Centennial Souvenir Program, 1954
    Families of O'Fallon: Louis F. Fischer

     Louis F. Fischer came to O'Fallon in 1869. He was born in Groessen Schoenen near Hanover in Germany in 1839. His father was a botanist and his grandfather a doctor. He received a good education and was conversant in four languages. He came to this country shortly before the Civil War and lived near Turkey Hill with an uncle by the name of Fiedler. He enlisted very early in the Civil War in the 9th Illinois Regiment. He served under Sherman and took part in the battle of Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and other engagements in the west. He had attained the rank of Lieutenant when he was discharged at the end of the war. He then got a job working in the Planters Hotel in St. Louis. One of his Civil War friends from southeast Missouri persuaded him to take a job in a grocery store. While in Bloomfield, Missouri, he married in 1867 Miss Laura Owen, daughter of Judge R. P. Owen. The climate in southeast Missouri caused Mr. Fischer to suffer with malaria, so he and his bride settled in St. Louis and he returned to work at the Planters Hotel. There a friend from O'Fallon, Mr. Ernst Tiedemann, induced him to come to O'Fallon and work in his grocery store. Mr. Fischer worked in the Tiedemann store until 1884, at which time he accepted the position of Secretary of the Charles Tiedemann Milling Co., which he continued to hold until his retirement in 1914. Mr. Fischer's wife, Laura, died in 1872 leaving two small children, Charles Owen and Louise Mary Fischer. In November 1873, he married Miss Josephine Engelmann of Shiloh Valley and two children were born to this union, Louis E. and Marianna Fischer.