psalm it tells how dangerous it is to associate with such people. After working with him for two years we decided to go to Holland.

I would like to tell how we were treated by the Englishmen during our stay among them. Once I took a load of flour to the colony at Holland. Five miles north of Allegan my sleigh became stuck in the woods. The roads were not chopped out yet and the snow was so deep that I could not see what was the matter. Naturally, I wanted to go on and tried to make the horses pull it loose, but the whippletree broke and thus I had to go for help. Luckily, the first house I came to I found the man at home. He went with me and helped get the sleigh loose and the whippletree fixed. In the meantime, it had become evening and I could not hope to get to Hamilton anymore that day. The good man took me along to his home and gave me good food and shelter for the night. He had but one stable for his oxen but decided to let his oxen run and put my horses in the stable.

Next day I paid him and proceeded on my journey. When I arrived in Holland I could not find a buyer for my flour. Had I only brought cornmeal, they said, I would have had many buyers. I finally sold the flour to Mr. Scaddilee for $3.25 per barrel. I had paid $3.00 per barrel for it at Galesburg, a town fifteen miles from Kalamazoo. So my earnings on that load of flour was $2.50 and I had made to trip of sixty-five miles.

It was the fall of 1856 when we packed our household belongings and set out for the colony to seek our fortunes.

What it means to make a beginning in the thick woods where a tree has not yet been chopped, only those who have experienced it know - hard work and poverty.

I had, however, lived for seven years amoung the Americans and had learned the language fairly well and had also learned how the work had to be done, which helped me a great deal.

We arrived in Filmore, Allegan County, early in December. We expected to go to Albert Kapinga's but it got dark too soon and we stayed at John Vandenbelt's for the night. We were neighbors in later years.

The next day we found a house which belonged to Isaac Fairbanks and had been built by the Indians. We stayed there for the first winter because cold weather set in before we could complete our log house.

In the spring we built a shanty and began the hard task of clearing land in the dense forest. We chopped sown trees and made them fall, as much as possible, in heaps. In between these heaps we planted corn and potatoes. The work went fairly well but it was hard to find soil enough to cover up the plantings. We covered them with leaves and dirt the best we could. The Lord blessed our work with a good crop of potatoes. The corn was not too good. To plant corn, we copped a hole in the ground between the roots and stumps and there was no way to cultivate it.

The next year it was a little better as we had a team of oxen. We soon had the land cleared.

The third year everything was a failure. We had a couple of acres of wheat which looked fine but in the month of June we had a heavy frost which froze the wheat and we had to mow it down for hay. The potatoes and corn rotted in the ground and the buckwheat also froze. We had nothing but turnips, rutabagas and cornmeal throughout the winter. We had to kill the pigs because we had nothing to feed them. But the Lord provided deliverance. We still had oak trees and with the help of the Lord and Egbert Bol we made staves and so two families were again saved.

In those days, a Methodist preacher came to the school house to preach and Mr. Capper came sometimes to hold revival meetings. As we had not as yet made confession and thought that there were many Christian people amoung the Methodists, we often went to the meetings in the school house.

Not long after this, Rev. Van Raalte came to visit us and promised to come again in the near future. On his next visit he was accompanied by two elders. After conversing with them for some time and answering a few questions, they agreed to accept us as members of their church and to baptize our four children. This was done a short time later in the school house, which was then known as the Broek School District. We were members of the church in Holland, which was afterward known as the Ninth Street Church. Later the Church of Ebenezer was built on the county line and is still there today.

Turning back to life in the country and some of the difficulties. During one of the early years when the crops were a failure, six men with one woman to cook for us went to Laketown to cut cord wood for H. Walsh who had a general store in Holland. We built shanties and stayed there from Monday morning till Saturday. My wife then had to stay alone with the four children and take care of the animals. So we worried thru another winter. In the spring, after and exceptionally long winter, and before boats came in the need was sometimes very great, but the Lord always sent deliverance.

From year to year our clearing became larger but it took several years before we could raise enough for ourselves and the stock. On that account we had to send the stock into the woods to seek their own food as soon as the snow was gone. But later when we needed the oxen we had to hunt for them. At one time I went into the woods right after dinner to hunt for the oxen but could not find them and towards the evening it began to rain and became dark. I could not find my way and was forced to stay in the woods all night, praying to God for protection. When it became light I could find my way again and came out of the woods a half-mile south of J. Kleinheksel's house. After I had circled back a mile on my way home I found the oxen eating along the way.

Here ends the historical sketch of the life of Gerrit S. De Witt.

The above account was printed in Dutch in the "GRONDWET" in Holland as a story of the life of the old pioneers. It was translated by Mary De Witt Farowe.

This is a letter written by Gerrit Simon De Witt around 1907. It was printed in the newspaper under the "thumbprints" historical column.

I emigrated for a better future. I was then seventeen years old and would have to draw lots for military service the following year. Even though I was next to the youngest, we thought it best first to go see what it was like in America. At first we thought the land was not so good, but we soon concluded that it was much better here than it was in the Netherlands.

So, later, two brother and a sister came - Klaas De Witt of Holland, Mich. who is still living and is eighty-nine years old, a sister, Mrs. Holleman, aged eighty-five, and brother Johannes, who preceded us to a better Fatherland where there is no more separation. I myself am now seventy-seven years old.

I have married twice. My first wife, well known in Zeeland, was Marie Meijaard. We were married in Kalamazoo by Rev. Vander Meulen with many witnesses present. We brought up nine children - seven still living. They are George De Witt, of Fillmore; Willem De Witt, Gertrude Kamper, and Ida Dalman, all of Rudyard; Marie, wife of Gerrit Hesselink of Holland and G.S. De Witt.

signed, Gerrit Simon De Witt