[5706]
per 1910 census John is a manager for an elevator. The family is living on Oxford St. His name is "Alexis J."
Per WWI draft card - John is a grain buyer for the Farmer's Elevator Co. in Edison, NE. He is slender, of med. height, with black eyes and hair. (The writing on this was awful. This is my best guess.)
1920 Census - his name is listed J. A.
1930 Census John is still managing the grain elevator. His home is worth $2500 and there is no mortgage. They have a 10 yr old granddaughter living with them. Last name Harlan, 1st name looks like "Halsn"
_Benjamin Russell GROVER _+
| (1821 - 1885)
_Edmund R. GROVER ____|
| (1869 - 1931) |
| |_Lurinda LEWIS ___________
|
|
|--Raymond GROVER
| (1899 - 1963)
| _Stephen MEAD ____________
| | (1829 - 1875)
|_Nancy Lucietta MEAD _|
(1872 - 1924) |
|_Laura Ann _______________+
(1830 - 1905)
[9331] Family chart given by Rae to Dawne Pamplin and passed to Dianne Stevens 26 Apr 2006.
_Frederick KAYHART __
|
_Richard KAYHART ____|
| (.... - 1850) m 1824|
| |_ VANDERHOOF ________
|
|
|--Edward KAYHART
| (1847 - ....)
| _Jacob DEMOUTH ______+
| | (1763 - 1835)
|_Elizabeth DEMOUTH __|
(1803 - ....) m 1824|
|_Deborah ____________
(1767 - 1833)
_Ferdinand Heinrich Wilhelm KLEASNER _+
| (1856 - 1933) m 1885
_Lewis William KLEASNER _|
| (1892 - 1957) m 1916 |
| |_Elizabeth Marie MIDDLEBERGER ________+
| (1866 - 1942) m 1885
|
|--Kathryn Virginia KLEASNER
| (1918 - 1992)
| _George W. BROWN _____________________
| | (1857 - 1930)
|_Mattie Lou BROWN _______|
(1896 - 1967) m 1916 |
|_Athelia _____________________________
(1855 - ....)
[917]
The Story of Kathryn Virginia Kleasner
3 November 2004
Dear Children,
Tonight I want to tell you about a very special lady that your Mommy loved very much. And I did too. And so did everyone that knew her. She is the person we call Grandma Zimmerman, Kathryn Virginia Kleasner Zimmerman. Kathryn was born to a poor young farming couple, Lewis and Mattie Lou Kleasner, in rural Howard County, Missouri near the town of New Franklin, on the 24th of July, 1918, at 5:00 o'clock in the morning. She was their second child, their first being 20 month old Lewis Junior. Kathryn's nickname in her birth family was always "Sis." Soon after Kathryn came Evelyn Lucille in 1920 whom everyone called "Tudie." Then it was eight years before the next child, Earl Wayne, was born in 1928, and two years later the last child, Kenneth. Sis and Tudie fought all the time. Sis took a scar to her grave that Tudie gave her once with a bite on the arm. However, they were both old enough to be little mothers to Kenny and Wayne, whom they both adored.
Farm life was hard for the Kleasners. I don't believe they were ever able to own their own farm. They rented. Everything they ate, they grew. This is the way Kathryn described life on the farm in the days of her childhood in a letter to her granddaughter Dawne in 1974.
"Our way of life was rather primitive in some ways such as no electricity, running water, and definitely no modern conveniences of today. We had to grow all our food. That covered meat, (pork and beef) chickens, vegetables and fruits. Lots of our summer days were spent in the vegetable garden, hoeing and keeping weeds from taking over. We had to can all vegetables and fruits and place them in a food cellar. My mother was the kind that definitely canned enough food of all kinds to feed her family all winter.
