The Fischers

There are branches on my family tree about which I know very little. One of those branches is the Fischers. Here’s what I know.

My father’s paternal grandmother, Mary Fischer (spelled variously Fischer, Fisher,and Fiser), was born around 1860 in Bohemia in what is now known as the Czech Republic. At some point she emigrated to this country and lived in Gasconade, Missouri. Gasconade is a rural area of Missouri about 100 miles due west of St. Louis. Today it’s an hour and a half from the city but a century and a half ago it was probably a couple of days away. In 1881 she married my great-grandfather, Joe Schuler. I have a wedding picture of them which I posted some time ago. They make quite an attractive young couple, he big, apparently red-headed with cowlicks, she small, dark, and rather pretty. She died in 1912 and is interred with rest of the Schulers at Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery in St. Louis.

The rest is the picture you see above. It’s captioned “Virginia Schuler with Fisher cousins approx 1920”. Virginia Schuler was the eldest daughter of my father’s Uncle Tony. She was, presumably, the little girl in the foreground of the photo. As a young girl she, too, was called Tony. I have quite a few pictures of Cousin Virginia (as my dad called her) which I received from my third cousin, Pat Harris Stott.

Everything else is conjecture. My dad used to say that the Fischers were Swabians. I don’t know whether he knew that for certain or whether he was speculating based on federal census data giving Bohemia as Mary Fischer Schuler’s place of birth. If the information on Mary Fischer Schuler’s death certificate is to be believed, her father was named William and her mother Antoinette or Antonia.

My dad also told me that his grandfather had a hunting lodge on the Black River (I’ve seen pictures; it was a shack) and that he met my great-grandmother down there. Again, I don’t know whether he knew that for sure or was just speculating.

I hope that my posting this picture and information may attract the attention of some other geneaological researcher who recognizes the people in the photo above, knows more than I do, and can help me fill in the blanks.

I think the Fischers look like a rather colorful bunch, to say the least.