How Husum got its name

On the Jutland Peninsula on the coast of the North Sea, once part of Nordfriesland, traditionally North Frisia, once part of Schleswig-Holstein, now the city of Husum (North Frisian: Hüsem) is German, the capital of the Kreis District.

How Husum got its name

Bestimmt!

I am speaking with a native of Holland. I tell him my wife's name is Van Huss. He says, sounds German. No, I say, she is Dutch from the German city of Husum, once part of North Frisia. He4 explains that there are several cities in Holland with variations on the word "hus".

And this is how it came to be.

Once upon a time, Holland was farmland and farmers, who got together to talk, spoke of the isolated settlements with a few houses where the cattle and wheat was brought to sell. These "houses" became the market. In time other houses were built and the tiny settlements became larger, but the farmers still refereed to the place as "hus".

Bestimmt!

We both agree that is a logical explanation of how Husum got its name, but there is more.

Husum

Before the name Husum was written down, someone built a house next to a bridge, a few miles inland from the Wadden Sea, where dry land meets the tidal flats and salt marshes. It is good land. Farmers can raise wheat and cattle, along the coast, there are countless geese and shore birds, and access to the sea and the fish that swim in the sea.

In good weather it is a good life. Theodor Storm, the 19th century author from Husum, gave the area this description:

By the grey shore and the grey sea where the fog lies heavy all year long, where the swamping seas come.

Our legendary figure thought he and his family would be safe from the storms, but he was wrong, and it must have happened many times, the storm and the sea surging over the land and then retreating back to sea.

This house was built well. It withstood the storms.

House, hus, huis, haus at Husembro

House, hus, huis, haus at Husembro

The foundation was made of stone to prevent settling and keep out the rats, but because stone was scarce, the main part of the house was built of logs or lumber milled from the trees with a thatched roof to keep out the rain during the long, chilly, windy, and mostly cloudy winters. As is still the custom in a few such houses, the barn were the precious cattle were kept was attached to the house, so as to protect the cattle but also to keep the house warm.

Along the coastline, farmers raised crops and cattle and geese. The coastline was dotted with small fishing villages that fished the North Sea for cod and other fish. And when there was a surplus of these items, the farmers and villagers took their crops and cattle and geese and fish south to the larger cities like Amsterdam where they could be traded for money and necessaries.

Our legendary house stood for many years. Locals would have referred to it as the house by the bridge. And when they spoke in their native languages, Danish, Dutch, German and Frisian, they would have said Hus, Huis, Haus, and Hus. The pastor at the church who wrote in Latin would have changed its spelling to Husem or Husum.

King Abel comes to Husembro

Let us move on now and speak of the first time that history records the name of Husum.

In 1252, it is recorded that King Abel of Denmark lead an army to the coast of the Wadden Sea to impose taxes on the stubborn and independent Frisians who farmed and fished and lived there. Near the bridge by an ancient house, an arrow struck the unlucky king and he died. His death might have been God’s revenge for it is hinted at in the historical records that Abel murdered his brother King Erik Ploughpenny to obtain the throne. History records the place as “husembro” (the house by the bridge).

Now, return again to the history books where it is written that in 1362 a disastrous storm tide, know thereafter as the "Grote Mandrenke," (Great Man Drowning) surged along the coastline, flooded Husum, and carved out an inland harbor. This event put Husum on the map. A seaport developed, businesses came, and houses grew up around the bridge and the house that once stood alone.

Norstrand and Husem

The maps that came in time named this little village and did so in the Latinized spelling, Husem or Husum, which is what it is called today.

Who's who in Husum

Who’s Who in Husum: 

Husum, formerly part of Friesland, homeland of the Frisians and a mixture of Angles and Saxons and Dutch, later the Duchy of Schleswig, sometimes Danish and this and that, and now a seaport in northern Germany.

Husum, Google earth, North Sea

Abel, Duke of Schleswig and King of Denmark

He was the son of Valdemar II and brother to Eric IV. In 1250, Eric was murdered while a guest at Duke Abel's residence at Schleswig. Abel took his Eric’s throne after swearing an oath he had nothing to do with the death.

Abel ruled for a year and a half. Hearing that the peasants in Frisia, led by Sicko Sjaerdema, refused to pay the tax levy, he led a punitive expedition and was killed by a wheelwright named Henner on Husum Bridge.

People said, "Abel af navn, Kain af gavn" Abel by name, Cain by claim.

