Maude Drew – A Scholar and Professor's Wife

Maude Mildred Drew was the youngest and only daughter of Thomas Drew and Margaret Walch. She was born in April 1882 in Caldwell Kansas. Both the 1900 and 1910 US censuses show Maude living with her parents on Webb Street in Caldwell. In 1910, the 27-year-old Maude was teaching piano, most likely out of her parents’ home. She may have already obtained a bachelor’s degree by that time. She also may have graduated from Central Wesleyan College in Warrenton, Missouri, where her future husband obtained his bachelor's degree. In any case, she is the first woman in the Walch family to earn a college degree.

At the age of 32, Maude married George Henry Von Tungeln, 33, a Harvard PhD graduate and recently hired assistant professor of sociology at Iowa State College. Following the marriage they moved to Ames, Iowa, where they resided until 1944.

Dr. George von Tungeln was an early pioneer of rural sociology, and served as Chair of the Rural Sociology Section of the American Sociological Society. By 1932, Dr. Von Tungeln was Head of the sociology section of the Department of Economics and Sociology at Iowa State College, and had gained national prominence for his work. Maude also furthered her study at Ames and in 1929 became the 12th recipient of an MS degree in Sociology at Iowa State University.

George died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1944 at 61 years of age as he was completing his thirty-first year as a member of the Iowa State College faculty. In 1969, Maude established an Iowa State University scholarship in honor of her husband, which is now called The George Henry and Maude Drew Von Tungeln Scholarship. Maude died in 1973 in Santa Barbara California at 91 years of age. It is believed that Maude and George had no children because there were no children listed in census reports.

The photograph above is Maude Drew with her mother, Margaret Walch

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A few years ago I found the following posted on the Internet: “I have recently come upon a family history written, and passed on by, Maude Drew von Tungeln. If anybody has a contact for her, or a relative who may know of her, please email me.” The posting was written by Nathan Drew Allen, 34, a descendent of Gladys (Drew) Allen. Unfortunately, Nathan's e-mail address is no longer valid, and all attempts to contact him or his parents have failed. If anyone knows his whereabouts and contact information, please let me know. I very much would like to incorporate Maude’s family history into the Walch history.

Alfred Henry Drew -- Merchant of Waukomis

Alfred Henry Drew was the younger son and second child of Tom Drew and Margaret Walch. He was born in New York in 1876 and moved to Kansas with his family when he was about three years old. He grew up in Caldwell and, like his brother Stephen, he moved to Oklahoma as a young man, where he operated a general store in partnership with his father. Alfred's general store was located in Waukomis which is located 9 miles south of Enid and 21 miles north of Dover, where his brother also operated a general store.

In 1898 at 20 years of age, Alfred married Cora Bell Riley, 18, in Enid, Oklahoma. They were living in Waukomis in 1900 with their one-year-old daughter Gladys. At that time, Alfred declared that he owned the general store free and clear of mortgage. Their second daughter and last child, Audine H. Drew, was born in 1906 in Waukomis. The census record shows the family was still living on Main Street in Waukomis in 1910.

Alfred died at the early age of 42, six days before Christmas in 1918. At the time Cora was 40 years old; Gladys, 18; and Audine 11. Cora died in 1965 and was buried with Alfred in the Waukomis Cemetery.

Gladys Drew married Richard Wayne Allen of Enid in about 1920. By 1930 they were living in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Gladys and Richard had at least one son: Richard Drew Allen. Richard eventually moved to San Diego, California, where he worked as an aerospace engineer. Little else is known about Gladys's life except that she was buried alongside her parents in the Waukomis Cemetery in 1951.

Alfred’s youngest daughter, Audine Hildred Drew, married Hosea Balleau Prewitt in Flint, Michigan, in 1921. They were still living in Flint in 1930, where H.B Prewitt worked as a wholesale heating salesman and engineer. They eventually moved east where their three children settled, in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Audine died in 2005 at age 98 in Chesterfield, Virginia, where her son Robert Drew Prewitt lives.

The above photograph is thought to be Alfred standing next to his father Thomas Drew.

