From the Old Country
Sasse is a old Germanic surname (originally spelled Saße), with influences from Dutch and French. In all instances, it sourced from the Old Germanic word "Sahso," shortened to Sahs, meaning a Saxon. As a surname, it can be traced back to the 1200s in the Westphalia region in the nortwest of Germany.
For this specific family, the lineage can be traced back to Hermann Heinrich Sasse and his wife Lucie Maria Elisabeth Häuschen. While it's currently very difficult to confirm, Hermann might have been born 9 December 1791 in Lemgo, Germany, which is in the Westphalia region. If this is true, an Engelbert Sasse is recorded as his father, though there is no mother written on the church record. No further information has yet been found.
Regardless of the unknowns, Hermann was a soldier in Blüchers Army (which fought Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo) before he and Lucie married in Quakenbrück, Germany. He continued to work as a bootmaker while Lucie worked as a midwife. They had their first child, Johann Hermann Heinrich Sasse, on 4 May 1821. During this time, Quakenbrueck was in the Kingdom of Hannover, which was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, and covered much of what would eventually become northern Germany.
The couple would have at least 3 more children: two sons, Herman Heinrich August "August" Sasse (born 20 August 1837 and baptised 27 August 1837) and Christian Frederick Wilhelm Sasse (born 20 May 1842 and baptised 4 June 1842) and a daughter in between, who was sadly stillborn (born, died 28 November 1839). Unfortunately, they would be further struck with the death of their eldest son on 3 January 1843, buried in the city on 6 January 1843. His siblings, however, would choose to not be buried beside him in the old country.
After the German revolutions of 1848–1849 (which itself was spurred by revolutionary events in 1830), the political unrest encouraged a stream of Saxons to emigrate to the United States in 1849. Most landed in Galveston, Texas, where a booming German-American population remains today. At age 16, the eldest son August followed suit, traveling alone and arriving in Galveston in spring 1853. After making his way to New Orleans, he went up the Mississippi River and landed in Illinois, where he settled in Havana as a farmer for several years. During this time, he was privy to one of the city's most famous visitors: Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln owned farmland in the county, and visited the town frequently, even holding his famous three hour speech (his half of the debate with Stephen Douglas) on the town's Rockwell Mound while running for US Senate in 1858. Given the area's strong attachment to Lincoln, it's no surprise many residents enlisted to fight under his name when fighting broke out with the American Civil War (1861-1865). In August's own words:
We had now gotten to the Year 1861 - the Year of the Rebellion hadbroken out!! I studied every inch of Newspaper That I could get hold of, listened to the many speeches of The great men, Especially to our afterwards beloved Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, The best speakers of them days, and many others. What I didn’t understand, I talked over with my dear old friends in Bruning, Westing, Walker, Neikirk – Yes, and a number of others; whose memory will not be forgotten for they were all dear to me and had always treated me as one of Their Sons.
On August 1st, 1861, I enlisted in Camp Butler near Springfield, Illinois in Company (A) 28th Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry. I served in the 3rd Brigade 4th Division 13th Army Corps; Army of the Tennessee - A part of my time we were attached to the 16th Army Corps - Not having enough men left to keep our own Corps complete. I was honorably discharged on September 10th, 1864 at Springfield, Illinois, after having served my time of enlistment of 3 years and 3 months!!!
What shall I say of all bloody battles and skirmishes? Or the more important battles such as Fort Henry and Herman, Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, Corinth, Mississippi, Matamoras, Hollys farm, Black River, Grand Gulf, or yet the more bloody ones of: Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi.
With the thought of all these slaughtering days it makes me shudder even now; and I wish they had not been!
In late 1864, he returned to his family in the Kingdom of Hannover, which was on the verge of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 (which would lead to the eventual annexation of the Kingdom by Prussia by the end of the year), married, and left with his new wife to the USA on 20 February 1865. He and his wife would go on to have 12 children, 8 of whom would survive into adulthood.
