Frances Catherine Morris

Frances C. Morris died in Indianapolis on September 28, having lived 101 years, 6 months, and ten days. She was born Frances Catherine Boltz in Fort Wayne on March 18, 1921, the daughter of Robert L. Boltz and (Mary) Irene Coffee. She preferred to be called Fran. She was named for her mother’s mother, Francesca (Frances) Theresia Bruening, and her father’s mother, Catherine Sauerbrunn. Her grandmother Frances Bruening was born in Cincinnati; her grandmother Catherine was born in Contwich, Germany, which was Bavarian at the date of her birth.

Fran requested that, upon her death, she be taken to the Catholic Cemetery in Fort Wayne and that only a small, private ceremony be held. The date of that observance is October tenth.

She was an only child, and her only child is Edward Hultgren, Jr. Her daughter-in-law is Joella Kwasniewski. Her two grandchildren are Edward Conan (Centennial, Colorado) and Ryan Patrick (Tacoma, Washington). Conan and wife Megan McNeirney have three children: Lars, Kristin, and Kyra. Ryan and wife Karen Kingsbury have a daughter Stella. Fran was very proud of and delighted with her family members.

A cousin Nancy Centlivre and her husband Dennis Neary, Indianapolis, were very special and helpful to Fran, especially in her later years.

Close friends were the late Carmen and Robert Michael of Fort Wayne. Their children Robert, Marcia, Karen, and Joyce continued to be close friends for the rest of her life.

Fran was a devotee of opera and waltz music. She also liked reading cozy mysteries and traveling. Her son and daughter-in-law escorted Fran and her father, and later Fran and her second husband Warren, to places in Europe and on cruises to and within Europe.

She graduated from Fort Wayne Central Catholic High School in 1939. This was the first co-ed class of the school. She attended St. Mary’s College in South Bend, studying home economics. She decided to begin a working career instead.

While working at the Wayne Pump Company in their bookkeeping department, she met Edward Hultgren, a CPA with the Chicago firm Haskins and Sells. He was on a temporary assignment, performing an audit of the company. They married on 22 April 1944. At first, they lived in a northern Chicago area that is now popularly known as Wrigleyville. By late 1944 they moved to Fort Wayne, and Edward became the secretary-treasurer of the Stockberger Machinery Corporation.

Edward died suddenly in 1963. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1941. He graduated 13th in his class and ’13’ was considered his lucky number. But he died on the 13th of October; October 13 is the feast day of St. Edward.

Fran decided to return to work, and for many years she was an employee of the Howard’s Gift Store in downtown Fort Wayne. She enjoyed working in the crystal and china department, and in later years especially enjoyed working in the children’s clothing department.

Her father Robert Boltz was president of Schwegman-Witte Industrial Piping and Plumbing Corporation of Fort Wayne. Fran was an officer of the corporation.

After retiring, she vacationed in Siesta Key, Florida in the spring months. She was introduced to widower Warren Morris by his sister Florence, who also frequented Siesta Key. Warren and Fran married in January 1994. They lived in Vero Beach in the cold season and in Fort Wayne in the warm season. Warren died in Indianapolis in 2009.

The four children of Warren’s first marriage are: Warren Jr. (wife Judy); Brian (wife Connie); Wendy (husband Paul Ciaccia); and Carol (husband Stan Bishop). Fran was very fond of them and their progeny.

Fran was very interested in her genealogy. The Boltz name originated with Thomas Boltz of Bohemia, who was a cavalry officer in the Thirty Years War and settled in Kubach, Germany in 1648. Descendants moved to Weilburg and Saarbruecken. Fran’s Boltz great-grandparents arrived in Fort Wayne in 1849. Fran visited all these German cities and also Bohemia, now in Czechia.

The Coffees can be traced to an area 4 miles north of Killarney, Ireland. In 1830 Humphrey and Bridget Coffee brought their family to Wilmington, Delaware. He and two sons worked at the DuPont Gunpowder Mill along the Brandywine River. In 1837 the Coffees began farming south of Decatur. Fran visited the Irish Coffee area near Killarney.

Her Coffee ancestry made her eligible to join the Society of Indiana Pioneers; her Boltz ancestry qualified her to be recognized as a descendant of First Settlers of Allen County, Indiana; and her Bruening ancestry qualified her to be recognized as a descendant of Settlers and Builders of Hamilton County, Ohio.

She liked to mention that her father’s father FC Boltz was an entrepreneur in numerous Fort Wayne businesses; that her great uncle Ferdinand Boltz was a cavalry captain in the Civil War; that her uncle Joseph Cyril Coffee was a Marine pharmacist mate in World War I who earned a Croix de Guerre medal from France and two US silver stars for battlefield rescues of wounded; and that a cousin of her grandmother Catherine was Elora Sauerbrunn, who married John Trump, the physicist, professor, and inventor who was an uncle of President Donald Trump.