Kleinhesselink, Arend John, 1832-1903

KLEINHESSELINK

Posted By: Lydia Lucas - Volunteer (email)
Date: 10/19/2011 at 19:58:23

Alton Democrat
May 10, 1902

PIONEER DAYS

A. J. Kleinhesselink was over from Orange City Wednesday and made us a pleasant call. Thirty years ago last Tuesday Mr. Kleinhesselink left Waupon, Wisconsin in a covered wagon with his wife and two children for the wilds of Sioux county. There was no Alton in those days and no railroad station nearer than LeMars. It took them twenty-four days to drive through and they were hard days of toil through rain and muddy roads most of the way. At the end of his journey Mr. Kleinhesselink and his family halted on the wild prairies four miles west of town where he took up the half section he owns today--one of the finest farms in the county. He brought with him five head of work horses and probably the first blooded stallion brought into the county. He had shipped his implements including a threshing outfit and lumber for a house to LeMars and soon had one large building for his family and stock and implements. That spring he and two hired hands he brought along broke seventy acres of land and put in a crop. Then the grasshoppers came and the rest is public history. That fall Mr. Kleinhesselink and his men threshed what little grain their few neighbors had. For several years they struggled along by hard licks and then the grasshoppers went and prosperity came. Those were trying days but they were lived down. Today Mr. Kleinhesselink lives at ease in Orange City in a nice property. He has seen his family grow up about him with plenty of life's necessities--and he has to his credit a thousand dollars worth of property for every year he has lived in the county.

(The Sioux County Iowa Cemetery Index gives his full name and life dates as Arend John Kleinhesselink, 9 Nov. 1832 - 29 Oct. 1903, and his spouse as Johanna Theodora.)