Robert Gene Van Huss

 

Bob Van Huss passed away peacefully Wednesday, September 9, 2020.

Robert (Bob) Gene Van Huss was born January 2, 1929, to Fred and Beulah (Phillips) Van Huss, in Beaumont Kansas, older brother to James R. Van Huss. 

Bob can trace his roots back to a town called Husum, on the North Frisian coast and the Jutland Peninsula. Husum is the place from which which the name Van Huss arose. His ancestors, Jan Franz Van Huss and his wife Volkje Van Nordstrand, left Husum after a devastating flood in 1634. The two settled in Amsterdam for a few years before sailing for America in 1642.

Bob was given no special advantages in life other than two loving parents. The Great Depression which began in the fall of 1929 brought unemployment to Kansas as it did everywhere, but it added almost a decade of drought and dust. Bob grew up in Butler County where one grandfather was Beaumont's only doctor, and another a farmer. Bob's dad Fred was a cattle broker, his mother the town postmistress and once a schoolteacher. During World War II, Bob watched Beaumont's sons, fathers, brothers and sisters go off to war, as he and his brother filled in to help on the farms. On the radio, Bob listened to the tunes of Big Band era, something he loved to do until the end.

When the Korean War broke out Bob and Jim served their country proudly. After his military service, Bob went to Fairmont College in Wichita (Wichita State University). He married Mary Miles, and they had five children, Diane, Robin, Laurie, Annie, and Billie. Bob and Mary endured the loss of their son Billie at a young age to leukemia. Despite the tragedy, Bob went on to provide for his family, working as a pharmaceutical salesman across Kansas. It was a life that kept him on the road, but it put a roof over the family's head and food on the table. Dinner was often Mary's special chicken recipe that the family adored. Bob only occasionally complained, saying that, as a child, he grew up on chicken, eating so much that he sprouted feathers on his arms. Bob and his wife Mary were both practical jokers, so there was merriment in the house. 

Bob is survived by his four daughters and six grandchildren, all of whom loved him dearly.

The Birth of Julia Laure Emma Chevallier

Julie Chevallier, my great grandmother

Julia Laure Emma Chevallier

Julia Laure Emma Chevallier

Birth

Born the 14th of March at 6 in the evening, 1862 in Graffigny-Chemin, Bourmont Canton, Department of Haute-Marne, France. Father Paul Constant Chevallier, 40 years old, mother Anne Marie Richier, 36 years old.

1862

Napoleon III (born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte), the nephew of Napoleon I ruled France. He was, by most accounts, a good ruler, modernizing the French economy, lowered tariffs, opened the Suez Canal, allied France with England, and liberalized laws for the working class and women. He was on the other hand a poor military leader, suffering defeat in France's Mexican intervention and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, after which the Third Republic was proclaimed.

In 1862, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables was published. When all was said and done, Victor Hugo would write of Napoleon II as a mediocrity, "Napoleon the Small" (Napoléon le Petit) in contrast to his famous uncle.

Paul Constant Chevallier was a "propriétaire demeurant"  landlord of property in Graffigny.

John Finley Van Huss

After we pass only the bare bones of our life remains. Take me, John Finley Van Huss for example. Myheritage says this:

John Finley Van Huss, 1859 - 1939
John Finley Van Huss was born on month day 1859, at birth place, Tennessee, to Valentine Worley Van Huss and Lucinda H. Van Huss (born Campbell).
Valentine was born on November 15 1818, in Wythe County, Virginia.
Lucinda was born on April 15 1819, in Carter County, Tennessee.
John had 6 siblings: James Matthias Van Huss, Daniel Smith Van Huss and 4 other siblings.
John married Josephine E. Van Huss (born Brewer) on month day 1888, at age 28 at marriage place, Kansas.
Josephine was born in June 1865, in Missouri.
They had 5 children: Lois O. Gresham (born Van Huss), Luva G. Foote (born Van Huss) and 3 other children.
John lived in 1880, at address, Kansas.
He lived in 1900, at address, Kansas.
He lived on month day 1905, at address, Kansas.
He lived in 1910, at address, Kansas.
He lived in 1920, at address, Kansas.
He lived in 1930, at address, Kansas.
John passed away on month day 1939, at age 80 at death place, Kansas.
He was buried on month day 1939, at burial place, Kansas.

Such a paltry and  incomplete description recalls to mind the second stanza of William Butler Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium."

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

But I was not an aged man when I left Tennessee to travel to Kansas by wagon with my parents and brothers. Just a young boy full of hope.

I was six years old when the Civil War ended. Our family was for the Union, a sentiment that was popular though not unanimous in eastern Tennessee. My great grandfather Valentine Felty Van Huss had come to Tennessee by way of North Carolina and Virginia seeking a new start and new land. His son Matthias my grandfather had stayed. Matthias had married twice. I was the only child of his first marriage to Elizabeth Worley of Cripple Creek Virginia. She died within a year of my birth. My father then married Lovina Dugger and they had a large and wonderful family. Lovina was a wonderful mother to me. Then my grandfather died in 1856. The farm in Elizabethton was not large and my father understood that it was best that it go to my half brothers and sisters.

So it was that my father and mother decided to head west to Kansas.

What an exciting adventure for an eleven year old boy to head west to the country of Indians, to land that would be ours. Across western Tennessee we went, though Missouri over roads that a few years before had been primeval forests.

We crossed into Kansas near Kansas City. There my mother Lucinda Campbell of Carter County Tennessee took sick in the town of Aubry and died on October 20th, 1870. She was just 52. I was but 11, too young for such a tragedy, but who is ever ready to lose one's mother?

It was a sad winter for all of us and especially for my father who had lost his wife. But next spring we once again loaded our few possessions into the wagon and headed south.

It was to eastern Butler County we went, to a place on the prairie out on the Flint Hills. The rolling land was watered by the Little Walnut River, which gives you an indication of its size. The land was for the most part grassland, but there were plenty of creeks, and where the creeks went, there was walnut and oak and sycamore.

To sum up, my brothers and my father would take up a homestead. I too would become a farmer. I met a Missouri girl named Josie Brewer from the neighboring farm and we got married in 1888. We had five children Bula, Fred, Luva, Elmer and Lois, who happily all grew up. My life was happy until too soon, the angels took dear Josie at the age of 47. Should you wish to visit her grave, don't be fooled, she is not in Latham as some say; rather you can find her buried next to her parents in peaceful Brownlow cemetery on an old country road.

In his final years, my father lived with my brother Isaac. He died in 1908 and we buried him in the Little Walnut Cemetery, two miles north of the road from Augusta to Beaumont. I lived another 30 years. You can find me in the cemetery at Latham, Kansas.

John Finley Van Huss and wife Josie

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