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

The Nordstrand flood of 1634

Perhaps a thousand homesteads were gathered on the island of Nordstrand before the flood. Perhaps two. Over successive decades, the land had been reclaimed from the North Sea. In 1630, the Dutch government hired Jan Adriaansz Leeghwater to supervise the land-reclamation. The island had two high points, Nordstrand itself and the smaller and more westerly Pellworm. The homesteads had names: Westerwold and Osterwold, Stintebull and Konigsbull, and many others. The island was home to some 9, 000 people, farmers, cattlemen, goose and chicken ranchers. It encompassed almost 100 square miles, four times the size of our own Manhattan. More than two dozen windmills and a long dyke kept the sea at bay. A half dozen clock towers sounded out the hours during the night and summoned the holy to church on Sundays.

In the space of one night all this would change. In the evening hours of October 11-12, 1634, the sea swallowed more than half of the island, 6,123 people drowned, 1,339 farms and houses were washed away, as were 28 windmills and 6 clock towers. The estimated loss of livestock was 50,000.

Escape was a miracle, for even boats were tossed about by the wind and the waves.

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

Making dough in America

They came by ship from Amsterdam to America, signed on for four years as indentured farmers, and in some cases as laborers and workers, to the wealthy Dutch diamond merchant, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer. They were on their way to a settlement called Rensselaerswyck.

Willem Juriaensz, the Baker

One such person was Willem Juriaensz, commonly called Willem the Baker (Bakker). Once, called Capitaijn, in 1646 and again, in 1650, Capiteijn Willem Jeuriaens, no doubt a reference to his prior career as a sea captain. Arriving in Rensselaer's colony in 1638, he worked on various farms as a baker, but beginning in 1644, was sentenced to banishment for misdeeds, and then reprieved.

One story goes something like this. Jochem Becker accused the old captain of stealing his hens. Jacob Willemz took up the captain's side in this story, saying, "What do you mean, they are the old captain's hens?" Becker called to Willemz to come out of the house. Willemz refused, and promptly Becker rushed in and giving him a sound beating and grabbing him by the throat, called him an "old dog". Willemz fought back as he could, and called Becker "a dog and a son of a bitch".

Whether the old captain stole the chickens was not, this time, a question for the court.

In 1647, he was again sentenced to banishment for attacking one, de Hooges with a knife. (This de Hooges, is presumably Antony de Hooges, business manager of Rensselaer's colony.) In 1650, despite his multiple reprieves, he was again sentenced to banishment to the Manhatans, but released to settle his affairs.

He struck up a relationship with Jan van Hoesen, and entered into a contract as baker dated Jan. 30, 1650. In November of 1651, Old Man Juriaensz (he was now 72), refused to honor the contract, and by January of 1652, the court gave Jan van Hoesen "permission to occupy the erf" (lot, or bakery) on the condition that the Old Man could live in the adjoining house "ofte de gelegenheijt," as long as he lived.
 O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, 1, pages 437 and 438;
Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts, page 820.

James Matthias Van Huss

The tree of life is broad, with branches far and wide, and many leaves.

James Mattias Van Huss, older brother of John Finley Van Huss (my wife's great grandfather), was the son of Valentine Worley VanHuss (1818–1908) and Lucinda H. Campbell (1818–1870); grandson of Matthias Van Huss and Elizabeth Worley.

Jamers was born 9 September 1845, on a farm, just east of Elizabethton, Carter County, Tennessee. The farm is still there, and a small family cemetery.

Unmarried and 25 years old, James left Tennessee in 1870 (therabouts), along with his parents and several brothers. Another branch of the Van Huss family remained in Tennessee and relatives can be found there today.

One imagines that they came by covered wagon, traveling a route close to US 50 that went through Jefferson City, Sedalia, and eventually Kansas City, before settling for a short while in the rolling hills of south Johnson County, Kansas. There James' mother Lucinda died, whether by illness or accident is unknown. Fairly quickly, the family moved on to Butler County and the several brothers took up homestead claims or purchased land near Beaumont, Kansas.

In 1875, James married Elmetta Lucinda Gifford. The marriage produced eleven children.

