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JANUARY 7, 1919—THE CINCINNATI TIMES-ST[[...]]
[HARDSHIPS OF PIONEERS WERE LOT OF MOTHER OF DUVENECK]
Little In the Eary Life of Great Artist That Tended to Develop the Talent Which Won For Him Recognition as America's Greatest Painter.]

  Many years ago in Vizbeck, a little town in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, was born a girl whose name was Elizabeth Siemer. This girl was destined to become the mother of one of America's great artists, Frank Duveneck. Not long after this child was born a little band of people, including the Seimer family, emigrated to American, forced from their native land by the impoverished condition of their country. This, Mr. Diveneck once told me, was before they had discovered the method of fertilization, which had so improved the condition of that country.

This sturdy and determined little band worked its way across the country to Pittsburgh and from there came to Cincinnati by way of the Ohio river. But they stayed here only a short time, joining a company being formed by Judge Stallo to push on to a settlement farther inland. This settlement was called Stallotown, but later changed to minster or Munster.

The Siemer family obtained a farm which they cleared and cultivated. There were four children—a girl of sixteen; Elizabeth, eleven, and two younger children. After the birth of the fifth child the mother died, leaving the older girl, as Mr. Duveneck said, "to mother and manage this young baby and their  humble home."

Soon after the death of their mother the father was killed in the distant woods by being thrown from his wagon. The elder girl, determining to come to Cincinnati, put her little family and a few belongings into a spring wagon and drove overland until her destination was reached. Here she settled. Eleven-yea-old Elizabeth found kind people who took her into their home. This family was none other than that of Beard, the portrait painter, James Beard, a great personage in Cincinnati in those days.

Elizabeth Siemer married a young man who was also an immigrant from Europe, a Hollander by the name of Frank Decker, and to them a boy
[[image - caption: PORTRAIT OF DUVENECK'S MORTHER, PAINTED BY THE ARTIST]]
was born; this boy was Frank Decker, later to be known as Frank Duveneck. A year after the birth of the son the father died.

A number of years later Elizabeth Siemer Decker married Squire Duveneck of Covington and bore other children. Three are now living, John and Charlie Deveneck and Miss Mollie, who was the constant companion of their elder brother, Frank.

Mr. Duveneck once said that his earliest artistic efforts were in making careful impressions of the neighbor's polished door plates with clay he dug from the banks of the Lucking. Later he became interested in art and