"Butchering time for the pigs and beef was a neighborhood affair. Neighbors helped one another as killing a big beef or porker was a big job. This could not be done until very cold weather started. You had to cool your fresh meat good before you cured it. This was done in what they called a "smoke house." After your pork was all trimmed and sugar and salt coated it was smoked by burning very small hickory logs in this tightly closed house. The trimmings were fat from the pigs so that called for a big session of cutting this fat into small chunks and cooking it in a big kettle over a fire. That was called lard and was long before Crisco was ever heard of. Some of the meat had to be canned. A lot was made into sausages and smoked. The farm ladies always made head cheese - truly a delicious part of fresh meat. My father usually butchered 5 or 6 big hogs. They usually milked about 6 Jersey cows and that meant lots of rich cream to be made into butter and sold at the grocery store.
"As for fun, we had to make our own fun. We were always allowed to have neighborhood children over and we were luckier than some farmers as we had a car. My father was a great lover of the model "T" Ford and also had a Ford tractor. Our dad was wonderful at going after our friends for us. One thing Grandma remembers so well that was so much fun - We didn't have paved highways and when a snow storm hit opening up roads was unheard of. One of our neighbors had a huge horse drawn sleigh. So he would start out and go from farm to farm gathering up all the children for school. We always sang songs. What fun!
"Would you believe Grandma went to a one room school house where all eight grades were taught? How we did have fun when time came to put on our Christmas play. We all would take a sheet and would make curtains that would draw. Our plays were something to remember. Another thing that was a lot of fun - we always held a "pie social" every fall at school. The girls were to trim a box up pretty and make a pie. Then at the social the boys would bid on them. You never knew who would help you eat your pie.
"One nice thing - we had telephones. Kids talked as much on them then as they do today. Another thing that was fun - Grandma and Aunt Tudie always built a "pretend" house under a big apple tree. That worked fine until my brother and his friends would come to visit us."
More memories of childhood come from an article I wrote about Kathryn in the Oakwood newsletter of June 1982.
" The girls learned to sew on brightly printed flour sacks from which they made their dresses.
They had fun, too, a play house under an apple tree, baseball in the summer, and on winter evenings playing cards and popping corn. The three older ones rode several miles to a one-room school on a little horse named Trixie. Her father allowed bands of gypsies who traveled the countryside to camp near the house and her mother gave them milk for their children. They told fortunes for a penny. When her Grandfather Brown went out to have his told in the evening, Kathryn worried about him, but he would be back in the morning and the gypsies gone.
"During the Depression many men who were out of work walked the roads or rode the freight trains looking for odd jobs. Though her daddy couldn't afford to hire them, her mother always managed to find something for them to eat."
The Great Depression hit rural America earlier than it hit the cities. During the First World War (1914-1918) the United States had become a bread basket for the troops fighting in Europe. Farmers thrived and expanded their fields. After the war, which ended in 1918, farmers kept up the higher level of production, but with the war market gone, demand for farm products declined and prices fell - dramatically. Since farmers were getting less money for their crop they decided to make up for it by growing even more which caused prices to fall further. So the 1920's, when Kathryn was a little girl, were a time of depression on the farm. While people in the cities were getting running water and lights in their homes, these modern conveniences were not coming to the farms, at least not the ones in central Missouri where Kathryn lived. Everything had to be used very carefully. Nothing could be wasted. And although the Kleasners were poor by today's standards, they didn't feel poor because everybody they knew was in the same boat.
The following story comes again from the Oakwood newsletter article. After finishing the eighth grade in 1932 Kathryn couldn't afford to go to the high school ten miles away. Besides, the family needed any money she could earn by working for families in the area. The pay was negligible and she suffered agonies of homesickness. In fact, in all the jobs she held over the next 20 years, she never got over being homesick.
In Kansas City she got a better job, earning $6.50 a week out of which she saved enough to buy a radio for her father and brothers to listen to ball games. On her days off she enjoyed the local YWCA where she made two fast friends among the working girls. They were Agnes Quinllan and Esther Albers. Eventually the three friends went to the Chicago area to work for wealthy familites along Lake Michigan. Though she worked for a kind family, the Angster's, with a huge house near the lake, Kathryn was so homesick that she took a bus to Missouri every time she could. The first year her family had electricity she saved enough money to buy her mother a refrigerator. And once again she found social life at the YWCA.
