Joseph Henry &

Katherine Magdalene Kunz

Joseph Henry Kunz

Joseph Henry Kunz     
 

            Joseph Henry was born on May 2, 1880 in Elvaston, IL to Josephine and Michael Kunz.  He came to the Sherman area with his family at the age of fifteen.  As a teen and young adult, Joe helped his Dad work the wheat farm that the elder had purchased over the years.  In 1904, Joseph leased Thorn Houston's ranch. 
 

L>R: Will Portch & Joe Kunz

            Joe had a lively personality.  He learned to play the fiddle and joined with his brother-in-law, Will Portch, who strummed the banjo.  They performed for  local dances and socials.   Evelyn Kunz Gaffney, daughter of Hilary,  recalled her Uncle Joe playing the fiddle and singing.  She learned the song “Old Dan Tucker” from him.       

            As a young man in 1905, Joe and a neighbour, J.S. Alexander, were sinking a well on the land of Joe's father.  It was January and they were trying to thaw the dynamite to be used.  They placed 25 sticks of dynamite in a warming closet, "a box in which they set a lighted lantern and the powder on a rack over it.  Being in a hurry, they added a lighted candle in the apparatus for an increase of heat.  After matters had proceeded for a few minutes, Joe peeped into the box to see how the thawing was progressing, and discovered that one stick had fallen down beside the candle and was all ablaze.  He started from the cabin with a rush, yelling to Alexander to run for his life.  The latter followed, but made a grab for another lot of powder containing forty pounds, but as the box slipped from his hands, he left it to its fate.   The boys ran in opposite directions, about 200 [yards] away and stopped to hear Joe, who warned him to stay away and before he could start again, there was a terrific explosion.  The wing of the old house was blown to atoms and it's supposed that the main frame [of the building] owes its continued existence to the fact that the powder was not all thawed when the explosion occurred.  Joe's father [Mike Kunz] reports that the young man has discontinued the operations,  and cannot be persuaded to try well digging again.¹ 


            Joe was always up for a challenge.  He published a notice in the Wilbur paper at the end of harvest 1910 "that he loaded 75 sacks of wheat the other day in eleven and a half minutes and would like to hear from others who think they have beaten him."²


            Joe and his brother Leo played baseball on a farm team in Sherman and they often played a Native American team from Fort Spokane, as well as other town teams.  Leo was a great pitcher. 

 

Wedding photographs of Mary Miller & Joseph Kunz

            The two brothers were each married just three months apart.  Joe courted a neighbour girl, Mary Miller, daughter of P.C. Miller who farmed up the Sage Hen draw.  She was born May 7, 1889 in Renville, Minnesota and came to Sherman with her family.  The young couple was married on June 9, 1909 at the bride's family home.  Joe bought 320 acres of fine wheat land in 1910 from Bert LaFavre, for $20,000 which was situated north of Sherman on the Columbia Ridge.

 
            Sometime after they were married, Joe and  Mary lived  in Yelm, and Soap Lake, WA until the time of his father’s death in 1922.  They came back to Sherman and farmed the Miller land up on the hill west of the Sage Hen Creek, eight miles northeast of Wilbur.  In 1923, Joe and Mary purchased a quarter section from Joe Wyborney.


            In 1911, Joe and Mary had an infant boy who lived only three months.   He died of uremia.³  The next year they had another child, this time a healthy girl.  Esther Irene was born on August 12, 1912.  Two years later, Joe and Mary had a son, Roy Joseph, born in 1914.  In 1916 Hazel Marie was born. Gordon Gomer was born in 1919 and in 1925, Franklin Arthur was born.


            Esther  married Lester Wyborney; Roy married Myrtle Campbell; Hazel married Delaney Wall; Gordon married Edna Parker; and Franklin married Audrey Hedrick and later Eleanor Reidt.  Gordon followed his grandfather into politics and became a Lincoln County Commissioner.
 

