Title: Kenneth Boyd Tanner Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1793-1965

Creator:

• Tanner, Kenneth Boyd, 1883-1965

Call Number: Mss 430

Quantity: 2.4 c.f. (6 archives boxes)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Personal, business, and family papers of Kenneth Boyd Tanner, a sugar plantation manager in San Luis Potosi, Mexico before World War I, then an insurance businessman and civic leader in Eastland, Texas. Included are papers concerning several family members as well. Correspondence concerns Tanner's experiences as a student at the University of Wisconsin (1900-1904), as an officer candidate in Kentucky during World War I, and as a Republican Party leader in Eastland in the 1950s. Letters written while managing the Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company plantation owned by his family deal with the problems caused by the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and later political turmoil. Family letters concern health, mutual acquaintances, events in Kaukauna, Wis. where Tanner was born, and experiences of his daughter, Dolores Tanner Vachliotis, while with the Hedgerow Theater in Pennsylvania in the 1940s and 1950s. Also present are genealogies of the Lawe, Boyd, Battles, Ford, and Tanner families; writings by Tanner's father, Herbert Battles Tanner; and information on a distant relative, Father Charles Francis de Vivaldi.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00430

 ↑ Bookmark this ↑

 ↑ Bookmark this ↑

Kenneth Boyd Tanner, sugar plantation manager and entrepreneur based in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and Eastland, Texas, was born July 20, 1883 in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, to Herbert Battles Tanner and Mary (Boyd) Tanner. The elder Tanner was a respected Kaukauna physician and druggist and active in the civic and political affairs of the town, serving as its mayor from 1894 to 1896.^[1] Kenneth Boyd Tanner was educated in Kaukauna's public schools, graduating from Kaukauna High School with the class of 1900. In the fall of that year he entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison and affiliated with the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Tanner retained many of his Kaukauna and fraternal friendships throughout his long lifetime. After graduation in 1904 he briefly studied medicine at the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1906, however, he left medical school to manage a Mexican sugar plantation owned by the Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company, of which his father was president and in which his family had invested heavily. On May 6, 1909 Tanner married Maria de los Dolores Asencion Sanchez at Hacienda Agua Buena, San Luis Potosi, Mexico. They had two children born in San Luis Potosi; Karl, born May 15, 1910, and Maria de los Dolores (Dolores), born March 6, 1912. Maria Tanner died a few weeks after the birth of Dolores. On March 25, 1913 at Chicago, Tanner married Bertha Marie Alter of Waterloo, Iowa. They had one child, Kenneth Boyd Tanner, Jr. (Boyd), born July 27, 1917 at San Antonio, Texas.

In 1915, the Herbert Tanner family closed the house in Kaukauna and moved to California, and then to Amarillo, Texas, for one year. The Kenneth Tanners followed them to Amarillo and later to San Antonio and in 1919 to Eastland, Texas, where both families moved hoping to profit in the Ranger oil boom. In 1918 Kenneth Tanner enlisted in the army, training with the Officers' Reserve Corps at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky. He was a member of the United States Army Intelligence in Mexico. He was also one of the many servicemen stricken with influenza during and immediately after World War I. In 1919, shortly after his return, the Tanner family, having been forced out of Mexico several times because of Mexican revolutions and the political upheavals that followed, sold its interest in the Rio Tamasopo Company at a considerable financial loss. At about the same time they “...dropped what [they] had salvaged of their Mexican holdings in trying to become oil barons.” ^[2] The family remained in Eastland; Kenneth took a position with the Freyschlag Insurance Company and he, his father, and his brother Herbert were active in the civic and political concerns of Eastland. Kenneth Tanner was a member of the Eastland school board from 1941 to circa 1958 and was its president for seventeen of those years. He was city manager of Eastland from 1943 to 1947 and again in 1962, an elder in the Presbyterian Church, a scout master, and in later years he taught Spanish in informal classes in his home.

