HAAN, JOHN 
John Haan, whose home and farm are in Riverside 
Township, Lyon County, is still in his early manhood, 
and his industry, economical habits and upright life, 
are a credit to his race and blood. He was born 
January 16, 1870, in Javerland, Germany, and the first 
five years of his life were spent in his native land, 
when his parents removed to this country, making 
indeed a vast change in the lives of their posterity, 
as well as greatly modifying their own condition. 
Germany is a land of liberty and education and law, 
but it has no such opportunity for ambitious manhood 
as Lyon County has presented in the closing years of 
the century. 

The Haans crossed the ocean in a British liner, and 
effected a location in Grundy County, Iowa, where 
young John received considerable schooling in the 
neighboring district school. After completing his 
education he went to work on his father's farm, and 
for two years was employed as a farm laborer. In 1891 
he became engaged in farming for himself in Pleasant 
Valley Township, Grundy County, and was married 
February 24, 1892, to Miss Bessie, daughter of Hie and 
Engel Rieman. He spent 1894 and 1895 farming in Butler 
County, and in December, 1894, bought a tract of land 
in Lyon County, described as follows: the north half 
of the northeast quarter of section 21, and also the 
north half of the northeast quarter of section 22, 
range 45, township 100. In January, 1896, he came to 
Lyon and settled on this land, and in August, 1898, 
bought more land, as follows: the south half of the 
northeast quarter of section 21, and the south half of 
the northwest quarter of section 22, of the same range 
and township. He is also the proprietor of a farm of 
two hundred and forty acres in Noble County, 
Minnesota, owning in all an amount of land that would 
have made him an aristocrat in the old country, but 
which here simply lifts him out of poverty, and gives 
him an enduring competency.

To Mr. and Mrs. John Haan have come the following 
children: Alfred, born January 13, 1893; John, 
September 5, 1894; Henry, February; 20, 1896; Ella, 
March 8, 1898; William McKinley, November 25, 1899; 
Bertha, December 5, 1901; and an infant, born August 
13, 1904. The father of John Haan was born October 12, 
1825, in East Friesland, where he was reared to farm 
life, and where he married Miss Ella Buus in 1858. 
They had children as follows: Anna, who died when 
twenty-six years old; Henrietta, who lived to be 
nineteen years old; Lena; Hannah; Delia; John; Henry, 
who died in 1875, while still an infant. The 
grandfather of John Haan was born in Germany, and 
served in the French Wars. He died in 1835. The 
grandmother of John Haan died in 1875. She was born in 
East Friesland, and her father also in East Friesland. 
He was a farmer and coming to the United States in 
1866, located in Illinois, later making a home in 
Grundy County, Iowa.

Ella Buus, the mother of John Haan, was born in East 
Friesland December 7, 1835, and died February 25, 
1880.

Hie Rieman was always a farmer, born in East 
Friesland, Germany, and came to the United states in 
1868, and located in Illinois and married there; went 
from there to Grundy County, stayed there ten years, 
and then moved to Butler County, where he still lives 
in his sixty-seventh year. His wife died June 30, 
1904.



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Compendium of History Reminiscence and Biography of 
Lyon County, Iowa. Published under the Auspices of the Pioneer 
Association of Lyon County. Geo. Monlun, Pres.; Hon. E. C. Roach 
Sec'y; and Col. F. M. Thompson, Historian. Geo. A. Ogle & CO., 
Published,Engravers and Book Manufacturers. Chicago, 1904-1905

Transcribed for Lyon County by Darlene Jacoby and 
Diane Johnson