USA > Illinois > Madison County > Centennial history of Madison County, Illinois, and its people, 1812 to 1912, Volume II > Part 66
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JOHN A. LEU. One of the useful and prominent citizens and leading Republicans of Highland is John A. Leu, postmaster, who since 1906 has discharged the duties of the of- fice with promptness and fidelity. He was ap- pointed by President Roosevelt five years ago and is now serving upon his second term. Mr. Leu was born in Clinton county, Illinois, May II, 1870, and is the son of John and Louise (Weidner) Leu. The father was a native of Switzerland, which has given so many good citizens to the United States and honored and been honored by so many. The mother is a native of the land of the stars and stripes, and
both are now living and make their home in Highland. Mr. Leu, immediate subject of this review, is the eldest of four children born to them and was reared upon the farm. He was eleven years of age when his parents re- moved from Clinton county to Highland, and in the public schools of this place he received his educational discipline. When a very young man he became associated with his father in the hardware business and they carried on a good business for fifteen years, their trade being drawn from Highland and the surrounding country. Mr. Leu has ever been aligned with the prominent Republicans, having given heart and hand to the men and measures of the party since his earliest voting days and for a number of years he has been prominent in public affairs. He was elected township clerk of Helvetia township and for two years gave efficient service in that office. As previously mentioned, his appointment to the postmastership occurred in 1906 and his re-appointment in 1910. In addition to the central office there are four rural delivery routes which are connected.
Mr. Leu laid the foundation of a happy married life in December, 1895, the young woman to become his wife being Ida Bleisch, daughter of John Anton and Catherine ( Met- tier) Bleisch. Mrs. Leu was born in Bond county, Illinois, and was educated in the pub- lic schools. The subject and his wife share their home with one son, Leto Millard, born May 5, 1898, who is a student in the Highland high school.
Fraternally Mr. Leu is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America and the Sharp- shooters' and Singers' Society. He has served as a member of the Republican central com- mittee and is secretary of the Taft-Sherman Club. In all matters of public import in the community he is helpfully interested.
HENRY BRENSING, of Alhambra township, is a fine representative. citizen whose life is viewed with pride by those who admire the German-American soldier and patriot and the successful agriculturist of the Mississippi val- ley-and who does not honor such as among the most loyal and substantial of those who assisted to preserve the Union and who have since faithfully labored to build up the indus- try upon which is founded its most enduring prosperity. Mr. Bensing is of brave and soldierly nativity and stock, having been born in the great military kingdom of Prussia, Ger- many, on the twentieth of September, 1841, a son of Henry and Wilhelmina (Mueller)
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Brensing. Like most practical German par- ents, Henry's father and mother insisted upon the mastery of a trade, and their son was therefore apprenticed to a shoemaker. This he followed in the old country and married when quite a young man. Although his friends in the United States were constantly writing him of the greater opportunities to be found in the new country, he did not immi- grate from Germany until after he had mar- ried and become the father of five children, of whom the Henry who is the subject of this biography was the youngest ; he had four sis- ters, Henrietta, Elinor, Wilhelmina and Eliza- beth, but the two latter only survive.
The father of this family came to the United States alone. He landed at New Or- leans, came up the river first to St. Louis and afterward located at St. Albans, Franklin county, Missouri, where he engaged at his trade and also purchased twenty acres of farm land and ten town lots. After three years of hard work and close economy he sent for his wife and children. The mother bravely un- dertook what was then a perilous ocean voyage, spending two months and two days upon the sailing vessel which also landed the family at the port of New Orleans. An event of the trip which is a part of this biography was the eighth birthday of Henry of this re- view, which was celebrated by the baking of a cake by the ship's cook, and in other family festivities which chiefly concerned the mother and children. The continuation of the voyage by river from New Orleans to St. Albans, Missouri, consumed fourteen days, and at that point the family were happily re-united. It was in that locality that the children obtained their education and that the three were born who died in infancy. When of proper age the daughters found employment in St. Louis, and later married good and industrious men- Henrietta, Gustave Willming, a farmer who is deceased : Elinor (deceased), Charles Olger, also an agriculturist ; Wilhelmina, William Peters, a carpenter, after whose death she wedded Henry Berkemeier, also a member of that craft in St. Louis: all deceased; and Elizabeth, Jacob Hitts, a farmer of Switzer- land, after whose death she wedded Jacob Willig (deceased), and is now a resident of St. Louis.
