Contact: Bill Powell, Herald Staff Writer

A family descended from local pioneers fears land that President Martin Van Buren deeded 162 years ago could be plowed under by a relocation of U.S. 231.

The Indiana Department of Transportation presented five relocation alternatives during a June public hearing in Jasper.

Consultants say all are being equally evaluated based on merit. Some expect the winner to be a route passing west of Huntingburg and east of Jasper. Preliminary Corridor studies in the '90's recommended such an alignment. A former state highway official even remembers that bypass corridor depicted on documents from the '70's.

Any conceptual corridor could threaten ancestral homes and family farms. But nowhere might a relocated U.S. 231 be on a greater collision course with history than on a quarter section of land west of Huntingburg occupied and farmed by the heirs of Gerhard Heinrich Niehaus.

The Niehaus family's nine siblings homesteaded many acres west of Huntingburg in a time when fewer than 2,000 people occupied Dubois County.

"When the Niehaus family moved here, there were very few people here," says Butch Bockting, 55, owner of Butch's Exhaust and Car Care, 502 N. Main St., Huntingburg. "We were the pioneers."

Butch, whose proper name is George W. Brockting, knows something of local history.

He represents the 13th consecutive generation in his family with a male heir named George Bockting. Butch's sone, George Ryan Bockting, marks the 14th generation. It's an unbroken chain going back to Germany and the Netherlands.

Butch's great-grandfather George William Bockting married Edna Niehaus in 1882. That's how Butch, brother Terry, sister Judy and their mother, Kay, came to live on and farm the land between State Road 64 and County Road 500S.

"It's hard to put into words how strongly a person feels about his heritage," says Terry Bockting, who uses his pioneer ancestors' anvil to make daily farm repairs.

Tract Book No. 1 at the Dubois County Courthouse shows that Gerhard Niehaus entered a claim on the 160-acre parcel at the federal land office in Vincennes on April 20, 1837. The official land grant was signed by this country's eighth president at the nations capital in 1839.

Dubois County records librarian Rosie Stewart said she's seen similar land grant documents during her seven years working with records of official or historical value in the courthouse basement. "There are a few of them out there, "Stewart says.

The Bocktings place a great deal of importance on the grant that bestowed "rights, privileges, immunities and appurtenances of whatsoever nature" unto Gerhard Heinrich Niehaus" and to his heirs and assigns forever." The family puts equal stock in artifacts and mouth-to-ear stories painting an even richer and more entrenched picture of the family's history.

Butch says Niehaus family guests included Col. Jacob Geiger, who founded Huntingburg, and William Henry Harrison, a military hero who became governor of the Indiana Territory en route to becoming the country's ninth president. "They frequented their (the Niehaus') household and stayed there because of the abundant game and good hunting in the area," Butch says.

Family heirlooms include straight razors purportedly left with the Niehauses by Geiger and Harrison. Butch says his family allowed Geiger's razor to be used to shave Huntingburg's mayor during the community's 1937 centennial.

Butch's great-grandfather Bockting brought artifacts to the mix when he married Edna Niehaus. The Civil War veteran acquired one striking item from his father-Butch's great-great-grandfather-who knew Thomas Lincoln while the Bockting ancestor was living between Troy and Fulda on Anderson's Creek.

"When the Lincoln family moved to Illinois (in 1830), in those days it was customary to leave a keepsake with friends," Butch says. The Lincolns allegedly left one of Nancy Hanks Lincoln's baby bonnets with the Bocktings. A few weeks before his death, Holiday World's William A. Koch said he remembered keeping the bonnet on display at his museum for many years, beginning when the theme park was known as Santa Claus Land.

The Niehaus family's oral history puts it in Dubois County before Huntingburg became a platted town in 1837 and before Indiana became a state Dec. 11, 1816. Terry Bockting says the stories and the land patend signed by President Van Buren "convinces me until someone else proves otherwise."

The first in a series of re-surveyed lats of the Town of Huntingburg-it is dated Nov. 24, 1854-is on file at the courthouse. It was filed by then-County Surveyor Jacob Marendt. The original 1837 Huntingburg plat under the signature of Jacob Geiger was said to have been lost in a fire at the old county courthouse in Jasper the night of August 17, 1839.

"The entire courthouse burned down." Says County Attorney Art Nordhoff, who is a local history buff." It was a log cabin. It was in Jasper on the circle where it is now. And nothing was saved.

Even in such long-ago times, Butch says, an old road already figured prominently in his family farm's history. Peole traveling between Louisville and Vincennes often traveled a pioneer road that passed through the middle of the farm from east to west, he says. Travelers stopped because of the balcksmith shop there operated by Gerhard Niehaus' brother Bernard.

"My grandfather and my dad both showed me where these graves are at and told me what they were," Bockting says. "When I was a young man you could see the indentations in the ground and tell they were graves. I still know real close where they are located."

The Bocktings worry this reich cache of history could be threatened by a proposals to relocate U.S. 231.

One alternative shown passing west side of Huntingburg appears as if it would enter the Bockting's land on a collision course with Butch's home.

"Given the current plan, it probably would" impact the Bockting tract, said Mayor Gail Kemp. "Those things are traumatic." Still Kemp backs a corridor on the west side of Huntingburg, where future growth is expected.

Butch says it took nine years to build his home out of timber sawed on the farm. It is still not finished. "I'd still like to put some porches on it and finish it up," he says. "I've got a son in college and money hasn't been really abundant."

If a bypass on the Bockting property claimed the house, Butch says, it would then encounter the family's gas wells (Huntingburg is a customer) and continue on to dissect the most productive 80 acres of the cropable land Terry Bockting rents from his mother.

Terry Bockting says the idea of a road dissecting the farm is akin to "a family heirloom that somebody wants to cut in half. We feel very much like we are a part of history. The people are a part of history. The farm is a part of history.

It's the project's threat to the family's heritage that is the crux of the letters Butch and his family have mailed to the governor, INDOT's commissioner and lawmakers on the state and federal level.

"It's the family's feelings," Terry Bockting reiterates. "It's not just Butch."

Butch says he realizes U.S. 231 will eventually be four-laned through Dubois County.

Consultants say a four lane relocation of U.S. 231 is needed to meet future traffic demands. It will take detailed anlysis of new traffic models, socio-economic factors and environmental obstacles to pick a route, they add.