Ralph Byron Bucher

Ralph Byron Bucher, son of Mary Lincoln “Tinty” Martin and Elwood Byron Bucher, was born 4 January 1900 in Winslow, Stephenson County, WI. With the exception of his first cousin (and later step-brother) Clark Fuller Martin, he was by far the youngest of the thirty grandchildren of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader.

Ralph’s mother died when he was two years old. When he was seven, his father married Laura Hart Fuller Martin, the widow of Ralph’s uncle Horatio Woodman Martin. So “Auntie Laura” became “Mommie Laura” and first cousins Nathaniel, Fay, Vivian, and Clark Martin became Ralph’s step-siblings. Horatio had operated the Martin family’s legacy business, the huge flour mill on the bank of the Pecatonica River in Green County, WI. Elwood and Tinty had earlier in their marriage lived in Martintown, and now Elwood returned in order to move in with Laura and share the house that Horatio had built near the mill.

Because he was still a child, Ralph was naturally part of the combined household, but his full siblings Claude, Arley, Rose, and Blanche Bucher were old enough that they had begun their independent lives. So had Nathaniel, eldest son of Horatio and Laura, leaving the three younger Martin kids -- Fay, Vivian, and Clark -- as the ones with whom Ralph shared accommodations. Ralph was, however, not far from all three of his full sisters, as they tended to reside nearby over the course of the next five years or so, while he was completing his years at Martin School.

In the early 1910s, Elwood and Laura moved to Winslow, where Ralph attended high school. He graduated as part of the Class of 1917 along with Clark Martin and a cousin, Ethel Ruth Hastings, Winslow High at that point being only a two-year institution. Elwood continued to be the boss of the mill, including seeing to it that the waterwheels were put to use generating electricity for Martintown as an additional source of income. Ralph’s brother-in-law Charles Buss, husband of Rose, grew into an increasingly responsible role handlng the day-to-day operations, allowing Elwood to semi-retire, and Ralph, along with Fay Martin, became the new junior employees, Fay being counted on to keep the power plant running smoothly, and Ralph being assigned to flour production.

Ralph retained a close bond with his parents in adulthood and remained in their Winslow home throughout the 1920s. Early in that decade his father became an invalid. At times Elwood was so feeble he used a wheelchair, and at other times was actually hospitalized. Ralph no doubt helped with his care, but the bulk of that responsibility fell upon his stepmother and upon his uncle, John Bucher, who moved into the home. Fay Martin, who like Ralph was grown but still unmarried, also lived there.

Elwood, partly because of his compromised vitality, and partly because Charles and Rose Bucher Buss decided to move to Vermilion County, IL, sold the mills in the 1922-23 time period. Ralph could probably have worked shifts for the new owners if he had cared to, pretty much the way he had before. It is possible he indeed did so. It’s also possible he did not. Elwood found ways to keep him busy. Elwood had ended up with quite a bit of agricultural property over the years, including the large parcel next to Martintown that he had purchased early in the century from his sister-in-law Nellie Martin Warner and her husband John Warner. By the early 1910s, Elwood had decided to use his acreage for more than crops, and had started to raise pigs and cattle as well. In the 1920s, Ralph stood in for his father when aspects of the business required travel. A 1922 newspaper article mentions that Ralph took a load of hogs to Chicago to sell while Elwood was unable to do so because he was lying in a hospital bed in Freeport. A 1923 article mentions that Ralph had gone West to purchase livestock on his father’s behalf.

Elwood Bucher died in early 1930. Laura lingered in Winslow for a little while, but by the middle of the decade moved a few miles away to Orangeville with her third husband Henry Hopkins, where she could be near her eldest boy Nate and his family, who had just moved to Orangeville. If Ralph had not managed to establish himself elsewhere by then, that was the development that set him adrift. One cousin recalls that he was not an ambitious sort of person. Now that his father was no longer there to indulge him with make-work tasks and with infusions of cash, Ralph went off in search of a better situation, but it is not clear to what degree he may have found one. By no later than 1935 he arrived in Milwaukee. This had the perhaps unintended consequence of putting him beyond the Martin-Strader sphere, except that his step-brother Nathaniel Martin’s son Roscoe “Max” Martin also established himself long-term in the Milwaukee urban area during the 1930s.

The 1940 census shows Ralph at 955 N. 25th Street in Milwaukee, a large residential building that included a number of studio apartments such as his. He was working as a tool grinder at a machine shop, which suggests he was putting to use the machinist skills he had acquired at the Martintown mills. According to that source, he was not yet married, but he had definitely met his future wife, because she is shown in the same apartment building as another individual tenant -- i.e. the pair were not cohabitating yet in the romantic sense, but knew each other as neighbors, perhaps separated by no more than a wall. Eventually they grew to be on friendly terms. Just when the wedding occurred has not yet been pinned down, but it was probably in early 1943 because in March of that year, the bride filed a change-of-name form with Social Security, reporting her last name as Bucher. Why she should be so much of a mystery is itself a small mystery. Within-the-family sources almost never bring up the fact that Ralph was married, and never reference his spouse by her name. Yet it is plain from public records that the marriage lasted for the rest of Ralph’s life. Perhaps the invisibility was because no children came along. In any event, the woman’s identity was not fully determined until July 2015, a full decade after this website first went on-line. This biography originally described Ralph as a lifelong bachelor until the full version of Ralph’s obituary came to light in the autumn of 2008, a source that mentioned his widow. A revised biography was posted here 28 October 2008, removing the bachelor description, but even then not saying much about Ralph’s spouse because her family name and background were still opaque. Now it can be said: She was Marion Nathalie Carufel, daughter of William Arthur Carufel and Elizabeth Patton. Born 9 September 1907 in De Pere, Brown County, WI, Marion went on to be raised in Brown County, including a substantial stretch on the farm of her maternal grandparents John and Frances Patton in Glenmore Township after the death of her mother in the 1910s. (Her father continued to have custody, but sought the help of his parents-in-law to help raise the kids, who included not only Marion but her brothers Harold and Kenneth.) In her late teens or early twenties, Marion moved to Milwaukee, where she supported herself as a restaurant waitress. The marriage to Ralph shows every sign of having been her first; certainly she was still going by her maiden name until she became Mrs. Bucher.

