Lila Hill

In March of 2004 I received an intriguing email from a Lila Hill, and I quote part of that email directly below:

Hello Jim,

I volunteer for Ernie Thode at the genealogy branch of the public library here in Marietta.  I became acquainted with your web site, and of course the name Gilcher rang a bell.  To give you a little bit of background—I am the granddaughter of Elizabeth Gilcher Scherber.  My name is Lila Doan Hill, daughter of George Brady Doan and Theora Scherber Doan.  I am 82 yrs of age, but still enjoy volunteering.

I wrote to Peggy Burge in August, 2003 and enclosed some prints of photos I had taken of tombstones for Gilchers in Oak Grove Cemetery. 

I enjoyed reading your genealogical stories about your ancestors.  Mr. Thode said he has met you at our library.  If you ever make a visit again to our town, maybe we can meet at the library.

Just a year later I stopped into the genealogy library in Marietta. I noticed a woman working there, and had a hunch it was Lila. We introduced ourselves and had a good conversation. Lila entrusted me with an amazing photograph. You see below Frederick and Carolina Zimmer Gilcher and 12 of their children. I was able to correlate their names and birthdates because of the email correspondence between Peggy Burge and me in 2001.

Since the photograph was in a somewhat advanced state of decay, I did my best to restore the faces and some of the background using Fireworks. Since Herman is an infant in this picture, we can estimate it was taken around 1887.

One final mystery surrounds this photograph. In the genealogy chart provided by Peggy Burge, it shows that two unnamed infants were born in 1899 and that Carolina Zimmer Gilcher died in 1899. Her death record shows that she died on May 13, 1899, of "unknown" causes. It seems to me to be at least a probability that she died of a childbearing-related cause. Either from bearing a twin pregnancy at age 54, or in childbirth, or some time shortly thereafter. And, I might add, such deaths from late pregnancies were not uncommon in these German farm women.

Frederick (1863), Caroline Elizabeth Zimmer (1844, mother), Herman (1886), Carrie (1874), Henry 1882), Louise Elica (1870), Elizabeth (1867, Lila Hill's grandmother), Daniel (1869), Rhoda (1877), Katherine (1879), Frederick (1833, father), Mayme( 1885), Rosena (1872, Jim Andris' distant great grand aunt) and John (1880).

*Note: Rosena Gilcher married my great grandmother Eva Fickeisen Noe's younger brother, Charlie Fickeisen, about whom I have written quite a bit in these pages.