Susan Anna Pulse/Pultz is my great-great aunt and to this date my oldest relative in my family tree. I was a child when I meant her for the first time, it was on a summer vacation trip to Manhattan, Riley, Kansas to visit relatives. She was already over 100 years old. I remember my parents trying to tell me where she fit in the family and I never paid attention back then and now I am writing a blog post about this fantastic lady! Who knew????
Anna Pulse/Pultz was born on January 20, 1861, in Burlington, DesMoines, Iowa to John Wilson Pulse and Jemina Susan Lozier. She had one other sibling, George Edward Pultz (my great-grandfather) 1859. Her father died at the very early age of twenty-four years old. Her mother married for the second time to Samuel Newton Marquis in 1865.
She lived in the Burlington community until she was eighteen years old and married William Andrew Calvin in 1879. In 1881 she gave birth to a son Zuinglas Clark Calvin. Soon after William, Anna, and their small son loaded up their belongings and traveled in a covered wagon to Kansas. I remember my father Merle Otto Weik telling me about his relatives that came to Kansas in a covered wagon.
They had a daughter Frankie in 1885 and their first home was a farm in Pottawatomie County, Kansas. Three years after that they moved again to Riley. It was in Riley County where they lived among family and friends the rest of there lives.
Anna was always involved in her church and was always present at the Pultz Family Reunions that were held each year after the harvest in May, June or July. One of Anna’s favorite hobbies was braiding rugs and she continued to do that until she was ninety years old.
William Andrew Calvin died in 1933 in Manhattan and in 1938, Frankie’s husband, Charles I Moore died. Her brother George Edward Pultz died in 1929. Anna and Frankie had only themselves now so they moved in together and took care of each other.
Anna’s son Zuinglas Clark Calvin died in 1947 and Frankie died in 1964, by this time she had outlived all of her family. She was truly a pioneer woman from Iowa and Kansas and loved her family and being apart of their lives.
She died On February 21, 1963, at the age of one-hundred and two years old in Manhattan, Kansas and she was buried in the Sunset Cemetery alongside her husband. She was one of the oldest citizens in Manhattan. What stories she would have told me – I can only imagine.
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