Stephen Drew - Merchant of Dover

Stephen Howard Drew, the oldest son of Tom Drew and Margaret Walch, was born in August 1874 in New York and would later write that his left leg was deformed due to infantile paralysis. He came out to Kansas with his parents when he was about 4 years old and grew up in the rugged cattle town of Caldwell. He spent most of his work life as a merchant store operator, a career he most likely began in his father's grocery store in Caldwell.

Stephen's father Tom took part in the first Oklahoma Land Rush and staked a claim in Hennessey. Stephen and his brother Alfred, most likely with their father's assistants, established general stores nearby the town of Hennessey. Stephen store was in Dover which is located 10 miles directly south of Hennessey. Alfred’s store was located 12 miles north of Hennessey in Waukomis, Oklahoma. Their proximity most likely helped them to share delivery cost and purchase baulk goods at discount.

Nineteen-year-old Stephen may have already been living in Dover in 1893 when he married 18 year-old Maude Hughes in Enid, Oklahoma, which is located 30 miles north of Dover. Stephen and Maude had three daughters: Edith, born in 1894; Ruth, in 1896; and Grace, in 1899. Ruth died tragically at 11 months of age and was buried in the Dover cemetery. In the 1900 US census, Stephen, 25, and Maude, 26, are listed as operating a general merchandise store in Dover. Their home was free and clear of mortgage; and they were well enough off to support a live-in maid.

Unfortunately, the marriage ended sometime before 1908, the year that Stephen, then 32, married Grace, a 28-year-old previously married woman. That marriage ended by 1920, when in the census of that year Stephen is listed as “divorced” and was living in a boarding house in Dover. By 1930 Stephen, 53, was living with his third wife, Irene, 32. His general store was now referred to as a grocery store.

Dover was first called Red Fork. It was located on the Chisholm Trail, which originally was a freight trail that crossed the Oklahoma Indian Territory, linking Texas and Kansas. A railroad was built along the trail; and a station built at Red Fork to service locomotives. Its name then was changed to Dover Station. In the 1889 Land Rush, Dover Station was part of newly created Kingfisher County and became a “boom” town overnight. However, the nearby Hennessey Station was more successful in attracting business. As a result, Dover’s boom population dissipated over the next several decades.

During Stephen Drew’s life three events in Dover made national news. The first was the Dover train robbery by the “Wild Bunch,” a gang composed of the Doolin Gang and former members of the Dalton Gang. In April 1895 the gang boarded the Rock Island train at Dover and robbed the express car. Around two o’clock that afternoon, a posse caught up with them at a camp near Ames. Tulsa Jack Blake was killed in the shootout. The rest of the gang scattered, never to reunite as a gang.

A second notable robbery occurred in Dover almost thirty-seven years later. In January 1932, the infamous Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd robbed the banks in Paden and Castle on the same day, and robbed the bank in Dover the next day.

But perhaps the most notable event occurred in September 1906. Just south of Dover, heavy rains washed away a bridge one night as the Rock Island train from Texas bound for Kansas came through. All but one car plunged into the Cimarron River. Of the 225 passengers aboard, over 100 lost their lives, making it one of the most deadly train accidents in history.

Stephen's first wife and daughters moved to Wichita, Kansas following the divorce. Maud raise the girls there as a single parent. Edith Drew was living in Wichita with her mother in 1930. Her whereabouts after that date are currently unknown. Her sister Grace Drew was married in Prescott, Arizona, in 1931 to Amos Francis Bumpa; but there's nothing further known about Grace and whether she or Edith had descendents. After 1930 Stephen’s whereabouts are also unknown. He was not buried in the Dover Cemetery so he likely moved on.

Today, Dover is a town of only a few businesses, boarded-up storefronts, and a population of 362, but it did have a spectacular aurora display. The photograph of that display (above) was taken by Dave Ewolt. The photograph of the couple above is believed to be that Stephen Drew and a second wife Grace. It is an excerpt from a previously posted family group photograph courtesy of Cait Hendron, Stephen Drew's 1st cousin three times removed

Walch Sisters – Lost, Found & Persevered

I posted historic family group photographs about a month ago and asked if anyone could identify the family members. Grace Walch and her daughter Dorothy Benkendorf were the only people who were previously identified, (right side of the photo above). Recently, I took another look at the photograph and use Dorothy's approximate age to deduce which cousin is standing next to her. As it turns out, John Harold Mendenhall is the only male cousin of the right age to fit. The woman behind him therefore is most likely Jessie Walch as an adult.

