Meet Anna
Anna Martha Elenbaas was born on November 22, 1900 in the small Dutch immigrant town of Zeeland, Michigan. She was the last of seven children born to Pieter A. Elenbaas and Hendrika Schipper. Anna’s grandfather was one of two Elenbaas brothers who moved from Baarland, Netherlands, to settle in Zeeland in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Anna spent her early years absorbing lush, humid summers, lengthy grey winters, and the intense, indescribable colors of West Michigan in the spring and fall. Throughout her childhood, Victorian-era standards and expectations for women were being challenged and upended. The battle for women’s suffrage was raging, and opportunities for women were slowly but surely inching forward in education. It is unlikely that Anna was fully aware of the changes going on outside of Zeeland’s conservative Dutch Reformed community; regardless, the tide of the New Womanhood movement was throwing open many doors as she moved from childhood to adolescence.
World War I proved to be a tumultuous time for the Elenbaas family, particularly Anna, who was attending Zeeland High School for the duration of the war. The war was a heavy cloud, but an even deeper personal tragedy struck in the winter of 1916. Anna’s mother, Hendrika, passed away just two months after Anna’s fifteenth birthday. Anna’s older siblings Anthony, Arthur, Mae, and Peter were already married and out of the house. Many of them had young children. Anna’s older sisters Gertie and Nellie were on the verge of independence; Gertie was married in Chicago that summer, and Nellie soon after. In many ways, Anna was the only Elenbaas young enough to still be considered a child. She was caught up in the trials of high school and her fast-approaching womanhood – and now she was motherless. Anna never mentioned her mother in any of the materials that she left behind, but it was doubtless a difficult time to be stripped of a parent and role model.
Anna graduated from Zeeland High in 1919, the summer after the war ended. The atmosphere post-WWI was optimistic and full of hope. It was a time of growth, both for the nation and for Anna. Women’s rights took a long-awaited stride forward with the passing of women’s suffrage in the summer of 1920, a few months before Anna’s twentieth birthday. Just as she was entering her own womanhood, the work and dedication of many women before her had given Anna a voice.
