Herman (Twin) PALFENIER, REV

                   Rev Herman 83 Years
Burial  20 May 1976 49Minneapolis,Minn
How it all Began[
The taproots of our family tree go deeply into the soil of the past, even down to the sixteenth
century.  The first records  reach down into the blackest chapter in the history of France, that
infamous part when benighted bigotry reached its peak.  A long war between the Catholics and
Protestants had come to an end. Then, secret orders were given by Charles IX, at the instigation
of his mother, Catherine de Medici, that all Huguenots should be killed.  The day set for this
dastardly deed was Aug 24, 1572.  No one can describe what took place.  The slaugher was
complete; over 70,000 people were butchered in homes and streets of Paris and the surrounding
country.  As some historians have said: On this terrible night the very flower of France was
destroyed.  And France never recovered from this horrible bloodbath.  All this inhumanity of man
against man in the name of Christ and Christianity
Our Ancestors were among those persecuted, and one of them sought refuge in a strawstack.
The bestial mob come to the place and began to thrust their knives and spears into the straw,but
missed him.  Many Huguenots fled into Holland,hence our French name.
This all happened four hundred years ago.  How glad we should be that we live in a country in
which freedom of religion is part of the foundation on which our nation is founded.  In the course
of time, they became Hollanders- -only the name remained French.  As far as I know,no orderly
family records were kept.  All that was transmitted  unto this day was by tradition and word of
mouth.  They left a wonderful heritage of faithfulness to Christ and the teachings of the Bible.
When we come to the 18th century,things become clearer and  move into focus.  My paternal
grandfather was born in Naarden,Holland, as was my father also.  He was born 3Jun 1845. Later
they moved to Coevorden, a small town near the German border.  Here he grew to manhood.  My
grandfather was a coppersmith.  He did not reach an old age - - he died of tuberculosis at the
age of forty-five.  My grandmother wasmade of sturdier stuff- - when she was high in her eighties,
she still did not have a single gray hair onher head.  Her maiden name was Scholte.  My grand-
uncle also was strong as an oaktree. When he was 95 years of age, he still went to work every
day in the town hall.  I do not know how  old he got,but it must been close to a hundred.  I don't
think the doctors made much money on him.
My father had one sister.  Her name was  Naatje and she, too,grew to be quite old.  Her married
name was Bennink and she had two children.  They all came to Canada after we were there.
My father was married twice.  His first wifewas a native of Arnhim, Holland,and they had five
children. They lived in Almelo,about seven miles from my mother's home town.  The name of the
town is Vriezenveen.  It has an interesting history.  In the 15th century,the Duke of Almelo called
in the service of a group of North-Friezen who were experts in the draining  of peat bogs to drain
a great tract of land in order to make it fit for farming.  When the task was finished,  the Duke
allowed them to settle on the land without payment of any kind, except they must bring him a
pound of butter every year as a token of their loyalty to him.  His descendents get their  pound of
butter even to this day.
This brings us to the story of my maternal side of the family.  My mother's name was Clazina
Webbink.  Her father was a tailor.  His name was Derk and her mother's name was Treintje,and they
were earnest Christians.  The great hand wrought scissors he used are lying in my desk right now.  I
treasure them dearly- -they still work.  They had two children- -my mother and her older brother,
Derk.  Her brother became a shoemaker,andhe plied his trade for over sixty years.  His business is now
conducted by his grandson, whosename is Derk also.  How well I remember the times when we as
children would come to visit OomDerk,which was usually once a year.
During those years, we lived in Germany, at first in Schuettorf, Hanover,where I was born,and later
in Rheine, inWestphalia.  We always made the trip by train and what an adventure it was, every time.
And what a difference bewtween now and then.  There were not accommodations on the trains, just
rows of seats made of wooden slats.  But that did not dampen our anticipations  of things to come.
The center of attraction always wasthe Schoonkamer, the shoe shop, where Oom Derk and his
oldest son, Jan were making shoes.  They not only repaired them, but made them from scratch.  I can
still smell the mixture of leather and pitch which pervaded the room.  Oom Derk and his wife had
six children- -the youngest was a boy and his name also was Derk. We played together,for he was
about my age.  We had a lot of fun in their spacious backyard where the chickens and rabbits were.
They also had a dog- - his name was Kees.  He  was very smart.  Jan would say No, Kees,it's the family.
He would be quiet at once. By the way,there is a Dutch  breed of dogs which are known as Kees dogs.
