A childhood memoir of growing up in Highland township in the mid-20th century is now available again, online and downloadable.The 1930s and 1940s was a powerful time of change for family farms. The Great Depression, WWII, the transition from horses to tractors, the advent of electric power, and the general decline of the economic sustainability of small farms all marked a major transition for life in rural Michigan and family farms everywhere. Clarence Vredevoogd was born in 1926 on a Highland family farm in Osceola County, just a mile south of Missaukee. Growing up on the farm his grandfather built in 1904, Clarence had a front row seat to these profound cultural changes. Clarence was the first of nine siblings that followed in the years after his father took over the farm. Clarence bore witness to a way of life common to the whole community that also ended for most of his generation as they sought professions elsewhere upon adulthood. His memoir, Sunday, Church Day; Monday, Wash Day: The Way We Lived on the Hills and in the Hollows of Highland in the Late 1930s and Early 1940s, is a snapshot in time, vividly capturing a colorful childhood as part of a tight-knit cluster of families, most with Dutch immigrant roots only a generation or two back.  Surrounded by family, shirt-tail relations, and other Dutch families, he shares stories about life in the Lucas area, not far from the towns of McBain and Vogel Center. He attended church at Highland CRC, with neighbors with Dutch surnames like Westmass, Veddler, Veldsma, Hibma, Eisinga, Heuker, Bos, Kuipers, Ouwinga, Ellens, Heeringa, Koetje, Dracht, Konyndyk, and Feeringa. Clarence wrote this memoir in 1996, had several copies printed and bound, and shared them with friends and family. His manuscript is housed in the Calvin University Heritage Hall collection. But with only a handful of printed copies available, it has been largely inaccessible to the wider public. With permission from his family, this new electronic edition makes these memories and history available and discoverable online. Anyone interested in 20th century agricultural life in general, and Dutch Michigan farm life in particular, is sure to enjoy Sunday, Church Day; Monday, Wash Day. Download the PDF and glimpse a view of history. 
1 Comment
Tracy Carpenter
4/17/2026 09:13:14 pm
This is my uncle’s memoir! I had never seen it before! I learned all sorts of things I never knew— including the events surrounding my own mom’s birth! Thanks for sharing this. Leave a Reply. |
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