Charles, Catherine & Nicholas Kunz

Charles Kunz was the eighth child born to Joseph Kunz and Mary Weber Kunz. He was born on May 2, 1862. Among all the boys of this large family, Charles is the only one who remained in the Midwest all his life. He farmed corn in the area near his parents' land, possibly continuing with his father’s land after Joseph Sr.'s death, given that Charles was just turning 18 at the time. In the letters written between Josephine and her brothers in Sherman, Charles is referred to as farming close to where Josephine is living in Hamilton, IL.

Charles married Elizabeth (Ellen) Roland on May 8, 1883. They had no children.

In August 1923, Charles visited his brothers, John, Joseph and George in the northwest for the first time. His brother Michael had died the year before. Charles' two sisters in Illinois, Josephine and Julia, had also recently died, leaving him the lone survivor in Illinois. (Josephine had passed away just a few months after Michael and Julia had died that March, the spring before this visit.) "Mrs. Amelia, widow of Mike Kunz, tendered a reunion reception to the visitor at her Sherman home. Seventy Kunzes of various generations assembled to do him honor.^"1

Charles died in Keokuk, IA on June 4, 1932. His wife Ellen had died six years earlier, on April 18, 1926. They are buried beside his parents and his two sisters, Katherine and Josephine, in the Nauvoo Catholic Cemetery in Nauvoo, IL.

Catherine Kunz, the third daughter and ninth child of Joseph and Mary Magdalena, was born in February of 1864 in Hancock County, IL. She died as a child at the age of nine on March 27, 1873.

Ellen, Wife of

Chas. Kunz

Feb. 8, 1856

April 18, 1926

Chas. [Charles] Kunz

May 2, 1862

June 4, 1932

Catherine

dau. of

J. & M. Kunz

died

Mar. 27, 1873

9 years, 4 months (?)

Nicholas Kunz

Nicholas Kunz was the last child born to Joseph and Mary Magdalena. Nicholas Kunz was born in 1866 in Elvaston, IL, Hancock County, IL. The first information available about Nicholas besides birth records is that he was in the military at Camp Merit, CA and then transferred to the Presidio, CA on September 15, 1898.² Some family members say he was in the Spanish American War which took place in this same year.³

By 1907, Nick was in the Southwest, mining. In a letter written that year to his sister Josephine, he reminisces that it has been seventeen years since he last saw her or any of John or Mike’s children. Nick is in Sandy, NV at the time.⁴ In a letter dated September 14, 1910, Nick gives his new address as Goodsprings, Clark County, NV, a town fifteen miles southwest of Las Vegas. Goodsprings appears to be the next town of any size to Sandy. Nick writes that he has just returned from a trip to northern Nevada, California, southern Oregon and Idaho. By the time he got back to Sandy, NV where he had been in 1907, it had become a ghost town. They no longer had mail service, nor any stores. Nick also tells Josephine that he had received a letter from John and Mary, inviting him to join Amile, Mike and family for Christmas. He hadn't received the letter until well after the holidays, however, and so he missed the reunion.⁵

The 1920 evidences the fact that Nicholas still lived in the precinct of Goodsprings, Clark County, the same town where he was living in 1910. He is listed as 53 years old, single, and a gold and platinum miner. This seems to be the last information we have on Nicholas.⁶We have no date or place of death on record.

⁴ Letter from Nicholas Kunz (Sandy, NV) to Josephine Kunz (Hamilton, IL), 1907.

⁵ Letter from Nicholas Kunz (Goodsprings, NV) to Josephine Kunz (Hamilton, IL), September 14, 1910.