William and Maria had seven children: Maria Emily, Henry William, Albertina Hedwig, Ernest Herman, Frederick Charles Emma Julia and Frida Alice. Emma Julia died in October 1883, soon after their arrival in Paris. The youngest child, Frida Alice, was born September 26, 1884, about two months after her father’s death in July. Here was my grandmother—a widow in a new country with a different language with five children to raise and another on the way.

My father in writing of his mother said that she did whatever she could to make ends meet, and with some help from the people she was able to keep them all together until the oldest girl, Emily, got married. Later his sister Hedwig went to Salt Lake City to stay with her. This left just the three boys at home, as Frida Alice had died at the age of five from scarlet fever.

The Paris Second Ward in which they lived paid for the children’s tuition to the school. Grandmother also attended school to learn English. As I mentioned before Frederick Charles went to Germany on a mission. Financing a mission must have been a real challenge. There is a postcard from Germany saying, “I forgot to tell you in the letter about having to have some money…I hate to keep having to write for money in every letter…If I could write a letter and not have to ask for money every time…”

Two of Maria’s boys were married on the same day—Frederick Charles to Lillian Hurst and Ernest Herman to Rhoda Wallentine. Grandmother went to the Temple in Salt Lake with them and obtained her endowments the same day, June 12, 1908. She was also sealed to her husband that same day with Ernest Herman acting as proxy for his father.

Daughter Emily’s husband, Julius Billeter, was a professional genealogist working with and living in Switzerland, and many names were submitted in grandmother’s name for ordinance work to be done for hers and her husband’s ancestors. Many names of friends were also submitted to the Salt Lake Temple for their work to be done. This was many years before there was a temple in Switzerland, and the people were unable to do the work themselves. Grandmother went to the temple in Salt Lake a number of times to do ordinance work and to have some of her children sealed to her and William. In October 1921 she came to Pocatello on the train then she and my father went to Salt Lake, also on the train; at this time my father was sealed to his parents.

I was nine years old when grandmother died. I was never in her home in Paris, but I do remember occasional visits she made to Pocatello. My sister Lola recalls that one time when grandmother was visiting in Pocatello she went to town and had brought home a sack of butterscotch wafers, for dad; she had to get some candy “for my baby.” Another time she sent some cookies in a sack and some bottles of home made root beer on a train from Montpelier to Pocatello and both arrived in good condition.

Maria Kienzli Wilker died January 24, 1930, in Paris, Bear Lake County, Idaho at the age of eighty-eight. She is buried in the Paris cemetery.