Born in the town of Sutherland, Emil Fred Propp grew up in the northeast corner of Liberty Township; at the time of his birth, his parents Frederick Albert “Fritz” Propp (1863-1940) and Friederike “Rebecca” Klacksein(1) (1862-1918) lived on the farm of John F. O’Donnell, in Section 2. Emil was the third of four children.
The Propp family differs from other families of Calumet German Band members in that the emigration from Germany was not quite as recent as for others, with a different point of initial settlement in the Midwest. The family arrived around 1867, settling first in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin. Fritz had been born in the Mecklenburg region of what at that time was Prussia, which encompassed Schleswig-Holstein. Rebecca also reflected German heritage; although she had been born in Buffalo, New York, her parents had both emigrated from Germany.
Fritz and Rebecca Klacksein Propp were married in Wisconsin, where their first son, Edward Propp (1884-1959), was born. By 1886, the family had relocated to Liberty Township of O’Brien County, where they had three additional children: Helen Mary (1886-1967), Emil, and Emma Mathilda (1893-1982).
By 1915, Fritz was working primarily as a land agent, selling prime northwest Iowa farm land. He advertised his services in these years with standing weekly ads in The Sutherland Courier.
In the same year, 23-year-old Emil Propp was living in Sutherland and working as a merchandise clerk. But following the U.S. intervention in World War I, Emil enlisted with the Army, on 24 February 1918, and he was discharged after the war, on 7 February 1919. He served as a Private First Class in Company C, 214 Engineers.
Following discharge, Emil is shown in the 1920 census for Waterman Township, enumerated in late January, as working as a laborer for a farm family. He also was boarding in the household of that local farmer, Martin Joseph Klema (1860-1945), Klema’s wife Josephine C. Dvorak (1870-1958), and their daughters Della and younger twin daughters Agnes and Margaret. The living situation seems to have been fortuitous. One year later, on 8 February 1921, Emil married the firstborn Klema daughter, Della Pearl Klema (1893-1977).
The natal family of Della’s father Martin Klema, like the Propps, had been fairly early arrivals in O’Brien County, coming in 1873 after first living for 12 years near Iowa City (Johnson County), in the eastern part of the state. Headed by Jacob Klema (1824-1893) and his wife Kathryn “Kate” Vosejpka (1836-1916), the family (including four other children in addition to Martin: Thomas, 1858-1919; John, 1859-1927; Mary May, 1866-1901; and Frank, 1869-1939) farmed in Highland Township, to the north of Liberty Township. The sons Frank and Thomas, like their father Jacob and their brother Martin, also went on to farm; Frank owned a nearby property in Section 12 of Liberty Township, and Thomas farmed in Cherokee County, to the south of O’Brien County.
The marriage of Emil Propp and Della Klema represented a rare instance of a Calumet German Band member marrying outside the tight-knit German and German-Lutheran community. On Della’s paternal and maternal sides — the Klemas, the Vosejpkas, the Dvoraks, the Broshes — the families were of Czech and Roman Catholic heritage, and they were tied to a large 19th-century Czech migration to the eastern portion of Iowa.(2)
Shortly after the marriage of Emil and Della, they had a daughter, Maxine Josephine “Jo” June (1922-1992). The young family lived with Della’s parents on a farm in Waterman Township at least into the 1930s. But in the subsequent years most of the Propp family relocated to Pipestone, Minnesota. Fritz Propp’s spouse Rebecca Klacksein Propp, Emil’s mother, had died in 1918, and it appears that their daughter Emma (Emil’s sister) was instrumental in the family move. She and her husband Philip O. Authier (1892-1978) were living in Pipestone by 1930, with the widowed Fritz residing with the couple. By 1940, Emil and Della and their daughter Maxine “Jo” were also in Pipestone, as was Emil’s other sister, Helen, and her husband Elmer Severance (1877-1964).
In Pipestone, Emil worked as a night watchman, and Della worked in a laundry. At the next census, in 1950, he was working as a janitor at a city school, while Della continued to work in a laundry facility. In 1955, Della’s widowed mother Josephine Dvorak Klema joined the couple for the final three years of her life, moving from Sutherland after her husband’s death in 1945.
Emil and Della’s daughter Maxine “Jo” Propp, who did not marry, became a registered nurse. Following her parents’ move to Pipestone, she returned to the northwest Iowa area and worked as a nurse in the Cherokee hospital, then relocated to Saint Paul, Minnesota, for the remainder of her life.
Emil Propp and Della Klema Propp are buried in Saint Leo Catholic Cemetery in Pipestone, Minnesota.
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Connection to Other Band Members
There are no known family connections between Emil Propp and other Calumet German Band members.
Footnotes
(1) The surname was anglicized and spelled in different ways, appearing as Klacksein, Klacksen, and other variations. It later years the family name seems to appear more frequently as Clarksean.
(2) Della’s maternal grandfather (father of her mother Josephine Dvorak) was Anton Dvorak (1828-1902), which invites speculation that the family may have been related to the celebrated Czech (Bohemian) composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904). During the composer’s years in the U.S., from 1892 to 1895, he spent the summer of 1893 in the Czech-American community of Spillville, Iowa, located in the northeast corner of the state. Dvořák is a common Bohemian surname, however, so it may be that any family relationship, if there is one, would be distant.