Theresa M. Panian

Theresa Panian (1878-1966), later Mrs. Joseph Kuchenmeister of Almena, Wisconsin: mother of Margaret (Kuchenmeister) Hatten. A cabinet portrait of a young woman in a dark, ruffled dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, a brooch at the collar and a watch on a long chain; the dress puts it in the later 1890s, around the time of her marriage in 1899. The same photograph is on the family history page about her (see A page on Theresa Panian).

A street at Zell in 1885: a wheelwright’s shop with wheels in the loft window, a frame house, wagons, and about twenty-five people standing for the camera, from bearded men to small children. Someone in the family has lettered them A to Y and named those they could:

C possibly George Panian Sr, E/H possibly Christoph (wheelwright), F William Banwarth, J possibly Theresia Panian, K possibly Mary Panian, L Juliana Haberkorn Banwarth, N Pete Banwarth, O Anna Haberkorn Panian, P Rose Panian, Q Chlemhart (?), R George Panian Jr, S “Otto” Adolph Banwarth, T Frank (last name unknown), and V Ed (last name unknown). A, B, D, E, G, H, I, M, U, V, W, X, Y are all unknown.

J would be Theresa Panian, aged seven, later Theresa Kuchenmeister: mother of Margaret (Kuchenmeister) Hatten. The Panians had come to Zell from Royalton, Minnesota, about 1882, and left for Almena, Wisconsin, in 1896. The Banwarths were kin through the Haberkorn sisters, Anna (Mrs. Panian) and Juliana (Mrs. Banwarth).

A typed page with her portrait, numbered 21 in a family compilation, headed “Theresa Panian” by hand:

Theresa Panian was born on February 25, 1878, to George Panian and Mary Habercorn in Westphalia, Iowa. She was the second of nine children. In 1881 they moved to Royalton, Minnesota and one year later to Zell, South Dakota. In 1896, when she was eighteen, the family moved to Almena, Wisconsin, where she met Joseph Kuchenmeister. The two were married on October 24, 1899, in Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a small wooden mission church, which would later become the parish school. Theresa was active in the church Alter Society and in the Catholic Aid Society. Her husband served as postmaster, and she managed the post office for some time while he worked in another position. Joseph preceded her in death by fourteen years. After the death of her husband, the family home was sold, and she moved in with her daughter’s family, Laura and Dominic Ritchie, in Barron, Wisconsin. She fell and broke her hip and spent the last year or so of her life in a small nursing home in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. She died on February 7, her husband’s birthday, in 1966 at the age of 84. She is buried with her husband in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Almena.

The Ancestry tree has her mother as Anna Maria Haberkorn (the Zell photograph’s caption also has “Anna Haberkorn Panian”) and her death on 8 May 1966 at Rice Lake, where this page has “Mary Habercorn” and 7 February 1966. Both are on her page until a record settles them.

A calendar picture, a painting of a white frame house joined to “Miesen’s Store”, with a post office sign by the door and two gasoline pumps in front, under a big prairie sky. Written on the calendar’s mount by a family hand: “Do not destroy this”, and “Grandmother Kuchenmeister[’s] childhood home & her father’s store in Zell So Dak”, with “Theresa” above.

Her father was George Panian, at Zell from about 1882 to 1896. The store evidently passed to the Miesens later; the calendar is of the mid-twentieth century.