Pilgrim Home

Tombstones are appearing in neighborhood yards to “spook” up the season. But real tombstones have a much greater significance. They represent unique lives and generations of impact. The tombstones in Pilgrim Home Cemetery are no different. 

Before it was a cemetery, Pilgrim Home began as a graveyard. You may be wondering, “What’s the difference? Aren’t those just two different names for the same thing?” Technically, no. A graveyard has a church on the premises while a cemetery does not. Pilgrim Home was originally attached to a log church erected in 1847, the same year that the Dutch immigrants first arrived in Holland. The graveyard received its first tombstone within that same time period due to the difficult conditions and new sicknesses that come with settling a town. 

Later on, the church was moved closer to the downtown area and its graveyard became a cemetery. It was named after those original residents, the Holland “Pilgrims” who had left their country in search of religious freedom and a fresh start. The term “Pilgrim Home” was chosen to recognize that these residents had finally left this earth and gone to their heavenly home.

The cemetery continued to fill, becoming the burial ground for Holland’s founder, his family, and many of the most influential people in the city’s growth and progress. After many years, it expanded from the north side of 16th street to the south side and onto the land that used to be the city’s fair grounds. The roads in this new southern portion of the cemetery were laid out in the shape of a tulip.

Although they are so easily overlooked, tombstones and cemeteries are meant to make us stop and recognize the lives of those who walked before us on the same ground we walk. They went through trials and stood for what they believed in so that the world after them might be a better place. They made decisions, good and bad, and experienced the results. They saw things that changed them and found ways to keep going. The dates engraved below their names are only numbers and concepts to us but they were ages, goals, and futures to them. Futures they didn’t know if they would ever see. 

At Holland Tasting Tours, we love to share the stories of those who are no longer here to tell you themselves. It can teach us what things we all share, where we used to differ, and how we got where we are. The Pilgrim Home cemetery tour is a great place to start if you want to hear the stories behind the tombstones.