Ralph Waldo Emerson
With his two brothers, Hugenholtz was involved in a Dutch movement that had similarities with the American Unitarians. The brothers “had ties to” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and his Transcendentalists, who revitalized American Unitarianism.
“The Transcendentalists [were]... a generation of people struggling to define spirituality and religion in a way that took into account the new understanding their age made available ... The new Biblical Criticism in Germany and elsewhere had been looking at the Christian and Jewish scriptures through the eyes of literary analysis and had raised questions for some about the old assumptions of religion ... The Harvard-educated Emerson and others began to read Hindu and Buddhist scriptures and examine their own religious assumptions against these.” [www.transcendentalists.com]
F.W.N. Hugenholtz sailed with his family to America and arrived in Grand Rapids in late 1885.
“During the first week of January, 1886, a constitution and creed were adopted, which are of a pronounced Unitarian type ... Their commodious and pleasant edifice was built at a cost of $7500, and dedicated December 22, 1886. Aid was received from friends in the old country [presumably from his brothers’ congregation in Amsterdam], but notably from the General Unitarian Conference held in the summer of that year at Saratoga, NY, to which [Mr. Hugenholtz] personally appealed, with such success that the sum of $1000 was immediately collected and placed in his hands. In 1887, Mr. Hugenholtz was formally acknowledged as a Unitarian minister and his church enrolled as ‘The First Unitarian Holland Church in the United States’.” [History of the City of Grand Rapids]
The church was known both as the Vrije (Hollandsche) Gemeente and as the Unitarian Holland Church. They established branches in Chicago and Kalamazoo.
“The Vrije Hollandsche Gemeente ... was acknowledged as the foreign branch of the Nederlandsche Protestantenbond (the Dutch Protestant Confederation).” [from Netherlanders in America]Jenkin Lloyd-Jones (1834-1918) was the leading Unitarian figure in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. In the 1850s, the Lloyd-Jones family from Wales --- Jenkin, his parents, his siblings --- settled in a beautiful valley along a river near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Today, this valley is the site of Taliesin, the residence and studio built by Jenkin’s nephew, Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959). And, F.W.N. Hugenholtz was here in 1888!
F.W.N. Hugenholtz: wrote poetry in Spring Green in September 1888.
In 1888, the valley had only the homes of Jenkin’s siblings and a small family chapel. The two-year-old chapel was designed by J.L. Silsbee of Chicago with a teen-aged Frank Lloyd Wright looking on. It was a reminder of Wales, dominated by its roof line and marked by the old Druid symbol adopted by the Lloyd-Joneses. Jenkin had consecrated “Unity Chapel” and dedicated it “to the Truth which maketh free.”
Unity Chapel (built 1886), Spring Green, Wisconsin
Unlike his brothers and sisters, Jenkin Lloyd-Jones did not have a home of his own in the valley. He had been a Unitarian minister in Madison and Chicago since his days at Meadville Seminary, which had followed his military service during the Civil War.
“So in 1889, he organized his brothers and some ministerial colleagues into a company to buy the derelict Tower Hill land for converting into a vacation encampment ... Soon the Tower Hill Pleasure Company found itself the parent of the Tower Hill School of Religion and Ethics. The faculty were some of the most notable American writers, scientists, professors, politicians, social workers, and ministers.” [from A Lloyd Jones Retrospective]
F.W.N. Hugenholtz lectured at the school on “The Growth of the Hebrew Religion” for a week in August 1892. He was presumably one of the “ministerial colleagues” who created the Tower Hill Pleasure Company. And, he replicated one of the Tower Hill buildings in Grand Rapids, creating a smaller Unitarian retreat across from his own residence. Jenkin’s great-granddaughter tells us the cottage pictured below “is very like those of Tower Hill.”
At Grand Rapids: this 1892 cottage replicates a Tower Hill building ... and was photographed again a decade later.
F.W.N.’s son, called Frits herein, was also named Frederik Willem Nicolaas Hugenholtz. He followed in Jenkin’s path and attended the Unitarian seminary at Meadville, PA. In 1892, Frits came to Spring Green with a new bride and two diplomas, Meadville and Harvard. Jenkin’s sisters, Nell and Jane, had expanded the Lloyd-Jones family school into the Hillside Home School with large new three-story building, designed by their architect nephew. According to the 1892-1893 catalogue, the Hillside Home School embraced “the principles of Emerson.” Frits Hugenholtz was their Unitarian minister and the instructor for Greek and Latin during the period 1892 to 1895.
In 1892, Jenkin Lloyd-Jones was busily organizing the 1893 World’s Congress of Religions, held in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair. Ten years earlier, the Hugenholtz family had been busily organizing their church across the canal from the 1883 Amsterdam World’s Fair. The Congress was a two-week event, Sept 11-27, 1893, at the building now called the Art Institute of Chicago.