Christiaan Frederik van Raaphorst (1852-1941)

Avatar

Chris's migration photo

Individual Facts

Netherlands, Chris's birthplace

Story: "Biographical sketch"

(By Chris's granddaughter, Anna)

Chris, his son John, and daughter-in-law Nan

Chris and I passed like ships in the night: he had been living with my parents but moved out just before I was born, and he died within a month of my birth.

Chris and his wife, Elisabeth, were part of a “chain migration” that involved the entire van Raaphorst family, twenty-some people in three generations, that took almost 20 years to complete.

Chris was Catholic, and wanted to raise his kids as good church members. Every Sunday he required his six sons to bring home a mass card as proof of church attendance. Apparently the cards weren’t dated, because each boy simply took one of last week’s cards on their way out of the house on Sunday morning and brought it back again on their return home.

Chris also insisted on respectful prayers before every meal. As he was praying, the boys would try to steal a bit of food off whatever serving dish they were closest to. If “the old man” caught them, they got a clip on the ear.

There weren’t enough chairs for the van Raaphorst family of nine, so some of the boys had to stand up to eat. If they complained, Chris told them that the queen’s horses had to stand up to eat, so why shouldn’t they?

Chris was mostly a hard-working carpenter and small business-owner, but he apparently occasionally “escaped” for a night at a local pub. A family story tells of Chris coming home late one night just before dawn and meeting a group of nuns on their way to early-morning mass. Chris insisted on singing and dancing with them. Apparently the noise, fuss, and lack of respect didn’t go over well with the local church authorities.

Shared Facts

Chris and Elisabeth van Raaphorst

Story: "My Dutch grandparents were a strong team"

(By their granddaughter Anna)

My Dutch grandparents married rather late for their era (he was 28 and she was 26 when they were married on March 17, 1880) which gave them time to develop individually for a number of years before they became a team. Both had unique personalities, strong opinions, and a number of wide-ranging skillsets, which they developed in their youth, and which served them well later in life.

Both of them stuck to the religious traditions of their parents, and never compromised in their beliefs. Although they were married in De Oude Kerk (“the Old Church”), a Protestant landmark in Amsterdam (Elisabeth was an Evangelical Lutheran), Chris never gave up the Catholic traditions that he learned as a child in the Rotterdam area, and Elisabeth never agreed to either turn Catholic herself or allow any of the children to be baptized in Chris’s church.

During most of their married life in Amsterdam they owned businesses to which both contributed. One was a neighborhood store. Another was a moving and delivery business, which specialized in hoisting large pieces of furniture up the exterior walls of canal-side buildings with stairwells too narrow to provide passage for a large pieces of furniture.

Chris and Elisabeth were the masterminds of the family’s immigration to the New World, first to Canada and later to Michigan. Although they themselves were handicapped by their ages (they were both in their 50s) and lack of fluency in English to fully participate in the economic opportunities offered by the booming economy in Ontario and Michigan in the early 1900s, they saw to it that all of their children, children-in-law, and grandchildren made it to the New World and got a good start. When they arrived in Detroit, and until he reached old age, Chris worked at one of the car companies, and Elisabeth turned home manager and chef for the whole van Raaphorst clan as they migrated, group by group.

Relationships

For more information

Additional resources from our knowledge base (books, papers, web posts, and records): For more information