Hattie Frances Hileman

On the sixth day of Spring, 2012, I visited, on a lark, the cemetery in Morrison, Oklahoma. There is little left of Morrison. The town has been reduced to a train stop and a bank. The farms surrounding Morrison use nearby Perry or Pawnee, Oklahoma for groceries and other needs.

Although I did not know it at the time, my wife's maternal great grandparents Charles Dallas Miles and Fannie Webster Miles are buried in the Morrison cemetery. Charles and Fannie were married in Sioux City, Iowa, homesteaded in Union County, South Dakota, and migrated to Stillwater, Oklahoma in 1900. A year later they moved to a farm near Morrison, Oklahoma.

Also buried in the Morrison cemetery is Hattie Frances (Miles) Hileman, daughter of Charles and Fannie, and sister to Frank Miles. I did find Hattie's marker, but I did not find those of Charles and Fannie.

Morrison Cemetery

From the records of Morrison Cemetery, Morrison, Oklahoma. See also, USGWARArchives.

Charles Dallas Miles, born 11 Jul 1854, died 21 Feb 1943, H. of Fannie Webster Miles Fannie, born May 1964 [sic, Note. the census records state that Fannie was one year younger than Charles, so, presumably, the date should be 1855 or 1856.], died 1935, W. of Charles

Hattie Frances Hileman, born 19 Jul 1878, died 12 Dec 1952 , wife of A. A. Hileman.

Morrison Cemetery, Noble County, Oklahoma

Hattie was the daughter of Charles and Fannie Miles. She was born in South Dakota. She appears in the Census of 1880, Union County, South Dakota. Her younger brother Frank O. Miles was born six years later in 1884.  By the time of the Census of 1900, Payne County, Oklahoma, Hattie was 22 and presumably married, as she was not living at home.

See article on Frank O. Miles.

Frank O. Miles migrated from Oklahoma to the oil fields near El Dorado around 1918. He then went off to Algeria before returning to El Dorado to raise his family. The family consisted of Charles (Charlie Jr.), who was born in Algeria, and later, two daughters Mary and Joan, who were both born in El Dorado. Mary would marry Robert Van Huss and they would have five children, the oldest of which, Robin, is my wife.

I happened to be traveling south this Spring (March 2012) and decided to take the short detour off of I-35 to Perry, Oklahoma. Perry is the county seat for Noble County and, so, is the depository for all land deeds in the county. I was hoping to get lucky and find the transfer of title to Charles Miles, father of Frank.

I didn't, but that wasn't the fault of the court records. From a History of Noble County, I found a reference to Hattie Frances Hileman, born South Dakota, daughter of Charles Miles. Her older brother was Frank O. Miles. She had married A. A. Hileman and their grandson Eugene Webb was deserving of a short bio in the History of Noble County. He was a farmer and rancher of note.

The bio quoted Hattie as relating that her grandfather lived on a ranch two miles east of Morrison, Oklahoma. The only other note was that her grandfather Charles had hand dug a well that was still in use in 1986.

I drove to Morrison. It is 15 miles due east of Perry and right off of the Tulsa Turnpike. Like so many small towns, its glory has long since faded. One mile to the east, just past the Long Branch Creek bridge is the turn off to the cemetery where Hattie is buried. I found the markers for Hattie, but did not see the markers for Charles and Fannie.

The countryside is beautiful in the Spring. The grass has sprouted green, the cattle graze outside the cemetery, and a pond shimmers in the distance. It is a good place to rest.

And, by the way, two miles east of Morrison puts you in Pawnee County. So, that is why Noble County had no land records.

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.


Move this to its own page.

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.

Josie Brewer Van Huss - Coming to Kansas

John Finley VanHuss and Josie Brewer VanHuss, Latham cemetery

Revise this article.


