Nine Children

Herman and Frances Kiefer had nine children, and their names tell you what the parents believed in.

Emila Anna died at five months. Alfred Kossuth was named for the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth. Richard Faust and Arthur Egmont carried names from Goethe. Oscar Hutton followed. Edwin Hans was named for Hans Christian Andersen. Then came Edgar Siegfried, Hermina Cora, and the youngest, Guy Lincoln — born in 1867, two years after the president's death.

Three of them — Emila, Richard and Oscar — died in childhood and were buried at Elmwood Cemetery.

The six who grew up went in six different directions: a mining engineer who fought eleven duels, a mechanical engineer who kept the family papers, a painter who won a prize in Paris, a tanner who built the largest pigskin business in the world, a daughter who married her father's successor, and a doctor who gave a hospital his father's name.

Their descendants are the family this site is trying to bring back together.