Christina Magdalena Buchmiller - Part One

CHRISTINE MAGDALENA (LENA) BUCHMILLER

            Christine Magdalena Buchmiller was born 5 August 1885 at Rexburg, Idaho in a dugout burrowed into a canal bank.  The canal ran through the southwest section of the new community where the German families were settling.  Their part of town was fast becoming known as Southend.  The baby was welcomed into the family by loving parents, Karl Heinrich and Christine Gertraude Walz Buchmiller.  An older sister, Emelia, 3 ½ , and a brother, John Henry, just 18 months also greeted her.  She was given her mother’s first name and the middle name of her Aunt Christina Magdalena Walz, her mother’s oldest sister.  Magdalena, the child would soon have her name shortened to “Lena.”  She hardly knew her father as he fell from a load of hay when she was just a baby and died a short time later of brain fever.   His death left her mother with three small children to care for:  Emma, age 5; John, age 3: and herself, only two years old.  Her mother found work at housecleaning, caring for the sick, washing, and ironing, and anything else she could find to support her young children.  They had a large garden and fruit orchard to care for which helped out also.

Map of Idaho 1895
Rexburg has a red circle around it

            The widowed mother struggled to keep the small family fed and clothed.  She did have a one-room log house that Karl had built before he died.  It was located about 365 South Fourth West, and faced west.  In 1891, when Lena was six, her mother married a widower, Fredrick Ludwig Klinger, who had six young children needing a home and a mother, making a family of nine children.  The small Buchmiller house suddenly became very crowded—even more so when Lena’s mother began having more children.  Eventually, five brother and two sisters would be added to the family which an even larger family of sixteen children.   One of her new brothers died as a baby.

     They all had to work hard, everyone doing his share because of such a large family and times being tough.  They were taught by their mother and father to be thrifty, making their own clothes and raising and storing food.

     When she was about seven, Lena and her sister, Emelia and her brother, John Henry, were placed permanently with relatives.  John Henry moved in with his married cousin, Conrad Walz, and his family in Burton, and would learn farming.  Lena and Emelia joined the household of their aunt, Christina Magdalena Walz.  She was their mother’s oldest sister and both relatives and friends called her “Auntie Walz.”  The sisters would help take care of their aunt’s invalid husband, George, called “Uncle Walz,” while she was out on her rounds as a midwife.

Lena, John and Emelia Buchmiller

            Lena raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day, her father and mother being converts from Germany.  She was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints three days before her eighth birthday, 2 August 1893 by Casper Steiner.  She was confirmed the next day by J. A. Austbacher.

     After “Uncle Walz” died, Emelia moved in with Mary and Jacob Brenner in Rexburg.  Mary was Auntie Walz’ oldest daughter.  Lena, then 9, was taken into the home of her aunt’s other married daughter, Christina Magdalena Walz Pfost and her husband.  They lived in Hibbard, about 5 miles northwest of Rexburg.  Lena would help her cousin care for the three young children who were in the home.  Though the sisters were now in separate homes, they were still able to see each other once in a while.  In exchange for her work in the home, Lena was given her lodging, meals, and some clothes.  Her formal education was limited because of these circumstances, but she learned how to work and maintain a home.

Lena, John, Emelia with their mother,
Christina Gertrude Walz Buchmiller

            When Lena was 15 an incident near her home led her to meet her future husband.  She and many of the neighbors had gathered to see the damage done in a nearby house fire.  Lena was there talking to Nora Cook, a girl who had recently moved to Rexburg.  Another young woman, a friend of Nora’s, was also a participant in the conversation.  Nora’s older brother, James Edward Cook, was also at the fire but was some distance away.  Soon he decided to rejoin his sister and her friends and began walking through the crowd.  He had been dating the other girl.  When he came close enough, Nora introduced Ed to Lena.  Ed describes the meeting in his life story:

            “I had taken the advice of one of our apostles (and sought) the help of the Lord in finding a mate.” Ed wrote that afterwards he had a dream and he knew that the young woman he saw in his dream was his future wife.  She was so “life-like that when I met Lena, I knew she would become my wife.”  Later, Ed met Lena’s brother, John, who was then 16, and the two decided to double date to a dance.  Ed went with Lena and John took Nora.

            Ed and Lena’s courtship lasted four years.  When he was 24 and she was 19 they were married 16 Nov. 1904 in the Logan Temple by Thomas Morgan.  Years later Ed would write the following about Lena, “She has been a faithful and true companion, and a true devoted and loving mother to our children.

The three siblings again