Clifford Warner

Clifford Warner, fourth of the five children of John Warner and Marancy Alexander, was born 14 April 1851 in Winslow, Stephenson County, IL. His older siblings were Araminta, John, and Frederick. The birth of his brother Charles would follow two years after his.

When Clifford was a baby, Stephenson County was just beginning to earn the classification of “settled” part of the United States. The region had still been controlled by native tribes just twenty years earlier and Winslow was still in its formative period. The presence of sawmills at Winslow and a mile north at Martintown, WI, and the fact that his father was a sawyer, meant that the family possessed a residence made of framed lumber, as opposed to the log cabin John and Marancy had started out with in the early 1840s, but there is no question Clifford from the git-go was imbued with the sense that his environment was being actively shaped, that rapid transformation of surroundings and customs and relationships was “what people did” as a common, everyday thing. As an adult he would not be afraid to place himself in similar circumstances.

For all of Winslow’s lingering pioneer aspects, Clifford spent his early childhood safe within a bevy of hearth and kin. In the early 1850s the household consisted not only of his parents and siblings but of both grandmothers as well. Living nearby were many uncles and aunts, including his father’s half-siblings Cynthia Mack and George White, and his mother’s siblings Mary Ann Francis and Almeda Boynton, and their various spouses and offspring. Clifford’s parents had been on their homestead for about ten years when he made his appearance in the world, and his father was gainfully employed as a farmer and sawyer (and perhaps as a flour miller as well). Clifford was unquestionably in a “good place to grow up.”

Unfortunately, when Clifford was not yet seven years old, his father died. That sort of loss at that sort of age surely had its effect on Clifford. He was deprived not only of his most important role model, but was now exposed to the insecurity of living in a household that had no full-time breadwinner. On the brighter side, he was somewhat sheltered from the ramifications of the tragedy due to being one of the younger children. For instance, unlike his older brother John, he did not have to quit school and go to work to support the household.

Marancy did not remarry until over four years after John’s death. The change came after after neighbor Nicholas Balliet became a widower. He proposed to Marancy, who accepted. The Warner and Balliet households were combined in 1862, and in the process Clifford gained step-siblings. The arrangement proved to be somewhat temporary, however, in part because most of the Balliet kids were older than Clifford and soon came of age and left to make their ways in the world, and in part because Nicholas Balliet passed away before the end of the 1860s. During the latter 1860s Clifford’s full siblings also spread their wings, even his younger brother Charles, who despite being only a teenager went with neighbor Charles Macomber and family to Washington County, NE to work as a hired hand on the farm the Macombers were attempting to establish there. By the time the federal census was taken in the summer of 1870, the only members of the Warner household left at the old place in Winslow were Clifford and his mother.

It could be that Clifford remained because by 1870 he was the eldest unmarried son, and was the one made responsible for maintaining the heritage farm. However, this was a stop-gap arrangement. Other opportunities beckoned. In particular, there was the call of Nebraska, where homesteading opportunities were plentiful now that the Civil War had ended and the army had been able to turn its attention to “pacifying” the Sioux and other Great Plains tribes. Clifford’s brother Frederick heeded this call. In 1869 Fred had married Penina Jane Shreckengost, the eldest daughter of a family who had come to Winslow in the early 1850s from Pennsylvania. In the autumn of 1870, Fred’s father-in-law Henry Shreckengost and Henry’s brother-in-law William Peter Miller scouted out prospective sites in Nebraska for purposes of homesteading, and liked what they found in Butler County. They returned and organized a migration of about a dozen Stephenson County households. The initial group of five families headed off in the spring of 1871. Fred and Penina (aka Nina) may have been part of those forerunners. If not, they made the journey later in the year, or in the early part of 1872. Soon the young couple had their homestead in Butler County at a locality that would come to be known as Rising City after the large number of local pioneers who had the surname Rising.

Clifford may have literally come along with his brother and sister-in-law. If not, he joined Fred and Nina a year or two later. He did not found a homestead himself. His role was apparently to assist Fred. However, his decision to come to Butler County led to another development that was perhaps even more a factor in his life story -- he married Nina’s sister Ella Andora Shreckengost. Ella had been born 12 October 1857 in Winslow. She therefore had been only thirteen (and a half) years old when her she climbed into the wagon for the big trip west, but by the time of the wedding, which took place 3 March 1876, she was eighteen.

Already by the time of that wedding, Clifford’s mother had sold the old homestead back in Winslow. Clifford literally had no home to go back to. And indeed, he never again resided in Illinois.