Jan Franz Van Husum

Jan was born in 1608. We may assume that for most of his life, he simply went by the name of Jan, or if further clarification was necessary, Jan, son of Franz. Jancalled himself as a seafaring man. We do not know for certain what fish he caught, but we can guess. As early as 1610, there  were reports of whales off the coast of Spitsbergen. Russians, Basque, French, English, and Dutch ships all vied for the trade. English and Dutch ships were often made up of North Frisians, who were known for their skills at sea.

The whale they hunted for was the bowhead whale, one that yielded large quantities of oil and baleen.

But this is idle thought, what we do know is this.

In 1634, a devastating flood, known as the second Grote Mandränke struck the Frisian coast, destroying the island of Nordstrand and much of Husum. After the flood, Jan would depart for Amsterdam. We know that he married his wife Volkjie there. She too was caught up in the devastaition of the flood, as she lived on the island of Nordstrand with her parents and sister.

Once married, Jan and Volkjie sailed for America.

Theodor Storm

 
Theodor Storm, a 19th century writer who called Husum, “the grey town by the sea.”

Die Stadt (1851)

Am grauen Strand, am grauen Meer Und seitab liegt die Stadt; Der Nebel drückt die Dächer schwer, Und durch die Stille braust das Meer, Eintönig um die Stadt.

On the grey sand, on the grey sea, Besides which lies the city, Press the mists heavy on the roofs, And in the stillness the sea roars, With one sound around tow.

The Marriage of Valentine Von Huss (Vanhooser) and Maria Barbara Zerwe (Zerbe)

[Notes on spelling. Spellings differ by language. The Reverend Stoever was German and chose to spell the name "Von Huss" instead of Van Huss or Vanhooser. Maria Barbara went by her middle name Barbara, a practice of trying to trick the devil. The last name "Zerwe" instead of "Zerbe" suggests that the name was pronounces like the French Servier, a name that appears on the French side of the border. Valentine was also variously called Velten and Felty. My advice to those looking up genealogy is to try various spellings.] 

The Wedding

Valentine Von Huss and Maria Barbara Zerwe were not well-to-do, like Sir William Pepperrell and his family. Most likely, the wedding was a simple affair with family and friends.

It is three days before Christmas, 1746, and the wedding day.

Let us join the families of Valentine Von Huss and Barbara and Catrina Zerwe and John George Meyer as they make their way to the tiny church at Tulpehocken for a double wedding, to be presided over by the Reverend Casper Stoever, America's first ordained Evangelical German Lutheran Minister.

Nearby Indian Fort on Mill Creek

Records of Rev. John Casper Stoever : baptismal and marriage, 1730-1779 (page 61)

The ceremony took place at Christ Little Lutheran Church in Tulpehocken, Pennsylvania. It was officiated by the Reverend Casper Stoever. Our minister was, like the bride's family, German, both from the Palatinate Region, and that is probably why the groom's name appears as "Von" rather "Van". The date recorded is December 22nd, 1746. The names: Valentine Von Huss and Maria Barbara Zerwe (Zerbe).

Two sisters are wed

Two weddings took place that day. The other being the wedding of Barbara's sister Catrina to John George Meyer.

The Zerbe Family

Barbara’s father was Johannes Jacob Zerbe, and her mother, Maria Catherine Leick (Lauk). Separatel;y, they came to America sometime prior to 1718, arriving in an English ship. They left Germany's Palatinate Region because of recurring French invasions, and famine came with war. With promises of religious freedom, they sailed up the Hudson River arriving at New York's Livingston Manor.

[The commercially and mercenary minded English transported Palatinate Protestants to the British-American colonies out of a need for pine tar. Pine pitch some called it, a necessary naval store the British desperately needed to keep their ships afloat.]

There they met and married, and all their children were born there (1718 until 1725).

Indentured Servants

The couple endured seven year at East Camp, Livingston Manor, a period that fits nicely with the idea that they signed emigration contracts as indenture servants. These contracts provided that "seven years after they had forty acres a head given to them.” "East Camp" and "West Camp" on opposite sides of the Hudson River were established residences for the new colonists.

Pennsylvania and Land

There is no record that Jacob and Catherine received their 40 acres a head of the more than 160,000 acres that then made up Livingston Manor. Instead they joined dozens of other Zerwes who settled in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvana and the area around Tulpehocken Creek. 

Coincidentally they became neighbors of the family of Daniel Boone. Indeed the Lutherans who built their church at Tulpehocken had by 1727 petitioned the officials in Philadelphia "for a road to the high road at the Quaker Meeting House near Boone's Mill at Oley."

First Tulpehocken Church


Secondary source for marriage.

 http://www.pagenweb.org/~lebanon/records/stoevermarriages.txt