In Progress...last revised July 14, 2019 ... He was the son of a man with first name Halvor. By the Scandinavian rules of his era, his surname would be Halvorsen if Danish, Halvorson if Swedish. Norway was still under Denmark at the time of his birth, causing -sen to be correct for him.

Jens' youngest survivor, a son nicknamed Sego, was born in Texas, but in a decade of controversy. He was maybe age 6 when his father, Jens, died. This Texas-born son would then be about 12, when learning about the knifing of a close-by Norwegian neighbor, in their "very same" Van Zandt County. The man had been a farmer noticeable for his good deeds and his family's intelligence. The Norwegian custom would have been to discuss fully his death. Children were not only allowed in the room, but also expected to learn lessons from whatever they heard in grown-ups' conversations. The neighbor had died brutally stabbed, not face-to-face, but in the back, by a non-Norwegian. This happened while standing in line for his mail at a local store that did double-duty as a post office, his killer coming from behind him. The murderer would not go to prison for another nine years, and, even then, was only imprisoned for three. Was this condoned by certain of the "Americans" present? Jens' son may have concluded that "letting some of his Norwegian-ness go" seemed a small price to pay, to avoid being "noticed in a bad way, by the wrong people".

The -sen spelling was, thus, used by Jens' church and elder children whenever naming Jens, but not by his youngest children. Not educated in Norway, where spelling had rules, the youngest, as the newest Americans, instead were taught to "sound-it-out". For the youngest son's surname, two vowels were changed, affecting the name's pronunciation in a way that maybe only a native Norwegian would notice. That son's family headstones, located in Tyler (Smith County) show the new name of HalvErson, also used on the son's paper records.

Rural Norwegian names were a mini-genealogy. His parents gave Jens his mini-genealogy when they baptized him at their church in "Loiten"/"Leuten", in the Hedemarken part of Norway. Business travelers from the growing place of Oslo, if headed further uphill, into mountains, would see Norway's southern farmland turn into Norway's northern conifers inside the church parish. A summary of Jens' baptism, transcribed online at FamilySearch, states Jens' father was "Halvor Hansen", meaning a son to somebody with first name Hans. Jen's mother was "Beerte Jensdr". This was similar to Jens' wife being called "Berthe Olsdtr" in Jens' marriage record. (LANGUAGE NOTE: In Norwegian and Danish, called Norsk and Dansk by them, multiple of their words, such as "datter" and "familie" and more, were very similar to English. His mother, "Beerte", was a daughter to an older Jens. His wife "Berthe", pronounced "Bearty", was a daughter to a man with first name Ole. Thus, -dr and -dtr were two different abbreviations for daughter, a word spelled fully in Norwegian as -datter, sometimes seen as -dotter. The similarities made English much easier to learn for them, than it would be, for example, for Czechs arriving in Texas later.)

We know from his mother's names that baby Jens was given his maternal grandfather's first name. Only a first name was needed, locally, to identify that grandfather, given that the parish of Jens' birth was so rural and small that "everybody knew everybody".

That youngest son of Jens ultimately went to Tyler, Texas, in Smith County, just east of Van Zandt, and married an "American" there. He became a widower with young children, then married a second woman in Tyler, also "American" and had two more children. The second wife survived. She translated things in a way that native Norwegians would never have done, also seen in his sister Eline's family.

The findable Jens Halvorsen was thus turned into the unfindable "James Halverson" in the "father spot" on some death records. Making things harder for heirs looking for the earliest records, Sigurd dropped his correct first name also. Even more difficult, he was not consistent. He seemed to use S.C. in public, at the time of meeting and marrying his first wife, Fannie. The nickname Sego, on his stone, was apparently used by family, in private. At his second marriage, he switched in public to his middle name of Christian, maybe as the second wife, Laura, liked it.

Jens and his wife Berthe married back in the old church in Norway, that record finadable at FamilySearch using Jen's birth address. Family trees might use older spellings, seen in paperwork brought here from Norway. The most common, "Loiten" in "Hedemarken" is merely a re-spelling, not a different place.

(Jens' wife is buried as "Bertha Halverson", in Tyler, with spellings those her son preferred. As a long-lived elderly person, she stayed for several decades with the family of her and Jens' youngest surviving daughter.).

Jens and Berte had multiple children in Norway, before moving with a large group of old neighbors to Texas. The group helped to found the second Norwegian community In Texas. Their arrival justified the move of services out of members' homes to a formal church large enough to hold everyone. Getting a minister who spoke Norwegian and who could teach was difficult.

Old rules were still in use for Jens' older children, when they were baptized back in Norway. "Jensen" was the surname given at baptism to Eline, the youngest known Norway-born daughter, buried as "Ellen" in the same town as Sigurd/Sego (in Tyler, TX). Giving females the same surname as the boys was a sign of modernizing by the ministers filling out the records. (Were any of her older sisters baptized as the earlier Jensdatter/Jensdotter?)

Things kept changing.

Once in Texas, those Norway-born children still in their parents' houses typically were re-assigned their father's surname, British-style, trying to fit with local ways, but the Norwegian spellings of his surname was kept. The Four Mile church records use the correct name of Halvorsen. (That way, officials "here in the new place" could send for records "back home", if needed.)

Jens died in 1859. His survivors were to be officially interviewed within the coming months. His wife and children had their first census in the US, in 1860, at their farmhouse in Van Zandt County, Texas, where we assume Jens would have died, Their interviewer mis-spelled Halvorsen horribly, did so for all in the family, so that record can be the hardest to find online.

Jens' youngest was the only child "of the right age" called Sigurd in Van Zandt County. To confirm he was Jens' child, Jens' no longer there after his death, we see Jens' wife Berthe in the same house as Sigurd, and some older sisters' with records saying Jens was their father (Britishized as Julia and Ellen, they were, in reality, Julianne and Eline).

Again church records at their church, Four Mile Lutheran, its building since relocated, still use the correct Halvorsen. There was an earlier census, the 1850. Jens' family was still in Norway, when others in their church were counted in Texas.

Some Norwegian neighbors with "strange" names by British standards would see their names done accurately in their censuses. Accuracy depended on the particular "American" interviewing, maybe on their willingness to ASK for the correct spelling? Maybe those brought up in more middle class places back in Norway were allowed to insist on things being done correctly, while those brought up as working class were expected to give-in or be punished by "their betters"?
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Further below are more of Jen's children's marriages. Below, too, are web addresses for the handwritten 1860 Census, Jens' typed birth summary, and that of daughter "Ellen " (Eline).

