Valentine Worley Van Huss' Obituary

From the El Dorado Republican newspaper, July 24th, 1908.

"V. W. Van Huss peacefully passed away July 18, 1908 at the home of his son Isaac..."

Born November 15, 1818 in Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee, taking his first name Valentine from his grandfather and his middle name from his grandmother Catherine Worley. Valentine's parents were Mattias Van Huss and Elizabeth Worley. Valentine was raised by a loving step-mother Lovina Dugger.

At 24, Valentine married Lucinda Campbell, the marriage producing 8 children. He left Tennessee to homestead in Kansas with five sons, James Matthias, Daniel, Isaac S., Robert Eldridge., and John Finley. The family left Tennessee in a Conestoga wagon, crossing into Missouri south of St. Louis, following the Missouri River to Jefferson City, then heading due west to Sedalia and Pleasant Hill and entered Kansas near Spring Hill where the party stopped, no doubt because Lucinda was in poor health. Lucinda died in 1870 in Johnson County, Kansas.

Eventually, father and sons made their way to Butler County and took up homesteads near Beaumont and Latham, Kansas. Oldest son James got his homestead first in 1875, followed by Isaac, Daniel, Robert, and John. Father Valentine would not get his homestead until 1902. James would move to Oklahoma, Robert to Texas, Daniel unknown. The others would stay.

Surrounded by his children and grandchildren, Valentine was laid to rest in a the small Baptist church cemetery located a few miles north of Highway 54, a few miles west of Beaumont, on the Rosalia-Keighley Road just before it turns west and turns into Flint Hills Road.

A visit to the North Frisian Islands 1887

"Sufficeth them the simple plan, That they should take who have the power And they should keep who can."

Frisians and North Frisia

The Romans were the first in history to comment upon the Frisii as an identifiable group. They were migrating Germanic tribes who lived in the coastal regions and the outlying islands and islets, on terps, hillocks like those described below by Queen Victoria's diplomat, John Ward. These hillocks had the advantage of protecting them from marauding armies, but the greater disadvantage of being at the mercy of storms and the sea.

Frisian is generally the area along the North Sea, encompassing mainly the coastlines of the Netherlands and Germany. North Frisian was that part of the coastline on the Jutland Peninsula. The people were an amalgam of Dutch, Danish and German. I find it interesting, that the NOrth Frisian dialect, now spoken by about 10,000 people, is considered the 'kissing cousin' of the English language.

At the conclusion of the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the province of Schleswig along with the North Frisian islands, once Danish became Prussian.

Experiences of a Diplomatist, Being Recollections of Germany, (1840-1870), by John Ward, C.B., her Majesty's Minister Resident to the Hanse-towns.

August 8. A visit to Husum and dined. Thence by steamer through the North-Frisian islands to Fohr and Sylt. We reached the point of Norse on Sylt at 10 pm, and after a rough drive in the bright moonlight arrived at our lodgings on the west side of the island at Westerland about midnight.

August 9. Surveyed the island which consists of heath and sand without any trees. Nothing exists between us and the English county of Durham except sea. Rye, barley, and oats are grown here but no wheat. The houses are built small here and all alike. The peasantry are all well off. In winter a great deal of wool is knit into stockings for export to Germany.

August 12. The inroads of the sea on the Frisian islands is very remarkable. Three hundred years ago the land area was double... There is an old geographical description by Caspar Danckwerth, burgomeister of Husum. August 13. To Keitem, the capital of the island on the east coast to visit a sort of museum of curiosities... The island of Nordstrand, we were told, before the Flood of 1634, contained 40,000 demaths of land and now only 6,000. The islands loss was the coastlines gain, with the marshy districts of Tondern, Eiderstedt, etc, adding some 30,000 demaths.

August 15. The islands are collectively called the North Frisian Utland (Outland) and the sea the Wattenmeer. Watten, meaning tracts of sand and mud emerging at low tide. In the midst of the water are Hallige, islets of land covered by tall grass washed every day by the tide and inhabited by a few families who live on hillocks of raised turf, supported by piles of wood driven into the wet soil.