Clifford and Ella probably spent the rest of the 1870s in Butler County, the word “probably” used merely because documentation is so sparse it is theoretically possible -- though unlikely -- they were elsewhere for a little while. They were certainly in the county in the autumn of 1879, because the death of their firstborn child, Olan Carson Warner, was recorded there. While it is possible little Olan and his parents were just visiting his Shreckengost grandparents, it seems more likely the Rising City area was still Clifford and Ella’s base of operations. It would not remain so for long. Though the other members of the Shreckengost-Miller clan remained in place, Ella was apparently ready to endorse a move elsewhere, and Clifford was ready to carve out a own destiny separate from Fred. By the spring of 1880 at the latest, Clifford and Ella moved to an entirely different part of Nebraska, settling on a farm near the juncture of Greeley, Nance, and Boone Counties.

The two decades of the 1880s and 1890s represent the prime period in the lives of Clifford and Ella. The early part of that span was spent farming in the Nance/Greeley/Boone area, the second part, in the 1890s, was spent farther north in Holt County, near the border with South Dakota, and just west of Knox County, where Clifford’s siblings Minta and Charles established homesteads in 1884. “Prime period” does not necessarily imply Clifford and Ella and their kids were thriving, though. Conditions in some years were perfectly adequate for farming. Other years -- not so much. The 1880s saw some severely cold winters, and over the entire first half of the 1890s, Nebraska suffered such a severe drought that half of the people who’d arrived during the previous decade changed their minds about staying. When rains did not come, the prairie winds could dry things out quickly, shrivelling crops and blowing away topsoil. What with one thing after another, Clifford and Ella were eventually reduced to being “sodbusters,” managing to eke out a subsistence only by finding new spots where the ground was still productive, and only because no prior settler had yet drained it of its fertility. References survive in family notes that make it clear the Holt County residence was a “dugout,” i.e. a house dug into the ground and otherwise constructed mainly of sod blocks. One way or another, though, the family survived. Despite the hard times, more children were born, if at a somewhat leisurely pace. About every three and a half years Ella gave birth to another young one until the count came to seven. This tally includes poor Olan, whom the others never got to know inasmuch as his death had occurred four months before the birth of Maude, the second of Clifford and Ella’s brood.

Seven kids was all there would be, and not just because Ella entered her forties. Descendants report that Clifford and Ella went through a bitter parting of the ways. They may never have divorced in the paperwork sense, but they definitely separated and did not maintain a spousal relationship during the last few decades of their lives. Precisely what triggered the bad blood between them is not known. Once the rift occurred, it was severe. One reason there is no photograph of Clifford on this webpage is that Ella must have destroyed any she owned, and it appears none were passed down to her descendants.

The split seems to have taken place in 1898. The couple were apparently getting along well in late 1897, because their last child, Martha Mary Ann Warner, was conceived that autumn. Martha was born 6 April 1898. The event occurred in Wolbach, Greeley County. This may have been where Ella sought out a midwife, because “home” was apparently still the Holt County dugout, where Ella and most of her kids are known to have stayed for at least a few months after the break-up. Soon Ella, accompanied by the three youngest kids, was in Butler County, having sought the haven of her brother Clemens and sisters Minnie and Rena in the Rising City area, as shown in the 1 June 1900 census. She would remain local to that general part of Nebraska for the remainder of her life -- another forty years. Clifford, meanwhile, would soon head the opposite direction. The 1900 census shows him sharing rented quarters with son Claude in the village of Brayton in Greeley County. He was by then a railroad worker. This occupation might have had something to do with the marital difficulties. Perhaps his job had forced him to travel a lot and kept him away too much from his wife, and that had led to a fraying of the bond.

Clifford and Claude, as a father-son tandem, appear to have continued “kicking around” for the remainder of Claude’s bachelorhood, which ended in early 1909 shortly before Claude turned twenty-five years old with his marriage to Bessie Elnora Hills. Family records indicate the wedding occurred in Winner, Tripp County, SD, and it was rural Tripp County that was to be home to Clifford for the rest of his life. However, it must be noted that Clifford, Claude, and Bessie do not appear in Tripp County in the 1910 census. This could be enumerator error, but it seems to be for a more straightforward reason -- they simply had not yet arrived for good, even though by the latter Twentieth Century, younger Warners were certain that Claude and Bessie -- both now deceased -- had told them Tripp County had become their home prior to 1910.

