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As far as the other towns were concerned, I had access to back issues of the Sioux County Capital and Sioux County Capital-Democrat (Orange City), the Chronicle (previously known as the Pella Chronicle and Pella Chronicle-Advertiser), the Holland Sentinel (formerly the Holland Evening Sentinel), and Holland City News. Locally published or circulated histories of the town festivals were available in Holland (Randall Vande Water’s Tulip Time Treasures), Pella (Muriel Kooi’s Festival), and Orange City (Arie Vander Stoep’s History of the Orange City Tulip Festival). In addition to the archival and newspaper research I have conducted, I also have taken a historiographical approach to the materials available on these celebrations, comparing the historical narratives presented about these festivals in local histories, travel publications, newspapers, and residents’ memories.
This study is laid out as follows. After this introduction, in chapter 1, I provide an overview of community celebrations in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addressing specific trends discernible in American community celebrations and display events during this time period, I pay special attention to the place of ethnicity and heritage within these events. Basically, chapter 1 is designed to provide a brief, descriptive overview of celebrations and festivities into which the Dutch immigrated and to which they eventually added their own contributions. Chapter 2, similarly, is concerned with providing a context and background for the five celebrations I am analyzing. Whereas chapter 1 deals with the American celebratory context, chapter 2 discusses the history of Dutch immigration to the United States and the Dutch-American subculture, which has maintained a presence since the late 1840s. I begin by discussing the economic and social conditions in the Netherlands that led certain groups of Netherlanders to decide to relocate to the United States. I then describe the ways in which the early immigration to the United States actually proceeded, paying specific attention to how, from the very start, Dutch settlement in the United States was characterized by an overwhelming tendency to establish somewhat isolated enclaves characterized by the dominance of Calvinist ministers.