City of Nederland
Nederland, Jefferson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settled by Dutch immigrants in 1897; named for their native Netherlands, which in the 1890s suffered overcrowding, wornout soil, and scant hope for prosperity. Thus when the Port Arthur Land Company (joined by Dutch businessmen) advertised the abundance of America, many families eagerly moved to this region. The new colony thrived, although torrid summers, frigid winters, and swamps prompted a few to return to Holland. Those who remained built a sound economy of farming and ranching, now largely replaced by rice-growing and industries.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Nederland was founded in 1897 by Dutch immigrants who took its name from their homeland, the Netherlands, then burdened by crowded land and worn-out soil. When the Port Arthur Land Company advertised the abundance of America, families crossed the ocean to this corner of Southeast Texas, where some were driven home by the swamps and hard climate. Those who stayed built an economy of farming and ranching that later gave way to rice-growing and the industries of the Gulf Coast.
Why it matters
Nederland's founding illustrates how railroad and land companies recruited European immigrants to settle the Gulf Coast, planting a Dutch community whose name and heritage endure.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of First Mercantile Building
Nederland, TX
In the late 1890s, Dutch immigrant G. W. Kilsdonk, Jr., working as agent for the Port Arthur Land Company, recruited settlers from his native Holland to this corner of Jefferson County. Among the businesses he built was a two-story mercantile store on this site that supplied goods and served as a hall for the young community's churches, clubs, and organizations. The original building burned in 1909.
First Baptist Church of Nederland
Nederland, TX
This congregation grew out of a Baptist revival held in Nederland's Dutch Reformed Church, reflecting the town's Dutch immigrant origins, and seven charter members organized the church in March 1907 under the Rev. George Montgomery. In its early years new members were baptized in the Neches River. Known until 1925 as the Peveto Baptist Church for a devoted early member, it grew steadily into a pillar of community service.
Trinity Lutheran Church
Groves, TX
In early 1899 a dozen listeners heard the first German Lutheran sermon preached in the area, and by that August a Concordia Seminary graduate was installed to serve Lutherans across Port Arthur, Beaumont, and Orange. Incorporated in 1901 as a congregation of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, the church survived a 1902 fire and grew rapidly amid Spindletop-era industrialization, going on to spawn a string of daughter churches and, in 1991, a mission for Port Arthur's growing Vietnamese population.
Harry Henry Choates
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Born in Louisiana in 1922 and raised in Port Arthur, Harry Choates became one of the defining voices of Cajun music, a fiddler who sang in French and English and blended traditional Cajun sounds with Western swing. His 1946 recording 'Jole Blon,' a reworking of an old Cajun waltz, won airplay nationwide and remains his enduring classic. But contract troubles, alcoholism, and a fractured personal life shadowed his talent, and he died in the Travis County Jail in 1951 at just 28.