Blanche B. Bucher

Blanche B. Bucher, daughter of Mary Lincoln “Tinty” Martin and Elwood Byron Bucher, was born 11 September 1888 in Martintown, Green County, WI. Her middle name is not recalled, but it is likely to have been Belle, because “Blanche Belle” was a popular combination of names for babies born in the general vicinity of Martintown during the second half of the 19th Century. She was the fourth of seven children. (This tally includes the twin boys born after her, who did not survive infancy.) Blanche’s early childhood was spent in Martintown, probably on eighty acres of farmland Tinty had been given as a dowry by her parents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. Some time in the 1890s the household shifted a short distance south over the state line to property with a Winslow, Stephenson County, IL address. Blanche attended Martin elementary school and then Winslow High School -- at that time only a two-year institution -- then went on to obtain a teaching credential at Northern Illinois State Normal School in DeKalb, DeKalb County, IL. (A generation later, her niece Thelma Ritter would also obtain a teaching at that institution, which is now known as Northern Illinois University.) Still in her teens, Blanche became a rural-school teacher.

Blanche’s mother did not get to see her daughter begin her career, an ectopic pregnancy (or perhaps a burst appendix) having claimed Tinty’s life in 1902, just before Blanche’s fourteenth birthday. However, Blanche surely felt the continuing influence of her mother in the sense that she remained a part of the Martin clan and cleaved to the community founded by her grandfather Nathaniel. This connectedness was reinforced after her uncle Horatio Woodman Martin passed away of tuberculosis in the spring of 1906, and Blanche’s father went on to marry his widowed sister-in-law, Laura Hart Martin, a year later. Horatio and Laura’s four children were from then on Blanche’s step-siblings as well as her first cousins. Already grown, Blanche was not a part of the combined household, except perhaps to stay at home in 1907 and 1908 during gaps between school terms. However, Martintown was unquestionably her anchorage. For one thing, her older siblings remained there or in Winslow. For another, with Horatio Martin’s passing, her dad took over primary oversight of the family mill complex, soon to be assisted by Charles Lewis Buss, husband of Blanche’s sister Rose, and in the period from 1907 into the 1910s, the prosperity of the village was so influenced by the Bucher family, it almost could have been called Buchertown. (In that era, Elwood’s brother Thomas Bucher and brother-in-law Thomas Devlin were among the prominent businessmen of the community.)

Her stint as a school teacher in Berlin, Stephenson County, IL caused Blanche to meet and get to know Tecumseh Edgar Claus, to whom she was joined in matrimony at the age of twenty. Her bridegroom had been born 10 April 1888 in eastern Stephenson County, a location given differently in sources as Rock City and Rock Run. (Both communities, along with Rock Grove, share the same general area.) He was a son of John Riley Claus and Mary Adaline Wolf. His father had died when he was a year old. The male parent he had known during childhood had been his stepfather Andrew Hanson, who in turn had died in 1903. Tecumseh had been born Fred (or Frederick) Edgar Claus, but apparently did not like his given name and switched to Tecumseh in gradeschool. As an adult he most often went by his initials, becoming T.E. Claus -- his full name appears in only a few public records. Blanche would have found this familiar as her father was usually known by his initials. The wedding took place 23 December 1908 in Stephenson County, probably in Winslow, but perhaps in Rock Run, where the couple would immediately establish themselves on a farm. (They appear there in the 1910 census.)

Among the legacies of Blanche and T.E.’s decade together are a number of the images that adorn this website. T.E. was the photographer. Among his habits was having his photos made into postcards that he would send to his fiancée Blanche at times when they were forced to conduct their courtship at a distance. T.E. was something of a flamboyant character, and fond of practical jokes. A surviving granddaughter recalls him as an intimidating figure who would make her eat sardines, and who threatened to take out his glass eye to watch over her and make sure she behaved.

Blanche and T.E. became parents of a daughter, Evelyn Lois Claus, in 1911. By then or some time in the next few years, T.E. gave up farming and the couple moved to Winslow. Second child Phyllis Irene Claus came along in 1916. This was probably after the move to Winslow. The household was definitely in Winslow by the time T.E. filed his draft registration card on 5 June 1917.

That draft card lists T.E.’s occupation as “garageman” for H.J. Kennedy of Winslow. He had a variety of jobs during the late 1910s. Soon he was working as a butcher. The family resided on the second floor above the butcher shop. They were still in these quarters in the latter part of 1918 when Blanche became pregnant a third time. Tragically, she did not get to carry the baby to term. This was when the Spanish Flu was ravaging the world, killing as many as twenty-five million people. The epidemic had the extraordinary quality of taking out vigorous, otherwise healthy individuals in their young adulthood, rather than whittling away at the very old and the very young as most diseases do. The Spanish Flu provoked the immune system, and the stronger the immune system, the stronger the symptoms. Blanche contracted the virus and this led to the case of pneumonia that killed her on the 30th of December at age thirty. Her remains were interred at what her obituary describes as Winslow Cemetery, better known locally as Rock Lily Cemetery.

Left scrambling to cope as a single father, T.E. Claus temporarily handed off Evelyn and Phyllis to the care of his mother Mary Wolf Claus Hanson in Pecatonica, Winnebago County, IL, while he tried to earn a livelihood as a vacuum-cleaner salesman (a rather new occupation in that era) in Freeport, Stephenson County, IL. He had been a widower a little more than two years when he married second wife Mabel Claire Zimmerman. The wedding took place 31 March 1921 in Stephenson County. Mabel was a dozen years younger than T.E., having been left as a foundling at the Stephenson County Care Farm 31 March 1900, which is believed to be the day of her birth. She had immediately been accepted by a middle-aged couple, Charles C. Zimmerman and Arabelle E. Grimes, who had decided to relieve their childlessness and had been waiting for a suitable orphan baby to turn up at the charity house. They had found Mabel to be just what they wanted, and the formal adoption had been completed 27 September 1900. Mabel had then spent the period from infancy to adolescence on the Zimmerman farm in rural Stephenson County, and her teens in Freeport, the place her parents had chosen to retire.

Inasmuch as Mabel became a bride on her twenty-first birthday, the stage was set for a whole second family. T.E. and Mabel would ultimately have six children together (in addition to Evelyn and Phyllis). They spent most of the 1920s in Stephenson County, then made a huge move down to the southernmost nook of Texas -- Cameron County, where Brownsville is located, though they were not based in that city. Instead, their home was in Santa Rosa, in the northwestern quarter of the county, away from the Gulf of Mexico and away from the Rio Grande. T.E. became a housepainter. The Claus clan would remain in Cameron County for many decades and some descendants still reside there. Phyllis Claus was part of the move and, though she left Cameron County upon coming of age, would spend most of her life as a Texan. By the time of the migration Evelyn was nearing the end of her teens and, given a somewhat ambivalent relationship with her stepmother, preferred to remain in Illinois. The eldest four of their half-siblings founded substantial families. The two youngest did not get the opportunity to do so. They were involved in a fiery vehicle crash 6 June 1951, and perished that month of the burns they incurred -- both were only in their teens at the time of their passing.

T.E. Claus lived long enough to have the misfortune of having to cope with the tragedy involving his two children. He ultimately passed away 26 April 1954 in Cameron County. Mabel survived him by about fifteen months.

Children of Blanche B. Bucher with Tecumseh Edgar Claus

Evelyn Lois Claus

Phyllis Irene Claus

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