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| Edward Diedrich Assink |
My father, Edward Diedrich Assink, was born to Hendrick and Christina (Ennen) Assink on March 5, 1889, the fourth of seven children. Grandfather Hendrick, son of Ben
John Assink, was born about 1839 in the Netherlands close to the German
border. We know little about his early
life in the Netherlands other than that he supervised a crew of road workers
for at least a period of time, and that he was single and 40 years old when he
emigrated to America. After arriving in
this country he spent some time near Shell Rock, Iowa, where he met and, in
1883, married Stena Ann Ennen.
Stena, sometimes referred to as Christena, daughter of Gerhart and Anna Ennen, was born on July 25, 1856, in the Province of Bentheim in western Germany. At the age of 24 years, she and her sister left her native land and emigrated to the United States, settling near Shell Rock, Iowa.
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| Hendrick and Stena's Farm |
After their marriage Hendrick and
Stena moved to a 160 acre farm in southern Hancock County in northcentral Iowa,
approximately 70 miles to the west and north of Shell Rock. This land had been acquired by a previous
owner through the provisions of the Homestead Act enacted by the United States
Government in 1862 as a means of encouraging the settlement of vacant land in
the states and territorial possessions.
Just how my grandparents acquired the land is unknown to me. The railroads were being built and were
interlacing the prairies of the Midwest, making the transportation of goods and
produce possible; consequently, for the first time ever, the virgin prairies
were being plowed up and cultivated with crops.
Whether Grandpa Assink came to this
country with family, I do not know. I do
know that years later in the Cedar Falls, Iowa area, quite near Shell Rock,
there were Assinks who had apparently descended from his cousins. The Assink Brothers construction materials
plant was located just north of the river on highway 218 in Cedar Falls. My Grandma Assink had relatives near Allison
and Shell Rock that I recall visiting in my childhood bearing such surnames as
Bower, Lubben, and Hartwig.
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| Hendrick, Stena, names to follow... |
Hendrick and Stena brought Gertie,
George and Ben into the world before my father was born; and Annie, Albert and
Henry after that. Grandpa Hendrick would
die of diphtheria in April 1908 at the age of 69. Grandma Stena would survive for another 25
years until she succumbed to cancer in February 1933 at the age of 76. I was just over four years old at her death
and remember very little about her except that she was quite heavy, had a big
wart on her cheek and usually sat in the same chair.
Prior to the formation of the local Christian Reformed Church, the family worshiped with a German-speaking Evangelical Church which met in a nearby country school building. This church, if I understand correctly, was basically the church of Martin Luther which bore the name of "Evangelical" in Germany, but which became known as Lutheran in America. The Reverend Cornelius Bode, an uncle of my mother, had been sent to north central Iowa by the Christian Reformed Church to gather in all the German-speaking people of Reformed background to form a church. My grandparents had belonged to Reformed churches in Germany and the Netherlands and were, therefore, eager to make the switch. The resulting congregation, which also enfolded some of the other German-speaking people from the Evangelical Church, was established in the town of Kanawha in the year 1900. My father's family were among the charter members of that congregation with Grandpa Hendrick being an elder on the first consistory.
The oldest child, Aunt Gertie,
married Fred Freerksen and eventually divorced him after bearing six children
and enduring considerable spouse abuse.
In my childhood, she was the only divorced person that I knew
personally. Their oldest son, George,
became a Baptist minister, serving pastorates mainly in Minnesota. Henry, Tena, Theoline and Alfred, moved to
different parts of the country.
Theoline, who never married, later came back to Kanawha. Ione remained in Kanawha all his life. Aunt Gertie was a very mild mannered, kind
woman. She died at approximately 80
years of age in the early 1960's. All
her children have also died, most of them considerably short of the three score
and ten years proverbially allotted to us.
The second born, Uncle George, left
the family farm in approximately 1914, and headed off to Wheaton College near
Chicago to study for the ministry. There
he met Ruth Barrow, from near Chicago I believe, and later married her. Ruth soon acquired certain health problems
which necessitated that she move to a warmer climate. Thus, with intentions of perhaps picking up
on a career in evangelism later, George and Ruth in 1919 headed down to
Mississippi, bought 160 acres of scraggly-timbered farm land near Brookhaven,
set up a farming operation, and didn't return to see his Iowa kin until 30
years later in 1949. George and Ruth had
three children: Noel, Albert and
Dorothy. Albert died at about age 15. Noel and Dorothy became high-ranking career
officers in the Air Force and eventually retired back in Mississippi, Dorothy
on her parents' original farm. Uncle
George died in the early l960's at about age 70; Aunt Ruth survived him by at
least a decade. Noel had five children
who have scattered all over the southland; whereas, Dorothy married late in
life and remained childless. My first
visit with them in Mississippi in the spring of 1986 gave me the chance to meet
Dorothy, Noel and most of Noel's family.
