Little Chute, Wisconsin Little Chute, Wisconsin Downtown Little Chute Downtown Little Chute Location of Little Chute, Wisconsin Location of Little Chute, Wisconsin Location of Little Chute, Wisconsin in Outagamie County Location of Little Chute, Wisconsin in Outagamie County Little Chute is a village in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, United States.
1.3 Father Van den Broek and the first Dutch pioneer While sharing in the history of northeast Wisconsin, Little Chute has been influenced by two unique factors: the rapids and portages along the Fox River and the coming of Dutch-Catholic pioneer in 1848.
There is little evidence today of the earliest Native American communities in the area.
Regardless, the Ho-Chuck dominated the region just as the French were first appearing in the St Lawrence region far to the east.
The Sac and Fox were uprooted again by easterly tribes and began to arrive in the Fox River Valley in the late 17th century.
The county which today contains Little Chute was to be titled Outagamie.
Painting of the Little Chute Lock and Dam in 1856 commissioned by Morgan L.
The series of rapids along the Fox River near Little Chute necessitated canoe portages.
By the time the French settlement started in the early 18th century, the Sac had essentially set up toll stations along the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway, including the rapids at Little Chute.
The French, outraged at the impact on trade, launched a series of attacks on the Sac, culminating in the Fox Wars, which drove them out of the region by 1742. The power vacuum created by the departure of most of the Ho-Chunk, the Sac and the Fox allowed the Menominee to briefly dominate the area.
The Menominee set up a village, Ookicitiming ("causeway" in Menominee) near present-day Little Chute.
Locally the three primary rapids on the Fox were titled "La Grand Kauklin" (near Grignon's trading post at present day Kaukauna), "La Petite Chute" (present day Little Chute) and "La Grand Chute" (still the name of the adjoining township).
Father Van den Broek and the first Dutch pioneer The singular person in the establishment of Little Chute as a Catholic Dutch-American improve was a Dominican missionary: Father Theodore J.
In Green Bay he met the Grignon family, and probably through this contact he went to La Petite Chute in 1836.
Father Van den Broek also met Morgan Lewis Martin, who was in charge of the small-town canal project.
Father Van den Broek purchased territory in the region which he later hoped to sell. In that same year, 1836, the Menominees signed the "Treaty of the Cedars" which required them to give up title to the small-town territory and move beyond the Wolf River to the west. Father Van den Broek began to write letters about the region to groups in the Netherlands.
The letters appeared in the Roman Catholic paper, De Tijd (The Times) beginning in 1843. In the summer of 1847 Father Van den Broek went back to the Netherlands to settle his parents' estate.
John Nepomucene churchioners were decidedly reduced after the Treaty of the Cedars, he used the trip as an opportunity to again write in De Tijd, advertising the mission, the territory at La Petite Chute and employment opportunities associated with the Fox River Canal, which encompassed no-charge passage to America for workers.
Typical passage to La Petite Chute encompassed crossing the Atlantic from Rotterdam to New York City, a train trip from there to Albany, a train or Erie Canal-barge trip athwart New York state to Buffalo, steamship travel through the Great Lakes and Green Bay to the head of the Fox River at Green Bay and finally a 30-mile, ox-cart trip to the mission at La Petite Chute.
Godthard. Father Van den Broek's group, held up by an ice jam on Lake Michigan, appeared on June 10, 1848. The emigrants identified not plowed fields and a village but forested land, being somewhat misled by wording of the De Tijd advertisements: the word "acres" was interpreted as akkers, meaning cultivated land.
There was also not enough good territory in Father Van den Broek's holdings for all the emigrants.
There was a resort to drawing straws, with the winners naturally picking the best lots. Many of the the rest - led by Cornelis van de Heij, a farmer from Zeeland, and Father Godthard - left to form the village of Holland (usually alluded to locally as "Hollandtown") clean water buying the remainder of Father Van den Broek's land.
There were other Europeans, mainly French and Irish emigrants, already established at La Petite Chute, now also known by its semi-anglicized name of "Little Chute." Even with the hardships, including the death of Father Van den Broek in 1851, the village prospered.