During World War II Tanner again sought to serve the war effort. Rejected for service with the armed forces because of his age, he was, in due course, appointed to the local Selective Service Board, a position he continued to hold, with one interruption, until his death in 1965. The war brought tragedy to the family. The youngest son, Boyd, a flight sergeant in the Royal Canadian Air Force, was shot down while piloting a Wellington bomber in a raid over Germany on September 16, 1942. Karl Tanner, first lieutenant, United States Marine Corps, and a recipient of the Navy Cross, was killed by a mortar shell on Iwo Jima on March 9, 1945. In their honor the Eastland American Legion Post was named the Karl and Boyd Tanner Post. Neither son had married.

After the death of his wife Bertha in 1954, Tanner retired from business but continued his community activities. He was also deeply involved in politics as a member of the Republican Party in Texas. During the 1950s he was chairman of the Eastland County Eisenhower Club, Republican Chairman of Eastland County, and an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1952. Tanner continued to live in Eastland with occasional trips to Mexico and Wisconsin until his death in 1965. He was survived by his daughter, Dolores Tanner Vachliotis, an associate professor of drama at Texas Christian University. There are no descendants of Kenneth Boyd Tanner's three children.

Not limited to the affairs of one individual, these papers represent three generations of the family during their moves from Wisconsin to Mexico and Texas during the first half of this century, and their involvement in the financial dreams and crises, wars, and civil and political concerns of that period in history. A close-knit family, related to the Lawes, Boyds, Battles, Fords, and Adamses, it continued to exemplify the spirit and toughness of the early “American character” necessary to uproot and relocate hoping to better one's condition, and an intense civic and patriotic commitment. The collection is organized under three main headings: Family Genealogy and Personal Papers; Family Business Papers; and Correspondence. From the material within these three categories, the history of the family is readily reconstructed.

The heterogeneous FAMILY GENEALOGY AND PERSONAL PAPERS contain genealogies of the Tanner, Lawe, Boyd, Battle, and Ford families; and other Boyd and Tanner family papers, including letters and other documents relating to the family back to 1793 and through the Reconstruction period to 1881. More on all these matters is in the Herbert Tanner collection. Herbert Battles Tanner was keenly conscious of history and a few of his writings and collected materials dealing with Kaukauna history are filed here, including reprints of his article on General George Washington's scout, Hendrick Aupaumut, the Stockbridge Indian largely responsible for the Stockbridge migration to Wisconsin and one of the very few Revolutionary soldiers buried in Wisconsin.

The FAMILY BUSINESS PAPERS are also supplemental to those deposited with the Herbert B. Tanner Papers (Wis/Mss/DJ). Because Kenneth Tanner spent nearly fifteen years managing the family's Mexican interests, the business papers reflect an important segment of his life. They include a history of the Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company written by Herbert Battles Tanner, and promotional materials, as well as journals, maps and general business papers. Documents relating to Tanner family property in Texas are found with the Red River Farm material. The Selective Service Appointments and Awards folder concerns Kenneth Tanner's service on the Eastland County Selective Service Board. Oversize items relating to the latter material are filed with Miscellaneous Oversize Documents in box 6, folder 1.

Most of the collection is CORRESPONDENCE, which has been divided into Letters Sent and Letters Received by Kenneth Tanner, and is described in some detail in the Container List of this register. Under Letters Sent the arrangement is by person(s) addressed, listed in family hierarchical order with one exception; early correspondence, 1880-1900, contains some letters from Tanner's grandparents. The last folder in this section marked General, holds letters written to a number of people outside of the immediate family. All letters are filed chronologically in each folder. They address the concerns one would expect in letters home from a university student and from an officer candidate during World War I. The letters Tanner wrote to his father, H. B. Tanner, from Mexico deal primarily with the problems of management of the Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company's plantation during the Mexican revolutions of 1910-1911 and the resulting political turmoil. The letters to Tanner's wife, Bertha, during this period are more concerned with the problems of family adjustments at long-distance.

