Ancestors

Marie Clara Bruner

Clara Marie was born on 22 November 1926 at Watchorn, an oil-field village near the line between Noble and Pawnee counties in Oklahoma. She went by Marie all her life. Her mother was Minnie Lee Teague, who had turned seventeen six days before.

The first record of Marie herself is the census of 1930. On 16 April the enumerator came to the house of Louis Bruner at Watchorn, in Otoe Township of Pawnee County. Louis, 41, was a laborer in the oil fields, born in Pennsylvania, and he owned his house, which he valued at $150. Minnie, 20, was listed as his wife. Two of his daughters by an earlier marriage lived with them, Geraldine, 17, and Evelyne, 15, whose mother had been born in West Virginia. The last name in the household was Marie Bruner, daughter, three years and five months old. The enumerator gave her father's birthplace as Pennsylvania and her mother's as Arkansas.

The family has always said that Marie was adopted. By their account she was born Clara Marie Foster, the daughter of a man named W. M. Foster, and her name was changed to Marie Clara Bruner. The census counts her as Louis Bruner's own daughter, and years later, when she applied for Social Security, she gave her father's name as Lois Bruner and her mother's as Minnie L. Tighe, the way she spelled Teague. No record that has come to light names W. M. Foster. One answer on the census leaves room for the family's story. Minnie said she had first married at sixteen, which puts that marriage between November 1925 and November 1926, but the census does not say whether her first husband was Louis Bruner or someone before him.

By the end of 1930 her mother had left the Bruner name behind. On 20 December 1930 Minnie married Frank Sappington at Perry, the Noble County seat, as Miss Minnie Teague of Watchorn, with her own mother as a witness. Marie had just turned four. Frank was born in Montague County, Texas, in June 1909 and had come with his family to the Watch Horn community, as he spelled it. He farmed around Morrison and Watch Horn, and later bought Frank's Cafe and Service Station at Morrison.

Marie grew up in his house and under his name. In 1940 the family lived in Autry Township of Noble County. The household was Frank, 30, Minnie, 30, Marie Sappington, 13, Frank's father T. W. Sappington, 56, and David Sappington, 18. Frank treated her as his own for the rest of his life. When he died in 1981 his obituary named "one daughter, Mrs. Clarence (Marie) Hartung." Her own obituary calls her the daughter of Frank and Minnie Sappington, and at Grace Hill Cemetery she is still listed as Clara Marie (Sappington) Hartung.

The Hartung farm was in the same township. Marie married Clarence Oliver Hartung, the youngest son of John Adam and Etta Pearl Hartung, on 1 February. His obituary gives the year as 1946 and the place as Wellington, Kansas, the county seat just over the state line in Sumner County. Her obituary gives 1948. They lived at Morrison and later moved to Pawnee. By April 1950 they had a son, Jimmie, and were living in Autry Township.

Their children were Jimmie Ray, born in April 1949, Lucky Lane, born in October 1950, Mary Ellen, born on 28 May 1952, and Pearlie Lee. In February 1957 Pearlie Lee, still a small girl, was in the hospital at Perry with pneumonia.

Her mother Minnie died on 6 January 1960, aged fifty, and was buried at Highland Cemetery in Pawnee. Frank married again in 1962 and died in May 1981. In 1980 Marie and Clarence went back for a reunion of the old Noble County country schools, listed together under the Jefferson school. Clarence died at the Veterans Administration hospital in Oklahoma City on 30 April 1993.

Marie died at 9 p.m. on Saturday, 17 June 1995, at Tulsa Regional hospital. She was 69 and her home was at Pawnee. Rev. Dan Duncan held graveside rites at Grace Hill Cemetery in Perry the following Friday. Her sons Jimmy Ray and Lucky Lane, both of Pawnee, and her daughters Mary Ellen Saunders and Pearlie Frick, both of Morrison, survived her, with seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She lies under a flat granite marker reading C. MARIE HARTUNG, 1926, 1995.

If Marie Clara Bruner is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Marie Clara Bruner (1926-1995)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/marie-clara-bruner-1926-1995-578e1c.