Lillian Helen Smrz
Lillian Helen Smrz was born on 4 October 1904 at Eastman, in Crawford County, Wisconsin. Her parents were Frank James Smrz and his wife Mary. Both came from Bohemian families. Her grandparents Vaclav and Marie Smrz had left Bohemia for Chicago in the late 1870s and moved to Eastman in 1897.
She was one of eleven children. Her sisters were Rose, Mary, Alice and Anna, and her brothers were Lawrence, Charles, George, Joseph, Frank and James. Her brother Frank was born at Eastman in 1902, two years before her.
In the spring of 1910, when Lillian was five, the family left Wisconsin for northern Montana. Her father took up a homestead nine miles north of Hingham, in what became Hill County, and her grandfather filed on the claim beside it. Her brother Charles was born at Hingham in 1911, and George and Joseph were born in Montana too. Her father farmed and carried the mail there.
In 1918 the family moved to Seattle. Her father went to work for the post office, first at the terminal annex and then at the main post office. Lillian was thirteen or fourteen when they arrived, and she spent the rest of her life in and around the city.
On 22 June 1927 she married Wilbur Zenas Bolton in King County. He was a Yakima County ranch boy, born at Wenas in 1902. Their wedding portrait shows her in a pale dress with a lace bodice, her dark hair waved, holding a bouquet.
Their son Gordon Wilbur Bolton was born on 18 April 1928 at Renton. Their daughter Lois Theresa Bolton followed on 25 July 1929. In 1930 the young family lived in Seattle, and Lillian's younger sister Anna, then about twenty, lived with them. They were still in Seattle in 1940 and in 1950, when Gordon was a young man living at home.
Her father died in 1955 and his obituary named her as Mrs. Lillian Bolton of Seattle. Her mother died in 1961 and was named in her own obituary as the mother of Mrs. Wilbur Bolton.
Wilbur died in Seattle on 11 December 1976. Lillian lived thirteen more years. She died in King County on 26 September 1989, aged 84. She is buried beside Wilbur at Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park in Seattle, under a shared stone that reads LILLIAN 1904 1989.
Sources
If Lillian Helen Smrz is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Lillian Helen Smrz (1904-1989)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lillian-helen-smrz-1904-1989-9d6d4b.