Rudolph Henrick "Ralph" Bratnober

Ralph Bratnober in Iowa around 1890. Courtesy of Doris Hughes Ralph Bratnober has the most authentic Old West look of all the Bratnober siblings. He also deserves special accolades as perhaps the first Bratnober to actually hint at a smile in one of their nineteenth century photographs. Born in Custrine, Prussia on October 8, 1846, he had just turned eight when the family came across to Wisconsin from Europe. Trained in harness-making by his father, along with his two brothers Henry and Gus, Ralph went on to become a master harness-maker while his brothers took off into other trades. We are fortunate to have three short accounts of his life, just one and two pages each, left to us by his immediate family. Before we proceed, however, we want to note that Ralph was clearly a family man as well. But then a picture is always worth a thousand words… Ralph Bratnober with five of his seven children in about 1910 in Iowa. Back row: Pauline O’Keefe, Charles Albert Bratnober, Amalie “Molly” Owen. Front row: Louise Byrne, Ralph Bratnober, Minnie Lister Shakelton. A portrait of his sixth child, Augustus Charles Bratnober, who died in 1900 hangs in back on the right. A seventh child, Henry Bratnober, died shortly after birth. Courtesy of Doris Hughes. Like his younger brother, Henry, Ralph was eager to follow in his older brother Augustus’s footsteps and to enlist in the Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War. One wonders what, if anything, their parents knew or had to say about this—particularly when Henry enlisted at the age of fifteen. Ralph, who was probably most needed by his father in the harness-making shop, enlists on February 6, 1865 at Plattesville in the 44^th Regiment of the Wisconsin Infantry Volunteers, Company K. By nineteenth century standards, he was a tall young man of eighteen, described as “5 feet, 10 inches with Yellow Hair and Blue Eyes” in his military record upon enlisting. Ralph was honorably discharged just seven months later (the war having ended in June) in Paducah, Kentucky. He had been paid forty-eight dollars and fourteen cents and his military record shows that he was still owed “thirty-three and a third dollars.” His daughter, Pauline, tells us that he was a prisoner of war for a short time and that he told her “their main diet (in prison) consisted of onions.” After the war, Ralph moves on with the entire family to Fort Dodge, Iowa in late 1865 from Hazel Green, Wisconsin. Here the Bratnobers rent a brick house in town and, according to Augustus, they begin to realize their first signs of prosperity because settlers are moving west, soldiers are returning from the war, and harnesses are in demand. Soon Ralph and Augustus purchase the family’s first farm in Iowa and the two brothers work the farm as well as the harness shop with their father. Reading the Augustus book, there seems to be no end to their ambition or their labors. On September 10, 1868 Ralph marries Rebecca Wilhelmina “Minnie” Endres in Fort Dodge. Minnie had been born in Schwabach, Germany in 1848 and had emigrated with her parents, Edward and Amalie, at about the same time as the Bratnobers were also taking the great risk of immigrating to America. Unfortunately, we do not have a photograph of Minnie. Ralph and Minnie would have seven children in all. They seemed to take great pleasure in naming them after Ralph’s four brothers and sisters (Augustus, Henry, Louise, and Pauline) and naming two more of their children after Minnie herself and her mother, Amalie (“Molly”), as well. To make matters even more challenging, the siblings’ father, August Martin Bratnober, later marries Minnie’s mother—a second marriage for both of them, which created a second Amalie Bratnober. Ralph kept the family harness-making trade going in Fort Dodge, with his father, when Augustus and his own new bride moved on to Waterloo in 1868. He also bought, sold and worked a succession of farms near Manson, Rockwell City and Waterloo, Iowa. Five of their seven children were born in Iowa between 1869 and 1879. According to the Augustus book, a plague of grasshoppers swept over the Waterloo farm in 1879 and Ralph apparently made the decision, at this juncture, to seek a new frontier once again. Ralph and Minnie Bratnober moved north to Canada in about 1880. For a few years they lived in Manitoba, near Ralph’s sister and brother-in-law, Pauline and Peter McArthur. According to one of Ralph’s daughters their house was “built on stilts along the river to protect us from floods.” Here their sixth child, Pauline, was born in 1880. In 1882 they proceed further west into the next Province (on board one of Peter McArthur’s steamboats, the Northwest) and they settled in the remote village of Prince Albert in the wilderness of Saskatchewan. Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada in the 1880s. Courtesy of the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada – www.glenbow.org. Prince Albert was truly alone on the prairie during the 1880s, with a population of about 1,500. However, the village stood near a growing military outpost and Ralph apparently found excellent demand for his harness making trade here from the Royal North-West Mounted Police, as well as from other early settlers.
Just when things were finally looking promising once again for Ralph, the family was visited by terrible tragedy—as happened so often on the frontier. On February 14^th of 1883 Minnie died shortly after giving birth to their seventh and last child, who Ralph named “Minnie” after his wife. According to his daughter, Pauline: “The ladies in the neighborhood took care of the baby for about six months and many of our valuables were stolen at this time.” Of this same difficult period, Ralph’s eldest daughter Louise (then fourteen years old) writes: “I was rather helpless with a tiny baby. I much appreciated the kind assistance of our neighbor, Mrs. Shell, who was like a mother to me from then on. When baby Minnie was 6 months old we left with her and my 3 year old sister, Pauline, to take them to my grandmother (back in Iowa). After remaining there for one year I returned alone to Winnipeg where my father met me with a team and buckboard, and brought me back to Prince Albert where two brothers and one sister waited for our return.” Despite this tragedy, Ralph seemed to rebound and become very involved with the well being of the town of Prince Albert as well as his children. In 1885 he was elected to the first Town Council of Prince Albert and his photograph, with the four other founders, hangs in the Prince Albert Historical Society today.	Ralph Bratnobers advertisement in The Prince Albert Times and Saskatchewan Review, May 9, 1884. Courtesy of the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society.
The First Town Councillors of Prince Albert, Canada who reconvened for this photograph in 1907. Ralph Bratnober, far right. Courtesy of the Prince Albert Historical Society. Friends and neighbors helped Ralph to raise the children, who went to school in a one-room log schoolhouse. In 1890 Ralph returned permanently to Iowa with all but one of his children, Louise, who remained and married Charles Byrne of Prince Albert—starting a family that still has many descendants in Saskatchewan today. Ralph’s brother, Henry Bratnober, bought him a farm near Waterloo on his return to Iowa and here Ralph resumes farming and harness-making for perhaps ten or twelve more years. In 1900 tragedy visits the family one more time, when Ralph’s eldest son, named after his brother Augustus Charles, drowns during a logging operation in northern Minnesota at the age of 28.

