The Voisin/Stewart Family
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Husband: Truman George Yuncker
Born: 20 March 1891 in Bloomer Township, Montcalm, Michigan 1
Married: 23 October 1915 in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan 16
Died: 1964 2
Father: Albert Yuncker
Mother: Lillian Velona Wilson
Spouses:

Gallery

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Truman George Yuncker
Wife: Ethel Burnett Claflin
Born: 06 March 1891 in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan 6
Died: 20 March 1981 in Greencastle, Putnam, Indiana 7
Father: Charles Elmer Claflin
Mother: Minnie Mae Burnett
Spouses:

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Children
01 (F): Betty-Jane Yuncker
Born: 07 June 1920 in Greencastle, Putnam, Indiana 9
Died: 31 March 2018
Spouses: Robert J. Lee
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Betty-Jane (Yuncker) Lee
26 May 2010
02 (F): Barbara Ann Yuncker
Born: 11 November 1921 in Greencastle, Putnam, Indiana 10
Died: 01 January 1996 in New York, New York 11
Spouses:

Gallery

01260.jpg
Barbara Ann Yuncker
Additional Information

Truman George Yuncker:

*RELN: 2C2R (8)

Grave Marker: Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; Truman George Yunkcer; 1891-1964 3

Recognition: 29 August 2003, Greencastle, Putnam, Indiana; DePauw University; A student house at 410 South Indiana Street was named in honor of Truman Yuncker 4 5

Notes:

"T. G. Yuncker (1891-1964) was a taxonomic botanist whose field was the Piperaceae, especially the Peperomia and Piper genera. He described 839 new species, 211 new varieties, and 25 new forma in the Piperaceae. He wrote the treatment of that family in almost every regional flora published during his lifetime. His early studies were on the genus Cuscuta in which he described 67 new species and 39 new varieties.

"Yuncker was head of the Department of Botany and Bacteriology at DePauw University from 1923 until his retirement in 1956. Concurrently, he was curator of the DePauw Herbarium from 1919 to 1964. This herbarium was acquired by The New York Botanical Garden in 1987.

"Yuncker was a botanical explorer who held the position of Associate Botanist at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum from 1941 to 1964. He was responsible for the first Floras of Niue Island and the Tonga Islands. He also compiled floristic treatments of the Manua Islands, and of large areas of Honduras. His Piperaceae of Brazil was published posthumously.

"Truman George Yuncker was born March 20, 1891, on a farm near Carson City, Michigan. When he was 13 the family settled in Lansing. His father became ill and Yuncker had to leave school to support the family, taking up work in the trolley barns. Soon he became a conductor, attending secretarial school at night. In 1907 he entered Michigan Agricultural College (Michigan State University) as an engineering student. After two years he was forced to leave again due to family financial problems. He worked as a secretary for the Durant-Dort Carriage Company in Flint.

"It was during this period that he met Ethel Burnett Claflin and became secretly engaged to her. Ethel encouraged Yuncker to return to college and then, in an extremely unusual move for that era, entered Michigan State along with him, delaying marriage until both had graduated. They married in 1915, after Ethel's graduation and a one-year assistantship for Truman at the University of Nebraska under Charles E. Bessey. They moved to Indianapolis where he was teaching at the Emmerich Manual Training High School. In 1916 both Yunckers enrolled at the University of Illinois. Ethel received her M.A. in dietetics and Truman completed his Ph.D. under William Trelease, undertaking a revision of the North American and West Indian species of Cuscuta. Eventually he would take up Trelease's study of the Piperaceae, completing his Piperaceae of Northern South America after Trelease's death.

"During World War I the Yunckers moved to Washington, D.C., where Truman served as a bacteriologist with the Army Medical Corps. Ethel worked as a dietician with the Food Administration.

