Geert Soulen

1833-1893 · Hanover, Germany

Born 1833, Hanover, Germany

Died 1893

Children include Lewis

Geert Soulen was born on 29 July 1833 in the kingdom of Hanover, in northern Germany. His name is spelled many ways in the records of his life: Geert, Giert and Gurt, Soulen and Zoulen.

He was in the Midwest by 1860. That year he was naturalized as an American citizen in the federal court at Chicago, giving his birth as 1833 in Hanover. On 3 November 1858, at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he had married Johanna Hank, a girl of about seventeen who had been born in Amsterdam. In the summer of 1860 the census taker found him in the Ninth Ward of Milwaukee, aged twenty six and born in Hanover, with a baby son Gerrit born that year in Wisconsin.

On 13 March 1865, in the last weeks of the Civil War, he enlisted at Milwaukee as a private in Company B of the 51st Wisconsin Infantry. The regiment was raised that spring at Camp Washburn in Milwaukee. It was sent to Missouri in May and spent the summer guarding the Pacific Railroad around St. Louis and Warrensburg. It never fought a battle, and the sixteen men it lost all died of disease. Geert was mustered out on 29 August 1865.

The family later went south to Cherokee County, in the southeast corner of Kansas, where their son Lewis was born on 7 March 1873. Johanna and her children made their home at Galena, the lead mining town on the Missouri line, and she lived there for nearly forty years.

Geert did not stay with them. From 1887 to 1890 a Geert Soulen was listed in the city directories of San Francisco, and a later note on his family says he was there in October 1888 and worked as a carpenter. He ended his life in the Washington Soldiers' Home at Orting, Pierce County, a state home for old Union veterans near Tacoma. He died there on 4 January 1893, aged fifty nine, and was buried in the home's cemetery, Section 4, Circle C, Site 15. The government stone over him, supplied by the Vermont Marble Company under a contract of 30 November 1894, reads "Gurt Zoulen, Co. B, 51st Wis. Inf."

In Galena, Johanna later married a Harry Miller. When she died in 1915, her four sons all carried the name Soulen.

Children

Lewis L. Soulen 1873-1935

Sources

Wisconsin, Marriages, 1836-1930, and Wisconsin, County Marriages, 1836-1911, Milwaukee, 3 November 1858; FamilySearch.

1860 United States census, Ninth Ward, Milwaukee City, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; NARA M653; FamilySearch 1:1:MW92-MD6 and 1:1:MW92-MDF.

Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865 (Madison, 1886), vol. 2, Fifty-first Regiment Infantry, Company B; archive.org rosterofwisconsi02wisco.

Illinois, Northern District Naturalization Index, 1840-1950; FamilySearch.

United States City and Business Directories, San Francisco, 1887-1888 and 1889-1890; FamilySearch.

Find a Grave, memorial 5551888, Washington Soldiers Home Cemetery, Orting, Pierce County, Washington; photograph added by Mike Webb, 8 March 2007.

United States, Records of Headstones of Deceased Union Veterans, 1879-1903, NARA; image on Find a Grave memorial 5551888, added by The Seakers, 4 November 2021.

Identified Civil War canteen, Geert Zoulen, 51st Wisconsin Infantry, collector's inventory number CAN 158; photograph on Find a Grave memorial 5551888, added by Nen, 15 September 2023.

Wisconsin marriages, Milwaukee, 3 November 1858, Giert Soulen and Johanna Hank, FamilySearch; Illinois, Northern District naturalization index, 1860, FamilySearch; 1860 United States census, Ninth Ward, Milwaukee, FamilySearch 1:1:MW92-MD6; Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, War of the Rebellion (1886), vol. 2, 51st Infantry, Company B, archive.org rosterofwisconsi02wisco; San Francisco city directories 1887 to 1890, FamilySearch; Records of Headstones of Deceased Union Veterans, 1879 to 1903, NARA; Find a Grave memorials 5551888, 27912532, 51196713; Joplin Globe, 5 January 1915

If Geert Soulen is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Geert Soulen (1833-1893)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/geert-soulen-1833-1893-fce395.