Phyllis Irene Claus

Phyllis Irene Claus, daughter of Blanche B. Bucher and (Fred) Tecumseh Edgar Claus, was born 22 December 1916 in Winslow, Stephenson County, IL, where her parents and older sister Evelyn had recently settled after a few years spent on a farm farther east in the county. That farm had been near Rock Run and Rock Grove and was where her father had been raised, and also where her mother had taught school while she was an unmarried woman. Phyllis grew up amid many relatives on her mother’s side who either resided in Winslow or a mile or so north in Martintown, Green County, WI. During Phyllis’s early childhood the Bucher connection was particularly strong. Life events would make it a challenge later to maintain that bond.

The first major instance of those changes was the death of Phyllis’s mother in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Blanche was pregnant at the time with what would have been the third child of the family, but mother and unborn baby succumbed at the end of December of that year, another tragic example of how the virus took out otherwise healthy individuals by turning their own vigorous, well-developed immune systems against them. Dad T.E. Claus did what he could to get by -- vacuum cleaner salesman, brush salesman, etc. He operated mostly out of Freeport, the largest community of Stephenson County, while Phyllis and Evelyn were cared for by his mother, Mary Wolf Claus Hanson, at her home in Pecatonica, Winnebago County, IL.

In early 1921 T.E. remarried. His new wife was Mabel Clare Zimmerman. The couple remained in Stephenson County until the late 1920s or the beginning of 1930, during which time Mabel gave birth to two children. At that point, the household shifted far to the south, to Santa Rosa, Cameron County, TX -- people from outside the region might call this part of Texas the Brownsville area. There T.E. worked as a housepainter. Evelyn was essentially a grown woman and preferred to remain in Illinois, but Phyllis joined the migration to Cameron County.

By 1937 T.E. and Mabel had become the parents of four more children, for a total of six, in addition to Evelyn and Phyllis. By the time the very youngest was born, Phyllis was no longer living in the home. In fact, she was married and residing in Louisiana, and her youngest half-sister was born precisely one week before the first of her own children. (Phyllis is shown with her baby at right.) Phyllis’s new husband was Morris Bruce Scott, who had been born 23 July 1910 in Bartlett, Williamson County, TX. The wedding had taken place on 10 November 1935. The presence in Louisiana was temporary, a construction job in the New Orleans area having drawn them there. Like Phyllis, Morris -- better known as Mike -- viewed Texas as home. The couple had met thanks to the Scotts, previously based in Burleson and Williamson Counties, had established themselves in Santa Rosa in the 1920s. Later in 1937 Phyllis and Mike put Louisiana in their past, going at first to Columbus, Colorado County, TX. They preferred more northerly parts of the state to Cameron County, though they would regularly visit Santa Rosa to see T.E. and Mabel, as well as Mike’s sister Frances Nuchols and family, who had a citrus farm in the area.

Soon World War II was upon the nation. Mike did not become a soldier, but was assigned to war-support tasks by the Civil Service. In 1942, his job was small arms repair at an armory in Minneapolis, MN. He and Phyllis were obliged to relocate to that city, and remained into the early part of 1943, during which time the second of the couple’s two children was born. For about six months during the latter part of 1943, the family was quartered in an old mansion in Davenport, IA, where Mike received further training in arms repair. In December, they were able to return to Texas, this time for good.

Mike was a son of Wilson E. Scott (full name Euclid Leonidas Wilson Scott) and Effie Myrtle Kelton. Phyllis and Mike soon settled into a stable domestic situation with the older couple near at hand -- not in Cameron County, but in McDade, Bastrop County, TX, not far east of Austin, and not far from the Scott clan’s earlier stomping grounds. Among other nearby relatives were Effie’s sister Maude and brother-in-law Louie Kunkel, who operated a drygoods store. Phyllis and Mike’s kids were able to spend the bulk of their childhoods in the midst of this bevy of extended family.

Wilson Scott was a building contractor. Now that Phyllis and Mike were done moving around, Mike committed to this trade in a dedicated way. He would eventually own and run his own construction company. His specialty was drilling and preparing ground for the erection of pylons and other large concrete structures.

Phyllis was a homemaker while the kids were small. In the mid-1950s, as her eldest was reaching college age, she went back to school for an education credential and became a teacher, following in the footsteps of the mother she had barely known. (The picture at the beginning of this biography is from her graduation.) This involved another relocation. Phyllis got her degree at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, TX, and subsequently taught at Fort Worth School.

Phyllis and Mike enjoyed a ’til-death-them-do-part union. In 1980, they moved twenty miles west of Fort Worth to the Rio Brazos section of Weatherford, Parker County, TX, where Mike passed away 13 August 1984. Having retired from teaching, one of the ways Phyllis occupied herself during her widowhood was caring for an ailing elderly neighbor, Lois Euniece Ray Ward. Lois passed away in 1989. By that point Phyllis and the widower, Dean Ward, had become well-acquainted. Over the next year or two the pair’s relationship evolved into a romance. Phyllis and Dean were wed 5 September 1992 in Parker County. Dean -- formal name Reginald Dean Ward -- had been born 15 October 1917; he would go on to survive Phyllis by a few years, dying 22 September 2003. Phyllis expired at home in Rio Brazos/Weatherford Wednesday evening, 8 September 1999. Her remains were interred Monday 13 September 1999 several miles south of Weatherford at Tin Top Cemetery in Tin Top, Parker County, TX.

The Tecumseh Edgar Claus clan in the early 1940s. The adults, left to right in back, T.E. Claus, Mabel Zimmerman Claus, Morris Bruce Scott, Phyllis Irene Claus Scott, Kenneth John Stoner, and Evelyn Lois Claus Stoner. The eight children are the six Claus/Zimmerman children and the firstborn offspring of Evelyn and Phyllis, left unidentified for now for privacy reasons -- three of the eight are still alive (as of autumn of 2011).

Descendants of Phyllis Irene Claus with Morris Bruce Scott

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