Leaving Winterswijk, May 1844
It is surreal to imagine that just a couple centuries ago around the time of Jan Willem’s emigration, it took the better part of two months or more to travel between Europe and the United States. Contrast this with the typical eight hour flight time today from Chicago to Amsterdam in an international jet that serves its passengers a couple hot meals and an endless array of binge-worthy shows.
Our experiences today could not be further from the realities experiences in the 1840s when the first of the Loomans family began arriving in the United States.
Port Destinations in the Netherlands and Europe
By the time Jan Willem and Willemina were ready to depart Winterswijk in the spring of 1844, they likely only held a vague idea of the journey ahead. Because they were part of the earliest groups to emigrate from the Netherlands, any sort of extensive understanding of ideal lands in the United States to settle was minimal.
The first leg of their migration was to travel across 110 miles of land between Winterswijk and the port city of Rotterdam, which was advantageously positioned along the Rhine delta with a direct route into the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean.
While Rotterdam was the first choice for their port of departure, it was certainly not the only option given to those seeking refuge in the United States. Of the Dutch emigrants who sailed for America during the 1840s, about two-thirds left directly from Rotterdam while only about 15 percent sailed from the Dutch capital of Amsterdam about 50 miles to the northeast.
By the 1860s, other destinations in Europe, specifically Liverpool and London, became more popular for Dutch emigrants due to lower fares being offered on the shipping routes to the American East Coast. Ultimately, poorer emigrants were willing to tolerate the additional logistical challenge of traveling to England from their home in the Netherlands to save some extra money.
Most Dutch emigrants traveled in groups of several families for the entire duration of their journey, and it seems reasonable that the Loomans family did the same. Jan Willem did arrive in Alto in 1846 around the same time as nine other families (the group of the 10 family heads would quickly found the Alto Reformed Church, which still exists and holds services today).
The most logical and obvious reasons for traveling in groups included having extra help and support, a more extensive network in North America, sharing of wealth when needed, and the knowledge that once they arrived at their final destination the group could settle and thrive (or struggle) together.
The Emerging Emigration Market
As travel to the United States became increasingly popular in the years following Jan Willem’s departure, firms that specialized in emigration appeared in Dutch cities including Rotterdam and Amsterdam. They often dispatched recruiters to interior Dutch villages and bought advertisements in newspapers across the country.
Once more firmly established in America, these same brokerages set up operations in major cities such as St. Paul and Chicago where they encouraged Dutch settlers in the American Midwest to prepay the fare of their family and friends who still needed to make the journey to the United States.
This was a common practice during the 1860s and later when firms such as Steinman & Company and Adolph Strauss & Son took out ads in interior Dutch newspapers that appealed directly to small farmers. As a result, their businesses exploded.
At its peak, the burgeoning emigration industry was operating hundreds of sailings across the Atlantic Ocean a month, and the higher capacity (and greater competition) meant lower fares for thousands of Dutch pioneers who sought passage to the United States.
In the 1840s, a typical, per-person fare to New York from Rotterdam was about $14 for a third-class ticket in steerage.
Leaving Winterswijk, April and May 1844
The trek from Winterswijk to Rotterdam was just slightly over 100 miles in a direct route west that followed the Nederrijn (meaning “Lower Rhine” in Dutch) that fed from the town of Angeren to the Rhine Delta near Rotterdam.
The rolling hills of the Dutch countryside required a week or more for the typical family to travel this distance (bearing in mind that most families were traveling with six or more children). Jan Willem and his children likely carried few possessions with them, leaving most things behind in the Meddo to reduce the load and strain on the shortest leg of their journey.
While the use of railway was becoming increasingly popular in the 1840s, the Netherlands did not develop an extensive network of railroads until the 1860s when the line connecting Amsterdam to Western Germany was completed. This meant that for Jan Willem and his family the travel from Winterswijk to Rotterdam was by foot and wagon (luckily, this cost less than a train ticket if it were available).
Those moving across the country toward their port city also had to pay the lodging costs until they reached their departure point, a cost that added about a couple dollars to the per-person trip cost. Once in Rotterdam, however, many shipping companies gracefully allowed ticketed passengers to live for free on the departure ship until it was time to sail, saving many poorer travelers a few francs.