Josie (Josephine) Brewer and her family came to Kansas from Allentown, Missouri by wagon before the turn of the century. They would settle in Hickory Township, Butler County, south of Beaumont. Like most settlers, they farmed the prairie. The family farm was next to that of Valentine Worley Van Huss, who had come from Tennessee about the same time. Josie would marry Valentine's son, John Finley Van Huss.  John Finley Van Huss is the father of Fred and grandfather of Robert Van Huss.

Josie is buried in the Latham cemetery alongside her husband John Finley VanHuss.

Josie's parents, James Madison Brewer and Margaret Faubion Brewer are buried in nearby Brownlow cemetery. Brewer family history.






[The Brewer name and their descendents can still be found in and around Beaumont and the city of Leon, Kansas.]



There are no records to tell us about the trip from Allentown to Butler County. Then, the trip was by covered wagon drawn by a team of horses.

Move the following section to the article on Valentine Worley Van Huss.
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Valentine Worley Van Huss

The three US Censuses taken between 1870 and 1900 document the migration of Valentine Worley Van Huss and his five sons from Tennessee to Kansas.

I am looking for the 1870 US Census. Adam found the 1880 Johnson County, Kansas census record and the later 1900 Census for Rockford Township, Sedgwick County, Kansas. What is missing is the 1890 US Census which was destroyed in a fire. Also missing are the 1900 census records recording brothers James, Daniel, Isaac, and Robert, who all lived on farms around the city of Beaumont in Butler County.

1880

In 1880, Republican James A. Garfield of Ohio was elected President of the United States, defeating the Democrat, William Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania. Garfield captured a whopping 214 of the 369 electoral votes cast, despite winning the popular vote by the slimmest of margins - 2000 votes.

The population of the United States tops 50,000,000 of whom 6.6 million are foreign born. Kansas was experiencing the last year of an 8-year-long drought that began in 1873. Kansas Dust Storms. The city of Wichita had been founded 10 years earlier, and it was still a destination for cattle driven up the Chisholm Trail. Most homesteads in eastern Kansas have been staked out and claimed and Oklahoma is next.

Sometime prior to 1880, Valentine Worley Van Huss and his youngest son John Finley had left Tennessee and arrived in Aubrey Township in Johnson County, Kansas. Johnson County, today, is the richest county in Kansas and site to modern day Overland Park. The two Van Husses were then working on separate farms as laborers.

If you are trying to keep track of who is who, Valentine Worley Van Huss is great grandfather to Bob Van Huss, John Finley Van Huss is Bob's grandfather, John's son Fred was father to Bob. Bob's second daughter Robin is my wife. Valentine Worley Van Huss was 63 years old when he arrived in Kansas. He, like all of his children, had been born in Tennessee in Carter County, near Elizabethton, in the approach to the eastern hills of the Appalachian Mountains. John Finley Van Huss, when he arrived in Kansas, was 20 and single.

1880 US Census, Aubrey Township Johnson County, Kansas 



The year 1880 finds 63 year-old Valentine Worley Van Huss, living on the farm of Samuel Slusher. His daughter Susan has married Samuel, and there are two grandchildren, John H. and Della May, ages 5 and 3. Valentine's occupation is listed as a carpenter.

On the adjacent farm of James W. Shouce lives 20 year-old John Finley Van Huss, working as a hired man. If you look on the map of Aubrey Township along the border with Cass County, Missouri, little more than half way down, you will find the farms of J. M Shuse and Samuel Slusher, where Valentine and his son John Finley were then living.

To get to both farms today, head south from Overland Park along Metcalf Avenue and onto Highway 169. Go south of Stilwell and you are in the area.

1900

In the year 1900 William McKinley would be elected President, but he would be assasinated the following year and succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt. In the first census of the 20th century, it was revealed that the population of the United States rose to 76,212,168, a 21% increase since 1890, an increase by half since 1880. Wichita days as a cattle town had died, and Carrie Nation was on the warpath, demolishing 25 saloons in the town of Medicine Lodge, near Wichita, a part of the national Temperance Movement to forbid the consumption of alcohol. There were 8000 automobiles for the 10 miles of paved roads. The average worker could expect to earn $13 a week, up from the dollar-a-day of cattle driving days.


