Emmert Elsworth "Tex" BERRY - some genealogy data

Emmert Elsworth BERRY (8 Jan 1908 - 12 Feb 1994), aka "Tex" BERRY, Emmert E. BERRY, E.E. BERRY
His parents were Sidney Wayne BERRY (son of Rose Ann MOCK & Wesley BERRY; see below) and Ethel Geneva LONGANECKER.
Emmert married
Marian Emma CHAPMAN (12 Oct 1914 - 28 Oct 1988)
Her parents were Clarence Clinton CHAPMAN and Emilie "Millie" RACKOW

Wesley BERRY 1 JAN 1878 in Kosciusko County, Indiana, USA. He was born 2 MAR 1851 in Indiana, USA. He married Rose Ann MOCK (David MOCK 4, John MOCK 3, Johann George MOCK 2, Johann MACK 1). She born 8 JUL 1857 in Kosciusko County, Indiana, USA, and died Jul 1917. [See land record data for them in Chippewa Co, WI | here |.]

Children of Rose Ann MOCK and Wesley BERRY are
i. Grace E. BERRY was born SEP 1878 in Kosciusko County, Indiana, USA.
ii. John BERRY was born JAN 1881 in Kosciusko County, Indiana, USA.
iii. Marion BERRY was born OCT 1882 in Kosciusko County, Indiana, USA.
iv. Hiram B. BERRY was born JUL 1884 in Kosciusko County, Indiana, USA.
v. Sydney BERRY was born APR 1886 in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, USA.
vi. Jennie Marie BERRY was born 10 APR 1888 in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, USA.
vii. George BERRY was born DEC 1891 in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, USA.
viii. Laurence BERRY was born DEC 1895 in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, USA.

Sydney Wayne BERRY (Rose Ann MOCK 5, David MOCK 4, John MOCK 3, Johann George MOCK 2, Johann MACK 1) was born 1 Apr 1886 in Chippewa County, Wisconsin.

Sydney BERRY married Ethel Geneva LONGANECKER (20 Aug 1890 - 15 Oct 1956) abt 1906-1906. One of their sons was Emmert Ellsworth "Tex" BERRY (above), second husband of Marian Emma CHAPMAN.

Note: for some BERRY family data, see Randy Deaver Miller's internet tree | here | [java required]

Census data for Emmert E. BERRY:

• 1910 Apr 18 Census: North Dakota, Ward County, Berthold. Tyler Street (Berthold Village, Ward 4 [in the home of his parents]
  
• 1920 Jan 21 Census: North Dakota, Ward County. Tasker Coal Mine, Kirkelie Township [in the home of his parents]
  
• 1930 Apr 4 Census: Minnesota, Hennepin County, Minneapolis . 6 East 37th Street (Ward 13, Block 130 ) [as head of household; he is with his first wife]
  

Emmert Elsworth "Tex" BERRY, born 1908, was a son of Sydney Wayne and Ethel Geneva (LONGANECKER) BERRY. Tex was a highly intelligent, strong-principled, hard-working man. He had a wonderful wit and was quite a charmer. Though he had to quit school in the seventh grade to help out with family finances, he continued his self-education for his whole life. The time he spent in school must have been well spent because he was adept at figures and was well-spoken and well-read.

When he married Marian Emma (CHAPMAN) LOISELLE in the 1940s, it was the second marriage for both of them. Behind him, Tex had a string of adventurous but arduous jobs, including mining in North Dakota and lumbering in Canada. He and Marian set up housekeeping together in Bloomington, Minnesota, in the first of two homes Tex would build for his family.

At the time, he was working as a driver-salesman for Emerick Baking Company in Minneapolis, his employer for twenty-five years. When he retired, while the couple was living in nearby Bloomington, there was no gold watch to accompany his employer's farewell handshake but only an electric waffle iron for all the long hours and years of hard work. Tex was never one to dwell on the past or to sit still for very long, however. All of his life, he was what everyone used to call "handy"; and so he had no sooner retired from Emerick's than he began his own construction business in Bloomington.

Bloomington was living up to its name. It had truly begun blooming since Marian and Tex began their family life there. By 1950, the town's population had swelled to 9,902, causing school enrollment to grow so quickly that the first and second grades had to be put on a split schedule for the 1949-1950 school year.

Starting out, the growing family had lived in a single-car garage built to shelter the family while Tex built the house itself. It could not have been an easy life for any of them. Marian worked for both Paramount Pies and Skippy Peanut Butter; and Tex was driving for the bakery. He built the house as he could. One of his sons loves telling about how he helped dig the well by being lowered into the hole and filling buckets with dirt. Eventually there was a house to connect to the garage with a breezeway, and the family moved in. The completed house had a full basement (exposed beams and painted cinder block) and a Tex-built fireplace - one of his specialties through the years. Three of the boys had bedrooms in the basement. The two youngest children's rooms were upstairs (as was Tex's and Marian's). Upstairs were two bedrooms, the living room, kitchen, and bath. The stairs to the basement were off the kitchen.