Some history is needed to make sense of their migration into Texas, given that the majority of Norwegians went "up North" instead. Two history books and the church history (at the Four Mile Lutheran website) tell much, as do news articles kept at TxGenWeb and a cemetery list at Ancestry's Rootsweb.

STORIES OF NEIGHBORS & THE MIGRATIONS: Norway's rules are more like ours now. Why did some neighbors not have changing surnames? ANSWER: Matching surnames for father and son was an option, but chosen rarely, merely not required until some decades after they left Norway.

The families sticking to one surname early tended to be people of means, who could travel for education or work, maybe with ancestors who emigrated to Norway from elsewhere, or who took city occupations, so moved inside Norway. Theirs was a time of no phones or internet. Those who moved did want relatives to be able to find them. One common way to find someone was to send letters to a postmaster asking for a family's last known address.

Among Jens' future neighbors were two families with urban occupations back in Norway. Both had relatives or in-laws from Denmark who had decided to become Norwegians.

When coming to Texas, they were still people of means. We see this, as the two sets quickly bought extra-large amounts of land once in Texas, over a thousand acres each, not having to "save-up" first. Each had an adult who was a professional writer. The two writers were involved, but at different times, in running the same pro-emigration newspaper, back in the city of Christiansand, Norway. They were considered social reformers, as their newspaper advocated temperance and other changes, not just emigration. Migrating was seen as a way to get away from those in Norway whose actions and abuses stopped the rest from advancing economically. Often cited were usurious rates charged for loans, instead of reasonable rates. (Maybe the immigrants to Texas did not understand that social class restrictions could be as daunting in the southern US? The education needed for "moving up" inside cities was easy to find in Norway. It would be drastically underfinanced, historians say, in the American South.)

The native Norwegians were highly literate, so had multiple newspapers and eventually many bookshops and magazines. Both writers helped start Jens' new church once in Van Zandt County, their church services at first run by these "lay people" out of their houses each Sunday, until they could get a trained minister who spoke Norwegian. One's father had been a minister back in Norway, so things did not "get too far off-track", while they located a completely-trained minister.

Jens came afterward with his large family and many other families, but from a different part of Norway. The increase in congregation size at Four Mile justified moving into their first formal church building.

Before Jens came, a county line newly drawn by non-Norwegians quickly sliced these first Norwegian settlers into two groups, the two writers to be on opposite sides of the new line. The former pro-emigration newspaper publisher, Johan Reierson, found his family put in Kaufman County, just west of Van Zandt. Johan used his middle name, so was called Reinert Reierson. sometimes J.R. Reiereson, both avoiding a change of his first name to John, as the Brit-descended would prefer.

Once in Texas, JR turned into a businessman (store, mill, boarding house, etc), excited about the opportunities in a place where new businesses by his social class would be encouraged, not stopped. His father, Ole, came with him, buying over 1400 acres in 1846, in the mother county of Henderson. The father previously had had two urban occupations, as a schoolteacher and with a watch business, while the family was of record at Vestre Moland church in Norway. (It still exists, its modern mail address being Lillesand.)

Reinert and his brother Christian went to America, to scout locations for emigration. Back at the Reiersons' paper in Christiansand, a pro-temperance writer named Elise Tvede was recruited to more or less run the paper. (They were not unknown to each other, had been childhood playmates.)

Despite seeing other places that he liked, JR chose Texas, instead of the Upper Midwest. An old-time Midwestern historian who covered both northern and Texas Norwegians (the Norwegian-speaking Rasmus Anderson, a son of immigrants) discovered the reason. Land was just fifty cents an acre in Texas, much more expensive in the north. This made a thousand acres achievable.

A different history source, written in Texas much later, in 1971, covering Norwegians, said Reierson, based on letters written, had narrowed the best choices to Wisconsin, Minnesota or Iowa. A last minute visit to Texas and an encounter with Sam Houston changed his mind.

(The earlier and later histories disagree as to the timing of the meeting with Sam Houston. The recent Texas version of Reierson's adventures, copyrighted in 1971, was much shorter, made it seem that the meeting with Houston happened upon reaching Texas. It was put out by the Texas Institute of Cultures, which still runs a museum well worth visiting in San Antonio, John R. McGiffert the Executive Director back then. The Institute's research team had a big disadvantage, as the people they researched had long been dead. Writing back in the1880s, Rasmus Anderson could and did personally exchange letters with some of his subjects. He could ask new questions while they could still answer. )

Anderson thus learned some "extra things", about the group's difficulty in getting to Nacogdoches, TX. He knew they went there via another town in Louisiana with almost the same name, Natchitoches, LA, (From the port of New Orleans, there was a steady series travelable waterways (mostly bayous) that angled NW toward Natchitoches, still in Louisiana. Travel turned difficult only when the Reiersons had to hoist themselves and their cargo up some sort of rapids or falls. The hoisting was not a total success. Some goods/supplies were lost.

Rasmus Anderson then said Reinert Rieresen left the Reiersons' spot in Nacogdoches to visit Austin. There, he met the intelligent Sam Houston.

Houston had shifted very recently, from being a President of the Texas Republic, to pushing for the Republic's annexation by the US. Mr. Houston invited the Norwegians to settle in what was initially Henderson County. Did he hope their literacy meant they would take his side politically, in whatever was to come?

Both histories give different timing to the meeting with Sam Houston, but the same outcome. The Reiersons took Houston's advice and went to Henderson County. (Created out of Henderson, later, were the Halvorsens' Van Zandt County, its future seat to be Canton, and, further west, where some Reiersons would settle, Kaufman County, its seat to be called Kaufman).

Ole Reierson purchased his large tract of land.at the south end, in the part to remain as Henderson County. Its future county seat would be Athens.

Reinert's brothers, George and Christian brought a group with 50 more settlers for the new settlement, called Normandy, name now changed to a British-sounding Brownsboro. Elise and Wilhelm came in Oct. 1847,. She, again,was the pro-temperance writer so helpful to the Reiersons' newspaper back in Christiansand. A Lutheran minister's daughter, she was one of the first women to become a schoolteacher, did so at age 19. She left behind parents buried in Norway, a biography of her father, Rev. Twede, at his Findagrave page. Her father's congregation faced famine conditions and other problems. These drove Rev. Twede to add agricultural experiments to his workload and to work to improve local education, with a then still young Ole Reierson invited to move in and teach. The biography, written by a Tom (for whom English might be a second language), says, "Ole Reiersen position as both schoolmaster as sexton, officer or employee, at Holt brought him into close association with Pastor Tvede, and the Reiersen children were playmates of Tvedes gifted daughter Elise, later Elise Waerenskjold."

