Leslie John Warner

Leslie John Warner, son of John Martin Warner and his first wife Anna Lueck, was born 17 March 1897 in Martintown, Green County, WI. From birth to the brink of his teens, he lived on a farm just beyond the northern edge of the village in rural Cadiz Township. This was a very “rooted” sort of upbringing given that Martintown had been founded in 1850 by his father’s grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader and surviving members of the Martin/Warner clan were the leading citizens of the vicinity. The rootedness became even more profound in 1900 when John Martin Warner assumed the proprietorship of one of Martintown’s two general stores. Leslie was a familiar sight around the community as a child, be it while hanging around in his father’s store or his great-grandfather’s flour mill, heading out from the family farm to fish in the Pecatonica River, or attending class at Martin School. A family-group photograph of Leslie during the midst of this phase is shown farther down on this webpage.

In 1906, when Leslie was nine years old -- three years after the birth of his only sibling, his sister Dorothy -- big changes began to unfold within the Warner clan. Leslie’s uncle Cullen Warner’s wife Minnie died of tuberculosis at the beginning of the year. Cullen was fighting his own battle with the disease. All around Martintown various relatives, friends, and neighbors were becoming infected. Leslie’s grandparents decided to try to do something to help Cullen, so they moved with him and his little girl Selma to the San Joaquin Valley of California. Leslie’s uncles Bert and Walter Warner went along as part of this exodus. In early 1909, Leslie’s aunt Cora Belle Warner Spece and her family likewise relocated, Belle having shown signs of developing TB (though in her case, it was a false alarm). Finally the scourge struck Leslie’s household as well. His mother began showing symptoms. With reluctance, the family decided it would be best to give up the store and family farm and leave Martintown in favor of California. It was hoped the arid climate would at the very least give Anna more time. The move had not saved Cullen Warner, but he had lasted until the spring of 1909, which was longer than his doctor predicted he would live if he remained in the Upper Midwest.

Leslie and his parents and Dorothy settled into a home in Sanger, Fresno County, CA, the small town that was rapidly becoming the main base of the extended family. John teamed up with his father to found Warner Warehouse Company. They sold feed grain and farm-related hardware to the public, and rented storage space to other businessmen. The warehouse was the largest structure ever built in Sanger to that point and reestablished Leslie’s dad in the sort of prominent-merchant role he had enjoyed in Martintown. However, John never was able to fully dedicate himself to the fresh milieu. Anna’s condition rapidly worsened. Feeling the end coming, she wanted to be cared for by her blood kin, so she spent most of her final months back in Monroe, Green County, WI, where her parents had moved in 1905. Leslie and Dorothy went with her, and often their father was there as well. Anna passed away 7 May 1911 in Monroe.

This is a full-view and close-up section of a photograph taken in 1904 or 1905 at the limestone quarry in the bank of the Pecatonica River not far from the Martintown mills. At this period in Martintown’s existence the quarry was being mined by the Kiel family and the stone shipped by rail to customers in northern Illinois. Martha Kiel is the young woman in the white blouse near the center of the picture, and Rose Kiel is one of the two little girls near the top. On the far left is Vivian Blanche Martin, daughter of Leslie’s great uncle Horatio Woodman Martin, then about ten years old. Horatio himself appears in the lower center with his wife Laura Hart Martin and their sons Fay and Clark. On the far right is Leslie and his mother and sister. Leslie is the little boy sitting on the ledge wearing the bowler hat. The trio are easier to see in the close-up.

John resumed co-management of the Sanger warehouse as a widower, but he did not find the same contentment with his situation that he had enjoyed while married to Anna. One reason perhaps was that his relationship with his second wife was not fully congenial once the “newlywed shine” had dimmed. That wife was Grace Annetta Walker (maiden name Martin), who John married in 1913. John grew restless and in 1916, sold his interest in the warehouse to brother-in-law Alie Spece. In making this trade, John assumed proprietorship of the grocery business Alie and Belle had been operating, but John did not long stick with that venture, either. Meanwhile Leslie came of age as a Fresno County resident, and as a grown man gravitated away from Sanger -- which was still quite a small town -- to the city of Fresno. That said, sometimes he was not in California at all. He made extended visits to spend time with his maternal kinfolk in Green County, WI. Eventually the reinforcement of the bond with Wisconsin would become a factor in Leslie choosing not to become a permanent Californian like most of the Warners. The same was even more true of his sister -- Dorothy even went as far as to attend and graduate from Monroe High School.

In the short term, though, Leslie began carving out an adult life for himself in the West. He found work on the B. Deaver farm near Fresno while living in what is now the “Kearney Boulevard” neighborhood of that city. He specialized in tractor driving. In this he was following family tradition. A few years before his birth his grandfather John had financed the purchase of a large steam tractor rig. This equipment, operated by Leslie’s father and uncle Charley Warner as the “Warner Brothers,” was used to harvest fields all through southern Green County and northern Stephenson County, IL and had provided a significant source of income to the family. The rig was still in use at least until Leslie was eight years old, if not longer. Leslie had no doubt grown up with dreams of the day when he would be big enough and strong enough to drive a tractor, though by the time he did so, steam-driven rigs had given way to gasoline internal-combustion models requiring less brute strength to deal with. (A photograph of family members operating the steam tractor rig can be seen at the bottom of Cullen Warner’s biography elsewhere on this website. Click here to go straight to that page.)