Inspired by this, Christian would following, taking with him their widowed mother on the month-long journey to America. He settled with his mother in Chicago, taking on a position as a brickmason. In 1867, he would marry Anna Gutjahr (which was Americanized into "Goodyear"), who had only arrived in the country the year prior. They would have two sons while living in Ward 17 of Chicago: William "Bill" Bernard Carl Sasse (born 3 September 1868) and Christian "Chris" Lewis Andrew Sasse (born 18 August 1870).
Moving West
In April 1871, August would move his family to Lincoln County, Nebraska, setting up a small farm.
On 8 October 8 1871, the western Great Lakes region were struck with two fiery disasters. To the north, in Wisconsin, the Peshtigo fire claimed up to 2,500 lives, making it the deadliest wildfire in recorded history. To the south, the great city of Chicago burned, killing around 300 people. 2/3 of Ward 17 were burned in the blaze (the section highlighted in red). It cannot be confirmed if Christian and his family lost anything in the fire, as I'm unable to determine an exact address for them, but it's clear that the scare was more than enough. After the fire, he and his family would leave Illinois together and join August in Lincoln County, Nebraska. Their mother would remain in Chicago until her death in 1876.
While in Nebraska, Christian and his wife would have their two daughters: Anna Elizabeth "Annie" Sasse (born 16 October 1872) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Sasse (born December 1874). August would move his family to Spring Creek, Nebraska in Harlan County, which borders Kansas in 1873 (only 2 years after the first white settlement sprung up on stolen Sioux land, near the Republican River), and would remain there until his death in 1922, while Christian would keep his family in Midland for several more years.
Living in Midland, Nebraska, USA in the 1870s offered a experience shaped by the town's location, culture, and opportunities. Midland was still in its early stages of development and like the Sasse's, many residents were pioneers who had ventured westward in search of new opportunities. The town served as a hub for trade and transportation, with the Union Pacific Railroad passing through. Additionally, the region's fertile soil and vast grasslands supported agriculture and ranching, making Midland an agricultural powerhouse.
By Anna's own account, however, Christian was a "lousy" farmer and instead kept with bricklaying. In addition to many bricklaying and construction projects in the surrounding area, Christian took his first foray into the food and drink industry, buying the Lincoln Brewery from the U.S. government for $577.50. The brewery had previously been seized under distraint from its former owners, thanks to long-due rent/taxes.
However, opportunity shined brighter elsewhere, as the Black Hills Gold Rush in the Dakota Territory reached a fever-pitch in 1876; hearing word of this, Christian would travel up to the Black Hills with many other men to survey the area. After a tumultuous journey, including false reports that he was killed by the Lakota, he and his family relocated north to Deadwood, Dakota Territory (now South Dakota) in 1877, building a brick home on McGovern Hill.
The settlement of Deadwood was an illegal settlement, on land that had been granted to the Lakota people in the 1868 Treaty of Foty Laramie, not that they had the power or capitol to fully or successfully challenge it. After the discovery of gold by Colonel George Armstrong Custer in 1874, the tiny community swelled to 5,000 people in 1875 and then 12,000 in 1877. The city was well-known as a brutal, lawless place, with murder, highway robbery, and other crimes being commonplace; the opium trade was on-going and disease was rampant (the smallpox epidemic of 1878/79 would be the worst). The family would find out first-hand on at least one occassion (Christian having a scuffle with an intoxicated man on 2 December 1881, leaving him with a broken leg)! Still, with such a population boom, there was likely a high demand for construction and bricklaying, which Christian would very well profit from.
For all the profits that might have been netted, however, it was countered by two deaths in the family. The second daughter, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Sasse, would never reach her fifth birthday, and their third son, Louis Sasse (born 1878), would die young on 27 March 1880.