Henry Brensing remained with his father, assisting in the support of the household until his own marriage, in 1866, although for more than three years he was missed from the fam-
ily circle, during that period being at the "front," fighting for the Union. He was twenty-one years of age when the Civil war burst upon the country, and he at once joined the fortunes of the Seventeenth Missouri In- fantry, enlisting at Pacific, that state, and reaching his regiment at Helena, Arkansas. To be exact, during the succeeding three years and three months Mr. Brensing partici- pated in the battles at Pea Ridge, Seary Land- ing, Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi; Arkansas Post, Arkansas; Fort Pemberton, Fourteen Mile Creek, Jackson, Vicksburg and Canton, Mississippi; Cherokee Station, Tuscumbia, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, Tennessee; and Ringgold, Resaca, Dallas, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Jonesboro and Loving Station, Georgia. While serving with his command he was at different times under Sherman, Grant, Logan and Sheridan, and, as a soldier of the true blue, was worthy of those brave and great commanders. At the close of the terrible war he came home, bearing with him an honorable discharge, and as a member of the Grand Army Post at Edwardsville still shows his unfailing loyalty to his old com- rades in arms, both living and dead.
Mr. Brensing's wife was formerly Miss Wilhelmina Geisman. A daughter of Chris- topher and Minnie Geisman, she was born in Hanover, Germany, in the year 1847, and when eighteen years of age came to the United States with her sisters. In the following year (1866) she wedded Henry Brensing, the sturdy young man of twenty-five who had but lately returned from the war and was eager to return to the paths of peace and domestic com- forts. In the intelligent and affectionate Ger- man girl of nineteen he found all that his heart or his good judgment could desire, and for nearly forty-five years their lives flowed along steadily together, although often flow- ing over rugged beds of death, sorrow and dis- . aster. They became the parents of a large family, in whose rearing and care the wife and mother (as has been the case with the faithful of her sex from time immemorial) bore the heavier burden with Christian patience and cheerfulness. Mrs. Brensing was not only a mother to her children, but a friend to all the helpless-kind, helpful and, motherly to every- one who was in need of the kind of ministra- tion which only a sweet and true woman can give. On December 15, 1910, her womanly soul sought kindred spirits in the beyond, leav- ing a bereaved husband, children, grandchil-
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dren and many fast-knit friends to mourn her departure and be comforted and blessed with the memories of her works and influences.
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brensing became the parents of nine children, four dying in their youth, and the surviving four being Albert, Henry, Edward and Ida. Elizabeth married James Wallace, engaged in the meat business at St. Louis, and at her death left two sons and a daughter-Edward, Leonard and Lo- retta; the last named is now Mrs. Edward Hitts, the wife of a farmer of Stafford county, Kansas, and the mother of one child, Ethel. Albert, who married Mollie Ankley, is a farmer residing at Mullenville, Kansas, and is the father of Henry, Walter, Irwin and Edna. Henry, who lives in Oklahoma, married Min- nie Poos, who has borne him four children --- Arthur, Nora, Oliver and Malinda, while Ed- ward, also a farmer of Stafford county, Kan- sas, is married to Dinah Mindrupp and has two children, Vera and Jacob. Ida married John Ochs, proprietor of a lumber yard at Alhambra, Madison county, and has become the mother of six children-Edwin, Adala, Orvill, Allevia, Alma and Alfred (deceased).
