♀Mary Magdalene Koons

Mary Magdalene Koons (22 February 1885 – 19 November 1977) was a farm wife of Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, who died at 92 in a nursing home in Wheaton, Traverse County, a hundred miles from home. She was the mother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014).

Early life

Mary Magdalene Koons was born at Flora, Clay County, Illinois (her entry in the state’s index of births and christenings names Harter Township, the township around the town), the daughter of Thomas Koons (1855–1938) and Magdalena M. Koons (1852–1923). In the 1900 census she was 15, living in her parents’ household in Harter Township with her brothers Joseph F., Will H. and Clarence E. The same census recorded her mother as the mother of eight children, of whom four were living.

Marriage and family

On 18 January 1910, in Clay County, Illinois, she married Clarence Eugene Walrath (1878–1934). The couple moved first to Peterson, Clay County, Iowa, where their eldest son was born in 1911, and on to Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, sometime between mid-1914 and late 1915 — a move dated only by the birthplaces later given for their children, since no account of the journey itself has been found. They settled at St Johns township, near the village of Raymond, and the 1920 census recorded Mary, aged 34, at St Johns with Clarence; the 1930 census listed her there as his wife. The couple had six children: Glen Eugene (1911–1993), Lorene Mary (1914–1988), Charlotte Mae (1915–2007), Elmer Alvin, who died in infancy in 1918, Nicholas Melvin (1922–2015), and Ora Emogene (1925–2014).

Widowhood

Clarence Walrath died on 6 January 1934, leaving Mary a widow at Raymond. His obituary gave the cause as tetanus after three days’ illness, and because he left a will, Letters Testamentary were granted to Mary. The 1940 census found her a widow heading her own household in St. Johns Township, in the same house as in 1935, with her children Ora and Nicholas; the 1950 census recorded her, a widow of 64, as head of a household in Willmar Township. Two later family obituaries describe the land after Clarence’s death, one saying her son Glen farmed it and the other that her son Nick eventually bought the farm from her; when Nicholas registered for the World War II draft in 1942 he named her, as “Mrs. May Walrath,” his only living parent and next of kin — by then she had been a widow for eight years.

Death

Mary Magdalene Koons, then Mrs. Mary Walrath of Wheaton, formerly of the Raymond area, died on Saturday 19 November 1977 at the Traverse County Nursing Home in Wheaton, Minnesota, aged 92. Wheaton lies about a hundred miles from Kandiyohi County, where she had lived since about 1915; her son Nick lived there, and her obituary in the West Central Tribune of Willmar, headed “Former Raymond Woman Dies In Wheaton,” lists him as “of Wheaton.” The records do not say when she moved to the town.

Funeral services were held on Wednesday 23 November at 10:30 a.m. at the Presbyterian Church of Wheaton, followed by graveside services at 2:30 p.m. at the Raymond Cemetery; she was buried at Raymond on 23 November 1977. She was survived by three daughters, Lorene, Charlotte and Ora, and two sons, Glen and Nick.

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

Her marriage to Clarence was long recorded in the family tree by year alone; a state marriage index later supplied the exact date, 18 January 1910.