"In 1919, the new Ph.D. took up an appointment as Assistant Professor of Botany and Curator of the Herbarium at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. The Yunckers remained in Greencastle for the rest of their lives. By 1921, he had been promoted to full professor and to head of the department in 1924. He became one of the most outstanding teachers and administrators of his generation. More than sixty percent of his students went on to earn advanced degrees.

"The Yunckers began their botanical explorations in 1926 with an extended trip to European herbaria for a world survey of Cuscuta. In 1932 Yuncker was awarded a Yale-Bishop Museum fellowship for a one-year sabbatical at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. Ethel Yuncker took over his duties as department head, teaching some courses as well. At the height of the Depression, she made it possible for Yuncker to devote himself to his studies without undue economic hardship to the family. In 1939, the whole family went to Hawaii for the summer. Truman went on to Niue and Samoa for fieldwork on his floras of those places. He was forced to use military transport in this sensitive area, soon to become a front in World War II. Other explorations were a survey of the Tonga Islands in 1953-1954, the study of the flora of Jamaica through a Fullbright and a study of Brazilian Piperaceae, 1957-1962, under a National Science Foundation grant. Yuncker studied not only the flora but the activities of the people of those places and recorded his observations in his correspondence and notes.

"Following the death of William Trelease in 1946, he was invited to the University of Illinois to complete Trelease's unfinished work on the Piperaceae of Northern South America. This involved a complete revision and editing of Trelease's notes. All 675 photographs in the work were taken and prepared by Yuncker. The work has become a classic.

"Yuncker's last major work, The Piperaceae of Brazil (1972-1975), was completed with the help of Ethel Claflin Yuncker and published and distributed to the scientific community by her. Her work on it was recognized in many quarters from the Bishop Museum to the Smithsonian Institution.

"Both Ethel and Truman were active in Greencastle civic life for their entire lives. Ethel held office in the Daughters of the American Revolution on a state level and was national president of Phi Omega Pi. She often went by her maiden name. Truman served for years as the honorary forester of Greencastle. He was active in the Kiwanis Club. Both Yunckers belonged to the Freemasons.

"Yuncker officially retired from DePauw in 1956. He became emeritus and remained curator of the herbarium until his death in 1964. At that time it was renamed the T.G. Yuncker Herbarium by its new curator, Winona Welch. In 1987, as Welch's ability to care for it became compromised, the Herbarium was sold by DePauw to The New York Botanical Garden. Separate Brittonia festschrifts, edited by Dr. Patricia K. Holmgren, were prepared in Yuncker's and Welch's honor.

"In 1966, 2 years after Truman's death, Ethel moved to Asbury Towers, a retirement community she had helped to plan. Her apartment was on the same floor as Dr. Welch's. In Dr. Yuncker's memory, she donated a solarium, whose plaque reads "Scientist and Teacher, Jungles and the South Seas were his workrooms, DePauw and Greencastle his home."

--Zelasnic, Laura "Archives and Manuscript Collections, The LuEsther T. Mertz Library, The New York Botanical Garden," March 2000. [Internet] <http://www.nybg.org/bsci/libr/Yuncker2.htm>

Ethel Burnett Claflin:

*RELN: Spouse of 2C2R (0)

Grave Marker: Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; Ethel Claflin yuncker; 1891-1981 8

(02) Barbara Ann Yuncker:

*RELN: 3C1R (9)

Obituary: 02 January 1996, New York, New York 12

Transcription:

Barbara Yuncker, Science Reporter, 74

Barbara Yuncker, a prize-winning science reporter for The New York Post and a longtime leader of the Newspaper Guild, died yesterday. She was 74 and had homes in Manhattan and Canaan, N.Y.

The cause was breast cancer, said her sister, Betty Yuncker Lee.

Ms. Yuncker was twice winner of the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for science writing: in 1966, for a series on the birth-control pill, and in 1968, for a series on the human brain. In 1979, she won a Matrix leadership award from Women in Communications. In her career at The
Post, from 1945 to 1986, she also won local Newspaper Guild Page One and New York Newswomen's Club awards.