In the late 1910s, Leslie met a young woman in Fresno who became his first wife. She was Olga Barsetti. (The couple are shown at left. Photo from 1918.) Like Leslie, she was not originally from Fresno. She was a daughter of Angelo Barsetti and his first wife, whose maiden name was Bertolucci. Olga was their eldest child, born in Italy in either late 1897 or the very beginning of 1898. Her birth was soon followed by that of sister Antonietta, soon after which Mrs. Barsetti died. By the time of that tragedy Olga’s father may already have been in the United States (census data shows he immigrated in 1900), trying to get established well enough to bring the family over. He succeeded in doing that in 1902, but with his second wife, Argene (aka Jennie) Matteucci. With Angelo working as a shoemaker and Jennie as a cook, the couple spent the early part of their marriage in Firebaugh, Fresno County. By the end of the 1910s the family -- the children consisting not only of Olga and Anna (Antonietta), but six more kids born in America -- reached the city of Fresno, where Angelo became the proprietor of a pool hall.

The wedding of Leslie and Olga occurred 7 March 1918 in Fresno. The couple are believed to have spent their whole married lives in Fresno residing at 251 Kearney Avenue. Unfortunately it was a brief union. The pair had only been married not quite eight months when Olga passed away 3 November 1918 in the great influenza epidemic. Her body was laid to rest at Calvary Cemetery. Leslie surely felt the sting of that loss for the remainder of his life, even though his destiny and those of the Barsetti clan were interwoven for such a brief span. Happily, Olga’s sister Anna and her six half-siblings lived far longer lives, most of them in Fresno, with her eldest brother Victor chosing instead to spend the bulk of his adult life as a resident of San Francisco.

Had Olga not died so tragically young, it seems likely Leslie would have chosen to remain in California and raise a family there. But within two to four years after becoming a widower, he went back to southern Wisconsin for good. If he had any inclination to leave again, it was erased once he met and successfully courted Eleanor Clarice Viney, with whom he would enjoy a death-do-us-part marriage of six and a half decades. Eleanor was the eldest of the seven children of Albert Joseph Viney and Louise Amelia Frelin. Leslie and Eleanor share a genealogical connection, but it is a convoluted link between the Viney clan and the Warner clan having to do with the pioneer days of Winslow, IL, the village a mile south of Martintown where Leslie’s great grandfather John Warner and great-grandmother Marancy Alexander had met and married one another in the early 1840s. (Had Leslie not moved to California in 1910, he would surely have attended Winslow High School.)

Leslie and Eleanor spent the first months of their marriage in Monroe, but soon settled in Belleville, Dane County, WI -- Eleanor’s hometown. Belleville is located just north of the boundary with Green County, so Leslie was only the length of a single county away from where he had spent his own early childhood. Born 11 October 1904, Eleanor was seven and a half years younger than Leslie, meaning she was about nineteen when the wedding took place (in about 1923 -- precise date as yet unknown but a 17 August 1923 newspaper article refers to them as a married couple). Despite this young start, she and Leslie are not known to have had children -- none are mentioned in family records, and the 1930, 1940, and 1950 censuses show none in the household.

Leslie was a jack-of-all-trades sort of person, willing to work a range of jobs whether they required manual labor, skilled craftsmanship, or interaction with the general public. In the 1920s, he supported himself and Eleanor as an electrician. However, as the Great Depression went on, given that Eleanor was not tied at home as a mother, the immediate family pooled resources. Leslie’s father-in-law became an innkeeper. Leslie became the bartender of the associated tavern, while Eleanor and her mother were the cooks for the restaurant portion of the business. It is likely Eleanor’s unmarried younger sisters put in some hours on site as well as waitresses.

World War II brought rapid changes and men were suddenly needed in new roles. Leslie and Eleanor left Belleville and relocated to Madison. This was quite a change of milieu. Belleville was a small community nestled amid the countryside, whereas Madison was the state capital and was unquestionably urban. Their residence was at 224 Sunset Court near the University of Wisconsin. The 1943 city directory lists Leslie’s occupation as instructor. Just what he taught has yet to be discovered, but chances are the nation needed to train young men in electrical skills and as long as an instructor had the necessary expertise, no one worried whether he had a college degree. Leslie in fact had only completed seventh grade, the move to California having apparently thoroughly disrupted his education.

Soon after the war Leslie became a radio repairman working out of his own shop/store. He operated this business in tandem with Eleanor, who served as bookkeeper and clerk. Leslie may or may not have gone on to other jobs during the remaining fragment of his working life. The store was probably in Madison but the couple ceased residing in the city and acquired a residence along Lake Kegonsa in the southeastern portion of Dane County just outside the city of Stoughton.

Leslie passed away 30 April 1988 at the impressive age of ninety-one. Eleanor survived him by ten weeks, expiring 10 July 1988 at the Skaalen convalescent home in Stoughton. The remains of husband and wife are entombed in Lot 130, Space 5 at the Garden of Eternal Peace mausoleum at Roselawn Memorial Park, Monona, Dane County, WI.

To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Martin/Strader Family main page, click here. To return to the Warner/Alexander Family main page, click here.