John Blumer (1845 - 1937)

Born 20 Apr 1845 in Engi, Canton Glarus, Switzerland

Ancestors

Husband of Elizabeth Marti — married 2 May 1872 in Canton Glarus, Switzerland

Descendants

Died 30 Nov 1937 at age 92 in Cedar Falls, Black Hawk Co., Iowa

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Tom Blumer [send private message]

Biography

Burial: 3 DEC 1937. Lu Verne Cemetery, Lu Verne, Kossuth Co., Iowa.

Notes

According to the New York Passenger Lists that include 1880, the year of their arrival in the U.S., John, Elizabeth, Jacob, and John sailed from the port of Le Havre, France, to New York, arriving 8 September 1880, on the ship Labrador. Based on an earlier account of a Swiss family, it seems likely that they traveled up the Rhine River to Rotterdam, then by coastal ship to Le Havre. The passenger lists on the Labrador give the following names:

Jean Blumer (Jean is the French spelling of John) age 31. Jeanne Blumer age 28. Jacob, age 7. Jean, age ?.

Other Canton Glarus family names show up on the same page of this list: Durst, Kundert, Zweifel, Jenny, Wild, Egli, Luchsinger, and Stussi. The arrival date agrees with the report below. The age for John is incorrect, but it's right for Elizabeth (Jeanne) and Jacob. I could find no better match in the passenger lists, so I asked a researcher at the New England Historic Genealogical Society if my match was reasonable. She said it was, and added that mistakes were frequent in these lists, caused by language differences.

The following is a combination of two narratives written by Johannes (John) Blumer's son Paul:

"My father, John Blumer, and mother, Elizabeth Marti Blumer, came to America in the fall of 1880 from Engi, [Canton Glarus] Switzerland with their two sons Jacob C. and John M., aged about 8 and 5.

They went first to West Grove, Iowa, where [father's brother] Samuel lived and where, in 1880, Henry was born. A year or so later (1882) they moved north across the state to the Renwick, Iowa, vicinity, where father worked for a time as dairyman for Mr. Sebastian Hefti. Some time later they moved to the neighboring town of Lu Verne, Iowa, where they acquired an 80-acre farm and lived [on it] until 1890. Then [spring, 1889] father purchased a nearby 200-acre farm and moved on it after building a house and beginning the hard task of breaking the prairie sod. The family lived on this farm until 1907 when father and mother retired and moved to Lu Verne. In 1918 they moved to Renwick where they lived until mother's death in 1930. Father then entered the Old People's Home at Cedar Falls, Iowa, [owned by the Evangelical Church] where he died in 1937 at the age of 92.

"Besides the three sons mentioned (Jacob, John, and Henry) the family consisted of Anna, Paul, and William, and six children who died in infancy--two in Switzerland and four in America. In the summer of 1906, my parents, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Oswald Schneider of Renwick, visited their old home in Engi, Switzerland.".

"My brother Jacob (1872-1948) graduated from Iowa State University in 1903 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Later, [he received] a Master of Science degree from the University of Michigan followed by much research in the southwestern states. Later he was employed by the Canadian and U.S. Forest Services.

"John M. attended business college and studied law. He was employed by the U.S. Government Land office. He was married to Ada Haas. [Her family now uses the spelling "Hass"].

"Henry, born in 1880, farmed until age 26 on the farm near LuVerne, Iowa, then went into business in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he married Marie Hansen. They moved to Knapp, Wisconsin, and carried on the business of a general merchandise store. They had a daughter [Doris] who was killed in 1936 in a car accident.

"My only sister, Anna (1884-1943) attended LuVerne High School and North Central College at Naperville, Ill. She married Delbert Ostroth in 1906.

"William, born in 1890 [died 1989], graduated from LuVerne High School and, in 1913, from North Central College, Naperville, Ill. He became a teacher in Minneapolis schools. His wife was Doris Brown, who died in 1935. They adopted Jean, now Mrs. Doug Glatzel. In retirement, he lived in Florida and Texas in winter and Minneapolis in summer.