She had had an amicable parting from her first spouse, a whaler who was an inventor, back in Norway, no children, before she joined the newspaper. The second marriage of Elise became final, once in Texas. Her better-suited second spouse spelled his name as Wilhelm Warenskjold/ Waerenskjold, pronounced Vanshaw. He would later have Civil War records as William Van Shaw, when using his real name became too difficult.

According to the Institute's history, Reinert and his brothers had encouraged a set of 50 to come to south Henderson County. Elise would write, later, that JR wanted the set of 50 to pick high ground, just as he had done. They chose "bottomlands" instead. Many would die, in their first year or two in the bottomlands. Comfortably colder weather was first seen at their arrival, fooling them. Its season ended. People began dying. (Wetlands and warm weather meant mosquitoes laying eggs. Mosquitoes were not yet suspected of causing disease. Coating skin with animal grease as the natives did, or rolling in the mud as buffalo would do, could reduce the biting, but arriving settlers would see those things as "too dirty".)

An online copy of the Institute's Norwegian history is kept at Texas A&M (true in 2019) It might still exist, if not able to get copies from the Institute:

MaysWeb.TAMU.edu/sage/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2018/08/Norwegian-Texans-282.pdf

To rid themselves of the sickness, Elise's young family moved north, into what became Van Zandt County, the same time as Reinert moved his family north, there maybe for or five years before Jans' and Berthe brought their already large family. Elise's family would not quite match in size, as Elise had too many who died as infants or toddlers.

Ole Reierson died in 1852, buried at the Norwegian cemetery in Brownsboro. In 1852, Elise and Wilhelm still felt good about choosing Texas. In a letter written back home to the Morgenblatt paper that year, Elise said she disagreed strongly with a French-written piece that was, instead, negative about Texas. She said her group had found people in Texas to be pleasant (maybe thinking of Sam Houston?) and the crops good. She praised the fact that living on prairie land meant they never had to fell trees before planting, as they had to do in Norway, and that there were no worries of frost killing things planted too early, that she liked sleeping outdoors when they traveled.

However, her experiences would change later. There would be murders, so maybe not all Texans were pleasant. There would be worrisome insects and droughts that ate-up savings, causing her to write years later that she had to sell magazine subscriptions to survive. It would have been hard for Berthe as well, living in the same place, also widowed by then.

Reinert Reierson was raised as a small-town urban Norwegian, not as rural as many. He, like Elise, probably did not understand that the "good solid freezes" seen in the Midwest would more effectively kill the crop-eating insects that would cause crop failures later at their Texas farms. Elise was able to keep her land in Van Zandt, despite economic stresses, as a son took it over. Would Berthe keep hers? Her one surviving son did not farm. Both widows, Berthe and Elise, moved with adult children to another county, Elise's burial would be in Hamilton County, Berthe's in Smith. Left behind were the graves of their spouses. Jens in 1859 and Wilhelm in 1866 were buried where they had put their hopes, in Van Zandt County, both at Four Mile, on former Warenskjold land.

War began in the early 1860s. The Four Mile Church historians say the Norwegians were normally anti-slavery, agreeing with other sources. If they particularly liked Sam Houston, they would have sided with him in his opposing secession by Texas. However, in an 1862 letter to his son Oscar Reierson (stranded in Virginia while two brothers enlisted in Texas?), Johan Reinert Reierson, aka JR, sounded gung-ho for the Confederacy, spoke as if he expected the worst from Yankees, despite not knowing any, worried in an 1863 letter about prices of livestock and corn, manufacturing enough iron for guns, and his ideas about machines to make thread. There was no mention of Sam Houston and his warning against secession, nor that slavery was wrong. He spoke of competing Confederate factions and his hope that Europeans would side with the South. He was calling himself John R., no longer Johan. He mentioned going to Mexico in order not to be "subjugated", so clearly he had no accurate idea about what Yankees would be like if they came, but there was a lot of propaganda to sort through. There was no mention by him of the wrongness of slavery

Rasmus Anderson would repeat what was well-known elsewhere, that Norwegians generally were anti-slavery. He indicated, however, that his contacts in Texas did not dare to express their true opinions in public.

Elise's spouse, Wilhelm, would find himself, in effect, conscripted into the Confederate army. At that time, maybe his choice, maybe not, his surname was Britishized as Van Shaw Elise's surname stayed Warenskjold in her writings, as she refused the Britishized name of Van Shaw.

Elise's land had been on new Van Zandt County's suddenly drawn edge with new Kaufman County. She and Wilhelm had unofficially given land to the church at its beginning, but she did not officially donate those two acres for the two-county church graveyard until the 1870s, after he had died.

Jens died too early to read her later work, but Elise is remembered for one of her topics in 1860, while her spouse still lived, in the year or so after the Civil War had ended. Was she the first to write about the excess number of murders in Van Zandt County?

She suspected the excess murdering was caused by too many putting revenge and honor above not sinning against God. (It's ironic that her own husband would be a target of murder, before the 1860s ended.) The cultural difference would partly die away, once Britain banned dueling, but an honor-and-revenge subculture would live longer in the American South

MAKING THEIR OWN TOWNS. Their little colony's main organizing family (the Reiersons) had gone first to Nacogdoches, then to Henderson County, then to Kaufman.. Nacogdoches was what pioneers might call a "jumping off spot". At the emerging state's edge, it was a place to stay while picking some place more permanent in the wllder interior.

Nacogdoces was across the future state line line from Natchitoches, Louisiana. (Both towns were "sound It outs" of the name for a tribe of natives known under the Spanish. Natchez, Mississippi, and the roadway called the Natchez Trace were maybe named for that tribe, as well.)

Nacogdoches was at the northeast tip of what soon to cease to exist, the short-lived "Republic of Texas". The USA agreed to annex the whole Republic of Texas (not as wide as the modern state) on July 4 of 1845. All legal steps were not completed until the end of Dec, in 1845.