That quibble aside, Tripp County looms large in Clifford’s story from the early 1910s onward. Why he ended up there may have been a simple case of following the availability of good homesteading land, the Tripp County area having become desirable due to railroad construction in the 1908-1912 time period. However, there may have been a genealogical catalyst. Clifford’s cousin Charles O. Hilliard, a grandson of his aunt Cynthia White Mack and one of the clump of kinfolk among whom Clifford had been raised in Winslow, arrived in Tripp County in approximately 1909. Charles became a tinsmith and tin shop owner in Lamro, the original county seat. When the railroad line bypassed Lamro the county seat was moved a couple of miles westward to Winner. Most of the commerical enterprises -- and most of the residents -- of Lamro moved to Winner in 1911 and 1912. Charles and his business were part of that migration. Charles would eventually go on to be the mayor of Winner. Clifford may have appreciated coming to a “land of opportunity” where he had a connection to one of the local movers-and-shakers, most especially one who would not judge him from a Shreckengost perspective. Charles’s spinster daughter Lottie, a local schoolteacher, may even have had some of Clifford’s grandchildren in her classes over the years to come.

Whatever the reasons were for choosing Tripp County, Clifford was soon a landowner there. He acquired forty acres in Section 32 of Rames Township, southeast of Winner. His land was only a third of a mile north of the boundary with Nebraska. It lay about three miles west of the village of Wewela. The land would remain sparsely settled. As of the 2010 census, Wewela has only five residents and Rames Township as a whole only forty residents. It was not quite so empty in Clifford’s era. For example, the enumeration of Rames Township in 1920 consisted of 245 people, and that tally seems to have failed to include a number of the native American families who still frequented, and often officially owned, acreage within the township. However, crowded though that may be compared to how it is nowadays, Clifford would unquestionably been a creature of a Wide Open Spaces sort of environment, and would have gazed out from his front yard at a landscape less wooded and more grassy than even the counties of Nance and Greeley and Butler and Holt had been.

Claude and Bessie Warner lived close by, but not literally within shouting distance. Their farm, a full 160-acre homestead, was in Millboro Township, just west of Rames Township. The two Warner parcels were four-and-a-half miles from each other. Among other things, this means Claude and family might have thought of themselves as being tied to Winner, though the town was well out of sight to the northwest. Clifford meanwhile would have received his mail from Wewela or from Colome, a slightly larger village to the northeast.

Clifford finished out his life in Tripp County. His date of death is 13 January 1925. His grave is in the municipal cemetery at the southern edge of the village of Colome. (The gravemarker, which may not have been installed until the autumn of 1988, is shown at the upper left of this page. Photo taken by Connie Smeds 24 August 2016.) Family notes declare Colome to have been the place of death, but this is probably an assumption based on where he was buried. Chances are high he actually died on his farm in Rames Township, or at the home of his son in Millboro Township.

Below is a bit more about the Clifford Warner clan, in particular, his widow and the seven children:

By the time Ella settled back in Butler County, both parents were dead, but her retreat was the equivalent of “going home to Mom and Dad” because so many Shreckengost and Miller relatives lingered in and around Rising City. Even in the Twenty-First Century burials of members of the clan still take place in the preferred family cemetery, Pleasant View, located out in the countryside four miles east of Rising City in Union Township. Ella’s home, at first on a farm in Reading Township, put her close enough to her brother Clemens and sisters Rena and Minnie that she could spontaneously visit one or more of them any day she chose, or be treated to the sight of them pulling up in her yard in a wagon, picnic baskets behind the seat. Ella had her support system and she clung to it. Her three youngest kids were therefore very much immersed in their Shreckengost identity.

Ella never remarried. She farmed in her own right. However, being a lady farmer, she did not do so in the direct manual-labor way that men of her generation did their farming. She depended upon hired workers. These workers probably included her nephew Hibbard Shreckengost, who reached eighteen years old at the Turn of the Century and then remained a bachelor for nearly another ten years, meaning he was available just when Ella needed a strong young fellow to depend upon. Hibbard was the biological child of Peter Stull and Mary Rebecca Patterson, but following the deaths of both those parents, had been adopted in mid-childhood by Clemens Shreckengost and his wife Cora, who otherwise had no offspring. Ella would ultimately be able to “pay back” Hibbard for being a devoted nephew. Hibbard and his wife Florence both passed away in 1929, making orphans of their nine children. Ella was one of the surrogate-mother figures in the lives of those kids, a duty shared by her sisters Minnie and Rena (until their own deaths in the early 1930s) and with sister-in-law Cora (Clemens having passed away in 1926).

Ella did have a formal partner in her years of farm management, but it was not a husband. It was another woman -- widow Emilie Henfling. By teaming up, the two ladies were able to split some of the costs and allow their individual profits to climb a bit higher than would have been the case had they operated solo.

