Carey, Charles Henry.  "History of Oregon." Vol. 3. Chicago-Portland: Pioneer
Historical Pub. Co., 1922.  pp. 59-60 

HESSEL SNELLER BRAAKMAN

Hessel Sneller Braakman, well known in Hood River for his work as a decorator,
was born in Holland in 1876, his parents being Herschel and Beckley (Sneller)
Braakman, who were well-to-do farming people. The son was educated in Holland
up to the age of twelve years, when his father suggested that he become a
seafaring man and learn of the world by actual contact. This plan was
objectionable to the son, however, so he packed his bag and left home with the
determination of learning a trade. He went into Germany and there took up the
trade of interior decorating and painting. He found the work entirely to his
liking and with his natural aptitude soon made rapid progress. After four years'
apprenticeship, in which he became thoroughly familiar with every phase of the
business, he was given a journeyman's card. He continued to work for his
instructor until his nineteenth year, when he returned to Holland to serve for
three years in the army according to the laws of that land. When the term of his
legal military service was ended he came to America and entered the employ of a
firm of decorators and has continued in this line of work, sometimes as an
employee and often as a contractor. During the past twenty-two years Mr.
Braakman has worked in most of the states of the Union. Examples of his ability
ornament the interiors of the homes of such well known citizens as Whitelaw Reid
of New York, John D. Rockefeller's country home in the White mountains, the D.
G. Bancroft home in Boston, Massachusetts, the Muldoon health farm and others,
including the Allen and the Madrona schools and the juvenile courthouse at
Seattle, Washington. The First National Bank of New Orleans has been embellished
by his skill, also the Union station at Memphis, Tennessee, is an example of his
taste in frescoing.

After traveling all over America Mr. Braakman was married in Tacoma,
Washington, in 1915 to Miss Rhoda Cooley, a daughter of Alfred W. Cooley, a
retired lumberman. Following his marriage he decided to settle down to a quiet
home life and selected Hood River as his future place of residence. Here he
established himself and soon built up a fine business. His skill is not only
manifest in the costly adornment and artistic frescoing of the mansion of the
multi-millionaire -- a line in which he excels -- but also in the handsome homes
and orchard bungalows of the well-to-do people of central Oregon, who are warm
in their praise of a man who knows his business from every angle and who gives
the same satisfaction in a job that brings him only a hundred dollars that he
does in one the contract price of which reaches a hundred thousand dollars. In
a word he is most thorough and painstaking and at all times perfectly reliable.

Mr. Braakman is an Odd Fellow, having joined the order in Manchester, England,
when a young man. He is a thoroughgoing American in all of his ideas and while
familiar with a number of countries on the face of the globe and with many
sections of the United States, he finds more pleasure in Hood River with its
splendid natural beauties, furnished by the rich valley lands and majestic
snow-capped mountains, than he has ever found in any other section of the world.




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Submitted to the Oregon Bios. Project in November 2006 by Jeffrey L. Elmer. 
Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family mentioned
above.