The Descendents of Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor

The First Generation: Citizen Farmers

The Six Children of Hendrik Bor and Bastiaantje Leenheer

Peter, Johanna (Hanna), Henry, Anna Maria (Mary), Sara, Alberdina (Delia)

It was the vision of Thomas Jefferson that America would be peopled by citizen farmers, strong, independent, and self-reliant, a people dedicated to family, church, and community. By and large, it was this vision that was realized in the lives of the children of Hendrik Bor and Bastiaantje Leenheer. Although they grew up in the rough life of the frontier, were born and raised in log homes, watched and helped their parents cut down trees, clear brush, draw water, build fences, and lay out the first fields and roads in what had until then been virgin forest, as they grew into adults they settled onto established farms, married, and raised families in the quiet life of well-established farming communities. They became the kind of citizen farmers that Thomas Jefferson had envisioned.

Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor had six children in the eleven years from 1856 to 1867, an average of one every year and nine months. Two were boys and four girls. Despite the hardships of pioneer life, all six lived to adulthood, married, and had large families of their own. Although they were the first generation of native-born Americans, they remained ethnically Dutch. All six spoke Dutch as their primary language and married within the Dutch-American community. Five married within the local Holland-Zeeland area and spent most of their lives working the farms their parents had built. Three of them married within their own church and lived their entire lives within about five miles of each other and their original birthplaces. Only one daughter, Sara, married out of the local community, but she moved into another Dutch community in the Chicago area. Only one of the six children, Peter, the eldest boy, sought out a pioneer life. In 1885 he moved his family to the Dakota Territory and helped to build a new Dutch community on the virgin prairies.

Like farmers everywhere, they raised large families. Between 1877 and 1911 these six children and their respective spouses gave birth to 51 children of their own, an average family size of 8.5, producing children with clock-like regularity once every two years during the woman’s fertile years. And like farm families everywhere, they also suffered a high rate of infant death. Seven of these 51 children were either born dead or died within the first five years of life–an infant mortality rate of almost 14 %. One finds no record of complaint, however. Like farmers everywhere, they were more thankful for the blessings they had than for the sufferings they endured, and all were active members of their local churches.

The following is a brief account of what is known about each of the six children of Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor.

Johanna or Hannah Bor was born on October 25, 1856 in a log house on section 25 of Fillmore Township, Allegan County, Michigan, the first of Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor’s six children. She lived in that house until age 4, and was baptized in the Overisel Reformed Church. On May 20, 1860, the family transferred its membership to the Vriesland Reformed Church, following a move to a new log house on a new farm in Zeeland Township of Ottawa County, immediately adjacent to Fillmore Township to the north. She remained in this church and presumably attended local schools until she was sixteen, when the family moved to a new farm in Holland Township, after the death of her father in 1871. On December 18, 1872 she and the rest of her family were accepted into membership of the Ebenezer Reformed Church, which was located on the south side of Ottogon Road, the eastward extension of 32nd street of the modern city of Holland. This road forms the boundary between Ottawa and Allegan counties, and the church is located on the south side of the road and hence in Allegan County, although it draws families from both counties.

On May 20, 1875, at the age of 18, Johanna married a boy from the same church, Ryk Van Eyck, on his 22nd birthday. He had been born in the Netherlands on May 20, 1853, the son of Gerret Jan Van Eyck and Marigje van der Heide. He had an older sister, Betje, who had been born on May 31, 1849. The family had emigrated to the U.S. in 1857 and settled on a farm in section 26 of Holland township, directly across the road from the farm that the Bor’s occupied in 1871. Ryk had become a member of the Ebenezer church on December 31, 1868. The fact that Ryk and Hannah were immediate neighbors and members of the same church fully explains how they met.

Hannah, of course, simply moved across the road to live with her husband on the Van Eyck farm. As the only boy in his family, Ryk inherited the estate on his father’s death and continued to operate it until his own death on July 7, 1938, at the age of 75. Ryk and Hannah remained life-long members of the Ebenezer Reformed Church, and all of their children were baptized there. According to the census report they gave in 1900, they had seven children in 12 years, from 1877 to 1889, but one died in infancy. We do not know when that was or the sex and name of the child. Of the six children who lived to maturity, five were boys and one was a girl. The eldest boy, Henry, purchased a 40 acre farm in sec. 23 of Port Sheldon township. Peter moved to Holland city and lived at 272 Fairbanks. Gerrit Jan/John and Bert moved to the Detroit area. The youngest boy, Benjamin, remained on the farm until about 1930, when he also moved to Holland city. Their only daughter, Marigje (Marie), married Cornelius Klassen, a printer in Holland, and lived at 71 W 18th Street.