Stories about what happened next vary. According to the historians of Four Mile's Lutheran Church, the Reiersons wanted their first settlement in Henderson County to be called Normandy. [The name matched the region in France named for Norsemen/ "Northmen", aka the Normans, who then engineered an invasion of England, at which point their leader, William of no last name, was nicknamed the Conqueror.).

The Norwegian-American historian, Rasmus Anderson, confirmed the Normandy name and that the tiny Texas place was very quickly re-named Brownsboro. (That was a British name, indicating British were nearby. Wiki's Brownsboro historians say the two were separate places, with Normandy started in 1845, Brownsboro in 1849, the latter by a man who put in a toll bridge, the former to shrink due to a high death rate in 1847. They did say that Normandy did manage to have a Lutheran church and cemetery by 1853 (about the same time as Four Mile had its built), but then that, quickly thereafter, Normandy was merged into Brownsboro, with the cemetery continuing to have a chapel until the 1920s

By the writing of Anderson's book, copyrighted in 1895, one of his correspondents, Elise, died in Jan. of that year, so perhaps she had no chance to see how he interpreted whatever she had told him. He had noted in his preface that many of the people he had spoken with were now elderly, from the generation of his immigrant parents, and his worry that elderly memories can fail.

The Lutheran Church at Four Mile formed specifically in 1853-1854, he said He added:

"The majority of the Norwegians in Texas are from Hedemarken. The first two who came from there at the instigation of Andreas Gjæstvang, Postmaster in Løiten, Hedemarken, were an old school teacher, Engelhoug, and an elderly farmer, Knud Olson."
SOURCE: "The first chapter of Norwegian immigration (1821-1840) : its causes and results", by Rasmus B. Anderson, writing in 1895. The quote comes from p. 382 of the fourth edition, published in 1906 in Madison, Wisconsin, preserved online at archive.org.

Brownsboro was the oldest surviving town of old Henderson County, he said. Reinert and Elise's families left Brownsboro. More went with them than stayed with Ole Reierson and others, family remained in what was the south end of Henderson County.

The Midwest historian commented that the tiny town of Normandy/Brownsboro was in the particular bottomlands associated with the Trinity River. What he called "ague" was then contracted by too many. (Ague was the old word for symptoms of malaria, given by bites of infected mosquitoes, which could, but did not always, turn into full-blown malaria. Flare-ups were eventually controlled by quinine. Doctors in their era did not understand swamp-breeding mosquitoes as the cause, nor the relief medication. They assumed the problem was "bad air", especially at night, called "miasma".)

Higher land had been purchased at what became the more popular Four Mile area. That new land was reached on New Year's Eve of 1847.

Judging by the age of their Texas-born son in 1860, Jens' had brought his own family in the early 1850s. His family of Halvorsens and a number of others came from Hedemarken, a remote place in the interior of Norway.

The newspaper families, in contrast, originally came from villages near the seaside port and shipping town of Christiansand, located on the sea and thus Denmark, a bit to its east. To reach their Halvorsens, someone coming from Christiansand (now Kristiansand), turned north at the Olso fjord, went a considerable distance to the fjord's head, through or past Oslo (then called Christiania), to, finally, the Glomma River, travelling along it a considerable distance, to the point where farmland turned into forests.

By Hedemarken, Rasmus Anderson meant what is spelled today as Hedmark. (Norwegian rules repeatedly changed toward simpler spellings.)

Relatives moved together as a support system, in a time of no EMS, no daycare. The elderly farmer, first name Knud, last name Olson or Olsen, was known to bring his daughter with him, but her own household moved on to Bosque County. Multiple Knudsen households were close neighbors to Jens' wife in her 1860 Census. Were they sons of that Knud?

Remember that the maiden name of Jens' widow was Berthe Olsdatter. If Berthe was Ole Hansen's daughter, is it possible that Knud Olson/Olsen was Ole's son, so her brother?

The Hedmarkians were not connected in some personal way to the Reiersons. The story told by Rasmus Anderson was that the postmaster subscribed to their newspaper. He was aware when Reinert and Christian left for America in 1846 that they had put someone named Tvede in charge.
Upon visiting their office, presumably to learn more about emigration, Andreas was surprised to find that the person named Tvede was a woman.

The Reiersons had originally come from the Vestre Moreland parish in Norway. (No longer an address, the church still exists, but its modern post office is at Lillesand.) Again, the earlier arriving families to Four Mile church came from nearer Christiansand, right on the sea, easy access to the island-like city of Copenhagen in Denmark, while the later-arriving Hedmark people were considerably up river from the gigantically long Oslo fjord, very rural, their remote mountains bordering Sweden's interior.

The migrants to Four Mile were at the front of a tidal wave out of Norway.

Some historians say that, as seen in Ireland, about half of Norway's population would leave. These were mostly the younger families, leaving the upper classes behind to "make do", without the cheap, young labor previously required to "live high".

Again, an important neighbor in Van Zandt was the former female editor of a controversial newspaper back in Norway (controversial due to promoting emigration to America). She and the paper publishers, her childhood playmates, the Reiersons, hoped that a large number of emigrants out of Norway would force Norway into more reforms than had already begun (This was achieved by lower aristocrats, themselves abused by higher aristocrats, sons by fathers, agreeing to slowly eliminate its aristocracy. No one born after 1821 would be given aristocratic rights while inside Norway, though they might still be allowed them if in the former parent country of Denmark would take them in as part of its aristocracy.)

The Norwegian cities' populations previously had been growing, due to people leaving farms for urban work. Now, they would leave for "Amerika".

Back in Norway, a fort city called Christiania (then Kristiania, now Oslo) saw its edges urbanize beginning in the 1700s. The Halvorsens' ultimate county of Hedmark began as part of Akershus, much larger then. Akershus laid along Oslos's edge, then spun off off several times a more rural part.

Hedemarken, aka Hedemark, was the last county created for the Halvorsens's birth parish of "Loiten". Its most famous resident is thought to be the artist Edvard Munch, born decades after the future Texans left. (He was famous for his modern painting of a screaming man.)

Many born in Norway, now in Texas, would have sided with Sam Houston in his desire to stop secession.

Speaking honestly of the old "Texian" past was taboo in some Texian places and times, so not all is known. Had Sam Houston hoped for the Norwegians' votes and assistance? to be on his side? South Carolinians led the push to expand slavery into new places, wanting to do so without getting permission first from the rest of the US.

