Early Memories of Saugatuck, Michigan : 1830-1930
Author: Heath, May Francis
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Grand Rapids, Mich: 1930

GERRIT CROCK

Gerrit Crock was born in Vierhouten, Gelderland, Netherlands in 1837.

While he took no part in the secession in Holland, he knew about it intimately and the little country noted for its religious freedom of worship underwent a severe persecution and many fled the country and came to America.

Mr. Crock's sister and family came with the Van Raaltes in 1847, and of that ship load, some went up the Hudson and settled, though the main body of the emigrants came to Michigan and settled in Holland, Laketown and vicinity. He was a member of the church in The Netherlands and when they came here joined the Dutch Reformed church on Moore's Hill, at Saugatuck.

In the Netherlands all males must serve their country and Mr. Crock served his time in the Dutch Army, and he had acquired his own home in his native land, but hearing of America and its forests and cheap lands, from the Van Raaltes, he and his family came over in the next boat and settled in Singapore in 1858, where he found employment in the saw mills, and when the mills and homes were no more, then he too, came to Saugatuck, following the mills. His was an honest, hard working life; with his hands he earned a home and a competency for old age, and his last years were easy ones.

He served as Marshal in the day of the old wooden sidewalks and the old kerosene street lights which had to be cleaned and filled each day, and all this as well as collecting the village tax fell to the lot of Marshal.

Mr. Crock died in 1918, his wife having passed on several years before. He is survived by two sons, John and Peter, and two daughters, Mary and Effie (now Mrs. Henry Randall).