As a genealogist I am sometimes asked what has struck me the most doing family research. My short answer is: perseverance. I am continuously amazed by the tragic and seemingly devastating events that some family members have experienced over their lives; and by their ability to adjust and get on with living.

Grace Walch appears to be a case in point. She was 27 years old when her first husband died. She then remarried but experienced a divorce. At age 51, she grieved the loss of her 27-year-old and only child, Dorothy. And, when she was age 78, her third husband died after 27 years of marriage.

Actually I don't have to go deep into history to uncover such tragedies. My own sisters have been widowed and one has experienced the death of a 29-year-old son. They too have shown resilience. I think that in some ways this knowledge of our family’s perseverance and resiliency serves to booster our own defense system. We will not be spared the pain of tragedy, but should feel less abandoned and hopeless in its wake.

Grace Walch, Daughter of James

Grace was born on June 4, 1885 in Winfield, Kansas and, except for six years in Wichita, spent her entire life there. On June 16, 1908, at age 23, Grace was married in Winfield to Ernest A. Benkendorf, 29, the son of Wilhemina Arndt and Julius Benkendorf, a Prussian emigrant miller. Ernest was a real estate broker in Winfield whose early career was interrupted by tuberculosis. He died at age 33 in California where he had gone for treatment. Grace and Ernest had one child, Dorothy.

Grace then married Peter Hickerson, a photographer who operated a studio in Winfield. They had no children and eventually divorced. In October of 1936, 51-year-old Grace married Charles Gaines in Ozark, Missouri. Charles, who was a widower with two grown sons, worked as a building contractor in Wichita. In that same month of 1936 Grace's only child Dorothy died at the early age of twenty-six. Grace's grief may have been somewhat lightened by the fact that Dorothy had three children before she died. Grace and Charles lived in Wichita for six years, before moving to Winfield. Grace was no doubt well known in downtown Winfield for she worked as a saleswoman for Calvert’s Department Store for about 18 years.

Charles died in 1963 at the age of 83 in Winfield. Grace died three years later at age 81 on June 7, 1966 in Winfield and is buried near her parents in Union Cemetery.

Dorothy Benkendorf’s daughter, Mary Louise Mackensen and her two daughters- Cait and Christine Hendron - have been very active in researching Walch history. They were the source, via Cait, for much of the James Walch history and for all the Winfield photographs.

The photograph above is Grace Walch and her daughter Dorothy Benkendorf. The photograph is courtesy of Cait Hendron of Glendale, Arizona.

Jessie Amelia Walch, Daughter of James

This begins a new section of the Walch history. Having finished the lives of Stephen Walch and Elizabeth Charnock’s children, we now turn to the next generation of cousins.

Jessie Walch was born in 1877 in New York and raised in Winfield, Kansas. In about 1903 at age 25, Jessie married John W. Mendenhall, son of Isaac Mendenhall and Emily M. Paris. John was born in Missouri in 1874 and moved with his family to a farm in Liberty Township of Cowley County when he was about four years old. Jessie and John had three children, all of whom were born in Kansas: Howard W., John Harold, and Pansy. Following Pansy’s birth in about 1911, the Mendenhalls moved to Las Animas, Colorado, where John operated a plumbing shop. They lived at 348 Saint Vrain Ave in Las Animas in 1920 and 1930. They also lived for a time in Grand Junction, Colorado. John died in 1945 at age 74. Jessie died in 1961 at age 84 and was buried beside John in the Las Animas Cemetery. At this time there is nothing known about their descendents.

The photograph is Jessie with her younger sister Grace. The photograph is courtesy of Cait Hendron of Glendale, Arizona, a great-grandniece of Jessie Walch.

The Oklahoma Land Rush -- The Walch Claims

On March 23, 1889 President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed that a two million acre region in the heart of the Indian Territory was open for settlement. The land, which was previously set aside for Indian relocation, was surrounded by tribal owned land: The Cherokee Outlet on the northern Kansas border; the Iowa, Kickapoo, and Pottawattamie reservations on the east; the Chickasaw Nation on the southern border; and the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Reservation on the western border.

