Surnames: Bruss, Schwantes, Hildensperger, Hinz

----Source: Colby Phonograph (Colby, Clark County, Wis.) 11/11/1948

Bruss, Lydia (19 Mar. 1903 - 6 Nov. 1948)

Struck by an automobile on highway 13, three miles north of Spencer in Marathon county, Saturday morning at 1:30 o’clock, Mrs. Lydia Bruss, age 45, of the town of Unity, Clark county, and a sister in law of Albert Bruss of Colby, was fatally injured.

Alex Schwantes, age 30, of Spencer, driver of the car, told John W. Hildensperger, Marathon county coroner, that the woman, mother of two children, walked into the path of his car.

He was driving south on highway 13 at the time. He said he saw the woman and swerved his machine to the left. Mrs. Bruss, he said, walked directly into the path of his car.

The woman’s husband, Otto, and Schwantes took the injured woman to the Colby clinic where she was pronounced dead on entrance. She suffered a broken neck and fractures of both legs.

The couple was on the way home from a visit. Bruss had just turned his car off onto a town road at the intersection of highways 13 and 153. A short distance from the intersection is a Soo Line railroad crossing.

Apparently confusing the railroad for a highway, Bruss turned his car down the tracks and stalled.

He started for a nearby farm for help and his wife walked back to the highway.

The woman’s death was No. 14 on Marathon county highways so far this year.

The body was taken to the Swarthout funeral home at Spencer, Wis.

Coroner Hildensperger reported on Monday that there will be no inquest. Funeral services were conducted Tuesday afternoon at the St. John’s Lutheran church at Spencer, Rev. H. C. Hinz officiating, and burial was made in the West Spencer cemetery.