A lettered man

I am not an unlettered man. I neither lack in the facility to read or write. Give me the Bible and I can read from it at length and explain its passages.

marriage certificate jan franz van husum and volkje nordstrand

I do admit that I came across this ability late in life. Then, many things came to me late in life, marriage, children, property, status and wealth.

I was, in the beginning, a sea-going man, sailing from my home, the port of Husum, Schleswig Holstein. Sometimes called we called it Friesland because of the large numbers of Hollanders who to reclaim the marsh from the sea. My wife-to-be, Volkje was one of these Hollanders, living on the island of Nordstrand. It was the Dutchman Jan Adriaansz Leeghwater who came to supervise land-reclamation using dikes and wind mills. And for a time, man conquered nature.

But I get ahead of myself. The mind wanders of an old man wanders. So much time has passed. So many memories.

My sea-going was aboard a fishing boat. We sailed the waters of the North Sea catching cod, to be dried and salted, and sold. All Europe wanted cod. Spain and Portugal wanted cod, and so did other Mediterranean buyers, such as those in Italy. It could be sold for Spanish bullion, traded for English manufactured goods. It was a profitable business, but already new fishing grounds in Newfoundland were cutting into the market. This was an area that the Spanish and the Basque were capitalizing on. And even the Dutch recognized the potential of the New World. By 1624, the colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company grew to encompass all of present-day city of New York, but then it was called New Amsterdam, and New York, New Holland.

It was old Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a wealthy Dutch merchant, who, in 1630, set up the manor where my wife and I first came. It was the same old man who encouraged my wife and I to leave Holland in 1639, to settle on his lands as indentured laborers, to learn to red and write, to become something of ourselves in this New World.

But before we could sail for the New Holland, it was necessary that Volkje and I marry. So we did. The marriage took place in the the Nieue Kirke, a few blocks from the port where we would board ship. I recall then that minister who precided over our marriage asked Volkje and I where we were born. It was then that we answered Nordstrand and Husum, and that is how I got my name. To signify our agreement to the marriage we both signed what is called a signum manus, I with cross and line though it and Volkje with a simple cross. This was by way of practice. I knew the rudiments of writing by then, but names were not used.

There was something that caused all this to happen. I do not speak of it often for it was terrible. It took the lives of Volkje's parents and ten thousand other lives. It was a flood of Biblical proportions like the Great Flood that only Noah and his family survived.

It is hard to speak of even at this time, some 30 years later. It was the Great Flood of October 1634. Having spoken of this calamity, I will leave it for later.

An old man tires quickly.

The Last Will and Testament of Jan Fransse van Hoesen

Caveat: The names are spelled variously according to where Jan and Volkje lived. The seaport in Nordfriesland where Jan came from is now spelled Husum, and is in north Germany on the Jutland Peninsula. In Frisian the town was spelled Hüsem.Volkje's name is spelled variously, as well as her place of birth, Nordstrand, an island off the Frisian coast near Husum. Their marriage certificate in Amsterdam spells the last name Hussum. The name evolved as branches of the family got further away from New York and moved to Pennsylvania, then to North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, and Kansas.

VAN HOOSE VAN HOOSER VAN HUSS FAMILY IN AMERICA by Joyce Lindstrom

On June 5, 1662, at Claverack on the Hudson, Jan Franse Van Hoesen bought from the Mahican Indians about half the present Columbia County including the site of the city of Hudson. The purchase price was 500 guilders in beavers, although one must wonder why the Indians needed beaver and not vice versa. Then again beaver to an Indian is more meaningful as a unit of exchange than paper or metal guilders. Ref-'The Albany Protocal, pp 566-575. The tract took in three clavers and extended southward to van Slechtenhorst’s land (about two miles of river shoreline) and eastward an uurgaan,or “hour’s going” (3 miles), over to the big Claverack creek.

Two Mahicans showed up before Johannes Provoost, clerk at the court of Fort Orange and the village of Beverwijck to affirm the sale, the two Indians being: one named Pamitepiet or in Dutch Kesjen Wey, and the other Hans Vos or in Indian Tatankenat.