It could be that James and his wife settled in Glencoe Township, on 480 acres a half a mile west of Beaumont and just north of US400. There is a stone foundation left and the markings of a well and a pump. Hickory Creek begins to form here and there is a man made lake on the property now.

I say could be because I need to go to the county register of deeds to confirm that he purchased the property indicated on the 1885 Atlas of Butler County, Kansas.

By 1900, James (at the age of 55) and Elmetta were living in Grant County, Oklahoma. James died 6 July 1908, Hawley, Grant County, Oklahoma.

Wichita Stock Yards

My father-in-law mentioned the Wichita Live Exchange to me the other day, otherwise I would not have even thought of it. Bob is approaching the ripe old age of 90, and the subject came up when I asked what his father Fred Van Huss did for a living.

"My father was in the business of buying and selling cattle," Bob said. "This was before the war, I was nine or ten, and once in a blue moon, my dad took me to the the Exchange and got us odd jobs."

"Cleaning up cowshit?" I suggested, and he laughed.

"Mostly, we were in the way, so it wasn't often that my brother Jim and I got to drive with my father from Beaumont to Wichita."  "One summer I remember, my dad got us a job driving the cattle from pen to pen, after a sale. One little critter took a shine to me and rushed me, hitting me in the chest, and taking my breath away."

"My dad," he continued, "stayed in Wichita during the week, the drive to Beaumont was too far, and the roads too poor, to make it a daily trip. He partnered with two or three other cattle buyers so they could share the expense of an office in the exchange and a secretary."

There is precious little to remind Wichitans of the Live Stock Exchange.

Way back when, writes J’Nell L. Pate in her 2005 book, America’s Historic Stockyards: Livestock Hotels, "The entire town of Wichita could be termed a stockyards as early as 1872 when the two-year-old settlement and trading post on the Chisholm Trail saw its first railroad, the Santa Fe, arrive. Citizens also worked to get the Western & Southwestern Railroad to connect to the Santa Fe and others. After its first year as a railhead, Wichita received 70,000 head of cattle worth at least $2 million."

J. R. Mead's photo of cattle crossing the Arkansas at Wichita 1869,
Wichita Photo Archive

In 1887, a stockyard was built at Emporia and 18th Street, but it burned down its first day of operation.

Wichita Live Stock Exchange

A second stockyards opened on January 1, 1888, then soon moved to north of 21st street when meat packer Jacob Dold agreed to build a plant next to the yard. He did. Then, in 1901, his packing plant caught fire.

Dold Plant, Wichita Photo Archives

Despite this bad luck, progress on the stockyards continued. Not only were cattle lots built, but a Stockyards' Hotel and Exchange Building were added, smack dab in the middle of the stockyards. Mind you, this was all 40 years before Fred Van Huss took up work at the Exchange. And before Fred arrived another fire destroyed the yard and the hotel in 1904. Then, in 1909, the Union Stock Yards Company decided to build a new Exchange Building, the one most old Wichita residents remember, and the one Fred worked at with his partners.

I don't know what a cattle buyer does or did, Bob didn't know either. Children often don't know what their fathers do.

I imagine that it involved the sale of slaughter cows and bulls, then breed cows, pairs of cows, and stock cattle and feeder calves, like it does today. And Fred got a commission on each sale.

In the midst of the stench from the packing and rendering plants, the Live Stock Exchange must have been impressive. The outside was a two story building with windows along the front. Inside the floors were of white marble, the walls of dark wood and glass. Visitors were greeted by two tile mosaics, one, on the first floor, a bull’s head measuring 40-inch by 45-inch. On the second floor, a 4 by 6 foot section of tiles proclaiming, "Market That Satisfies" surrounded by the contented heads of a cow, a horse, a pig and a sheep. The Exchange housed 15 livestock commission firms, one of which at one time was the little group that Fred belonged to, plus a national bank, the office for the president of the stockyard company, an office for the Wichita Terminal Railway Co., and branch offices for the packing houses. It must have been a merry group that played cards during off times, smoked cigars, and drank beer and something harder, even during the Prohibition Years.

