♂Samuel Kunz

Samuel Kunz (12 June 1825 – December 1904) was a Pennsylvania German farmer from Lebanon County who prospered after moving to Henry County, Indiana, while the elder brother who stayed behind died there landless; his own son would later marry that brother’s daughter, his first cousin. He later settled in Clay County, Illinois, where he was known as Samuel Koons. He was the great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Thomas Koons (1855–1938) and Thomas’s daughter Mary Magdalene Koons (1885–1977).

Early life

He was born on 12 June 1825 and christened that year at Jonestown, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, a son of John Kunz and Cattarina Gingerich. A family letter written in 1916 by a relative, David Koons, lists him second among the couple’s nine children; church baptism entries confirm seven of the nine names.

The 1850 census index places him in East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, still in his parents’ household, with John Koons (63) and Catharine (57); the index gives his own age as 23.

Marriage and family

On 5 October 1854 he married Maria (Mary Elizabeth) Rickert at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jonestown. Their son Thomas was born in December 1855 and their daughter Malinda about 1858, both in Pennsylvania, and they had no other children: the censuses of 1860 and 1870 show the same household, and Samuel’s will names only “my two children namely Thomas Koons and Malinda Koons”.

By 1860 the family had moved west to Greensboro Township, Henry County, Indiana, where the census recorded the name as “Coones”. In 1870 he farmed there with land worth $1,600. Jacob John Kunz, his elder brother, whom their father’s will of 1864 names among his sons, had stayed in Lebanon County, where he was a tenant farmer in 1860 and died in 1866, as a Find a Grave memorial gives it. The two branches rejoined when Thomas married Jacob’s daughter Magdalena M. Koons, his first cousin. Malinda very probably did the same: in 1876 she married John H. Koontz, who by name, age and birthplace was Jacob’s son John H. W. Koons, although no record yet names his parents. Samuel was still at Greensboro in 1880, with the children grown and gone.

Illinois and death

Sometime after 1880 he and Mary moved to the Town of Harter in Clay County, Illinois. There, on 18 October 1894, aged 69, he made a will giving his wife “all my real and personal property to have and to hold as her absolute property so long as she remains my widow”, with forty acres of Clay County land to each of his two children: Thomas received the south-west quarter of the south-east quarter of section 5, and Malinda the north-west quarter of the north-east quarter of section 8, both in Town 2 North, Range 6 East. Bequests to a widow that ended if she remarried were a common form in wills of the period. The 1900 census finds the couple at Harter, still farming.

He died at his house in December 1904. The county death register gives the date as 16 December, and he was buried two days later in Camp Ground Cemetery near Xenia. His widow’s sworn proof of death, filed with the will in January 1905, says only that he died “on or about the 10th day of December”. The two dates differ, and the records do not settle which is right. The will was proved in the Clay County Court in March 1905.

Notes

Earlier versions of the family record placed his birth in Juniata County. No record supports that: his christening and his Illinois death record both point to Lebanon County.