In the early 1940s Ralph is known to have become based in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis. The timing suggests this relocation -- a minor one of only a few miles westward -- happened right after Marion became his spouse, and was triggered by the new couple’s desire for larger living quarters. They did not become homeowners, however. They continued to rent. This was true despite the dual-income nature of their household, Marion continuing to work as a waitress in the absence of offspring to care for. All available sources confirm or at least imply that West Allis was Ralph’s place of residence for the rest of his life. Not all of it was spent in the same spot, though. The 1950 census shows the couple at 9105 W. Greenfield Avenue. By the time Ralph died they were no longer living there. Just how many addresses they had altogether is unclear. At least two.

A brief article in the 23 September 1944 edition of the Rhinelander Daily News describes a fender-bender accident in which an automobile driven by one Charles Johnson of Three Lakes crossed into the wrong lane of traffic on a curve on Highway 32 and collided a vehicle belonging to “Ralph Bucher of West Allis.”

In addition to Ralph’s earnings as a tool grinder and Marion’s as a waitress, the couple generated additional income by taking on lodgers. Two -- Harold Beckstrom and Henry Bence -- are shown in the 1950 census sharing the downstairs unit at 9105 W. Greenfield with the Buchers while other households filled the upstairs and rear units.

Childlessness was just one of the indications that Ralph and Marion were more partners in life than they were in romance. The passionless lifestyle became more pronounced as the 1950s progressed. Eventually the pair were spending much of their time apart. This was true even though Ralph retired well short of sixty and no longer had employment obligations to prevent him from spending time with his wife. He chose instead to head off on fishing trips. An interest in fishing was something Ralph shared with many of the males of the Martin/Strader clan, including Clark Martin and Fay Martin -- the latter treating it as his main source of income in his latter years. Ralph’s uncle Horatio Woodman Martin had been especially known for his enthusiasm for fishing. But Ralph took things to an extraordinary level. His trips lasted weeks or months at a stretch. (The photograph at left shows Ralph in 1951 with one of his prize catches.)

Another way that Ralph avoided spending a lot of time at home was to visit his sister Arley all the way out in Van Nuys, CA. Arley’s grandson Richard Boos, in the midst of a family-history interview undertaken in 2008, recalled meeting “Uncle Ralph” at Arley’s home during a visit Richard, who was at that point an Air Force intelligence officer, made to see his grandmother in the year 1958 during a furlough. Marion was not present. Ralph had come alone. In the absence of any comment otherwise, Richard assumed Ralph was unmarried. In fact, Richard indicated during that 2008 interview that he had never understood Ralph to be a married man at any point in his life, and was surprised when, several months later, the longer version of the obituary came to light, revealing otherwise.

Ralph made another visit to Van Nuys in the spring of 1961. A surviving piece of correspondence reveals this fact, and also serves to shed light on what turned out to be the final calendar year of Ralph’s life. The author was Hazel McMillen Granger (1888-1978), someone who had spent most of her childhood in Martintown. She had known Ralph’s sisters well and she remained a particularly good friend of Ralph’s first cousin Mary Emma Warner Hastings, even though Emma was almost fifteen years her senior. On 20 April 1961, Hazel wrote to Emma’s sister-in-law Grace Branson Warner not long after Hazel had spent a couple of weeks in California, much of it in Emma’s company. The trip had included an afternoon in Van Nuys visiting with Arley Bucher Ames. Hazel stated that Ralph had happened to be there, and furthermore had been staying there for quite some time. He was on the verge of heading back to Wisconsin in order to devote “several months” to fishing in the northern part of the state. Hazel also stated that Ralph “hasn’t gotten a divorce from his wife, who still lives in Milwaukee [this means West Allis] and he goes to see her and she calls him once in a while and writes to him.” Continuing in the gossip vein, Hazel mentioned that Ralph was very overweight and was disabled due to arthritis and “something else I forget what” and was getting by on some sort of pension along with Social Security payments. Hazel’s personal assessment was quite negative: “All I know is that I dislike him very much” and she hoped Emma was not going to accept Ralph’s offer to have her ride along with him on the drive from California back to Wisconsin.

The insight drawn from that letter suggests that if Ralph had lived longer, he and Marion might well have divorced one another, but it seems they never got around to it. Ralph passed away 5 December 1961, doing so in Broward County, FL where apparently he was engaged in yet another fishing trip. The Wisconsin Death Index confirms he was still a resident of West Allis when he died, and his obituary pinpoints his address as 7425 W. Becker Street. The memorial service was held at the Borgwardt Funeral Home in West Allis on Friday, the eighth of December, after which his body was interred at Rock Lily Cemetery in Winslow, which is where his parents are buried (his mother’s body having been moved there in the 1920s from its original resting place in the Martin family cemetery).

Marion survived Ralph by decades. She did not marry again. As far as can be determined, she continued to live in the Milwaukee area throughout her widowhood. She passed away 14 March 1990.

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