I want to tell you a little bit about the YWCA because it played such an important part in the history of our family. Young Women's Christian Association was formed in London by Emma Roberts and Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird in 1855 and was introduced to the United States in 1858.TThroughout its history the YWCA has been in the forefront of most major movements in the United States as a pioneer in race relations, labor union representation, and the empowerment of women. Here are some highlights of the YWCA's history that I gleaned from their web page.
In 1860 - The YWCA opened the first boarding house for female students, teachers and factory workers in New York City as women moved from farms to cities. In the 1870s - Recognizing women's needs for jobs, the YWCA held the first typewriting classes for women, formerly considered a man's occupation, and opened the first employment bureau. In 1946 - YWCA adopted its Interracial Charter - eight years before the US Supreme Court decision against segregation. In the 1950s - As African countries became independent, the United States sent leaders who moved from village to village to tell the YWCA story and help women marshal their own leadership and resources to create indigenous YWCAs in Kenya, Uganda, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa and elsewhere. Uganda achieved remarkable participation - 90 percent of women were YWCA members by the 1990s. In 1960 - The Atlanta YWCA cafeteria opened to blacks, becoming the city's first desegregated public dining facility. Separate black YWCA branches and facilities were integrated into the whole.
I also want to tell you a little bit about the YWCA as we knew it in Highland Park, Illinois. It was a huge 100 year old house about six blocks west of Lake Michigan. Young women working in the area rented the upstairs rooms for a nominal fee like $20 per month. There were programs and classes for many groups of people - the elderly, African Americans, women who worked in the wealthy North Shore homes. There were painting classes, bridge classes, dancing classes. There were always people, more kinds of people than I had ever known existed, coming and going. I learned right away that the motto of the YWCA was that it was for all women without regard to race or creed or religion.
It was at the Highland Park YWCA at 474 Laurel Avenue, which no longer exists because it was torn down to make room for a library expansion in the 1960's, that Kathryn met a little dark haired girl who had lost her mother and had come to live with her aunt who was the executive director of the YW. The girl liked the plump lady with the beautiful smile and would watch for her coming. A real love affair developed between the two. A year later when the girls' father and brother came to visit, Kathryn's cheerful ways captured the heart of the grieving father and in 1955 they were married. Instantly she became the mother of the girl (Yes, that's me, Dianne Irene Zimmerman Stevens) and the 15 year old boy (my brother, Jon Christian Zimmerman).
She joined the family in a project house in Waukegan, Illinois. It was a little 3 bedroom house exactly like 100 others in the neighborhood, but oh how happy we were there. It's hard to explain the magic Kathryn worked on our family. Under Kathryn's management home became an oasis of peace and order and happiness. Kathryn was 37. It was her first and only marriage. She may have brought extra joy in knowing she no longer had to worry that her dreams of family and home would go unfullfilled. The Zimmerman family had been limping along without a mother for nearly three years. We truly appreciated the homemaking skills Kathryn brought with her. More than that we all thrived under the spell of genuine love that she brought.
The following spring the job of Resident Director of the Highland Park YW opened up. For 10 years, along with her home duties Kathryn ran the Y's residence for 15 girls, supervised the upkeep of the building and kept the books. She loved her job, though it was difficult to keep up both at home and at work. Kathryn rose at 5:30 every morning and seldom came home before 6 at night. For most of those years she commuted to work on the train - Chicago & Northwestern. People coming to the YW loved being greeted by her warm smile just as Dianne had. She was an extremely capable manager. Her talents were so appreciated that at one point when Aunt Musa DeMouth left the position of executive director to take a job in Billings, Montana, that job was offered to Kathryn. She turned it down because she was intimidated at the prospect of standing up and giving reports to the extremely well-educated women on the board of directors. She was very aware of only having an eighth grade education. One highlight of that job was the Christmas bazaar held every year in the fall. Kathryn loved making things to sell. Another was the opportunity to work at the Americanization of Gilda Bosco. The first day Gilda, who was a new immigrant from southern Italy, worked at the Y she put the electric toaster in a sink of hot soapy water. Kathryn proved a patient and persistent teacher and we became life-long friends with Gilda and her family. One of the bizarre stories that I remember from those days was the time when the board had hired a fairly screwy executive director who kept believing the Y was being visited by an intruder every night. She talked Kathryn into staying overnight and hiding in her office closet to apprehend the said intruder...but only once. That Exec was gone soon after that incident.