The kids grew up. Elsie wed in 1909. Marion followed suit in 1916. That left only Martha still with Ella. Then in September of 1918, Martha wed Alden Robert Moural. The time had finally come for Ella to scale back. She became a “live-in mother-in-law” figure in the young couple’s home. This would be the arrangement for many years. Alden, a son of Czech (Bohemian) immigrants, had been born and raised on a farm near Schuyler, Colfax County, NE, and soon came to actively farm, and then own, his father John Moural’s land. Ella’s final days were spent in that locale. This kept her within thirty miles of Rising City, and inasmuch as the era of automobiles had arrived, she was readily able to keep in touch with her same-generation relatives.

The photograph of Ella shown slightly higher on the right was taken in the late 1920s, as evidenced by the brooch she is wearing. She gave that brooch to her then four-year-old granddaughter Mary Andora Warner in 1929. It then became one of Mary’s cherished keepsakes for the rest of her long life. (Mary is the one who supplied this picture for scanning in late 2012, about fifteen months before she passed away.)

One of the many Shreckengost gatherings that took place while Ella and her siblings were still alive was this one held in the summer of 1923. Her brothers Elmer and Milton do not appear to have made it from their homes in Illinois and Kansas -- but the rest did, including Nina, who passed away later that year. The children in front (including the adolescent girl toward the left) are not identified on the print, but are surely the offspring of Hibbard Shreckengost. The young couple on the far left are Ella’s son Marion Henry Warner (wearing the cap) and his wife Alma Lena Reitz Warner. Alma is holding one-year-old Marion Clifford Warner in her arms. The four adults way in back are, left to right, Minnie Rae Shreckengost and her husband Vache Dickerson (the tall fellow with the big white mustache), Alden Robert Moural, and Ella’s daughter Martha Mary Ann Warner Moural. The remaining adults, the ones arrayed immediately behind the children, are (left to right) Ella’s niece Frances Mildred Warner Bowers, Penina Jane Shreckengost Warner, Ella Andora Shreckengost Warner, Clemens Nelson Shreckengost, and Cora D. Armagost Shreckengost. Ella’s sister Ida Lorena “Rena” Shreckengost was there that day, but did not happen to be in view in this particular shot.

Ella passed away 20 March 1940 in Schuyler. She was laid to rest in the aforementioned Pleasant View Cemetery, joining her baby Olan more than sixty years after his demise. The next grave to the right (from the viewpoint of a person standing there reading the front sides of the headstones) is that of her sister Nina and brother-in-law Fred.

Olan Carson Warner, as mentioned above, only survived two years. He was born 8 October 1877 and died 20 November 1879 in Butler County, NE during the family’s final months in the area. His first name is spelled both Olen and Olan in his mother’s family Bible, and too few other documents survive to be absolutely certain of the correct spelling, but we’ll leave it as Olan here inasmuch as that’s the version on his gravemarker. Speaking of names, neither Olan nor Carson are names found in earlier generations of the Warner or Shreckengost families, nor do Clifford and Ella appear to have had a friend or comrade named Olan Carson whom they wanted to honor. In that era, it was unusual for couples to give kids -- particular firstborn sons -- names that were “creative,” but that seems to have been their way of doing things and the uniqueness of the names was a pattern they continued to follow. The exceptions are the final two of the seven kids, whose middle names clearly were acknowledgments of maternal grandparents Henry and Mary.

In the 1880-census mortality schedule, which tabulated deaths that had occurred over the twelve months preceding the census date, Olan’s cause of death is listed as membraneous croup. This was a diagnosis often applied to cases that should have been attributed to diphtheria. The winter of 1879/80 brought a widespread epidemic of diphtheria to the heartland of North America, and it is reasonable to assume Olan was one of the victims. The same wave took the life of Olan’s first cousin Ida Ellen Warner as well as the life of a first cousin of Ida on her mother’s side, Minnie Edna Brown. These girls, who were not even as old as Olan, died back in Martintown, WI, the village a mile north of Winslow where Clifford’s brother John and family had settled.

Maude Melville Warner also died young, though her life was considerably longer than that of Olan. Thanks to that comparative longevity, at least one image of her survives, namely the photograph of her taken in girlhood you can see reproduced at right. By the time of her birth on 15 March 1880, the family may still have been in Butler County. If not, she was born in Boone County, then was raised in the Boone/Greeley/Nance Counties area. Young as she perished, Maude nevertheless produced offspring and is the matriarch of a substantial line of descent. Just barely after turning sixteen, she was impregnated by Milton Cleaveland, who went on to marry her five months later (in August, 1896). Their first child was Nettie Ellen Cleaveland, born 29 November 1896. The second child, Edgar Melvin Cleaveland, was born 6 August 1898. He was born alive and went on to survive into his eighties, but Maude apparently lost too much blood during the labor and expired shortly after the birth. Ella’s Bible puts her death on the sixth of August, the same day as Edgar’s birth. Other family notes say Maude died on the seventh.