Ms. Yuncker, who was born in Greencastle, Ind., graduated from DePauw University in 1943. In 1943, she joined The Wall Street Journal, the first woman to be a copy editor there. She moved to the Post copy desk
in 1946, and in 1959 became a science and medical reporter. Later, she was medicine-science editor.

She left newspapers for a year in 1956-57, when she was Deputy Commissioner of the State Commerce Department, writing reports for women working outside the home.

She was elected guild unit chairwoman at The Post in 1976, while Dorothy Schiff was publisher. When Rupert Murdoch bought the paper in 1977, she became the first Murdoch employee to lead a bargaining committee against the publisher. In 1981, she became a member of the guild's international
executive board.

She retired from The Post in 1986.

She is survived by her sister, of Boynton Beach, Fla., two nephews and a niece.

Grave Marker: Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; Barbara Ann Yuncker; 1921-1996 13

Occupation: Medical and science writer for the New York Post 14

Occupation: Wall Street Journal 15

Footnotes
  1. Lee, Betty-Jane (Yuncker), Correspondence from Lee, Betty-Jane [420], E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 12, 2003.
  2. "Photographs," Betty-Jane Lee, Boynton Beach, Florida. [123], Grave marker for Truman George Yuncker, May 2006; Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/tsphoto/jackson/mtevergreen.htm.
  3. Ibid., Grave marker for Truman George Yuncker, May 2006; Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/tsphoto/jackson/mtevergreen.htm.
    Quality: 3.
  4. DePauw University, DePauw University (http://www.depauw.edu/news/index.asp?id=12880: accessed). [317], viewed; 3 November 2010; Duplexes Named in Honor of Distinctive Individuals from DePauw's Past.
    Quality: 2.
  5. Betty-Jane Lee, e-mail message from (, Boynton Beach, Florida), to. [265], Yuncker House; 4 November 2009; Mike Voisin.
    Quality: 3.
  6. Lee, Betty-Jane (Yuncker), Correspondence from Lee, Betty-Jane [420], E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 12, 2003.
  7. Ibid., E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 12, 2003.
  8. "Photographs," Betty-Jane Lee, Boynton Beach, Florida. [123], Grave marker for Ethel (Burnett Claflin) Yuncker, May 2006; Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/tsphoto/jackson/mtevergreen.htm.
    Quality: 3.
  9. Lee, Betty-Jane (Yuncker), Correspondence from Lee, Betty-Jane [420], E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 12, 2003.
  10. Ibid., E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 12, 2003.
  11. Ibid., E-Mail to Mike Voisin, June 19, 2003.
  12. New York Times; online archives (http://www.nytimes.com/: accessed). [18], Barbara Yuncker, Science Reporter, 74; 2 January 1996; copied; 23 November 2008.
    Quality: 2.
  13. "Photographs," Betty-Jane Lee, Boynton Beach, Florida. [123], Grave marker for Barbara Ann Yuncker, May 2006; Jackson, Jackson, Michigan; Mount Evergreen Cemetery; http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/tsphoto/jackson/mtevergreen.htm.
    Quality: 3.
  14. Lee, Betty-Jane (Yuncker), Correspondence from Lee, Betty-Jane [420], E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 24, 2001.
  15. Ibid., E-Mail to Mike Voisin, June 19, 2003.
  16. Ibid., E-Mail to Mike Voisin, October 12, 2003.
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Citation: Mike Voisin, iSeeAncestors (https://iSeeAncestors.com/tree/groups/public/grp50004.php : revised June 12, 2023), Truman George Yuncker & Ethel Burnett Claflin.

Revised: June 12, 2023

Copyright © 2000-2023 Mike Voisin. All rights reserved.

Source: Mike Voisin   Website: https://iSeeAncestors.com   E-Mail: MikeVoisin@iSeeAncestors.com