Waves of Catholic Dutch emigrants followed from all over the Netherlands, with whole families and neighborhoods moving to join family and friends already established in Little Chute, Hollandtown, and the outlying farming communities.
It is estimated that, by 1927, as many as 40,000 Dutch Roman Catholics had immigrated to the United States an average rate of 10 per week for 80 years.
While many headed for metros/cities or individual farms athwart the country, Little Chute and the encircling area represented the biggest concentration of Catholic immigrants. The State "Fox and Wisconsin Improvement Company" took over operations in 1850 and rather than the canal and adjoining dam by 1856. Railways approached from the south and steamship lines were established on Lakes Michigan and Winnebago. The 16 feet of water head at La Petite Chute and other falls was used for mills, a practice that continues.
Little Chute postal service was established in 1849. In 1898 the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning was memorialized and the surviving "48'ers" recognized. In 1898, inhabitants of La Petite Chute petitioned the State of Wisconsin for incorporation as the Village of Little Chute, which was formally granted on March 8, 1899.
Little Chute and some encircling area was largely settled by Catholics.
By the early twentieth century it was the biggest Catholic Dutch improve in the United States. Little Chute remained a Dutch-speaking improve - known locally as "speaking Hollander" - into the twentieth century.
As late as 1898, church sermons and event announcements were in Dutch. Dutch newspapers continued in the region - mainly in De Pere by Catholic clergymen - were presented up until World War I. Speaking Dutch as a first language was common in the region among second and third generation even as late as World War II. The Dutch festival of Sinterklaas was jubilated as "St Nick's Day" (December 5).
One of four dams on the Fox River in Little Chute Doyle and Island parks in Little Chute, as seen from the Fox River Little Chute has jubilated the Dutch festival of Kermis annually since 1981 - after a long hiatus dating back to the early twentieth century - possibly the only such titled event in the United States. St.
Little Chute has a full-scale authentic working Dutch windmill directed by Little Chute Windmill, a non-profit organization.
The Little Chute Windmill and Van Asten Visitor Center, instead of in 2013, serves as a exhibition and tourist attraction that promotes the history and Dutch tradition of the community.
The Fox River Navigational System Authority is rehabilitating and operating the fitness of Lower Fox River locks between Lake Winnebago and Green Bay, including the Locks at Little Chute in Doyle Park.
Repairs to the Little Chute guard lock, lock and combined locks are scheduled to be instead of by 2009.
Funding for the bridge at the Little Chute Lock and extra repairs on the Fox River Locks appear to be in question. The non-profit organization Fox-Wisconsin Heritage Parkway is rehabilitating the Little Chute Lock Tender's House with volunteer workforce and private donations.
Little Chute is positioned at 44 17 03 N 88 18 49 W (44.284087, -88.313629). According to the United States Enumeration Bureau, the village has a total region of 5.52 square miles (14.30 km2), of which, 5.16 square miles (13.36 km2) of it is territory and 0.36 square miles (0.93 km2) is water. Little Chute is the biggest village in Outagamie County Little Chute has both a enhance and private school systems: St.
The superintendent of the Little Chute School District is Dave Botz.
"Little Chute, A Century of Progress, 1899-1999", 1999, Village of Little Chute Centennial Committee a b "The First Dutch Catholics In Brown County", Willem Keeris, Netherlands On their experiences see Yda Schreuder, Dutch Catholic Immigrant Settlement in Wisconsin, 1850-1905 (New York: Garland, 1989); and H.
By far the most complete study of the nineteenth-century migrants in the United States is Jacob van Hinte's Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in the United States of America, 2 vols., ed.
Lucas also used this work extensively for his Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigration to the United States and Canada, 1789-1950 (1955; reprint, Grand Rapids: William B.
Swierenga, "Local Patterns of Dutch Migration to the United States in the Mid-nineteenth Century," in A Century of European Migrations, ed.
Transcript of Dutch immigrant Arnold Verstegen's letters, 1850 and 1852 Conversations with a several Little Chute residents, one resident since 1915 Little Chute Little Chute Historical Society Appleton / Fox Cities urbane area, Wisconsin Municipalities and communities of Outagamie County, Wisconsin, United States
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