USA > Michigan > Monroe County > History of Monroe County, Michigan : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests Volume II > Part 15
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
On this farm at Maybee, which was hallowed by their labors, the parents died, each at the age of eighty-one years. Their offspring num- bered five, three of whom are living. One of the two who are deceased was a son named Daniel, who like Christopher, was a Union soldier during the Civil war, in the Fifteenth Michigan Infantry, and was killed in battle in the south, where his remains were buried, far from home and friends, and with only the rude obsequies of the battlefield, if they had even them.
Christopher Rapp enlisted at Monroe in December, 1861, in Company K, Fifteenth Michigan Infantry, commanded by Captain Bubys and Lieutenant Baker, the regiment being under the command of Colonel Alger. The regiment went into camp at Monroe and was soon after ordered to Butte Barracks in St. Louis. It took part in the battle of Shiloh, where General Grant won a great victory.
After that battle, Mr. Rapp was stricken down with typhoid fever and passed some time in a field hospital. From that he was transferred to the Evansville, Indiana, hospital, where he was obliged to remain all winter. After leaving the hospital he was honorably discharged, being unfit for further service at the time, and returned to his Monroe county home. Late in 1864 he felt himself so far recovered that he enlisted again, but this time in the corps of United States Engineers and Mechan- ics, in which he served as regimental supervisor in getting out ties and
1
682
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
square timber for the use of the government in building and repairing railroads for the transportation of troops, the greater part of his work being far in the south.
During this service he was taken prisoner by General Hood's forces and marched two hundred miles to a Confederate prison, making the trip at the rate of forty miles a day. On this hurried trip of five days, there was no food for the prisoners but corn, turnips and pumpkins, and these in such scant supplies that the hapless men were sometimes on the verge of starvation. Mr. Rapp was detained as a prisoner of war for weeks. At length he was able to bribe a guard and an officer with twenty dollars he had, and was exchanged through their intervention, and returned to Chicago.
After the close of the war he returned home and gave his atten- tion to farming, in which he has been engaged ever since. He was married in this township in 1868 to Miss Louisa Raybuck, like himself, a native of Germany. They have six children, four sons and two daugh- ters: Christopher, Jr., Fred, Joseph, George, Annie and Ella. On his farm at Maybee Mr. Rapp has a fine brick dwelling house built in 1911, a good barn, and other valuable improvements. In political allegiance he is a Democrat, and in church connection a Lutheran. He has realized in large measure the hopes which induced his parents to come to this country, but he has paid full price and a premium for his success.
ANDREW W. BECKER. An enterprising and progressive farmer in time of peace, and a brave and gallant soldier during the Civil war, and meeting the utmost requirements of his duty in both lines of activity, as well as in every claim of citizenship at all times, Andrew W. Becker, one of the leading and forceful residents of London township, has given and is still giving the people of Monroe county a fine example of thrift and good management in his work as a farmer and his fidelity and breadth of view as a citizen.
Mr. Becker was born at Dundee in this county on June 25, 1844, and is a son of Philip and Polly (Breningstool) Becker, both born and reared in the state of New York. The father was a Pennsylvania-German in ancestry and immediate parentage. His parents moved from their native state to New York early in their married life, and early in his, following their example, he moved to Michigan and located in Monroe county. Here he died in middle life, after making considerable progress toward clearing and improving a farm in the wilderness. The mother lived to be seventy-one years of age, and reared her son Andrew W. to manhood. Some time after the death of his father she was again married, being united in the second marriage with John Whaley, by whom she had one additional child, Polly, resident of Milan.
Andrew W. Becker was reared on a farm in London township, and obtained his education in the public schools and through the lessons of experience. That the latter have not been lost upon him is proven by the fact that he now owns a fine farm of seventy-five acres in section 1, London township, which is well improved and has been acquired entirely through his own energy and thrift, without any aid from the outside or favorable circumstances, but rather in spite of difficulties and trials.
1
683 .
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
When Mr. Becker was about eighteen, he went to Tecumseh, Lenawee county, and enlisted in the Union army for three years or during the war, but was credited to Milan township, this county. He enlisted on August 8, 1862, in response to President Lincoln's call for a large body of volunteers to save the Union, being enrolled in Company F, Twenty- sixth Michigan Volunteer Infantry. This regiment was the second to leave the state for the seat of war, saw a great deal of active field service and made a gallant record in the mighty and sanguinary sectional strife which then came near tearing our unhappy country asunder.
The regiment was under the command of Colonel Farrer, and the captain of Mr. Becker's company was later promoted lieutenant-colonel of it. The troops composing it were first stationed at Camp Jackson, this state, but were soon afterward ordered to Virginia, and reached that state in time to take part in the leading engagements that closed the campaign for the year. Mr. Becker was placed on provost duty in the commissary department of the army in the spring of 1863, and remained in that department some months under Colonel Bell, commissary general, who was the officer in charge for that portion of Virginia in which they were stationed. The headquarters of the department were at Arlington Heights, the former home of General Lee, for several months.
When his term of enlistment expired, Mr. Becker returned to his home in this county, and from then until the present time he has been engaged in the more prosaic but peaceful and productive pursuit of farming. In this he has been very successful, acquiring the ownership of a fine and well improved farm of seventy-five acres in London town- ship, as has been stated, and rising to a high place in the regard and good will of the people around him and in all other parts of the county.
Mr. Becker was married on January 9, 1868, to Miss Olive Briggs, a young lady of good family, substantial education and commendable social culture. She was born in the state of New York and is a daughter of Darius and Elizabeth (Bell) Briggs, both now deceased. They came to this state from New York and were long esteemed residents of Monroe county. They were prosperous farmers and took a lively and serviceable interest in everything pertaining to the welfare and progress of their township and county, leaving their mark on the institutions of their locality in the value of their good works and on the minds of its residents in the force of the excellent examples. of industry, thrift and upright living which they gave.