The family would further endure several other wider-scale disasters. Early Friday morning, 26 September 1879, a fire started in a bakery on Sherman Street and quickly spread through the lumber buildings, burning much of the city to the ground. By sunrise, Deadwood would have 2,000 homeless, over 300 ruined buildings, and an estimated $729,500 in damages (over $22 million in 2023) - Christian reported a loss estimated at $5,000. This would result in the adoption of building regulations, with new buildings being built of brick and mortar.
As buildings were rebuilt and businesses sprung up to fill in the gaps, Christian and Anna began to supplement the family's bricklaying income, buoyed by their brief experience with the Lincoln Brewery, and opened up his saloon on Sherman Street in early 1880. It did quite well, becoming a popular part of the community with various social and seasonal events. Around this time, Christian also made a foray into local politics, running for delegate of South Deadwood. This political career attempt doesn't seem to have taken off beyond the August 1880 Primary, though it would crop back up later!
The Deadwood Garden saloon moved from Sherman Street to Lee Street, closer to Main Street, in September 1881. Around this time, Sasse became a partner in the Denver Market, a popular market in the community that sold vegetables and most kinds of meats. In late August 1882, Christian bought the Headquarter's Restaurant on Lee Street.
The 1879 fire was followed by water, when heavy, wet snowstorms resulted in rising waters around noon on Wednesday, 16 May 1883, that washed away most of the town by the next morning. 4 were killed and $250,000 in damages were reported (around $8 million in 2023).
With most of Lee Street (and much of the other streets that crossed the river) destroyed, Christian and Anna reopened the establishment as a hotel and restaurant on Main Street, with Anna providing much of the management. It became quite popular as the "headquarters of all those who know a good thing when they get it."
In early August 1884, Christian deconstructed the family's home brick-by-brick and rebuilt it on his valley homestead, located to the northwest of Deadwood by the settlement of Spearwood (more specifially in what would become Bell Fourche). Like Deadwood, Spearfish had also sprung up in 1876 to house goldrushers. The town was originally named Queen City before being renamed to Spearfish by this time, a name the city's newspaper would keep! The work of deconstructing the home and transporting the brick to the homestead would take most of the month, finally fully transported by 28 August 1884. Anna ran the Headquarter's Restaurant until the homestead was fully habitable before closing it permanently and moving herself and the children to join Christian in the valley.
It was here that the children began to marry off. Anna Elizabeth married James Webb Foley on Christmas Day in 1894 in Spearfish and the couple would have 3 children in Deadwood by 1899. Not to be outdone, Bill married Eliza Hannah Wescott in Deadwood on 27 December 1896, having one surviving child in 1909, running a meat market there until his death in 1943.
In 1899, Anna Elizabeth became stricken with paralysis and returned to her parents' Spearfish home with all three children. James Foley found work where he could, often staying in boarding houses in nearby cities; in 1900, he can be found in a boarding house with Chris in Lead City, working as a laborer. After only 2 years, both Anna Elizabeth and her youngest son would pass away; he around the age of 1 some time between June 1900 and March 1901, her at the age of 27 in the early morning of 27 March 1901. Her two surviving children would remain in the care of Christian and Anna until they reached adulthood.
As for the middle child, Chris worked in the neighboring area as a contractor, often traveling together with James Foley, though he also surveyed work in neighboring states, likely for job opportunities. During one such jaunt in Colorado, he met and married Mary Ethel Senter on 8 November 1900 in Cañon City, Colorado. He was 30; she was only 16. Incidentally, Cañon City came to be in 1859 from the Pike's Peak Gold Rush; the Sasse family seems intimately tied to the American gold rushes!
The couple would settle just to the east of Spearfish, in Meade County, South Dakota and have their first son: Lewis Sasse. Unfortunately, much like Chris' younger brother Louis, Lewis would die young, being stillborn on 19 July 1907. This death would unfortunately have lingering ramifications for the entire family.
