The Third Generation: Children of the Depression

The Great-grandchildren of Hendrik Bor and Bastiaantje Leenheer

Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor’s first great-grandchild was born in 1900, the son of Ryk and Hannah Van Eyck’s only daughter, Marie, who had married Cornelius Klassen the previous year. More than 140 other great-grandchildren followed over the next 53 years, although the great majority were born in the thirty-year span from 1910 to 1940. In this they were remarkably similar to their parents’ generation, the grandchildren, who were largely born in the thirty years from 1880 to 1910 and married between 1900 and 1930. These, the members of the second generation, had grown up in an era of great optimism, when America was turning into an urban, industrial nation and it seemed that prosperity would go on forever. They were, of course, subsequently hit by the shock of the Great Depression, and their children grew up in a considerably different atmosphere. These, the descendents of the third generation, grew up in hard times, learned the value of thrift and hard work and sacrifice, and then faced the challenge of a great world war as they emerged into their teens and twenties. Many were called to serve on active duty, and one member, Willard Van Eyck, was killed in action.

Ties with the old country continued to dwindle. All indications are that the children of this generation were well aware of their Dutch ancestry, but none of them were able to speak Dutch and knowledge of their own family history was rapidly shrinking. The Michigan Borrs, for example, knew their immediate aunts and uncles and were well aware that they were related to all the other Borrs in town, as well as to the Van Eycks and the Mulders, but appear to have known little about the Boomkers and the Hieftjes, and none of them seem to have known the names of their great-grandparents. Although they grew up in Dutch communities, they were Americans first.

With a few exceptions, all of the children of the third generation grew up in small towns and cities and any experience of the farm life was largely confined to their parents’ stories. The oldest ones, those born before 1930, would have been able to visit their grandparents who were still living on the old family farm, but the last of these disappeared in 1934. The descendents of the third generation were almost entirely city children who had lost their ties to the land.

They were, however, generally better educated as a result. While most of their parents had grown up farms and consequently had no more than a ninth-grade education, all of the great-grandchildren are believed to have graduated from high school, and several went on to college and/or married college and professional spouses. However, the custom and frugality of the times tied most of them to the family home until they married. Thus, while many of them went to work as soon as they graduated from high school, they continued to live at home and contributed their earnings to the general family budget until they married and started households and families of their own.

Most of the third generation descendents appear to have stuck fairly close to home in picking their mates and setting up their first households, but as economic and social mobility increased in the United States after World War II, they began to spread across the country. For example, the seven children of Matthew and Cornelia Borr all lived within a 50 mile radius of each other during the 50s and regularly got together for holiday gatherings, but by the mid-60s they had spread to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and family reunions became increasingly rare. The last complete family reunion was on the occasion of Matthew and Cornelia’s fiftieth wedding anniversary in 1969. Similar things were happening among the children of the other major families.

The exact number of Hendrik and Bastiaantje Bor’s great-grandchildren is not known for certain. Complete records are available for only 39 of the 44 second-generation descendents who are known to have reached maturity. Mabel Mulder may not have married, but information is not available for Bert Van Eyck and three members of the Hieftje family. Of the 39 for which we do have records, there are a total of 142 recorded children, which includes 3 adopted children and 8 infants who died shortly after birth. For three of these, including a set of twins born in 1940, the gender is not known. Of the 136 natural descendents whose gender is known, there 60 were boys and 76 girls, giving a slight advantage of 44 : 56 in favor of girls. This contrasts sharply with the marked 70 : 30 male bias in the preceding generation. Of these 60 boys, about half, 32, carried the Borr name.

The increasing number of descendents in this generation makes it harder to gather family histories for all of them. What follows is a brief summary of the lives of those for whom information has been located or made available.

It is known that five children of Ryk Van Eyck and Hannah Bor married and had children of their own, but no information is available for the sixth, Bert Van Eyck. Thus there may be more than the 17 third-generation descendents for which records are available. All but two of the 17 were born and raised in the Holland area, but most moved away and dispersed throughout the state and the nation as they grew older.

Of the three children of Henry and Daisy Van Eyck, the eldest, Raymond Van Eyck, worked at Holland Die Cast for many years and had five children with his wife Rena. He died at one of his children’s homes in Afton, Tennessee in 1991. His brother Russell worked at Holland Wire Products for 14 years and had three children with his wife Ethel. He died in 1974 at the age of 54. Their sister Dorothy married Rodney Paultersack and moved to the Benton Harbor area.

The three children of Cornelius and Marie Klassen, Richard, Josephine, and Robert, all moved out of the Holland area. The two daughters of John and Kate Van Eyck were born in Detroit, where their father operated a grocery store, and moved even further afield. Hazel married Beecher McKillop and moved to Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania; Louise married Philip Emerick and moved to Santa Barbara, California. It is not known if they had any children.

