Kooyer Farm

In December, 1908, William, Kate, and four-year-old Andrew boarded a Pere Marquette train in Fremont, and moved north to a farm located on “the north half of the south half of the northeast quarter of Section 15, Township 32 North of Range 8 West, containing forty acres of land more or less, according to government survey thereof.” They purchased the land from Charles and Mabel Bennett for $800. A house and barn were already standing on the property. According to the bill of lading, William, Kate and Andy brought with them on the train, a cook stove, beds, quilts, tables, chairs, a sink, curtains, tubs, and other items for their new home. If William, Kate and Andrew had been able to load themselves and their belongings into one of those new-fangled aeroplanes soon to start making appearances around the country and take off from the pasture behind the barn, they would have had to backtrack east, 3926 miles to reach the farm William’s grandfather, Hendrik Jan Kooijers, left near Winterswijk, Netherlands, in hopes of new prosperity for himself and his descendants, 62 years previously.

In the coming years, William and Kate would clear land, acquire more land, plant crops, tend to a garden, put up buildings, and modify their house. They would raise chickens, hogs and cows, and put in a cherry orchard-- mostly sour cherries to sell, but one large black sweet cherry tree in the middle of the orchard at Kate’s request for personal use. And they would have more children-- John to be born six months after their arrival, as well as Janet and George to join older brother Andrew. William would serve on the local school board for 19 years, become a director of the  Farmer’s Exchange, and serve several terms as Banks Township treasurer.

The farm would see joy and it would see sorrow. But mostly, it would see lots of hard work on the part of highly self-sufficient people who worshipped a loving, nurturing and fearsome God and who raised their children to care deeply for each other and for their community.

Kooyer Farm History

William and Kate (Tanis) Kooyer, also known at times as Kooyers, came to the Ellsworth Michigan area (in Antrim County, Banks Township) in 1908, and purchased “The Farm.” They had come northward from Muskegon, Michigan, where William was employed as a fireman/brakeman for the Pere Marquette Railroad, and Kate was a mother and homemaker.

When they arrived in Ellsworth in December, 1908, with four year old son in hand (and their next son on the way), William and Kate joined a growing, post-lumbering era, farming community which William had become familiar with during his railroad travels, and which matched the Dutch Reformed ethnic background of their youth in West Michigan. They took up subsistence farming on their forty acres, in the midst of other family farms, and there they remained for the rest of their lives.

William was born in 1876, and Kate in 1878. They married in November, 1902, and eventually raised four children on The Farm. Through typical hard toil as the years went by, the land was cleared and tilled, improvements were made as they could be afforded, a cherry orchard was planted, cash crops were raised for the local cannery, the cows were milked and the cream separated for sale, and in this way their growing family was fed and housed. Eventually, William added another forty acres to his farm and saw the transition from horse to tractor; but his agriculture always had but one purpose, to support the family livelihood.

William came to the end of his lifetime in 1959, and the next year his widow Kate exchanged properties with their second son, John (the son who had arrived in Ellsworth in her womb). He and his wife, Alice, who had been raising their own family in the village of Ellsworth, moved to The Farm and his mother moved “into town.” There, Kate came to the end of her own lifetime in 1963.

John had been born and raised on The Farm, and had lived at home until his marriage to Alice (Bratt) in 1936. He had been drafted to military service in World War II, and after discharge, with the proprietary blessing of his parents, began a part-time chicken and egg business on The Farm to supplement his income from other work. He and Alice continued to “work the farm” in the ensuing years, while living in the village nearby and holding other full-time occupations to support their sizable family.

By 1960, when John and Alice and the last of their seven children moved back to his homeplace, the use and purpose of The Farm had changed along with the surrounding community. The family farms of William’s generation were disappearing, their present occupants now depending mostly on “outside work” to provide primary domestic support. While John continued to raise a field or two of cucumbers for the local pickling trade for a few more years, The Farm no longer had hay or milking stock in the barn, the chicken coops were empty, the orchard was taken down, the barbed wire and electric fence lines were mostly removed, and nature had begun to reclaim margins and hillsides that once were cleared. Its main contribution to family livelihood now was a large and productive seasonal garden.

When the extent of his own agrarian efforts waned, John began renting unused acreage to a neighbor in the dairy business and became content to farm by proxy, a practice that has continued to the present time. A third generation now holds The Farm as an inheritance, but all of its tillable land remains in agricultural use just as it has been for one hundred years.

John came to the end of his lifetime in 1991, dying in the same farmhouse in which he was born eighty-two years earlier. His widow, Alice, stayed on at The Farm for three more years, before moving back into the village, then eventually to Grand Rapids to be near the majority of her children. Her lifetime ended there in 2002.

