Local history as an academic discipline has gained considerable respectability lately, as has the study of American ethnic groups. I am writing a book which compares the Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) in the Midwest in the last decades of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century, with special reference to the churches of Orange City (and the surrounding area of Sioux County and Northwestern Iowa), against their background in the Netherlands and the larger church situation in the United States. My study will, I hope, contribute to knowledge of the life and thought of immigrant ethnic churches in our country about a century ago by examining the Orange City-area microcosm of the mini-macrocosm of the Dutch Reformed immigration to the American Midwest. Little has been published comparing the RCA and the CRC. One of my aims is to see how, when, and to what extent these denominations became "Americanized." I also see this work as a contribution to mutual understanding between the RCA and the CRC.