The big churches had already split over slavery itself, northern Baptists upset that southern Baptists would not renounce slavery as the southern Quakers had done, ditto for the Methodists and the Presbyterians, splitting into North and South. There would be a big vote in Texas; Several counties voted with Sam Houston in saying no to secession, yet Gov. Houston would lose his request to not secede.

Jens did not live to see the outcome. The seceders were led most vividly inside the US Congress by Preston Brooks of South Carolina, a man not ashamed of using his gold-headed cane as a weapon when someone disagreed with his views. He saw the expansion of slavery into newly emerging states as a state right not to be denied to the South Carolinians.

According to the Four Mile church history, its Norwegians were, in contrast, opposed to slavery. Texans from Germany and Sweden and Mexico also wanted all of it to disappear. They thus, opposed any secession allowing slavery's expansion into new places.

Reinert Reierson (first name Johan) had been vilified in Norway, as his views and his brother Christian's views on emigration became known. At one point, however, one of the Reiersons was guilty of suggesting former countrymen as potential slavelike servants for southerners. A Christian Reierson (maybe his brother? maybe somebody's son?) put a notice in a Galveston news article, viewable at TxGenWeb. . Christian's notice (editorial? ad?) advocated replacing slave labor around Galveston with unmarried Norwegians brought in cheaply, paid little. He said he thought he could attract about 200. Sounding not as idealistc as the others, he made clear that he expected to be paid for his services. It's not clear that JR or Elise would have approved of his offer, as they seemed to be trying to raise their Norwegian emigrants up, not push them back down.

Wilhelm and Elise had a thousand acres, so could afford to donate some to their church. Their Lutheran cemetery grew to add a separate section for non-Lutheran burials. The Norwegians called these "American", which apparently meant "not Norwegian Lutherans". Local people of color were allowed to bury their own dead in the same section as the white "Americans".)

Death in 1859 made Jens and an Ellis Halversen countable as two of the four Halvorsen graves at the church's Four Mile Cemetery. All four Halvorson graves were in the first 15 years of burials, with no more Halversons buried there after 1862.

Widowed "too young", parenting alone for the last months, Berthe was age 48 for her 1860 census count. At their census time in July, she was of record actively farming in Van Zandt County. Of the six children remaining in her farmhouse, the eldest two were especially helpful ages for a new widow, "Inger" 17 and "John" 15, with one other, "Anne", also able to do field or barn work as an adult might. The rest probably tried to be helpful, too, but were only ages 10, 9 and 7. The interviewer came to visit on July 25, writing some things very clearly, but, just as clearly, scribbling what he did not understand.

As to places, their settlement area was "Prairie Beat"-- very clear. Their post office was at a store, probably in the hamlet with the original church site, its name abbreviated as "4 M. Prairie"--kind of clear. (Like Prairieville, seen in some Kaufman County records, these hamlet names were all unofficial. Like many tiny settlements back then, they never incorporated. mapmakers most likely guesses where to put the names, mad the letters large in tiny county maps so anywhere along the line of letters could have been the actual place.)

Multiple weddings in the family are easy to find, as just the county name is needed-- the first ones were for four of Jens' and Berthe's daughters .

The first two daughters to marry were recorded in Van Zandt County, before the Civil War ended and, thus, before Berthe's leaving of that county and thus her losing or selling Jens' farm:

*The first, in Jan. of 1860, "Hellen" (Helene? Oline? Oleane?), to "Perry" (Per?) Pearson. She clearly left home before the 1860 Census happened in July of 1860.

*The second, in Dec. of 1864, of "Anne" to "E Alberson".


Berthe had apparently moved the rest to Kaufman County, before the two weddings in that county.

*The third, in Nov. of 1868, showed "Ellen" (the daughter baptized as "Eline" back in Norway), to "Elef Albertson",

*The fourth, much delayed, in Jan. of !875, "Julia A.", to B. Olsen [Burrell Olsen]


There was a last child to wed:

*Fifth, Feb., 1877, known son Sigurd C., going by S.C., married Fannie Roberts elsewhere, in Smith County. He very likely had gone to work for others, his parents' farm at Four Mile presumed lost or sold well before then.
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Going back to the cemetery, one other Halvorsen died in 1859, the same year as Jens (in a time of cholera?). That party was Ellis, perhaps another child of Jens and Berthe, but maybe one of Jens' other relatives. Neither a birth year nor an age survived for Ellis, that information perhaps too faded to read at later dates when lists were made.

Four Mile's church history said cholera was an issue that took many of the first settlers, but did not give the main years. These years are presumed not as early as seen in NY and along the Great Lakes. Their church historian noted that childbirth had caused multiple deaths over multiple decades, those mother and child pairs dying together buried in one grave.

Remember, also, that the early 1860s were Civil War years. 1862 saw the birth and death of a Halvorsen infant buried at Four Mile. Ole Berthold Halverson's year of birth was too late for him to be Jens' child. Yet, the babe was clearly named to honor wife Berthe and her side of the family, The tot's middle name was the masculine version of Berthe. ("Berthold" did not mean as strong as a bear, but someone hoped to burn as bright as a candle lit in the dark, able to lead the way.) "Ole" was for Berthe's father. (Again, daughter Eline's baptismal record, back in Norway, verified Berthe's maiden name as one indicating her father's first name had been Ole, as did Berthe's marriage record.)

The maturing son that the newly widowed Berthe buried last at Four Mile was "John", 15 in the 1860 census, He would have been about 18 at his death, buried in 1863 as Johan Halvorsen.

Johan was too young to be baby Ole Berthold's parent by Norwegian standards, but not too young to fight a war by Confederate standards. Did he die of illness, in a farm accident, or of war-related issues? We do not know. A family tree seen online, presumed by one o the older children whose family remembered Norway, says this Johan was the namesake of his older brother Johan, who died as a babe back in Norway.

Again, Johan, the last Halvorsen buried at Four Mile, seems too young to have been Ole Berthold's father. Perhaps Berthe and Jens had an elder son who, like "Hellen", left the house pre-July1860? If the elder son was away during the Civil War, his pregnant wife may have returned to her parents to have their baby? The baby then died and was buried at the local cemetery. Or...?

Unfamiliar with Norwegian names for people or places, the interviewer in 1860, a Mr. Williams, scribbled their birth place, but the scribble appeared the same for all Norway-born in the Van Zandt house Did he really write "Chu Sun Norway" as the majority birthplace, a "best guess" by one volunteering transcriber? There seems to be no such place. The two words, each about 3 or 4 letters, should be something that sounds more Norwegian, less like a Chinese meal?

