Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Totler, Louie 1924
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Marilyn Ransom mransom311@gmail.com August 25, 2014, 1:44 pm

The Ionia Daily Sentinel-Standard, Tuesday, June 10, 1924


The body of Louis Totler, friendless and partially demented Austrian who blew 
his head off with a shotgun on the John Basset farm in north Plains Sunday, lay 
in the Lowery & Boynton morgue Monday awaiting final preparations for burial.  
All efforts to locate acquaintances or relatives of the man had failed and the 
body was buried late Monday, Rev. Kruse offering prayer, in an Ionia cemetery.

Totler, who had worked at several places in that section of the county, was 
known as a queer man and he had on one occasion at least, spent a night in the 
Ionia jail when he had no other place to go.  He appeared to be unable to 
continue long on one job and moved from place to place to keep himself clothed 
and fed, but evidently found the problem too difficult and chose a quick and 
certain way of solving it.

“Luys Totler” is the name given the man who committed suicide by shooting some 
time Saturday after John Bassett, for whom he worked since last fall, left home 
for Ionia.  When the man failed to appear for supper that night nothing 
particular was thought of it for the reason that doing so was one of his 
idiosyncrasies, as is stated by the Westbrook brothers and others for whom he 
worked.  He also refused to shave, and showed other signs of an unsound mind.  
He was an Austrian, and claimed to have been in the army of that county during 
the World war.  An ugly scar….(portion illegible)….  He had said that his 
father was killed in a saloon in his native county.  The gun he used to take 
his life belonged to Mr. Bassett, and was not missed from its place in the 
house until some time Sunday.  The affair naturally created great excitement in 
that usually quiet neighborhood, unaccustomed to sensations in late years, and 
as for the Bassett family, they are considering themselves fortunate that 
nothing more serious took place in the home during the time the man was with 
them.  While at the Westbrooks he carved his name, “Luys Totler” on a barn 
door, which is almost the only clue to his identity.


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