In 1980, long after Fred Van Huss moved on, the stockyards shut down. And, in 2000, the Live Stock Exchange was razed to the ground.

Source: Wichita Historic Preservation Alliance

Maria Llabres

When I met her three decades ago, she was short, tough, and wiry. She lived alone, or rather I should say, she lived with her dogs in a small house in Butler County, and tended her garden daily. Her grey hair grew about her head in the fashion of the 1920’s. She never sat down in my presence, a practice no doubt she learned waiting on customers in the family hotel in Mallorca. Her sentences were short and clipped. A no nonsense woman who had had a hard life.

Her name was Maria Llabres. She was born in 1895 on the island of Mallorca, and, by stages in her life, traveled and lived in French Algeria, and then Kansas.

Images trigger memories, some random, some not.

Someone sent me a picture of the Casa Fina plate from the Ibiza collection. The plates come in a sand grey and iridescent blue. Now, you may know that Ibiza is the smallest of the three main Balearic Islands. In Roman times, it was a hangout for pirates, today it is known for its night life. From Ibiza it is a short hop to the largest of the three islands, Mallorca. Mallorca is where my wife’s family took up residence for a period. Not my wife mind you, but her grandmother Maria Llabres.

The birth year 1895 makes her a contemporary of the poet Robert Graves, who like Maria was born in Mallorca, but unlike her decided to remain there.

In Mallorca, Maria’s family ran a small hotel and restaurant. The family left Mallorca for Algeria for a chance to farm, but the Algerian struggle for independence ended that. Maria married shortly after the end of the First World War and came to Kansas, leaving behind a sister Catherine, who married and became Catherine Guerrier. She came to Kansas once to visit. The visit was brief. The years are not always kind to relations and hard times make things more difficult. They grew corn which they called Kafir corn and held parties celebrating the Queen of the Kafir Corn. But the corn did not always grow and that which did grow was meant for cattle and chickens. And chickens would eat most anything and cattle could be fattened up on the blue stem grass of the Flint Hills without the expense of the corn. The apple and pear trees shriveled and died. The flowers in the fields failed to bloom and the bees sought nectar elsewhere.

Drought cost Maria and Frank their farm. Then, the oil fields around El Dorado, which once provided work for Frank began, to disappear.

Life in Kansas could not be easy for a girl from Mallorca.

Maria must have looked a lot like this

Maria enjoyed her garden, her wine, her dogs, and cooking a dish that was a combination of chicken, olives, and wine. It was a dish she passed down to her daughter Mary and one of my favorite foods.

Most of Maria’s life is forgotten. She would be 122 this year. She is, for most of us, beyond living memory. For that reason, I will quote one of Robert Graves’s poem as a memorial to Maria.

MOON-WOMAN
She came and asked: Are the apples ripe?
The hay put up?
The wheat stored?
Didn't you know, I stammered,
The sun couldn't wait
The fields weren't Ploughed
The rain was dry.
But you promised
Corn, plums, Pears and honey
On my bread.
Didn't you see
The dog, rat and cat
Digging in the garden dust?
The clover didn't bloom.
Find me a basket, she said
Bring a hoe
The corn is ripe
This pear tastes good.

Earlier post on Maria Llabres.

Brownlow, Kansas

Brownlow, Kansas is a town which has never appeared on a map. 

The few references are confusing and contradictory. For instance, the Butler County Directories, 1878 Gazetteer and Business Director, R. L. Polk Company describes Brownlow as: “A settlement on Hickory creek, in the southeastern part of Butler county, 10 miles from El Dorado, the county seat and shipping point.” If accurate, this would suggest that the town was on a railroad, none of which existed in this area at the time. 

Then the obituary of Alexander Baker says he “came to Butler county in 1888 at the age of 17. The family settled on a 360 acre farm in the Brownlow community - halfway between Leon and Latham.” Further that Mr. Baker was a member “of the old Brownlow Methodist Church, the congregation of which later transferred to the Latham Methodist Church when the Brownlow church closed.” 