Was the guessed Chu a mis-read of Chr., an abbreviated for Hedemarken's nearest big city back in Norway, downhill and distant, then called Christiania, to honor the Danish Kings, Norway now independent, so renamed as modern Olso? Was the guessed Sun or Sum, then a mis-read of an abbreviated county name? Both are too scribbled to make out, despite having been repeatedly written for multiple neighbors.

Christiania's name was recognizable to well-read Americans.

How do we find their immigration date, given they came later than the first Norwegian arrivals? on the Amerrican end, there was no such thing as officially required immigration records then. His widowed wife Berthe, however, would tell the interviewer that all children in the farmhouse were born in Norway, except the one listed last, his name spelled as "Sigurd C.", age 7, The child next older, "Ellen", was age 9. Her baptismal record in Norway is online as Eline Jensen, but as a summary only. (The older children may have been born in a different Norwegian parish than was Eline, as their baptisms are not easily found online? Or?)

The method? Count backwards, from 1860, by the ages in July, of the youngest two children, so 9 and 7. That tells us something. They came to America between July of 1850 and July of 1853. (Sometime after Ellen's birth in Norway, her birth no earlier than July of 1850. Sometime before Sigurd's birth in Texas,, his birth no later than July of 1853. This makes it possible to find their paper records and stones, some with precise dates)

The interviewer "sounded out " Berthe's name as "Bearty". Their dialect was thus one that pronounced the "final e", not leaving it silent, as done in English, not turning it into an A-sound as Swedish dialects might do. They thus did not pronounce her name the more Swedish way, as "Bertha", never mind what was guessed by whomever ordered her stone

Daughter Ellen's baptismal record, done back in Norway, showed her true name, born as Eline Jensen. The beautiful spelling of "Eline" turned into an Irish-sounding "Ellen" in time for the 1860 Census, after the Irish had arrive in America in the 1840s, due to the potato famine. Again, the Texas -born son, Sigurd C., as an adult, would skip the spelling issue, simply by listing himself as "S. C.".

Web addresses, for pre-Civil War:
1) Berthe's handwritten 1860 US Census (pages 1 and 2), her name looking more like "Bearty Hovlerson". (A log-in and password must be set-up, to view the image below, doable at no charge):

familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9BS8-VKZ

2) FamilySearch.org has a database with images of Texas marriage licenses, organized by county, granted by the district court, plus the testimony of the minister as to vows actually having been taken, oddly allowing different spellings in the different sections for S.C:

At FamilySearch.org, "Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1965"

The recording of his vows with Fannie Roberts was by Rev. RS Finley of the ME Church , probably that wife's minister. Oddly, Rev. Finley had sounded out the surname as Halberson. This was even though the district clerk had already written a more common mis-spellig, as Halverson, right where Rev. Finley could see. Maybe Sigurd or his new bride commented that "everybody gets it wrong", so the Rev. tried his best to put down a good alternative. Many born in Ammerica in early decades were taught to read, but not to write, so had to trust that the officials writing things down guessed correctly After his first wife died, Sigurd's second wife was a Laura Fielder.

3) Jens and Johan are both among the named grave sites at Four Mile Cemetery, not all of which have birth and death years. The church history says there were many graves they could not identify, left unnamed, not just unlocated.

Also, some people known only as "stranger" are buried with the "Americans". (Accidents and heart attacks happened. No one back then needed an id in their pocket in order to drive a horse and buggy down a strange town's street or to order a drink at its saloon. If they had the bad luck to die alone and away from home, they were a stranger.)

A full list of Four Mile's named graves though 1989 is at Rootsweb, many, but not all, still verifiable via a cemetery walk, but most compiled though a transcribing of old church funeral records by volunteers. The husband of Elise Warenskjold is there, murdered by a resentful "American" in 1866, a mere year after returning. One surviving son stayed on the farm Elise managed to keep in their name, accounting for more burials at Four Mile. A move away took her to Hamilton County with family. Before then, her widowhood had reduced her to a difficult life. Her grandchildren were perhaps the Warenskjold infants buried 1872 through 1877, with no more burials for them later.

The cemetery's last burials at Rootsweb were over one hundred years later, 1989. The cemetery remained active, even after many left The two key volunteers deciphering the old church history have named graves there. They were another husband and wife team, Martin Jensen and Valborg Jensen-Tiller. Before he died, Martin wrote a book called "Four Milers". his death in 1989 thus indicated the date that some excellent detective work ended. A volunteer put the list online at Rootsweb, copyrighting her work as dated 2001-2004, so be sure to giver her credit if using her information. She was volunteer Abby Balderama, That was years ago. She was the Coordinator of the larger Kaufman County project of TXGenWeb .

A map of the three counties amidst others, plus links to them and newer volunteers, can be found at TexenWeb, no login required. They are British-focused very, very short of information on the Norwegians. Begin with TxGenWebCounties.org/Kaufman/

Stories of the graves' occupants are at the church's web site. Ancestry.com has archived the rootsweb page here, no login required:

FreePages.RootsWeb.com/~sturnbo/folklore/files/olson/Four%20Mile%20Prairie.htm

4) Jens' baptismal record, summary only, is viewable at:
FamilySearch.org/tree/person/sources/KF25-WWM

Born Oct. of 1850, daughter's Eline's baptismal record is also part of "Norway Baptisms, 1634-1927", an LDS collection. Only a summary transcribed by volunteers, viewable via this searching address:

www.familysearch.org/search/hrsearch?givenname=eline&birth_place=norway&father_givenname=jens&father_surname=halversen&mother_givenname=berthe&mother_surname=ol*&collection_id=1467014

Her father was listed as Jens Halvorsen; her mother, Berthe, as an abbreviated "Olsdtr" (Ole's daughter). The baptized daughter's name was also that expected by Norwegian rules, not British ones, "Eline Jensen" (note that, sue to its later date, datter/dotter was no longer used by Eline's parents' minister).

Note also that, also true with the Scots comin got America, each woman had the right to continue using her maiden name. Her relatives could always find her should her new family move in an emergency or if she widowed and remarried, after moving away from her parents' place.

Eline's summary gave both her baptismal and birth dates. plus indicate she was baptized in that same church parish as her father. Re-spelled as Løten in modern times, it was spelled differently when they lived there, originally shown in older spellings as Leuthen, still sounded out as Leuten.