Because of Maude was gone so young and so suddenly, her kids did not have the chance to bond with their Warner side relatives and in turn became an almost-unseen branch of the family. Had Clifford and Ella stayed together, it’s possible little Nettie and Edgar would have been raised in their household, but under the circumstances, Milton Cleaveland retained custody. In the fashion typical of men of his era, he did not do much actual childrearing, though, and depended upon arrangements with female relatives. At first, he retreated to the home of his own parents in Nance County. In about 1909, he married Desa Hodges -- who was probably some sort of cousin of his -- and moved to Brazoria County, TX. In the 1910s, he established himself in Lolita, Jackson County, TX and married a third time, to Alice L. Moore, gaining a teenaged stepson, William Kelly, in the process. He and Alice moved back to Nance County in the 1920s. He passed away 2 June 1939 in Sheridan, WY.

Nettie Cleaveland came of age in Lolita and this determined her adult life course. She remained in Texas for the rest of her life, and even today, Texas is the main base of the majority of her descendants. She produced five children with first husband Daniel Jonah Walker. Later she married Eddie Guy Walker (apparently no relation to her first husband). Nettie died 25 November 1971 in a suburb of Fort Worth.

Edgar Cleaveland preferred not to linger in Texas and returned in his early adulthood to Nance County, where he would remain for many decades. He married Sophia Elise Blankemeier and just like his sister, became the parent of five children. He died 22 October 1980 in Central City, NE. Four of his kids chose to live in one part of Nebraska or another throughout their lives. (The last survivor was Clarence, who passed away in Omaha in 2019.) The youngest, Earl, eventually moved to Colorado Springs, CO.

Claude Dee Warner, born 24 May 1884 in Reading Township, Greeley County, NE, fulfilled the role of “number one son” of the family and had a closer bond with Clifford than any of his siblings. As mentioned, he stayed with his father when his parents split up, even though he was only in his mid-teens when the incident occurred. As a young man Claude moved to Tripp County, SD, either because he was still part of his father’s household, or out of his own independent wandering. He perhaps preceded his father in relocating to that area, and it was his presence that prompted Clifford to move there. As mentioned above, Claude married Bessie Elnora Hills. She was a daughter of Chester Wallace Hills and Minnie Davis. (Chester was a native of Sylvester, WI, which is not far from Winslow, IL. This point of origin however does not appear to have had any bearing on why Claude and Bessie met.) The wedding took place 31 January 1909 -- allegedly in Tripp County in the village of Winner but as suggested above, that latter detail must be taken with a grain of salt. Bessie and her parents and siblings had reached Keya Paha County, NE just south of Tripp County during the 1890s. It could be Claude and Bessie were married there, which though it is quite close to Winner, would account for why Claude and Bessie do not appear in the 1910 census in Tripp County, SD. Frustratingly, they do not appear elsewhere, either. The censustakers apparently did not find them. (Chester and Minnie Hills meanwhile appear well to the east in Gregory County, SD.) Maybe the problem was that no frame house had yet been built on either farm. The obituary of Claude and Bessie’s eldest child reveals that she was born in a sod house. Chances are it was a dug-out style and the enumerator may not have spotted it while he was gazing across the landscape. Clifford, as a bachelor, might have had accommodations even more primitive.

Given circumstantial evidence such as the census, Claude and Bessie appear to have settled upon their 160-acre homestead in Millboro Township of Tripp County in late 1910 or in 1911 or 1912. They would remain in Tripp County until 1936. Not all of that interval was spent on the same farm. During the early 1920s, they acquired additional Millboro Township acreage, which was put in Bessie’s name, but later in the decade, probably as part of the hardships that came with the onset of the Great Depression, they sold (or lost) those parcels and by 1930 were living as renters on a farm in Huggins Township. Things remained insecure as the 1930s progressed. They moved again and by the middle of the decade were renting a farm in Beaver Township. In late 1936, they moved to Spokane, WA. They were not alone in abandoning Tripp County. So did the majority of the county’s residents. The region has never regained the population levels of the early Twentieth Century. For example, the 2010 census shows Millboro Township with only forty-four residents. Neighboring Rames Township, as mentioned above, is shown with only forty.

