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Dirk Nieland
Dirk Nieland, Page 438-39
is another of the numerous sons of the fair old Netherlands who
have gained success in connection with business activities in the city of Grand
Rapids, and here he has maintained his home since he was a youth of nineteen
years. Mr. Nieland, in the year 1912, here became associated with the old
established William. H. Van Leeuwen Company, a pioneer and important
representative of the real estate, loan and insurance business in the city and
county, and in this connection he gained varied and valuable experience in the
selling of real estate, as well as in other departments of the business. William
H. Van Leeuwen established this business shortly after the close of his loyal
service as a soldier of the Union in the Civil war, and he continued the
executive head of the enterprise until he had attained to the venerable age of
eighty years. He retired May 1, 1925, and the business was purchased by his
trusted and valued assistant, Dirk Nieland, of this review, who has since
continued at the head and who in his methods and policies is well upholding the
prestige that has attended the business during the course of more than half a
century, the while he places high valuation on the reputation his concern has
held during the many years of its control by his honored predecessor. Mr.
Nieland was born in the Netherlands, January 16, 1886, and was there reared and
educated, having been nineteen years of age when he accompanied his parents to
the United States, where the family home was forthwith established in Grand
Rapids. He is a son of Peter and Liefke (Tornga) Nieland, born respectively in
1842 and 1848. The father died in 1922, but the mother still survives and
maintains her home in this city, where she has many warm friends. With her, in
the attractive home at 926 Sigsbee street, southeast, remains her son Dirk, of
this sketch, who is the only child, and who was married to Miss Anna DeBoer on
September 2, 1925. After coming to Grand Rapids, Dirk Nieland was here employed
several years in furniture factories and thereafter he was associated with his
father in gardening until 1912, when he turned his attention to the real estate
business, his association with which has already been made a matter of record in
this review. Mr. Nieland has no little literary ability, has studied and read
with discrimination, and he has taken much satisfaction in writing sketches of
Dutch life in America, with deep appreciation of the sterling worth and many
original characteristics of the Holland Dutch settler who have played a large
part in the development and progress of Michigan, as the history of the state
fully reveals. Several of Mr. Nieland's sketches have been published in book
form, and many of his articles have been published in the newspaper press.
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