by Howard Spaan

Part Two: Early America

In Orange City, Iowa, the Spaan family were members of the Reformed Church in America. Grandpa Spaan was born in Pella, Iowa, before the Civil War. Shortly after the Dutch became interested in Sioux County, the Spaans joined the new settlement. Five years after the Slotemaker family arrived in Orange City, Anna Slotemaker married Henry Spaan. Of their courtship I know nothing. They married on April 7, 1887. They settled on a farm Grandpa owned five miles due north of Orange City and a mile east of the settlement of Middleburg. This was a farm on which they raised corn and hogs.

It was on January 12, 1888, that Cora (Cornelia) was born in their farm home. On that day a severe snowstorm struck the region. When Grandpa left the barn in the blinding snowstorm, he found the clothesline and followed it to the house. Had he missed that clothesline, I was told he surely would have lost his life. In 1890 Cornie (Cornelius) was born, and Henry was born in late 1891. I am not certain of the year Aagje was born, for she died as an infant. But Grandma on occasion would reflect on her sorrow in losing this child. During 1896 Agnes was born, and next came John, born in 1898. Not too long after the turn of the century, Henrietta joined the family. Her life was short, for she passed away when she was four years of age. 

As much as Grandma wanted to move to Washington, she experienced a heart-breaking time when she had to leave behind the graves of two of her children.

Grandpa Spaan had stomach disorders, although I never saw him being an ill person. After living in Lynden, he discovered a patent medicine which he claimed made him a well person. It was called Zokoro. He became a salesperson for the product. He kept a supply in the cooling room attached to their home. Every now and then a customer would need a bottle and he would be off making the delivery.

The only story I knew for years is that his feeling ill in Iowa led him to make a trip to Lynden to learn whether he'd feel better there. This was in 1906. Concluding that the climate made him feel better, he bought a piece of ground at the south end of today's 17th Street. There he had a rather fashionable home (for that day and age) built. It was in virtual readiness when the family moved to Lynden in 1907. 

His story of health was always a puzzle for me. It didn't make sense that climate would cure his stomach ills. Only when I had passed my midlife point did I come upon what I have concluded was the motive for the move. When a teenager, my parents and I spent six weeks in Sioux County among the Spaan relatives. Grandpa's siblings and their sons and daughters would speak of Annie as quite a lady whom they described as a stylish and gifted lady with good taste, but also a lady who could be quite domineering. When in midlife I read a recently published history of the Dutch in Lynden, I discovered that the Slotemakers moved to Lynden in 1900. Grandpa's 1906 trip to Lynden was not exclusively a search for greener pastures in a strange land, for he already had relatives living there. Now I'm sure Grandma motivated her family to move there to be near the rest of her family. 

Continue to Part 3---Cars & Gardens