Sometime after Ryk’s death in 1928 Hannah moved to Holland to live with her daughter, and died at her home on December 19, 1934, at the age of 78. She was interred in Fairlawn Cemetery.

There appears to have been somewhat of a rift between Hannah Van Eyck and the other Bor children. Although she lived directly across the road from the Bor farm, which continued to be operated by her brother Henry until his death in 1925, she apparently had little contact with him or the other Bor children, even though they continued to go to the same church. Cornelia Bor, who married one of Henry’s children, remembers that they never visited or had any contact with Aunt Hannah, even though she was living just across the road. In contrast, they knew the other aunts and uncles quite well and regularly visited their homes, even those that had moved away from Holland. She can remember, for example, traveling all the way to Chicago to visit with Aunt Sara, but never once met Aunt Hannah.

Pieter Bor or Peter Borr (it was he who changed the spelling of the family name to Borr) was the most restless and adventurous of the Borr children. He seems to have inherited his father’s desire to keep moving to new places and doing new things. He was born in the first log house Hendrik had built on section 25 of Fillmore township, Allegan County, on July 27, 1858, the second of Hendrik and Bastiaantje’s six children and their first boy. When he was two years old the family moved to another farm in Zeeland township of Ottawa county and became members of the Vriesland Reformed Church. After two more moves within the township, his father died in 1871, just after he had purchased a new farm on section 35 in Holland township. Peter was 13 at the time. His mother moved the family there in 1872, and they all became members of the Ebenezer Reformed Church on December 18, 1872. In 1874 his mother remarried Jacob Van Louten, who apparently ran the farm until she died in 1889.

On December 29, 1881, at the age of 23, Peter married a much younger girl, Grietje Van Dyke, the second and youngest daughter of Barteld Van Dyke and Elizabeth Brocius. We do not know where the Van Dyke’s had come from or where they were living at the time, but we do know that ‘Gertie,’ as she was called, had just turned 16, having been born on December 28, 1865. They had their first child two years later, and altogether had 12 children over a span of 22 years, from 1883 to 1905. This includes one girl, Henrietta, who died in 1900 after living for only three days.

As the oldest boy in the family, Peter could presumably have inherited the family farm eventually, but either he did not care to wait or chaffed under the control of his father-in-law and could find no new land to farm in the now fully settled lands around Holland. Thus in 1885 he and a group of 22 friends took the train out to the edges of the frontier, which was then in the Dakota territory, and filed blind on land in Campbell County, South Dakota. He returned to Holland, loaded his wife and child and all their belongings on a train, and headed out west.

There they underwent a true pioneer experience, breaking the sod, building sod houses, and constructing the first houses, churches, and schools in that part of the country. Peter was apparently very active in this process. After he returned to Holland many years later the newspapers reported that he had helped to establish a total of 20 churches and 76 rural district schools in the 35 years from 1885 to 1920. His daughter, Cora, also reports that he served as postmaster, county assessor, and the county cattle inspector at various times. A family legend also holds that he once met Chief Sitting Bull, which is entirely possible, since the Sioux Indian Reservation is located in the central Dakotas in the same area that Peter settled.

In any event, life on the plains eventually proved too much for Peter. In 1920 he moved to Iowa, where he lived for seven years, then in 1927 he moved back to Holland, where he resumed his relationship with his many local relatives. In 1931, for example, he apparently organized a large family reunion for all the Borr descendents.

Cornelia Borr also remembers that it was ‘Uncle Pete’ who came back from South Dakota in 1927 and told all the Michigan Bors that they should start spelling their name with two r’s instead of one, and indeed everyone did so, at exactly that time. Mildred Borr, Cornelia’s daughter, was in second grade at the time and just learning to write her name. She remembers being told to add another ‘r’ to her name in the middle of the year, and in fact a collection of writing samples from her early school years shows this change in the spelling of her name at exactly that time. According to Cora Borr Volk, Peter had originally decided to change the spelling in 1907 while he was living in South Dakota, and it was not until he returned to Michigan in 1927 that it became general. It is not known why Peter felt having two r’s in the family name was more American, but for whatever reason, all the Borrs today spell their name in this way.

