This chronicle centers on Aldrich J. "Rich" de Vries (1927–2008), tracing backward through his maternal Groen line to eighteenth-century Friesland, and forward through his eight children. Two families became one through the Dutch immigrant communities of Montana and Washington.
The Groen Line
The documented Groen ancestry begins in the 1730s with Fokke Ykes, a farmer in Ureterp, Friesland. The village sits on a sandy ridge in eastern Friesland, about seventy miles northeast of Amsterdam. First recorded in 1315 as Urathorp—"higher settlement"—it distinguished itself from neighboring Olterterp by its elevation. A Dutch Reformed church with a thirteenth-century tower still anchors the village. Seven generations separate Fokke Ykes from Aldrich de Vries.
The family name itself dates only to 1811. That year, Napoleon's Civil Code required all Dutch citizens to adopt fixed hereditary surnames. Before this decree, the Frisians used patronymics: a man was known by his father's given name. Yke Fokkes was simply "Yke, son of Fokke." His son would be "Jogchum Ykes"—Jogchum, son of Yke—and so on through the generations. The law demanded something permanent. Families chose occupational names, geographic features, or simple descriptors. Groen means "green" in Dutch—perhaps a reference to the pastures surrounding the farm, or to the family's plot along the fertile ridge. Some families, skeptical that French rule would last, chose absurd names in protest. The Groens chose plainly, and the name stuck.
The Immigration
Yke Jogchums Groen—who became "Ike" in America—left Ureterp in the early 1900s with his wife Wiske "Winnie" Tolsma (1870–1962). They settled first in Shepherd, Yellowstone County, Montana, near a federal irrigation project that had just opened former Crow lands to homesteaders.
The Huntley Project was the fifth venture authorized under the Reclamation Act of 1902, a federal effort to transform arid western lands through irrigation. President Theodore Roosevelt opened the project for homesteading on May 21, 1907. William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition had inscribed his name on Pompey's Pillar—visible from the project lands—exactly a century earlier. The government divided 28,000 acres into forty-acre parcels, believing this enough to sustain a family. Settlers planted sugar beets and alfalfa. Many discovered alkali soil, poor drainage, and drought. The post-war agricultural collapse of 1919 broke the rest. Farms failed across the valley.
The Groens moved on. They made their way to Whatcom County, Washington, where a Dutch community had taken root around Lynden and Sumas. D.J. Zylstra and other settlers from Oak Harbor had arrived in 1897–98, drawn by cheap stump land that could be cleared for farming. Zylstra promoted the settlement in Dutch-language newspapers, and families followed. By 1950, Dutch residents outnumbered all others in Lynden. Reformed churches multiplied—twenty-eight by 1995. The Groens found what they had crossed an ocean seeking: their own kind, their own faith, land they could work.
Sumas, five miles north, sat directly on the Canadian border—so directly that a surveying error in 1857 placed part of the town north of the 49th parallel. Three railroads converged there in 1891: the Seattle Lake Shore & Eastern, the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia, and the Canadian Pacific. The town boomed, then busted in the panic of 1893, then settled into its role as a border crossing. Ike Groen died there in 1963, at ninety-four.
The Groen–de Vries Intermarriage
A Remarkable Pattern
Four of Ike and Winnie Groen's children married four children of Aalderik "Aldrick" de Vries and Jessie Eisenga. This was not coincidence but community. Dutch immigrant families in Whatcom County shared churches, schools, and social circles. The Zylstras, the Groens, the de Vrieses—they all knew one another. Through these four unions, two clans became one extended family.
Aldrich J. "Rich" de Vries
The eldest child of John Aldrich de Vries and Nellie Groen, Rich de Vries was born November 15, 1927, in Huntley, Montana—twenty years after Roosevelt opened the irrigation project, in the midst of its long struggle toward viability. His birthplace suggests his parents lived briefly near the older Groen settlement in Yellowstone County before moving to Washington.
On January 15, 1948, in Sumas, Whatcom County, Rich married Marcella M. "Marcie" de Boer (born August 30, 1929). He was twenty; she was eighteen. They had eight children.
Children of Aldrich and Marcella de Vries
Rich died in 2008 in Mount Vernon, Skagit County, Washington, just south of his ancestral Whatcom County territory.
Rich's Siblings
Aldrich had three younger siblings, all children of John Aldrich de Vries and Nellie Groen.
Ivan de Vries (1931–2013)
Born September 25, 1931, at Billings, Montana. Married Jean Dolores Dykstra (1934–2003) in 1952.
Five children: Kathy Jean (1959–2003), Karen L., Bonnie L., Dale, and John.
Wilma Jean de Vries (1934–1997)
Born July 23, 1934, at Shepherd, Montana. Married Hilbert Visser (1929–1999) in 1952.
Five children: Jerald, Roger, Arlene, Denise, and Barbra.
Jay de Vries (b. 1939)
The youngest sibling. Married Irene.
No children recorded.
Geographic Thread
The family's American geography traces a clear arc: initial settlement in Montana (Shepherd, Huntley, Billings—all in Yellowstone County), then migration to Washington's Whatcom County (Lynden, Sumas, Bellingham). Mount Vernon, Skagit County, where Aldrich spent his final years, lies just south of this ancestral territory—still within the corridor of Dutch settlement, still surrounded by the fertile river-bottom farmland and tulip fields that drew immigrants from the Low Countries to this corner of the Pacific Northwest.
They came for land. They stayed for each other.