Christine Gertraude Walz-Pictures

I had these pictures ready to scan and put into Great Grandma's history and then simply forgot that I had them.  So I am going to add them now.  Sorry about that.  I hope that you will enjoy them all by themselves rather than in a history.

Buchmiller-Klingler Family 1895
Godfry, Friedrich Ludwig Klingler, and John Buchmiller
Karl, Great Grandmother with George on her lap and Chris

The Buchmiller-Klingler Family
Caroline, Christina, Mary, Emma, Christina Magdalena (Grandmother)
Fred is seated.

The Buchmiller-Klinger Family 1908
First row: George, Fred, Great Grandmother, Alma, Bill in front of Friedrich Ludwig, Barbara, and Sara
Second row: Christina Magdalena Buchmiller, (Grandmother), Karl, Emma Buchmiller, John Buchmiller, Christina, Godfrey May, Chris, Eva, and Caroline
This picture was taken just before Godrey left for his mission.

Great Grandmother Christine Gertrude Walz seated
Standing:  Christina Magdalena (Grandmother), John and Emma Buchmiller
About 1910

Early Teens
Christina, John, and Emma Buchmiller

My Grandparents
James Edward Cook and Christina Magdalena Buchmiiler

Grandmother Christina Magdalena with her siblings John and Emma Buchmiller
Taken at a family reunion in Rexburg, Idaho about 1955

Christine Gertraude Walz - Part 6

            Christine learned a bitter lesson shortly after she came to Rexburg. A neighbor woman told her many negative things about another neighbor. She repeated it to someone else and that someone went to the original victim and said Christine had started it. The woman who had told Christine denied the whole thing and Christine then became the villain. She learned from that experience never to gossip or repeat stories.

            Karl and Conrad obtained haying jobs in Montana during the summer of 1887. While they were away Christine stumbled and fell into an irrigation ditch. She was going to or returning from a well across a pasture. It was dusk and difficult for the young mother to see and she was pregnant. The fall caused her to miscarry. She grieved over the loss for a long time.

            Karl returned home in the late summer, injured and ill, without Conrad. He had been seriously hurt in a runaway team-and-wagon accident and while in his weakened condition contracted typhoid fever. He lingered for a while and then died of pneumonia on October 27, 1887. He was only 27. The neighbors came to give solace to the young widow and to build a coffin from a cotton wood tree. Miss Ella Hinckley made the clothes and lined the coffin for Karl. After a funeral he was buried in the Rexburg Cemetery. The baby that Christine miscarried in the spring would have been born about the time of Karl's death. (Ella later

married Thomas B. Cardon and the two became parents of Genevieve. When Genevieve grew up she became the wife of Karl Klingler, son of Christine and her second husband Friedrich Ludwig Klingler.)

            Christine struggled to maintain her little family without her husband. Emelia was three months short of being six years old. John Henry was 3 1/2, and Lena was two.

Christina Gertrude Walz Buchmiller seated;
Standing-Christina Magdalena,
John Henry and Emilie Walz Buchmiller

             The young mother took in washing, did housework, and sewed for other families to provide their living. The children gleaned wheat from the ditch banks which their mother made into flour. But they often went hungry. Christine remembered later how tasty some wild meat was that had been given to her by a neighbor. Once she used a whisk broom to brush together enough flour to make some gravy.

            Three years had passed since Karl and Christine had arrived in Idaho to homestead. On March 9, 1888, Christine traveled to Blackfoot, the county seat of Bingham County, Territory of Idaho. She paid nine hard-earned dollars to the county treasurer and received the deed to the 2 1/2 acres she and Karl had homesteaded. The property was located in Southend, a community in the southwestern section of what is now Rexburg.  (Note:  This property is just down the street from where George and Diana Wilson used to live.)

            Christine became acquainted with a German woman named Charlotte Klingler Pfost. Charlotte's brother, Friedrich Ludwig Klingler,

Friedrich Ludwig Klingler

his wife, and family of six children had joined the Church in Germany and had come to Rexburg in 1886. They had a son born while in Rexburg on August 18, 1886. When Christine went to see the new baby, Christoph, she thought he was one of the most beautiful babies she had ever seen. The Klingler family moved a short time later to Pocatello so Friedrich could work for the railroad. While they were there another child was born, May 22, 1889. Two months later the mother died, and the baby lived only four more days.

            The children were brought back to Rexburg to live with various relatives. Friedrich continued working in Pocatello but would visit his children whenever he could. Charlotte wanted Christine to meet her brother. She played matchmaker and was the one who introduced them to each other. After a courtship they thought about marriage. They did much soul-searching on this matter, as Friedrich had seven living children and she had three. Also, Fredrich had a habit to overcome — he smoked a pipe. Christine did not approve of smoking.  He was able to give up the habit and a wedding day was set.

          They were to be married February 11, 1891, in the Logan Temple for time only.  Christine was already sealed to her first husband, Karl Heinrich Buchmiller. The day arrived for her to meet Friedrich in Pocatello where they would take the train to Logan. As she approached his home she could see him through a window with a pipe in his mouth. When confronted with this, he said he was not smoking but had put the unlit pipe in his mouth out of habit. He really had not smoked since he told her he would not, he explained. She was finally convinced he was telling the truth and that he did love her.

