by Jim Graupner
Aurelia nee Klause was born 112 years ago on 12 December 1894, the second of five children born to Adolph and Ida Boock Klause in New Ulm. Aurelia was the granddaughter of Christian Friederich and Wilhelmine Ernstine Plath Boock and Ludwig and Wilhelmine Krumvei (Kromrey) Plath. Her siblings were: Adolph (died young), Aurelia (1894), Olga Klause Hellmann, then Stoltenburg (1899), Olga's twin: Olivia Klause Gluth (1899), and Norma Klause Ford (1901).
Aurelia made a strong connection with her cousins, Norbert Boock and Gertrude Boock Graupner, despite the fact that they were almost a generation older. When the Arthur and Emma Boock returned with their family (Norbert, Gertrude, and Esther) to New Ulm, Gertrude and Esther became special friends of the Klause sisters, eventually receiving some of the older girl's toys. Among the toys was a large doll house built by their Uncle William Ruemke, which passed along four generation from Ruth Ruemke to the Klause girls, then to Gertrude Boock, Marilyn Boock , Cathryn Graupner, and finally to Emily Graupner.
When Norbert Boock was quite young, maybe a young teenager, he traveled out West one summer to visit Aurelia and her husband, Jim Walker, on their ranch in Wyoming. Much later, in the 1970s, Norbert and Marian Boock and Gertrude and Carl Graupner traveled out to visit their first cousin, Aurelia; they enjoyed hearing about life on a 3,000-acre ranch, many miles from the closest town, where most of everything the Walkers needed, beyond food stuffs, was purchased out of mail-order catalogues.
A further connection with Aurelia came from my father's side of the family, when our first cousin, Else Dauer Eickstedt and her husband Raymond and their six children moved to Lander, where Raymond worked at the airport with small aircraft.
Aurelia died on September 12, 1980 in Lander, Wyoming, preceded in death by her first husband, Clarence Alm, as well as Jim Walker.
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I only recall my dad, Norbert, being very happy spending time in New Ulm with his cousins, laughing and chattering away in German. My mother, Marian,being raised in Spencer, was concerned about the high and low German being spoken in the two towns.
The trip to the Walker's by Carl, Gertrude, Norbert and Marian took place in 1974. I remember that Norbert was sporting a Colonel Sander's beard. Brother Chuck, Else Eickstedt and I visited them at their Sinks Canyon ranch in the spring of 1977. Chuck had just graduated from law school. Else brought along a bag of groceries because the Walker's were less readily getting into town (Lander, WY). I think Jim wasn't so well at that time, because I honestly can't remember him visiting with us...unless he had an accent, like he came from the UK or Australia. But that's a bit foggy.
Aurelia was happy for the visit. She still retained an industriousness that a ranch life must have required. She had a bunch of her projects lying around--knitting, sewing crafts. She was a very interesting person and enjoyed regaling us, with an unabashed brassiness, of life on the ranch, shooting rattlesnakes and such. She recounted how she and Jim met. She had been a nurse, or an assistant, at the Mayo Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jim Walker was a patient suffering from tuberulosis, I believe. One thing led to another.
What I recall of the Walker ranch is that it was rangeland. It was best suited for grazing cattle or sheep. It didn't look like field crops would do well. But the ranch is beautifully sited at the entrance to Sinks Canyon, with the Rocky Mountains for a backdrop.
Gertrude Boock Graupner, my mother,told me that Aurelia put her wedding bouquet on the new grave of her sister Esther Boock, Art & Emma Boocks' three-year-old daughter who had died of spinal meningitis or scarlet fever(?) on August 30, 1917.
While Esther was sick, Norbert and Gertrude lived with their Aufderheide grandparents until the Boock house was fumigated and Esther's bedding was burned after her death.
Cathy
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