Ancestors

Steven Leo Terry

Steven Leo Terry was born at Kaukauna, Wisconsin, on 19 April 1909. He was the son of Joseph F. Terry and Ada Graves. Kaukauna is a paper-mill town on the Fox River in Outagamie County, and his grandfather Walter J. Terry had been the sixth man hired at its Thilmany Paper and Pulp mill. Steven went to St. Mary's Grade School in Kaukauna. He had one sister, Iola, who married Archie Scott and died before him.

As a young man in the Depression he spent eight months in a camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps. That was the New Deal program of the 1930s that sent out-of-work young men to plant forests, build parks and fight erosion, for wages that went mostly to their families at home.

On 12 September 1936 he married Rosella Van Densen at St. Paul Catholic Church in Wrightstown, Brown County. The Kaukauna Times reported the wedding on 18 September under the headline "R. Van Densen Is Married to Stephen Terry." Rosella was the daughter of Michael Lawrence Van Densen, a Dutch immigrant from Blerick in Limburg, and Jacobina Vandehey of Hollandtown. Their marriage lasted 59 years.

They raised five children at Kaukauna: Judith, born in January 1938; William, born on Saturday, 15 May 1943; Daniel; Patrick, born in 1947; and Jean, who married David Piepkorn. The Kaukauna Times announced Judith's birth as "Daughter Born" and William's as "Son Arrives Saturday."

Steven went to work at the Thilmany mill in the early 1930s. He ran a rewinder there for 37 years, the machine that winds paper off the big mill reels onto the smaller rolls that are cut and shipped. He retired in 1969. He belonged to the mill's Quarter Century Club, its society of workers with 25 years' service, and the Kaukauna Times listed him among its members in November 1962. His grandfather Walter had been in the same club in the 1940s. His son William later worked at Thilmany for 35 years, until 2005.

He was a member of St. Mary Catholic Church in Kaukauna. His obituary remembered him as "a sports fan and an avid Packer Backer," a follower of the Green Bay Packers, and said he "loved to play cards and bingo." His last home was 709 West Seventh Street in Kaukauna, the house where his mother Ada had died in 1958.

Steven L. Terry died on Sunday, 22 October 1995, at the Franciscan Care Center, aged 86. His funeral was held at four on the Wednesday afternoon at St. Mary Catholic Church, with burial in St. Mary Cemetery, Kaukauna. He left his wife, his three sons and two daughters, 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. A grandson, Jeremy David Piepkorn, had died before him.

If Steven Leo Terry is in your family, start your own tree.

Researched October 2026. Cite: Heirology, "Steven Leo Terry (1909-1995)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/steven-leo-terry-1909-1995-4e0c79.