Soon Sam was aboard another train with his family as they journeyed west.
When the Zwemers arrived at Graafschap, Sam felt like he had stepped into another world. The village was not at all like Albany. It was made up of frontier houses clustered together in a clearing that had been carved out of the surrounding forest. It had a general store and a little red schoolhouse where Sam would attend school. As was customary in such communities, the church formed the center of village social and spiritual life. Most people spoke Dutch and wore Dutch clothing and clogs.
The Zwemer family soon adjusted to life in Michigan. Sometimes after school, when they were not reading books, Sam and his younger brother Peter would roam in the woods around the village, pretending they were missionaries going to some dark corner of the world. As they clambered among the trees, they had to step around the burned stumps and trunks of old ones. These trees had been burned in the Great Fire that had swept through the area five years earlier in 1871, just days before a huge fire also swept through the city of Chicago across Lake Michigan. The fire had not only burned the trees but also burned many houses and killed hundreds of people. The area had a lot of low-lying swampland that harbored mosquitoes and disease, but by now much of this swampland was being drained. The reclaimed land was being used to grow a new vegetable that was catching on in the United States—celery.
Sam enjoyed helping his father in his workshop. Adriaan Zwemer loved to make things from wood. Such items as chairs, tables, and bedsteads flowed out of his workshop behind the house. Between his pastoring duties and making furniture, Sam’s father found time to make the family a croquet set, complete with mallets and balls. Sam loved watching his father shape the wood on his lathe and then sand it until it was perfectly smooth and beautiful.
During the hot summers, Sam swam in the river and sometimes was invited to go sailing on Lake Michigan. He didn’t like group sports, but during winter he enjoyed ice skating on the frozen river.
It wasn’t long before Sam’s four older sisters all became public school teachers. They banded together to help put Fred through Hope College so that he could become a pastor like Sam’s oldest brother, James. James and his wife now had three little girls, Katrina, Maria, and Henrietta, making Sam an uncle three times over.
By the time Sam finished elementary school in 1879, Hope College, the Reformed Church’s university in nearby Holland, Michigan, had expanded to include a high school. The new school, Hope Academy, provided a four-year course designed to prepare students to enter university. Sam was enrolled in the first class of twenty students at the new school, half boys and half girls. Attending the new school would involve a four-mile walk to Holland in the morning and back again to Graafschap in the afternoon. Because such a walk would be pleasant in summer but an impossibly difficult trek during the long, snowy winter months, Sam’s father decided that his son should board with a Christian family in Holland during the week and return home on weekends. This was a daunting plan for twelve-year-old Sam—being expected to excel at school, away from home. As his older sister Nellie helped him pack his clothes into a well-worn leather bag, Sam wondered how lonely it would be without his close-knit family around him.
Chapter 3
Time to Stand Up and Be Counted
The leaves of the surrounding trees had just begun to turn to shades of bright yellow and red as the Zwemers’ wagon rolled along toward Holland, Michigan. Sam sat in the front seat beside his father. He felt very grown up, even more so when his father asked him to recite two of his favorite questions from the Heidelberg Catechism. Sam could recite all 129 questions and answers from the catechism by heart.
Sam began, “Question one: What is thy only comfort in life and death? That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation; and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth, to live unto him.”
Sam paused for a moment as his father patted him on the knee and spoke. “Never forget that, son. God has the power to deliver you from all evil. You just have to ask him to do so. Now, go on.”
After taking a breath, Sam recited on. “Number twenty-seven: What dost thou mean by the Providence of God? The almighty and everywhere present power of God; whereby, as it were by his hand, He upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come not by chance, but by his Fatherly hand.”
“Ja. Ja,” Adriaan said. “You know, it is one thing to recite these things, Sam. It is quite another matter to have them stored in your heart, ready for the trials you will face. Everyone faces trials, but it’s the Christian man or woman who has prepared for them ahead of time who gets through them. If you are in trouble, if you don’t know what to do, remember that God is the beginning and the end of all matters and that everything that happens to you is not by chance but by Providence. You have been given a wonderful opportunity to learn. Seize hold of it and become the best student you can possibly be. These next years will lay the foundation for your future.”
Sam knew that his father was right. He hoped to do well enough at school to go on to Hope College in four years and follow the example of his brothers, James and Fred.
Things started off well for Sam at Hope Academy. He was a natural student who already had a firm grasp of Dutch, English, and German, and he took quickly to learning Latin and Greek. He also studied math and science, both of which he excelled in. He was particularly interested in biology and would spend time wandering through the woods surrounding the school, picking berries and flowers to study. Spare time for such activities, though, was limited. During the week schoolwork came first, followed by chores for the Engles, the family with whom he boarded.
