The Asher Getchell Family

The Getchell family had their share of sorrows in their time at Silver City and four family members are laid to rest in this cemetery. Brothers Asher and Merserve grew up in Maine, the great-great grandsons of a Revolutionary War hero. They headed to Silver City in 1889 to work for their uncle, Mr. STN Smith. Both started as clerks, and later Meserve was the town’s postmaster and older brother Asher was the town’s pharmacist. 

Asher Aurthur Getchell married Silver City resident Selma Adaline Brunzell in 1901. They had twin infant girls, Arline Smith and Zelma Elizabeth in 1902. Sadly, Arline died suddenly at age two months and Zelma passed nine months later.

Zelma’s obituary states she was “delicate from birth and the flame of life was only kept alive in the frail little body as long as it was through the nursing of a devoted mother, father, and grandmother. About seven weeks before her death, she was afflicted with dropsy, an accumulation of fluids in the body, and efforts to save her were futile. The obituary says that “with one tiny hand tightly clasped about her mother’s wrist and with one tiny finger pointing upward, her spirit returned to Him who gave it, and she was at rest.”

Asher and Selma later had a son, Asher Frederick, in 1904 and the family moved by 1930 to Twin Falls, where he was a pharmacist for many years. Asher lived to be 85, dying in 1959 and is buried in Seattle near his brother and parents.