Peter remained in Holland for several years, went back to the Dakotas for a time during the thirties, but eventually returned to Holland where he died on October 17, 1943 at the age of 85. He was buried in Pilgrim Home Cemetery. His wife, Gertie, survived him by nine years. She returned to North Dakota to live with one of her children, and died there on November 6, 1952 at the age of 86. However, her body was returned to Holland for burial next to her husband. At the time of her death she had 38 living grandchildren, but five more were born in the years afterwards. In all, Peter and Gertie Borr were the most active and prolific of Hendrik and Bastiaantje’s six children, moving several times and producing 11 surviving children and 40 surviving grandchildren.

While Peter Borr seems to have inherited his father’s wanderlust, Henry was the homebody. He was born on November 9, 1860 in his father’s second log house on the ‘famous sink hole’ in Zeeland township, near Vriesland, Michigan, and grew up in that area until his father’s death in 1871. At the age of 11 he then moved to a new farm that his father had just purchased on section 35 of Holland township and became a member of the Ebenezer Reformed Church on December 18, 1872. Like his sister Hannah he remained a member of that church for his entire life, and lived his whole life on the same farm, inheriting it after his mother’s death in 1889, when he was 29. Two years later he married Martha Jacobs, the daughter of Jacob Jacobs and Aaltje Wagenweld, who had been born in the Netherlands. (It is not known exactly where the Jacobs family came from and there is some uncertainty about the date of Martha’s birth. The family tradition holds that she was born on October 1, 1868; her obituary says it was 1866, and the Ebenezer church records it as 1871.) The Jacobs family emigrated to the U.S. when Martha was only four years old, and eventually settled on a small lot of 10 acres directly across the road from the Bor farm. This and their common church membership is enough to explain how Henry and Martha met. They were married on July 22, 1891 and had their first child nine months and two days later, on April 24, 1892. They went on to have 10 children in 19 years, from 1892 to 1911, although one was stillborn and the last died at the age of 3. One of the brothers, Richard, could clearly remember the night he passed away, lying on the couch in the parlor with his head resting on his sister’s lap. All the children, nine boys and one girl, were born and raised on the Bor farm and baptized in the Ebenezer church, although curiously Henry and Martha themselves were not officially accepted as members until June 22, 1906.

A major family tragedy occurred on the Bor farm in 1902. As he grew older, Martha’s father, Jacob Jacobs, grew increasingly blind and found himself unable to care for himself, so he and his wife moved into a room in the Bor house where his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren could look after him. Yet he grew increasingly despondent. According to a newspaper report of the following day, at 8:30 on the evening of July 31, 1902, his wife entered their room and found him lying face down on the floor. Unable to rouse him, she called to her son-in-law Henry, who was out in the fields working in the late evening light. He came running and managed to turn his father-in-law over, but found he had slit his throat with a pen knife. The old man was still breathing, but a doctor could not be called in time and Jacob died a short time later. His wife, Aaltje, continued to live with the Bors until her own death in 1915.

The story of Grandpa Jacob’s suicide remained a strict secret in the Borr family, even though it had been openly printed in the newspaper at the time. When told about it 90 years later, Cornelia Borr, who had married one of the Borr children, said none of the Borrs had ever told her anything about it, and she had never even known the name of Mrs. Borr’s father before I told her. As far as the Borr family was concerned, Jacob Jacobs had never existed.

Of the eight Bor children who lived to adulthood, seven were boys but none showed any inclination for farming. As they grew to maturity they all moved into the city of Holland and took up various trades and factory jobs. Several worked in the Holland Shoe Company for many years; two, James and Matthew, founded a retail shoe store in Holland which was known as Borr’s Bootery. It became a minor Holland landmark and the name was kept when the store was sold in 196_. Another son served for a time on the Holland Police force.

