Monroe Co., Wisconsin OBIT:  Wilhelmine Gerke 

SUBJECT: Wilhelmine GERKE Obituary
SUBMITTER: Dwight GRABITSKE 
EMAIL: ddgrab@frontiernet.net
DATE: Apr 14, 1999
SURNAMES: GERKE, KORTBEIN. ZELLMER 
Unidentified newspaper)

July 1912

Mrs August GERKE 

In the midst of the hustle and bustle which accompanies the preparation
for our readers of the local and general news of the week, we pause for
a few moments to note the death of Mrs August GERKE, Sr., and to make
mention of her better qualties and to pay a brief tribute to her memory.
Her death was the last chapter in the life of a good mother. It came after
more than sixty-five years of life, sixty of which were spent in Wisconsin.
And in the early part of those years it took women with nerves of steel
and hearts of iron to live in Wisconsin. There was no need for the weakling
or the sickly woman or the homesick one or the one who sought alone comforts
and luxuries.

From the time she was twenty-two years old and married, her life was given
to her husband and to the bearing of his children. With him she shared
the terrible hardships of Wisconsin winters. With him she worked at clearing
the Ridgeville wilderness; for him she cooked, washed and sewed; and to
him she brought nothing but words of cheer, words of encouragement and
his children, of which they may well be proud and of whom they were proud
and to whom their lives were devoted.

Death, the greatest tragedy of life, came to her at a most auspicious time.
Had it come sooner, there might have been things she would have wished
to do; had it come later it might be that she would have grown too old
to enjoy life. As it was, she died when her work was done and before life
itself had become a burden. The duty that God had put her upon earth to
perform was completed. Her children were grown and married and she was
ready to pass to her Maker and receive the reward which she so richly merited
and in which she so firmly believed. Her life is typical one of a good
woman.

The maiden name of the deceased was Wilhelmina ZELLMER and she was born
February 7, 1849, in Posen Germany. At the age of five years she came to
Watertown, WI, with her parents and two years later they moved to the
Ridgeville country and settled on a farm. At the age of about twenty-two,
on February 22, 1871, she married August GERKE, who survives her, and went
to live upon the farm adjoining her parents and they lived there until
she died. She bore her husband eight children, of whom two died in infancy.
She died from the effects of an operation for cancer which she underwent
on June 18th last at the Lutheran hospital in LaCrosse. Her death occured
on thursday morning July 25 after a long, stubborn fight with the dread
malady.
She is survived by her husband, August GERKE, and her children, Carl GERKE,
August GERKE, Mrs Albert KORTBEIN, Gustave GERKE and Leopold GERKE, all
of Monroe County, and Adolph GERKE of Warner, Canada. A sister, Miss Louisa
ZELLMER and a brother Fred ZELLMER also of the town of Ridgeville and a
brother Chris ZELLMER, of Fessenden, N.D., are also still here to grieve
for her. The funeral occurred from St John’s Lutheran church in the town
of Ridgeville at one o’clock in the afternoon of July 29, and services
were in charge of Reverend A. Stock. The attendance was one of the greatest
within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. The interment was in the Lutheran
cemetery on the ridge. May her life be an example as well as an inpiration
for her daughters and her daughters-in-law and for all women for she was
possessed of the greatest and most essential of [remainder missing]
[Ed. note: obituary for Mrs GERKE was provided by her grandson, Donald
L GERKE]
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