Noel has since become deceased.
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| Ben, Henry, Ed, Gertie, Annie |
Uncle Ben married Annie Smidt. Not long after their marriage they headed off
to Columbus, Montana where they engaged in farming and brought six children
into the world. Apparently there had been some question about whether Uncle Ben
or my father should take over the homestead.
It appears that my grandmother favored the younger of the two. When
my father married in January 1916, Aunt Annie is reported to have said
with some decisiveness: "We're going to Montana!" And they did.
When Grandma Assink died in 1933, something was worked out so that Ben's
family could return and take over the homestead, while my parents availed
themselves of the opportunity to move to a farm south of Kanawha belonging to my mother's family. Uncle Ben continued on the old Assink
homestead until about 1946 when the farm was sold by the family, and Ben moved
to a farm a mile north of there. Two of
Uncle Ben's family, George and Alfred, would stay in the Kanawha area, while
Henry and Alvin settled in southern California.
Helen married and made her home in Pella, Iowa; and Harlan became a
commercial air line pilot and lived in Virginia. Harlan would die in a tragic white water
rafting accident in Alaska in the late 1980's.
Uncle Ben died in his 70's while living in retirment in Kanawha. Aunt Annie survived him by about 15 years.
My father was the next in the
family, being born in 1889. He would
live on the homestead until 1934. After
the death of his father in 1908, he and his brothers, along with Grandma, ran
the farm until Grandma moved to Kanawha in 1915. My father had just previously met Hilda
Eekhoff whose family had moved from a farm in Wright County into the town of
Kanawha and had begun attending the Kanawha Christian Reformed Church. Hilda, I am told, served on occasion as the
organist for the Kanawha church. Since
it was a pump organ requiring someone to keep air pumped into it, my father
enlisted in that yeoman's role, a factor which may have incited or enflamed his
attraction for her and led him at age 26 to marry the 19-year old blond who
would become my mother. My parents were
married on January 20, 1916, nearly 13 years before I would come on the scene.
Aunt Annie was just younger than my
father and was probably his favorite sibling.
She married Bill Alke, a German Lutheran, and moved with him 30 miles
away to Titonka where they set up farming and raised a family of eight
children. Their oldest son, Henry, would
die of spinal meningitis while in the Army during World War II. A daughter, Mary, would marry a Lutheran
minister. The others, Christina, John,
George, Volina, Anna, Ida and Bill, all settled in various locations throughout
northern Iowa. As of this writing these
cousins all continue to maintain fairly close contact with my brothers and the
other Assink cousins in Iowa. Uncle Albert died a short time
before or after Grandpa Assink in 1908 at about the age of 15. He was slender
and a blond. My father remarked on
occasion that I resembled him somewhat.
Uncle Henry, the youngest in
Father's family, went off to the Army in World War I from 1917 to 1918 and
served as a medic. He saw frontline
action in France and was seriously wounded by a mortar shrapnel. A telegram came to Grandma Assink notifying
her that her son had been killed in action.
Some time later, however, she received a letter from Henry in which he
mentioned that he had been wounded and was in the hospital. Hope was greatly aroused when the date
indicated on the letter was later than the presumed date of his death. A second letter, shortly after that, verified his continued life. Uncle Henry
was partially disabled as a result of that experience and later acquired diabetes.
He never married, lived with his mother until her death in 1933, and then lived
alone until his own death in the early 1960's.
I got to know Uncle Henry quite well.
He would often come to the farm where I first lived and repair things or
help out wherever he could. Later, while
my parents would visit him after church on Sundays, I would drink many a cup of
coffee at his house, sweetened with saccharine and lightened with carnation
condensed milk. He was a very kind,
gentle and pliable person, not above bending an ear to a young lad. He was devout, and often served as an elder
in the Kanawha Christian Reformed Church.
I wish now that I had asked him more about his experiences in the first
World War.
As I look back on my father's
family, I see them as generally placid, kind, hard-working and steady people,
seldom afflicted with the vice of excessive aggressiveness or guilty of
reckless adventure. They seemed to be
contented and free of bitterness and resentment. They talked freely, but were
certainly not characterized by joviality or boisterousness. In keeping with their temperament, they
tended to be physically rather heavy, my father and Uncle Henry being
exceptions to that rule. None of them
were very expressive of the intimacies of their Christian faith, but all of
them were faithful church-goers and concerned about being good Christian
people. Uncle Ben, who had lived a
couple of decades in Montana, seemed somewhat less devoted to the faith, a
judgment based, perhaps too much, on his tendency to be a "oncer" in
his attendance at services on Sunday.
While I never really got to know Uncle George in Mississippi, the fact
that he sought to enter the ministry suggested something about his commitment
to the faith. I was pleased to discover
later in my visit to Mississippi in 1986 that his children and grandchildren
would continue to be firmly established in that faith, most of them associated
with Methodist churches in the South.
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