            Joe was locally famous for the invention of a new blade control for the harvester that prevented beating standing stalks. He received a patent on an improved harvester reel, which would operate on any make of cutting machinery. It consisted of feathering blades, which automatically moved into position edgewise into the standing grain without beating it or crushing it.⁴  


            Mary Kunz had her own well know talent.  She was accomplished at crochet.  During her retirement years she made beautiful bedspreads with intricate patterns for each of her children and grandchildren.  She seemed to love the challenge of a new pattern.  There was one that had extensive grapes crafted into the pattern.  The colours were bold and contemporary.
 

            When Joseph and Mary Kunz retired in the 1940s they had a house built on Main Street in Wilbur.  Their son Frank and his wife moved to the farm, while Joe and Mary lived in the house that Joe's family [father Mike and step-mother Amelia] had built in Sherman, as they waited for their Wilbur house to be completed. 


            Before he died, Joe had a series of strokes that affected his short term memory.  His devoted wife cared for him at home.  Joseph Henry Kunz died on April 4, 1961 at Coulee Dam Hospital.  Mary continued to live in their home in Wilbur  until shortly before her death on February 5, 1976 in Davenport Hospital.

Katherine Magdalene Kunz

Katherine Magdalene

            Katherine Magdalene Kunz was born in Elvaston, IL on November 20, 1882, the only daughter of Michael and Josephine Kunz.  She attended her first years of school in Illinois.  In 1895, a few years after her mother's death, she came with her father, his new wife and her brothers to Sherman, Washington.  Kate finished her education at Sherman.  She also learned the chores of all farm girls, helping with the cooking, laundry, canning, making jams and preserves.  As a young woman, she worked on the cookhouse wagon during the long period of harvest.

 

           The cookhouse was a wagon on wheels and was pulled from field to field by its own team of horses. It had a cook stove at one end and tables lined each side rowed by benches. The cook house was powerfully hot and the only movement of air was from two boards along the outside that could be lifted up for ventilation. Sleep was not the best in these accommodations: either the floor of the cookhouse or off to the side in a tent. The cooks woke at 3 a.m. so breakfast could be ready by five. They baked pies and batches of bread two or three times a day as they not only served three meals, but sandwiches and coffee for mid-morning and mid-afternoon.⁵  


            Kate became a great cook. On at least one harvest Kate and her friend Fredericka Copenhaver were assigned to the cook house. Michael was the roust-about and he had brought little Gertrude to the field to be watched by Kate and maybe to play and learn some cooking duties. But the evening became late as the men were working on a mechanical breakdown.  Michael had gone to town to get parts for the machine.  That meant that Gertrude had to spend the night in the cookhouse with Kate and Freddie. 


            The two older girls slept side by side with a wash tub between them containing an alarm clock and a box of matches in case they needed to get up to have a light to see their way. This particular night Gertrude slept in the middle between the two girls and she kept scooting and wiggling.  How many times that night did her wiggling land her head smack up against the wash tub that housed the alarm clock and the box of matches.  She made a big racket!  Needless to say, not much sleep in the cook house that night!  Kate did not want Gertrude to come to the cook house any more.


 

Wedding portrait of Katherine Kunz & Will Portch

            Kate was wooed by Will Portch, a fine young man from the Portch family who lived up the draw, north east of Sherman.  William had been born on January 25, 1871 in Chicago, IL. He and three of his brothers – Daniel L., Edward A. and J. Howard – had come from Chicago to Sherman in 1884 to homestead when Will was only thirteen years old. Their father seems to have remained in Chicago, shipping coal on the Great Lakes. In 1901, another brother, Giles, had joined the clan. While still a youth, Will had attended Courtland Academy in what must have been its inaugural year; the school had been established two miles north of Sherman in 1888. 


            By 1907, the brothers had realized the homestead was not large enough for all the brothers to make a living, so they turned the farm over to Giles’ son Ray Portch to farm. Will then took a partnership deal with Mr. Plough in the Plough Implement Co. of Wilbur. 


