Liberty and Progress

Liberty and Progress

A Dutch-American biography of the 20th Century


Two ancient family histories came together when in 1913, just before the outbreak of the Great War, Carolyn Kellogg Hull of Pittsfield, MA, married Wim Korthals Altes of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Their married life spanned the defining decades of the 20th century. Similar to many people of their generation they experienced successive stages of progress and adversity at unprecedented scale, including the roaring twenties, the Great Depression, another World War with five years of nazi occupation and finally, the decades which brought the promise of new prosperity and lasting peace in their world. Throughout her 60 years of residence in the Netherlands Carolyn's foremost passion was the American Women's Club of Amsterdam.


The biography is written by Theo Korthals Altes (1952), who is a grandson. In this he was greatly aided by remaining correspondence but also by other written records, most notably a collection of essays covering some two hundred years of family memory and personal notes on the historic context in which they lived, written by Carolyn in the last years of her life.