The Berry house - 207 Pillsbury - was second in from Pillsbury Avenue's intersection with 90th Street (near Lyndale Ave). Physically, however, it was actually the first house on 90th after the intersection with Pillsbury. The family's next-door neighbors were Frank and Audrey Turnquist. Their front door was on Pillsbury Avenue. Catty-cornered from Berry house on 90th was a (garden) nursery. No more houses were on 90th until after the railroad tracks which bisected 90th Street.

In 1952, Toro Manufacturing Company moved to Bloomington, opening up more jobs and providing a nice economic growth spurt for the town. The town's Chamber of Commerce was organized that year - as a booster club. By 1953, the Berry family was seriously working toward a relocation to the north woods. That same year, Bloomington's government changed from a township form of government to that of a village form. A Police Department was established at cost of $2 per taxpayer; and the city got its first traffic light - at what was called the "very dangerous" corner of 98th Street and Lyndale Avenue - only a couple of blocks from where the Berry home was.

In about 1952, one of Tex's brothers, also a contractor, had moved north to the small community of Outing, Minnesota. Tex followed not long afterward, moving his family, too, to the shores of Smokey Hollow Lake, onto an approximately ten-acre lot he had acquired. The two Berry brothers had partnered up, creating the Northern Construction Company. After just a few years in business together, however, they were unable to resolve some financial differences and dissolved their business partnership. Still, both remained in construction in Outing, with Emmert continuing his work under the Northern Construction Company business name and his brother working under his own name.

Over the years, Tex's integrity and hard work made him a highly-respected area businessman. He was personable and could get along with just about anyone. At the local Remer bank, Tex's handshake was enough to secure loans for his materials. He was a loyal customer of Johnson's Lumber in Fifty Lakes, Minnesota, about forty miles from Outing, for many, many years; and one of his company's largest contracts was the construction of the Boy Scout Camp in Fifty Lakes. He and his small crew built the camp over two and a half years, working year-round - doing all the inside cabinetry and built-ins during Minnesota's harsh winter months.

Tex also built his family's home in Outing, starting its construction while the family still lived in Bloomington. For about a year, Tex and a couple of his boys had gone north on weekends to build an enclosure that the family could move into. The year the family moved - 1954 - Bloomington was still growing exponentially. It bought its first park land - for the parks of Moir and Bush Lake Beach - by assessing each village parcel $1 to cover the purchases. By 1955, the year the Berry family was settling into life in the deep woods around Outing, Bloomington's population had soared to 248, 934, and the town boasted 85 businesses. In 1992, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnestoa was built. It stands just over two miles from the site of the first BERRY home.

In Outing , the original one-room structure into which the family moved in late summer 1954 became the house's living room. That initial living area was divided into three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a washroom. It was warmed by a large wood-burning stove that the family fueled from its own land. When Tex and Marian sold the house in early the 1970s to move to Wickenburg, Arizona, where they'd been wintering for a few years, the house - on what is now known as Berry Road - was a small gem - three cozy bedrooms; a bath; a large sitting room-living room combination with two walls of windows overlooking the lake; a recreation room big enough to comfortably house the family's pool table; a bright eat-in kitchen, also with a view of the lake; and a laundry-mud room. Tex had also built a 32x32 foot workshop-garage in which he did much of his winter-time carpentry. Near the front door stood the trees the family had planted in honor of each of the household's children. The wooded area around the house had been brushed out early on and framed the deep lot. In the sparkling lake out front, a motor boat and pontoon were moored at a short swimming pier. Syd and Ethel, Tex's parents had moved into a cottage with root cellar next door at about the same time Tex and his brother moved north. Next to Syd and Ethel was a seasonal home and then came Tex's brother's two lots - shallower than Tex's but plenty large enough for his brother's family home and one for nephew, too. George Huff, the first resident on the family's end of the lake, lived next; and on the other end of the lake was its first settler, a farmer who had cleared and planted all the way to the lake shore. In the later 1950s, the area between Tex's and the farmer's began to be populated with city people building seasonal homes.

