Heritage Hall Archives

03/11/2026

Heritage Hall's scariest single artifact? It frightened a few of the children from a local elementary school getting a tour of the archives. Perhaps the main character in a Calvin version of the "Chucky" movie franchise? Does anyone remember who this actually is?

Calvin Alumni Association
Calvin Chimes
Hekman Library, Calvin University
AADAS (Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies)

12/09/2025

College and Seminary students, faculty, and alumni served in World War II in a variety of roles. Calvin also had a "Victory" cargo ship named after it, the SS Calvin Victory. Check out the story by Matt Vander Wall, history major at Calvin University and archives assistant in Heritage Hall.

Calvin Theological Seminary
Calvin University
Calvin University Historical Studies Department
Hekman Library, Calvin University

Last year, Dr. Katerberg wrote a post about the other Calvin Colleges (fictional and real). Another fun “Calvin” fact is that the University shares its name with a World War II era ship.

11/20/2025

What can you research in Heritage Hall? Health care and public health.

Bethesda Sanitarium, later Bethesda Hospital, began as a place for “Christian mercy” in Maxwell, NM in 1898. Rev. Idzerd Van Dellen and his congregation opened a facility to treat tuberculosis (yes, the guy with the dorm named after him). It closed in 1908, but then re-opened in 1910 in Denver, supported by both the Christian Reformed Church and Reformed Church in America.

Like many such institutions, Bethesda promoted the climate of the American West. In one pamphlet it advertised “Health Restoring Sunshine and Bracing Mountain Air” and “A Health Resort . . . Not a Hospital.” It also, of course, emphasized “Spiritual Guidance and Christian Influences.”

In the late 1940s, new, more effective antibiotics (streptomycin) began to reduce the number of tuberculosis patients dramatically. And in 1950, Bethesda transitioned into a mental health hospital.

The collection’s 50 boxes of material include promotional material and reports, executive committee and board minutes, newspaper clippings, photographs and A-V material. You can explore the evolution of health care and public health and how Bethesda saw its work as shaped by Reformed Christianity—including an article by Calvin professor Henry Meeter on “Bethesda Sanatorium, A Monument of Calvinism”!

Calvin University
Calvin University Historical Studies Department
Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA
AADAS (Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies)

11/07/2025

What can you research in Heritage Hall? The history of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (and the CFF of Alberta).

The Dutch pastor, politician, and journalist Abraham Kuyper once said that Christ claims every "square inch" of human existence as belonging to him. In good neo-Calvinist fashion, Dutch farmers in the Netherlands applied this ideal to their lives and work. When they emigrated to Canada after World War II, they brought it with them. CFF of Ontario had its first offices in Drayton, where my grandfather and his family emigrated after the war. The name of the newsletter of the CFF in Alberta was "Plow-Share".

We have a collection of records and newsletters related to the CFF. The library also has a master's thesis written about the CCFO.
"What wilt thou Lord that I do? The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, 1954-1971: Neo-Calvinism, Agriculture and Ethnicity".

The CFFO continues to follow its mission--"We advocate for policy that encourages Christian stewardship and supports thriving family farms." In the first two comments below you'll find links to the CFFO website and to Heritage Hall's records related to it.

AADAS (Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies)
Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA
CRC Do Justice
The Banner Magazine
Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario

09/12/2025

For the 150th Anniversary year of Calvin Theological Seminary and Calvin University, Heritage Hall is going to publish weekly photos of the four Calvin campuses. Today's is from the early years of the Franklin campus. The College Inn Club housed 14-20 students annually from 1921 to 1930. A student-run venture, it was Calvin's first "co-op" housing and a bit like a fraternity (on a campus that forbade them).

Calvin Theological Seminary
Calvin University
Calvin Alumni Association
Calvin Chimes
Calvin University Parents
Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA

08/28/2025

How many campuses have Calvin Theological Seminary and Calvin University had over the past 150 years? Where were they? What did they look like? Your questions are answered here--even if you didn't know you had them. All of them continue to be sites where Christian ministry or education is done in some form.

Calvin Theological Seminary
Calvin University
Calvin University Parents
Calvin Alumni Association
Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA

Most people who know that Calvin Theological Seminary and Calvin University have had more than one campus only know about the “Franklin” campus on what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Street. A few know about the “Madison” campus, at the corner of Madison and Fifth (later Franklin, now MJL Jr....