1900 US Census, Hickory Township, Butler County, Kansas



By 1900, both father and son had left Johnson County. The father Valentine followed his other sons James, Isaac, Daniel and Robert who settled in Butler County on different farms. I am still working on the land records and hope to have them up soon.

By the 1900 Census, John Finley Van Huss appears on a  Kansas census, but this is another story I am still writing.


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What follows is information for me.




An Abbreviated History of Johnson County, Kansas

With few exception, Kansas was not open to settlement by whites prior to 1854. Kansas was Indian Territory, home to the Pawnee, Sioux, Osage, and Commanche, and the many eastern tribes forceably resettled to Kansas including the Shawnee and Wyandott.

Weather in Kansas has always been a hit or miss proposition. Ask any farmer. It is a cycle of rain and drought, mixed with extreme and mild temperatures. Early settlers often found in the early years heavy snowfalls and plunging temperatures that froze the Kansas (Kaw) River. The wooly Buffalo was dressed well for the icy cold. The summers were hot and dry with little rain from spring until fall. The extremes of temperature and rain made grass the dominant vegetation except along the creek beds where forests took root. Along the creek beds where the light shone through were fields of painfully stinging and nettle. Heading west from the Missouri border and away form the river valleys, the dense forests are replaced with isolated Cottonwood trees whose deep roots and thick bark allowed them to survive when the gulleys and creeks run dry in the summer or the prairie fires rage.

The tall grass for which the Kansas prairies are famous was thick and high. The story is often told of an Indian standing on the back of his pony to make his way through the endless stretches of grass. The grass then abounded with the green headed fly and deer tick which made horse back travel uncomfortable if not impossible.

One can still experience a taste of this unpleasantry by heading to the Shawnee Mission Park and to the Arboretum, both of which are in Johnson County. In the park there is a stand of thick grass below and to the north of the lake that the deer roam freely through. After my walk with the dogs, I and the dogs were covered in ticks. I could remove them, the deer were not so lucky and I imagine suffer greatly from these pests. Another time on a walk with my ten-year-old son through the Arboretum, we took a short cut through a field that turned out to be nettles. I hoisted him on my shoulders and walked painfully, clad only in shorts.

Johnson County was named for the Reverend Thomas Johnson, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, came out to Kansas Territory in 1829 to teach and proselytize among the Shawnee and Wyandott. In 1839 he secured a grant of 2239 acres south of Westport and opened a manual labor school for Indian boys and girls. The buildings he erected are still there today along Shawnee Mission Parkway, just before arriving at the famous Kansas City Plaza.

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 opened Kansas territory to a floodgate of settlers, even though the land was still owned, at least in legal title, by the Shawnee tribe in common in the north and the Osage tribe in the south. Claims were marked by building a rough shanty, or if time did not allow, by laying down four hewn tree poles and defending the claim against all comers.

The succeeding decade concerned the struggle between pro and anti slavery factions and the Civil War which settled the issue. Characters like John Brown and William Quantrel, organized and disorganized groups such as the Jayhawkers, Bushwhackers, and Border Ruffians would color the history of Kansas during this time.

Eventually peace was restored and Kansans went about building their farms, schools, and towns, along with the political structure to bring law and order to the state. By 1872, the US Congress saw fit to open other lands in Kansas to homesteaders. Economically, Kansas faired relatively well. The yield of corn increased, but it was accompanied by a dramatic drop in price that caused many farmers to loose their farms when they could not make the mortgage payments. Cheaper lands newly vacated by the Osage in southeastern Kansas became available.



See the entire 1874 Atlas map of Johnson County, online, along with a history of Johnson County.

Valentine Worley and John Finley Van Huss



What happens 20 years later?





