Ancestors

Erhard Wallner

Erhard Wallner was born at a quarter past midnight on 1 January 1880, in the army barracks at Burghausen, a garrison town on the Salzach river where Bavaria meets Austria. He was the first child baptized in the parish that year. His father, Alois Wallner, was a Feldwebel, the senior sergeant of a company, in the 16th Infantry Regiment, and his mother was Agnes Spitzl. He was baptized on 3 January, and his godfather was the regiment's staff bugler, also named Erhard. His grandfather Franz Xaver Wallner had been the schoolteacher at Burgkirchen an der Alz, a few miles to the west.

As a young man he served in the army and then trained as a jeweler, alongside a friend named Max Kuhn. He was also a keen gymnast and taught a gymnastics class for women. On 14 October 1904, at Nuremberg, he married Babette Stumvoll. Both were twenty-four. Their son Erhart was born in December 1903, and Agnes, Julius and Anna followed.

Max Kuhn had already gone to Reno, Nevada, and in 1913 he sponsored Erhard to come and work with him. Erhard left his wife and four children at Viechtach, in the Bavarian Forest, meaning to send for them as soon as he had saved the passage. The First World War began the next year. A German family could not cross, and his own father wrote again and again asking him to come home. He decided the journey was too dangerous and that the family was safe where it was, among Babette's two brothers and his own relatives.

In the draft registration of 1917 and 1918 he was living in Washoe County, Nevada, a German citizen, and gave his family's home as Viechtach in Lower Bavaria. He bought a house on Center Street in Reno. On 18 September 1920 Babette landed at Ellis Island from Bremen on the Susquehanna, and the family was together again after seven years. A last daughter, Babette Lina, was born in Reno in June 1922 and died in January 1923.

Erhard worked for Herz Bros. Jewelers in Reno from the time he arrived until he was 76. That year he fell down the basement stairs while getting ready for work and could not go back. In 1940 he and Babette were in the same house in Reno's first ward where they had lived in 1935. They later bought a house at 36 Martin Street, turned it into apartments when the children left, and built a duplex behind it. He kept a large garden, with fruit trees, berry bushes and grapes.

In old age the couple sold the Reno house and moved to their cabin at Kings Beach, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. Erhard died there on 7 September 1962, aged 82. His family says he died in the arms of his granddaughter. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Reno, under a stone that reads FATHER.

If Erhard Wallner is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Erhard Wallner (1880-1962)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/erhard-wallner-1880-1962-c75f59.