Gierse Family

This family came to the archive's attention through the research behind the article "An 1892 Souvenir, Two Tailors, and the Mystery of the Missing R." Charles Gierse (1883-1974) was born in Farmington, Missouri, and learned the tailoring trade there before marrying Louise M. Schwaner (1883-1974) of Fredericktown on May 15, 1907. The couple moved to Poplar Bluff on April 1, 1914, where Charles opened a cleaning and dyeing establishment at 410 Vine Street. His early advertising carried the slogan "The Name With the R," a pointed way of distinguishing his business from that of Charles William Giese, a merchant tailor with a nearly identical surname operating at 208 South Main Street. In 1918 a fire damaged the cleaning works in the Frank Building; the business recovered and continued for decades. In 1924 the family moved into a newly built home at 1118 North Main Street, the address written inside the museum-held copy of Walter H. Kennedy's 1892 photographic souvenir of Poplar Bluff. Daughters Frances D. Gierse Bell and Elizabeth L. "Betty" Gierse Frain grew up in that house. Charles sold the cleaning business in 1945 and retired in 1963; he died in Poplar Bluff on August 5, 1974, at the age of ninety.