Anton, the second child of Franz von Gruner and Katharina Bergmann, was born in Reichenberg, Bohemia (now Liberec, Czech Republic) in 1812 and died in Branch County, Michigan on 25 May 1895. He married Caroline Pilz, a native of Luxembourg, Austria, in 1856.

Anton, like others in his class, was well educated. He was a member of the social group that attended court balls. He was also a serious and reflective man who assisted his father with the management of the woolen mill. In the 1840s class rebellion was spreading throughout central Europe and the German ruling class in Bohemia was threatened. The Gruners began to consider the possibility of migrating to America.

Anton was thirty-five and still unmarried when he first went on an exploratory trip to America in 1847. He traveled as far west as St. Louis, where he contracted Malaria and was forced to return to Reichenberg as soon as he was well enough. It is not certain when he returned to America, but probably in 1848 with his brothers Franz Xavier and Josef, who later settled in Auburn, New York.
In 1853 he and his younger brother, Wenzel, purchased a ticket to Chicago, but stopped off in Coldwater, Michigan where Wenzel had an introduction to Lorenzo Crippen. They were persuaded to purchase 120 acres of land in the former Indian reservation west of the town. They went back to New York
State and returned in the spring of 1854 with their parents, Franz and Katharina, cleared the land and began what became a successful farming venture. They eventually expanded their holding into an entire Section of land and donated a portion for the erection of a school around 1876.

Anton was forty-four when he met and married pretty young Caroline Pilz. Her stepfather, a chimney sweep named Werner (also spelled Warner) and his children by a previous marriage had been sponsored by Anton to come to America and work on his farm. Werner didn’t like working on a farm, so Werner and his sons quickly took off for parts unknown, leaving Anton responsible for the woman who became his mother-in-law.

Anton was a quiet, reflective man who appeared to be dominated by his strong-willed wife, although there are indications that her dominance did not extend outside the management of the household. For example, as much as she deplored the use of tobacco, she was never able to stop Anton from chewing it. She did not interfere with his business deals as a rule. Still, perhaps
because she had known poverty in her childhood, she could not abide the wasting of money and was known to have voiced hearty disapproval if a financial venture of Anton’s did not pay off. As the saying went, she would “curry him off good.”

Anton and Caroline had four children, Caroline, Frank, Charles and Edwin. Anton died in 1895 after a short illness. He was eighty-three.


--------------------------------------------

Note:Other Children are on their own pages

--------------------------------------------



G-24-1 Glen Anton Gruner (1894-1965)

Glen, the eldest child of Edwin and Anna, was born in 1894 and lived in the same area until his death in 1965. He married Clara Marsh in 1925 and soon afterward took over management of his grandfather’s farm. They were noted as hard-working people, devoted to their home and family of seven children, none of who chose to continue with the family farm tradition, although all of them became modestly successful in other professional and semi-professional fields. The children were Maynard Lloyd, Lawrence Dale, Frank Marsh, Edwin Anton, John David, Ellen Caroline (Wilkinson) and Milton Lee.

Write up below by Sylvia H. G-24-111, granddaughter of Glen A. and Clara Marsh.

(Clara Marsh married to Glen A.). It's hard to summarize a rich and very full life, let alone the impact that life had but here's a try:

My grandmother, Clara Marsh Gruner, was a terrific person. Not perfect, but really terrific. Grandma raised 7 children on a farm during through depression and war, and managed to keep everyone fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and generally in good health. As Uncle Frank's painting, Narrows Minded, shows, there was time for fun as well as chores. She was practical, sensible and rather sentimental without being over the top about it. And she was a lot smarter and more aware of things that many people gave her credit for.

It wasn't easy. When Uncle Ted was so sick as a small boy, Grandma carried the extra burden of taking him to doctors and handling his physical therapy herself. It was tough making him do his exercises when he was in such pain, but she wasn't about to have him live his life as an invalid if she could do anything about it. I don't think anyone can fully appreciate how she must have felt when he died.

And just to keep things interesting, Grandma partly raised her sister's daughter, Laura, when Aunt Helen was quite ill. I don't recall much about that as it was before my time and Grandma never made a big deal out of it. I guess one more wasn't too much of a problem.

When the first grandchildren came along (my brother and me), Grandma looked forward to spoiling us and doing the usual grandma things. She was cheated out of some of that due to my mother dumping us and leaving. At a time when her two youngest, Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tony, were in high school and she could look forward to relaxing a little, here she was, stuck with a couple of pre-schoolers. Whatever disappointment she may have felt, she never let on. She did all those things mothers usually do. She was there for the first day of school, for every school program, for every scraped knee and every splinter, for every up and down kids have.

I had a thing for picking flowers and taking them to Grandma. For some reason, I seemed to find dandelions terribly pretty and always picked great big handfuls. Grandma stuck them in a glass of water and I felt very pleased with myself. Another time, I saw some pretty purple flowers across the road by the mailbox so I picked almost every one and raced to the house to show Grandma what lovely flowers I found. She had planted violets around the mailbox and I had just picked them all. She took it with good humor and grace but I know she wasn't too thrilled to have those violets torn up after she had planted them. After that, I stuck pretty much to dandelions.

Ray and I knew Grandma liked butterflies and one year there seemed to be a plethora of very nice ones out in the yard. We decided to get some for her. Not having any clue about how to capture butterflies, we figured bashing them with a play snow shovel seemed about the surest way to keep them from escaping. We must have smashed about 35 or 40 of the poor creatures and took them all in to present them to Grandma. She managed to find 3 or 4 that were in good enough shape to mount and frame.

Being on a farm, naturally, we grew a lot of our own fruits and vegetables. There used to be raspberry bushes along the lane from the barnyard to the pasture and one year those bushes produced a huge crop. We had raspberries and more raspberries and still more raspberries. Another year, we had a lot of strawberries. Grandpa had a blueberry bush that really did produce well but Grandpa only got maybe one or two bowls a year. Between the birds and Ray and me, Grandpa never had a chance. Years later, whenever I came back to Michigan to visit, Grandma always had berries. In summer, fresh; in winter, frozen from the previous season. I always appreciated that.

This isn't even a small part of what Grandma was like but it gives an idea. I truly wish more people could have known her.


G-24-2 Elsie Irene Gruner (1897-1985)

Elsie, the second child of Edwin and Anna, was born on 17 June 1897 and died 24 October 1985. In 1920 she married Leo McQueen, a long-time city commissioner in Coldwater. They had two children, Dorothy Elaine (DeBoe) and Constance Ann (Elliget). Elsie and Leo were both warm, outgoing people, admired by friends and family alike.


G-24-3 Carolyn Gruner (1899-1910)

Carolyn, the third child of Edwin and Anna died of diabetes in the University of Michigan Hospital at the age of eleven, following a slow, lingering death in the days before insulin was discovered.


G-24-4 Mable Gruner (1901-1986)

Mable was the youngest child of Edwin and Anna. She became a bookkeeper and secretary. She married Albert Norton in 1935. They lived on the Ed Gruner farm so Albert could assist Edwin in the latter’s declining years. Mable and Albert had only one child, Dale, who died at birth in 1939.