For one year after his marriage Mr. Bren- sing continued to reside in Franklin county, Missouri, where he rented his father's farm. In May, 1867, he moved with his wife to the farm in Alhambra township, Madison county, which remained the family homestead for the succeeding third of a century. The young couple first moved into a one-room house on a sixty-acre tract, but with such happy, hope- ful hearts that they were quite content to work and wait for more comfortable sur- roundings ; energy and good sense, with a con- stant spirit of contentment and intelligently- directed efforts, brought advancement all along the line, substantial prosperity and the deep respect of associates, until at length the estate comprised two hundred acres of fertile and improved land and no family was more honored than that which had been founded by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brensing. The one deep regret which tinges the life of the venerable but still vigorous husband and father is that his revered wife is not spared to him to still enjoy the comforts and pleasures which are his ; but his religion gives him the sublime as- surance that his happiness is not to be meas- ured with that of the revered wife who has been parted from him for but a brief season. His grandsons, Edward and Leonard, who have lived with him since the death of their own parents, are now fine young men of
twenty-four and nineteen ; have lifted many of the burdens from his older shoulders, and are among the greatest solaces to a life which, in the order of nature, must be moving toward the setting sun.
EDGAR G. MERWIN, M. D. It is entirely within the province of true history to com- memorate and perpetuate the lives and char- acter, the achievements and honor of the il- lustrious sons of the state. High on the roll of those whose efforts have made the history of medicine in Illinois a work of fame appears the name of Dr. Edgar G. Merwin, who for the past four years has been numbered among the medical practitioners at Highland, Illinois. Dr. Merwin is strictly a self-made man, his education having been obtained through his own well directed endeavors. In addition to the work of his profession, he has time to par- ticipate actively in community affairs, his in- trinsic loyalty to all matters affecting the good of the general welfare having ever been of the most insistent order.
A native of Madison county, Dr. Edgar G. Merwin was born in Saline township, the date of his birth being the fifth of July, 1879. He is a son of Peter D. and Sophia (Walter) Merwin, both of whom are now deceased. The father was born and reared in Connecti- cut, and the subject's grandparents were na- tives of Scotland and England, respectively. At the age of twenty-one years Peter D. Mer- win came to Madison county, Illinois, where he engaged in farming operations and where he also devoted a portion of his time to work at the carpenter's trade, which he had learned as a young man. He was twice married, his first wife having been Miss Emily Reynolds in her girlhood days. To this union were born five children. In 1877 Mr. Merwin was united in marriage to Miss Sophia Walter, and that union was prolific of one child, the subject of this review. Mr. Merwin died when the Doc- tor was a child of eighteen months and subse- quently the mother married again. In 1886 she wedded.J. P. Sehnert and they established their home at Pierson, Illinois, removing thence to Edwardsville, in 1887. When he had reached his eleventh year Dr. Merwin lost his mother and thereafter he lived for about ten years in the home of his uncle, Frank S. Walter, at Highland. He attended school until he had reached his thirteenth year, and for the ensuing four years worked at various odd jobs. At the age of seventeen years he again entered school and three years later he became prescription clerk for Dr. Pogue in a
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drug store at Edwardsville, subsequently read- ing medicine under that skilled practitioner for a period of two and a half years, at the expiration of which he was matriculated as a student in the medical department of Wash- ington University, at St. Louis, Missouri. He was graduated in Washington University as a member of the class of 1907, duly receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Imme- diately after graduation Dr. Merwin located at Highland, where he initiated the active practice of his profession and where he rapidly gained recognition as one of the most efficient and well equipped physicians and sur- geons in Madison county. In connection with luis medical work he is a valued and appre- ciative member of the Madison County Medi- cal Society, the Illinois State Medical Society and the American Medical Association.
At Edwardsville, Illinois, on the twenty- second of October, 1903, Dr. Merwin was united in marriage to Miss Carrie M. No- wotne, who was reared and educated at Ed- wardsville, and who is a daughter of Frank Nowotne, long a representative citizen of that place. Dr. and Mrs. Merwin are the parents of one child, Imogene Hope, whose birth oc- curred on the tenth of January, 1910. Mrs. Merwin is a woman of most gracious hospi- tality and is deeply beloved by all who have come within the sphere of her gentle influence.
In political questions of a national character Dr. Merwin is aligned as a stanch supporter of the cause of the Republican party, but in local affairs he maintains an independent atti- tude, preferring to give his vote to men and measures meeting with the approval of his judgment rather than to follow along strictly partisan lines. In a fraternal way he is affili- ated with Highland Lodge, No. 583, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons ; Highland Chap- ter, Royal Arch Masons, in the Masonic order, and with the local lodges of the Woodmen of the World and the Knights of Pythias. Dr. Merwin is a man of mark in all the relations of life. His splendid achievements show him to be a hard and earnest worker and, inas- much as he himself built the ladder by which he has risen to prominence in the medical world, his admirable success is the more pleas- ing to contemplate.
