Story: Our Voyage to America by Jan"John" Kwist Jr.

back row: Leendard "Lee", & Adriana "Jane" Kwist

front row: Jan "John" Jr., Josina "Joan" and Adriaan Kwist


I was seven years old when my parents told me that we would be emigrating to America. “But don't tell anyone just yet," my mother told me, "because Daddy doesn't want to risk losing his students."


My dad was a music teacher. He gave private lessons in piano, organ and accordion. He was also a church musician and choir master. But his real passion was the carillon. He was commissioned in Veere where he played the Bells weekly and on special occasions. It was that vocation which ultimately made it possible to apply for emigration out of Holland.


Immigration laws in the U.S. required potential immigrants to have a sponsor and a job when they arrived. That opportunity presented itself in Greenwood, South Carolina, a town which had nine cotton mills.


James C. Self, founder and president of Greenwood Mills sponsored our family and offered my dad a job. The job was to play the carillon built adjacent to the Callie Self Memorial Baptist Church. It had been constructed three years earlier, but no one locally knew how to play it. So, through a mutual friend, contact was made and the wheels were set in motion to begin the emigration process.


Because I was the youngest of five children, I was the last to know. In spite of my mother's admonition, I immediately told my friends at school, and pretty soon the entire community knew of our plan to go to America. The next two years would be difficult ones; disposing of most of our belongings, closing accounts, saying goodbye to friends and family, all while continuing to work, go to school and carry on our daily routines right up to the week before we departed.


On January 15, 1954, we boarded a passenger/freighter in Rotterdam named the "Black Hawk.." It was one of several freighters owned by Black Diamond lines. It carried about fifteen passengers and crew. We were a family of seven. I remember rounding the Hoek van Holland and making our way through the English Channel, past the Cliffs of Dover, and on to New York.


We arrived in New York harbor on January 26, 1954. It was late afternoon when we passed the Statue of Liberty, the U.N. Building, and saw the sun sinking behind the sky scrapers.


Immigration officials boarded the ship and checked all of our documents and belongings. Darkness fell on the city and fear and angst set in all of us like a highly contagious virus. I could see it in my father's eyes and feel it in my mother's grip on my hand when we went down the gang plank. Miraculously, as if a voice from heaven, we heard our name being called from people down on the dock. They were representatives from Greenwood Mills who managed the main office in downtown Manhattan.


We were in good hands! The fed us and gave us the "quick tour," including Rockefeller Plaza, the business district, and the Empire State Building where we were all treated with souvenirs. In short, we were all treated like royalty!
The same night we were taken to Grand Central Station where we boarded a train. going south to Greenville, South Carolina.


We arrived about midday and again were met by representatives from Greenwood Mills, who would soon become our good friends. By car we were driven about one hour south to Greenwood, S.C. where we would live, go to church, school and work for the next nine years.


In 1963, my parents made one more move to Summerville, S.C. My dad could play the carillon at The Citadel, my mother fell in love with the flora de fauna of the low-country, and my brother Adriaan and I were the only two children still living at home. So we moved with them. We both met low-country girls, and had children and grandchildren.