Ancestors

Lewis L. Soulen

Lewis L. Soulen was born on 7 March 1873 in Cherokee County, in the southeast corner of Kansas. He was the youngest of five children of Geert Soulen, a carpenter from Hanover in Germany, and Johanna Hanks, called Hanna, who was born in Amsterdam. His parents had married at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1858, and his father had served in the 51st Wisconsin Infantry in 1865. His brothers and sister were George Garrett, Dora, John and William.

He grew up at Galena, the lead mining town on the Missouri line, where his mother lived for nearly forty years. His father did not stay. By 1887 Geert Soulen was in San Francisco, and in January 1893 he died at the Washington Soldiers' Home at Orting, near Tacoma, two thousand miles from his family. Lewis was nineteen.

On 30 April 1892 Lewis married Maggie Foust at Columbus, the seat of Cherokee County. The children listed on his memorial are Jacob Thrail Soulen, Henry Soulen and Porter Soulen, who both died as infants, Dora Soulen, born in 1897, and the Rev. Harold Lewis Soulen, born in 1903. Jacob's listed birth year of 1889 comes before the marriage, and the memorial does not explain this.

His mother, by then Mrs. Harry Miller, died in Galena in January 1915, and the Joplin Globe named him among her four sons as Lewis Soulen of East Galena. In 1930 he and Maggie were still living in Galena.

Lewis died on 4 July 1935 in Galena, aged 62. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery at Galena under a stone inscribed "In Loving Memory."

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Cite: Heirology, "Lewis L. Soulen (1873-1935)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lewis-l-soulen-1873-1935-693124.