​

Henry Van Engelen[1] did not grow up in Eagle Rock, but it was in Eagle Rock that Jesus called this young farmer into the pastorate for the next 45 years or so of his life.  In fact it was on his 22nd birthday, just six months after his baptism at the First Baptist Church of Eagle Rock, that he was ordained and appointed by the Baptist Home Mission Society pastor of that church.  So this is the story of a man Jesus brought to Eagle Rock/Idaho Falls, and then after pastoring here for six years,[2] sent out from here to minister the gospel in at least a dozen other communities in Idaho, Montana, Washington and finally in Los Angeles, California.

 

Overisel, Michigan was founded in 1848 by a Dutch Reformed congregation that, led by their pastor, emigrated together from Holland to “improve their secular and religious condition.”[3]  It was in this frontier farming community that Henry was born[4] and grew up. While his parents were not among the original settlers of Overisel, they joined the community shortly thereafter. Henry was converted to Christ in childhood, and with the encouragement of his parents became deeply interested in the study of the Bible.[5]  He received his early training in country schools near his home.[6]  He was further educated at Hope College,[7] a Dutch Reformed school in Holland, Michigan.  I could not find what Henry studied in college, or even if he completed a degree.  His marriage certificate, issued on the day before his 20th birthday, shows his occupation as a farmer and he and his bride residents of Drenthe, Michigan, a community about 10 miles from Overisel.   

 

Henry married Leutje Wakotte, (known also as Lucy Walcott) on June 28, 1888.[8]  Within a year, their first daughter, Beulah, was born.  Months later, the young family had made their way to Eagle Rock, Idaho.  I can only speculate on Henry’s reason for coming West; I suspect that, like the immigrants who settled Overisel, he had both secular and religious reasons.[9]  A short bio of his life published in 1903 reports that shortly after arriving in Eagle Rock he had become convinced through his study of Scripture that he needed to be baptized by immersion, and so he was, in January of 1890, in the Baptist church of Eagle Rock.[10]

 

Henry was thus living in Idaho the year it became a state and the following year when Eagle Rock became Idaho Falls.  But perhaps of more importance to him than these political changes was his sensing God’s calling.  Two months after being baptized, the Baptist church licensed him to preach.[11]  And four months after that, on June 29, 1890, he was ordained in the Idaho Falls Baptist Church.[12]  Once ordained, the Baptist Home Mission Society appointed him the pastor of the church.[13]

 

What was it like for this 22-year old preacher to take charge of the church that had been formed less than a decade previous by the larger-than-life Rebecca Mitchell, at a time when she was still very active in its affairs?  Did she take him under her wing?  Certainly!  A long article published on the front page of the Idaho Falls Times about Rebecca Mitchell upon her death included:

 

"It had been hoped that Rev. Van Engelin (sic) could be secured to preach (her) funeral sermon, as it was through Mrs. Mitchell’s efforts that he entered the ministry.  He was prevented from being present by illness."[14]

 

While unable to travel to Idaho Falls from Missoula where Henry was pastoring in 1908, he did send a letter that read in part:

 

Knowing her as I do and having a very intimate knowledge of her unselfish and persevering services in the interest of Christ’s kingdom and the promotion of righteousness in civic life; knowing how bravely, loyally and unswerving she fought the curse of intemperance; I say without any hesitancy that I do not believe there ever lived in the state of Idaho a man or a woman who has accomplished as much as Mrs. Rebecca Mitchell in behalf of the homes, the families and the children of the state.  No one can fully estimate the worth of her conscientious and persevering seed sowing in the interest of Christianity and temperance reform in every nook and corner of the state and generations yet unborn will reap the blessings of her devoted labors.[15]

 

Aspects of Henry’s ministry over the next four and a half decades reflect Rebecca Mitchell’s heart for reaching people with the gospel and permeating society with morals based on the Bible.  

 

One indication of the popularity of his preaching in his first years in Idaho Falls comes from an invitation he received to preach in the First Ward building in Rexburg on July 14, 1892.

