♀Magdalena M. Koons

Magdalena M. Koons (30 July 1852 – 13 December 1923) was a Pennsylvania-born woman who married a man of her own surname, Thomas Koons, and who followed him from Indiana to Illinois and finally to Oklahoma. She was the grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977).

Early life

Magdalena was born on 30 July 1852 at Jonestown, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, a daughter of Jacob John Kunz and Magdalene Holdeman. In 1860 the family lived in Swatara Township, near Jonestown, where the census described her father as a tenant farmer who owned no real estate; seven of the couple’s children were at home, with a hired servant. Her father’s death is given as 1866 by a Find a Grave memorial. In 1870 she was still in Lebanon County, living in Union Township and listed as “at home”.

Marriage and family

On 24 December 1876 she married Thomas Koons in Henry County, Indiana, where his father, Samuel Kunz, had been farming since at least 1870. The two fathers were brothers, sons of John Kunz and Cattarina Gingerich of Lebanon County, which would make the couple first cousins. Samuel’s descent from John rests on Pennsylvania church and census entries; Jacob’s rests on John’s will of 1864, which names him among the sons appointed executors. Because she married a Koons, her surname never changed.

Four of the couple’s children were living in 1910, born between 1879 and 1893; her entry in that census gives eight children born and four living. By 1910 they were living in Harter Township, Clay County, Illinois, and later they moved to Oklahoma. When her sister Amelia Umberger died at Lebanon in 1919, the Lebanon Daily News named her in the funeral notice as “Miss Magdalena Koons, Homestead, Oklahoma”. The paper’s “Miss” was mistaken: she had then been married for more than forty-two years.

Death

Magdalena Koons died at Homestead, Blaine County, Oklahoma, on 13 December 1923, and was buried there. Thomas outlived her by fifteen years.