Editing Little Chute, Wisconsin (section)

===Father Van den Broek and the first Dutch settlers===

[[File:Father Theodore Van den Broek.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Father Theodore Van den Broek, before 1848]]
[[File:Saint John Catholic Church and Island Park, Little Chute, Wisconsin (May 8 2009).jpg|200px|thumb|right|Saint John Catholic Church]]
The singular person in the establishment of Little Chute as a Catholic [[Dutch-American]] community was a [[Dominican order|Dominican]] missionary: Father [[Theodore J. van den Broek]]. Born to wealthy parents in Amsterdam, Netherlands in June 1784, he had relatives in [[Uden]], [[North Brabant]], [[Netherlands]] and apparently spent time there as a youth. He was highly educated and fluent in six languages. He was ordained a priest in 1808 and joined the Dominican Order in 1817. After a period as a pastor in the Netherlands, he left in 1832 at the age of 49 to join other missionary priests at [[Cincinnati]], [[Ohio]]. In 1834 he was ordered to [[Green Bay, Wisconsin|Green Bay]] to an established Dominican mission. In Green Bay he met the Grignon family, and probably through this contact he went to La Petite Chute in 1836. There he built the first church for the Menominee Indians, St. John Nepomucene, one of several he would establish in the area. Father Van den Broek also met [[Morgan Lewis Martin]], who was in charge of the local canal project. Father Van den Broek purchased land in the area which he later hoped to sell.<ref name="Keeris">“The First Dutch Catholics In Brown County”, Willem Keeris, Netherlands</ref> In that same year, 1836, the Menominees signed the “[[Treaty of the Cedars]]” which required them to give up title to the local land and move beyond the [[Wolf River (Fox River)|Wolf River]] to the west.<ref name="Treaties">[http://www.menominee.nsn.us/History/History/HistoryPages/HistoryTreatiesSept31836.htm History- Treaties- September 3, 1836; The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061003103510/http://www.menominee.nsn.us/History/History/HistoryPages/HistoryTreatiesSept31836.htm |date=October 3, 2006 }}</ref>

Father Van den Broek began to write letters about the area to groups in the Netherlands. The letters appeared in the Roman Catholic paper, ''De Tijd'' (The Times) beginning in 1843.<ref name="Committee" /> In the summer of 1847 Father Van den Broek went back to the Netherlands to settle his parents’ estate. The settlement was not very beneficial and he found himself nearly destitute. As St. John Nepomucene parishioners were significantly reduced after the Treaty of the Cedars, he used the trip as an opportunity to again write in ''De Tijd'', advertising the mission, the land at La Petite Chute and employment opportunities associated with the Fox River Canal, which included free passage to America for workers. The results were immediate and, by 1848, three wooden sailing vessels called "barks" or "barque" (small three-masted sailing ships), the ''Libra'', the ''Maria Magdalena'' and the ''America'',<ref name="Ships3">All three ships (broker was Hudig & Blokhuyzen) departed from Rotterdam. ''Libra'' departed March 13, 1848, and arrived in Boston, ''America'' departed on March 18, 1848, and arrived in Philadelphia, and ''Maria Magdalena'' departed March 20, 1948, and arrived in New York City.</ref> had been booked for passage to the east coast of the United States. Approximate 918 Dutch Catholic immigrants were on the three boats. Most of the early emigrants were from villages near [[Uden]], including Zeeland, [[Boekel]], Mill, Oploo and [[Gemert]]. The Dutch economy of the era was stagnant and much of the motivation to emigrate was economic. The emigrants were not poor, as the cost of passage, expenses and land purchase in Wisconsin would have been substantial. They were not, however, affluent and many would have been risking most of their wealth on the chance of economic improvement. There were also political pressures at the time that favored mass emigrations of Catholics.<ref name="Keeris" /><ref name="Vanderheide">Albert Vanderheide [http://www.GoDutch.com/ “Priest led party of emigrants to Wisconsin’s frontier territory”]  {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150817141557/http://www.godutch.com/ |date=August 17, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="Stekelenburg">H.A.V.M. Van Stekelenburg. [http://www.GoDutch.com ''Landverhuizing als regionaal verschijnsel, Van Noord-Brabant naar Noord-Amerika, 1820–1880''], doctoral thesis, accessed: March 7, 2003  {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150817141557/http://www.godutch.com/ |date=August 17, 2015 }}</ref><ref name="Swierenga">Catholics were far fewer in number than Protestants among the immigrants. On their experiences see Yda Schreuder, ''Dutch Catholic Immigrant Settlement in Wisconsin, 1850-1905'' (New York: Garland, 1989); and H. A. V. M. van Stekelenburg, ''Landverhuizing als regionaal verschijnsel: Van Noord-Brabant naar Noord-Amerika 1820-1880'' (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 1991). On Dutch Jews see Robert P. Swierenga, ''The Forerunners: Dutch Jewry in the North American Diaspora'' (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994). On socialists see Pieter R. D. Stokvis, "Dutch Socialist Immigrants and the American Dream," in ''The Dutch-American Experience: Essays in Honor of Robert P. Sweierenga'', ed. Hans Krabbendam and Larry J. Wagenaar (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Uitgeverij, 2000).

