Antje Paarlberg

Who was Antje Paarlberg?

Antje Paarlberg née Waagmeester is known as the inspiration for the novel "So Big". Chicago area author Edna Ferber used South Holland, Illinois, its pioneers and onion farms as background for her 1924 novel about an ambitious widow in a Midwestern Dutch American farming community. The resilience of Antje Wagemeester Paarlberg, a widowed immigrant and determined pioneer, was allegedly the inspiration for the main character Selina Peake DeJong.

On 26 April 1835, Antje Waagmeester married Klaas Paarlberg in their birthplace of Warmenhuizen and settled as farmers in nearby Spanbroek where they would get eight children. In 1847 Klaas and Antje and their seven surviving children set off on a voyage from the Netherlands to America in search of better fortunes on the ship Doggersbank. They felt that the State Church was too liberal and the taxes unfair. The taxes in the Netherlands were high; there was blight in the potato crop, and disease among the cattle. The couple heard about wonderful opportunities in America. They left North Holland, a province of the Netherlands with their seven children, the oldest being seven years old and the youngest three months old.