Detail of Butler County, Kansas map 1885

Perhaps the best designation of where Brownlow comes from is the school district designation – “23 Brownlow Leon Rt. 3.” This places the schoolhouse known as Brownlow, no. 23. At a location halfway between Leon and Latham as Mr. Baker’s obit suggests, but a few miles past the ten miles given in the Gazetteer. 

Where does the name Brownlow come from? 

Best guess is that the community was given the name by T.R. Purcell in nearby Walnut Township. Purcell, a Tennessee native, gave his service to the Union cause, enlisting in the First (Union) Tennessee Cavalry, under command of Colonel James P. Brownlow, and serving two years and nine months. Col. Brownlow is remembered for his crossing of the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia on July 9, 1864. What made the event noteworthy was that the Northern soldiers who crossed the river and attacked the Confederate defenders on the south bank did so in the nude. 

The Brownlow village and community disappeared in time, but the cemetery remains. It can be found with the help of Google at 135 se and Hickory road to the south of Hickory Creek.

Fred B. Van Huss

Fred was born in 1894, Parents: John Finley Van Huss and Josie E. (Brewer) Van Huss and Siblings: Bula, Luva, Elmer E., and Lois O.. In 1927 he married Beulah M. Phillips in Chase County. They had two children: James and Robert.

Worley - What's in a name?

What's in a name, in particular, the name 'Worley'? 

Jo Anne Worley, Laugh In, 1969

The question arises because of my wife's family genealogy, in general her great great great grandfather Valentine Worley Van Huss, and in particular, her great great great grandmother Elizabeth Worley and her great great great great grandmother Catherine Worley.

Worley - English: possibly a place name, either from a variant spelling of Wortley, in which case a town near Sheffield; or alternatively in Essex and Somerset called Warley, from Old English weir  'a low level dam for fishing' + leah ‘a clearing in the woods’; or from Warley in West Midlands, from Old English weorf ‘draft oxen’ + leah. 

Werle (Verle) – German: a shorten version of Werner, or Verner (Scandanavian) derived from warin from a military word meaning 'guard' or 'vanguard'.

Werle (or Wenden) - a fiefdom, Herrschaft, roughly the same as a barony, in the Holy Roman Empire founded in 1235. 

Vanguard comic first issue,
or alternate source for the name Worley, Werner

Catherine Worley was the mother of Matthias Van Huss. Elizabeth Worley married Matthias. Surely the two Worleys are related, but how is unknown. 

Matthias and Elizabeth had one child Valentine Worley Van Huss. When he was two years of age, his mother died. Matthias remarried to Lavinia Dugger and the couple had nine children, half brothers and sisters to Valentine. 

Valentine would grow up and leave for Kansas with his sons to homestead in Butler County. They settled on one of the few places in Butler County that didn't have oil underground so they had to scrape by for a living.

What about the three Worleys, Elizabeth Worley (1798-1820) and Catherine Worley (1769-1795) and Jo Anne Worley, comedian on Laugh In, famous for her swirl and infectious laugh.

Add Catherine Worley here... 

Elizabeth Worley was born in Wythe, Virginia, on 1798 to Valentine Worley and Anna Barbara Spraker. Valentine was born in Rowan, North Carolina, on 1772 to Michael Worley and Anna Reigher. Michael was born in Ontario, Canada on 1750 to Jacob Worley and mother unknown. Jacob hailed from Germany. 

This genealogy is uncertain, especially Jacob Worley. 

Jacob has an alternate spelling of his last name as Werle and he was from Alsace, Germany. Others trace the Worley name to Lancashire, England and further back to Normandy, and eventually the Vikings who settled in Normandy, but this is speculation.

What is in a name? Don't we each make a name for ourselves? Or as the Bible says in Genesis 11:4, 

"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

But then again, we know how that turned out.

Dr. William James Phillips

Dr. William James Phillips was a rural doctor and surgeon for the Frisco Railroad in Beaumont, Kansas. In 1885 he came to Kansas, moved to Beaumont in 1895 and lived there until his death in 1929.

This article is based primarily on the two sources mentioned.

[Dr. William James Phillips' daughter Beulah married Fred Van Huss, and so is the maternal grandfather of Robert Van Huss, my father-in-law.]

