A plain people, a rough soil, a strange country. And out of these, prosperity — prosperity won by courage and vigor and moral fortitude. Such is the epic of Netherlanders in America. The story opens with a brief sketch of Dutch emigration to colonial America and then describes Van Raalte and the founding of the Michigan Kolonie in 1847, Scholte and his settlement at Pella, Iowa. It tells next of the movement of this sturdy, God-fearing folk into Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Canada, into Illinois, Ohio, and New York. It speaks of Dutch settlers in the South, in Texas, in the Southwest, and on the Pacific Coast, and traces Dutch culture they carried with them wherever they went. Drawing on countless scattered records at home and abroad, on personal reminiscences, and on an intimate acquaintance with nearly every Dutch settlement in the United States, the author gives a wealth of information on the life and customs of the patient and tenacious Dutch of the New World. Here are their names, their family histories, their villages and towns, their fields and crops, their money worries, their deep convictions— a canvas as wide as the continent and crowded with meticulous detail about these strong men and valiant women whose lives and culture helped to build America. All those who have Dutch blood in their veins will take pride in this record of the Netherlanders' place in our country's history— in this story of a people who became good Americans by entering into the spirit of the New World without sacrificing the virtues they brought with them from the old.