Grave Tales: Meet Dr. Francis Marstiller, Doctor and Developer

When I shot this photo of Dr. Francis Marstiller’s tomb in West Side Cemetery, I had no idea that I had visited his house almost 10 years ago.

The red brick home on the northwest corner of State and Fourth streets where Dr. Marstiller lived and practiced medicine for 53 years held the Geneva office of Kettley Realtors when my family and I were house-hunting in Geneva in 2001. It now serves as an insurance office.

 That house saw its share of wheeling, dealing and a hint of scandal between 1895, when the new medical school graduate moved to Geneva with his parents, and his death Dec. 6, 1948.

After a few years spent building his medical practice, Dr. Marstiller dove head-first into civic affairs. He became mayor of Geneva in 1905, stepped down in 1907, then won re-election in 1911 and served until 1913.

In 1907 he co-founded the Geneva Building and Loan Association, which raised money to build small homes for factory workers to lure companies to locate in the city. He was the association president for 26 years, according to obituaries provided by the Geneva History Center.

Though he lost his bid to become Kane County coroner in 1908, Dr. Marstiller did serve as Geneva Township supervisor from 1922 until his death. As the first president of the new Kane County Forest Preserve District, he arranged for the county to buy the estate of Col. George and Nelle Fabyan and maintain it as a public attraction.

Some longtime residents still recall seeing Dr. Marstiller leading Geneva’s as grand marshal, which he did for 49 straight years.

“He was a very handsome and distinguished gentleman,” said history center volunteer Mary Jaeger, who was 13 when Dr. Marstiller died at age 82. “I remember him as being one of the few men I saw who wore a stiff, detachable collar.”

Though she wasn’t one of Dr. Marstiller’s patients, Jaeger said she heard stories as a child about the medications he dispensed. “He treated everything with either a red pill, a yellow pill or a blue pill. People would ask each other after they’d been sick which color pill he’d given them,” she related.

Dr. Marstiller’s first wife, Ada May Fields, divorced him in 1912 after 13 years of marriage. The next year he married his housekeeper, Nettie Langs, who lies in the lower half of their two-person crypt.

“It was very unusual for people to get divorced back then, but I never heard anyone say anything bad about him because of it,” Jaeger remarked.