A Break For Family

 

Spring of 1920 was Clara Kuck's last school semester in Great Falls and she decided to head back east for more college education in Boston. But for some reason, her photo album skips backward in time because there a number of pages featuring her cousin Leta and her daughters. Above is a picture of her cousin Leta who was the daughter of her uncle Frederick and aunt Katherine Brandau Kuck, Frederick is the younger brother of her father John Kuck and Katherine is the older sister of mother Elizabeth Brandau Kuck. Isn't it fun keeping things straight when brothers marry sisters!

Leta Adelheid Kuck would marry Leo Grant Titus on 17 December 1912 in Seattle, Washington.

Leta and Leo's first born was named after Leta's mother Katherine. She was born December of 1914 so I'm guessing the two pictures above were taken sometime in the spring of 1915.

When I cam to this page, I spent a fair amount of time and comparing it to Clara Kuck's mother Elizabeth Brandau Kuck's two photos that I have but wasn't seeing the resemblance. It was about that time that I noticed the "and" appended to after the label of "mother" but on the next page beside it was just another photo of Leo and Leta's first house in Ephrata, Washington. It was only when I turned the page did I figure out who mother was...

Mother was simply Leta, "mother" of Katherine who apparently was the light of Clara Kuck's eyes as she has dozens of photographs of her in her album.

A few pages later, there is another picture labeled "mother" and this one I am more convinced that it is Clara's actual mother Elizabeth who died back in 1910 after what her obituary said was a "brief bout of cancer." She was only 53 years old at the time and Clara only 27 years old. This was the second time my 3rd great grandfather John Kuck lost a wife at a young age. However unlike his first wife, this one lived long enough for her kids to all grow up and leave the house before she passed away.

The photo above is a mystery to me. I looked through all my 3rd great grandfather's brothers and sisters and none of them had a 'D' in their first or last names. So I moved onto Clara's mother's sibling and did find an older sister named Christine who married a Charles Dickman who lived near Charles City where Clara's parents lived. I don't have any pictures of her so I can't verify it this is 'Auntie D." or not. Christine Dickman died in 1903 so if it is, this picture is of a significantly older time period than most of the other photos in the album.

This photo too has me puzzled. The label of 'Pa' leads me to think it could possibly of my 3rd great grandfather John Kuck but of the three dozen photos I have of him, he is wearing a beard in all of them and they cover his time from newly married to towards the end of his life. The man above on the ladder doesn't appear to have a beard. It could also just be Leo Titus again but it is hard to determine the age of the man on the ladder. With Clara's picture of "Mother", I was able to gentle dislodge it from it's adhesion to the photo retainers on one side and peel it back to reveal there was no writing on the back of the photo. With "Pa", it was firmly adhered to the corners but not the middle. Ever so gently, I used my letter opener knife to gently lose one of the corners and peek under it but alas there is no writing there either. 

Perhaps the antique shop that ended up with this album and a box full of "loose" pictures will come through and they will find more pictures of John Kuck to give me some more reference points, especially ones without a beard and later in life. But that would be something like lightening striking a second time after it already struck that spot once.