History
The town was established in 1551 by three lords as a location for the purpose of digging peat which was used for fuel, hence the name (heer is "lord", veen is "peat"). Heerenveen was not one of the traditional eleven cities in Friesland (Fryslan) as it did not have so-called city rights. However, it is now one of the larger municipalities of the province.
The windmill Welgelegen or Tjepkema's Molen is the only survivor of seventeen which have stood in Heerenveen..
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)