By 1966 it was becoming clear that something was not right with Kathryn's health. She was having more and more trouble walking. She had had to give up travelling to work on the train and instead Forrest drove her back and forth everyday. In 1966 she had back surgery to remove a growth on her spine. Afterwards she needed a walker to walk and she sadly gave up her YWCA job .
In 1969 Forrest retired from his job as an electrical engineer at Great Lakes Naval Base. He had always dreamed of retiring in his beloved Pacific Northwest. So they packed up their belongings, sent them on ahead by moving van, and they took the train to Seattle. Kathryn arrived in pretty sorry shape. She could barely walk even with the walker and was in constant pain. She soon landed in the University of Washington Hospital's neurology unit. She was there for four months, lost 100 pounds, and came out in a wheelchair. Although the doctors thought she might have Multiple Sclerosis they weren't sure and no one told her it was a possibility. In the meantime Forrest had moved them to a lovely apartment overlooking Puget Sound in the town of Edmonds, north of Seattle. That's where your Mommy and her brother and sister came every summer to visit for 4 years. And what wonderful visits they were! Grandpa was anxious to show his grandchildren every sight that could be seen. And Dianne and her mom no matter how hard they tried never ran out of things to talk about. But the years in Edmonds were lonely for Kathryn. She never got over missing the hubbub of her job at the YWCA. Forrest could come and go, make friends, and join in community activities. It was different for Kathryn. She was confined in her wheelchair now and it was difficult to get out and meet people. She got tired of looking out at "that old water." Forrest had had dreams of travel, but that was not to be for Kathryn. She encouraged Forrest to go without her and he did so. One time when he went on a trip to Alaska, Kathryn fell. Unable to get up she spent many hours on the floor before she was able to work her way to the telephone and call for help. Her health was not improving.
So in 1975 Forrest reluctantly moved with her back to Madison, Wisconsin to be near Dianne and her family. They enjoyed their grandchildren immensley but it seemed to be the beginning of a long slow decline for Forrest.
One of their first acts was to get a new neurological report on Kathryn. She was in the University of Wisconsin Hospital's Neurology unit which was out on East Washington Avenue at that time. After many tests they came up with the diagnosis of neurological disorder of uncertain etiology. They said she might have Multiple Sclerosis but they weren't sure. So Kathryn kept trying to walk, walking up and down the hallway with her walker everyday. The next major event in Kathryn's life happened in late summer of 1976. She fell while transferring in the bathroom. She broke her thigh bone just above the knee. Dr. Breed put her leg in traction. She hung there for seven weeks. The leg never did heal properly. Eventually they sent her home and she never stood on her legs again. Forrest bought a hoyer lift and a van with a motorized lift and they learned to get along with the aide of this special equipment. Forrest was wonderful. He had to get Kathryn out of bed every morning and into bed every night, but like his father before him he never complained. Kathryn quickly learned to take care of all her other needs herself.
In 1979 they moved once more to Oakwood Retirement Home, 15th floor. Here Kathryn was truly happy. She and Forrest went to the dining hall every night, and with her warm smile and caring nature, Kathryn quickly made friends with almost everyone in the building. When Forrest's health declined to the point that he was no longer able to help Kathryn in and out of bed, she found outside help and remained very independent. Now it was her turn to take care of him. He could walk and move but could not remember what to do. She couldn't walk but knew exactly what needed to be done. And for the next several years they made a pretty good team. Eventually Forrest needed much more than Kathryn's supervision and in the fall of 1985 had to go to a nursing home. He died in 1989. Kathryn remained at Oakwood and flourished in the glow of friendships she had made inspite of numerous aflictions.
