Evalina's Wedding or Engagement Ring

This story was sent to me by Carolyn Helmke.  Carolyn is the daughter of Polly Cleland who was the daughter of Hazel Boss Cleland, oldest of the children of Andrew and Evalina Boss. Marge  Munter was the oldest daughter of Hazel and Spencer Cleland.

When Andrew married Evalina, there was no diamond. I think the story is that he had no funds.

On 25th wedding anniversary, Andrew gave Evalina the big diamond in the middle.

When Hazel got married (or engaged?) , she got one of the small diamonds on the right or left of the bigger one. 

So.... after Evalina died, Hazel had a ring remade with her mother's diamond, her diamond, and a little one that she bought. 

When she died, the ring went to Marge Munter. Marge gave it to Shelley, her daughter. When I had cancer, Shelley gave it to me, in friendship and to give me strength.

I wear it pretty much every day!

Love,

Carolyn 

Andrew Boss "Heritage Northwest"

In 1976 radio station WWCO in Waco, Texas had a series of programs on "Heritage Northwest".  In looking through a photograph album I found the script for the program they did about Andrew Boss, my grandfather.


"During the late 1880's a young man from Minnesota tried to find a way for more farmers to make more money.  First, he said, they had to keep better records.  They also needed more advise on matching the best crop with their soil and weather and pocketbook.  He tried setting up small farm plots at the University of Minnesota's agricultural experiment station.  The project was a pioneer effort in crop rotation.  It failed.  So the young man tried it with real farmers.  He would pick them from three test areas around the state.  One little problem.  Some of the farmers did not trust this university "book" farmer.  Some were afraid he was gathering information to use against them....perhaps to increase their property taxes.


This man's career covered 50 years of agriculture in Minnesota.  In the 1880's when he came to the University of Minnesota there were about 7,200,000 acres under cultivation in the state.  In the 1930's when he retired there were close to 31,000,000.  He did not have a college degree, and yet his research in agriculture touched crop rotation, animal husbandry, agronomy, plant pathology, meats and farm management.


Andrew Boss was born the oldest of 11 children to parents of Scotch ancestry in Minnesota's Wabasha County, 1867, Gillford Township. He drove a plow and harrow at age 10, enrolled at the University's agriculture school in 1889.  Two years later he was named foreman of the university's agriculture experiment station, started only four years earlier.  He apparently was not impressed.  'The more I see of these professors,' he wrote, 'the more I think talk is all they amount to."


It was not long before Andy Boss was doing pioneer work in the science of breeding plants, when few people thought much of cross-breeding and inbreeding varieties of seeds.  His research laid some of the groundwork for many varieties that resist disease.  He was one of the first to take a serious interest in the feeding and management of livestock.  "It has been a maxim of  scientists", wrote Andy Boss, "that animals adapt themselves to their environment only gradually and then begin to grow strong.  We have here our own conditions.  Why not have breeds of American stock, for Americans?"


It was said that Andy Boss could stroll around a farm and then with what seemed just a few questions, judge the quality of the operation, point to the problem areas.  His plan to measure farm profits and planting decisions eventually took hold in three areas: Northfield, Marshall, and Halsted.  After a while most of those skeptical farmers came to see Andy Boss as one of them.


Andy Boss liked to say he was on the payroll at the University every month from October 1889 through 1936.  He came to the university husking corn for ten cents an hour.... he left as a respected chairman of the department of animal husbandry.  He died in 1947.  "I have in my veins," wrote Andy Boss, "the blood of my forebears, who were attracted to America by a desire to own a piece of land.  That desire is strong in me. and may bias my views, but I am firm in my conviction that a permanently satisfactory agriculture must be built upon the family unit."

John and Elna Olson 3rd Episode

 Mom and Dad had a great influence on my life.  Dad had the ability to tell you all about anyone he had met.  One day he called the newspaper to talk to a reporter.  He didn't get the person he expected to talk with but he managed to find out all about another reporter who had been to Norway.  They talked for a half hour or more and he told us all about the man and the trip when he hung up the phone.


The church and their church friends were the most important part of their lives.  They each held offices in the church.  Mother and Dad were both elders.  Dad was moderator of the Presbytery for at least one term. Mother was also very active in Women's work.  She was even a Presbyterial and Synodical President.  She attended many National meetings of the women's organization.


After  Vivian had graduated from Trinity University, she worked as a censor for the PO and checked the mail coming in from Mexico.  She was fluent in Spanish including conversational Spanish.  But after the war, she went to work for the Synod Office.  Hoytt Boles was the Synod Executive and Vivian was the secretary.  She wrote to many people in the New York Office at 156 Fifth Avenue.  So, on a vacation she went to visit the New York Office.  And shortly thereafter went to work for the Office for Rural Church  Work headed by Dr. Randolph.  That was the office that was in charge of the field that Irvin pastored in Northwest Mississippi after graduating from Seminary.


There are so many connections to the Presbyterian Church in my lifetime that I can hardly recall them all.  And I am so thankful that John and Elna were so dedicated to the church that some of that rubbed off on me.


