Oostburg CRC--150 years i

 We happen to be out of town right now, so I'm marching these next several posts out in absentia. I hate to leave the page blank for as long as I would, so I determined to put something up here ahead of time. Honestly, I happened on a speech I gave at the 150th birthday of the church in which I grew up--Oostburg Christian Reformed Church, so this is an essay that was once heard but never read, other than by me, that night.

I think it was appreciated. After the speech--it certainly wasn't a sermon--people smiled generously and shook my hand. There were no white hoods anywhere near.

I told myself that a goodly number of the godly folks OCRC wouldn't know me really. I hadn't lived anywhere close for forty years, left town after high school graduation. So I thought I needed to say that, deep down, I was "of them." How do I do that? Easy, a deep dive into my family's life in town and throughout history. So there's a ton of biographical stuff, maybe more than anyone that night expected. 

But I loved doing it and that kind of love, I've learned, casts a spell. It was a good night. So, for the next week or more, here's my Oostburg Christian Reformed Church 150th birthday celebration speech. Should you choose to tune in to the whole thing, here's hoping you find it worth your while.

For the record, James Calvin Schaap is now happily retired after a long teaching career at Dordt College in Iowa. But, just so you know, I spent my childhood here, in Oostburg, just a block away from your church—and mine, in a way, I guess, forever. My earliest memories include ye olde downtown church, the one that used to stand where Judy’s downtown restaurant serves up more breakfast than anyone needs to eat. Not long ago on Whidbey Island in Washington, I happened past another built from the same blueprints.

I’d like to go back a bit, not only because I love history, but because birthdays are special offerings for reminiscence. So let me try to justify your bringing me here on this very important birthday here by spelling out my pedigree. 

    Most all of my kin—Dirkse, Hartman, and Schaap—are buried a mile or so north in Hartman cemetery, a place largely named after this guy, my great-great-grandfather, Evert Hartman, who was born in 1822 and came to this country in 1846, bought 40 acres of unbroken land in the frontier town named Milwaukee, where he lost three sons, a daughter, and a wife to a plague of influenza, then moved north to Sheboygan County 

 and bought 250 acres of heavily-wooded land 2½ miles north of (East) Oostburg (bottom left on the map above), then married again, to another immigrant Hollander named Jane Berkers, who, with him had 10 children, six sons and four daughters, including my great-grandfather, Dirk, a implement dealer/salesman, who loved wine, women and song (not necessarily the Psalms). But that’s a story for another time.

The Hartman land, all of it primitive and wooded, must have lain all around the Hartman cemetery. I’m quite sure the house just south is where Wayne Hartman lived when I was a kid—a member of this church who was the manager, in a way, of the old Oostburg softball team, for whom my second cousin, Duane DuMez, was the big-time chucker at a time when I, like a thousand Oostburg kids before and after, found our heroes in local sports figures.

     My own family lived here about 35 years ago or so—my daughter, who is 42, went to first and second grade at Oostburg Christian, my son went to Kindergarten. Back then, I stuck them in the car and took them and my dad out to Hartman Cemetery because all kinds of ancestors are out there.

    Grandma and Grandpa Dirkse, a blacksmith who, once horses largely disappeared, ran a garage right downtown Oostburg, in the oldest dwelling in the village (it’s now long gone).  My parents never missed decorating graves, and I thought, even though they were little, it would be good for the kids to come along.

 Here’s Great-great Grandpa Hartman’s grave. An early history of Sheboygan County begins his citation this way:

The early pioneers, who came to the unbroken wilderness in the early days, felled the trees of the forest and cleared the land ready for the plow, deserve much praise and commendation from the generations who have entered in to reap the fruits of their labor. 

And one more thing. 

Over the years out there on the edge of the Great Plains where I now live, I’ve become interested in Native American cultures, I thought I’d throw this into the mix too:

This property was in the midst of the forest and had never before been occupied by white settlers.  Then the hardships and trials of the early pioneer were experienced, for they had very little to eat, not much clothing, and scarcely any of the comforts of life. The red men were still numerous in this section, but were not troublesome to the white settlers, except as beggars. 

Now all of this happened twenty years BEFORE the Christian Reformed Church started, but it’s part of your story and mine. One of the horrors of your choosing this stranger from Iowa to be your speaker is that you got someone who rather likes this ancient trivia.

Tell you what.  Let me show you. 

    Check this guy out again. Now take a good look at your speaker. In a couple of years, when what little hair I’ve got is white, I’m going to get me a long bow-tie, a three-piece suit, and a fancy old chair, shave a strap over my chin, and sit down just like this guy. We’d be indistinguishable.