Besides her undiagnosed neurological disorder, Kathryn had terrific arthritis, occassionally suffered from TIAs (transient ischemic attacks)(they are mini-strokes which supposedly to not leave permanent damage.), and sporadically developed decubitis ulcers. On the night of May 1, 1990 she suffered a TIA. It knocked out her ability to speak and did not seem to be reversing itself as previous ones had done. After several hours she decided perhaps she'd better go to the hospital. So I called the ambulance and off we went to St. Mary's Hospital. By the next day the TIA had totally disappeared but they wanted to keep her several days to treat the decubitis ulcer on the back on one heel. The day before she was to go home, she was in her wheelchair on a platform having a whirlpool treatment for the leg. Someone came along and bumped her chair. The chair rolled off the platform and Kathryn fell out onto the floor. No one realized it till the next day, but both her legs were broken. She never returned to her apartment again. Instead she was sent to Oakwood's nursing home where she stayed for a month, rarely getting the proper care.
So in June of 1990, she came to live with the Stevens family. This made for a busy household as Heather had suffered a severe brain injury and needed constant care and Daniel was only 6 years old. Cindy Maloy, Dianne Hess, and Elspeth Gordon were three people who helped us get through those days. Kathryn was not easy to care for. She had both legs out in front of her in splints. Being out of commission in the nursing home for a month, she had lost many abilities including the ability to sit up properly, feed herself, and to write. She had no bed mobility at all and had to be turned. She had gone from being almost totally independent to being totally dependent. And then she developed terrific diarrhea which last for four months and was only then traced to the medication baclofin that had been prescribed in the hoispital to keep her legs from spasming in the splints and rubbing on the decubiti. Fortunately Kathryn never remembered the diarrhea. It took two people to move her from bed to chair and back. And Heather still needed help too. Someone got us in touch with the Chinese group in town. We went through nine Chinese women. Then we tried the Polish. We went through three Polish live-ins. Somehow we all survived and kept smiling. I remember one call I made home to Dianne Hess one evening when I had Dan at the doctor's for an ear infection. It went something like this: "After you get Grandma's diarrhea cleaned up and have given Heather her exercises, could you please clean up the cat vomit in the backhall?" We all had a good laugh about that one. We kept a diary of those days. All the volumes are carefully stowed away in the Box room.
After we conquered the diarrhea Kathryn had one fabulous year at the Stevens home before beginning to go downhill in the fall of 1991. It's surprising how many threads of her life came together in her last few months. Her son, Jon, and his wife, Nancy, came to visit. Her brother Kenny, whom she hadn't seen in 25 years, came to visit her. A friend from childhood, whom she had not seen in 60 years, wrote to her. Her old friend from the Y, Viola Poore, whom she hadn't seen in twenty years, called and they had a wonderful telephone visit. A large group of Oakwood friends came over to Stevens' house for an afternoon party. And she made one last visit to the dining hall at Oakwood Village. She died of heart failure at University Hospital on the 10th of February 1992. An autopsy showed she had indeed had multiple sclerosis.
You may be wondering what became of her dear farm family in Missouri. Grandpa Lewis Kleasner died only two years after Kathryn's marriage in June of 1957. Grandma Mattie Lou took it very hard and several months later attempted to swallow a bottle of aspirin, but was found in time to revive her. She moved into town with her younger daughter,Tudie, and lived for ten more years. Tudie was married to a man who drank too much. She supported him and herself and then her mother on her wages as a telephone operator. After her husband and her mother died, Tudie married again and seemed to be very happy But she died of heart problems less than a year later. Lewis Jr. grew up just in time to get in on World War II. He drove a tank in the Battle of the Bulge and then on through Germany. He helped to liberate the concentration camps. Lewie lived most of his life in California. Wayne and Kenny both loved to play baseball. Kenny was a on a Yankee farm team for awhile. Wayne married a tiny woman named Gladys and they had two daughters - the only blood grandchildren from Lewis and Mattie Lou. Wayne had his own trucking business near Columbia for many years. Kenny was the only child who finished high school - and just in time for the Korean War. After the war he went to college and had a wonderful job for many years with Brown & Root, doing something with pipelines in Bahrain. He and his wife Johnnie live in Houston, Texas. The Kleasners were all wonderful people, cheerful and hardworking, just like Kathryn - just good-salt-of-the-earth people. My brother and I adored them. We always looked forward to our trips to Missouri with eager anticipation.
