Boudewijn DeKorne, a Dutch immigrant living in Grand Rapids, bought an old farmhouse near Glen Lake in 1924 as a getaway for his wife Kate and 11 children. According to family lore, he remarked, “I’m going to give this to my family. Maybe it’ll keep the family together.”
Boudewijn passed away just five years later, but his dream stayed alive. Gathering near the old farmhouse around Memorial Day became a DeKorne family tradition, and this year, Boudewijn and Kate’s descendants will celebrate the 100th anniversary of getting together in Glen Arbor.
“The tradition really started with my grandfather and his 10 siblings,” Jack DeKorne said. “They were very close as siblings and would often get together at the lake. And later, they built their own cottages along the south shore. … They would come up here on the weekends during the summer, go to church together, and afterwards they would have coffee parties.”
And over the years, the old farmhouse transformed from a building lacking amenities like beds, indoor plumbing, and electricity into a hub for the DeKorne family in the summer.
As the DeKorne family grew larger it became harder for all of them to get together in Glen Arbor, Jack said. Boudewijn and Kate’s many descendants have spread throughout the country, with DeKorne family members in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, California, and Oregon, among other states. Others stayed in Leelanau County and built their own homes in the neighboring communities.
Prior to the centennial this year, the last significant effort to reunite the entire family occurred in summer 2002. Nonetheless, at least some DeKorne family members have made their way to the old farmhouse and neighboring cottages every year since 1924, Jack said.
To mark the 100th year of vacationing in Glen Arbor, Jack has assembled a “coordinating team” with representatives from each of the family’s 11 branches to try to bring about as complete of a family reunion as possible. Jack said that he expects to bring together over 100 of his relatives.
Jack’s grandfather was Lewis DeKorne, Boudewijn and Kate’s second eldest son. According to a family history written by Tom Van Zoeren, Lewis and middle brother Casey helped develop their father’s business into the DeKorne Furniture Company in 1916.
Van Zoeren reports that a teenaged Boudewijn was already a skilled wood carver when his family emigrated from Holland to America in 1879. When the family settled in Grand Rapids, Boudewijn used this talent to carve patterns for a large furniture company, which found their way into many local homes and shops.
The DeKorne Furniture Company survived the Great Depression, and by the 1990s, the company stocked exclusively Ethan Allen-brand furniture at four locations in west Michigan: the DeKorne Ethan Allen furniture stores. The DeKorne grandchildren sold the operation to Ethan Allen in 2005.
Although the furniture stores are now closed, some DeKorne family members are continuing to practice woodworking craft. Bob DeKorne of Port Oneida carves Michigan hardwoods into custom instruments, including guitars, bass guitars, and ukeleles, through his business, Pyramid Point Custom Guitars.
Bob said that he learned the basics of wood carving from his father, John C. DeKorne, but he really became interested in the practice when a friend, Tom Keen, gave him a bass guitar that was damaged in a flood. Repairing the instrument allowed Bob to combine his lifelong passion for music with the traditional family craft.
When a white ash tree died on his property about 10 years ago, Bob used the wood from the trunk to carve up material for as many as 50 guitars. He believes that his father impressed on him the importance of repairing and repurposing materials – skills he learned from living during the Great Depression. “He never threw a lemon out until he squeezed all the juice out of it,” Bob remembers.
According to the DeKorne family history book shared by Van Zoeren, Boudewijn purchased the farmhouse near Glen Lake from Levi Green for $400 in 1924 after Green “he told Boudewijn about the beautiful lake it was by and convinced him to go visit there with him.”
