The Tallent Connection

Where have I been and how is the book coming along? With due diligence I have been indexing away. With roughly 1500 people (along with numerous cities, towns, mountains, streams, boats, cemeteries, etc.) mentioned, I am only about 1/3 of the way done, much to the disgust of Mary Frances, who wants this project completed. I say "due diligence" with hesitancy, as my "diligence" has recently been anything but "due." You can blame Matilda ("Tillie") Wehner, daughter of Lorenz, who was not very careful in choosing her three husbands: John B. Tallent, Arthur E. Cooney, and David Colburn Shelton. She had a knack for picking grooms who did not long survive-less than 4 years of marriage with John, two or three years with Arthur, and an incredible (for Tillie) 15 or so years with David. Short marriages mean few records, loads of research, and lots of uncertainty. Husbands 2 and 3 died at respectable ages, 65 and 76. But Husband 1 died at a very young 24. He was shot multiple times in Jacksonville, Florida, by James M. Kelly, an off-duty policemen, but surprisingly died of his wounds in St. Louis. James Kelly was charged with and convicted of murder. (His story is told in the book Vivien M. L. Miller, Crime, Sexual Violence, and Clemency, University Press of Florida, 2000, pp. 218-225. Anyway, after a lot of difficult, time-consuming, frustrating work, I have finally been able to write about the life and death of Husband 1, John B. Tallent, though not without a number of doubts. The story of John, his father, Thomas Tallent, his mother, Lavina Elizabeth Eaves, and all the other people involved (Enoch McFarland, Walter McFarland, Ed Gunn, Mary Tallent, Pearl Tallent, and others) are presented over three pages of the book, too long to put here. To all those to whom I promised copies of Bier und Brot, the Wehners of Southeast Missouri, you will get them, but not as soon as I had hoped. Then you will be able to find out exactly what happened to John B. Tallent in Jacksonville. Now, back to indexing.

Finishing Up

Lots of new things have come up, and the book has expanded by several pages, but I can't keep going forever. Bier und Brot, the Wehners of Southeast Missouri, is going to press soon, come hell or high water. Keep your eye on this site.

Frank Bernard Cooney Sr.

I have succeeded in contacting some of the descendants (or their spouses) of Frank Bernard Cooney Sr. (son of Theresa Wehner and John Richard Cooney and grandson of Lorenz Wehner and Flora Glisner). This is helping finish up the section of the book on the Cooneys.

You may wonder where I've been for the last several weeks. I've actually been working on the book, or should I say, THE BOOK, or perhaps THE BOOK. It just keeps getting longer and longer. Editors state that newsworthy articles must have three things - facts, persepective, and relevance. Mary Frances and I have just returned from three weeks in the Mississippi River area, part of which was used in looking for more Wehner facts and perspective (i.e., history). We spent part of the trip on another riverboat cruise up the Mississippi, seven days from St. Louis to Minneapolis. But we also spent some time in the St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve area following up on leads for the book. We visited the St. Louis church where Julius Martin Wehner and Mary Ann Oces were married. I was successful in finding what happened to Eulalia Margaret Baumstark, daughter of Mary Wehner and William Baumstark (she married Vernon Jones and the couple are buried in what may be a pauper's grave in St. Matthew Cemetery, St. Louis). But I had no success at all in finding out anything about the homicide of Franklin Charles Hoeckele, husband of Dora Ann Wehner. The Festus police files do not go back that far and a thorough search of regional libraries found no extant copies of Festus newspapers for the appropriate time period (he was killed 10 Mar 1928). An attempt at the Ste. Genevieve courthouse and the Church of Ste. Genevieve to find death dates for Nicholas Wehner's two children, Joseph and John, who died young, was also unsuccessful. It may be that the church at River aux Vases, which may have been Nicholas's church before he came to Ste. Genevieve, could provide the information. I did get some new photos, at least two of which, Plattin Creek, where the glass industry started at Festus and Crystal City, and the present mining along Plattin Creek, re now in the book. And I got a lot of additional history. All in all, it was a successful trip, I added to facts and perspective. I hope that relevance will not be forgotten. I also made some new Wehner contacts. The book is not receiving its final editing and indexing. I will keep you posted.

Golfinopulos

As usual I have allowed myself to get tied up in something. I am once again working on Theodore Golfinopulos, who married Nellie Louise Siebert, daughter of Anna Wehner and Frank Peter Siebert Sr. I found to my surprise that he had been previously married for a very short time to one Melissa Higgins, who had, in turn, been married to the widower Charles Simeon Dunford. The story is fascinating because Charles's will was contested by his daughter Alice (Dunford) Rayl and Theodore became involved in the suit.

I've been working on the history of John Joseph Wehner, son of John George and Theresa (Vaeth) Wehner, who married Alma D. Kieninger. John and Alma ran bakeries in St. Louis, the major enterprise being "Wehner Bakery" located at 770 Lemay Ferry Road during the Depression years and later. They had two children, James H. Wehner Sr., who also ran a bakery and about whom we know a lot, and Marion (or "Marian") L. Wehner, about whom we know little. Marion was born in 1920 or 1921 and worked in her father's bakery. She apparently married a Palmer since she appears as Marion L. Palmer residing in Chicago in 1995 obituaries for her brother James. Any help with Marion's history would be appreciated.

I am going back through the book one final time, but there are still some difficulties. I have had trouble figuring out the various Wehner-related bakeries in Ste. Genevieve. In 1921 August Peter Wehner, "Big Augie", purchased a bakery from G. H. Arthur, changed the name to "Wehner's Bakery," and was baker and owner until at least 1930. Around the same time Henry Charles Wehner went to work for Home Bakery, where he worked from around 1919 to 1926 before moving to California.

In the 1930s, Henry heard that a bakery was for sale in Ste. Genevieve and asked his brother Walter to look into it. Henry ended up returning to Ste. Genevieve, where he and Walter started the Wehner Bakery on Main Street. When Walter left the business, the shop was sold to Anthony ("Tony") Zarinelli (a baker from St. Louis), and Henry returned to California. In Ste. Genevieve, Earl Daniel Wood Sr., son of Martha Ervine Wehner went to work for Tony Zarinelli, who moved the bakery to Merchant Street. There Earl learned the skills of baking, and continued working there after Tony sold the business to a St. Louis company (who changed the name to "Toni's Bakery Inc.") in December of 1976. In 1980 Earl and Virginia Wood bought the bakery changing the name to "E&G Bakery" for Earl and Ginny. The couple owned the bakery until around 1985, when it was sold and became "Home Bakery." Earl continued working there until 1990, when the new owner decided to do his own baking. The question is which of these bakeries are which? There were at least two named "Home Bakery" and two named "Wehner's Bakery". Can anyone help straighten this all out?