LOUIS PHILIP FROHARDT. It is not to be gainsaid that there is no office carrying with it so much of responsibility as that of the educator, who moulds and fashions the plas- tic mind of youth; who instills into the for- mative brain those principles which, when
matured, will be the chief heritage of the active man who in due time will sway the multitudes, govern nations or frame the laws by which civilized nations are governed. Louis Philip Frohardt, the admirable and en- lightened superintendent of the schools of Granite City, Madison County, Illinois, is one who sees in education a process rather than a fulfillment; an acquiring rather than a completion; who strives to teach the young people within his care to be of quick percep- tions, broad sympathies and wide affinities ; responsive, but independent ; self-reliant, but deferential ; loving truth and candor, but also moderation and proportion ; courageous, but gentle ; not finished, but perfecting. Profes- sor Frohardt has served in his present capac- ity since 1894 and the ensuing years have been fruitful and satisfactory. At that date the new industrial city that now is was but a village and the subject accepted the position of superintendent, at that time very insig- nificant, because he believed there was a brighter future ahead. He was the only teacher for the first two months, and then received an assistant. Now he has forty- seven assistants. The first day's enrollment in 1894 was thirty-two; now it is sixteen hundred.
Professor Frohardt was born June 5, 1857, in Moniteau county, Missouri, the son of John D. and Wilhelmina (Kuenning) Fro- hardt. Both parents were natives of Han- over, Germany, and in their son are apparent many fine and characteristic Teutonic traits. Perhaps credit must in part be given to the Fatherland, the country of splendid schools, for his ambition to give to the young the best educational advantages possible. John D. Frohardt came to the United States in 1836, to claim his share of the greater advan- tage and opportunity afforded by the newer country. He located in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later removed to St. Louis, Missouri, where he passed ten years, the greater part of which period he spent as an employe in the Planters' Hotel. In 1845 he removed to California, Missouri, where he married and engaged in the grocery business. In 1848 he settled on a farm and there lived until 1866. He was an extensive reader, an active worker in the German Methodist Episcopal church and a local preacher. He served in the home guards during 1864-5 and spent his later life in the state of Iowa, where he died at the age of ninety years. The year of the
I.D. Frohardh
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inother's birth was 1827, and at the age of three years she came with her parents to the United States and located near Dayton, Ohio. Her mother died when Wilhelmina was a very young girl, and at the age of eleven or twelve she removed to St. Louis, where she received her elementary education. With her father and sisters she went to Cali- fornia, Missouri, where she married. She was always a devoted member of the Methodist Episcopal church. She spent her last days with one of her daughters in Omaha, Ne- braska, where she died January 7, 1912, in her eighty-fifth year. These worthy people were the parents of the following children: Frederick William, Christine Wilhelmina, Louis Philip, Caroline Margaret, Alvine, Ferdinand Christopher and Dorothea. The father was a public-spirited man and always a staunch Republican, but he was never ac- tive in public life, having held no public office with the exception of that of school director.
Professor Frohardt received his elementary education in the district schools of Moniteau county, Missouri, and Pottawattamie county, Iowa, and his academic and collegiate stud- ies were pursued in Central Wesleyan Col- lege, at Warrenton, Missouri. He was a farmers boy until reaching the age of eight- een years and he then attended college for five years, earning his own expenses. After grad- uation he took a position in one of the schools in St. Louis county, Missouri, and he taught the same school for five consecutive years. Recommended by his pedagogical services, he was then chosen head teacher of the academ- ical department in Central Wesleyan College, which position he held for eight consecutive years, then resigning to take his present charge. The subsequent growth and develop- ment of the Granite City schools have been previously mentioned, and their excellent di- rection has been entirely in the hands of Pro- fessor Frohardt, who is one of the best known instructors in this section.
