Kuchenbecker-Ahnen

Nachruf

MRS. MARY F. KUCKENBAKER A good woman who has reared her family to lead honored lives, is Mrs. Mary F. Kuckenbaker, the widow of the late Charles Frederick
Kuckenbaker, the well-known Laton pioneer, and who resides at the old Kuckenbaker ranch of fifty acres five miles west of Laton, in comparative retirement, enjoying quietly the old pioneer house which was added to, from time to time and in happier years, to meet the exigencies of a new country and a growing family.

Her home, though simple and old-fashioned, is very cosy, and easily reveals the presence of an experienced and careful housekeeper. It was her lot to lose a noble son in the World War, and not long ago the companion for many years of her joys and sorrows also passed away. Beloved, however, by her children, of whom she has good cause to be proud, and highly esteemed by all who know her as a neighbor and a friend, Mrs. Kuckenbaker still has much to make her cheerful and happy.

She was born in Cedar County, Mo., about sixteen miles west of Stockton, the county seat, of parents who came to that state from Virginia. They pitched their tent in Cedar County, and were among its earliest settlers. Her father was J. C. Beydler, and he married Eliza Gouchenour who came, like himself, of German ancestry. Indeed, the grandparents of both families came from Germany and settled in Missouri about two years before the out-break of the Civil War, after which they moved to Illinois.

This change was necessary owing to their sympathy with the anti-slave movement. At the close of the war, however, they returned to Missouri, where the parents had homesteaded, and there our subject grew up.

While in Missouri she was married to Mr. Kuckenbaker, a native of Germany, who was reared and educated in Missouri, and who was only eight years old when his parents came to America; and years after her marriage, she came, in June, 1897, to California. Seven of Mr. and Mrs. Kuckenbaker's children were born in Missouri, while the two youngest were born in California. Effie Elsie Lee, the eldest, died in Missouri when she was two years, seven months and fourteen days old. John Noah, a rancher, married Miss Grace Sands, of Laton, and owns a ranch near that town, and has been very successful, and having no children of his own, he is rearing an orphan boy, known as Russell Kuckenbaker, whom he adopted and who is now in the grammar school. George owns two ranches west of Laton, and shares the fruits of his labors with his good wife, who was Hattie Sands before her marriage, and is the mother of three children Harold, Elnora and a baby boy. Josie is the wife of Guy Whitney: they have two children, Esther and Dorothy, and they own eighty acres near Laton. Clyde married Alice Cummings of that town, and resides near-by, a rancher, the father of two children. Homer and Wilbur. Crafton is a farmer owning twenty acres and renting 200 acres of the Hancock Ranch, and he married Amanda Bristol, by whom he has had one baby, Virginia. Lester Emery enlisted in the service of his country, and died at the Rocky Ford aviation school near San Diego, on March 8, 1917, unmarried, in his twenty-first year. Isaac Nathan, nineteen years of age, works on a ranch but is included in the honor roll of the draft. Olen Howard, the ninth and youngest born, is seventeen years old and is at home.

It was about the beginning of this century when Mr. Kuckenbaker bought the fifty acres which his widow now rents to a resident tenant, and which is a part of the famous Laguna de Tache grant; and about 1912 he went to Old Mexico and bought some 300 acres of land to which he expected to bring his family when the revolution there had ceased. He was driven out. however, with five hundred other Americans and arriving at Missouri, was vaccinated. Tragic to relate, blood-poisoning set in ; his arm turned black, and he who had so long labored as an exemplary American citizens, valuable to every community in which he had lived and toiled, fell a victim to a disorder that has long been a blot on North American civilization. On June 8, 1912, he passed away, in his sixty-fifth year. In addition to the desirable estate five miles west of Laton, and south of the
Riverdale and Laton Road, now known as Mt. Whitney Avenue. Mrs. Kuckenbaker owns 120 acres in Cedar County, Mo., and this property is also managed with characteristic good judgment.