Hauff, Claudia 1876-1976

HAUFF, CROUCH

Posted By: Linda Ziemann, volunteer (email)
Date: 5/5/2008 at 20:57:30

MRS. CLAUDIA HAUFF
DEAD AT AGE 100

Mrs. Claudia Hauff, 100, longtime Merrill resident, died Friday, Sept. 3, 1976, at a Sioux City nursing home.

Services will be held Monday, Sept. 6, at 2 p.m. at the Merrill Methodist church with Rev. E.J. Berreth officiating. Burial will be in Merrill Hillside Cemetery with the Mauer funeral home in charge of arrangements.

Two area towns claimed Mrs. Hauff as their centenarian: Merrill, where she had maintained residence 72 years, and Moville, where she had lived in the home of her daughter, Mrs. G.H. Todd.

The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Crouch, Claudia Hauff, was born on a farm west of Hinton, on Perry Creek road.

She grew up on another farm, west of Perry creek. The land had been homesteaded by her uncle, Robert Crouch, and later purchased by her father.

Except for one year, 1880-81, when her family returned temporarily to Wisconsin, she has been an Iowan, for 97 years a resident of Plymouth county. Her parents moved to LeMars in 1901.

Her father, a Civil War veteran, became a familiar figure on the white horse that led the parade each Memorial Day.

An 1894 graduate of the old Northwestern Normal and Business College in LeMars, Mrs. Hauff taught for six years in rural schools and in Hinton. She attended summer sessions at Morningside college in Sioux City.

Claudia Crouch and Conrad Hauff were married in LeMars Oct. 2, 1901. They lived in a farm on Perry creek until they moved to Merrill in 1904.

On New Year’s day that year, Conrad Hauff bought a building in which to establish an implement business. Later he added the agency for the Jackson automobile.

For many years, he and a brother Dan Hauff, of Hinton, operated Hauff Bros. Implement and Hardware. Conrad Hauff died in 1962 at the age of 94. The business is currently operated by Mrs. Hauff’s son, Warren, of Merrill.

First a member of the Postosi United Brethren church, she transferred her membership to the Methodist church in Merrill early in this century.

She was president of the Methodist Ladies Aid and served as a longtime Sunday school teacher.

In 1919 Mrs. Hauff became a charter member of the Merrill Study club, now one of the Iowa federation of Women’s clubs, and served a term as president.

She was preceded in death by her husband and one sister, Mrs. Mabel Van Dyke, Sioux City.

Also preceding Mrs. Hauff in death was her only brother, Oscar Crouch, Sioux City.

Mrs. Hauff is survived by one daughter, Mrs. G.H. (Viola) Todd of Moville; two sons, Dwight, Sioux City, and Warren, Merrill; eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Other survivors are her three sisters, Mrs. Harold Pew, LeMars; Mrs. F. Doublas, Sandberg; and Mrs. Allen Lemon, Laguna Hills, Calif.

~Source: The LeMars Sentinel

Plymouth Obituaries maintained by Linda Ziemann.
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