August 18, Sunday. Drove to List at the north point of the island. The road along the shore line contained so many sea fowl. At Vogel-koje wild ducks are decoyed and kept for sale... List was a Danish enclave with a church and a school of eleven children being "Danized". The Danish schoolmaster was replaced by a German when the enclaves were ceded by Denmark to Austria and Prussia in 1864...  

Experiences of a Diplomatist, Being Recollections of Germany, Founded on ...

Churning Song

Johannes Vermeer, the Milkmaid, c. 1658

Volkje Jurraiens von Nordstrand

Gentle reader:

On the last day of the last year of her life on Nordstrand, Volkje and her sister Annetje would have gone about their daily tasks, rising to feed the chickens, tend the ducks, gardens to tend, candles and soap to be made, milk the cows, wash the clothes, prepare and cook the food. In 1634, a terrible gale hit the coast of North Frisia and the island of Nordstrand, causing the sea to break the dykes and flood the island, destroying churches, farms, and homes with great loss of life. Sixteen year old Volkje and her older sister Annetje are the only two in her family who are known to have survived.

We find her, five years later in Amsterdam, marrying Jan Franz Van Husum (Husem), departing for the New World, New Holland, and a new life.

The butter churn surely followed.

Volkje might have said, "'An aching back, a weary arm robs the churn of its charm.'"*

Then added, "As harsh as life ahead may be, with nothing but a butter churn, my future prospects are certainly better than what I leave behind."

‘Apron on and dash in hand
O’er the churn I stand’
Cachug, cachink!
Aching back and arms so weary

We are not so dumb as you might think
It’s just that we have no time
We must work
We milk the cows, we let it sit
While we mend, clean and cook
Then take the cream
And place it in a barrel
From which we churn and turn
Hour after hour
To make our bread and butter

And you my child, the future
You are not so smart
Yes you, who do nothing more than text
You see, oh no you don't
That iPhone in your hand is
But a stratagem to beguile
A clever ruse, a simple trick
A wile they say is free, and
All the while
They charge you out the ass
And turn your brain to mush

Pieter Bruegal, Visit to a Farmhouse, c.1620–1630

*From a poem by Silas Dinsmore, St. Nicholas Magazine, 1874.

Love in 16th century Frisia

Surely they were touched by human emotions. A 30 year old sailor named Jan from Husum, a 20 year old farm girl named Volkje, married in Amsterdam's Nieue Kirche and about to set sail across the Atlantic to New Amsterdam and a new life. She would be his guiding life, the mother of his children, the keeper of the house. Together they would share life's journey.

What thoughts had they, we can only imagine

Dear Lyltsen, when I am with thee
(My light, my flame, my sun, my eye)
As dark as deep as night may be
When through the sky stars steer their course
No matter how dark it may be
It is light as the daylight sun for me.

But when your flare flares not unto me,
I have no star to steer my turning;
I move then blind as a stick, a stone,
Though mid-day sun is burning.
What use if the sun in my eyes is bright?
Lylts is all, my dark, my light.

Gysbert Japicx (b. 1603)

Lyltsen  (the diminutive and enduring way of referring to Lylt), possibly Lilith. In Jewish mythology, Lilith refers to a demon in the night.

Gysbert Japicx (also Japiks; 1603–66) was a 17th century Dutch poet who wrote in Latin as well as the Frisian dialect, Friesche Rymlerye (1668; “Frisian Verse”). Japicx or Japiks spoke to his beloved Lylt in several verses.

Here is one in the original Frisian:

Lyltsen paeyde Poppe' in pea,
Dear trog trillen, lef, sijn ljea,
Fijt'! him tocht him salm t'ontrinnen.
Yn swiet mulke it 'i thauwer-poeen.
't Is klear jou-leas-nimmend'-joeen.
Dock jaen jou-nimt hert in sinnen.

And my poor translation:

Lyltsen paid Poppy in peas (the Pope in peas?)
Dear, rise up trembling, beloved, they lie
Fie! he thought his salmon escaped
In sweet cucumber, it is their point
'Tis clear to you less none do join
Yet, unless you take heart in your mind