Background
Hendrik Peter was born on September 25, 1805 at Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, the son of Jan Hendrik Scholte, a box manufacturer, and Johanna Dorothea Roelofsz, daughter of an Amsterdam broker.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Hendrik Peter was born on September 25, 1805 at Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, the son of Jan Hendrik Scholte, a box manufacturer, and Johanna Dorothea Roelofsz, daughter of an Amsterdam broker.
Scholte had excellent schooling, but at sixteen was compelled by his father's death to leave school and take charge of the factory. Later he resumed his studies in October 1827, at the Amsterdam Athenium Illustre. He entered the University of Leyden in May 1829. The next year his studies were interrupted by the bloodless "ten days' campaign" against Belgium's claim to independence from the Netherlands, for which service each of the student volunteers received a huge gold medal from a rich and patriotic Dutch lady. In May 1832 he received the degree of doctor of theology.
Left the sole survivor of the family by the death of his mother and brother, Scholte sold the business. Impressed by the atheistic tendencies of the time, especially among students, he decided to prepare for the Christian ministry.
Scholte soon became the leading spirit in a group of young clergymen who protested against the secularism of the State Church, seceded from it in 1834 in the name of a purer Christianity, were persecuted, fined, and imprisoned, and saw their congregations dispersed by police and troops.
He edited a periodical, De Reformatie, devoted to the dissenting movement, and in this and a series of pamphlets urged emigration as an escape from intolerable ecclesiastical conditions in Holland. An emigration association was formed at Utrecht in 1846, with Scholte as president. In October a preliminary group of thirty sailed to the United States and reported favorably from St. Louis. The main body of emigrants, counting some eight hundred souls, left Holland in April 1847 in four sailing vessels.
Scholte and his family traveled by steamer to Boston, whence he proceeded to Albany and Washington to secure information about lands open to settlement. In June 1847 the reunited colonists traveled by rail, canal, and wagon from Baltimore to St. Louis. Scholte and four others then proceeded by boat to Keokuk and by wagon on into Iowa to spy out the land, choosing a location in the newly formed Marion County, near the Des Moines River. On the day of his arrival at the chosen site (which he named Pella after the place of refuge of the early Christians in Palestine, persecuted by Rome), Scholte immediately contracted with the few settlers in this frontier region for the purchase of all their claims, and entered new lands with the government to a total of 18, 000 acres.
He had the town of Pella platted in September 1847 and was largely instrumental in the location there in 1853 of Central University (later Central College); he gave the grounds, contributed to the funds, and was president of the board of trustees. He was gentleman farmer, owner of saw mills and brick and lime kilns, land agent, notary, printer, editor and publisher, broker, banker, express agent, dealer in farm implements, attorney, as well as clergyman; and through all these activities in a rapidly developing community he contrived not to amass a fortune.
He took an active interest in politics; he was delegate at large from Iowa to the Chicago convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln, and was recognized as the outstanding representative of the new foreign vote which the supporters of Lincoln had the foresight to cultivate. For some time he was editor of the Pella Gazette.
He died at Pella, Iowa, shortly before his sixty-third birthday.
Hendrik Peter Scholte was the editor of a periodical, De Reformatie, the president of Emigration association at Utrecht. Emigrated to the town of Pella, United States, he made his utmost for development of the new community. Namely, he was largely instrumental in the location there of Central University (later Central College), built a church at his own expense and preached in it without salary, encouraged the adoption of American methods and standards. Scholte's well-known publications after coming to America include Eene Stem Uit Pella (1848) and Tweede Stem uit Pella (1848).
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
In November 1832 Scholte married Sara Maria Brand, daughter of a sugar refiner who had bought packing cases of his father. Scholte's wife having died in 1842, he had later married M. H. E. Krantz. Three daughters of the first marriage: Sara, Maria and Johanna and two sons of the second grew to maturity.
