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.

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.