I'm going to tell you the story of my grandmother's death just as my mother told it to me.  When she
was on her deathbed, she called all the  family to her bedside and took leave of them one by one,and
lay down on her pillow and closed her eyes.  Then, suddenly,she opened her eyes and sat up and
stretched outher arms, and looking up she said,The angels are coming to take me home.Then she
fell back, closed her eyes, and was home
Both of my grandparents reached a ripe old age,but I never knew them for I was the last of the
grandchildren.  My mother would sometimes call me her Benjamin.   I had a twin brother, but he
lived to be only six weeks old.When the doctor looked at him when he was born, he said,This one
looks pretty weak,but that one (meaning me) looks very strong.
When I was about two years of age,we moved from Schuettorf to the city of Rheine, in Westphaliz.
At first we lived in a house which was built right alongside of an open sewer draining ditch.  There
was a little bridge across it which we had to cross in order to get into the house.  One day I was
playing on the ditch, lost my balance, and fell right into the malodorous muck.  I would have
drowned initifmy brother John, had not been near.  He  reached down and took hold of my dress
and pulled me out.  You see,in those long gone days, even little boys wore dresses like the girls.  I
can still feel the heavy drag of those skirts as he pulled me back onto the bridge.  My guardian angel
was with me that day.
My mothertold me of another time when I was near death while we lived in that house.  One evening,
she put me to bed and went downstairs to finish her work in the kitchen.  While she was working,
she though she heard me calling her.  She quickly came,and when shecame into the bedroom,it was
full of thick, blacksoot.  It was so heavy that she could hardly see me.  The little oil lamp beside
my bed had begun to smoke.  She snatched me out of the bed and brought me downstairs.  I was
fast asleep the whole time.  Who calledmy mother?  A few minutes later,I would have been dead.
Here we lived until I was about school age.  Then we moved to a home that was located in a better
part of the city.  We lived on Bernhard Str. No 15, a street that was near the factory in which my
father and  older members of the family worked.  Our house was at the end of the street--it was a
dead- -end stree for a creek ran at right angles of it.  How we liked that situation.  We swam and
fished in that creek during the summer months,or rather weeks,for we  had only six weeks of
vacation and then we had to go back to school again.  Both swimming and fishing were forbidden
by law.  But all the boys of the neighborhood did it anyway.  We always posted a guard so that he
could warn us of coming disaster.  When the guard shouled,Police, police we ran for our lives
toward home.  Sometimes we just had time to grab our clothes and run all in way in- -our
birthday suits.Ah, those were the days of real  sport.
On the other side of the creek, just about opposite our house, there was a beautiful meadow
where a armer's cows grazed, and beyond that there were woods.  Near the creek therestood a bush
in which a nightgale had its nest every summer.  How that bird could sing Throbbing notes that
awoke nameless emotions in our hearts.  And it sang as long as midnight and sometimes even
longer.  I have never heard a bird sing like that again.
Our other activities were reading Indian stories.  We not only read them, we acted them out. Some
would hide and others would be the trackers.  Our imaginations were boundless.  Our school life
was quite different - - there we faced the hard facts of iron-clad discipline day after day.  How
different it is now, especially in our country.  We went to school  program.  They did not spare the
rod, but applied it whenever they thought it was needed.  Three minutes late for school brought
punishment,so did any undue noise or absence from school if you could not show an attestation
from a doctor that you had been sick.  We learned our subjects.  There was no such thing as not
being able to read.
One thing I shall always be thankful for is the fact that we had instruction in poetry,music,and
hymns.  The great hymns of the Church we had to learn by heart and recite them in class, and
some of them had up to fourteen stanzas  And you had to know them or else  I never had much
trouble in learning them for I loved them.  How grateful I was in later years when we were on the
farm, and the long winter evenings came, then  we would gather around the big iron stove with
its many mica eyes that glowed with the inner fire of the stove, and we would sing by the hour
without any books,all by heart.  We sang in Dutch and German.  Later we learned to sing the songs
of England,Ireland and Scotland, and the songs of the South.  And then father would begin  to
tell us about the heroes ofthe  past in  the history of Holland,both in the political and spiritual
realm.  One of his favorites was the story of Piet Hein, the great navl hero of Holland,and how
he beat the Silver Fleet of England.  He also loved to tellthe story of Uncle Tom, which he had read
many years before.
