Roelof Sleyster
Dutch American farmer and politician (1815–1882)
Roelof "Ralph" Sleyster (December 25, 1815 – June 4, 1882) was a Dutch American immigrant, farmer, painter, Republican politician, and Wisconsin pioneer. He was an early settler in what is now the town of Alto, Wisconsin, and represented that region of Fond du Lac County in the Wisconsin State Assembly for the 1870 term; he also served 14 years on the Fond du Lac County board of supervisors.
Background
He was born December 25, 1815, in Zutphen in The Netherlands; his father was a painter and grainer. Sleyster learned the trade and worked with his father until 1846 when he was one of two Secession Church members (Sleyster was a deacon in the Seceder church at Velp, Gelderland) sent to America by Albertus van Raalte (with a missive titled ""To the believers in the United States of North America") to investigate suitable locations for the group of Protestant Reformed Dutch immigrants who eventually founded the city of Holland, Michigan. He reached Milwaukee in the summer of 1846, and informed Van Raalte that the Hollanders there had work and ate well. Sleyster's letter convinced van Raalte to lead the first group of Seceder immigrants to America, initially intending to settle at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Winnebago; but van Raalte eventually was persuaded to go to what would become Holland, Michigan instead. Sleyster himself settled on Alto. Most of the early settlers of Alto were Gelderlanders like himself.
Wisconsin career
He was married in Milwaukee, June 26, 1847, to Johanna H. Liesveld, who was born April 6, 1822, in Arnhem. They settled on the farm in Alto, which Sleyster managed, while also working as a painter.
“Roelof Sleyster” enters the record as dutch American farmer and politician (1815–1882). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Roelof, Sleyster and Dutch can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137863991. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1815, 1882, 1870 and 1846.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roelof Sleyster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.