The eldest son of Peter and Katherina Van Eyck, Willard Van Eyck, was killed during World War II while serving in the Army Air Corps. He is the only one of the Borr descendents known to have died in this war, although many descendents of this and the previous generation served in the war. Peter’s eldest daughter, Janet, also died relatively young, in 1957, but the cause is not known. Two of the other four children, John Richard and Thomas, remained in the Holland area; both remaining daughters, Anna and Marian, married and moved out of state. The four as a group had 10 children when their father died in 1984, but it is not known what their names and ages were.

Benjamin and Nancy’s three children also moved out of the area–Marvin to Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Bernice to Houston, Texas, and Nina to Lansing. The three had a total of 11 children when their mother died in 1984, but it is not known how they were distributed or what their names and dates of birth were.

There is not enough information on the Van Eyck grandchildren to calculate any family statistics, because only four of the 17 known descendents, Raymond, Russell, Richard, and Thomas, stayed in the Holland area.

The eleven surviving children of Peter and Gertie Borr had a total of 44 children of their own, born between about 1908 and 1940. However, four of these died in infancy, and records of the lives and activities of the remaining 40 is very limited.

The eldest son of Peter’s eldest son, Preston Borr, even though he was born and raised in South Dakota and married another South Dakota girl, Dora Westveldt, moved back to Michigan and resided in Zeeland most of his life. Preston and Dora had four children and were members of the First Reformed Church of Zeeland.

One of his younger brothers, Alvin Borr, graduated from Hope College and became an owner of the Sullivan-Borr Funeral Home in Grand Rapids. He and his wife Jane had three boys. The youngest was killed in Vietnam in 1969.

The eldest daughter of Cora Borr, Angeline, also ended up in Zeeland, married to Kenneth DeJonge. He worked for the U.S. Post Office for thirty years and was Assistant Postmaster of Zeeland and President of the Zeeland Lion’s Club. They had three children and were also members of the First Reformed Church of Zeeland. Angeline’s younger sister, Esther, also married a DeJonge and lived in Zeeland. Dwain and Bernard Borr lived in the Grand Rapids area.

Other descendents of Peter Borr are reported all over the country. A few stayed in North Dakota, particularly in the Strasburg area, but there are also reports of Vernon Borr in Riverside, California; Harold Van Beek in Portland, Oregon; and Norman Borr in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Henry and Martha Bor had eight children who lived to adulthood and had children of their own. All eight stuck to the Holland-Zeeland area and had a further 36 children, only one of whom died in infancy. Like their parents and grandfather, most stuck fairly close to their roots and many are still living in the area along with their own children.

The eldest son of Henry’s eldest son, Harold Borr, was born in Holland in 1916. He moved to Portage in 1951 where he operated his own business, Borr Heating and Air Conditioning, until he retired in 1984. He was quite active in the industry, serving as Director of the Kalamazoo Heating Association and the Michigan Heating Association. He was also an elder of the Lakeland Reformed Church and had two sons with his wife Pauline.

Harold’s younger brother, Robert Borr, moved to Battle Creek in 1952 and operated the Battle Creek Home Improvement Company for many years. He also served as President of the Urbandale Kiwanis Club. He and his wife Charlotte had four children and were members of the Christ United Methodist Church.

Most of the seven children of William and Alice Huizenga stayed in the Holland area. Jay and Sylvia Vander Meulen lived at 427 Hazel in Holland and had five children. Evelyn married Roger Rietberg, a professor of Music at Hope College. Ailene graduated from Calvin College and the University of Michigan, and became an elementary school music teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. She married Charles Goguen but they did not have any children.

Matthew and Cornelia Borr had six daughters and a son. The eldest, Mildred, married a minister in the Reformed Church and they served churches in Grant, Michigan; Delmar, New York; and Danforth, Illinois. They had three grown children. Bernice married an engineer who worked for Kings-Scotts Architecture and Engineering in Kalamazoo, Kamarad and Stroop Architects in Holland, and Consumers Power Company in Jackson. They also had three children. Marijane graduated from Hope College and taught elementary school in Grand Rapids and at the U.S. Army base school in Kaiserslauten, Germany. She later married a nuclear engineer. They in Pennsylvania and Ohio, adopted two girls, and had a son of their own. Matthew’s only son, Earl Borr, served in the Navy in World War II and graduated from Western Michigan University on the G.I. Bill. He became a basketball coach and took one of his teams to the State Finals in 1954. He later worked for many years in the Athletic Department at Western Michigan University. He and his wife Betty have four children.

John and Lena Borr’s only son, Burton, served a full career on the Holland City Police Force. He and his Eleanor had three children.

