August, the first of six children of August Dontanville and Melanie Duffner, was born in Pasadena, California December 27, 1894. He worked for most of his life as a landscape gardening contractor, as had his father. On October 12, 1915 August married Catherine Elizabeth Dunker who had come to California from Quincy, Illinois. Two children were born to that marriage, Virginia Katherine on August 28, 1916 and Melanie in August 1918.

Catherine died in 1918, at age 30, possibly in childbirth. Their maternal grandparents, William Dunker and Mary Catherine Schuette, in Quincy, Illinois, raised her two young daughters. In the early 1920s August married Margaret M. English, daughter of Morgan English and Mary Young from Pennsylvania. They established their home in Rural Altadena. August continued to work as a landscape gardener and Margaret as a nurse at Huntington Memorial Hospital.

August died in Huntington Memorial Hospital July 23, 1951, three months before the death of his father. Margaret eventually moved to Primrose Avenue in South Pasadena and continued to practice nursing. She died in Huntington Memorial on May 24, 1971. Both are buried in Calvary Cemetery. Virginia Katherine eventually retuned to California where she was employed by the California State Department of Health. Records indicate that she never married. She died in Mendocino County on May 12, 1981. This researcher has no further knowledge of the younger daughter Melanie.

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