06/10/2025

Check out the free story by Robert Schoone-Jongen from the Spring 2025 issue of Origins magazine. The Wispelwey family's emigration from the Netherlands to Passaic, New Jersey, was typical of immigrant experiences in many ways. But less than two weeks after arriving tragedy struck the family. The Dutch immigrant community and the local Christian Reformed Church rallied around the family.

If you enjoy the story and would life more, consider subscribing for $15 a year for two issues. (There is a link to subscribe in the blogpost.

AADAS (Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies)
Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA

The Spring 2025 issue of Origins is in print and in the hands of subscribers. Here is a free article from the Spring issue.

04/03/2025

When did Calvin first award baccalaureate degrees and who was the first student to be awarded one? Check out the not-so-simple answer.

Calvin Alumni Association
Calvin University
Calvin Theological Seminary
H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies
Calvin University Historical Studies Department

The question might seem straight-forward. Just get the year right. But the past is usually messier than we remember. When we tell the stories of communities and institutions, we often smooth out complications in the interests of narrative clarity.

02/28/2025

We are working on the Spring 2025 issue of Origins magazine. It will have some great stories. In the meantime, here is a free article from the Fall 2024 issue of Origins.

The story is about Dick Veenendaal, a Dutch immigrant to Canada, whose team constructed a dozen church buildings and a Christian school for immigrant Christian Reformed congregations in Canada between 1949 and 1958. He and his team didn't just put up buildings, they helped build communities.

Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA
AADAS (Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies)
Riverside CRC Wellandport
Strathroy East Christian Reformed Church
Wyoming Christian Reformed Church
First Christian Reformed Church of Barrie
The Junction Church St.Thomas
Dundas Calvin Christian Reformed Church
Woodstock Christian School

The spring 2025 issue of Origins magazine is in the works. Here is a free article from the Fall 2024 issue. Peter Bulthuis tells the story of Dick Veenendaal, a Dutch immigrant to Canada in the 1930s who, after World War II, helped meet the religious needs of a new wave of Dutch immigrants. Over a d...

02/27/2025

The latest story on the Origins Online blog is in. Calvin University student Matt Vander Wall tells the story of Eastern Academy, a Christian high school in Prospect Park, NJ, founded by Dutch Reformed immigrants. The story focuses on the founding and the first campus of the school.

The new high school opened for classes in 1919, borrowing space in the North 4th Street Christian elementary school for several years. In 1923 the high school renamed itself Eastern Academy. And in 1924 Eastern Academy purchased the Stansbury Estate, a home on 7th Street, and renovated it as its first independent campus.

The campus's story not just about religious education, but one of immigration and ethnic succession in Prospect Park. Today the building is a still a school, but one operated by a more recent immigrant religious community.

Christian Reformed Church in North America - CRCNA
Eastern Christian School
AADAS (Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies)

In 1917 there was a major debate ongoing among Christian Reformed folk around Prospect Park, NJ. They needed to decide if it was time to establish a Christian high school.

01/15/2025

Calvin College's first student from Korea was Ki Tai Han (from Pusan, today Busan, in SE Korea). Here's a story about his arrival at Calvin College in the _Chimes_ issue from 6 Nov. 1953.

The story feels dated in the telling, with Han being depicted by _Chimes_ as a something of a curiosity. Nonetheless, like some Korean students at Calvin today, he was a "third culture kid," having spent part of his childhood in Japan (during the late 1930s and war years), where his father served a Korean church. He would graduate from Calvin College and then Seminary, as planned. At the seminary he would find other Korean students, who came with degrees from schools in Korea. He went on to complete a second graduate degree (MTh) at the seminary and then a degree (MEd) at Michigan state.

His brother Ki Bum Han followed a similar track at Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, and then Princeton Theological Seminary.

Traces of them mostly disappear after that. The last one that my admittedly quick searches found is a _New York Times_ story that mentions Ki Bum Han serving as a pastor at Port Chester Presbyterian Church. [See the link in the NY Times story in my comment.] Perhaps Ki Tain Han also stayed in the United States.

Calvin Alumni Association
Calvin University
Calvin Theological Seminary
Hope College
Western Theological Seminary