Henry Gene Straatmeyer's family tree (Bossman-Gruis Side)

 BOSSMAN

 

We found no Bossmanns in Germany in the graveyards.  I thought I had found them in the Freepsum cemetery when I discovered a lot of Busemanns.  I spoke with an elderly woman who remembered the "Buuhsmanns," and that sounded just like Bossman is pronounced in Low German.  She said Henry and Edward Buuhsmann lived in the village and she pointed to their houses.  I decided not to go because I wasn't quite sure.

 

After returning from Germany, we got a letter from Dirk Cirksena who had poked around in the Aurich courthouse files for us and he came up with the following:

 

Thomas Bossmann was born 10.24.1840 in Holthusen, Ostfriesland.  He came to America in 1866, settled in Grundy County, Iowa, near Ackley.  There he married Zwaantje Isebrands on 7.9.1872.  Zwaantje was born in Rysum, Ostfriesland 9.23.1851.   He died 10.23.1920.  She died 11.22.1927.

 

Harmanus Bossmann, was born in 1844 in Holthusen.  He also left for America in 1866.  His first wife was Renske ?, and his second Trientje Schnus.

 

George Bossman was born in 1855 in Holthusen, Ostfriesland and came to the U.S. in 1867.  He married Fannie Sinning.

 

Dirk Cirksena from Aurich believes that Heddina Bossmann, who was born in Holthusen, in 1850, is the sister of Tom, Harm and George Bossman.  She married Harm Buus.  They had a total of 12 children.  Their youngest child and daughter Minnie married Eilert Thaden and my wife Jean is their granddaughter.  Jean's mother is named, Heddina after her grandmother, but as did her grandmother, she was known as just Dena.  We have a copy of an old picture of the two taken by H. Saterbo in Lennox, SD.

 

This is where Jean and I are "cousins."  We had common great great grandparents, the parents of Hedina, Thomas, Harm and George Bossman, whose names we do not have.

      

(Information received 9/15/97 shows that the parents of the above are:

            Jurgen Bossmann (b. 4/16/1815, d. 2/5/1890) and

            Swantje (Geersma) Bossman (no dates)  

They were married 7/4/1838

      Also, Birthdates for Henry and Kate Bossman are:

                              Henry:  4/11/1882

                              Kate:  6/5/1882

 

It is interesting that Holthusen was the last cemetery I visited.  We had been looking in Reiterland (around Weener and Leer) cemeteries all day and Jean wasn't feeling so good.  So she went to lie down while I went out to eat and then at the last moment decided to drive the five miles to Holthusen and go through the cemetery, but I found no Bossmanns on the tombstones.  Dirk Cirksena says it is a village of only 200 people.

 

The Rev. George Schnucker's book, "The East Friesians in America" says about the Lennox, SD colony, "As soon as the railroad had pushed its rails into northwest Iowa, our countrymen out of Illinois and Central Iowa climbed aboard to seek after fertile lands; some to found a new home and the others to invest the savings, which they had acquired by much effort and work, in a good piece of land.  In the southeastern corner and in various places in Eastern South Dakota, they found land whose soil conditions and fertility were as good as that in the old Colony.  Here they settled down.  So originated little by little, the colonies of Lennox, Monroe, Willow Lake, Dempster and others."

 

Among the settlements named above, the one by Lennox, which stretches over parts of Turner, Lincoln and McCook counties, is the oldest and most wide spread.  Following is an account of Christopher Wiebesiek's and Harm Apkes' trip to South Dakota in March of 1873.  "We lived for a time in Ackley, Iowa and then traveled by train to Sioux City.  We stayed overnight in a hotel and then traveled by stagecoach to Vermillion where we arrived at 9 p.m. in the evening.  The next morning we rented a wagon and traveled 45 miles to the north to the border of the present village of Davis.  Early Ostfriesians came but from 1879-1885 a real immigration took place and the prairie by Lennox swarmed with East Friesiens and echoed with East Friesen sounds.  Out of the region of German Valley came....Henry Timmerman, Andreas DeVries, Thomas Bossmann....The middle of Iowa gave these families, "Harm Buus...."

 

"Since most of the settlers belonged to the Silver Creek Reformed Church at German Valley, Illinois, they desired, when the immigration from there swelled more and more, a Reformed Church.  Therefore the Missionary, Warnshuis, a Hollander, who spoke German fairly well, began to preach to them.  At the middle point of the Settlement, some five miles southwest of Lennox, where now stands the (Turner County) First Presbyterian Church, he founded a Reformed Mission Station, which soon developed into a congregation on January 5, 1880.  Under the Presbyterian pastor, Figge, whom they called as the first minister, the congregation changed over to the Presbyterian Church.  They continue today under the name of the First Presbyterian Church of Turner County.  It is the mother Church of four flourishing Presbyterian congregations, Lennox, Germantown, Marion and LaValley."  I wonder where the Salem Presbyterian Church near Tea come  from?   

 

GRUIS

 

We found the Gruis name in Rieterland.  We had been looking in Krummhorn without any breakthrough until we visited Hilda Bruns in Camun.  She said the Gruis family was from Reiterland.

 

We later found my great grandmother Gruis’ obituary and it said she was born in Harrenland.

 

We found the grave of a Tjabe Gruis, Henderika Gruis, Detert Gruis, Annette Gruis, Erna Gruis, Jakobus & Martha (Boelman) Gruis in the Ditzumverlat church cemetery in Dollartland, northwest of Weener and Leer, almost on the border with Holland.  We also found the Gruis name on stones in the Nuttermoor cemetery, not far north of Leer. 

 I would like to think that the Gruis family came from Ditzumverlat just because I liked the village more than Nuttermoor.  It was a small, peaceful, neat village not too far from the seacoast town of Ditzum, which I also liked. 

However, on our 2011 visit to Ostfriesland, we found a street/lane/road just on the west end of Wymeer, southwest of Weener. Here there were many graves of those named Gruis. Without the church book we could look no further.