Otto Julius Constantin von Klose

My great-great grandfather Otto Julius Constantin von Klose was born in Strelitz, Prussia, in 1832 and died in St. James, Minnesota, in 1904. His name is vaguely discernible in the memories of my father and his siblings: the von Klose always pronounced with a thick accent, upraised eyebrow and a hearty chuckle. Sometime during the American Civil War he married a woman named Christine Bruckner, and between 1864 and 1868 they conceived four children, not unremarkable for the time. Also not unremarkable for the time was that they traded the difficulty of Europe for the opportunity of America, where they would have seven more children between 1870 and 1888.