♂Clarence Eugene Walrath

Clarence Eugene Walrath (6 October 1878 – 6 January 1934) was a farmer who raised his family across three states before settling in Kandiyohi County, Minnesota. He was the father of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014).

Early life

Clarence was born in Farmers City, De Witt County, Illinois, the son of Nicholas Walrath (1850–1895) and Anna Lucy Bosler (1860–1910). The 1880 United States census found him, at two years old, living in his parents’ household in the town of DeWitt, in De Witt County, next door to his grandparents, Nicholas and Elsie Walrath.

Marriage and family

The 1900 census index lists a single Clarence Walrath, 22, as a boarder in the household of Jno W. Overmyre at De Land, Piatt County, Illinois. He married Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977) on 18 January 1910 in Clay County, Illinois; his obituary places the wedding at Flora. The 1910 census index shows him as head of a household at Peterson, Clay County, Iowa, with his wife Mary, and their son Glen Eugene (1911–1993) was born there. His obituary says he followed farming and lived in Illinois until 1901, moved to Iowa, where he stayed until 1915, and then went to Minnesota; their daughter Charlotte Mae was born in Kandiyohi County in November 1915. The couple had six children: Glen Eugene (1911–1993), Lorene Mary (1914–1988), Charlotte Mae (1915–2007), Elmer Alvin (1918–1918, who died in infancy), Nicholas Melvin (1922–2015), and Ora Emogene (1925–2014).

Farming in Minnesota

By 1920 the family was established at St Johns township, Kandiyohi County, where the census that year and again in 1930 recorded Clarence as a farmer and head of a household he owned. His 1918 draft registration was filed in Kandiyohi County (rural route 4), naming his wife Mary as nearest relative. According to his obituary he was treasurer of St. Johns township, a director of the Farmers Union Oil Company and of the county Farmers Union organization, and a member of the Methodist church from the age of eleven. The Willmar Tribune shows him in township life from the war years on. In October 1918 he was named to the St. Johns committee of the county’s United War Work Campaign^W. At the St. Johns township election of March 1919 he was chosen assessor, and in March 1920 he was listed for St. Johns at the annual conference of the county’s assessors at the court house in Willmar. In February 1920 he answered the roll call, listed from Raymond, at the Kandiyohi county convention of the Farmers’ Nonpartisan League^W, held for the delegates and committeemen elected at the January caucuses. A newspaper of 8 January 1934 gave his residence as about nine miles west of Willmar on the Milan road.

Death

Clarence died on 6 January 1934 in Kandiyohi County, a date confirmed independently by the state’s own death-certificate index, after an illness of only three days; his obituary in the West Central Tribune of 12 January 1934 says that death was due to tetanus. The state’s death certificate names his parents as Nicholas Walrath and Anna Bossler. Funeral services were held on Tuesday, 9 January 1934, at the residence and at the Methodist church at Raymond, conducted by the Rev. F. W. Hedtke, and he was buried in the Raymond cemetery, recorded as Fairview Cemetery. The obituary names five surviving children (Elmer Alvin having died in infancy), four brothers and three sisters living in Iowa and Minnesota, and an aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Lawrence of Forrestburg, South Dakota. Notices in the early months of 1934 show Letters Testamentary granted to his widow Mary, which indicates he left a will; its text is not known. Two later family obituaries describe what became of the farm: one says his son Glen farmed it after his death, and the other that his son Nick eventually bought it from his mother.

The family

Nicholas Melvin Walrath (1922–2015) was injured on 22 July 1938 in an automobile collision on the Milan road west of Willmar, Minnesota. The crash killed his grandfather, Thomas Koons (1855–1938), of Okeene, Oklahoma, who was eighty-two; the body was shipped to Oklahoma for burial. The records do not say what had brought Thomas Koons to Minnesota.

Notes

One death index attributes his 1934 death to Ohio rather than Minnesota; every other record, including the state of Minnesota’s own certificate, places it in Kandiyohi County, so the Ohio entry is a mismatched index rather than evidence he ever lived there. The records do not explain how a Minnesota death came to be filed under Ohio.

The four Willmar Tribune items are from the Library of Congress’s text of the paper (30 October 1918, p. 1; 19 March 1919, p. 8, where the name is misread “Clareae”; 18 February 1920, p. 1; 31 March 1920, p. 1); the page images have not been viewed. When he became township treasurer, the office his obituary names, is not recorded in them.