            The Kunzes were close neighbours to the Portches, not only geographically, but also being approximately the same age. Will was a banjo player and he joined Joe Kunz on the fiddle at social events with their pickin’ and grinnin’. And the young Kate Kunz was an attractive young woman who caught Will Portch’s attention. On May 15, 1907, Katherine Magdelene Kunz and William A. Portch were married.


            Two years later, their first child, Harold Michael, was born on October 18, 1909. The next year, Will and Kate moved with their infant son to Almira and Will went to work for Kunz & Kramer Hardware & Implement Company, owned by Kate’s brother Gene Kunz and Albert Kramer. 

 

Will Portch with Kathleen and Harold

           Kate's family and that of her brother Gene, who was living nearby, became good friends. Claire Gibson Barker, granddaughter of Gene Kunz, recalls that Aunt Kate was a good cook: "I remember her cloverleaf rolls and ground-cherry jam... What a treat when I would be at her house visiting! I spent quite a bit of time at her house when I would be at my grandparents, since it was right up the street."


            On June 13, 1914, a daughter by the name of Kathleen Gertrude was born to Will and Kate. A short four years later, Will developed tuberculosis of the spine and by June of 1918, was taken to Sacred Heart Hospital where he died on June 22 at the age of 47. Katherine was left with two small children, aged eight and four years. She inherited Will’s share of the Potch land. Her father, Mike, was so grieved for her loss that he gave her his two best quarters to help support her family. She also took boarders into her home in Almira to help financially.  


            When the Portches quit farming in late 1940, Kate sold her inherited Portch ground to Hilary Kunz, her youngest brother, for $18,000, dividing the money three ways between herself and her children. 


            Katherine Magdalene Kunz Portch remained in her home in Almira into old age. She died on December 4, 1965 in Davenport Hospital, WA and was buried in Sherman Cemetery.


            Kate’s daughter, Kathleen, married Jack MacPhee and they raised a family in Ellensburg.


            Kate’s son Harold was 12 years old when he began working for his Uncle Gene Kunz, pumping gas and working in the hardware store. He also swept the dance floor above the Kunz & Kramer building. In 1926, when he was a junior in high school, Harold got a job with Bob Drinkard at Drinkard Men’s Furnishing Store. In 1927, the summer after graduating from high school, he worked one month on the farm of his Uncle Leo Kunz. They were harvesting and also trying to seed. Harold seeded with the team of horses and also helped in the harvest and picked up wheat sacks.


            In 1928, Harold worked in Blair’s Grocery Store, right beside the Farmers’ Meat Compnay which Oscar Feryn ran. He worked a year out of high school before he went to college. In the fall of 1928, when he registered at Gonzaga and started school, he got a job at the Smith Grocery Store on the corner of Division and Mission in Spokane. 


            Harold went to school at night and also worked as a busboy at the Desert Hotel, across the street from the Davenport Hotel. This way, he had three meals a day if he so desired. He walked approximately 2 miles (3.2 kilometres) between Gonzaga and the hotel, situated downtown on the corner of First and Post. 


            In 1929, Harold had gone to Gonzaga for one year when the Depression hit. When he went home that summer, Oscar Feryn asked him to come to work for him in the Farmers’ Meat Market grocery store. Harold was undecided about what to do, but in the end he decided that he needed the money and he could always go back to school later. This was in 1930. 


             The Farmers’ Meat Market was owned by stockholders. After Mr. Feryn retired, Harold started buying the stock out and ultimately bought out all the stockholders. He now owned the Almira Market Company.


            Harold married Thelma Bernice Estby on April 22, 1935 in Spokane, WA and they raised a family in Almira. Harold retired in 1977. As of today (2007), at 97 Harold is still in good health, sound of mind and body. He lives by himself on the south hill in Spokane. (At this writing, Harold is the oldest living descendant of the Michael Kunz family.)   Harold’s daughter and her husband, Dorothy and Darryl Bahr are great historians and are good stewards of the Wilbur museum and of many precious stories.
 

Katherine M. 1882 - 1965 Mother	William A. 1871 - 1918 Father

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¹  Wilbur Register, January 13, 1905.