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Before Kansas - Tennessee and Before

Sometime after the end of the Civil War, Valentine and John, father and son, sold their farms in Carter County, Tennessee and headed west to Kansas. The pieces to the puzzle showing the date and the route are missing from the puzzle.**

Valentine Worley Van Huss' father Mathias was born in Virginia, but grew up in Tennessee. He joined General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and then married Elizabeth Worley. Valentine's mother died soon after his birth and father Mathias remarried to Lovina Dugger, who raised him as her own son. Mathias' father Valentine Felty Vanhooser, Jr. came to Tennessee from Virginia and North Carolina in 1795. Valentine Felty Vanhooser and his father, who both had the same name, followed the Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail, first to North Carolina, then up into western Virginia, and then over the Appalachian Mountains following the Watauga River to Fort Watauga, present day Elizaberthton, Carter County, Tennessee. The elder Valentine Felty Vanhooser chose the British side during the Revolutionary War, possibly because he had joined Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of North Carolina, in battling Shawnee and Mingo Indian tribes across the Appalachian Mountains in the 1774.

(Note. I am trying to keep the spelling of the names as each family member used it at the time. Spellings were not always consistent.)

The Van Hoesen family had earlier come from the Quaker communities of Tulpenhocken, Pennsylvania and before that from the Hudson River village of Beverwyck, New Amsterdam, where the first Van Huss - Jan Fransse Van Husum arrived in 1639 along with his wife Volkje Juriens.

Dutch or Frisiian - North Friesland

Jan and Volkje were either Dutch or North Frisians depending on how one looks at it. The couple, almost ten years apart in age, were thrown together by the terrible flood of 1634.  The flood struck the islands of North Friesland and the peninsula of Jutland. It cme during the night of October 11 and 12th, destroyed the island of Nordstrand where Volkje lived with her parents and sister, and devastated the city of Husum, just inland, where Jan Frans lived. Jan was then 25 and she was 16.


A Little Background




Generally, I spell the last name Van Huss, but it wasn't always so. Often the name was spelled in records as Van Hoesen, Vanhooser, Van Husum, and a host of other minor variations. Today, family genealogies continue this variation in spelling, but with the common ancestor always going back to Jan Fransse Van Husum from the city of Husum in Schleswig, now a part of northern Germany.

* There are earlier records showing land purchases in Butler County by Van Huss family members. The earliest dates to 1868, recording J. W. Van Hoesen's purchase of 320 acres just north of Beaumont, Glencoe Township, Kansas from Adam Hageman and his wife for the sum of $1,000. (Revise this.) Additionally, there are several brothers James, Isaac and Daniel who all settled in Butler County. But, we will come back to this later.

** I imagine they traveled through Tennessee along the route which is now known as the Trail of Tears Highway, Route 60. This route also crosses southern Missouri before going south to Oklahoma. I travel this route when going to Highpoint, North Carolina. My trip is, of course, with the comfort of car and along paved roads. The Cherokee who traveled this route in 1838 did it in winter with few provisions and at the cost of thousands of lives. The story of the trail as told by the Cherokee.

See an overview of the Trail of Tears and other historic trails by the National Park Service.

Frank O. Miles

Frank Ottley Miles was born in 1884 in Sioux City, Iowa. He was the second child of Fannie May (Brewster) and Charles Dallas Miles. An older sister, Hattie was born in 1879.

[The census records of 1880 and 1900 suggest that Charles and Fannie had only one other child, a daughter named Hattie, born 1879. But in the 1910 census the name "Elsie Duree," daughter , divorced, appears with two grandchildren. The census records that Fannie had three living children, a fourth was deceased.]

Frank Ottley Miles is my wife's grandfather and father to Mary Van Huss, Charlie Miles and Joan Smith. By trade he was an oil rig builder. In the 1920's he traveled to French Algeria where he met and wed Maria Llabres. His travels also included trips to Angola, French West Africa, and the Belgian Congo.