This is what I said about "Grandma" at her Memorial service:
"My mom was a super nice lady with a big heart and a big smile. She had tremendous organizational abilities, she was a wonderful mother, and she radiated a courageous joyful spirit.
"My mom had a big heart. She came from a poor Missouri farm family, She had to leave home when she was just 14 to help support her family. But she always had a heart for the poor. Maybe she got it from her dad whom she said would always find something to share with the hobos who would stop by their farm. When she was a very young woman she left Missouri and went to the Chicago area to work.She was upset for a long time by the experience of riding on the train through Chicago's slum neighborhoods. It made her so sad to think that anyone would have to live in such places. When we were growing up it seemed that whenever she received a request in the mail to help the poor she would always find a few dollars to send.
"My mom had a big smile. Her smile could light up a whole room. The first time I ever remember seeing her was one day when she came through the big front door at the YWCA where I was staying with my aunt. She had such a beautiful smile and it seemed like it was just for me. After that whenever groups of people would come to the Y for meetings, I would always watch and hope that the lady with the beautiful smile would come.
"My mom had tremendous organizational abilities. When she married my dad we were a forlorn raggle- taggle little group, my dad, my brother and me. And she made us such a good home. Though it was humble by material standards, she used her many skills to make it an oasis of peace and order and happiness in a bustling busy world. It was such fun to help her with the housework because she took such pride in it and enjoyed it so.
"My mom was a wonderful mother. She made me feel I had no problem too large or too small for her to be concerned about. I remember when I was a full-grown high school girl I would look forward to each evening when she would get home from work, and while she changed her clothes I would sprawl across the bed and tell her everything that had happened to me all day long and she would help me figure out what it all meant. And we had such fun together! She really taught me to find the fun in everyday living.
"My mom was a woman of tremendous courage and spirit. She suffered with various physical problems all her life. She spent her last 20 years in a wheelchair. But she didn't let these things stop her from enjoying her friends and family and from running her own life the way she wanted it to be. Because of her great spirit I always felt like people who knew my mom socially would have been very surprised to learn how very physically handicapped she really was - and those who knew what shape she was in physically would have been very surprised to see how resourceful and ingenious she was at caring for herself, and how independent she was able to be. She was a tremendous example for myself and many others of living with adversity.
"A former minister at my church was fond or quoting a great theologian who had said, 'Joy is the surest sign of the presence of God.' Everytime I heard him say that the image of my mother came to my mind. My mom was a person who found joy in life. And she radiated joy to everyone around her. She was surely one of God's special people."
So, dear children, when you hear your mommy or me talk about "Grandma" this is who we mean, Kathryn Virginia Kleasner Zimmerman. She lived a full and wonderful life and though she had many adversities, she never stopped smiling. I hope you will help us remember her because she never had birth children. She was a beloved mother to Dianne, though a step-mother. Dianne had Dawne. Dawne had you. So she was your step-great-grandmother. And she would have adored you.
Love,
Granny
_William STEVENS ____+
| (1785 - 1869) m 1810
_Elisha STEVENS _____|
| (1815 - 1880) m 1840|
| |_Hannah HIGGINS _____+
| (1787 - 1869) m 1810
|
|--Joseph Burpee STEVENS
| (1846 - ....)
| _____________________
| |
|_Abigail HALL _______|
(1819 - 1881) m 1840|
|_____________________
[10875] Carol writes the following about Burpee: " Burpee (Burpie)Stevens b 1846 was my great grandfather. His name was Joseph Burpee but he was known as Burpee....There was another Burpee Stevens b abt 1873. He lived in Brookfield. Nova Scotia. It would be interesting to know who he was a descendant of. I have been told that both Burpee and his brother John L had red hair. I have 2 sisters and a brother all with red hair. No one else in the family has red hair. Burpee's son Howard b 1878 is my grandfather."
__
|
_William TRYON ______|
| (1595 - ....) |
| |__
|
|
|--William TRYON
| (1645 - 1711)
| __
| |
|_Rebecca ____________|
(1610 - ....) |
|__