            They attended the temple on the appointed day. Christine stood as proxy for Friedrich's first wife, Anna Maria Bauer, so Anna could receive her endowments. The sealing of Friedrich and Anna Maria would be performed later. Then Christine Walz Buchmiller and Fredrich Ludwig Klingler were married for "time only" by Merriner Wood Merrill, president of the temple.

Christine Gertraude Walz - Part 5

           Work was becoming scarce in the area as the railroad line was completed and the temple just needed interior decorative work. Karl and his young family moved to the boom town of Beaver Canyon, also called "Canon," in present-day Clark County, Idaho. Karl's job was to "walk track" for the railroad. Beaver Canyon was a large lumber and railroad center located several miles north of present-day Spencer. A number of timber firms in that region supplied lumber for construction in growing Eagle Rock, Idaho, now Idaho Falls.

            Indians were seen regularly in the Beaver Canyon area. One elderly Indian man loved to visit the Buchmiller home and play with the beautiful young child, Emelia. Christine noticed the man had lice and told little Emelia not to get too close to him. Even though he did not understand German, the Indian knew what the mother meant and never picked the little girl up again.

John Henry Buchmiller

            Christina Magdalena, who was known as "Auntie Walz within the family and among her friends, was helping to support her husband and children because George had a form of creeping paralysis. For a time she did laundry work for 50 cents a day, and also made egg noodles. She carried the noodles to her friends and clients in clean little white cloths. Since Christina Magdalena had to deal with other than German speaking people she soon learned English. Later, Dr. McCalister, a female Logan obstetrician, requested that Auntie Walz accompany her to the homes of the German-speaking people to act as an interpreter. The doctor also taught and trained Auntie Walz in the skill of obstetrics. It was Auntie Walz who helped her sister, Christine, when her first son, John Henry Buchmiller, was born February 3, 1884, at Beaver Canyon, Idaho.

           

Rexburg, Idaho

Meanwhile, Church people from Logan, Utah, had founded the new Idaho community of Rexburg. The settlement was located about 170 miles north of Logan, Utah, in what is now known as Idaho's Upper Snake River Valley. From Beaver Canyon, Idaho, where the Buchmillers lived, the town was about 70 miles to the southeast via Market Lake (now Roberts). Both the Buchmillers and Wakes would find their future in the Rexburg area.

Thomas E. Ricks

            Rexburg was just one of more than 500 communities founded by the Church after the first pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. In this instance President John Taylor had sent William B. Preston, president of the Cache Valley Stake, and Thomas E. Ricks of Logan north to check out possible town sites in Idaho. Besides looking for good homesteading land they were to consider religious, educational, and commercial factors. They found all of these at the Rexburg site and members were called to come and settle. Thomas E. Ricks was the first bishop. The new town was dedicated March 16,1883, named in honor of Bishop Ricks whose family name was once "Rex."

            Young Conrad Walz and a neighbor followed the roads north from Logan to the new settlement. The rest of Conrad's family was still in Logan, but they had definitely decided to move, urging Karl and Christine to move, also. It was not a difficult decision. Karl resigned his job with the railroad and they loaded their belongings on the train and rode to Market Lake. They got off the train there,

Market Lake train station

ferried across the Snake River, and walked the next 20 miles northeast to Rexburg. A wagon carried their belongings. They found other German speaking friends from Logan already there. Among them were the Henry Flamm and Casper Steiner families. Makeshift dugout rooms were excavated by hand into the side of a canal until log homes could be built. The Walz and Buchmiller dugouts were side by side, but the Walzes had not yet arrived. It was in this primitive situation that Christine gave birth to her third child, a daughter, on August 5, 1885, She was named Christine Magdalena after her mother and her mother's sister. Family members shortened her name to "Lena." (This is my Grandmother Christina Magdalena Buchmiller Cook.)

Christina Magdalena Buchmiller

     After the birth, Karl and Conrad headed for Logan to get Conrad's family, consisting of father, mother, and two younger sisters. George, now an invalid, rode the train to Market Lake, then was brought to Rexburg in a wagon. He arrived before the others and stayed in the Buchmiller dugout until his family came.

     It was late October of 1885 before the Walz wagons and herds arrived in Rexburg. Auntie Walz wondered aloud why she had left her comfortable home in Logan to live in a dugout. But it was not long before logs were secured 12 miles north of Rexburg, and one room homes built. They were about 12 x 15 feet in size. The logs were chinked with mud and the roof was spread with willows and sagebrush and covered with dirt - a typical pioneer home.

     Rexburg was still in a wilderness condition when the Walzes and Buchmillers arrived. Sagebrush had to be cleared before the ground could be tilled and planted. The men spent the winter of 1885-86 hauling logs to earn enough money to buy some of life's necessities.  In the area were people who had come from France and Switzerland as well as Germany. They all spoke the language of their former homelands. One day a Swiss-speaking family and a French-speaking family started arguing over a cow that got into a garden. They were arguing but they couldn't understand each other. Karl used his language skills to interpret for them so the matter could be settled.

Hauling logs for homes

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