1880 - Dakota Territory 

In 1880, before Frank was born, Charles and Fannie Miles homesteaded in the Dakota territory. Their farm was located in  Virginia Township of Union County. On Google maps, it is an are of large farms and few towns. One gets there by traveling north from Omaha to Sioux City, Iowa. From there it is 40 miles north along I-29, following the Missouri river past Junction city until coming to Highway 48, where you swing east and travel about 10 miles.

In 1880, Charles and Fannie would have traveled over trails that rambled over the flat fertile prairie. Travel, then, was by horse and wagon, the dirt roads interrupted by streams that had to be crossed at points that could be forded. This was before the railroads and  towns,  just wide open prairie and a chance to start fresh.

The timing for 27 year old Charles, 23 year old Fannie, and one year old Hattie couldn't have been worse. They were greeted by the Hard Winter of 1880-1881. From October of 1880 through the late spring of 1881, snow fell in unprecedented amounts and when spring finally arrived and the sun shone, the snow melted turning the prairie into a giant lake. It was not an auspicious start for the young family.

On October 15, 1880 I was in the town of Eden in Union County. On the morning of that day I started to take an all day drive in the county on business. The morning was mild and gave no indication of a storm coming, but it began to be cloudy in the middle of the forenoon. At noon I stopped at a farm about fifteen miles out from town, had the horses fed and took dinner with the farmer. During the dinner hour moist snow began to fall but did not seem threatening. I was in a quandry whether to go further in the country and finish the work office day or to return to town, but finally decided to return and it was well that I did so. The snowfall increased rapidly and became blinding. In the last two miles before reaching town I could hardly see the road or the horses, but I arrived safely about three o'clock in the afternoon. The storm went on and we guests in the over-crowded hotel were confined under the roof for three days.

History of Spink County, South Dakota 

This terrible winter was followed by economic hardship struck in the early 1880's. Increased farming brought lower wheat prices, then there was a severe drought.

 How long the Miles family stuck it out on the prairie is not known. Frank Ottley Miles is born in 1884 in Sioux City, Iowa, but there is no explanation for the location.

The 1890 US census was destroyed in a fire and we take up the family again in 1900.

1900 - Payne County, Stillwater Oklahoma

Until the 20th century, Oklahoma was Indian territory, a place where the US government forceably removed eastern tribes. Ever increasing demand for free and cheap land finally put even Oklahoma up for grabs by Americans of European descent. After 1887 and the Dawes Act, Okla homa was up for grabs. Early settlers in Oklahoma became known as Sooners, the nickname of the state.

The 1900 US Census records that the Miles family, Charles, age 47, Fannie, age 42, and son Frank Miles, age 15, were farming in Stillwater, Payne County, Oklahoma on land which was mortgaged to the bank. Daughter Hattie was now married to Allison Hileman. There is no mention of any other children in the census record, but the census does record that Fannie has four children, three of whom are alive.

Stillwater was created from the Cherokee Outlet. It was part of the first land rush of 1899. The following year, 1900, Stillwater had barely advanced beyond the stage of a tent city.  Telephone and gas service was newly established; the Eastern Oklahoma Railroad arrived; and, the population was less than 500. The population of the county at the time of the census totaled 3,536.

Isn't it interesting that Fannie's parents were from New York and she was born in Kansas in the year 1857. Fannie's maiden name is possibly Webster, a fact we learn from the grave registration information for Morrison cemetery in Morrison, Oklahoma where Charles and Fannie Miles are buried along with their daughter Hattie.

1910 - Noble County, Autry Township, Morrison, Oklahoma

By 1910, Charles and Fannie have moved to neighboring Autry Township in Noble County, Oklahoma. Anyone who has driven south from Wichita along I-35 on the way to Oklahoma City will pass through Noble County. Perry is it the largest city in the county. Payne County and Stillwater are to the east.

Note. It is also possible that Charles and Fannie Miles were living in Pawnee County,  just over the county line from Noble County, near Morrison.

