George Philip Gein (1873–1940) was the father of Ed Gein, the Wisconsin murderer whose crimes shocked America in 1957. A carpenter, tanner, and farmer, George died of heart failure at 66, seventeen years before his son’s arrest. No credible source has ever published a net worth estimate for him.
Quick Facts: George Philip Gein
| Detail | Fact |
|---|---|
| Full name | George Philip Gein |
| Born | August 4, 1873 |
| Birthplace | Bergen, Vernon County, Wisconsin, USA (some records say Coon Valley) |
| Died | April 1, 1940, aged 66 |
| Place of death | Wisconsin, USA (records differ: Plainfield, Madison, or Lane) |
| Cause of death | Heart failure |
| Resting place | Plainfield Cemetery, Plainfield, Wisconsin |
| Spouse | Augusta Wilhelmine Lehrke (married December 11, 1900) |
| Children | Henry George Gein; Edward Theodore “Ed” Gein |
| Occupations | Carpenter, tanner, fireman, grocery store owner, farmer |
| Net worth | No verified estimate exists |
| Known for | Father of Ed Gein |
Who Was George Philip Gein?
George Philip Gein was a working-class Wisconsin tradesman and farmer best known as the father of Ed Gein. Born in 1873 to German-American parents, he worked as a carpenter, tanner, and grocery store owner before moving his family to a 155-acre farm near Plainfield. He died in 1940, long before his son became infamous.
You’ve probably never heard his name on its own, and that’s exactly the point. George wasn’t famous, wealthy, or powerful. He was an ordinary working man whose name survived history for the worst possible reason: his younger son grew up to become one of America’s most notorious criminals.
Unlike his wife Augusta, who dominates every retelling of the Gein family story, George is barely a footnote in most accounts. People magazine’s 2025 profile of him runs under 900 words. His IMDb biography is about 50 words long. This article pulls together everything the records actually confirm about him, and stays honest about what they don’t.
Early Life & Background
George Philip Gein was born on August 4, 1873, in Vernon County, Wisconsin. That date is one of the few facts every genealogical source agrees on. WikiTree, Ancestry, and IMDb all list August 4, 1873, which makes it about as solid as a 150-year-old birth record gets.
His exact birthplace is less certain. WikiTree and IMDb place his birth in Bergen, Vernon County, while Ancestry’s records point to nearby Coon Valley, also in Vernon County. Both are small Wisconsin communities a few miles apart, and 19th-century rural records weren’t always precise. Either way, he was a Wisconsin native through and through.
His parents’ identities are genuinely disputed, so treat anything you read about them with caution. Some genealogical profiles name his father as John Gee and his mother as Maria Catherina Dingeldein. Ancestry’s records instead name Leonhart Dingeldein and Amelia Hermann. The sources flat-out disagree, which means his parentage should be considered unconfirmed until better records surface.
What is consistent across sources is his German-American heritage. His family came from German immigrant stock, like so many Wisconsin farming families of that era. An 1880 census record cited by WikiTree shows a young George living in Bergen, Wisconsin, confirming his deep roots in the state’s rural German-American community. Nothing is documented about his formal education, and no reliable source describes his height, weight, or appearance.
What Did George Philip Gein Do for a Living?
George held a string of working-class jobs in La Crosse, Wisconsin, including carpenter, tannery laborer, fireman, and insurance salesman, according to People and The Tab. He later ran a small grocery store, sold it, and moved his family to a 155-acre farm outside Plainfield, where he farmed for the rest of his life.
His working life tells the story of a man who kept hustling but never quite got ahead. People magazine, citing the New Zealand Herald, lists him as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman, and notes he struggled to hold down steady work. The Tab adds firefighter to that list. A biographical account of Ed Gein’s childhood records that George also served in the La Crosse city fire department and owned a local grocery shop before selling it.
One biography site, StoryofCeleb, dug deeper into city directories and census records and reports more specific details: a stint as a railroad section hand, tannery labor work, a fireman position with the La Crosse Gas Company, and a listing as a retail grocery dealer in the 1910 census. That same research reports the family bought their 155-acre Plainfield farm around 1914 for about $3,500. These finer details come from a single secondary source, so take the exact figures as reported rather than fully verified, but the overall picture is consistent: George was a hands-on tradesman who eventually bet everything on farming.
The move to Plainfield defined his final chapter. The 155-acre farm became the family’s permanent home, the isolated property where Augusta kept the boys cut off from the outside world, and eventually the site of Ed’s horrors. George farmed that land until his death.