Jens and Berthe's next-to-youngest daughter, in a family tree as Julianne, would have her name rendered as Julia or Julia Ann. Remember that many times, Britishness was required to avoid biting taunts or smirking looks from those not taught to respect everyone, but that there were also British-descended who tried to get the names right, but did not know the spelling rules.

Julianne married an Olsen. Their marriage was recorded in Kaufman County, where he was in a census record with his family as Burrell . His last name tells us his father or grandfather had been an Ole somebody, but was most likely NOT related to Berthe's father.

More about life in Norway-- Yes, their name changes can make our heads spin, but if you find their churches, the records will clear that each change of surname marked a new generation. If you were their neighbor, you would know their town or farm, their wife and children, so could handle people being born with the same first name. Urbanizing caused all of that to change, but later.

Eline's original baptismal form would have added some otherwise forgotten relatives' and old neighbors' names (as godparents and witnesses). After a certain date, these forms would have also given all of the adults' more precise addresses (helpful even for people living inside the Løten attendance lines, as, for example, their landlord's estate name or the village address might be determined by occupation. Given their geography, their likely occupations if not farming would be lumber or grain mill or distillery related ).

According to Wiki geographers, that Norwegian parish lays along the line at which Norway''s southern farmland turns into Norway's northern wilderness, with coniferous forest to the north increasing the number of occupations possible. Logs were once floated down the Glomma River, to the seacoast. The farm area occupations varied, from work at corn-growing estates (wheat grown nearby), to work at beer-brewers (probably using wheat) and then distilleries (perhaps using corn and potatoes). One of neighboring parishes in the brewing/distilling area was Stange, which merged later with Romdale (each parishes originally co-incided with a farming estate) overlapped with farming estates. Berthe was perhaps born in Stange, but without knowing her mother's name it is hard to say, as none of the birthdates easily found for Berthe Olsdtr of her era exactly match what is given for her in America. Perhaps a family member found her baptism date and assumed it was a birth date? (Children could be baptized anywhere from to a few days to a few years after birth, delays caused by dangerous weather, worries about catching a current contagion, etc.)

Their county was an inland one, not on the coast, so fishing and shipping were never their occupations, unlike at Christiansand. Without ships bringing goods, their Oslo-based region was slower to urbanize.

Their county was called Hedemarken/Hedmarken when daughter Eline was born, not shortened to Hedmark until much later. Løten's part of that county is a east-lying lakeside region still called Hedemarken/Hedmarken today.

RELIGION. Why were they, pretty much, all Lutheran? Kings chose Norway's state religion, then subsidized the selected church with tax money, kept records at those churches, much as would be done at town halls and courthouses once in the States.

If you had a different religion, you had no subsidy and still had to visit the Lutheran church to make your marriages and births legal. Churches were assigned to families by address, each attendance area called a parish, its priest/minister, a "sogneprest". For rural populations of low density, the minister perhaps circulated across the local villages, something their Four Mile church history clearly says they experienced once in Texas. (Too few Lutherans per town meant borrowing someone else's minister for special occasions, the lay congregation doing minimal things on their own.)

The parish name of Løten always sounded the same, sounded out as "Leuten", but Its spellings changed several times. It began more German-like, written as "Leuthen" and "Leuten" for several hundred years, until 1838. The spelling became Løiten between her father's birth and Eline's. After they left, the church's name was re-spelled in the last round of rule changes, in 1918, as Løten.

Again, the "sogneprest" making the original baptismal record, by her era, typically would have named her godparents (usually relatives chosen by the parents) and baptismal witnesses (old neighbors), and then given more precise addresses,

Once in America, when asked for a birthplace, people might give those more precise addresses, so key to their genealogy, not the larger Løten used in Norway's records. Others might substitute the nearest well-known big city, after watching the "American" listener look confused over the true former address. Still others might think the very last address was really what was wanted, so gave the port of departure, especially if they had spent time there earning money to pay for tickets before shipping out
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In Jens' lifetime, the nearby big city had become Oslo, still called Christiania. It grew from a fort village occupied by the Danish military, into a big city, with a budding university for them, had they stayed.

As the Halvorsen's big city of Christiania/Oslo spread into the countryside, this caused the overburdened mother counties intruded by urban growth to spin off daughter counties. Thus, even if no one moved, ancestors' old records might show changing county names for whatever the currently most rural part was called.

At the beginning, for the people of old Leuthen, their county was first a mega-version of Akershus, next to a then still tiny military district at Oslo. This was Jens' ancestors' most populous mega-county. It ruled their parish until 1757. (The remnant Akerhus, highly suburban, along with the big city of Oslo, are now to the south.)

Akershus spun off Oppland County in 1757. That change was around the time the world welcomed Jens' great-grandparents. (Oppland's old spelling then was Oplandenes amt.)

Opplandes spun off Hedland County in 1781, so in the childhood of Jens' parents. The Oppland remnant is that county (fylke) west of Hedmark. Note that this last and (as of 2019) final county was still called Hedmarken at Eline's birth, shortened later, in 1918, as the parish and town of Løten received their final spelling, now a century old.

ANY NON-HAVORSEN RELATIVES AS NEIGHBORS? The handwritten 1860 US Census showed their Texas neighbors. Most common and nearest were numerous families named Knudsen, to be Britishized at times as Canuteson for some going to Bosque County, plus several Olsens, some British-descended, and others.

A number were marked as born in "Chu Sun Norway", including Jen's children and wife.

IMPORTANT: Whatever names and address are missing from the online transcription might be seen in the handwritten originals archived on microfilm. (Microfilm copies are orderable for viewing if visiting a FamilySearch library.)

5) Their Four Mile church congregation had its own volunteers who wrote its history, not translated from Norwegian to British into recent decades. Their website described the multicounty parish they created in Texas, after an invitation from Sam Houston. There was the fact that many entered through the port of New Orleans. (Other sources add that the decision on immigration was still local, made by the city of the port. If turned away at Boston or New York as too spoor or too sick, then Philadelphia or New Orleans or a Canadian port might still take people. The local immigration gates were not yet shut down by forcing entry through Ellis Island in NY.)

Their history implies the community's people made decisions jointly. Some stepped in as needed to be leaders, women included, but with no "big egos" tolerated.

A drop in crop prices once in Texas hurt many, caused one working widow (widowed neighbor Elise) to sell magazines for a living. Many would have lost land and had to move? Did this eventually happen to his widow, Berte? The last Halvorsen burial at Four Mile was in 1862, as the earlier son had died by then and Sigurd would not marry until late, in a different county . Was having no farm to share with or buy from his sisters' families the reason son Sigurd left the area?