In his political affiliations Professor Fro- hardt is a Republican, having given hand and heart to the cause of the party since his earliest voting days. He has ever been a valued and active factor in public affairs. He was a charter member of the city council of Granite City and was secretary of the Gran- ite City Building and Loan Association for a number of years. He has never sought any political office or any political favor, as his school work claims his closest attention. He
is one of the prominent members of the Meth- odist Episcopal church and is superintendent of its Sunday-school, in which capacity he has served for the past seventeen years. He is a licensed local preacher and can conduct a religious service with grace and efficiency. He has no fraternal associations, with the exception of membership in the Mutual Pro- tection League, which he holds principally on account of the insurance feature, his church, Sunday-school and other duties so fully en- grossing his attention as to prelude all other activities.
At Virden, Illinois, on June 20, 1883, Pro- fessor Frohardt was united in marriage to Miss Carrie Becker, the daughter of John G. and Anna Katherine Becker, the former a carpenter and contractor by occupation. Her paternal grandfather was a teacher in his native Germany. He taught to the age of eighty years, his demise occurring at the age of ninety-four. Mrs. Frohardt was educated in the public schools of Virden. The chil- dren born to this happy union are as follows : Homer Oscar, born in St. Louis county, July 6, 1885; Edith Luella, Virden, Illinois, Sep- tember 20, 1887; Viola Elnora, Warrenton, 'Missouri, February 25, 1890; Elmer Philip, Warrenton, Missouri, July 13, 1892; Irwin Louis, Granite City, Illinois, September I, 1895; Alvin Raymond, Granite City, April 6, 1898; Annie Edna, Granite City, January 20, 1900; Ralph Eugene, Granite City, June 24, 1902; Waldo Emerson, Granite City, October 26, 1907; Homer O., the eldest member of the family, is a commercial photographer, lo- cated in Omaha, Nebraska; Edith L., the next in order of birth, is a graduate of the high school and also of the Missouri Con- servatory of Music, and a talented musician. She is now teaching piano and is pipe organ- ist in the Methodist Episcopal church.
Professor Frohardt is a man of interest- ing and virile personality. He is of a mod- est and retiring nature, and he deplores this as the cause of his missing a number of good opportunities. People at first sight regard him as too meek and modest, lacking self-as- sertion and aggressiveness, but this is an apparent contradiction of the real hidden self in the background. Professor Frick, of the college from which he graduated, who knew him thoroughly and witnessed his struggles to make his way unaided through college, once said to him, "It is your bull-dog nature which carries you through." Through a re- liable source the following bit of interesting
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personal history of Professor Frohardt came into our possession : When he started here with a board of education of seven members they were possessed with the idea, as so many boards are, that they must run the schools. He heartily concurred with them in this, as the law gives them that power, but it was a question as to the manner in which this power is to be exercised. It was Professor Fro- hardt's idea that the board should run the schools through the superintendent, who is supposed to be the educational expert, and if it should develop that the superintendent is not capable of managing the schools, it becomes the duty of the board to get some- one who can.
For a time there was a hard struggle and it required his consummate energy and tact to tide over this critical period of a school system in a formative stage. Professor Fro- hardt struggled on heroically because he felt that this was a vital epoch in the history of the schools, as not only his interests were at stake, but it was a question of moulding the school policy in the incipient stages of this new industrial emporium, for he believed that in the original mould in which it would be cast it would likely remain indefinitely. He felt it his duty to stand till the last ditch for the inherent rights and for the prestige and the dignity of the office of school sup- erintendent, ves, ultimately, for the best in- terests of the boys and girls, because if the head of the school system is constantly ham- pered by men, though honest and well mean- ing, but inexperienced and uninformed on school .management, feeling it their bounden duty to "hold down" the superintendent in- stead of upholding and encouraging him, then the entire school system must suffer and may be a total failure. During these strenuous times one of the board members was once overheard making the pathetic remark, "It takes more than seven men to hold him down."
Little by little the board members began to understand their superintendent and gain confidence in him as time and experience dem- onstrated the wisdom and practicability of his recommendations, so that today he has the entire confidence of the board, which is now one of the most progressive and liberal minded to be found anywhere, and the good will of the entire community.
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