For an overview on Dutch immigration which explains the three waves see Suzanne M. Sinke, "Dutch," in ''A Nation of Peoples: A Sourcebook on America's Multicultural Heritage'', ed. Elliott R. Barkan (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 156-7. See also Robert P. Swierenga, "Dutch," in ''Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups'', ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 284-95. By far the most complete study of the nineteenth-century migrants in the United States is Jacob van Hinte's ''Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in the United States of America'', 2 vols., ed. Robert P. Swierenga, trans. Adriaan de Wit (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), a translation and reprint of the original published in the Netherlands in 1928. Henry S. Lucas also used this work extensively for his ''Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789-1950'' (1955; reprint, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1989).

See Robert P. Swierenga, "Local Patterns of Dutch Migration to the United States in the Mid-nineteenth Century," in ''A Century of European Migrations'', ed. Rudolph Vecoli and Suzanne Sinke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), pp. 134-57.</ref>

Typical passage to La Petite Chute included crossing the Atlantic from [[Rotterdam]] to [[New York City]], a train trip from there to [[Albany, New York|Albany]], a train or [[Erie Canal]]-barge trip across [[New York state]] to [[Buffalo, New York|Buffalo]], [[steamship]] travel through the [[Great Lakes]] and Green Bay to the head of the Fox River at [[Green Bay, Wisconsin|Green Bay]] and finally a 30-mile, ox-cart trip to the mission at La Petite Chute. The first group from Rotterdam arrived on May 22, 1848, led by a Franciscan missionary, Fr Adrianus D. Godthard.<ref name="DeBoer">{{cite web|url=http://www.wlhn.org/users/wlhn/web/wisconsonian/june99/dutch_settlements.htm |title=Early Dutch Settlements in Wisconsin |last=DeBoer |first=Twilah |date=June 1999 |publisher=Wisconsin Local History Network |access-date=October 31, 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071008085620/http://www.wlhn.org/users/wlhn/web/wisconsonian/june99/dutch_settlements.htm |archive-date=October 8, 2007 }}</ref> Father Van den Broek's group, held up by an ice jam on [[Lake Michigan]], arrived on June 10, 1848.<ref name="Committee" /> The emigrants discovered not plowed fields and a village but forested land, being somewhat misled by wording of the ''De Tijd'' advertisements: the word “acres” was translated as ''akkers'', meaning cultivated land. There was also not enough good land in Father Van den Broek's holdings for all the emigrants. There was a resort to drawing straws, with the winners naturally picking the best lots.<ref name="Committee" /> Many of the others—led by Cornelis van de Heij, a farmer from Zeeland, and Father Godthard—left to form the village of [[Holland, Brown County, Wisconsin|Holland]] (usually referred to locally as “Hollandtown”)<ref name="Verstegen">Transcript of Dutch immigrant Arnold Verstegen’s letters, 1850 and 1852</ref> rather than buying the remainder of Father Van den Broek's land. There were other Europeans, mainly French and Irish emigrants, already established at La Petite Chute, now also known by its semi-anglicized name of “Little Chute.” A few Native Americans still lived in the area.