This is D'Maris Orissa Van Dorn Van Arsdale who, were a contest for Lucas County's most elaborate combination of names to be launched, would be in the running. The portrait is from the Lucas County Historical Society collection and is companion to one of her husband, Peter Van Deveer Van Arsdale, at left.
I've always liked the D'Maris image and got to wondering the other day about the origin of the name. It's most likely Biblical, plucked from Acts 17:34 that tells us Dionysius the Areopagite and "a woman named Damaris" were among those who believed after the Apostle Paul's sermon in front of the Areopagus in Athens.
In this instance, the initial "a" has been dropped and an apostrophe substituted, perhaps to add a vaguely French favor. "Orissa," however, I cannot explain.
D'Maris and her husband were prosperous farmers who had moved from Illinois to land just east of Chariton during 1872, then into Chariton to a home on South Grand upon retirement. She died there on June 17, 1921, at the age of 74. Peter, age 81, died a month later, on July 16, 1921.
As it turns out, the most adventuresome period of D'Maris's life occurred when she was a very small child --- as recounted in her Herald-Patriot obituary of June 23, 1921:
+++
D'Maris Van Dorn, the only child of George and Almeda Van Dorn, was born near Strawberry Point, Buchanan county, Iowa, on November 11, 1846. When she was but eleven months old her parents emigrated westward in wagons drawn by oxen to a point near what is now Oregon City, Oregon. Here they staked a claim on which they lived until the discovery of gold in 1849 in California.
As many of the pioneers of their colony rushed to the gold fields, it left the few remaining families easy prey to the Indians, so they were forced to follow, and the Van Dorns made their home where the city of Sacramento, California, now stands, the little girl, D'Maris Orissa, being the first white child in that territory.
In the spring of 1850, the family started back to civilization, via the isthmus of Panama on pack mules, and thence by boat to New York, where they lived on farms at South Trenton and Syracuse until 1862, when they again went west, settling in Fulton county, Illinois. At this time the daughter attended an old-time select school and helped with the work of the home department of the Civil War.
On May 16, 1866, she was married to P. V. Van Arsdale at Fairview, Fulton county, Ill., living there until six years later, when with her husband and parents she moved to Lucas county, Iowa, where she spent the remainder of her life.
+++
D'Maris and Peter were the parents of five children --- Almeda, who died when 10 years old in 1877; Christa May Rockey, who died in March, 1920; and George Beekman Van Arsdale, Helen N. Culver and Inda A. Post, who survived them.
Inda and her family eventually moved to Florida and as she was nearing the end of her life during the 1960s, shared many family artifacts as well as these two portraits with the Lucas County Historical Society.
No comments:
Post a Comment