Also in the church history, both the good and the bad--

A funny story reported the eulogy given by a minister, after a request at one funeral that he try out the English he struggled to learn. Had the deceased's "nut" left its "shell" behind?

One of their female leaders (Elise, wife, then widow of their murdered man) had joined the temperance effort back in Norway. She was considered one of Norway's main leaders on that. She continued that once in Texas,.

There was a murder of a Norwegian who tried to set his life by religious principles. He was Wilhelm, Elise's husband. Stabbed in the back, he had been waiting in line, visiting a post office kept at the local store, in Four Mile's hamlet (Big Rock in Van Zandt county also had a post office).

The stabber was a renegade Methodist minister, not Norwegian. The renegade's other mis-behaviors were known to the neighbors and kin of his Norwegian victim, his "American" wife perhaps happy to be finally rid of him by his disappearance. The renegade would be sheltered by non-Norwegians, so not prosecuted for almost a decade. Once finally put on trial, the renegade would only serve three years, before being freed .

The murderer's action and his being protected may have had three causes. From the Four Mile church historians--there was the possibility the murdered victim had accidentally witnessed the renegade's involvement in the hanging of an unnamed three. There was also the renegade's lusty pursuit of a pregnant teen sheltered by her relative, the renegade's unfortunate wife. The still lusting renegade reportedly resented the teen then being moved out of his reach, to the Norwegian murder victim's house for her safety. The third reason comes from the historian in the Midwest who had old letters, including from Elise. In the view of some, Wilhelm's murder was a condoned assassination. Like the other Norwegians, Wilhem was opposed to slavery. Many followed Sam Houston's example in being opposed to secession.

Note that the service of Wilhelm and multiple other Norwegians in the Confederate army was not due to blind loyalty, but a matter of "serve or hang". The "serve or hang" phrase was something noted among family historians of multiple British-descendeds also opposed to secession, mainly those who came to Texas from Kentucky, with one whose father was related to Abraham Lincoln's father. Living in the Bull Creek area, they opposed secession and refused to enlist, instead tried to aid the Germans in Fredericksburg in their refusal to enlist, after being warned the Confederates were sending in "Regulators" or "Engorcers", as they were also called. Those resisters still refusing to enlist were forced to go to Mexico or wait for the "regulators: to ride in, find them, and then shoot or hang them, without a trial, unlikely that newspaper publicity was allowed.

Four Mile church's history, published sometime after 1988, tells some other Texas history also normally "swept-under the rug". Specifically, there was discrimination against them in Texas. This worsened when it became clear their community that they were anti-slavery and thus anti-secession.

For more, see FourMileLutheranChurch.org/forward.htm

This was a working link as of 2019. If that is not viewable, try FourMileLutheranChurch.org. Lutheran headquarters may know of copies

6) HISTORY NOTE-- From non-church historians:

The non-British inside Texas, in general, the Germans and Swedes and Mexicans, many cowboys, not just the Norwegians, typically opposed slavery. One reason? "Do unto others".

Another reason was maybe bigger. Even the "free-thinkers" not belonging to a church felt this way: For too many, conditions in Europe were too close to slavery. Given how bad serfdom was there, they easily imagined how bad slavery was here, then saw examples in Texas and while taking steamboats along the Mississippi River that confirmed their worst suspicions. (Serfdom was not totally outlawed in multiple places until around 1840, a scattered few parts keeping serfdom alive longer, with miners in some parts of Scotland being one of the examples offered.)

Some historians also note there was immense social pressure upon the British-descended males in Texas, to pretend they were in favor of secession and slavery, no matter how opposed personally. If vocal about opposing, a person's children could be subject to ostracism or taunts, the adults, to denial of business and vandalism of property, including arson. (Just one of those going to Mexico was Virginia-born John Hancock, his loyalty to the country similar to that of fellow Virginians, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Their families had owned slaves, but had fought in the Revolution, so would not "throw away" those earlier deaths on a secession. (Enough perhaps still had business connections in Mexico, it having been the parent country to Texas?)

A special US census in 1890 asked surviving veterans for their Civil War service. A surprising number of the "Americans" had served on the Union side, not with the local Confederates. This was accomplished for several by enlisting up north, several in Ohio or Iowa. Going to Mexico or serving on the Union side would also have been options for the Norwegians of recruitable ages, just as it was for the British.

Most of the Norwegians and Germans and Swedish forming Texas communities came pre-Civil War. After many letters written by them, to people "back home", the next waves of immigrants from their places, by and large, avoided Texas. They went, instead, to the states that had been Reinert Reierson's first choices, mainly to Wisconsin and Minnesota and, to a lesser extent, Iowa. These were the next states to form out of territories pre-War, all "on the other side" fof the Civil War.
Coda for Sam Houston at very end.

Copyright, July, 2019, by JBrown, writing in Texas, former resident of Iowa and Minnesota, many Norwegians as beloved neighbors and extra-good teachers in those places, though she was not Norwegian herself. She is neighbor to many beloved in Texas, who disapprove of their ancestors' slave-owning past. .

All rights reserved, 2019. Findagrave has permission to use this at Jens' gravepage. Descendants may copy parts for private family use, but not put them online or otherwise publish them. Giving a link to this page is better

----------CODA----------
FOR SAM HOUSTON.

These Norwegians' original welcomer to Texas, Sam Houston, died in 1863, after being denied a continuance as Texas Governor earlier, at a convention in March of 1861, meeting to to set-up secession by Texas

Houston continued to speak out against the ongoing secession. He warned accurately that the North would win. This was as its economy was industrial (slavery instead encouraged a weaker economy, one that was agricultural, slow to build enough quality rail to carry troops reliably, slow to have factories to mass manufacture rifles, allowing the plantations to grow what they wished instead of food. Many Southern farmers were tempted into growing cotton, expecting that trading cotton with Britain would let them order whatever else they needed from Britain.

No one listened to Houston. A son joined the Confederacy. He reportedly enlisted but it is not clear if "serve or hang" was the recruitment slogan presented to him to encourage his enlistment.

Houston's funeral was boycotted, no fancy statue erected for him until a hundred years after his passing. Many modern Texans have learned to appreciate his sacrifices, even if earlier generations did not fully understand the need.