Letters Received is the larger of the two correspondence files. It includes a great deal of family information and history, and carries Kenneth Tanner from a university freshman to the end of his life. The first and General section of this file includes letters from distant family members and others, and deals with every phase of Tanner's life and that of his family. Dolores Tanner's fourteen years, circa 1940s - 1950s, with the Hedgerow Theater, a struggling drama company in Pennsylvania, is touched on and there are three letters from Dolores' husband, Christos Vachliotis, a Greek citizen connected with the Hedgerow group. Tanner's involvement with Republican politics, as well as his sister Blanche Tanner's lingering final illness and the war-related deaths and military records of Tanner's two sons can also be traced in this file. The letters of the Bossard sisters, friends of Tanner's youth in Kaukauna, are chatty reminiscences of Kaukauna, their neighbors, and friends, replete with current news and views of mutual acquaintances and family members. They occasionally touch on the political situation of the day and reflect cultural biases. Of more than passing interest is the correspondence with Tanner of his cousin, Vivaldo Coaracy, and of Sister Helen A. Hurley, concerning the Sister's research into the life of Coaracy's grandfather, Father Charles Francis de Vivaldi. The Vivaldi and Coaracy families are considered rather extensively. The Horatio Winslow correspondence is full of the veiled bitterness and subtle humor of Tanner's fraternity brother, a man at that time in his 70's and 80's, slowed by a series of strokes, reminiscing and resenting time's passing. In the folder of correspondence pertaining to the 1952 Presidential campaign are three campaign letters signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 26, October 20, and December 16, 1952; and a similar letter from Senator Robert A. Taft dated February 22, 1952. The family letters in the Letters Received segment are arranged in a hierarchical order. Other letters follow at the end of the file in alphabetical order. Within each folder the arrangement is chronological.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Mrs. Dolores Tanner Vachliotis, Fort Worth, Texas, May 24, 1967. Accession Number: M67-174

Processing Information

Processed by H. Smith (Intern) and Joanne Hohler, November 6, 1978.

