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Surnames: Zoller, Sultana
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/UNYBAEB/83
Message Board Post:
George Anthony Zoller and his wife Maria Gehr Zoller were natives of Germany, who came to
America after the unsuccessful German revolution in 1848. He was highly educated in his
native tongue having attended the University of Heidelberg. They were living in Clermount
County, Ohio, on January 21, 1855, when their son, John W. Zoller was born.
Soon after the family moved to Berry, KY where John and his two sisters, Mariah Elizabeth
(b. 1859) and Rose Ann (b. 1861) were raised. At the age of 17, John established the
"Kentucky Free Press" a newspaper that was published in Berry from 1872 to 1873.
On November 26, 1874, he moved to Robertson county (Mount Olivet) KY and with Thomas L.
Greene began publication of the "Kentucky State Tribune".
George Anthony Zoller volunteered in the Civil war and served in the Union army. He was
enrolled for three years October 9, 1861, and was mustered in the Company B, 6th Kentucky
Cavalry on January 9, 1864, at Rossville, Georgia. He served as Commissary Sergeant and
during the last year of the war he was captured and held at the Cahaba prison camp in
Alabama. On April 27, 1865, the Sultana Steamship carrying over 2000 passengers,
including paroled Union soldiers recently freed from the Confederate prison camps of
Cahaba and Andersonville, exploded on the Mississippi River seven miles from Memphis,
Tennessee. The explosion was the worst maritime disaster in history. George Anthony
Zoller perished and his body was never recovered. A memorial in his honor was erected in
September, 2004, next to his widow, Maria Gehr Zoller Knight, in Battle Grove Cemetary,
Cynthiana, Kentucky.