Claude and Bessie produced a total of eleven children. They were Elsie Elizabeth, Martha Mae, Bertha Bernice, Lloyd John, Clyde Irvin, Marion Floyd, Eldon Carl, Donald Ralph, Kenneth James, Leona Belle, and Mildred Ida Warner. Of these, seven -- the youngsters -- would move with Claude and Bessie to Spokane in 1936. Daughter Martha Mae and her husband and children eventually became part of the migration as well, but not until the second half of the 1940s. One son, Marion, was not part of the move because he had died as a toddler. The cause was a tragic accident. Left in the care of an older sister (probably Elsie, then age thirteen) while Claude and Bessie were away, the little boy, then only sixteen months old, climbed in the kitchen water jar (or barrel) while his sister was using the outhouse, and managed to drown himself. Two others, Elsie and Bertha, never became part of the the Spokane adventure. They abandoned Tripp County years before the others. Both went to Iowa -- and not just to Iowa, but to the eastern portion of the state, apparently having had their fill of the Great Plains. Both became wives in the first half of the 1930s. While they did not always live near one another, in retirement both chose to reside in Cedar Rapids. That part of their lives was not brief for either of them. Bertha was ninety when she passed away in 2004. Elsie was ninety-eight-and-a-half when she perished in 2008. (What a contrast in longevity compared to Marion, and in a certain way, it isn’t entirely fair it worked out that way, is it?)

Above is Claude’s daughter Martha Mae Warner on Christmas Day, 1936. She is posing with her husband Jesse Neal “Slim” Clason, a brother-in-law and his wife, her father-in-law, three of her own children, and two of Slim’s nephews along with a baby niece. The scene is one of the South Dakota family farms. Mae, the woman in the center, gave birth to her fifth child the day after this photo was taken -- if she looks a bit under seige, now you know why. The baby in question was Mary Belle Clason, who supplied the copy of the photo.

Claude and Bessie found what they needed in Spokane. There were enough economic opportunities to sustain them, as Tripp County had not. In particular, there were logging-industry opportunities, though these did have the disadvantage of requiring temporary relocations to forest sites, sometimes well up into the higher elevations across the state line in Idaho. That is not to say that Claude and Bessie became rich, but one way or another, Spokane and its surrounding region did well by them, and the couple never found cause to make another big move to some other part of the nation.

Claude and Bessie had already become grandparents a few times before they settled in Washington. They would go on to witness that generation expand dramatically, if not quite as remarkably as they themselves had “gone forth and multiplied.” In the end, the count of grandchildren would reach forty-three. This does not include a significant number of step-grandchildren. The tally would probably have been higher if two sons had not died young. One of those was of course little Marion. The other was Eldon, who lost his life in a car accident in the early 1940s at age sixteen. Five of forty-three grandkids were Iowa-based. The rest were part of the Spokane contingent. Given the tendency of the clan to continue to have big bunches of kids, and the tendency to cleave to the region, there are scads of descendants around today. As Claude and Bessie’s late granddaughter Mary “Tootie” Clason Brown put it in 2005, “I’m related to half of Spokane!” Thanks to this concentrated group, the line springing from Clifford Warner exceeds even the robust line of his brother John, and dwarfs the size of the lines springing from Clifford’s other three siblings.

Bessie passed away 10 May 1951 at age fifty-nine, early enough that not all of those forty-three grandchildren had yet made their appearance. She was by then a great-grandmother, though. Claude died 12 February 1956 at the age of seventy-one. While this may not seem like a long life, he’d already lasted far more years than the majority of his siblings. Luckily the surviving pair, Marion and Martha, would have better luck in that respect.

Claude was known as a fiddle player. This skill flowed down through the generations to his son Lloyd and beyond. As of the 2010s, his great-grandchildren Kimber and Dennis Ludiker have become nationally known for their bluegrass fiddle-playing musical careers. It’s easy to imagine Claude sitting down with his fiddle and bow and filling the long icy evenings in Nebraska and South Dakota with tunes.

Dessa Dollie Warner, born 23 August 1887, was not living with either parent by the time of the 1900 census. In that survey, she is probably the twelve-year-old Dessa Pierson who appears as part of the household of Swedish immigrants Neil and Marie Pierson in Lincoln, Lancaster County, NE. Who Neil and Marie might have been, and why she came to live with them, is a mystery. Perhaps she was a servant, though she is described in the census as a daughter and her occupation is listed as “at school.” Perhaps she had been adopted.

Regardless of whether she was ever a member of the Pierson household, Dessa Warner would go on to spend the bulk of her adult life in Lincoln. She was a resident of Lincoln when she married Alfred Picard Dawe in 1914 and the couple would then make Lincoln their home as newlyweds, even though the wedding itself took place in Beatrice, Gage County, NE. They dwelled in a boarding house or inn and probably operated it, or were otherwise employed there. (Alfred’s occupation in censuses is given as restaurant cook.) Dessa and Alfred did not have children. Her little sister Elsie settled very near Lincoln and did have offspring, so Dessa had the opportunity to be a regular figure in the lives of a group of her nephews and nieces when they were young. Dessa passed away at home 27 August 1930 at only forty-three years of age.

