Dutch Treat

• Citation: Vol. 28 No. 2
• Publication year: 2015
• Author: By Justice Eileen C. Moore

Dutch Treat

By Justice Eileen C. Moore

Justice Eileen C. Moore

He's tall, looks impressive, somewhat commanding and always dignified. Those who know him appreciate his grand and wonderful personality, full of good cheer and exuberance. He is our court's Santa Claus each year, handing out presents at the holiday party. Who is this man? He is the Honorable William F. Rylaarsdam, and his is an extraordinary story of American immigration and success.

He started out in a little village in Holland as Willem Rijlaarsdam, named after his father's father as was the custom. None of his grandparents on either side went beyond the third grade, although his parents made it through the sixth grade. He still remembers the smith's shop with its wooden stall for farm horses to be fitted with horseshoes and the smell when the red-hot shoe was pressed against a horse's hoof.

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He first heard about America from his grandfather. Three young men, his grandfather, an uncle and their cousin, emigrated here in the late 1890s. At one point, they worked in the Chicago stockyards, and Justice Rylaarsdam's grandfather later related stories about the filthy stockyard conditions. For the rest of his life, his grandfather never ate cured or canned meat. When Justice Rylaarsdam read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" years later, he recognized many of the practices his "opa" described to him as a boy.

His grandfather also talked about his experiences of learning new farming methods and meeting people of other races in America. He remembers a little account his grandfather told about the language difficulty. While working on a farm, he walked to a neighbor's farm and asked to borrow a farm implement. The neighbor responded, "help yourself," which in English, of course, means "yes, go ahead and take it." However, in Dutch, the same phrase means "no, you have to take care of your own needs." So, his grandfather walked back without the tool. When he told his boss what happened, the boss explained the significance of "help yourself," and he had to return to the neighbor to help himself.

Two of the young men, one Justice Rylaarsdam's grandfather, returned to Holland to find wives. Their quest for wives proved successful and the uncle and his wife returned here, eventually Americanizing their name to Rylaarsdam. But Justice Rylaarsdam's grandmother only consented to the marriage on condition they stay in Holland, so his grandfather never returned to America. Descendants of his two family members...