Tulip City Dispatch

I was helping a relative with some genealogy work, and found an interesting headline on a website: “Gitchel: The Ghost Town.” I've previously reported on Shackhuddle, the ghost town south of Hudsonville that , from what I can tell, got largely bulldozed to make way for the I-196 Ford Freeway in the 60's and 70's...but, that name “Gitchel” rung a faint bell at the back of my memory. I'd seen it before when researching this blog. I turned to some old sources, including Walter Romig's “Michigan Place Names” book, and found that, the post office at Gitchel operated from 1886 to 1902, which indicates that there was some sort of settlement in this unincorporated part of Jamestown Township. But, what else was there?  I took to the Google search engine, and found a couple of real estate listings, one for a brick farmhouse along 24th Ave. south of Jamestown, and the other actually listing the Gitchel schoolhouse on 24th at Adams St. I'd read one location of Gitchel b...

Like many of you, I'm spending substantially more time at home.  I'd hoped to be back at work by this point, but the way that current world events have played out put a little damper on that.  I kill a lot of time by listening to podcasts!  You know, the little talking shows that you can listen to at your own leisure; talk radio without fearmongering, politics, or angry hosts screaming at you. I'll open with friend of the blog, the Podcasting Janitor show:   https://linktr.ee/podjanshow I met the host when he was doing the Tales Of Hope podcast, and he keyed me in to some great historical resources available in and around the Holland area, and Hope College specifically.  What I like is the challenge to improve yourself - every week, episodes are published centered around one common word, theme, or idea.  This week's episode, published today (4/21), leads with the question "What happens when things stop going the way you had planned?" and the title "...

As we're under quarantine, certain employers and industries have been deemed "essential" to continued operations and life-giving activities. Among these are medical personnel, public works employees, and humble grocers. Employees of stores like Meijer are hard at work, keeping their shelves stocked so persons like you and I can purchase necessary things for survival (like food). I can only speak for myself, but being under quarantine means that I'm doing a lot more home Meijer True Goodness "TG" Thick & Chunky Salsa cooking. As a result of this, my consumption of seasonings and condiments has also increased. This week, Meijer had a deal on their brand of salsa. So, my wife and I bought 2 jars of hot salsa: The regular ol' Meijer brand, and the Meijer True Goodness organic brand. And, when I say "hot salsa," I mean that the jars are labelled as such. They have red caps, instead of yellow or green. While I personally am not a pepper...

Today, we'll be taking another look at the 1918 Flu Pandemic through the lens of our 2020 CoViD-19 pandemic, specifically the coverage and information in the Holland City News Archive. If we take the 2006 article written by Morens and Taubenberger (cited below), the pandemic's first wave (of three waves) wa described in the United States, beginning in March of 1918. What I find interesting about this is that the Holland City News first mentions the event in October, specifically the October 10 issue. I used the search engine on Hope's digitalcommons website, using the keywords "flu" and "influenza" in their 1918 HCN section. Figure 1 in the article by Moren and Taubenberger show three distinct peaks in flu deaths: One in July, a second in late October or early November, and a third in late February or early March 1919. Going off of last week's article, we know that Holland had closed churches and gone into quarantine by October 31, yet a short three ...

I was exploring the Joint Archives of Holland on Hope College's website, and found a scan of the Holland City News from 1918, from Thursday, October 31, 1918: https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=hcn_1918 Being in the heart of the 1918 Flu Pandemic, there are some interesting facts and tidbits in there. A front-page article declares "Next Sunday again to be 'Churchless': Secretary of State Board Of Health so tells delegation of ministers." Much like CoViD-19, they were taking things week by week, making assessments and decisions to stay on top of the situation. Local ministers implored the State Board of Health "if some way could not be found to place the churches on the same basis on which the schools are operating." The state denied the request, citing the fact that schools were subject were under medical inspection, which churches were not. The State doubled down, and ordered every church in the state to be ti...