Now Charles and Fannie are joined by a daughter Elsie Duree, two granddaughters, and Susie Critz, whose relationship is unclear. Frank has moved out of the house. We know that Charles and Fannie had a daughter Hattie who died in 1957. The relationship to Elsie Duree is still unclear.

El Dorado Oil Fields

El Dorado K

Frank Miles 1918

Some time before 1910 Frank moved off the family farm and made his way to the oil fields of El Dorado, Kansas. These fields were newly discovered in 1915 with the drilling of the Stapleton #1, famous as the first use of scientific methods to discover oil. By the time the US entered WWI in 1917, this field produced the majority of oil for the war effort. By 1918, Frank was traveling abroad building oil rigs. His travels took him to French Algeria at the close of the war, and later to French West Africa, Angola, and the Belgian Congo.

Years later after Frank married and returned from Africa, he and his family would settle in Spring Township, Butler County, just off of Haverhill Road. The Stapleton #1 is reached by traveling north on Haverhill to 6th Street.


Passport Application Frank Miles, 1918

Below is the first passport application for Frank O. Miles submitted May 18, 1918. It is barely legible. What can be read is that Frank was born in Sioux City, Iowa on February 21st, 1884. His father was Charles D. Miles of Marietta, Ohio.

Passport Application 1920

Frank applied for and received a second passport in October of 1922. The passport was issued in El Dorado, Kansas on October the 9th. Frank gives his middle name as Ottley. There are also a few more details of his residence - that he resided in England from July 1918 until June 1919, and that he resided in Algeria from June 1919 until May 1922.

We now know that Frank was an Oil Rig Builder,. Back in the 1920's oil rigs were constructed of wood and appeared as so many towers peppering the landscape. He traveled over much of Africa building new rigs. The countries Frank listed included Angola, Portuguese West Africa, and the Belgian Congo.

Add to these few details, that Frank married Maria Llabres in June of 1920. Then, in November of 1925, Frank, his wife Maria, and baby son Charles left Bordeaux for New York aboard the French liner Le Bourdonnais. They settled in Spring Township, Butler County where they remained for the rest of their lives raising their three children Charlie, Joan, and Mary. Maria would remain on the farm with one exception, a trip that she took with her daughter Mary in the late summer of 1954 when she traveled back to France and Algeria to visit relatives.

Spring County then, as it is now, was rural. It is a distance of perhaps 15 miles along Haverhill Road from El Dorado to the township.

Maria Llabrés

The name Llabrés

It was in the year 1895, in the port city of Soller, Mallorca, Spain that Maria Llabrés was born. 

One can go to the search engines and type in the name "Llabrés" and "Mallorca" and come up with multiple hits. One can even find a hotel in Soller named Llabrés. The family name appears most often in the Sapnish province of Catalonia between the provincial capital of Barcelona and neighboring France. Also, the name can be found in the United States, the Philippines, and South America.

What the name means is at this time unknown, to me. I hope to Facebook a living member of the Spanish Llabrés family and find out.

Maria Llabrés

These are the bits and pieces that make up the life of Maria Llabrés, born 1895 in Soller, Majorca, Spain. For those of you who do not know, Maria Llabrés was my wife's grandmother, mother to Mary Van Huss.

I met Maria only once while dating my wife. This goes back more years than I want to remember. Maria, then in 80's, had dark brown dark brown hair and eyes that matched her fiery spirit. Her husband, Frank Miles, ten years her senior, had long since passed. Maria lived alone, or I should say with her dogs, on the same small farm on Rural Route 2 in Butler County that she had lived on for forty plus years.


Her small stature hid a determined  spirit. Like the old joke, it is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog. One did not mess with Maria. She never sat down while I visited. Instead, she always found something with which to keep busy. She served her guests red wine sweetened with sugar. Her most repeated remark was "beaucoup jolie", meaning very pretty. It was a comment about what she saw around her as much as a comment about her attitude to life.Her other French, was the command to the dogs, "Viens!", which means come.

