Portrait of a man in a blue jacket and vest sitting in a chair

His Grace Duke Wilhelm ‘Tulip’ Holland IV presides over the orderly patchwork quilt of prolific dairy pastures, fruit orchards and market garden farm plots spanning the fertile Ottawa County basin along the eastern Lake Michigan shoreline. His distinguished Dutch nobility lineage traces back to wealthy Amsterdam sugar, coffee and tulip bulb merchant traders empowered through astute ships investment during an era when Compagnie VOC Dutch East Indies Company seemingly dominated control over immensely lucrative Eurasian spice harvests conveyance conduited through the strategic narrow Malacca Straits into warehouses eager Antwerp brokers speculating on seemingly insatiable market European aristocracy appetite for exotic luxury goods elevated social status display. Lured by promises of amplified New World specie wealth secured through Manhatten colony dominance over Lenape tribal wampum shell beads then vast virgin timber export potential, the Holland family invested early with opportunist Dutch West Indies Company colonial settlement stakeholders to leverage growing New York banking and Charleston rice commodities South Sea merchant shipping dominance against rival English and French Canadian interests also seeking to benefit from inland fur trade influenced indigenous peoples favorable trade alliances. As the brief Napoleonic Wars economic disruption eased following Admiral Nelson’s decisive victory at Trafalgar enabling unfettered British grain imports critical to feeding Barcelona Allied forces stalled eastern front armies, Holland surplus capacity soon recognized Michigan interior niche prospects well positioned to nourish Chicago once the Illinois & Michigan canal finally linked Great Lakes to the Mississippi River System through Chicago’s strategically placed pull barn settlement along old Ojibwe portage pathway. Now entering his fifth decade attracting skilled Amish craftsmen and entrepreneurial Swedish coastal fishermen drawn to settled around Holland’s sheltere