Minert Pannkuk
Minert Pannkuk was born at Titonka, in Kossuth County, Iowa, on 6 October 1905. He was the son of Boyd Pannkuk, an early settler of the north of the county, and his second wife, Rentje Smidt, who had come from Upleward, a village in East Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany. He was one of about twenty children Boyd had by his two wives.
On 14 February 1934, Valentine's Day, he married Sadie Ruter of Shannon, Illinois. Sadie had been born at Upleward too, in 1911, the same village as his mother, and had come to Illinois with her parents in 1924, ten years before. The young couple farmed 160 acres of a 200 acre place half a mile east of German Valley, in Kossuth County. Their first son, Eugene Richard, called Gene, was born on 23 December 1936. A second son, Ronald M. Pannkuk, was born on 19 July 1941 at Buffalo Center, and there was also a daughter, Joyce.
The family later moved to northern Illinois, near Sadie's people, and Ronald graduated from Shannon High School in 1960. Minert Pannkuk died at Freeport on 3 April 1994. He is buried at Forreston Grove Cemetery in Forreston, Ogle County, Illinois, beside Sadie, under a shared stone marked Minert Sr.
Sources
If Minert Pannkuk is in your family, start your own tree.
Researched October 2026. Cite: Heirology, "Minert Pannkuk (1905-1994)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/minert-pannkuk-1905-1994-2e8abf.