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To: darrellmaurina

Today’s now mostly Hispanic SW side was deep Dutch territory. Lots of family lived there in the 70s. The place quickly rotted away once the older hold outs moved over into Wyoming or died off.


49 posted on 07/08/2011 3:40:27 PM PDT by VanDeKoik (1 million in stimulus dollars paid for this tagline!)
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To: VanDeKoik

Yep... Grandville Avenue Christian Reformed Church was, if I remember correctly, the last congregation in the CRC to still have one worship service each Sunday in Dutch. (Yes, I know I could Google to check it, but I’m doing something else right now.) The predominant language of that area on the southwest side of Grand Rapids had, of course, long since changed to Spanish rather than Dutch or even English; I was surprised at the time to learn that none of the Canadian CRCs still had weekly worship services in Dutch since they’re almost entirely post-WW2 immigrants. For whatever reason, that one small area in a part of Grand Rapids that was once Dutch had enough people still attending church there who wanted Dutch services long after most of the people had long since moved out of Grand Rapids and into either the cities of Wyoming or Grandville (not to be confused with Grandville Avenue — the road starts in the city of Grand Rapids and leads to the city of Grandville).


50 posted on 07/08/2011 5:21:18 PM PDT by darrellmaurina
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