Richard and Gertrude Borr’s three eldest daughters all moved away from Holland. Joyce married and moved to Grand Haven and Muskegon and had four children; Betty married a Doctor and moved Livonia, Michigan and had three children; Marsha married and moved to Wyoming, Michigan, and also had three children. Only the boy, Roger Borr, stayed in Holland, where he married and became a realtor. He and his wife have three children. The youngest of Richard and Gertrude’s children, Judith, died tragically in a train accident in 1968 at the age of 21.

Willis and Gertrude Borr had four girls and two boys, but most of them have stayed in Holland. Only Shirley moved out of state, to Illinois. She married Ed Scherpinsky, then, after his early death, his brother David, and had four children in all. Geneva, Willis, Jr., Nancy, Ronald, and Patricia all married locally and are still in the Holland area. They have a combined total of 18 children.

Of John and Sara Boomker’s seven children, only five had children of their own, producing a total of 13 grandchildren, but this includes two adopted children. These 13 appear to have stuck fairly close to home, which means the Chicago area. However, Shirley married Louis Van Drie and they moved to Sibley, Iowa where they raised seven children. Also, Joan married Robert Swierenga, a college professor and one of the nation’s leading experts on Dutch-American history. He taught at a number of different schools, including Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and Kent State University in Ohio. They had six children.

John and Delia Mulder also had 13 grandchildren, but few have stayed in the Holland area. Gloria moved to Maryland, Jack to Richland, Michigan, and John to Detroit. Helen became a nurse and worked in Muskegon.

Records are available for only two of John and Mary Hieftje’s five surviving children, but these records reveal an impressive family size, by far the largest in this generation.

Mary’s oldest child, Bessie, had a daughter Angeline by Cornelius Diepenhorst, nine children by John C. Heyboer, and a step-daughter, Anna, by John’s first wife, Gertrude Holstege. Two of John and Bessie’s own children died in infancy, leaving a total of nine children who reached adulthood. Records for this family are complicated by the fact that the names given to most of the children on their birth records are different from the names by which they were known in the family and in later life, so that some diligence is required to keep track of who is who.

For example, Bessie’s first child, a daughter, who was called Angeline, was named Cecelia Marie on her birth certificate, March 2, 1909. She was probably born on the Hieftje family farm in Holland Township, northwest of Zeeland. She later married Richard Doornbos, but it is not known where they lived or whether they had any children.

The first child John and Bessie had together, Beatrice, was named Coebe on the birth records. She was born on April 10, 1912, but died on December 1, 1918 at the age of five and a half.

Their first son, Clyde, was called Cornelius or Corie at birth. He was born on May 25, 1913 in Zeeland. He married Ica Mai Hurt of Nashville, Tennessee where they lived and had two children and 5 grandchildren.

A second son, Marvin, was called Martin or Marvin Jason on various birth records. He was born in Zeeland on November 2, 1914, and married Aleen Nogar of Petosky, Michigan. They had 7 children and 14 grandchildren.

A third son, Leon J., born December 6, 1917 in Holland Township, died within two months.

John and Bessie’s fifth child was another daughter, called Lillian on the birth records but known in the family as Lavina. She was born in Holland Township on November 21, 1918, and married Willard Hansen. They had 5 children and 10 grandchildren.

Ernest Heyboer was born on January 7, 1921, and named Lester on the birth records. He and his wife Hilda Rankens lived in Hamilton, Michigan where he worked as a nurse’s aid. They had four children and six grandchildren before he died on May 24, 1975 at the age of 54.

Dorothy Heyboer was born in Zeeland on December 20, 1921. Unlike most of her siblings, she did not have a second name. She married Edward Nagelkirk in 1948 and they had five children between 1948 and 1962. They also adopted a family of three older children, the Staals, who had been born from 1939 to 1945, giving a total of eight children in one household. They lived in Zeeland where Ed worked as a superintendent for Herman Miller Furniture.

Glenn Heyboer was born in Zeeland on October 30, 1927 and also is known only by this name. He spent a career in the Army and it is not known if he married or had children.

The youngest of John and Bessie’s children was named Junior on the birth certificate, but is known in the family as Paul Dale Heyboer. He was born in Zeeland on April 28, 1934, when his mother was 44 years old. He married Helene Veldhuis and they had two children.

For the record, John’s daughter by Gertrude Holstege, Anna, Bessie’s step-daughter, married Bert Schuitema in 1917. They had three children born from 1918 to 1924, all of whom married and had children of their own.

The only other child of John and Mary Hieftje for whom we have records, Louis A. Hieftje, also had a large family, but his wife’s full name is not known. Nor do we know anything about his children beyond their names. Most live in Grand Rapids or Grand Haven, but one, the eldest, Lois, lives in Los Angeles.

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