The country doctor of the 1880’s and 90’s was a general practitioner delivering babies, setting broken bones, pulling teeth, tending snake bites, and wounds from gun shots and farm equipment. The country doctor might live on his own farm to make ends meet, and so would travel by horse or buggy to treat patients in outlying farms. They likely delivered every child within miles, and sat with the dying as they left this world for a better place, and these happenings often required a doctor to get up in the middle of the night to attend his patient. As cash was short on the prairie, the pay for a doctor might be a basket of eggs, a bushel of corn, or a side of beef.

 


WILLIAM JAMES PHILLIPS, M. D.

[source: http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1918ks/biop/philliwj.html]

The Phillips family originated in Wales. William James Phillips' paternal grandmother was Irish, coming to America at the age of nine. This paternal side of the Phillips’ family came to America in colonial years, later moving west  to Ohio, then Iowa, and finally, with William James Phillips to Kansas.

William James Phillips (1856-1929) was born in Washington County, Iowa on October 2, 1856. He was the second son of George Phillips and Susanna (Deen) Phillips.

William grew up near Iowa City. He attended public schools and an academy. In 1874, at the age of 18, William spent 15 months working on a farm along the Little Blue River near Washington, Kansas, (north of Manhattan and Clay Center and west of Marysville).

Six years previous, Cheyenne and Arapahoe had made a raid in the county. Four years previous, the Kansas Pacific Railroad completed its line along the Smoky Hill River from Kansas City to Denver.  Buffalo still roamed western Kansas.

http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/washington/washington-co-p1.html

In 1885 William graduated from the College of Medicine, State University of Iowa. [Announcement of the College of Medicine, the State University of Iowa, 1885-1886,
 https://archive.org/details/announcementof8586stat.] After graduation, Dr. Phillips settled in LaCrosse, Kansas to practice medicine, marrying the same year Maggie Z. Redman (1867-1958), (daughter of A. J. and Mary (Wright) Redman).

In 1895 the couple moved to Butler County and Beaumont where Dr. Phillips worked as surgeon for the Frisco Railroad. They bought a 130 acre farm at the southwest edge of town.

Page 32, 1905 Butler County Atlas, Glencoe Township

Dr. Phillips served as town clerk. He operated a drug store and acted as pharmacist. He was a Republican, and a member of Beaumont Lodge No. 465, Ancient Order United Workmen.

The Phillips family grew to eleven sons and daughters.

Clarence M. farmed 3 1/2 miles southwest of Beaumont; Hubert W. worked as a brakeman with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and lived at Biggar in Saskatchewan, Canada; Edith Fern was the wife of A. L. Milliken, station agent for the Frisco Railway at Altamont, Kansas; George A. drove an auto stage at Brawley, California; Pauline, the fifth child, died at three years of age; Helen M. is the wife of J. H. Nichols, an express messenger in Wichita; Beulah M. was a school teacher and would marry Fred Van Huss; as of 1918, Paul W. was attending a school of automobile instruction at Wichita and the three youngest Alwilda, Wendell and Ruth, were attending public schools in Beaumont.

Beaumont Cemetery, William J. Phillips and Margaret Z. Phillips

William died in 1929 at Beaumont and is buried in the Beaumont Cemetery just north of Highway 400. His wife Maggie died in 1958 and is buried next to him.

George Phillips

William's father, George Phillips (1814-1873), was born in Ohio on February 10, 1814. He was an early pioneer of Washington County, Iowa and died in Daytonville, Iowa on February 6, 1873. His career included farming, general store and hotel owner. He was a member of the Methodist Church and served both as steward and trustee. In politics he was an active republican.

[I find nothing of the family history of the Phillips before George.]

George Phillips married three times. He first married Elizabeth Deen, a native of Ohio. She died in Illinois and was the mother of ten children.

His second wife Susanna Deen (1831-1856) was a half-sister of his first wife. She died at Daytonville, Iowa, October 9, 1856, one week after the birth of William J. Phillips. She had one other child, W. S..

George Phillips married his third wife Judith R. Downing. Her only child, Thomas A. L., died at seventeen months.