The Weismiller Family Burial Plot

The Weismiller family burial plot is in the City Cemetery in Marysville, KS, my hometown. There are eight graves, all full, in the plot. It was purchased in 1916 in order to bury my Grandfather, Maximilian Weismiller. The last person to be buried in it was his wife, my Grandmother, Pitronella Frederika ('Nellie') nee Peterson.

When Grandpa was killed in an accident on the UP Railroad in 1916, there was no workmen's comp and he had no insurance, so Grandma was left a widow with two children still at home. However, she managed to raise the funds to buy a cemetery plot but had no money to buy a headstone. She found an attorney willing to sue the railroad and eventually did receive a settlement, out of which she bought a stone. It is a large standing stone, of the style very popular in the 
early 20th century, and on it, she had engraved, 'Maximilian Weismiller, 1863-1916' and below that, 'Nellie, His Wife, 1876-...'

In 1973, after 57 years of widowhood, she was killed in a house fire.  We laid her to rest in that plot she bought in 1916, and had '1973' engraved on the stone. She had had a small limestone marker placed under the headstone, over Grandpa's grave that said 'Father' (she always called him 'Papa'), which has weathered and broken in the ensuing years. I would like to have a new one made for him, and a matching 'Mother' to put over her final resting place.

Next to them in the front row of the plot are buried their daughter, my Aunt Eva, who died in 1941, and her husband, my Uncle, Leo Orr, who died in 1985 after 44 years of widowerhood.

In the rear row of the plot, beginning on the left, are buried my Uncle Roy, a veteran of the First World War, who died in 1945, and my Father, Perry, a veteran of the Second World War, who died in 1952. They are buried under US Veterans' Administration headstones of post-WWII vintage showing name, rank, the branch of service, and dates of birth and death. 

There is an oddity about the two stones, however. Two blood brothers of the same parents are buried beneath stones that spell their shared surname differently! Why? Well, the story I was told was that when Uncle Roy was drafted in 1917, the Army paymaster misspelt his name. He considered trying to get it corrected, but he was afraid that his pay might be interrupted whilst the paperwork was being processed, so he just left it 'Wisemiller', instead of 'Weismiller'. It was that spelling that he used for the rest of his life and the spelling that his son, Max, and his children use to this day.

Next to them, my Uncle Glen is buried. He never married or left home and was killed in the same fire that killed my Grandmother. He died outright in the fire, whilst Grandma survived for three days.

The last plot? I have no idea who is buried there. During the Great Depression a family, travelling and looking for work stopped in Marysville. Whilst they were there, one of their children died of diphtheria. They had no money to bury the child, so my Father offered them the grave site in the corner of the family plot. There was no money for a headstone or marker of any sort, so 'til this day, all I know is that there is a child, unrelated to us, buried there.

(They misspelt the surname of all of his survivors, copying the error the Army paymaster made!)

For the last 20 years of her life, when we decorated the graves for Memorial Day (or 'Decoration Day' as Grandma called it until she died), she would point at Grandpa's headstone and say next year, I'll be there by Papa'. Ironically, the first person buried in the plot was Grandpa, and the last person to be interred there was Grandma, who had bought the plot 57 years before.