The Kooyer Farm was never more than a humble enterprise, but it was a typical example of that brief time in rural America when forty or eighty acres allowed a man to feel the dignity of self-sufficiency as he provided for his family and took his place in his community. Like many in their time, William was simply a farmer and Kate was a homemaker. Beyond that, they participated in ordinary ways in the life of their community: he as a churchman, school board member, and in the farmer’s cooperative; she as a helpful neighbor and participant in church society.

Although The Farm supported John and Alice differently in their time, they also represented what was common in a generation that had been raised on family farms: he was a dependable stalwart in the life of the church and town, a Banks Township Clerk for many years, and coordinator of the local Memorial Day observances to the year of his death; she was a charitable caregiver to any who needed it, and could be counted on at church or school.

Upon Alice’s death, The Farm was willed to her children and they now hold the property in common. This third generation of owners each went off to his or her individual pursuits as they became adults, and none of them ever depended upon the land for a livelihood. But it always remained a reference point for them, a grounding which now has produced a different kind of yield, a determination to preserve the homesteading efforts of “Grampa and Gramma” for subsequent descendants!

                      

Life on the Farm

Biographical Accounts

Janet speaks of hardships including how, in the early days, water had to be carted from a creek a half mile away. The poorly insulated house had every crack and crevice stuffed with rags in the wintertime to keep out the northern Michigan cold. Children had to forge paths through the deep snow across open fields in order to get to school. If the family was to eat, the entire family had to work, gardens needed to be tended, cows needed to be milked, fruits and vegetables had to be canned. She also speaks of joys-- the blessing of refreshing well water, making a birthday cake for brother George’s sixteenth birthday, going out for the first time with her future husband. Through the gift of her writings we are offered more than stories about growing up, we are given privileged insight into her personality and gain new respect for the fortitude which was prerequisite for survival in the early days on the farm.

In 1998, George Kooyer wrote down his memories of life on the farm growing up. He spoke of being close to his sister, Janet, and apparently shared her capacity for mischief. To read his personal memoir, click here.

                          

Tragedy Strikes the Farm

William’s second son, John, had been drafted into military service and was in training at an army camp near McComb, Mississippi. John’s wife, Alice, along with son, Ron, was in Grand Rapids. Daughter Edna was being cared for by Uncle Andy and Aunt Jessie. John and Alice’s two oldest sons, Bill (age 7) and Henry (age 3), were staying with Grandpa and Grandma on the farm. On a warm August afternoon, Bill and Henry were in the kitchen with Grandma Kate when Grandpa William came up the drive on a tractor pulling a loaded hay wagon. The boys ran outside to join him and young Henry was struck and killed. Grief descended heavily upon the Farm that summer. John was recalled to Michigan and on the long train ride home from Mississippi, put grief to paper in the following poem which was published in the local newspaper. After laying his son to rest, John returned to the business of war and shipped overseas to Europe.

In our earthly family circle

There stands an empty chair.

For Jesus took our Henry,

To Heaven’s glories fair.

Our hearts are filled with sorrow

As we see the empty place,

There’s an atmosphere of stillness

In the absence of his face.

Four months ago we left him

We’ll ne’er forget that day.

His curly locks in slumber,

Upon the pillow lay.

And bending gently o’er him,

We kissed the peaceful face,

And kneeling down beside him

Asked God to give us grace.

We were off to serve our colors

Wherever they might call,

To leave our homes behind us,

Loved ones, friends and all.

We prayed that God would lead us

According to His plan,

Back to friends and loved ones,

By His gracious loving hand.

But God in all His wisdom,

Took our Henry dear away,

Before we could return to him

And see him at his play.

When the home we entered,

His little form was still,

No more we’ll hear the little voice

Or the tread upon the sill.

But oh, the grace of Jesus,

When He took our darling boy,

He did it with a purpose

The which, now gives us joy.

For tho our circle’s broken,

The seeds one planted there,

For a circle that’s unbroken

In the heavenly mansion fair.

We praise thee, Christ, our Savior,

For what you’ve done today,

When in tender love and wisdom,

You took our child away.

For he has found a better home,

While we who are left behind,

Are longing now to meet him there

In that blessed heavenly cline.

Dear friend, our Father speaks to us

In taking one away,

Like grass we flourish in the morn

And wither in the day.

To close our earthly heritage

And stand before the throne,

With Heaven or Hell before us

Our everlasting home.

Private John Kooyer, August, 1944