Historic Fisher House in Weiser

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James was a good provider and saw that all his daughters received college educations, four of them graduating from the U of I.  We have one of the steamer trunks that accompanied them on the train to school and back each year.  When he died in 1935, his wake was held in the front room!  His wife survived him by 25 years, passing in 1961, with both of them having lived to the same ripe old age.  Roberta, the oldest surviving daughter, had married late in the 1920’s and moved to Pocatello, where they had a daughter.  She soon divorced and moved back with Jean to the family home, where she became a much beloved schoolteacher and librarian in the Weiser School District.  In 1957, Jean married Bill Marshall at the Weiser Presbyterian Church and made their home in Oregon.

From 1961 through her retirement, Roberta lived alone until she sold the house and moved to Oregon in 1974 to be closer to her daughter.  In fact, all her sisters eventually married and moved away.  However, they always returned home through the years, with Roberta and Chris returning frequently during the early years of our ownership.  We were blessed to have experienced relationships with the Fisher women, Roberta (“Bert” to her family), Chris, Willie, and Bea.  Sadly, Mary passed away in 1982 before we could meet her, but her children have given us a good idea of what she must have been like.

At the time we decided to move to Weiser in 1981, we told our realtor, Louise Tarter, we wanted an original, unaltered house and that’s exactly what she brought us.  It’s the only house we looked at when we came to Weiser that February.  The Merrill’s were in their third year of ownership, having bought the house from Delbert and Carolyn Petty, who had purchased it from Roberta in 1974.  By then, the back acreage had been sold off, leaving just the acre on which the house sat and the acre to our east.  When we moved in during Fiddle Week 1981, 6^th Street dead ended at the recently built apartments directly behind us.  The original barn was gone but the Leighton barn remained.  The original, solid concrete-walled, one car garage was still standing, though listing more than the Titanic!  With no practical way to resurrect it, a little nudge created a pile of rubble which we stacked into low landscape walls that remain around the yard.  Though long gone, we’ve often laughed as we’ve recalled the story Roberta and Chris told of how every time they’d pull their 1916 Buick touring car through those narrow swinging doors, they’d “knock off a piece of brass”!

Also present in the house at our purchase were most original light fixtures, wallpaper in three bedrooms, varnished woodwork, and even some wool carpeting dating to James’s last years!  This was due perhaps to Petty’s children being already raised by their family’s ownership.  While Merrill’s seven children certainly left their marks, their ownership was so short that the house survived pretty much intact.  The house was always a single-family home and by 1986, we’d already become the second longest owners.  Sadly, the end of the century would also bring an end to most of the mature trees in our front yard, grown from mail order nurseries in Chicago when the house was built.

We’ve strived to honor the legacy bestowed on us by good fortune and the original family.  We replaced the garage with a building sympathetic to the style of the home.  The original footprint and fabric of our home remains, which was a real challenge in a kitchen with five doors, two windows, a chimney stack, and no uninterrupted wall!  The litmus test for all modifications is “would it still be recognizable and feel like home to the Fishers”?  That family has blessed us with some original artifacts, including the rocker on which Wilhelmina nursed all seven of her children.  Perhaps most treasured by us is how they’ve welcomed us into their family, sharing stories and memories which remain with us long after many have passed.  Besides many photos, we have a copy of a video oral history done here at the house during the centennial reunion in 2008. We stay in touch with the Fishers, having spoken by phone recently with Jean who turned 90 last year and whom we’ll be visiting in the coming months.  We also received separate visits from descendants last year, one of them flying in on a private plane.  I took a video of them buzzing over us when they flew home to Washington.  Our story, their story, continues as does our work and woeful maintenance on their home. We’ve put on two roofs and masonry has been repointed, though painting, updating plumbing and electrical is ongoing!   

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From Tony Edmonson