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.

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.