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.

Robert "Bob" Van Huss

This is the story of Robert Gene Van Huss

Bob as he is known everyone, was born in Beaumont, Kansas on January 3rd, 1929 to Fred and Beulah Van Huss.

Beaumont Wooden Water Tower

Robert, a.k.a. Bob, Van Huss is Beaumont Bob, Bobcat to his four daughters, the Baron of Beaumont to his three sons-in-law, of which I am one, and, Colonel Bob to his friends. He is the Merry Prankster, owner of  Bob's Armadillo Ranch, which is located in the front yard of his two houses in Beaumont, Kansas.

In the early 1870's, Bob's great grand father Valentine Worley Van Huss, along with his four sons, including Bob's grandfather John Finley Van Huss, settled in Glencoe and Hickory Townships of Butler County, Kansas. In addition to John Finley were his brothers - James, Daniel, and Isaac and Robert. They had all left farming life in and around Elizabethton, Tennessee after the Civil War and joined the rush of homesteaders moving to Kansas.

Bob's mother was Beulah Phillips and her father was Beaumont's first doctor, Dr. William James Phillips.

The community of Beaumont, Kansas, esteems Dr. William J. Phillips as its pioneer physician and surgeon and as a man whose capable efforts have been directed through a long period of years largely to the service of his fellow men. Doctor Phillips has gained his best recognition in a comparatively limited community, and has been well satisfied to do his work there and to merit the esteem and respect of those closest to him.

One way of saying that Dr. Phillips delivered all of the children born in the area and healed and mended those who became ill or injured. From a Standard History of Kansas and Kansans,  William E. Connelley,  Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918.The women in Bob's family would serve the community also, teaching and acting as post master.

Beginnings

Bob's family began its American journey in 1639. Jan and Volkje Van Husum arrived on the ship Den Harinck and settled at Beverwyck, then part of New Netherlands and part of the Renssaleur estate. The family prospered and Jan bought his own sizable estate from the Indians around 1652. Later, family members followed William Penn to Tulpenhocken, Pennsylvania. Later still family members migrated south at the same time as Daniel Boone to Rowan County, North Carolina, and, from there across the Appalachian Mountains to Fort Watauga, Tennessee. Along the way family members and relatives battled the frontier and Indians, fought on both sides during the Revolutionary War, and went with General Andy Jackson in the War of 1812.

Bob can trace his family all the way back to 1609 when his earliest known ancestor was born. Jan Fransse Van Husum and his wife Volkje Juriens were either Dutch or North Frisiians, depending on who you ask. Either way, the two lived in North Friesland, an area bordering the North Sea to the east of Holland. At that time Protestants and Catholics were embroiled in a battle for the souls of men. Martin Luther might be fine for the German principalities, but it was the Dutch Reformed Church, a more tolerant form of Protestantism that won the hearts and minds of the commercially minded Hollanders. Holland and Spain were then in the middle of Holland's War of Independence which did not end until 1648. And minor states such as Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig exchanged villages from time to time.

Jan lived in the village of Husum, then part of Schleswig. Volkje lived on the neighboring island of Nordtrand. But the area was full of Hollanders who were then attempting to hold back the sea from the marshland that formed the coast. In 1634 a terrible flood stuck both the city of Husum and the island of Nordstrand. Husum was devastated, Nordstrand destroyed. Sixteen year old Volkje lost both her parents in the flood. She then met Jan and in 1639 they wed in the Nieuw Kirk of the Dutch Reformed Church in Amsterdam, and sailed to New Netherlands where they settled in the little village of Beverwyck on the Hudson River.


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Beaumont, Kansas

Established in 1879, Beaumont is a former whistle stop for the Frisco Railroad which, in a more exciting once-upon-a-time, ran from St. Louis, Missouri to Wichita, Kansas. Beaumont was well-situated, up the steep climb from Fredonia into the Flint Hills and located between the beginnings of the Little Walnut and Otter Creeks.

Seven trains a day once ran through Beaumont, drinking up the 25,000 gallons of water held by the Beaumont wooden water tower. A roundhouse was built in 1890 and grocery stores, general stores and businesses thrived.  In its heyday, the Frisco employed 90 people to service the six engines maintained at the round house.

The tracks for the Frisco Railroad were laid down upon an earlier stagecoach line. Travelers stayed at the Beaumont Hotel. This route itself was the path of an even more ancient trail used by the Osage Indians on their biennial trip to buffalo hunting grounds. The railroad line and the tracks that served it are gone now, but there still stands in Beaumont the historic water tower that greeted the trains on their long uphill climb from Missouri into the Flint Hills of Kansas.