From Nancy G. Van Valkenburg (Br U) of Huntsville, Alabama

There are many stories of Van Valkenburgs in the National Archives in Washington, D. C. In the summer of 1988, I was able to spend a couple of weeks researching at the Archives and I only began to scratch the surface. While most of the records which are kept at the Archives relate only to military service, there are many clues which lead to information about past Van Valkenburgs.

Our late Dr. Fred VV was interested in the stories of the family. He especially stressed the need to record the stories of the Van Valkenburg women. Sad to say, history seems to be written almost exclusively from the male side of the house. Women marry, take their husbands' names, and their original family name is lost to history. Then again, the women become, and are, Van Valkenburgs when they marry Van Valkenburg men. Usually it is the women who preserve the family records and pass them on to future generations. A researcher must remember to ask women for the records because the records often pass into other families and get lost. "A son is a son ‘til he takes him a wife, but a daughter's your daughter for all of her life."

Thanks to Dr. Fred's emphasis, I was especially interested when I found the story of Susanna Van Valkenburg. Hers was a life of patriotism and sacrifice for her family and her country.

Susanna Alden Richards of Springfield, Marquette County, Wisconsin, married Henry Van Valkenburg of Plainfield, Waushara County, Wisconsin, on September 25, 1860, in Springfield. Susanna, the daughter of Solon and Susanna Richards of Springfield, was born in Sullivan Township, Tioga County, Pennsylvania, on February 1, 1838. Henry, a farmer, was the son of John and Phebe Wagner Van Valkenburg and was born in Fultontown, Schoharie County, New York, August 1, 1830.

When the Civil War broke out, Henry went to serve the Union Army in Co. A, lst Wisconsin Heavy Artillery Volunteers in Virginia. While on duty at Fort Cass near Alexandria, Henry became seriously ill with malaria. Meanwhile Susanna was teaching in Wisconsin. In November 1863 Susanna gave up her job and paid her own way to Virginia to nurse her husband back to health. She boarded in Alexandria and tended her sick husband in the camp. After Henry recovered in December 1863, Susanna stayed on and served as a nurse at army hospitals in Alexandria under the direction of the Christian Commission. She nursed many sick and wounded soldiers and experienced the horrors of the wartime hospital.

In July 1864 Susanna caught typhoid fever and hovered between life and death for about two months. So, on 1 August 1864, after 9 months of caring for the sick herself, she was sent home to Springfield, Wisconsin, at government expense.

Back in Wisconsin, Susanna continued to nurse the sick at local hospitals and her home and she also kept boarders in her home. She worked for a local doctor who valued her services highly. After Henry returned from the war in June 1865, their only child, Nettie Richards Van Valkenburg, was born August 17, 1866, but the child died December 19, 1878.

Henry was never well after he returned and it was up to Susanna to support her family by her nursing. They moved to Plainfield and to Westfield and finally to Oshkosh so that Henry could get work. Henry tried working on a farm and also worked as an attendant at a mental asylum in Oshkosh but his health was such that he had to give them up. Henry attempted for years to get a military disability pension and amassed quite a file of applications and medical records. He worked as a night watchman in a lumberyard and suffered with bronchial problems. The Government indicated that they believed that his problems stemmed from his civilian job and outdoor exposure, but Henry maintained that he worked only within a covered warehouse. Despite many assurances from doctors that Henry's medical problems resulted from his illness during his time in service, the Government would not relent. When Henry died on January 25, 1901, at age 70 in Oshkosh, he had finally been granted a pension from the Government of $6 per month. Henry was interred in Riverside Cemetery in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Susanna applied for a widow's pension on Henry's service and sent many applications. In one application, she stated that if they would not accept the fact that she and Henry had been married, she would send in the entry straight from her Bible. Sure enough, in the next application there was a lithographed page cut from the Bible, which contained all the original information on their marriage. The page shows the marriage of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria and it remains in the file in the National Archives in Washington, D. C. Susanna never managed to get a military widow's pension based on Henry's service.

After Henry's death, Susanna tried to get a pension based on her own service as a Civil War nurse. Again she sent many applications to Washington. Included in them were letters from the doctors for whom she worked in Wisconsin and also statements from doctors who had been through the War with her. The Government refused to grant her a pension because she lacked a certificate showing that she was employed by the Government. Her reply was that, "I did not enlist as a nurse in any hospital not knowing how long my husband would remain in camp in Alexandria - but my services were gladly accepted and I was given free access to the stores of the Christian Commission and the guards at the hospital were ordered to admit me at all times day or night - as a nurse under the direction of Christian Commission. Refusing pay or enlistment I suppose may be the reason that my name was not enrolled on the records of the hospital; as the only recompense which I accepted was transportation home as a nurse on soldiers fare by paper from O. C. Thompson, Superintendent of Christian Commission." So the catch seems to be that because she was not paid, the War Department did not consider that she had served as a nurse.

Susanna struggled on. She kept sending in information to her files although she received rejections. Although she almost died from a serious accident after December 1901, her attorney indicated that she was much better and wished to pursue her claim in July 1902. She suffered so severely from infirmity of age and rheumatism that she was unable to support herself. The last entry in her file sums up most poignantly her patriotic life. It is her letter to the Secretary of the Interior dated September 24th 1902 from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which reads as follows:

"Dear Sir:-

It may not be customary for a widow of a deceased soldier to make a personal plea on her own behalf when striving to secure from the government a pittance for her declining years. But the blood of a great-grandfather who fought and died in the Revolutionary War, and the blood also of a grandfather who fought in and lived through that war, is in her veins and she feels, to-day, that the record for patriotism and service of the men of her family should count for something, now that her soldier husband who went to the Civil War a robust man and came out a physical wreck, is gone. Nor is this all.

This widow fired by the same spirit of patriotism that carried her husband into the ranks, left her home and a lucrative position (as a teacher) and went to Alexandria, Virginia, bearing her own traveling expenses and boarding herself while there, and faithfully worked in the hospitals nine months (under the direction of the Christian Commission) caring for the sick and ministering to the dying, without money and without price; asking nor receiving any recompense other than the consciousness that she was doing all she could to relieve the sufferings of the dear boys in blue, and in that way also serving her country in her direst need, until by over exertion and the poisonous atmosphere of the hospitals, she, too, succumbed to a severe attack of fever and for nearly two months hovered between life and death. But God spared her life, and after the war was over and her husband came home no longer able to do hard work, she went right on doing hospital duty in her humble home in the meantime keeping boarders and doing her own work in order to earn a living for herself and sick husband.

Finally as years crept on and sapped away her youth and strength she was no longer able to do this, and was obliged to mortgage the little property she had managed by strict economy to save, so that her sick husband might have proper medical attendance and the common comforts of life. This mortgage still stares the widow in the face with but meager hope that it will ever be lifted. With a record like this which can be easily and amply substantiated and with the probability that this widow will live but a few years at the longest, she being almost sixty-five years old, it would seem an ungrateful act for the Government to deny the appeal of a rightful daughter of the American Revolution and the widow of the Civil War, the privilege of drawing a pension under the general law instead of what is termed by many the Pauper Act of 1890. If I did not feel and know in my inmost soul that I am entitled to draw under the General law, I would not plead with you to carefully look over the evidence on file. And if after doing so you do not find that justice does appear in my favor I will meekly "pass under the rod."

Respectfully yours,

Susanna A. Van Valkenburg"

Susanna's is but one of many stories to be gleaned from the records of the National Archives, I strongly urge anyone who has the opportunity to research in these files to do so.