In 1957 Dad got a call from Rev. Elmer Gieser.  He was our first pastor in Hereford, Texas and his daughter was my best friend.  Elmer wanted to know if Dad would be interested in moving to Ghost Ranch near Abiqui, NM.  Mr. Pack had given the ranch to the church for a conference center and they were going to need to build several new buildings before it could get up and running.


But when Dad said he would be interested, the Board of Christian Education (who would be in charge of the program) said they needed a Dietitian and couldn't afford both.  Mother had graduated and was a dietitian, so they hired both of them for two positions, but I think they only got one salary.  They packed up and sold their house in Waco and moved to Ghost Ranch.


It just so happened that our son John had been having many allergy problems in Florida and we had been there for 5 years and we called the Board of National Missions and Dr. Jackman and asked if there was a place in the Southwest where we could serve.  There was and Irvin flew to Mississippi where he visited his mother and then on to Colorado.  He visited the site and thought it would be a good fit.
He came back and gave notice that he would be leaving First Presbyterian Church in Miami the end of December.  We took December as a vacation month and left Miami on Dec. 12th and headed west.  We were excited.  We stopped in Mississippi for an early Christmas with family, and then on through Texas.  John still had not been able to sleep through the night, and we were spending the night in Corsicana.  About 2 am we had been up with John and decided to put the kids in the car and drive on.  John then went to sleep and we went to Hereford where I had grown up.  We looked at some sights and I visited some people, and everyone went to bed very early, and John slept through the night!  He was 18 months old.


We got up early the next morning and headed for Ghost Ranch.  The kids had asked about tumbleweeds.  Did they really tumble?  They got their answer. All the kids except Robert liked watching the tumbleweeds but he was quite frightened by them. We had quite a few on the highway to Clovis and ended up at a service station where we could pull the pieces out of the radiator.  Then on down the highway.  There had been a recent accident on a major highway and we stopped to see if we could be of help.  When Irvin got back to the car, it wouldn't start.  At that point another driver who had stopped offered to jump start our car and that worked.  He explained that in the higher altitude we needed more octane in the gas than at lower elevations.  And so we made it to Ghost Ranch just before Christmas.  John and Elna were glad to see us and we all slept well at the higher altitude.  We were happy to be able to live closer to them and had a wonderful Christmas before going to Colorado.

Elna and John in Waco

I was in my Junior Year at Trinity when Mother and Dad moved to Waco.  Dad took a job with a friend who built Quanset buildings and Dad supervised the building..  He also did inspections of buildings.  During the last week of school, Trinity University had to close the school because of a flue virus which was getting out of hand, so tests were not given but we still got the credits for the classes.  Dad came to San Antonio to pick me and my "stuff" up.  I was glad he didn't have to drive all the way from Hereford to get me.

1605 N. 18th St.

He enjoyed his work.  Then one day he went down to get some shoes at a repair shop just across the street from the tall office building in which his boss had an office.  The buildings were sold from another quanset hut out on or near a highway.  Dad had gotten to the quanset building when the wind started blowing.  It took 3 men to get the door closed.  That's when the phone rang and his boss asked if everyone was all right.  There had just been a tornado which blew through the town flattening all the buildings except the tall one in which the main office was located.  We were grateful that Dad was gone from there, because the shoe repair place was gone.

Dad and Mom enjoyed their time again in Waco. Dad taught the Berean Bible Class at church.  They had many church friends   And as was told in a previous blog, Irvin and I were married in Waco. Irvin graduated from Louisville Seminary and we moved to Nesbitt, Mississippi We had our first son in 1950, when Ken arrived on July 17th.  We were living in the manse in Nesbitt and Mother came to help us.  Our year together in Louisville Seminary was nice in many ways, although Irvin had a number of deaths in the congregation he served in Indiana.  My Grandmother Boss died just shortly after Ken was born.  I expected that my mother would go to the funeral, but she said that it was more important to help with the living than with the dead and she stayed with us for a time. It was a long time before I wanted to answer a phone, since I thought there might be another death.

One night we got a phone call from my sister Vivian she was in Memphis and wanted to come to see her new nephew!  We bundled up Ken and went to Memphis and got her and got home about Midnight.  Then she had to be back in Memphis to catch a train early the next morning so we left about 6 and took her to catch the train.  When we returned we thought that someone had been in the house.  Sure enough, the elder who lived right across the lane that went in front of the church to the manse, had been over to check and see if everything was all right.  He had a key to the house which we didn't know about.

Ken had his first birthday in Waco at his Grandmother and Granddaddy's house.  Being the first had it's advantages. 

Jean arrived on April 16th in 1952 and again my mother came to be with us in Nesbitt.   She was enjoying the beautiful azaleas and dogwood trees at a church members home when I decided to go to the hospital.  We left at 5 and took mother to Nesbitt from New Bethlehem and got things out for Ken, and took off for the hospital in Memphis.  Jean arrived at 8 pm.  The church member had wanted us to wait until we had some supper, but was glad we hadn't when she found out that Jean was born so soon after we left.

December of 1952 we moved to Florida for health reasons, but Elna and John stayed on in Waco.