Obit: Reis, Joseph #2 (1870 - 1951)

Contact: Stan
 

Surnames: Reis, Calmes, Kochan, Strehlo

----Source: Abbotsford Tribune (Abbotsford, Clark County, Wis.) 03/22/1951

Reis, Joseph (4 Dec. 1870 - 21 Mar. 1951)
 

Funeral services for Joseph Reis, 80, who died Wednesday, will be held at St. Bernard’s Catholic Church at 2:00 o’clock Saturday afternoon and a solemn requiem high mass will be read on Wednesday morning at 9:30 at St. Bernard’s Church. Internment will be made Saturday afternoon in the parish cemetery of St. John the Baptist Church at Wuerzburg.

Mr. Reis was one of a small group of men who organized that parish and built the church and served for many years as trustee.

The body of Mr. Reis will be taken to the George Calmes home, Friday morning, and will lie in state there. At 8:00 o’clock that evening, a rosary service will be held at the home.

Joseph Reis was born Dec. 4, 1870 at Whitelaw in Manitowoc county. He was married at Reefs Mills, Manitowoc county to Miss Julia Kochan on Oct. 27, 1894.

In September of the next year they came to Athens and settled on 80 acres of virgin timber. There were no buildings on the land and the young couple lived for a few days on the threshing floor at the neighbors, then built a shanty and lived there about six weeks until a log house was built. Mr. Reis cleared the land and farmed there for 31 years. A frame house in 1903 replaced the old log house, and when he retired they built another house on a half acre he reserved when he sold the farm to his son, Erwin. Here they lived until Dec. 5 when they came to make their home with their daughter, Mrs. George Calmes at Abbotsford, Wis.

Mr. Reis has been in poor health the past year and a half and a bed patient since June. Death came at 12:25 Wednesday noon at the Calmes home.

Mr. Reis was active in church and community affairs. He served as chairman of the town of Johnson for eight years and as supervisor for eight years, a position he still held at the time of his death. For 32 years he was president of the Athens Cooperative.

He is survived by his widow; one daughter, Mrs. George (Martha) Calmes, of Abbotsford; and one son, Erwin, of Bakerville. He has one brother, Albert Reis, and a half-sister, Mrs. Sophie Strehlo, both of Antigo. Two brothers and two sisters preceded him in death.