TE SELLE

A search of the internet for "TeSelle" information in January 2006 uncovered a wonderful website entitled "Will and Nettie DenBeste", created by Jean Duke Hafner, the great-granddaughter of Will and Nettie DenBeste.  Dirk te Selle exchanged e-mails with Jean and with her mother, Marie Duke, who is Will and Nettie's granddaughter.  Here are some selected comments from their emails:

Jean: 

Well, what a pleasant surprise! I have heard from other distant relatives in the U.S., but this is the first from the Netherlands. I love the article on your webpage, and I forwarded your email to my mother, who will then forward it to other Dutch relatives we have. Thank you!

If it is ok with you, I’d like to put a link on my webpage to yours. I think yours is very good, too, but you made me feel good about mine.
 

Marie:

This is so very exciting! I will read more of the other pages later, but for now, the page about John Willem's farm on Fruitland has me engrossed.

I, Marie Duke, am the daughter of Esther Den Beste Drexel. The Den Bestes arrived on Fruitland about the same time as the Te Selles. William Den Beste, and his family, along with the Sipmas, settled just west of the Te Selles. I grew up in Crawford, and we have been well acquainted with Fruitland Mesa and the old homestead. My grandma, Nettie Den Beste was one of the teachers at the Fruitland school that is mentioned in the article. My Mom and Lily Te Selle were "best friends" all thru their growing up years and in high school in Hotchkiss.

I do wish that Mom could see this article. Perhaps she did when it was first published. There is no date on it, but it is likely that she did.

We are so glad that you found Jean's web site. Jean is our daughter, she has done all the work putting it together. George and I have gathered up lots of the information, but it would be 'in boxes under the bed' without her efforts in getting it organized and put on the web.

Incidentally, is nearly everyone in the Netherlands named William?

The TeSelle family is mentioned near the bottom of the Will and Nettie DenBeste website page.  Here is an excerpt from that section of their site:

The TeSelles were a neighboring Dutch family on the mesa. Lilly TeSelle, one of the daughters, was Esther's good friend, and they attended high school together. The TeSelle place was once a majestic farm on Fruitland Mesa. Marie TeGrotenhuis Wetterick remembered that the house had a parlor and a sitting room, an indoor bathroom (no running water of course), and a very narrow staircase leading to three bedrooms upstairs. She wondered how they got the beds and even the bedding up by way of those stairs. The barn has since been torn down, but the silo is still there. “The TeSelle place was never very beautiful during my lifetime,” wrote Uncle Earl. "When I rode combine there, the paint had pretty well peeled off the house and the wood had turned sort of a silver-gray. As for the barn, it wasn’t so much beautiful as impressive. It was built around a silo with a ramp spiraling around it to the top, so that wagons filled with insilage could be pulled up by horses and dumped in. It’s a crime that that magnificent building wasn’t preserved as a historical marker."

All of the TeSelle wealth came from the deep, rich soil of Iowa, and they eventually returned there. TeSelle was an ordained minister in the Dutch Reformed Church and served as pastor of the immigrants from Iowa. Earl told about when he was about five or six, Mr. TeSelle came to visit them with a second wife. Uncle Earl had a bad cold, and just before they left, TeSelle called him aside, gave him a five-dollar bill, and told him to get something for his cough. “Wow! Did I ever feel rich!” he said. “When I told the folks about it, they said that was Mr. TeSelle’s way of paying for their visit, and they took my $5 away!”

Browsing the DenBeste website gives an interesting perspective about life on the Fruitland Mesa of Colorado.  Jean Hafner has graciously allowed us to link to their website, so we hope you will enjoy the information there.

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