Henry Bor died in July, 1925 (either the 19th or the 21st, the records differ), at the age of 64 and a half, but Martha continued to live on the farm with her youngest son Willis until her death on September 23, 1935, a week short of her 67th birthday. All of the Borr grandchildren tell stories about walking out to grandmother’s farm in the winter to go sledding on the big hill in front of her house. However, soon after she died the farm was sold and so passed out of the Borr family history after some 64 years of continuous occupation.

Martha’s step-daughter, Cornelia Borr, remembers that Martha never learned to speak English. She continued to speak Dutch with her husband and her children until her death. The boys, however, all grew up speaking English, which they learned in school, yet their mother was able to understand them when they spoke to her. They would talk to her in English, but she would always reply to them in Dutch.

At her death, Martha (Jacobs) Borr had 25 grandchildren; 10 more were born in the years afterwards. Altogether, Henry and Martha Bor produced 10 children, 8 of whom lived to maturity, married and produced a total of 35 surviving grandchildren.

Sara Bor was the fourth child of Hendrik Bor and Bastiaantje Leenheer. According to her brother, Peter, she was born on March 9, 1862, but some church records say it was 1863. (One even gives the date as May 3, 1863.) She was born in the second log house that her father built, on second farm he owned, the ‘famous sink hole’ property near Vriesland. Shortly after this the family moved to another farm near Vriesland where her father built two more log houses. Finally, in 1866, when Sara was three years old, they moved to yet another farm near Vriesland where Hendrik built still another log house, his fifth in all. The family lived there until Hendrik died in 1871, when Sara was 8 1/2 years old. A short time later the family moved to a farm on Adams Road in Holland township which her father had purchased just before his death, and it is there where Sara grew up and completed school.

At the time the U.S. census was taken in 1880, Sara, who was then 17, was working as a servant in the city of Holland for Dr. Roelof A. Schouten, who had a wife and five children. It was quite common in those days for young farm girls who had completed their schooling but were not yet old enough to marry to work as maids and servants in the houses of more well to do families. In addition to earning badly needed cash for the family, it kept them occupied and taught them basic household skills. It is not known for how long Sara worked for the Schoutens or how she came to meet her husband, Johannes or John Boomker. He was not from the local area but was living in Chicago, where they were married in 1888. They continued to live there for their entire lives and had seven children from 1890 to 1904, five boys and two girls. All seven married, but only five had children of their own.

Despite the distance, Sara maintained contact with her relatives in Michigan. Cornelia Borr recalls visiting ‘Aunt Sara’ in Chicago during the twenties or early thirties. John died on October 11, 1922 at age 59; Sara died fourteenth years later October 10, 1936, aged 74 and a half. Altogether John and Sara had 13 grandchildren, but this includes two adopted children.

According to her brother, Peter Bor, Alberdina or Delia Bor was born on April 9, 1864 on the second farm that her father, Hendrik Bor, had purchased in Zeeland township, near Vriesland, Michigan, in the first log house that he built on this property (the third such house he had built in all). However, some church records and her obituary say she was born in 1865, and one church gives the date as April 6. Shortly after her birth, her father built yet another log house on the same property (the first having proven unsatisfactory because it was located on the side of a hill), and the next year he moved to yet another farm and built yet another log house, his fifth and last. He died in 1871, when Delia was 6, just as he was about to move to yet another farm in Holland township. Her mother and the rest of the family completed the move the following year, and all were accepted as members of the Ebenezer Reformed Church on December 18, 1872. She probably went to the local school there.

At the time the 1880 census was taken, when Delia was barely 16, she was already working in Holland as a servant for Dr. Francois Ledeboer, who had a wife and five-year-old son. Her older sister, Sara, was working for another doctor in the city at the same time.

It is not known for how long she worked for the Ledeboers. Perhaps she moved back to the farm to help care for her mother, who died on April 24, 1889. A few months later, on October 23, 1889, she married another member of the Ebenezer church, John H. Mulder, who had been born on February 6, 1863, the son of Hendrik Mulder and Jantje or Johanna Hop. The Mulders owned a farm in Fillmore township of Allegan county (the Ebenezer church was on the county line and so drew families from both counties). The marriage license, which was taken out in Ottawa County, lists the marriage as having taken place in Fillmore Township. Thus it was either in the Mulder home or in the church, which was on the Allegan side of the county line.

