My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM F. STRUNK, one of the reliable citizens and substantial farmers of the town of Ellicott, is a son of William H. and Jane A. (Van Vleck) Strunk, and was born in the town of Ellicott, Chautauqua county, New York, May 7th, 1840. The first of the Strunk family in America was in 1750, when Hendrick and Catherine Strunk, brother and sister, came from the principality of Leppe Detmold, in North Germany, to Rensselaer county, New York. Hendrick Strunk was a farmer and his son, Jacob Strunk, grandfather of William F. Strunk, came in 1816 to Chautauqua county, where he settled on lot 5.3, range 4, township 2 in what is now the town of Ellicott. He owned a large farm, was an old-line whig in politics and died in 1831. He married and reared a family of ten children. His son, William H. Strunk, was born August 5th, 1807, and died December 25th, 1878. In 1834 he was married to Jane Ann Van Vleck by Rev. E. J. Gillett. They reared a family of five sons and five daughters, of whom three are living: William F., Dwight, a farmer of Lakewood, and Alvin, now engaged in farming in Ellicott.

William F. Strunk grew to manhood on the farm and received his education in the common schools. He has always followed farming and owns a farm of eighty-five acres of good land, upon which he now resides. In 1865 he went to Forestville and bought nine bull-head fish with which to stock a pond his father had made; seven of these fish lived, and in 1867 the pond was washed out by Lake Chautauqua, into which the fish escaped. By this means the lake was stocked with its present abundance of that kind of fish. In politics Mr. Strunk is a republican.

He married Edna Augusta, daughter of Lyman Parker, of Ellicott, who died leaving two children: Grace Edna, who has taught five terms of school in Cattaraugus county, and Minnie R, a dressmaker of Jamestown. Mr. Strunk again united in marriage with Gertrude A. Carter, daughter of S. H. and Jane A. (Perry) Carter, of the town of Randolph, Cattaraugus county. Mrs. Gertrude A. Strunk received her education at Chamberlain institute, from which she was graduated in 1875. After graduation she taught in the States of New York, Ohio and Illinois. While at Chamberlain institute she taught in one of the preparatory departments and afterwards taught natural science and German in the Illinois female college for three years and the higher branches in the high school of Ironton, Ohio.