This week’s In Remembrance highlights one of Antigo’s forgotten matriarch’s, Elizabeth J (Frost) Boerner, who died on this date in 1943.
Elizabeth was born 4 Aug 1861 in Shiocton, Wisconsin to Asahel Frost (1828-1897) and Rosetta (Newell) Frost (1829-1892) at a time when Shiocton was a booming logging town. Asahel was a farmer and later a carpenter and Elizabeth was the middle of 9 children. Both the Frost and Newell families trace their arrival in North America to the early 1600’s and they largely followed the pattern of several generations residing in Massachusetts and/or Connecticut, then migrating to New York after the Revolutionary War for 1-2 generations, then on to Wisconsin.
She married John J Kupps in Shiocton on 16 Mar 1876 when she was 16 years old, and he was 27. Unlike Elizabeth’s family line, John was born in Bohemia and he and his parents arrived in the US only about 20 years before his marriage. He worked as a laborer in the lumber industry, which was winding down in Shiocton, and they moved to Bryant (in NE Langlade County) in 1885. Bryant, and which was the next logging hot spot in Central Wisconsin.
John and Elizabeth had two children, Emma Marrion (Kupps) Leonard (1879-1953) and Kathryn (Kupps) Driscoll (1882-) before moving to Langlade County. John was hired by T.D. Kellogg in Antigo in 1891 and the family moved into town soon after.
Elizabeth was widowed in 1899 when John passed away at the dinner table after, as the local paper put it: “a severe fit of coughing. Arising from a table he passed through the kitchen and reached the outer door when his strength apparently failed. He stopped to rest on the steps and leaning his head back on his wife’s lap, he quietly and silently passed away.” Family lore, shared by Emma’s granddaughter Peggy, has it that John had stopped off at the tavern unexpectedly for a few and when he returned home well after dinner Elizabeth refused to make him a plate, so his mother (who was visiting) agreed and Elizabeth went upstairs angry. John subsequently choked on dinner because he was so drunk, and suffocated. His official cause of death was heard disease, so we can take the story for what it’s worth!
Elizabeth raised her daughters alone until Emma married Dan Leonard in 1902 (In remembrance: Dan Leonard), and Kathryn married Jess Hawkings in 1904. She lived with Dan and Emma until remarrying Louis Boerner (1850-1935) around 1906. Louis was also a widower, and a Naturalized citizen originally from Germany, who brought two children into the marriage: Erma and Edward (adopted from the State Home when young). The Boerner family was well known in Antigo, and Louis’ father owned the main daily newspaper. He was a furrier and well regarded as his was about the only fur store in town at a time when fur was very common.
Her stepson Edward was killed in action in WWI, and she lost Louis in 1935. Her Grandson Floyd Leonard (1906-1941) was killed in Egypt one week after WWII was declared. Elizabeth died after a long battle of what was then called “Bright’s Disease”. We now know it as Chronic Nephritis, and is usually a byproduct of high blood pressure and heart disease, which are mentioned on her Death Certificate.