The Will of Jan Fransz van Hoesen and his Wife, Volkje: A Case Study by Ruth Piwonka,  HollandSociety.org Winter 2011

No one lives forever, and Jan Fransse  Van Hoesen, ten years shy of his allotted three score and ten, preceded his wife in death, executing a joint will her, possibly on the evening of the 29th or the morning of the 30th of November, 1665, when Jan passed away "at about eleven o'clock in the forenoon". The will was drafted by a notary, Van Schelluyne.

JAN FRANSSE VAN HOESEN'S WILL

In the name of God, Amen. (On this day appeared) Jan Fransz van Hoesen and Volckie Jurriaens of. van Noortstrant, husband and wife, residing in Albany (known to the undersigned witnesses), he, van Hoesen, lying abed sick and she, Volckie Jurriaens, being sound of body, but both of them being in full possession and having the full use of their faculties, mind, memory and understanding, as far as outwardly appeared and could be observed, which appears, considering the shortness and frailty of human life, the certainty of death and the uncertain hour thereof, and wishing therefore to forestall the same by proper disposition of their temporal estate to be left behind, declared that without inducement, persuasion, or misleading on the part of any one, they had made, ordained and concluded this, their joint, reciprocal and mutual last will and testament, in form and manner as follows:

First and foremost they commend their immortal souls when they shall leave their bodies to the gracious and merciful hands of God, their Creator and Redeemer, and their bodies to a Christian burial; and whereas they, the testators, acknowledge that before the date hereof they had neither jointly nor severally made or executed any testamentary disposition, legacies, donations, or other bequests whatsoever, therefore, the said testators hereby declare that they hereby nominate and institute the survivor of both of them as his or her sole heir to all the property, real and personal, claims, credits, money, gold, silver, coined or uncoined, jewels, clothing , linen, woolens, household effects, etc., nothing excepted or reserved, which he or she who dies first shall vacate at death and leave behind, to do therewith as with his or her own free property , without contradiction or gainsay by any one, provided that the survivor of the two shall be held to bringup the six minor and unmarried children, namely, JURIAEN, aged 23 years; MARYA, aged 14 years; CATARINA, aged 12 years; JOHANNES, aged 10 years; JACOB, aged 8 years; and VOLCKERT, aged 7 years, until they are of age to marry; to rear them in the fear of the Lord and to train them and have them trained in an honest trade or profession whereby in due time they may earn their living and then, when they reach their majority, to turn over them as much as their two married children, to wit, Styntie Jans and Annetie Jans, have received, or the value thereof, with which the said testators consider that the survivor of them may suffice. Therefore, the survivor of the two shall be held to bind therefor especially their real and immovable property, such as houses and lands, both the house and lot situated here near the fort and the land lying below the fort. Furthermore, the testators hereby exclude and shut out the honorable orphan-masters and ever one else from the guardianship of the aforesaid children,and the administration of their estate, not being willing that they shall meddle therewith, and in their place they nominate and appoint the survivor of both of them as guardian.

We, the undersigned, declared for the honest truth that what is hereinbefore written is the last will and desire of the aforesaid testators, stated clearly and with due understanding of its meaning by both of them, which they caused to be reduced to writing as hereinbefore stated, and that, when the writing had progressed as far as above, the testator, Jan Fransz van Hoesen, wanted to get up from his bed and sit near the fire, where, on being taken there and put in a chair, he suddenly and unexpectedly gave up the ghost and died. Actum in Albany, on Monday the 20/30th of November 1665, at about eleven o'clock in the forenoon.

Cornelus Tonisen Bos Anthony Jansz D.V. Schelluyne, Secretary

Return to Husum

If the stars align and the fates allow, my wife Robin Van Huss, her sister Laurie, and I will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, rent a car and cross the Storebælt Bridge to the Jutland Peninsula making the journey to town of Husum and nearby island of Nordstrand. These two places mark the starting points for the Van Huss family clan. What does one say about a place whose moniker is "the grey town by the sea"?

It is Home

Home to those who go by the following names: "Van Huis, Van Housen, Van Os, Van Hise, Van Ness, Van Asse, Van Hoose," according to Ancestry.com, and even Hooser without the "van". If you are from New York, then it is probably Van Hoesen or Van Heusen.

