THE VERY first predecessor of De Daily Dutchman was also a weekly newspaper, published in Wisconsin. The Sheboygan Nieuwsbode appeared in Dutch only, had a Zeeland-born publisher, and first came off the press 175 years ago, in 1849.
Why only in Dutch? Two reasons: one, many of its readers in the Midwest had only recently arrived in the US and mostly spoke their native language only, not English. And two, as publisher Jaap Quintus from Haamstede on the Dutch island of Schouwen made it clear on the front page week after week:
The language, which departed parents spoke
Will a virtuous child forsake it?
No, Brothers! Countrymen! no!
Already the closest ties bind us,
Read only the language of the Netherlands,
And nothing ever tears that bond away!
Jaap was a poet, a printer, a semi-lawyer, schoolteacher, salesman for insurance policies and subscriptions to Zierikzeesche Nieuwsbode, and once he arrived in Wisconsin he turned all these qualities into a reasonable living. Once arrived – it did not happen without mishaps, for his emigration ship sank off the coast of Calais, and Jaap had to move heaven and earth to charter another ship for him and his eighty fellow emigrants.
ALL IS well that ends well, so he stayed for a while in Buffalo, New York where someone made a half-baked attempt to publish a newspaper, De Nederlander in Noord Amerika, but it was a scam. The man did collect subscription fees, stopped publishing after six issues, and disappeared. Jaap Quintus took a different approach. He trekked to the town of Sheboygan some six hundred miles away, where Katrien from Oostburg was living, a young woman he had fallen in love with while crossing the Atlantic together. He married, started a business in coffee and gin. And he launched his Nieuwsbode.
With much news from Holland, old news because newspapers took more than a month to reach America. But also, increasingly, with news from the US that was becoming more and more engrossed in what would eventually turn into the Civil War. Plus, many reports about immigrants in many states and cities, especially those who had recently come ashore.
He was busy, and he let readers know it as he wrote in verse:
The Editor sits down,
overloaded with newspapers,
Almost lost in the news
from all these periodicals.
AFTER ALL, as he also wrote every week on the front page, he published “The only organ of the Dutch in North America, dedicated to the news, the situation and the interests of the Old and New Homeland.” Publisher/editor-in-chief Jaap Quintus was able to make ends meet, for almost a decade. Until he got tired of it. Wisconsin didn’t offer enough excitement, he thought. In next-state Michigan, and especially in the city of Grand Rapids, also packed with Dutch immigrants, life was a lot more fun and exciting. The New Dutch Store downtown, for instance, was one of the largest department stores there.
And so Jaap sold his newspaper to a German guy, and a short time later the curtain fell on the Nieuwsbode. But regardless: for a solid twelve years, hundreds, and eventually a few thousand, immigrant Dutchmen were updated on what was going on in their old and new worlds. And it made for a good example. Over a period of decades, America counted roughly fifty Dutch-language newspapers.
