The Stubborn Wife

Franciska Kehle was born on 25 May 1826 in Bonndorf, Baden, the daughter of Johannes Kehle and Katharina Weckerle. In 1850 Dr. Conrad Kiefer escorted her to Detroit, and on 21 July 1850 she married his son. In America she became Frances.

They began in a house at Hastings and Congress, then moved to the corner of Library and Gratiot, and finally to a house at 89 Forest Avenue East with a tower inscribed So ist's halt jetzt — "That's just how it is now."

The family remembered her as the steady one. When the doctor was in a temper, she would say: "The old bear is in his den, growling." She baked Christmas stollen, and every 25 May her birthday was celebrated with a May bowl.

In 1883 the doctor wanted to sell the Library and Gratiot property. Frances refused to sign the deed.

"Tell him you have a stubborn wife!"

The family kept the land. Between 1910 and 1912 they put up the Kiefer Building on it, leased to the Crowley Milner department store. By 1951, Edgar wrote, it had earned the family more than two million dollars in rent.

Frances died on 6 August 1909, the mother of nine children, six of them living.