 

Another indication that this young pastor impressed not only his own congregation but others in the Idaho Falls Christian community is evidenced by a report of his farewell service in August of 1892:

 

Last Sunday evening, the united Baptist and Presbyterian congregations assembled in the Baptist church to hear the farewell sermon of Rev. Henry Van Engelen, who made it the occasion of closing his two years’ pastorate.  The house was filled and the service most impressive.  The text chosen was: Rev. 2:10-11 – ‘Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.’[16]

 

The same article reported that Rev. Van Engelen was leaving Idaho Falls to pursue a theological course of three years at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.  However, after a year he returned to the pastorate at First Baptist Church in Idaho Falls.[17]  Evidently he sensed the Lord’s call to pastor more heavily on his heart and more important than completing his theological studies.

 

During his second period in Idaho Falls, Rev. Van Engelen travelled to nearby communities to hold services, mostly St. Anthony, Rexburg and Jarnagan, a small settlement north of Idaho Falls.[18]  Like his mentor Rebecca Mitchell, he was active in the community.  He was the speaker at an event at the Idaho Falls High School to raise money for musical instruments for the school.[19]  He gave a “fervent, eloquent and appropriate prayer” at the city’s 4th of July celebration in 1895.[20]

 

Three of Henry’s six children were born in Idaho Falls.  But in 1896, when he received a call to pastor the Baptist church in Great Falls, Montana, he took it. So In May of that year he preached a second farewell sermon to the Baptist church of Idaho Falls.

 

During his years in Great Falls, there was an outbreak of smallpox, although in the early stages it was not correctly identified.  Rev. Van Engelen visited numerous times a member in his congregation who was sick and died; only later his illness was recognized as smallpox.  The following week Henry fell ill, and he along with his wife and three children were quarantined in what was called a “pest house,” short for “pestilence house.”[21]  While there, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Anaconda Standard, describing conditions in the house, symptoms of patients, praising the efforts of doctors and nurses, and concluding with, “We feel hopeful and cheerful and try to make it as pleasant as we can for one another and are grateful to the authorities of Great Falls, who have arranged so well for our comfort.”[22]

 

Henry recovered quickly from the disease.  However the following month, in November of 1899, he accepted a call to pastor the Baptist church in Pocatello.[23]  His bio written in 1903 hints at his motivation for retuning to Idaho, calling Pocatello “one of the most promising young cities of the ‘Gem of the Mountains.’”[24] Two months after arriving in Pocatello, he also assumed the pastorate of the Baptist church in Blackfoot.[25] In the spring of 1900 he participated in revival services in Idaho Falls.[26]  News items over the next 5 years in which he is mentioned are mostly about his speaking engagements in other places – a week of meetings in Hagerman, speaking in three churches in Salt Lake, etc.[27]

 

Then in February 1905, he received a call to pastor the Baptist church in Missoula. and he accepted. 

​

Wherever he went, Henry threw himself into ministry in his congregation, in his community and in neighboring communities.  Some of his sermons were printed in Montana newspapers.  A few sermon titles were:

The Satisfaction of a Clear Conscience and How to Obtain It

Our Great Redeemer

Spiritual Agriculture (Psalm 126:6)

Four Steps Toward the City of God

Just How to Obtain Salvation

Three Resurrections

How a Church Ought to Grow

Finding Life by Losing it

The Salt of the Earth

A Truth Seeker’s Experience

The Believer’s Divine Mission

Filled With the Holy Spirit

Baptized in the Holy Spirit.[28]

 

In 1906 the churches of Missoula joined together for a week of evangelistic meetings, with Rev. Van Engelen and Rev. Earnest Wright of the Presbyterian church as speakers.[29] In January of the following year Rev. Engelen was the speaker at a week of revival meetings in Hamilton, Montana.[30]

 

While the above sermon titles and participation in evangelistic meetings reflect Rev. Van Engelen’s calling, he was not afraid to bring civic matters into the church or to bring the gospel into civic venues.  On Sunday, March 28, 1909, he preached a sermon on “Municipal Reform,” taking his text from Isaiah 28. The local paper printed most of his sermon, noting that, “This discourse contains many excellent suggestions to voters and dealt with the importance of carrying the reform fight to the polls at the coming election.”[31]  On Memorial Day in 1910, he preached to a packed crowd at a theater in Missoula, his message entitled, “A Nation’s Tribute to its Heroic Dead.”[32]  His sermon on Memorial Day in 1910 came just after he resigned from his position at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Missoula.  The church at first refused to accept it.  Then reluctantly, they issued the following:

 

 “Whereas Our brother Rev. Henry Van Engelen more than five years ago assumed the pastorate of the Emmanuel Baptist church, succeeding a prosperous and efficient administration and

“Whereas the interest of all departments of the work have been sustained with unflagging intensity, while the demands of the situation have constantly grown more exacting and

“Whereas his Christian accord with his ministerial brethren, in advancing the betterment of social conditions and civic improvement has secured him general respect, appreciation, influence and commendation,

“Therefore be it resolved that we remember with gratitude to God our pastor’s abundant labor and consecrated and wise leadership, resulting in many conversions and in lengthening the cords and strengthening the stakes; we cannot overestimate the importance of his efforts in training the Sunday school teachers and building up a vigorous young people’s society and in maintaining a well-attended and spiritually helpful prayer meeting: that, yielding to his conviction of duty we accept reluctantly his resignation of the pastorate of this church: that we lovingly commend him as ‘a workman who needeth not to be ashamed,’ who ‘is zealous for his God.’”[33]

 

What a commendation - recognizing his role in conversions to Christ, improving social conditions in the community, training Sunday school teachers, building a youth program, and establishing a “spiritually helpful” prayer meeting! What more could he do but repeat what he did in Missoula in other communities?  And that’s pretty much what he did – in Coeur d’Alene, then Payette, then two communities in Washington State, Hoquiam and Centralia.[34] 

​

Shortly before leaving Missoula, Henry deeded a plot of land in owned in Darby, Montana to the First Baptist Church of Darby.[35]

 

When he left Payette, the local newspaper reported “that he goes reluctantly for he enjoyed his work here but the hearty and unanimous call from the church on Grays Harbor seemed to present a larger field for service and a deeper need to be met.”[36]  The motivation for all his moves was likely similar, wanting the Lord to use him to reach and teach the most people possible, and believing he could do it in a relatively short period of time.  When he resigned from the church in Hoquiam, the paper reported, “He has been unusually successful in church work, has gotten the church on a stronger footing and better organized than it ever had been and has been popular with his congregation and people of the city generally,” and the church was reluctant to accept his resignation.[37]

 

But then he returned to Missoula in late 1919 for eight years, the longest stay of any of his pastorates.[38]  As in previous pastorates, his ministry extended beyond his church, and he held various positions in the Montana Baptist Convention.  In late 1927, without much comment, newspapers reported that he had been replaced and that he had gone to California.[39]  The city directories of 1928 and 1930 for San Pedro, a municipality in Los Angeles County, list him and his wife as residents, and his occupation as pastor of the First Baptist Church.  It’s unclear whether he stayed more than three years in California.  But by 1935 he was back in Idaho, where he lived the remainder of his life.[40]  By 1940 he had retired; and his oldest daughter, Beulah, lived with him and his wife; his daughter was working as a bookkeeper. One of his sons was also living in Twin Falls in 1940, another in Burley, while one of his daughters was living in Portland and one had died in Burley in 1918.[41]

 

In late 1942 Rev. Van Engelen visited Idaho Falls, preached at the First Baptist Church, and at a reception Sunday afternoon read and passed out some poetry he had written.[42]  He died in Burley at age 93.[43]

 

While Rev. Henry Van Engelen’s ministry in Eagle Rock and Idaho Falls was shorter than a few dozen other pastors whom Jesus sent here in the past 140 years, there is no doubt that the Lord used him here, and for whatever reason he came to Eagle Rock, while here Jesus called him into a life of fruitful ministry and then sent him out from Idaho Falls to bless people and communities in Montana, Idaho, Washington and California.  His life was an example of obeying the text that he used for his farewell sermon in Idaho Falls in 1892, Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.

 

[1] Newspaper articles sometimes use variations of Henry’s surname, showing it as Englen or Engelin.