Alfred was also known as Fred Dawe, and as A.P. Dawe. He had been adopted as a child by Joseph and Mary Picard of Houghton County, MI -- no doubt acquiring his middle name at that time -- but was biologically a member of the Dawes (with an “s”) family of Caplinger Mills, Cedar County, MO. Perhaps due to the adoption, the “real” spelling of his surname may have been forgotten -- certainly he went by Dawe from 1900 to 1930. He went back to using Dawes not long after Dessa died, apparently having reconnected with his birth kinfolk. Just how that reconnection played out is unknown, except that it is obvious he must have spent some time in Caplinger Mills during his period of mourning. In early June, 1931, after just nine months as a widower, he wed a woman of Caplinger Mills, Iva Mae Phipps, eldest child of Green Phipps and Mary Ellen Ralston. She became the new Mrs. Dawes having previously been married to Robert Otis Elliston, Sr., with whom she had produced three children -- meaning Alfred at long last had the chance to be a father, if only as a step-parent. Alfred and Iva made their home back in Lincoln. Alfred, born 4 March 1887, died 20 March 1967. Iva survived him by not quite five years. They are both buried in Caplinger Mills Cemetery under the Dawes spelling of the surname. (For that matter, Dessa’s headstone at Fairview Cemetery in Lincoln also says Dawes.)

Elsie Birdie Warner, born 10 April 1891, was the eldest of the three kids who remained in their mother’s care after the separation. Being in Butler County steered her in the direction of the young man who became her husband. He was Charles Alvin Peck, son of Silas Walton Peck and Ellen Jane Layton. Born 27 July 1886 Crawford, Dawes County, NE, Charles was a grandson of Reuben Peck and Malvina Hill, who were two of the homesteaders who had come to the Rising City area not long after the Shreckengosts and Warners had established themselves there. Charles’s great uncle Jessie Hill took him in when he was a teenager following the death of his father, and eventually it became a given that he would encounter Elsie Warner. Once the two were married, Charles went to work on the farm of his uncle Albert Layton in Bellevue, Sarpy County, NE, but this was a temporary gig. In the early 1910s, Elsie and Charles settled in Lancaster County, NE on a farm in Havelock Township, a locality which lay not far outside the city of Lincoln. They may have chosen this area because of the nearby presence of Dessa and Fred. In the 1920s Charles gave up farming and the household was reestablished inside Havelock City, a community which in modern times has become a suburb of Lincoln. He became an automobile mechanic.

Elsie and Charles conceived their first child the month of the wedding and over a twenty-year span had a new baby about every three years until the count came to seven. This number includes Harvey Clifford Peck, who died the same day as his birth in 1927. (He was perhaps stillborn.) The others were, in order of birth, Esther Jane, Ethel Andora, Eva Marie, Alvin Walton, Marion Paul, and Kenneth Olen Peck.

Elsie passed away 2 February 1943 at only fifty-one years old. This meant she did not live long enough to see her youngest, Kenneth, come of age. The timing also meant that she died in the midst of worry about her sons Alvin and Marion, who were serving in the U.S. Navy and were therefore at risk of losing their lives in World War II. And in fact Marion, a machinist’s mate on a submarine, did die the following year of injuries sustained in battle. The other five children survived Elsie by decades. Kenneth was the final survivor -- and by quite a margin -- until his death in 2011.

Elsie’s remains were interred in Section 24 of Fairview Cemetery -- this is the section that contains Dessa’s grave as well. Charles survived her by many years, passing away 25 March 1971 in Lincoln. At some point he became a married man again. His new wife was Kathryn Schaefer, a woman twenty-four years Charles’s junior, and it should be no surprise she outlived him, perishing in 1986. She came to the union with a daughter, Donna, but inasmuch as Donna had been born all the way back in 1930, Charles did not play a major role in her upbringing.