Ralph Bratnober with children and friends at the funeral of his son Augustus Charles Bratnober in 1900. Ralph was later buried here, alongside his son, in this cemetery near Dunkerton, Iowa. Photo courtesy of Doris Hughes.

Ralph’s second son, Charles Albert, establishes a successful clothing store—the Williams Clothing Store—in Williams, Iowa shortly after the turn of the century. After a short stint in Washington State, helping the sons of his brother Augustus with their new lumber business and living with his sister Louise in Tacoma, Ralph lives in Williams, Iowa for a time, with his daughter Minnie, and helps Charles to manage and run the clothing business until his retirement.

In 1919 Ralph made a sentimental, final visit to Prince Albert. Then, in 1920 he settles at his last home

at 605 Rhey Street in Waterloo, Iowa where he applies for a Civil War pension and he is cared for, in declining health, by a daughter and granddaughter. His brothers, Augustus and Henry, and his sisters, Louise and Pauline, had already preceded him when Ralph, the last surviving sibling, passed away in April of 1925 at seventy-eight years of age.

We have only one personal document in Ralph’s hand—besides standard forms like deeds, applications and affidavits—his entries into the family Bible. Here Ralph carefully lists births and deaths in a florid longhand style that is always in German. His descendants are many. We will begin to list them in an addendum to this section soon. All of his daughters had large families, like their parents, and the succeeding three generations of their families have grown wider still: a living legacy to a brave frontier family.

Williams Clothing Store, Williams, Iowa around 1907. Proprietor: Charles Albert Bratnober, Courtesy of Doris Hughes.

Excerpt from the front of the Ralph Bratnober family Bible. Courtesy of Doris Hughes.