Albertus C. Van Raalte was born a Frenchman, grew up a Dutchman, and died as an American. Trained in the Netherlands as a minister for the Netherlands Reformed Church, Van Raalte experienced ecclesiastically two crucial moments in his life. The first occurred in 1834, when he left the Netherlands Reformed Church in which his father was a pastor, to join the Christian Seceded Church; the second took place in America in 1857, when the True Holland Reformed Church seceded from the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church in which Van Raalte had become a minister. These two moments are separated not only in time but also in place. Van Raalte had left the Netherlands in 1846, taking a party of 101 persons with him to Western Michigan where they founded Holland and other Dutch settlements.