- Mrs. Mary Wanish, Kin of Winonan, Succumbs at 102
Mrs. Mary Wanish, 102 years and six months, grandmother of Carl H. Donart, 1286 West Broadway, died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. James Mathias, Sauk Centre, Minn., Saturday. Funeral arrangements are awaiting the arrival of a son and daughters from the west. Services will be Wednesday at the Sauk Centre Congregational church. Mr. and Mrs. Donart left today for Sauk Centre to attend the funeral.
Mrs. Wanish, the oldest resident of Sauk Centre, homesteaded with her husband, Matthew Wanish 12 miles south of Sauk Centre 87 years ago. Her hobby was flowers and she continued working in her flower garden until 99 years old. Letters of congratulations from Governor Luther Youngdahl and J.M. Nolte, director of the Minnesota Territorial Centennial, an orchid from the Breakfast in Hollywood program, a letter from senator Hubert H. Humphrey and congratulations from all over the country were sent to Mrs. Wanish on her 100th birthday in February, 1949.
She was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and lived on a farm i the Sauk Centre area before there was a Sauk Centre. She often recalled that when they broke the ground for their farm n Raymond township, they had to go to St. Cloud for a sack of flour.
She was three years old when her parents came from Europe to Wisconsin, and was 17 when she came as a bride to Minnesota territory, going by train to St. Paul. She was still active about the house when she celebrated her 100th birthday although she had given up reading, sewing and baking the year before. She had but few gray hairs. Mrs. Wanish often related that her grandmother lived to be 112, and had coal black hair, and "would have lived even longer but a storm had wrecked the apple tree on the farm and when she went to see the damage she slipped an broke her leg, and died a few weeks later.
There were six children in the Wanish family. Surviving are five, Mrs. Rose Braatz, mother of MR. Donart, Minneapolis; Mrs. Harry Lesem, Crystal Lake, Ill.; Mrs. Mathias, Sauk Centre; Mrs. Sam Kendrick, San Diego, Calif., and Matthew Wanish, Auburn, Wash.
The Winona Daily News
Mon, Jul 23, 1951 ·Page 13
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Jindra and Chaloupka Families
1850 - 1951 (101 years)
