Zell Obituaries

Johannes (John) Zell│

                                                                                │

                     William Ryman          +      Anna Zell  (brother is Otto Zell)

                                                                                │

                                                La Verna Ryman ( aka Grandma Wilkins)

Among the folder about the Zell family is a photocopied page of obituaries about Otto Zell and members of his family.  Otto Zell was Grandma Wilkins maternal uncle (see above). Even though he is not a direct ancestor, he is a relative and learning about him through his obituary also provides some background into the history of our family as a whole. 

The  newspaper obituary for Otto Zell has the handwritten date Jan. 8,1947 written on it and probably came out of a newspaper in Aberdeen, South Dakota.  It is worth quoting the obituary at length since it provides some general family background along with some specific information that helps to fill in some of the Zell-Ryman family relationships.

   “Otto F. Zell was born in Kassin, Pommerania [sic], Germany on November 24,1865. At the age of three he came to the United States with his parents who settled near Lamira[sic], Wisconsin. When but a young man he came to South Dakota with his brothers Will and Henry who settled near Warner, South Dakota, where he lived until 1900 – when he moved to farm east of Ashton.”

   “In 1900 he was married to Esther Roby of Warner, South Dakota.  To them was born three children, two sons and one daughter.”

   “He is survived by his widow, a son of John Zell of Webster, North Dakota, a daughter – Mrs. Lester Miller of Ashton, a brother G. E. Zell of Salem, Oregon, 13 grandchildren, one great-grandchild, besides a large number of relatives.  A son of Clifford preceded him in death a few years ago.”

   “At the time of his passing he was 81 years, 1 month and 14 days.  The pall-bearers were his nephews, Percy Ryman of Onaka, South Dakota, Geo. and Delmar Ayman [sic] of Aberdeen, South Dakota, Frank Morgan of Warner, South Dakota and Kenneth Wilson of Aberdeen,  South Dakota.”

As someone who has been researching the family history for over a decade now, I think this obituary is fascinating, both for the details it gives and the sense of what writing in a local newspaper  was like half a century ago.  It also demonstrates some problems in relying on local news as sources.  At least three proper names in the article – Pomerania, Lomira, and (amazingly)  Ryman are misspelled.   Another interesting insight gained about the culture of the time is the status of women at the time.  His daughter is referred to as Mrs. Lester Miller, not by her first name.  I had to search through other documents in the family box to find out that his daughters name is Hyacinth Irene Miller. 

The article mentions that Otto first came to South Dakota with his brothers Will and Henry.  There is a bit more to the story from other sources and it is important because it shows the relocation of not just one individual, but entire families.  Will was actually the first of the family members to go out to South Dakota where he went out to stake a claim in Rondell township in 1880.  In 1882, according to a family note, “in 1882 William took a box car of stock and equipment from Wisc to S. D.  On this trip he took Gustave and antoher bro. ? (Otto) with him. Gustave got home sick and will took him back to Wisc.”  In the same year, two other brothers, Henry and Ernest, as well as their sister Elizabeth came out.  Their father, John, followed in 1886.  The pattern that the Zell family followed is a classic migration pattern for German immigrants of that time period.  First they came to states like Wisconsin and Minnesota where there were already established German speaking families and then they moved further west when land was opened up for them to claim where they were often among the first residents.

Another interesting point revealed in the article is the relationship between the Zells and Rymans.  Four of the pall bearers for Otto were Grandma’s brothers –Percy, Delmar, George, and Glenn.  Another was grandma’s sister Wilma’s husband Kenneth Wilson.  In fact, only Grandma and her husband Victor Wilkins are not mentioned as being present. This might be because they were living in California in 1947 while the others were still living in South Dakota. Nevertheless, it shows just how close the families of Grandma’s parents were. 

The page of obituaries for the Zell family also included.  As mentioned in Otto’s obituary, his son Clifford died first, his wife Esther in 1952 and his son John in 1955.  Esther was 15 years younger than Otto and born in Wisconsin but migrated out to South Dakota prior to marrying Otto in 1899.  She was another example of the migration pattern just mention which often included marrying someone who had originally come from the same area that you had.   Their daughter “Mrs. Lester Miller” survived all of them.                                                                                                             

Diphtheria

On Sept.  5, 202, I posted a picture of Melchior Ryman and his family taken in 1903 that had come in a box of family research collected by my aunt, Sr. Karen Wilkins. In the same box was a white folder labeled “Zell.”  It contained two lists, each in a different handwriting. One list was a chronology of the descendents of Johannes (John)  Frederich Zell listed in outline form. It was an aged photocopy of what had originally been a twenty-nine page record written on lined, whole-punched, notebook paper. The document included dates for birth, death, and occasionally marriage of the family members along with cut out copies of pictures of some of the family members. The pictures were so faded as to look almost like black and white ghosts.   

The second list, though in stronger, neater handwriting, was more sparse.  It contained an outline of the Ryman family, beginning with the eponymous Heinrich Reyman of Switzerland but concentrating predominantly on the descendents of Melchior (Michael) Ryman, the progenitor of the Ryman family in America. If the 1903 photograph of the Ryman family evokes  flesh and blood people divested of history or information, the family list feels sterile, a bare skeleton. Comparing the two, however, allows the reconstructive imagination to gain a toehold into a story.

The Ryman’s came to South Dakota during the boom of the 1880’s  The 1880’s census still list them as living in Jeffersonville, but by 1883 they were in Brown County, South Dakota.  This was over a hundred years past the time that the United States became a country but before South Dakota became a state.  It was tough going for those like the Ryman’s who came to homestead.  As described in the post on Magdalena Bossley , in January of1888 the Schoolhouse Blizzard – the worst blizzard in the state’s history – killed a number of people including children.  Something else occurred for the Ryman family in 1988 as well.  The chronology from Sr. Karen’s box  lists Melchior and Magdalena Ryman’s eleven children by name.  However, the 1903 picture only shows nine.  Next to the birth and death for two of their children, Albert and George, is the note: “died in the diptheria epidemic.”  Albert was 20, George was 10.

I’ve been unable to locate any mention of an 1888 diphtheria epidemic in South Dakota.  That is not surprising since at that time The Dakota Territory (as it would still be called for another year) had little in the way of a health system.  The first hospital had come to the Dakotas in 1877. Research on the cause of diphtheria was just beginning and it was not until the late 1890’s that the first intubation of diphtheria patients had not begun.  There is not 1890’s census to show two boys in the family missing since those records were all destroyed in a fire.  However, in 1892 diphtheria was listed as the most common cause of death by disease in South Dakota, with 67 people dying.   As the headstones of Albert and George in the family plot at Warner Cemetery testify, diphtheria took its toll on many families, just as the covid pandemic does currently.  Albert and George died a month apart.