George Philip Gein: Life Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1873 | Born August 4 in Vernon County, Wisconsin (Bergen or Coon Valley) |
| 1900 | Marries Augusta Wilhelmine Lehrke on December 11 in Hamburg, Vernon County |
| ~1901 | Older son Henry George Gein is born |
| 1906 | Younger son Edward Theodore Gein is born August 27 in La Crosse |
| 1900s–1910s | Works as a carpenter, tanner, fireman, and grocery store owner in La Crosse |
| ~1914–1915 | Family moves to a 155-acre farm near Plainfield, Wisconsin |
| 1940 | Dies of heart failure on April 1, aged 66; buried in Plainfield Cemetery |
| 1944 | Son Henry dies; 1945: wife Augusta dies |
| 1957 | Ed Gein is arrested, 17 years after George’s death |
| 2025 | Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story premieres; Darin Cooper plays George |
What Was George Philip Gein’s Net Worth?
No credible publication has ever estimated George Philip Gein’s net worth. He died in 1940 as a working-class farmer and tradesman, decades before celebrity net-worth tracking existed. Any figure you see online claiming $500,000 or $1 million has no reliable basis, as StoryofCeleb’s research also concludes.
Let’s be straight about this, because net worth is the first thing most people search for and the easiest thing to get wrong. Forbes never profiled a Wisconsin farmer who died in 1940. No financial outlet has ever attached a number to George’s name. The $500,000 and $1 million figures floating around some corners of the internet are unsourced guesses, and at least one biography site has explicitly debunked them as having no reliable basis.
What we can document is how he earned his living:
| Income source | Details | Estimated value |
|---|---|---|
| Carpentry & tannery work | Skilled and manual trades in La Crosse, early 1900s | No verified figures |
| Fireman | La Crosse fire department / gas company | No verified figures |
| Grocery store | Small La Crosse store, later sold before the farm move | No verified figures |
| Farming | 155-acre working farm near Plainfield, mid-1910s to 1940 | No verified figures |
One reported detail, from StoryofCeleb’s local-records research, is that the Plainfield farm cost around $3,500 when purchased around 1914. That’s a purchase price from a single secondary source, not a net worth figure, and it shouldn’t be treated as one.
A quick disclaimer that applies to every celebrity finance article you’ll ever read: published net worth figures are always estimates, never audited facts. In George’s case, there isn’t even an estimate from a credible outlet, so the honest answer is that his net worth is unknown and unknowable.
Personal Life: Marriage, Children & Family
George married Augusta Wilhelmine Lehrke on December 11, 1900, in Hamburg, Vernon County, Wisconsin, according to WikiTree’s genealogical records. The marriage lasted nearly 40 years, ending only with his death in 1940.
Together they had two sons. Henry George Gein, the elder, was born around 1901. Edward Theodore Gein, the younger, was born on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Both birth facts are confirmed across WikiTree, biographical accounts of Ed’s childhood, and entertainment outlets.
By every historical account, it was a miserable marriage. Augusta was a fervently religious Lutheran who preached to her sons about the evils of drinking and the sinfulness of the outside world, according to biographical accounts and People magazine. She despised alcohol. George, by multiple accounts, drank heavily. The Tab describes him as a violent alcoholic, while People, citing A&E’s Crime + Investigation, calls him an alleged alcoholic who left most of the parenting to Augusta.
The accounts of his behavior toward his sons are grim. People reports, citing EBSCO research, that George was physically and verbally abusive to Henry and Ed. The Tab quotes Ed himself saying his father would hit him so hard his ears would ring. These are historical and journalistic accounts, not court findings, and they deserve that qualifier. But the pattern across independent sources is consistent: a heavy-drinking father, a domineering religious mother, and two boys caught between them on an isolated farm.
How Did George Philip Gein Die?
George Philip Gein died of heart failure on April 1, 1940, at the age of 66, according to genealogical records, IMDb, and People. Multiple accounts link his heart failure to years of heavy drinking. He was buried in Plainfield Cemetery in Plainfield, Wisconsin. (A few local sources give April 4, but April 1 is the widely recorded date.)
The Tab and other biographical sources connect his fatal heart failure directly to chronic alcoholism, which fits everything reported about his final years. People magazine, citing Britannica, confirms heart failure as the cause of death. His burial in Plainfield Cemetery is documented by WikiTree and multiple biographical sources.
What followed his death reshaped the family completely. With George gone, Henry and Ed took on odd jobs to support themselves and their mother, according to People. Then Henry died in May 1944 under strange circumstances in a marsh fire on the property. People, citing USA Today, reports the official cause as asphyxiation, with no autopsy ever performed. Augusta suffered strokes and died on December 29, 1945, at age 67, according to People citing Biography. That left Ed utterly alone on the farm, twelve years before his arrest.