On Friday afternoons Sam would pack a few clothes and walk the four miles home to Graafschap for the weekend. He spent Saturday helping his father or studying, and Sunday was taken up with attending Sunday school and church. It was a busy, happy life.
The first year at Hope Academy flew by, and soon it was time for Sam to return home for the summer. Back home in Graafschap, Sam found work with the local blacksmith. The work was hard, mostly carrying coal and stoking the forge (coal hearth), but Sam enjoyed watching the blacksmith form shapes out of the hot, glowing orange metal as he pulled it from the forge.
In the fall, Sam returned to Holland for another year of school, only this time his younger brother Peter went with him and also boarded with the Engles. It felt good to Sam to look out the window during class and every now and then catch a glimpse of his brother.
Another two years at Hope Academy passed. During his second summer in Graafschap, Sam worked as a clerk at the local grocery store. He put aside the money he earned to help pay for his food and board during the following school year.
Sam knew that his first responsibility was to get good grades, but he did take time out to contribute to the school newspaper, the Excelsior. He often wrote poems and literary compositions for the publication. One of the pieces he wrote for the paper was a poem titled “True Courage,” of which Sam was very proud. The poem grew out of an English assignment to write about a character trait each student admired. Sam thought about the topic for a long time before picking up his pen. He dipped the nib in the inkwell and wrote:
True bravery never seeks the laurel-crown,
Her fame extends into a higher sphere,
Her praise is sounded through eternity!
He, who, when plodding on life’s thorny path
As oft as care or want his way oppose,
Doth overcome these obstacles and rise again
And still march on, is truly brave.
As Sam wrote, he thought about all the older Dutch people he knew who had risked their lives to start a new life and Christian community in America. He wondered whether he would ever be called to show that kind of courage in his own life.
On April 12, 1883, just after his sixteenth birthday, Sam completed high school at Hope Academy. His mother made him a special batch of speculaas (Dutch windmill cookies) for the occasion. Sam loved these spicy Dutch cookies molded into unique shapes, and he enjoyed celebrating his success with his family.
That summer Sam again worked as a clerk in the local grocery store, stocking shelves with dried goods and helping customers find what they were looking for. He knew just about everyone who came into the store, and many customers asked about his plans for the future. Sam had no hesitation giving them an answer. He felt that God had called him into full-time Christian work just like his father and older brothers. He assumed that this would be as a Dutch Reformed pastor. The next step toward attaining this goal was to earn a degree in liberal arts at Hope College.
In the fall Sam headed back to Holland, where he enrolled at Hope College. Many things were familiar to him. During his time at Hope Academy, Sam had walked around the grounds of the college many times. Six of the twenty students from his high school class were in his college freshman class. However, instead of boarding with the Engles, Sam joined the other first-year students living in a dormitory. This was not much of a transition for Sam, since it reminded him of living with his big family back in Graafschap.
Each student enrolled at Hope College studied Greek, Latin, German, and French. This posed no problem for Sam, who already spoke German and had studied Greek and Latin for four years in high school. The school also strongly emphasized the sciences, and Sam was required to take chemistry, geology, and botany. Botany was his favorite subject, and he continued to collect plant specimens to study from the woods near his home and around the college.
Mornings at Hope College began at eight o’clock with a chapel service, where the students were reminded of the history of the school. Albertus Van Raalte, who had led the initial group of Hollanders to settle this area of Michigan, had established the college. At the school’s founding in 1851, he had given a speech in which he said, “This is my anchor of hope for this people in the future.” As a result, Hope College’s crest featured a circle with an anchor in the center and the school’s motto—Spera in Deo (Hope in God)—directly above it.
Faith and hope in God seemed natural to Sam. Like his parents and older brothers and sisters, he had dedicated his life to God when he was so young he could barely even remember it. Yet it was real to him, and during his time at Hope College Sam’s faith grew and matured. He loved to listen to the chapel talks and made a point of reading the Bible through once each year. When the pastor of the Reformed Church in Holland called for volunteers to teach Sunday school at the Pine Creek settlement across the river, Sam volunteered. He enjoyed the three-mile walk each way to Pine Creek from Holland. It gave him time to pray for the young students in his Sunday school class.
During his first summer vacation from Hope College, Sam found work with a threshing gang. He was six feet tall, taller than most of the crew, and was wiry and strong, but it was still the hardest work he had ever done. The gang would go from farm to farm, cutting wheat and feeding it into a threshing machine. Once separated from the stalks, the grain was poured into sacks that were then loaded onto wagons to be taken to market. Although the work was hot, dusty, and backbreaking, the job paid well, and Sam was able save his earnings to pay for his entire tuition the following year. Sam’s younger brother Peter joined him on the threshing gang. Because he was to start attending Hope College in the fall, he also needed to earn money to pay his tuition.