Nothing disturbed the halcyon days of our happy youthful days until I was about eleven years
of age.  Then,one day, it was after supper,and father was reading his Dutch newspaper, the
Courantwhich he received every week from Holland, when suddenly he jumped up from his
chair and said, This is for us, just listen.  And he read, A hundred and sixty acres of land in
Canada.  And there it was, in  great big black letters.  It told how you could begin a new life
there in freedom, the land was gratis,all you had to do was to pay the registration fee and then
live on the farm and cultivate it.  In five years you received full title of it.  We boys could not
restrain ourselves for joy.  We had visions of all the wonderful stories we had read coming true,
once we got there.  We walked around in a daze of happiness from that moment on.  We did
not care where the money would come from to travel to Canada- -we had absolute confidence in
father and mother that they would find a way, though they were poor.  I remember how I told my
best friend, Friederich Elfring was his name,that I was going to make friends with the Indiana and
become a famous woodsman.
You smile at such simplicity- -it was very real to me then.  We were the envy of the whole
neighborhood.  We did not have the haziest idea as to what Canada was like, but it was the
Promised Land for us.  And it proved to be just that, but only to those who were willing to work
hard,endure all the hardships that were part and parcel of raw and rugged land.
Finally,the long awaited day and hour came when we said farewell to our loved ones and to our
friends and playmates.  This was not easy to do- -only those who have gone through like
experiences know what it means.  The tearing up of roots is always a traumatic event and some
never recover from it.  It leaves a void,and ache,and  unless that void is filled, it leaves a wound
that never quite heals.
The week before we left we had our family picture taken: it hangs on my study wall right now as I
write.  Two of those on the pic ture are still living,my oldest niece and me.  The day we set out
on our journey of faith,for such it was, wasearly in April,1904. We were a group of eleven, our
family of seven  and three others.  The three were Mr Paarefort andhis wife, and a friend of theirs
by the name of Fisterbusch. He was a veritable Nimrod,a great hunter before  the Lord.
Our first stop on our longjourney was Brussels, Belgium.  We stayed there overnight and here
we saw the huge belgian horses for the first time.  Wealso saw our first Indians- -how excited we
were  They were  no doubt members of a traveling Indian show,perhaps Buffalo Bill's.  Here we also
had our first taste of french fried potatoes- -weall liked them.  I'll never forget how Mr.Finsterbusch
patted his stomach and said,De luss ik so graag. (I surely like those) The next morning we took
the train to Antwerp, the harbor city.  We boarded ship late in the afternoon- -it was a small boat
that made regular trips between Antwerp and England.  Our trip was to Liverpool,the biggest harbor
in England.  We had supper on board, and from that moment on our adventure began with a
vengeance.
We all had a good appetite,especially our good friend Paarefort.  My father notice it and said to
him,Henry, don't eat so much, you might get seasick. With all the pride of utter ignorance he replied,
What, me, get seasick? I'm a man  After a while,the ship lifted anchors and we began to move out
into the open sea and we were off.  What a glorious feeling  After a while a stiff breeze came up and
the ship began to sway from side to side and up and down.  All at once Mrs Paarefort got sick and
yelled, Henry,come over here and help me. He replied,You women always have something,just
keep quit.. After a while she moaned,Henry, come I' dying  In reply he groaned,Leave me alone,
I'm dying myself.  Pride goeth before the fall.  We all laughed when he began to crawl up the stairs
on hands and knees to go on deck to feed the fish.  But our mirth was short lived, we all got sick
except father.
Towards evening we landed in Liverpool, a forlorn group or seasick, greenhorn immigrants.
Officials came on board and took us in tow and brough us to a ramshackled building that had
seen better days.  Late in the evening we were served a meal.  I don't remember what was on the
menu,but I'msureit was prepared with tender care and meticulous cleanliness,for when we were
eating our soup,Gerlof dipped his fingers into his bowl and lifted out a hair that was about a
foot long,and held it up for all of us to admire.  Whatever little appetitewe had we lost at the
precise moment.  We were taken to another building some blocks away, were we were to sleep.
I'm sure that building was erected before the reign of Alfred the Great, for it was worse than the
other.  Now we began to realize that we werein a disreputable part of the city- -we would call
it skid row now.  We were beginning to get scared,we had visions of ruffians breaking down the
doors while we were sleeping.  We took some of the chairs and put them against the doors,also a
broken down washstand.  Then we prayed and commended ourselves to the care and protection
of our Heavenly Father.  Liverpool is one city I'll never forget.  The next morning we awoke,
thankful that we were still alive.
Toward noon we were taken to the ship that was to takeus across the Bounding Main to the
land of our dreams.  It was a good sized ship.  It was part of the White Star Line- -its name was
the Virginia.  It took us seven days to cross over to Canada and we got a small dose of mal de mer,
but again my father was not bothered in the least.  He walked around with a smile of superiority
on his face; secretly we all wished that he should get a taste of it, just so he would know what it