"I, Paul, born in 1886 [died 1980], left the farm at age 21. The next ten years were spent at North Central College and teaching school in Ledyard, Badger, and Dakota City. I married Helen Constance Emrie (1893-1965) in Dakota City in 1918 and the same year we moved to my father's farm near Livermore. In 1959 we moved into LuVerne to retire.".

"There are a number of Blumer families around LuVerne and Livermore, Iowa. They are descendants of Joseph and Henry Blumer, who came to America about the same time as my parents." [A descendant of Joseph, Sylvia Elbert, said in a letter 81481 that Joseph came to the U.S. via New York in 1879, and settled first in Monroe, Wisconsin. --PKB].

More information about the ancestral village in Switzerland is given in the following letter from Ralph W. Blumer following a visit there in 1977.

"The main business at Engi is still cows, as it was when grandfather left. The village strings out along the road for a mile or so and the houses and businesses are next to or surrounded by meadows usually full of Brown Swiss cows busily converting the lush grass into tomorrow's milk.

"We checked into the Hefti Hotel and then walked up to the schoolhouse where the village clerk (Gemeinde-Schreibe?) has his office. His name is Hans Baumgartner and I inquired about the records of our family. He got out some enormous old ledgers about 30 inches square when open and about 4 inches thick with all the entries written in ink and going back, I am sure, for two hundred years. He was able to tell me where Grandpa and Grandma lived. "The only house on the other side of the river, straight across from the post office.".

It is called the "Mattluei". It was (as are a lot of the farms in Europe) a combination house and barn. For some years, it has been the property of the village, but has recently been sold to a private owner who is restoring it as a vacation home. It looks to me as if the front part of the home had been added to an older and smaller building built into the side of the hill. I took several pictures.".

"The village census [for Engi] taken at 10-year intervals since 1830 shows the population remaining constant at around 1,100 people until the last in 1970 which showed the current population is 850. In other words, the principal export product of Engi is its young people, who--as they have for centuries--leave to seek their fortune in some other land.".

Following is a tribute to John (Johannes) Blumer by his son John M. Blumer: "Looking back over two-thirds of the long life span of our dear father, whose passing we mourn today, my memory turns back to the days of my earliest recollection of old Switzerland--the few scenes and incidents which vividly impressed themselves upon my childish memory. Also, the crossing to our beloved America, the founding of a new house here, and the poverty, cares, and struggles shared by father and our dear departed mother. They were hard, self-sacrificing days, with the ideal of a house and self-respecting security of their loved ones ever before them.

"Father was by early training essentially a stock farmer and dairyman in a small way. He knew cows from the ground up. Already mature in years when we reached our blessed and fertile Iowa acres, he found it a little difficult to learn the new ways of tilling the soil with horses and farm implements, so different from the manner of tilling the small mountain patches of the native country. He preferred to work with his hands. How happy he was in those early days to return to our little humble American fireside with the dollar he earned that day at such work as he could get to do. The hard way of his youth did not leave him much leisure to gain education and a broad outlook on worldly affairs. This handicap was in a measure overcome in later life by reading, and many hours our mother blessed memory read to him when his vision began to grow dim.

"Father's saddest affliction was blindness, at first partial and finally total, caused by cataracts. To this was added partial deafness.

"Among his outstanding characteristics were: (1) His sense of duty to family and society. To him there were no short-cuts or evasions, every situation had to be met, every debt discharged to the last penny. Yet he was willing to take a chance, and fortune smiled in a modest way upon his good judgement and honest efforts. For his success he always gave thanks to the Almighty. (2) His simple Christian faith, a plant of slow growth but which became deeply rooted and very real. His companions in the Christian life will ever remember his simple childlike faith. (3) His love of family and loyalty to friends. He always would tarry a moment for a little jest and a friendly word and never forgot his gratitude for a kind word or deed.