Marion Henry Warner was born 23 October 1894 in Belgrade, Nance County, NE. During the 1910s it was surely Marion’s contribution that allowed his mother to be “self”-sufficient and avoid the apparently unwelcome prospect of a second marriage. His World War I draft registration card mentions that his mother and sisters were dependent upon him. In addition to helping with her farm in Reading Precinct, he also rented and managed a farm in Summit Precinct owned by Oliver E. Wade. He married Alma Lena Reitz (16 March 1897 - 17 March 1986). She was a daughter of Frederick and Mary Reitz, and had been born and raised in Butler County. The wedding took place in or near the village of Surprise 14 June 1916, when Marion was twenty-one. In the early 1920s he and Alma bought and moved to a ranch in Lingle Precinct, Goshen County, WY, not far west of the Nebraska state line. Their two children, Marion Clifford Warner (known as Clifford) and Mary Andora Warner, were born during their first few years on the Goshen County acreage. The spot was isolated and mountainous. By that era, most American homes had electricity and indoor plumbing, but Marion’s kids grew up in circumstances almost as primitive as those he had known, reading their first books by the light of kerosene lamps, and finding playmates by riding horses over to a nearby Indian village. In the early 1930s the family moved to Benton City, WA. In the 1940s, an attorney in nearby Kennewick, having heard what a good farmer Marion was, hired him to care for acreage he owned, and Marion and Alma moved to a house on that land. Later Marion and Alma lived in Mead, Spokane County, WA, putting him somewhat near his brother Claude and his many Spokane County nephews and nieces. The final portion of Marion and Alma’s lives was spent in or near Naches, Yakima County, WA, where they probably went so as to be in proximity to their son. Marion passed away 8 June 1978 -- the first of his parents’ offspring to have surpassed eighty years of age, and the only one to do so aside from his younger sister Martha. Alma survived him by not quite eight years. She almost outlived her son, Clifford, who died at only sixty-six years of age. Her daughter, Mary, enjoyed better longevity, surviving to age eighty-eight and perishing in 2014. Mary lasted long enough to be among the family members who directly contributed information, documentation, and photos for this website, with the assistance of a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter. All in all, Marion and Alma had five grandchildren; they and further descendants live in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Portland, OR.

Martha Mary Ann Warner, born 6 April 1898, was the tailender of the family, and as often happens with last babies, she was the one her mother clung to. Martha wed Alden Robert Moural 6 September 1918. His parents were John Moural and Anna Roussar -- Alden would remain closely associated with them even as an adult, and would become the main farmer of the family property in the early 1920s. He took over completely once his father passed away in 1932. Martha and Alden were still on this Schuyler-area acreage in 1940 when Ella Shreckengost Warner passed away, having lived with them ever since they had been newlyweds. Martha and Alden’s union resulted in two children, Dalton (aka “Bud”) and Correnne (aka “Corky”). Some time in the 1940s or early 1950s, having finished raising their kids, Martha and Alden relocated to Milton, Van Buren County, IA. Alden resumed farming in that area. In retirement, he was a well-known figure among enthusiasts of antique tractors and farm equipment, including steam-powered rigs. In 1957, he became the founding secretary of the Middle-States Early Gas Engine and Tractor Association. The Mourals stayed in Milton-area farm for good. Martha was the child who inherited her mother’s Bible, originally given to Ella 16 April 1871 by her father. She kept the Bible until 1979, by which point she knew she was not long for this world and passed the heirloom along to niece Mary Andora Warner Reyburn, who was still its owner when she passed away in 2014. Martha passed away in Keosauqua, IA in June, 1981. Though Alden was older than she, he survived several more years, passing away 17 August 1987. The pair are buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Cantril, Van Buren County, IA.

Neither of their kids moved to Iowa. Both remained not all that far from Schuyler. Dalton moved only twenty miles east to Fremont, Dodge County, NE. Correnne moved only ten miles west to Columbus, Platte County, NE. Dalton predeceased his father by a few years; in her widowhood his wife Lorna returned to Schuyler, where she passed away in the early summer of 2009. Bud and Lorna are not known to have had children. By contrast, Corky and her husband, Leonard Krepel, had seven kids, though that includes Jerry Louis Krepel, born in 1956, who survived only eleven days. Despite living in a rural part of the nation, Corky and Leonard did not settle into an agricultural lifestyle, nor did Corky limit her role to housewife. They both pursued varied occupations, teaming up in the latter part of their working lives for an eighteen-year-stint as apartment managers. For the most part, they were in Columbus, though a 1972 newspaper article reveals Corky went all the way to Naval Air Station, Oceana in Virginia Beach, VA to complete a course in aviation maintenance. Corky was widowed in 2008. She died in 2017 in Columbus, having outlived all other grandchildren of Clifford Warner, and if not for Roger Warner Lovett, who died in mid-2018, she would have borne the distinction of having outliving all other great-grandchildren of John Warner and Marancy Alexander as well. She was survived by five of her children along with eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. (In addition to son Jerry Louis Krepel, she was pre-deceased by daughter Joyce Jean Krepel Shockley.)

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