“We were thirteen families…[and] Fr. Godhart was our leader”
The following is a guest submission by Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore.
Striking out into new, foreign territory is a consistent theme in the Catholic life. A devout Catholic need not even walk out his own front door to encounter in his daily life territory that is unknown yet needed to be treaded upon in order to advance in his life, whether that advancement is in his spiritual, mental, or physical life. Such a thing is now uncommon in the history of Catholics, for one can simply look into the past and witness Catholics journeying into unfamiliar lands that called for great faith and fortitude to step out of their “comfort zone” and fulfill the mission God ordained them to perform for His greater glory. An example comes from the settlement of Francis’ Woods, known today as Holland, by Dutch Catholic immigrants in the then new state of Wisconsin under the leadership of Franciscan friar Fr. Adrianus Dominicus Godthardt during the years 1848-1850.
For historical context, Fr. Godthardt’s group was not the first and only band of Dutch Catholics to settle in Wisconsin during its early years as a state. Fr. Godthardt and the Dutch Catholics he led were among a wave of known Dutch Catholic immigrants who emigrated to the United States of America in the mid 1840s because of anti-Catholic policies in the Netherlands and, for certain regions, infertile farmland.[1] These Catholics left the Netherlands mostly in family groups; for example, Dominican friar Fr. Theodoor J. van den Broek led a group of Dutch Catholic immigrants to Little Chute, Wisconsin, in 1847.[2] A year later, Fr. Godthardt and his group of Catholic immigrants arrived in America on May 5, 1848, with the group comprised of eleven families and two single men, making the group, including Fr. Godthardt, a total of eighty-one people.[3] Although three families in the group departed and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, or Buffalo, New York, because of depletion in their finances, Fr. Godthardt and the rest of the company continued their journey to Wisconsin, taking over six hundred hours to travel from Boston to Wisconsin, and arrived on May 22nd in the Little Chute area, but they decided to travel a couple miles away and establish a village which they eventually called Francis’ Woods, (later being named Hollandtown and then just Holland), in early June because the original site for their settlement “had bad connections, had no commerce or stores, and…the land was not fertile.”[4] Other families must have departed before Fr. Godthardt’s company left for Francis’ Woods, considering that Fr. Godthardt wrote that five to six families went with him into the frontier of Wisconsin to settle their new home.[5] In order to get to their new home, Fr. Godthardt and his group had to hew their way for twelve days through the forests of Wisconsin, being naturally filled with wild animals.[6]
Their hardships did not stop there. Life was not easy at first for the Dutch Catholics after arriving at their new home. John Verboort, one of the Catholic immigrants, recalled later in a letter written on November 23, 1897, that “[d]uring the first years we lacked everything except firewood. Poverty was our normal lot, not only among those of us who had no money, but also among those who had a little. These latter, like the others lived, too far from stores to be able to buy anything.”[7] Not only that, but these Catholic immigrants at first “had [no] houses, but we lived in tents made of branches which protected us against the heat of the sun, but could not keep out the rain,” (even though they eventually built huts for themselves between early June and mid July), and none of them had “a stove except perhaps Father Godhart.”[8] Verboort described that these settlers also endured cooking their “scanty food over open fires or under ashes” with the utilities they brought from Holland, even having to bake their bread among the “ashes or among hot stones” and it being “usually poor in quality, for we lacked all skill and knowledge to prepare food this way.”[9] Verboort further stated that “[w]henever any of the women was so successful in baking bread that the dough would not entirely stick to a tree when thrown against it she would be praised by her neighbors and would have to show then how she accomplished this feat.”[10] Sometime between early June and mid July, the settlement grew to include “fifteen more families,” making the population of Francis’ Woods to possess twenty to twenty-one families.[11]
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, Verboort wrote that they did not complain but rather “in spite of all hardships our people were happy” and he could “not recall there ever were quarrels or dissensions of any importance.”[12] Though they had to work hard, including Fr. Godthardt, to build their new homes and church and two roads from their settlement to two other villages, with their “reward” for such work being “sore muscles and bruises,” Fr. Godthardt admitted the following by late July:
But I have been helped with grace from heaven. I have been able to doctor the people who have been very sick or wounded, and none have died except a baby of ten months, whom we buried in our new cemetery. Little by little I’m becoming a real American farmer. Plowing and planting and taking care of the farm animals has become the joy of my life.[13]
By August 20th, the people of Francis’ Woods seemed to have settled down and they and Fr. Godthardt were able to celebrate the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament on that day, with Fr. Godthardt describing the celebration:
[W]e had a big procession with Father Van den Broek. The people were very happy. Early in the morning I led the procession out of the woods with four banners and all. When we reached the highway we were met by two fathers from the church of Father Van den Broek and were solemnly received by himself. We heard confessions and I sang the high mass at 11:00 [a.m.] and preached in French and Dutch.[14]
Although these Dutch Catholics underwent trials and the experience of having to start new lives in a foreign land, they demonstrated a quality of virtue and faith in Christ that should inspire all Catholics throughout all ages to come. They stepped out into the unknown, and we should too. This is further illustrated through the ministry of Fr. Godthardt which he recorded in his journal, but this will be discussed in part two of this series.