1908 cfw city justiceA Small Note
Sent To the Farm
After the stillbirth of her first child, Ethel Mary exhibited periods of mania followed by depressive moods, which would likely be categorized as Bipolar Disorder today, though it's hard to determine if this truly began after this point or if it worsened with the loss. It's also extremely likely that she suffered from undiagnosed Post-Partum Depression to a severe degree. Unfortunately, this would not be met with much sympathy, and she would be "hospitalized at the Yankton, South Dakota, State Hospital (at the time called Dakota Hospital for the Insane), a facility many miles from her home near Spearfish in the western part of the state" [1] on 14 August 1907, less than a month after the stillbirth. She would stay for over a year under the care of Dr Bagley, a female doctor, before release in mid-December 1908, though Dr. Bagley warned Ethel Mary was still depressed and should not be discharged. A month later, she would be found to be pregnant.
The specifics can be read in full here, but the long and short of it is Ethel Mary had relations with Assistant Physician Charles J. Trail on two occasions. I'm personally inclined to believe it was not consentual. At best, it involves a doctor abusing his power of authority over a patient; at worst, it was outright rape.
At the time, Ethel would not disclose the father, and Chris "expressed absolutely no desire to have such prosecution undertaken, preferring rather to take his wife away, giving her such care as he best could, avoiding the publicity and probable disgrace that would attend such an effort." So he brought her to Omaha, Nebraska on January 30, 1909, where he had been staying and working during the interim of her hospitalization. It would be here that daughter Katherine Ethel Sasse would be born on 9 June 1909. Their third child, Harry Christian Sasse, would follow soon after on 28 November 1910. In late 1911, daughter Eva Sasse would join the family, their fourth and final child.
During this time, Chris drank and worked and traveled. Left at home to care for three young children, Ethel Mary's mental issues soon came to a head once more, resulting in her relying heavily on the kindness of neighbors, frequently leaving the children in their care for long periods of time. Chris was none the wiser to this, whether she was clever about it or he simply didn't think of check is uncertain. Perhaps he simply wasn't home long enough to catch on.
It was in early 1912 that Eva died before her first birthday and Ethel Mary fell deeper into depression. Her brother, Orville, visited from Spokane, Washington out of concern for her health and safety. Believing his fears validated, he had her hospitalized in the Nebraska State Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. Ethel Mary would later be transferred to the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo, Colorado before 1920, where she would remain for more than 20 years.
With Ethel Mary institutionalized, Chris found all he had missed, including how his children had been moved from house to house. He chose to abandon Ethel Mary, moving himself and the children to Spearfish in late 1912, back on Christian's homestead in Belle Fourche. At this time, the two were also caring for Anna Elizabeth's two surviving children, Christian and William Foley, already providing quite the full house. As a result, Chris, Katherine, and Harry lived in a small sod-roofed house nearby.
Chris maintained his lifestyle, alternating between working, drinking, and traveling for work. Anna, already long-upset with her husband's alcohol consumption, was equally incensed that her son also drank in excess regularly. According to Katherine:
One year the wheat harvest led to a bit more profit than usual, and Anna took the money and put it under the mattress. Chris, Sr., wanted the money to go drinking, and ripped up the mattress. While doing so, the money "flew up-right into Anna's apron." Her husband became incensed, and her nephews, the Foley boys, had to protect their aunt[sic] while getting their uncle out of the house.
Meanwhile, the children were expected to work young, and the pair grew up learning to milk the dairy cows, separate the cream from the milk, and other farmyard chores. Several stories, each according to Harry's daughter Helen:
Dad recalls the times he and Katherine still under 10 years old, would hitch a horse to a flat sled. Barrels were put on the sled and they went to bring water home. One such trip they were on the way home and always before starting up the hill they rested the horse. The horse must have dozed off because she bolted when Katherine flipped the reins and ran spilling all the water. Those two children had to put the barrels back up, and return to fill them before they could return home.
Another time Grandpa Sasse [Chris] and Dad were in a buggy. They were going on a trail that ran under a tree. As they approached the tree the horse refused to go forward, after several trys[sic] and refusals by the horse they looked in the tree. Laying on the branches was a huge bull snake. They drove around the tree and went on.