"My own youth was spent in the family circle on the farm. There was little time for play which had a smaller place in the lives of the children of that day. I mention this merely as a fact without trying to posit a moral. Perhaps the new way is the right way for a new day. There for 30 years and more because of my arduous duties as a government employee and demands of my superiors in the Government service I was able to make only occasional irregular visits home for a few days at a time at long intervals. Two winters while mother was yet living they spent a few short months at the home of myself and wife in Salt Lake City, Utah. The visits have always taught me what mother and father love really means.

"In the last five years I was able to make four short annual visits of a few days each to father at his last home, the little room in the Home [for the Aged] at Cedar Falls. He always met his loneliness with courage and resignation and always spoke good words of appreciation of those who cared for him there. Except for the things already mention, he was in good condition for one of his age most of the time, but did at times and toward the last with greater frequency have attacks of great suffering. I was present at one of these attacks in the fall of 1936 and brothers Henry and Paul were present during part of his last illness and know of his suffering in his last days.

"As our eyes dim with tears of sorrow we can only bow and pay tribute to a life well spent and a good father gone to his reward.".

About a year after Johannes Blumer left Switzerland with his family, a major disaster hit the town of Elm, Canton Glarus. On Sept. 11, 1881, a giant landslide swept down the mountainside and crushed 116 villagers beneath a layer of slate rubble. The avalanche made geological history. It is still being studied by scientists who are interested in the physics of avalanches. See SCIENCE NEWS, August 29, 1992, page 136.

Elm is only a few kilometers from Engi. It is the birthplace of Johannes Blumer's mother, Burgula Zentner. It is not at all unlikely that Johannes and Elizabeth lost relatives in the disaster.

From the U.S. Census for 1920, Vernon Township, Humboldt Co. Iowa:

Blumer, John M 74 Immigrated 1880, Naturalized 1890 b. Switzerland. Father born: Switzerland Mother born: Switzerland Owned home, free of mortgage

Blumer, Elizabeth b. Switzerland; parents both born in Switzerland. Immigrated 1880; naturalized 1890.

Blumer, Jacob C. 47 b. Switzerland; parents both born in Switzerland. Occupation: Forestry--government.

[Note: Naturalization dates are incorrect. See information from document, below.].

Excerpts from a letter written by W. C. Lang, Superintendent of the Western Old Peoples Home, Cedar Falls, Iowa, where John Blumer spent the final years of his life.

"Jan. 14, 1935 . . .

It was four years ago last Thanksgiving Day that your father entered our Home. . .Your father is surely a delightful man. Always the same. I don't believe that he ever could get mad at anyone. He not being able to come to the table makes extra work for the girls, but they do it very cheerfully, because he is always so friendly and thankful. He is surely growing old gracefully. . . .".

John Blumer's Naturalization Papers show that he became a U. S. citizen on April 6, 1892. The document was recorded in Dakota City, Humboldt County, Iowa.

U.S. Census, 1930, Renwick, Humboldt County, Iowa:

Blumer, John 84 b. Switzerland Father b. Switzerland Mother b. Switzerland; year of immigration: 1880.

Elizabeth 77 b. Switz Father b. Switz Mother b. Switz Year of immigration 1880.

Jacob C. 57 b. Switz Father b. Switz Morther b. Switz Yr of immigration: 1880.

Sources

See also:

• Find A Grave: Memorial #53520024
• Blumer #249, Volume GE16 Matt, in Kubly-Müller genealogy records for Canton Glarus, 36 volume set, created by J. J. Kubly-Müller during the years 1893-1923 from Canton Glarus church records and other supporting documents.
• Glarus Family Tree, created by Patrick Wild in Zurich, based on the Kubly-Müller research and other supporting sources, https://www.glarusfamilytree.com/genealogy