Lizzie Templet Schmitt

100 years after she died, there’s still a marker for Lizzie.

I went to Gibson today to spruce up my grandparents’ graves. While there, I walked the small cemetery to see if I could find Lizzie Schmitt/Schmidt’s grave.

Lizzie was the baby sister of my granny’s great grandmother, Anaise Templet Giroir. After her mother died when she was just a baby, she rotated among the relatives before marrying and settling in Gibson. It took me a bit to prove she was Anaise’s sister. My guess is their mother died in childbirth having Lizzie and the family didn’t get around to baptizing Lizzie.

I’d never seen her grave in the Gibson cemetery, but an old catalog of the graves showed markers for her, her husband and at least some of their children.

Using the mention of the graves being in their own enclosure as a guide, I studied the cemetery and soon came across a row of graves squared off by a low border of bricks. None of the graves were readable, which would be why I didn’t remember coming across Lizzie.

I went down the little line of markers and noticed one had a nameplate. It read Mrs. Jos. Schmitt. That would be Lizzie. I’d probably seen it before I knew her married name and it hadn’t registered.