[2] There was a 1 year break in this period in which Henry attended Divinity School

[3] http://genealogytrails.com/mich/allegan/historyoverisel.html

[4] Henry was born on June 29, 1868, see the photo of his gravestone on https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35623778/henry-van_engelen.  His date of birth is also reported in a bio preceding an article he wrote for a Baptist publication at the turn of the century, see  https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_American_Baptist_Pulpit_at_the_Begin/3EUNAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Rev+Henry+Van+Engelen&pg=PA515&printsec=frontcover

[5] bio preceding article Henry wrote for The American Baptist Pulpit at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, edited by Henry Thompson Louthan, published 1903, p. 513, see URL in footnote #4

[6] Ibid, p. 513

[7] Ibid, p. 513

[8] "Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925," database with images, FamilySearch; citing Marriage records of Drenthe, Ottawa, Michigan, Department of Vital Records, Lansing; FHL microfilm 4207677; https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SD3-GM5?i=315&cc=1452395&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3ANQWM-11R

[9] This was the period of vigorous promotion of farming land around Eagle Rock in immigrate communities of the East and Midwest.  

[10] bio preceding article Henry wrote for The American Baptist Pulpit at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, edited by Henry Thompson Louthan, published 1903, p. 513, see URL in footnote #4

[11] Ibid, p. 513

[12] Ibid, p. 513; also Post Register, October 11, 1942, “Former Pastor of Baptist Church to Return Sunday.”

[13] Ibid, p. 513

[14] Idaho Falls Times, October 6, 1908, p. 1.

[15] Ibid. p. 1

[16] Idaho Register, August 1, 1892, “Rev. Van Engelen’s Farewell”

[17] bio preceding article Henry wrote for The American Baptist Pulpit at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, edited by Henry Thompson Louthan, published 1903, p. 513, see URL in footnote #4

[18] Idaho Falls Times, July 12, 1894.

[19] Idaho Falls Times, November 22, 1894.

[20] Idaho Falls Times, July 4, 1895.

[21] Anaconda Standard September 27, 1899, & Butte Intermountain, September 27, 1899 and Denver Rocky Mountain News, October 1, 1899.

[22] Anaconda Standard, October 2, 1899. 

[23] Butte Weekly Miner, November 16, 1899.  

[24] bio preceding article Henry wrote for The American Baptist Pulpit at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century, edited by Henry Thompson Louthan, published 1903, p. 513, see URL in footnote #4

[25] Ibid, p. 513.

[26] The Idaho Falls Time, March 1, 1900  

[27] For example see Shoshone Journal, December 4, 1903 or Salt Lake Tribune, October 23, 1904.

[28] Daily Missoulian, March 21, 1909, April 5, 1909, April 18, 1909, May 17, 1909, June 13, 1909, June 14, 1909, October 11, 1909, October 18, 1909 and Anaconda Standard January 10, 1909.

[29] Anaconda Standard. March 23, 1906.

[30] Western News  (Hamilton, Montana), January 23, 1907.

[31] Daily Missoulian, March 29, 1909.

[32] Daily Missoulian, May 30, 1910.

[33] Daily Missoulian, May 10, 1910

[34] He pastored in Coeur d’Alene from June 1910 to August 1911, Payette from August 1911 through April 1913, Hoquiam from May 1913 to early 1917, Centralia from early 1917 to May 1919.

[35] Daily Missoulian, March 27, 1910.

[36] Payette Enterprise, April 10, 1913.

[37] Oregonian (Portland), February 3, 1917.

[38] Based on various news reports, either Emmanuel Baptist Church in Missoula was also called First Baptist or Rev. Van Engelen was simultaneously pastor of both of these churches, both in his first and second stay in Missoula.

[39] Bozeman Courier, November 25, 1927.

[40] The 1940 census of Twin Falls shows the he was living there in 1935 as well.

[41] I could not confirm where his youngest daughter, Ruth, was living in 1940, but it may have been in San Antonio, Texas, where she died in 1957.

[42] Post Register, October 12, 1942 .

[43] On October 27, 1951.