	Series: Family Genealogy and Personal Papers
Box   1 Folder   1	Kenneth Boyd Tanner genealogy
Box   1 Folder   2	Tanner genealogy
Box   1 Folder   3	Lawe, Boyd, Battle, and Ford genealogies
Box   1 Folder   4	Diary of Kenneth Boyd Tanner, 1898 January - February
Box   1 Folder   5	Boyd family papers, 1793, 1838-1839, 1863-1865, 1871, 1881
Box   1 Folder   6	Tanner family papers, 1836, 1841, 1876-1878, 1881
Box   1 Folder   7	Personal documents -- wills, estate papers, miscellany, 1910, 1929-1954, undated
Box   6 Folder   1	Miscellaneous oversize documents -- diplomas and awards, 1896-1965
Box   1 Folder   8	Newspaper clippings re Tanner family, 1933, 1958, 1961-1963, undated
Box   1 Folder   9	Kaukauna, Wisconsin, history, [1899-1953], undated
Box   1 Folder   10	Congregational Church, South Kaukauna -- miscellaneous papers and history of, 1894-1906, 1915, 1925
Box   1 Folder   11	“History of Kaukauna's Revolutionary Hero” (Hendrick Aupaumut) by Dr. H. B. Tanner, Reprints, 1926, 1948
	Series: Family Business Papers	⇧
	Rio Tamasopo Sugar Company
Box   1 Folder   12	Miscellaneous papers, maps and printed materials, 1904-1924, undated
Box   1 Folder   13	Journal and “Register of Visitors,” 1903-1917
Box   1 Folder   14	Hacienda Tamasopo Leasing Company -- Mexican Claims Commission settlement, 1925, 1935-1945
Box   1 Folder   15	Red River Farm (Texas) documents, 1904-1940, undated
Box   1 Folder   16	Selective Service appointments and awards, 1941-1965
	Series: Correspondence	⇧
	Subseries: Letters sent
Box   2 Folder   1	Papers and correspondence, 1880-1900
Box   2 Folder   2	Letters to parents written from University of Wisconsin, 1900-1904
Box   2 Folder   3	Letters to H. B. Tanner and family from Mexico, 1906-1918
Box   2 Folder   4	Letters to wife, Bertha Marie (Alter) Tanner, 1912-1918
	Letters to family
Box   2 Folder   5	1918 August - November Note: Written while in training with Officers' Reserve Corps, U.S. Army, at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky.
Box   2 Folder   6-7	1921-1922
Box   2 Folder   8	1923 January-February; 1926 June-July; 1928 November 5; 1939 June
Box   2 Folder   9-10	Letters to sister, Blanche Tanner, 1940-1947
Box   2 Folder   11	General, 1933 December - 1965 May
	Subseries: Letters received	⇧
Box   3 Folder   1-4	General, 1901-1965, undated
	Letters of father, Herbert B. Tanner
Box   3 Folder   5-7	1894-1907
Box   4 Folder   1	1912 July-1918 December
Box   4 Folder   2	1921 October-1933 July
Box   4 Folder   3	Letters of mother, Mrs. Herbert B. (Mary) Tanner, 1901-1906; 1912-1913; 1920's; undated
Box   4 Folder   4	Letters of sister, Blanche Tanner, [1901-1946], undated
Box   4 Folder   5	Letters of wife, Mrs. Kenneth Boyd (Bertha Alter) Tanner, 1913-1935
Box   4 Folder   6	Letters between Kenneth Boyd Tanner and Bertha A. Tanner, 1948 January-February Note: Written during terminal illness of his sister, Blanche Tanner.
	Letters of son, Karl Tanner
Box   4 Folder   7	circa 1915, 1926-1931
Box   4 Folder   8	1944-1945
Box   4 Folder   9	Letters of daughter, Dolores (Tanner) Vachliotis, 1925-1965
Box   4 Folder   10	Re illness and death of sister, Blanche Tanner, 1948 February-September
Box   4 Folder   11	Re son, Kenneth Boyd Tanner, Jr., 1942-1951 March
Box   4 Folder   12	Letters of condolence at death of son, Kenneth Boyd Tanner, Jr., 1942 September-1945
Box   5 Folder   1	Letters of condolence at death of son, Karl Tanner, 1945, March 7-1965, May 8, undated
Box   5 Folder   2	Military records of son, Karl Tanner; correspondence with Veterans Administration, 1942 March-1945 November
	Letters from Bossard sisters [Mrs. Daniel (Gertrude) Costello; Mrs. Paul Frederick (Mame) Stanton; Mrs. M. E. (Frank) Winsor]
Box   5 Folder   3	1940-1965
Box   5 Folder   4	Undated
Box   5 Folder   5	Letters of Concepcion Sanches Castillo, 1907-1951 (In Spanish)
Box   5 Folder   6	Letters of cousins, Vivaldo Coaracy and Ada Maria Coaracy, 1952-1954 Note: Re Father Charles Francis de Vivaldi and Mary Lawe Meade de Vivaldi.
Box   5 Folder   7	Letters of Sister Helen A. Hurley, 1952-1955 Note: Re Father Charles Francis de Vivaldi and Mary Lawe Meade de Vivaldi.
Box   5 Folder   8	Correspondence with Rodolfo Usigli, Mexican ambassador to Lebanon and later to Norway, 1962-1965 Note: Re Tanner's 1962 translation of Usigli's play, El Gesticulador.
Box   5 Folder   9	Letters of Horatio Winslow, 1954-1965 Note: University of Wisconsin classmate and fraternity brother.
Box   5 Folder   10	Re , 1952 Presidential campaign

See Herbert B. Tanner Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Wis/Mss/DJ.

Kenneth Boyd Tanner to Vivaldo Coaracy, November 10, 1952, box 5, folder 6.