By the mid-1960s, Tex and Marian themselves were also migrating seasonally. Another of Tex's brothers was living in the small town of Wickenburg, Arizona; and Tex and Marian began spending several winter months there. By the early 1970s, with all their children married and the northern Minnesota winters chilling older bones to the core, Tex was ready for a second retirement. He and Marian began the last chapter of their life by selling their Outing home and business and moving permanently to Wickenburg, a town that smacked of the flavor of the old West. Of course, Tex didn't completely retire; that just wasn't in his nature. He couldn't resist taking on small independent contracting jobs - doing roofing and carpentry and building fireplaces for many people in Maricopa County and its surrounds. The money he earned came in handy, too. The couple were among the thousands whose life savings were completely wiped out in the widespread Arizona Savings and Loan scandal. By then, however, Tex and Marian had simplified their lives even more than the plain, unpretentious lives they had always lived; and so they survived. You might say even say they thrived there in the Arizona desert. Over time, three of their grown children moved nearby and started families of their own.

When Marian contracted liver cancer and died in 1988, Tex remained active and stayed on in the former bunk-house apartment at the Simpson family's Whispering Pine Lodge in Wickenburg that he and Marian rented and called home for years. He had survived a severe heart attack a few years before Marian's death, but in the late 1980s he began having heart problems again. Eventually, around 1991, he agreed to move in with his second-to-youngest son and daughter-in-law, to share their home in Phoenix. And not long after that, he also agreed to stop driving - probably one of the hardest decisions Tex ever made. His son's family treated him with dignity, allowing him all the independence he could safely bear. All his children and grandchildren kept in contact and spent time with him as they could. He died in Phoenix on 12 February 1994. [In this online version of the sketch, the names of living people have been replaced with their relationships to Tex.]

Photos of Tex's and Marian's graves in the Wickenburg Cemetery can be viewed online:

• Emmert Elsworth BERRY, Section 3, Row D, Grave 19
• Marian Emma (CHAPMAN, LOISELLE) BERRY, Section 3, Row D, Grave 19

Obituary, Emmert BERRY, 8 Jan 1908 - 12 Feb 1994

Emmert Berry

Emmert Elsworth Berry of Phoenix died on Feb. 12 [1994] at a Phoenix hospital. He was 86.

Mr. Berry was born Jan. 8, 1908 in Stanley, Wis., and had lived in Arizona for 20 years.

Over the years, Mr. Berry had worked as a trapper in Canada, a U.S. Cavalryman, a bakery truck driver in Minneapolis, Minn., and a residential carpenter in Northern Minnesota.

He moved to Wickenburg in 1974 and had spent the last two years in Phoenix.

Mr. Berry bowled until he was 82 and did carpentry work until age 80. He was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Wickenburg.

He is survived by [private - contact Dawnelle for the data, or read the original source file].

The funeral will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday (Feb. 17) at the First Presyterian Church, 180 N. Adams St. [Wickenburg, AZ]

Rev. Jim Longstreet is to officiate.

All arrangements were handled by Wickenburg Funeral Home.

Source: "More Obituaries - Emmert Berry." Wickenburg Sun [Wickenburg, AZ]16 Feb 1994: A3. (Original among compiler's family papers.)

Notes: I am not certain who acted as informant for the published obituary or how much of the information they provided actually made its way into the paper. The Sun does not mention Emmert's nickname, "Tex," likely the only name many knew him by. Genealogists will notice that the published obituary also omits his marriages. It doesn't mention his first wife and mother of two of his children, Haida (UNK), whom he divorced, or his second wife, Marian (CHAPMAN) BERRY, mother of four of his children and of the two step-children he raised. It doesn't say that that he was buried next to Marian, who predeceased him, in the Wickenburg Community Cemetery. Tex also had two children who died before he did: step-daughter Barbara Ann Loiselle Ward (1937-1965) and Lon Sidney Berry (1948-1984). Though all three census entries for Tex indicate that he was born in North Dakota, his obituary says that he was born in Stanley, Wisconsin, so maybe he was...

Funeral/Memorial card:

In Remembrance
Emmert E. Berry

Behold the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy; To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waiteth for the Lord: he is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in his holy name. Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, accord- ing as we hope in thee. Psalm 33:18-32

In Loving Memory of
Emmert E. Berry
Jan. 8, 1908--Feb 12, 1994

Memorial Services
At 10:00 A.M.
Feb. 17, 1994
First Presbyterian Church
Wickenburg, Arizona

Conducted by
Rev. Jim Longstreet

Internment
Wickenburg Cemetery

[Card back credit: Design & Printing Courtesy of Bobbe Berry and his Macintosh.]
Source: Family data. Loiselle family papers.

The White House
Washington

February 17, 1994

[address block private]

Dear Mr. Loiselle:

Hillary and I extend our deepest sympathy
on the death of your father. We hope that the
love and support of your family and friends will
sustain and comfort you during this difficult
time. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

Sincerely,
[Signature of] Bill Clinton

Source: Family data. Loiselle family papers.

Copyright 2006 D Giles Loiselle