Hendrik van Steeden served as minister of the Dutch Reformed congregation in Aalten from 1826 to 1850. He was born in Amsterdam on 12 May 1785, the son of Adrianus van Steeden and Anna Alberts.
Van Steeden began his career as a minister in Noorden, near Nieuwkoop. He subsequently became minister in Maurik, where he served from 1817 to 1826. From Maurik he moved to Aalten, where he was inducted as minister on 9 July 1826.
In Aalten, Van Steeden initially served alongside Rev. Tjeerd Radsma, who had been attached to the Dutch Reformed congregation since 1817. After Radsma’s death in 1839, Rev. Carel Frans Sebald Pape came to Aalten in 1841. Van Steeden and Pape then served the congregation together for almost ten years.
Van Steeden married Catharina Sterk in Amsterdam on 19 May 1814. They had several children. After Catharina’s death, he married her younger sister Elizabeth Maria Sterk in Aalten on 30 October 1835.
The ministry continued in the next generation of the family. His son Adrianus Elisa van Steeden also became a minister. Another son, Jacob Willem Christiaan van Steeden, born in Maurik in 1825, served as an assistant minister in Aalten in 1849. He subsequently left for the Dutch East Indies, where he worked as a minister on Banda and later in places including Makassar, Surakarta, Surabaya and Batavia.
Aalten’s 1850 population register records Hendrik van Steeden together with his wife Elizabeth Maria Sterk and their son Jacob Willem Christiaan. The same register also lists Izaak de Waal, who would shortly afterwards succeed Van Steeden as minister.
Van Steeden retired on 31 December 1850. This brought his ministry in Aalten, lasting more than 24 years, to an end. He remained living there and died on 29 May 1853, aged 68.