In addition to the costs of traveling to Rotterdam, emigrants in the early years of the emigration movement had to provide their own food during the voyage, which they likely brought from home and purchased once in the city. At about $8 per person for the length of the voyage, food and clean water for third-class passengers was not only scarce, but dangerously out-of-reach.
“Overall, the cost before even setting foot in the U.S. was approximately $20 to $25 per person—which represents more than $800 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation.”
Leaving Rotterdam, May 1844
The lively nineteenth-century city of Rotterdam, which in 1844 consisted of a chaotic city center that stunk of raw sewage and horse waste, was stuffed with plenty of multi-story buildings and a bustling harbor at the mouth of the Nieuwe Maas channel leading into the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta.
For Loomans family ancestors who lived the previous several hundred years in Winterswijk, arriving in Rotterdam was like entering an entirely new world—a place of indescribable magic and ingenuity. Jan Albert, barely halfway through his fourteenth year, was accustomed to the fields and farmlands of the only space he ever knew. Now for a mere blip in his lifetime he would see the majesty of Europe’s largest port city, a memory that he undoubtedly conveyed to his children as they experienced childhood in Wisconsin.
These landlubbers had never been to the sea, and it seems anybody watching the waves slam against the shore for the first time would be haunted by the water’s changing moods and authorities. In the six weeks it typically took for Dutch emigrants to reach the United States from Rotterdam, some ships encountered exceeding horrors.
The cries and whimpers of young children during powerful ocean storms, the stench of waste and vomit, a lack of food and clean water, and the occasional burial at sea were among just a few of the reasons that traveling across the Atlantic Ocean was such a vivid and perilous journey.
For other ships making the voyage, it was a trip on calm seas underscored with emotions of excitement and anxiety as they remember a world left behind and a world yet to dawn. Jan Willem’s family traveled in the earliest years of this immigration, making the chances of distress on the seas higher than trips taken during the 1850s and later (for starters, new regulations introduced in the 1850s made shipowners accountable for planning and preparing meals for all their passengers, including those in third-class).
A Journey Toward Opportunity, May to July 1844
Painting of a Dutch Immigration and Cargo Ship, by an Unknown Painter
Whatever the conditions of their voyage, one cannot help but picture an aged Jan Willem standing on the deck of their ship, named Ship Hoop, as the cool ocean breeze wisps across his face. Jan Albert, young enough to still be glossy-eyed, but old enough to understand the uncertainty of his family’s journey ahead, walks up beside his father. The two of them stand together enjoying the calm evening on an ocean they first experienced a few weeks earlier.
Thousands of stars gleam brightly above their heads as the ship thrusts against the waves of an unforgiving sea. With every moment they grow further from their homeland, and it now will only exist in the family’s collective memory.
In the years to come, they will occasionally tell the story of their passage. Their experiences of nostalgia are not so different than the nostalgia we experience 200 years later. It collects in our minds, feeding off the persistent need to be bigger than ourselves. It forces us to recognize and appreciate the leaps of faith taken by our forbearers.
For Jan Willem, the prospects of a life for his children in the small village of Winterswijk, given the economic and religious conditions of his time, were blissfully inadequate. He simply had no choice but to embark on the ultimate journey of faith.
For Jan Albert, the journey represented something different. It became the foundation for how he would see the world over the next half-century. Old enough to remember the Meddo, he arrived in the United States recognizing that his journey would be entirely different than the lineage that came before him.
His experiences would inspire a family for generations. His work ethic would guide his descendants for the following two centuries. His journey would become a reality in the face of incredible odds.
LEARN MORE:
Dutch Emigration in the 19th Century, Collected by The Memory, Netherlands: Link Here
From Winterswijk to Wisconsin by Yvette Hoitink of the National Archives of the Netherlands: Link Here
Going to America by Robert P. Swierenga, Van Raalte Institute, Hope College (1997): Link Here
Google Map From Winterswijk Meddo to City of Rotterdam: Link Here