Watch lost in WWI to be returned to family today
Published: June 5, 2007
The phone call came out of the blue, delivering news about a period of his grandfather’s life that William Gill knew little about.
A watch Gill didn’t even know existed was sitting in Iowa. Engraved on the back of the watch that had changed hands in a World War I poker game somewhere near battlefields in France: W.B. Gill, Sioux City, IA, U.S.A.
For much of the past year, genealogists had searched for Gill’s family, determined to return the watch to the nearest relative.
William Gill, named after his grandfather, the man who owned the watch until sometime in 1918, was stunned to hear what his brother, Lloyd, had to say after beginning with “Bud, you’re not going to believe I just had the strangest phone call.”
“It brought a flood of emotions. Obviously, I was named for my grandfather and there was so much I didn’t know about him,” said William Gill, who lives in Keizer, Ore.
On Wednesday, William and Lloyd Gill will receive their grandfather’s watch during a 3 p.m. ceremony at American Legion Post 1981, 3901 Floyd Blvd. The elder William Gill died when Lloyd was about 14 and grandson William 10 or 11. Neither of the grandsons knew about the watch, and their grandfather, who was in poor health in the final years of his life, didn’t share stories about trench warfare.
“The only thing I ever got out of him was war is hell,” said Lloyd Gill Jr., a security officer in Springfield, Mo.
For years, another World War I veteran who spoke little of the horrors he had seen held onto the watch, but didn’t know if William Gill had survived the mustard gas attacks that killed all but 20 men in a company. The watch sat in an ivory cup on top of Carl Grothaus’ dresser in Bemis, S.D.
How he acquired it was one of the few war stories he shared with his inquisitive boys.
“It was part of the pot in a poker game,” son Dewey Grothaus said, laughing that he had never seen his father gamble or even play cards. “That part he would talk about. I don’t know if he knew Gill or if he served with him.”
“He did try to look the guy up” after returning from the war, Grothaus said. During a trip to sell cattle at the Sioux City Stockyards, Carl Grothaus asked around about W.B. Gill, but found nothing. The watch returned to his dresser, where it sat until he died in 1991.
Dewey Grothaus, who lives in Spirit Lake, Iowa, took possession of the watch and some of his father’s other war-related items. He made a brief, unsuccessful attempt to locate Gill’s relatives at the time, then let it go.
But about a year ago, the watch came up in conversation while Grothaus drank coffee with friends. He passed the watch on to an acquaintance who said he knew several Gills in the Sioux City area. The watch wound up with Joe Gill in Jackson, Neb.
“I had a William who was an uncle,” Gill said. “It wasn’t him.”
Gill contacted Robert Mahon, past commander of American Legion Post 1981 in Sioux City, to see if Mahon could find information about W.B. Gill through veterans organizations.
Mahon’s searches were unsuccessful, so he contacted Peggy Powell, a genealogist from Climbing Hill, Iowa. With the help of fellow genealogist Connie Swearingen, Powell began to track down William Gill’s family. She found out why no one could locate his relatives in the Sioux City area.
“These Gills are not related to any of the Gills around here,” Powell said. “It took me a while to sort him out.”
Using census records, old city directories and a WWI draft registration, Powell found that William Gill, a bookkeeper at the Armour & Co. meatpacking plant, had moved to Sioux City from Chicago with his father around 1909. Powell’s research led her to Helen Gill, the widow of William Gill’s half-brother, Ivan. Helen Gill told Powell she thought William had moved to Omaha.
In Omaha, Powell found burial records for a William Gill, but was unable to find a birth date to confirm he was the same William Gill from Sioux City. Newspaper obituaries were no help. Finally, Powell searched death records for William Gill and his wife, Marguerite. A death record gave her the date she was looking for: Jan. 19, 1894 — William Gill’s birth date.
Powell called Lloyd Gill Jr. in April.
“She started explaining to me that my grandfather’s watch had been found,” Gill said, recalling the conversation. “I can’t believe it’s been 80, 90 years and it turns up.”
After speaking with Powell, Lloyd called his brother.
“I was just shocked,” William Gill said.
Lloyd told his brother he should have the watch because he shares their grandfather’s name. Pausing to regain his composure during a telephone interview, William Gill said, “It’s been a tremendous emotional experience. I don’t know if I can describe it.”
A police sergeant in Hubbard, Ore., Gill said he plans to display the watch and eventually pass it down to his son Matthew. Gill said it will be hard to control his emotions Wednesday, when he sees the watch and has a chance to thank the strangers who dedicated so much time searching for its owner.
“I see it as an opportunity to honor my grandfather and renew that connection and honor those people who brought this about,” he said. “When you’re involved in law enforcement, you tend to become cynical, and every now and then something like this happens to renew your faith in people.”
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