Certificate of Marriage 1920

In 1920, she and Frank Miles married. The Certificate of Marriage records that the wedding took place on June 12th, 1920 in the city of Castiglione, Algeria. The groom was Frank Miles, then 36, and living in St. Aime, Algeria. "Aime" is a French word meaning, appropriately enough, love. The bride is Maria Llabres, 25, born to Spanish parents in Soller, Majorca, Spain, and then living in Castiglione, Algeria. Castiglione may sound Italian, but it was named for a French General serving under Napoleon.

Maria's Spanish connection is a little puzzling. Years later, Maria's daughter Mary would visit Soller and Majorca my wife and me. Mary explained that her mother's family had a hotel in Majorca before moving to Algeria. Maria spoke French not Spanish. That is something revealed in the 1930 Census and a fact personally known to the family. Maria's French connection is also bolstered by a visit in 1954 by mother and daughter, Maria and Mary, to relatives in Paris, Marseilles, and Algeria.

Le Bourdonnais

One can conclude that Frank and Maria lived in Algeria for the next five years. Then, according to the next record, they embark from France to the United States. There they are on a  passenger list of United States citizens aboard the ship Le Bourdonnais, sailing from Bordeaux, France to New York in 1925. Also on board is son Charlie, born in St. Aime, Algeria.

1930 US Census

By the time of the 1930 US Census, Frank and Maria Miles are living in Spring Township of Butler County, Kansas. Spring Township is a rural township east of Augusta, west of Leon, and south of El Dorado. The census reveals few details of their marriage, but we do know that 8 year old Charles and 10 month old Joan Miles were born in Algeria and Kansas, respectively. Also revealed is that Maria spoke French and not Spanish, in spite of the statement that Maria and her parents were born in Spain.

1954 Visit to French Algeria

In the late summer and fall of 1954, mother and daughter, Maria and Mary, would visit French relatives in Paris, Marsailles, and French Algeria. The trip began July 21, 1954 and ended September 14th with their arrival in New York.

Everything else about Maria Llabrés Miles is speculation. For example, the family name Llabrés. It is an unusual name. It has a Spanish spelling. But it could have been French. Maria spoke French. She and her daughter, Mary went back to France and Algeria to visit French relatives. Even later, my wife and I would visit some of these same relatives in Paris, Marseilles, and Toulouse. Could Llabres be derived from the village of St. Bres in France?

Saint-Brès est un petit village français, situé dans le département du Gard et la région du Languedoc-Roussillon.That is a long way from Majorca. How they would have got there, if true, is anyone's guess.

Even more intriguing is the existence of the Hotel Fonda Llabres in Alcudia on the same island of Majorca, just 30 miles east of Soller. This Hotel was bought by the family Llabres in 1950. Could it be that some of the family remained in Majorca, and are now recreating family history?

Of course, it is also possible that Maria's family was from Bresse in the Vosges Mountains of France. An obituary published at her death in 1983, at the age of 88, reports that " Maria Labrezze Miles" daughter to Marguerite and Paul Labrezze" died at the age of 89. La Bresse is located in Loraine, France.

Llabres

Likely, the name "Llabrés" comes from Vehinat de Llabrés - "es un municipio de la Provincia de Girona, en la comunidad de Cataluña, España", a small city in Catalonia. It is close to Barcelona and closer still to the French border.

Do a Google search for the surname Llabres and what do you find? It most commonly appears in the Philippines, then Spain, then South America. 

When speaking of French relatives, Mary Van Huss and her family often referred to the name "Guerriere" . That translates as "warrior", but that should be another story.

Three Throstles

A throstle is a song-bird, known as a thrush across the pond. A throstle is also an antiquated machine that spins cotton and wool threads into fabric, and, by extension, a storyteller who tells his tales from the tattered bits of yarn.