George Philip Gein in 2026: Latest News & Updates
The biggest recent development in George’s story isn’t about George at all. It’s about television. Netflix premiered Monster: The Ed Gein Story on October 3, 2025, the third season of Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology, with Charlie Hunnam playing Ed, according to CBR’s entertainment coverage.
Darin Cooper portrays George Philip Gein in the series, Wikipedia’s episode and cast listings confirm. But People reported in October 2025 that George appears in just one scene, in episode three, where Augusta orders him out of the house after he passes out drunk. The Tab’s coverage of the show describes the same single-scene appearance. For a man whose real influence on his son’s upbringing spanned decades, that’s a remarkably small footprint.
The series has driven a fresh wave of searches for every member of the Gein family through late 2025 and into 2026, which is likely why you’re reading about George right now. One caution: the show takes dramatic liberties. A Medium analysis of the series notes it fictionalizes elements like the circumstances of Henry’s death for dramatic effect. Treat the Netflix version as entertainment inspired by real people, not a documentary record.
As of 2026, no new verified biographical discoveries about George himself have surfaced. No lost letters, no new photographs with confirmed provenance, no death certificate published online. The historical record on him remains what it has been: thin, working-class, and pieced together from census data, city directories, and secondhand accounts.
The Angle Nobody Covers: The Father Who Never Knew
Here’s the detail that stops you cold once you do the math. George Philip Gein died on April 1, 1940. Ed Gein wasn’t arrested until November 1957. That’s seventeen years. George never knew what his son became. He never saw the headlines, the trial, or the house of horrors his farm turned into. He died believing whatever he believed about his strange, shy younger son, and the truth arrived nearly two decades too late for him to reckon with it.
There’s a strange imbalance in how history treats him because of it. Augusta gets whole chapters: the religious fanatic, the domineering mother, the woman Ed tried to resurrect. George gets a line: the drunk, the beater, the man who died early. Both may be true, but only one of them lived long enough to become a character in the story. George checked out before the story started.
He’s buried in Plainfield Cemetery in the same small Wisconsin town where it all happened, alongside the family whose name became shorthand for horror. A working man who fixed things with his hands, sold groceries, farmed 155 acres, drank too much, and died at 66 of a worn-out heart. History remembers him for exactly one reason, and it’s a reason he never lived to see.
Frequently Asked Questions About George Philip Gein
Who was George Philip Gein?
George Philip Gein (1873–1940) was a Wisconsin carpenter, tanner, and farmer, best known as the father of murderer Ed Gein. He married Augusta Lehrke in 1900, raised two sons, and died of heart failure at 66, seventeen years before his younger son’s crimes were discovered.
What did George Philip Gein do for a living?
According to People and The Tab, George worked as a carpenter, tannery laborer, fireman, and insurance salesman in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He later owned a small grocery store, sold it, and moved his family to a 155-acre farm near Plainfield, where he spent his final years farming.
How did George Philip Gein die?
George Philip Gein died of heart failure on April 1, 1940, at age 66, according to IMDb and genealogical records. Multiple accounts connect his heart failure to chronic alcoholism. A few local sources list April 4 instead, but April 1 is the date most records support.
Was George Philip Gein abusive to his sons?
Multiple accounts describe George as a heavy drinker who was physically and verbally abusive toward his sons Henry and Ed. People reports the abuse claims citing EBSCO, while The Tab quotes Ed saying his father hit him so hard his ears would ring. These are historical accounts, not court findings.
What was George Philip Gein’s net worth?
No credible outlet has ever published a net worth estimate for George Philip Gein. He was a working-class farmer and tradesman who died in 1940, long before celebrity wealth tracking existed. Figures like $500,000 or $1 million that appear on some sites have no reliable source behind them.
Who plays George Philip Gein in Monster: The Ed Gein Story?
Darin Cooper portrays George Philip Gein in Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which premiered on October 3, 2025, according to Wikipedia. People notes he appears in just one scene, in episode three, where Augusta orders him out of the house after he passes out drunk.
Where is George Philip Gein buried?
George Philip Gein is buried in Plainfield Cemetery in Plainfield, Waushara County, Wisconsin, according to WikiTree and multiple biographical sources. He rests alongside other members of the Gein family in the same small-town cemetery where his wife Augusta and his sons were later laid to rest as well, keeping the family’s story rooted in the town where it unfolded.
Did George Philip Gein know about Ed Gein’s crimes?
No. George died on April 1, 1940, and Ed Gein’s crimes were not discovered until his arrest in November 1957, seventeen years later. George never lived to see his son’s grave robbing and murders come to light, or the worldwide infamy that followed.
