Town of Holland
Brown County, Wisconsin
A Dutch immigrant community rooted in faith, farming, and tradition
In the 1840s, Father Theodore van den Broek, a Dominican missionary stationed at Little Chute, Wisconsin, traveled back to the Netherlands to promote the opportunities available in the Fox River Valley. His efforts convinced many Dutch Catholic families to emigrate, and three ships eventually made the crossing as a result. The first to arrive was the Libra, carrying a group led by Franciscan priest Father Adriannus Dominicus Godthardt.1
The Libra group traveled from New York to Buffalo by way of the Erie Canal, then by steam tug across the Great Lakes to Green Bay, and up the Fox River to Little Chute.2 Many of the families, however, were dissatisfied with the land at Little Chute. Nine families chose to leave with Father Godthardt and find a settlement of their own. They loaded their belongings onto an ox-drawn wagon and followed the Military Road south. After spending a night in the barn of a settler named Steve Ballard, they followed a sledge trail into dense forest until they came upon about sixteen acres of open ground.3 Within two days, they had built a log church that doubled as their first shelter. They called their settlement Franciscus Bosch — “Francis’ Woods.”
The pioneers lived in one-room log huts with dirt floors and split-log roofs. Their first crop was peas, grown from seeds given to them by neighboring settlers.4 The settlement grew quickly. By 1849, Irish families had joined the community, followed by German families in 1850.5 The three groups built a life together, and Franciscus Bosch became known as Hollandtown. The Town of Holland was formally organized in 1853.6
The parish of St. Francis Seraph was the center of community life from the beginning. The original log church was replaced within a few years by a small frame church, which gave way to a larger church built in the 1860s. On the night of June 13, 1899, that church was struck by lightning and destroyed by fire. Within a year, the community had erected the solid brick Gothic church that still stands today. It was dedicated on June 19, 1900, and consecrated on October 4, 1903.7
Hollandtown holds a unique distinction as the site of the only Dutch Roman Catholic colony established in the United States.8 That heritage lives on in the annual Schut, a shooting festival rooted in the Schutterij tradition of the medieval Netherlands. The Hollandtown Schut has been held every year since 1849, making it the oldest continuous event of its kind in the world outside the Netherlands.9 In 1956, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands recognized the tradition by presenting a silver parrot to the community, still worn each year by the winner.10
The community’s economy grew around dairy farming, and by the 1880s Holland had become one of Brown County’s premier agricultural districts. Local cooperatives and cheese factories sustained the area for generations, and Hollandtown’s commercial life included general stores, inns, blacksmith shops, and other small enterprises that served the surrounding farming community.11
This page is a work in progress. The Town of Holland Area Historical Society is actively researching and expanding the historical record for all three of our communities. If you have photographs, documents, stories, or other materials related to Hollandtown’s history, we would love to hear from you.
More detailed content, primary source documents, and archival materials are available to members through our digital archive. Creating an account is free.