Less than a month later the largest accumulations of would-be settlers massed along the Kansas border, primarily at the railroad towns of Arkansas City and Caldwell. On April 18th the crowds at Arkansas City and Caldwell were escorted by U.S. Army troops across the Cherokee Outlet to the border of the ‘Unassigned Land.’ The Caldwell crowd was composed of 10,000 farmers, cowboys, and old soldiers in buggies, covered wagons, and on horseback. They helped one another ford the Cimarron River before making final camp at Buffalo Springs north of Kingfisher. On Easter Sunday, the day before the land rush, the camp took on a festive atmosphere; following religious services, foot races were held and baseball played.

The rail station at Guthrie and the land office at Kingfisher were two sites of choice for settlers and town site corporations. They also were the sights of choice for the Walch family. William W. Howard, writing for Harper's Weekly, followed the crowd to Guthrie:

"In some respects the recent settlement of Oklahoma was the most remarkable thing of the present century. Unlike Rome, the city at Guthrie was built in a day. To be strictly accurate in the matter, it might be said that it was built in an afternoon. At twelve o'clock on Monday, April 22nd, the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand. In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken towards the formation of a municipal government. At twilight the campfires of ten thousand people gleamed on the grassy slopes of the Cimarron Valley where the night before the coyote, the gray wolf, and the deer had roamed undisturbed. Never before in the history of the West has so large a number of people been concentrated in one place in so short a time. To the conservative Eastern man, who is wont to see cities grow by decades, the settlement of Guthrie was magical beyond belief; to the quick acting resident of the West, it was merely a particular lively town-site speculation.”

“The preparations for the settlement of Oklahoma had been complete, even to the slightest detail, for weeks before the opening day. The Santa Fe Railway, which runs through Oklahoma north and south, was prepared to take any number of people from its handsome station at Arkansas City, Kansas, and to deposit them in almost any part of Oklahoma as soon as the law allowed; thousands of covered wagons were gathered on camps on all sides the new Territory waiting for the embargo to be lifted. In its picturesque aspects the rush across the border at noon on the opening day must go down in history as one of the most noteworthy events of Western civilization. At the time fixed, thousands of hungry home-seekers, who gathered from all parts of the country, particularly from Kansas and Missouri, were arranged in a line along the border, ready to lash their horses into furious speed in the race for fertile spots in the beautiful land before them. The day was one a perfect peace. Overhead the sun shone down from the sky as fair and blue as the cloudless heights of Colorado. The whole expanse of space from zenith to horizon was spotless in its blue purity. The clear spring air, through which the rolling green billows of the promised land could be seen with unusual distinctiveness for many miles, was as sweet and fresh as the balmy atmosphere of June among New Hampshire's hills.”

“As the expected home-seekers waited with restless patience, the clear, sweet notes of a calvary bugle rose and hung a moment upon the startled air. It was noon. The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver lashed his horses furiously; each rider dug his spurs into his willing steed, and each man on foot caught his breath hard and darted forward. A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line, and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the country like fiends."

All was not milk and honey when the boomers reach the promised land. Much of the land around Guthrie station was already staked out by "Sooners" which included US Marshals and railroad workers. The rules which made them ineligible for claims were simply ignored. It was fortunate that alcohol was prohibited in the new territory, said one reporter, because blood surely would have filled the newly forming streets otherwise.

John Walch may have been one of those Sooners, for after all he was a railroad man. And his brother-in-law Tom Drew in Caldwell may have used his influence to get there sooner as well. As mentioned before, William Walch later submitted a billing to the Guthrie Board of Education for his labor during the construction of its first school. It cannot be said for certain that any of the Walchs participated in the rush itself, but a year later in the First Territorial Census of Oklahoma of 1890, Thomas Drew and James Walch were property owners in Hennessey of Logan County and in Guthrie of Logan County, respectively. As claimants under the 1862 Homestead Act they could have been granted title up to 160 acres of public land if they remain on it, “improved” and developed it for five years. They most likely kept their primary residencies in Caldwell and Winfield, and stayed on their claim land to meet minimum residency requirements. Although in the case of Tom Drew, he may have made a longer commitment to the claim because his two sons eventually operated general stores in the towns immediate north and south of Hennessey - which we will turn our attention to in a future blog.


For William W. Howard’s full article in Harper's Weekly, (18 May 1889), go to www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/landrush.htm