John and Delia continued to farm in the area after their marriage. They had seven children in all, three boys and four girls, who were born between 1890 and 1904. All of them were baptized in the Ebenezer church.

In 1913 the family gave up the farm and moved into the city of Holland, where John worked as a general laborer and factory worker, including many years at the Home Furnace Company. The family became members of the First Reformed Church of Holland on December 22, 1913 and lived at 345 E. 7th Street until John and Delia died. Delia passed away on April 15, 1932, age 68, and John a few years later on December 15, 1935, aged 72 years and 10 months.

It is curious to note that Delia had exactly the same number of children as her elder sister Sara over exactly the same span of years, seven from 1890 to 1904. They also both had 13 grandchildren, although two of Sara’s were adopted.

Anna Maria or Mary Bor (her brother Peter called her ‘Annie’) was the youngest child of Hendrik Bor and Bastiaantje Leenheer, and their fourth daughter. She was born in a log house on the third farm Hendrik owned near Vriesland, probably on section 10 of Zeeland township. The Ottawa County records and those of the Ebenezer Reformed Church, to which her membership was transferred on December 18, 1872, give her date of birth as October 1, 1867, as does her brother Peter. However, the Vriesland church records, where she was originally baptized, say she was born on September 30, 1869. Perhaps this was the baptismal date instead. In any event, her father died on October 31, 1871, when she was four years old, so it is not likely that she had many memories of him. She probably had better memories of her step-father, Jacob Van Louten, who married her mother in 1874 and came to live on the family farm on Adams road in Holland township. It is here that Mary grew up and went to school and continued to live until her mother died in 1889. There is no record of her activities in the intervening years.

She was married in Zeeland on May 16, 1889, less than a month after her mother’s death, to John Hieftje, a grandson of one of the original settlers of the city, who is described in the marriage records as a laborer from Zeeland. The marriage was witnessed by her sister, Sara Bor, yet curiously she entered the name of both her father and mother as unknown. Since Mary’s first child, Bessie, was born in September 1889, only four months after the wedding, this may have been an attempt to hide a potential scandal. This may also explain why Sara signed her name as Sara Bor, even though she had already been married to John Boomker for a year. Bessie’s birth is not recorded in Ottawa county, so it is possible that Mary left the county in order to give birth. Perhaps she went to Chicago with Sara and gave birth to Bessie there.

In any event, John and Mary Hieftje did continue to live in Zeeland, where they had a second daughter on November 13, 1891, who died without being named. Their first son, Joe, was born in 1894. About 1895 the Hieftjes moved to a farm northwest of Zeeland, near the corner where sections 11, 12, 13, and 14 of Holland Township meet, where John listed his trade as a butcher. A second son, Henry, was born here in 1897 but must have died very soon, as another son was born the very next year and given the same name, Henry. They were still living on this farm when the 1910 census was taken, and by this time had had three more children, Neal, Louis, and Marie, although the youngest girl had died the year before after living for only five weeks. At sometime during the next decade, the Hieftjes moved to Grand Rapids where many of their descendents live today. The eldest daughter, Bessie, however, stayed in the Zeeland area, married John Heyboer, and had 10 children in all. Mary died early in 1946 at the age of 78 and was buried in the Zeeland cemetery on January 29. John’s date of death is not known.

Because the records of this family are not complete, it is not clear how many children and grandchildren John and Mary Hieftje had in all, although it would be unusual if she had any more children herself, as she was 42 at the time the youngest was born in 1909. However, the two children for whom records are available produced a total of 19 grandchildren, 16 of whom lived to maturity, plus one step-child.

In conclusion, we can say that all of the six children of Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor lived long, active, and successful lives. All married, had large families, ran successful farms, and, except for Peter, moved only once or twice in their entire lives. All had many grandchildren, most of whom they were able to see before they died. Henry died first and at the youngest age, in 1925 at the age of 64 and a half; Peter lived the longest, until he was 85; Mary died the latest, in 1946. For all six children the average life span was 75. Their spouses were long-lived as well. Their ages at death range from 59 to nearly 87, for an average of 72. (This does not include John Hieftje, whose date of death is not known.) All six can be taken as models of hard-working, industrious farmers.

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