[1] Henry Stephen Lucas, Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789-1950, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1955), 213, 214.
[2] Ibid, 214-217, 218.
[3] Lucas, Netherlanders in America, 218. Jacob van Hinte, Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in the United States of America, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), 180.
[4] Lucas, Netherlanders in America, 218. Hinte, Netherlanders in America, 180-181. Paul J. Spaeth, “A Priest in the Woods: The Journal of Fr. Adrianus Dominicus Godthardt, O.F.M.,1848-1850,” ed. Paul J. Spaeth, trans. Sr. Brigid Conboy, O.S.F., and Sr. Agnes Bangert, O.S.F., revised trans. Dr. Henry A.V.M. van Stekelenburg, The Wisconsin Magazine of History 75, no. 2 (1991-1992): 117. Fr. Adrianus Dominicus Godthardt, [1848] “Account of a Journey,” in “A Priest in the Woods: The Journal of Fr. Adrianus Dominicus Godthardt, O.F.M.,1848-1850,” ed. Paul J. Spaeth, trans. Sr. Brigid Conboy, O.S.F., and Sr. Agnes Bangert, O.S.F., revised trans. Dr. Henry A.V.M. van Stekelenburg, The Wisconsin Magazine of History 75, no. 2 (1991-1992): 121, 127.
[5] Fr. Godthardt, [1848] “Account of a Journey,” in “A Priest in the Woods,” 127, 128.
[6] Ibid, 127.
[7] John Verboort to John Smith, “Dear friend John Smith,” November 23, 1897, in Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings, rev. ed., sel. and arr. Henry S. Lucas, (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1997), 150.
[8] Verboort to Smith, “Dear friend John Smith,” November 23, 1897, 150-151. Fr. Godthardt, [1848] “Account of a Journey,” in “A Priest in the Woods,” 128.
[9] Ibid, 151.
[10] Verboort to Smith, “Dear friend John Smith,” November 23, 1897, 151.
[11] Fr. Godthardt, [1848] “Account of a Journey,” in “A Priest in the Woods,” 128.
[12] Verboort to Smith, “Dear friend John Smith,” November 23, 1897, 150.
[13] Fr. Godthardt, [1848] “Account of a Journey,” in “A Priest in the Woods,” 128.
[14] Ibid.
Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore earned his B.S. in History (2019), M.A. in History (2021), and Ph.D. in History (2025) from Liberty University. During his Ph.D. studies, he converted from Reformed Protestantism to Catholicism, along with his seven living siblings, instrumentally being brought in by their father who reverted to the faith. His dissertation is titled “‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: The Religious and Political Missions of the American-Catholic Military Chaplaincy during the Mexican-American War,” which will be taken and published as his first book. He also runs a scholarly YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TheSt.BedeCenter), Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/thestbedecenter/), and Substack account (https://substack.com/@thestbedecenter), named The St. Bede Center, where he posts Catholic and Catholic-related history content for academics and history buffs to learn and enjoy alike. He is also a freelance writer for 1Peter5, with his first article to be published this April, a history teacher for Scholè Academy, and a freelance editor for Arouca Press. He lives in North Carolina with his large family.
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