Julia (Boma) Schnell
1884 – 1972
In July of 1884, Julia was born at the Boma home. She attended public school in Shelby township and the Catholic school at La Crosse. When she was 21 years of age, Julia married John Schnell November 21, 1905.
The Schnells were neighbors of the Boma’s. John was born in 1883 the son of Phillip and Helena Schnell who founded the Schnell Bros. Brick Co. with his brother.
In the wedding was Julia’s first cousin, Frank Mader Jr., who gave them an ornamental black and gold shelf clock for a wedding present. (This clock is proudly displayed in the home of Bill Schnell.) After the marriage, John and Julia lived with his father and two unmarried brothers on 15th and Market St. in La Crosse.
John was good looking and Julia was very attractive, a jolly, happy-go-lucky person. Frank Jr. always said, “The Boma girls were the prettiest girls he ever saw in his life!”
Later they moved into the Schnell brick house below the road in State Road Coulee. (Site of the trailer park today.) Two houses belonged to the Schnell Brick Yard. When John’s brother Charles married he lived in the lower house and John and Julia moved into the older brick house above the road. When the boys moved to the brick yard their father moved with them renting out his house in town. John and his brothers worked in the brick yard, eventually taking over when their father got too old.
Julia and John Schnell were the parents of four children; Edwin born in 1910, Helen 1911, Florence 1913, and William 1916. Keeping busy with her own family, Julia also had to keep house for the boarded workers in the brick yard, cooking the meals and doing up the bedding.
The children went to school in the red school house on State Road. Then they had two years at Trinity High School for religious training. “We’d run out to the road and catch a ride to school.” Bill recalls, “The janitor would let us in the boiler room until Mass started. After school we walked home.” John Mader can remember going to a school with a boy called “Brick” Schnell. “Brick” was a name for Edwin.
The boys worked in the brick yard. When John bought Jacob Boma’s 380 acre farm, he sent William who was only 15 years old to run it.
The Mader family all came to Julia and John’s Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1955.
Julia was going to be 88 years old when she died in May of 1972. Her husband John lived only six and a half months longer before he passed away at age 89.