Box 10B

 

Ernest Kuck and my great grandfather

A little over a year ago, we traveled out to The Dalles, Oregon area to vacation and experience some of the area a distant relative had lived and then funded a huge museum when he died. I wrote about that HERE. Ernest Kuck was my first cousin, three times removed or translated, my first cousin three generations different than I. The nearest relative we both share in our family tree is my 3rd great grandfather, and original immigrant along that branch, John Kuck. 

Growing up, I didn't know anything about John Kuck and my grandfather didn't know anything either. I always suspected a lot of that had to do with John Kuck dying while his grandson, my great grandfather and the gentleman on the right in the above picture, was away fighting World War I in France. It was only after I started figuring out my family tree using genealogy that I finally pieced things together and discovered the gravesite for John Kuck which my grandparents were able to visit for the first time before they died.

I have often told of the story of John Kuck having seven children and losing five of them and a wife due to a diphtheria pandemic. It was only maybe a decade ago before I really looked into the other surviving child who wasn't my great great grandfather. It was only at that time that I ever knew anything about Henry being a somewhat famous western saddle maker and state senator. I'm pretty sure I asked my grandfather about Henry but I can't remember him knowing anything about him. I thus have always assumed that our two branches of the family had never met. 

Then came box 10B of my great uncles slides and I discovered I was very wrong on that assumption. Above is Ernest Kuck on the left and my great grandfather on the right. They are first cousins with no time removed.  My great uncle took that picture and was along for that trip though my grandfather apparently wasn't. I've seen no evidence of him in any of the dozen or so boxes of slides I've scanned thus far. Since this trip occurred in the summer of 1966, my grandfather would have been married with two children around the house.  My great uncle had been married but his wife Roma had died 5 years earlier due to a genetic disease and thus widowed with no children, my great uncle tagged along on the vacation. 

my great uncle who would have been 44 posing near a 350 year old ponderosa pine according to the writing on the slide.

Growing up, my great uncle was quite fond of my brother and I and though we didn't know our great grandfather well since he died when I was 12 and my only memories of him are after his severe stroke, we got to know our great uncle quite well. In fact, I was married and had kids the last time I saw him before he too passed away in 2012. One of my biggest regrets has always been not asking my great uncle more questions about family and his life in the military when I had the chance. I would have loved to ask him about the Kucks who went west and he probably would have been thrilled to learn that due to Ernie's generosity, there is now a major museum named after the Kuck family. 

Great grandparents sitting in front of Ernest Kuck's cabin, near The Dalles, Oregon