Did you know that all the land around Hudson, New York once belonged to Jan and Volkje. Only in America...

One is warned, like George Webber that "You Can't Go Back Home Again". Scorn awaits you. "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." You Can't Go Back Home Again, Thomas Wolfe.


Should my wife and her sister get past this, they face the fact that nothing is as it was. Husum was once a quait fishing village, in which their penultimate ancestor Jan Franz Van Husum  was a "Sea-going man" and his wife to be, Volkje Van Nordstrand, a simple girl living with her parents and sister Annetje on a spit of land reclaimed from the sea. What they did for a living is mere conjecture, but why not guess? It is likely they raised geese and or cattle and wheat, which they took to the markets in the south.

The First Van Huss

A few lines above I mentioned "penultimate" ancestor and named Jan Franz Van Husem. I should explain. Jan and Volkje did not get their names until they married. They married in the  Nieuwe Kerk and the registrar asked them where they came from, Jan answering, "van Husum" from Husum, and Volkje, "Nordstrand". Penultimate because Jan was asked the name of his father, Franz, who technically becomes the ultimate Van Huss.

 

 

The idyllic life for Jan and Volkje ended on the night and day of 11–12 October 1634. A storm tide rose from the North Sea and struck the coast of North Frisia overrunning the dikes built to keep back the ocean, it drowned upwards of ten thousand deaths. Much of Nordstrand was washed away, the fishing industry devastated.

If catastrophe can be the cause of celebration it is that Jan met Volkje and the two went to Amsterdam, were married, and in 1642 sailed  on a boat to America.

The summer of '43

Summer of 1943, Beaumont, Kansas

Outside Beaumont in the bottom lands, the farmers raise corn, which they call maize and primarily used as forage for cattle, in the uplands on the rocky hillsides, the cattle grow fat grazing on the rich Kansas grass. Everyone is what they call "dirt poor" meaning that one hopes for a better life for one's children.

In Beaumont, the roads are dirt and few. The horse and buggy replaced by the Tin Lizzy, but Beaumont is small and one can walk from end to end in a matter of minutes.

Bob was 13, his brother Jim was 14. They lived on Main Street in a two bedroom house. Their father Fred was a cattle trader, his mother Beulah the postmistress, his grandfather Dr. Phillips, the town doctor. City houses had electricity and phones, party lines that neighbors could listen in on. A bank took in what little money there was from the cattlemen and farmers, who loaded their cattle and crops on the steam engines that stopped at the depot at the south end of town. The depot was next to the holding pens for the cattle and the two ponds that caught the rainfall when it came.

The railroad was the reason the town existed at all. Years later, the Frisco railroad stopped running and so did the town. They took up almost all the track, leaving only a short stretch and the historic water tower that is now the town's signature piece.

Last Night

My wife and I went to dinner with her father at the Cracker Barrel last night.

Bob Van Huss was born in 1929 in Beaumont, Kansas. He was 12 years old when World War II started. He and his brother Jim saw farm boys from Beaumont go off to war. And Bob and Jim would have heard this song on the radio in 1943 while they worked the farms in place of the boys who left.

Some never came home.

Bob has seen a lot. During the war and after, the steam engine trains came through Beaumont taking troops off to training camps and to war. Bob tells the story of the time the train stopped to take on water and refuel. Jackie Robinson was on the train with other recruits. They got off for a spell and, according to Bob, Jackie ran a foot race against all comers, and won.

Bob and his brother answered the call to serve their country, both served in the Army overseas. Jim fought in Korea. Sadly, Bob now suffers from memory loss, but he is staying at the Presbyterian Manor and I am glad to say, quite happy.

On a Wing and a Prayer

On the way to the restaurant and home again Bob sang the lyrics over and over again with a smile on his face. Oh, how he sang. There were stars in his eyes. The world was in bloom. Somewhere, it was spring again. Some memories are never forgotten.

Thought you might like to hear it:

Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer
Though there's one motor gone
We still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer

What a show, what a fight!
Boys, we really hit our target tonight
How we sing as we limp through the air
Look below, there's our field over there
With just one motor gone
We still carry on
Comin' in on a wing and a prayer...

There are many recordings, but English vocalist Anne Shelton gives one of the best.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B69CquvLHgY