Background
Huidekoper was born in Hoogeveen, Netherlands in 1776, the son of Anne Jans Huidekoper by his second wife, Gesiena Frederica Wolthers. He was descended from a Frisian family of Mennonite faith.
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Businessman founder theologian
Huidekoper was born in Hoogeveen, Netherlands in 1776, the son of Anne Jans Huidekoper by his second wife, Gesiena Frederica Wolthers. He was descended from a Frisian family of Mennonite faith.
He completed his formal education in a school in Hasselt and an Institute in Crefeld, Germany in 1795.
He found Holland held by the French, at war with England, and ruined in its commerce. Aided by his half-brother, Jan, who had made a tour in America, he therefore sought a career in the United States and arrived in New York October 14, 1796, on the American brig Prudence. A winter spent with a marriage connection of his brother in Cazenovia, N. Y. , convinced him that to make a farm from the wilderness was of prohibitive cost, and in the next summer he removed to Oldenbarneveld to join a group of notable Hollanders banished or selfexiled following the struggle with the House of Orange for free government in 1787. After employment in the local office of the Holland Land Company, he became in February 1802 the bookkeeper of its general agency in Philadelphia and secretary of the Pennsylvania Population Society. These were companies of Holland merchants who had invested the proceeds of their loans to the American colonies during the Revolution in large land purchases in New York State and northwestern Pennsylvania.
Desiring a country life, Huidekoper secured appointment as local agent in Meadville, Pa. , purchasing also for himself extensive holdings in that neighborhood. He entered upon his duties in January 1805 amid disordered frontier conditions that exacted skill and courage. Indian warfare had made it impossible for the land company to comply with some provisions of a Pennsylvania land act of 1792, and when peace came in 1796 many squatters took possession, claiming that the former owners had forfeited title. Lawless intruders even plotted to destroy the offices and records of the company and to drive away or kill the agents. Although a state supreme court decision had impaired the company's titles, Huidekoper, on his arrival, began suit in the United States circuit court for the ejectment of an intruder, and a construction of the law by Chief Justice Marshall necessitated a judgment of the circuit court in Huidekoper's favor. This remedied the general situation.
Orderly civilization in the region owed much to his firm policy, his eminent integrity, his personal aid of struggling farmers, and the example of his own arduous grappling with economic difficulties in an area isolated because of primitive means of transportation. After the Hollanders sold their company holdings (1810) and some land of the Population Society (1813), Huidekoper as agent of the new owners had profitable commissions due to the influx of settlers after the War of 1812. Finally, in 1836, he purchased for $178, 400 the lands retained in the sale of 1813. This prosperous Hollander early became an ardent American, rejoicing in American freedom and in the responsibilities of citizenship. While not enrolled in the army in 1812, he was of service to Perry in the preparation of the Lake Erie fleet and in the equipment of the militia. Through his home life, also, Huidekoper was a social force.
Concerned for the religious education of his children, he became a patient student of Scripture and of church history. He had been reared in the Dutch Reformed Church but its Calvinism had been modified in his case by the influence of Mennonite preaching in Crefeld and the catholicity of a union church in Oldenbarneveld. Disturbed by the rigor of the Presbyterian Church in Meadville and responsive to the Unitarian movement in New England, he created in 1825 a home school for his children, with public Unitarian worship on Sunday, under a succession of young graduates of Harvard College of later distinction in Unitarian pulpits. In defence of his new theology he maintained for two years (1831 - 32) a monthly periodical, The Unitarian Essayist, in which he published a complete controversial survey of doctrine, and he made later contributions to The Western Messenger, a journal founded at his instance and edited successively by Ephraim Peabody in Cincinnati, James Freeman Clarke in Louisville, and W. H. Channing in Cincinnati. The permanent result of this religious zeal was the Unitarian Church in Meadville and the Meadville Theological School which he founded in 1844 for the joint interests of the Unitarians and the Christian Connection. To these foundations he and his descendants gave bountiful gifts and fostering care.
Having married, September 1, 1806, Rebecca Colhoon, daughter of Andrew Colhoon of Carlisle, Pa. , he built in fair surroundings a spacious home, Pomona Hall, celebrated for cultured life and hospitality in the letters and journals of many notable visitors, among them Harriet Martineau.