One Day Great-Grandmother Sasse [Anna] was going to feed the pig, holding Dad's hand and barefoot he was about to step off the step when she saw a rattle snake. She pulled him over the snake by his arm, let go and grabbed the shovel and cut off his head. Dad was impressed as she then fed the snake to the pigs.
Alongside the inherent hardships of living on the land came the unkindness of Foley brothers. Both often teased Katherine and Harry about their mother, which was never called out by Anna. They called their cousin "Kate," a name Katherine learned to hate. While not destructively violent, they slapped Katherine for minor reasons. They were, simply, "just mean." According to Katherine, Grandmother Sasse was kind to the boys; she only tolerated Katherine and Harry.
Back and Forth and Back Again
On 25 November 1916, Christian fell to a stroke. At only six years old, Harry was put on a horse and sent ahead into town to ready a doctor, while the rest of the available family gathered Christian to follow into Deadwood, arriving at William's home in the early morning. Sadly, the stroke was too much and Christian passed at 5 a.m. on 26 November 1916.
This left only Anna and the two children on the homestead, Chris spending long periods of time out working. Early 1917, their Grandmother Senter in Spokane was concerned about Katherine and Harry being left alone and wrote to Anna to request that the pair come live with the Senters in Washington. Despite expectations being set for their care, Anna refused to concede. Katherine would find this letter in the following year and learn the truth of her parentage.
In early May 1921, Anna fell ill to a stroke of her own, leaving Harry (age 9) and Katherine (age 11) to care for both the farm and her until she passed at home around 5 May 1921. She would be buried in Rose Hill Cemetery on 7 May 1921, leaving Harry and Katherine well and truly alone.
Chris was working in Rapid City, South Dakota at the time, and sent train ticket money for them to join him. Once there, they would live with the Workman family (friends of the Foleys). After, they lived with Chris as he worked and drank in Chadron, Nebraska. The strain of caring for two children on top of everything else proved as difficult for Chris as to Ethel only ten years before. So he followed much the same strategy: the pair were split up and sent to different homes, Katherine to the Davis family near Spearfish and Harry to the Foley home.
After six months, he collected them and moved to the nearby Lead, South Dakota, where they would live in a small apartment. This, too, proved to be a short-lived situation, however, once Chris heard of work in Ann Arbor, Michigan; both Katherine and Harry were returned to the care of the Davis family near Spearfish until he could settle a home in Ann Harbor.
When the promised message was wired, along with train money, Katherine and Harry packed up one more time and joined their father in Ann Arbor. They would attend school, Katherine in St. Thomas High School and Harry in [unknown]. After school, Harry began taking lessons in bricklaying from Chris by age 14, while Katherine beecame close to Ed and Marie Flynn, who became something of an adoptive family and sponsored her conversion to Roman Catholicism in February 1923. To her firmly Lutheran father, this proved a final straw, and resulted in a permanent schism in 1927: Katherine Ethel Sasse formally changed her name to Katherine Marie Flynn, finding a home with the Flynns; Katherine would marry Robert Bradley Barnes 11 July 1940, having four children before separating from Robert in 1955 due to his alcoholism. She would otherwise create a happy life for herself, passing in Corpus Christi, Texas on 26 July 1990.
Chris would take Harry with him back to familiar stomping ground of South Dakota.
South Dakota and Beyond
Back in South Dakota, Chris continued Harry's bricklaying education, which was quite brusque, according to Harry. If the brickwork had any imperfections, Chris would kick it all over and remade a full immediate do-over.
Like it or not, Harry took it on and it was thanks to it that he would meet Annie Emilia Johannesen (b. 26 February 1910, Quinn, South Dakota) while she was pursuing a teaching degree at the Dakota Territorial Normal School in Spearfish. They would marry in Aurora County, South Dakota on 18 April 1929, and Annie would finish her degree while becoming a homemaker.
They started married life ir first child, a girl, was born in 1930, but only lived for a few days before passing