Mr. and Mrs. Becker have one child, their son Albert, who was born, grew to manhood and .was educated in London township, and was here married to Miss Pearl Hitchings, a native and product of the township of Dundee, the daughter of Alfred and Dane (Drew) Hitchings. Albert Becker and his wife have three children : Alfred, who is now (1912) eight years old, and Florence and Etta. Their father is an enterprising man, a good manager of his own affairs and a progressive and useful citizen.
Andrew W. Becker is a Republican in politics and a member of Milan post, Grand Army of the Republic. He is square, straightforward and upright, keeping his word as he would keep his bond, which gives him high rank and esteem as a citizen; and genial, frank and companionable in disposition, which has won him wide and genuine popularity as a
684
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
man; and the other members of the family share with him in the general regard and good will of the people of the county of all classes. They are representative of the best manhood and womanhood of Monroe county, and would be creditable to any locality in this country or any other.
HON. HENRY H. HERKIMER. Among the notable Monroe county families none has been longer and more usefully identified with the substantial interests of the county than the Herkimers, descendants of a historic American name, and from New York this branch of the family came to Michigan nearly eighty years ago.
Henry H. Herkimer, who has been a soldier and legislator and for years one of the most enterprising farmers of Exeter township, was born on the Herkimer homestead in that township on the 4th of September, 1842. His father, Robert H. Herkimer was born April 9, 1813, in Herki- mer county, New York, a son of Henry, who in turn was a grandson of the General Herkimer of Revolutionary fame, after whom the county along the Mohawk was named, where large tracts of land were given under colonial patent to the Herkimers. The Herkimers were one of the thrifty, industrious and honest families that gave character to early American life. The men were close tillers of the soil and shrewd business men, the women were excellent housewives and mothers, spinners and weavers of wool and flax, and all were God-fearing people and patriotic to the core. Robert H. Herkimer, the father, grew up in his native county and married Mary Peters, a native of the Genesee valley and daughter of John Peters.
In 1835 Robert H. and his brother Henry came west to Michigan. They were carpenters and contractors, especially builders of grist and sawmills, and for a number of years they worked under a pioneer mill- wright named Graham. Their brother-in-law, Gilbert Palmer, had settled as one of the pioneers in Monroe county in 1831, and they located in the same region, and besides building mills in Ohio and Michigan they used the proceeds of their labor to buy large tracts of government land and together owned about a thousand acres of the best land in Exeter township. Among the mills which these brothers built, were one on Detroit river, one on Maumee river, one on Raisin river at Monroe, a sawmill on Swan creek in Exeter township, and one at Flat Rock. Robert H. bought three hundred and twenty acres from the government and his brother five hundred acres adjoining, and the former made one of the fine farms of Monroe county, with a comfortable brick house, barns and other improvements.
Robert H. Herkimer and wife had eleven children, two of whom died in infancy, and the others were as follows : Mary Helen McIntyre; Henry H .; Catherine; Matilda, wife of J. K. Knickabocker; Lucy, wife of Charles Loudon ; Jay J., of Detroit; Lida, wife of George Fulcher; Viola, and Annie D., wife of H. B. Vedder, of Exeter township. The father of this family died at the age of seventy-five. He was an honored citizen and had gained a large prosperity. He was Republican in politics and a member of the Methodist church.
Henry H. Herkimer, the well known citizen named at the beginning
685
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
of this article, was reared on the home farm and attended the country schools of his native township. He was just at the entrance to young manhood when the war broke out, and on August 19, 1862, he enlisted and joined the Fifth Michigan Cavalry, his captain being John E. Clark, and the colonel of the regiment being the late General Alger, one of Michigan's greatest public characters. Mr. Herkimer saw three years of active service, including the battle of Gettysburg, and service in the Shenandoah valley under Generals Custer and Sheridan. The Fifth Michigan Cavalry was part of the first brigade and first division. At the end of three years he was honorably discharged as first sergeant, and then returned to civil life.
On the 18th of February, 1868, he married Miss Helen Stoddard, who was born and reared in this county. She died a few years after their marriage, and Mr. Herkimer then married Lucy Vedder. They are the parents of one daughter, Clara E., the wife of Edward Lewis, of Oil City, Pennsylvania. Two of the children died young.
Mr. Herkimer has long been one of the leading farmers of the county, and his place in Exeter township shows the best improvements of the modern scientific agriculture. A large and comfortable residence, barns, and windmills are some of the features which mark out this farm as the home of able management and well ordered prosperity.
Successful in business he has also for many years taken an active part in public affairs and is one of the influential republicans of Monroe county. For thirty years he has been justice of the peace in his town- ship and has held other local offices. He was elected to the legislature in 1903, and again in 1905, and made an excellent record. He is a mem- ber of Carleton Post of the G. A. R., and he and his family are members of the M. E. church at Oakville, Michigan. Having spent practically all his life in Monroe county, he has gained his success on the basis of solid industry and honorable methods and is one of the most popular citizens.
HARRY C. HERKIMER. Of distinguished ancestry, the members of his family having countless triumphs to their credit in almost every department of human activity in peace and war, and living creditably now in most if not all of the states of the American Union; the intrepid valor of their arms winning victories for our common country in all our wars, and their intellectual supremacy manifest in every walk of life worthy of the attention of men; and himself a gentleman of unusual ability, high character and social culture of the best type, it is not sur- prising but almost a matter of course that Harry C. Herkimer of Maybee, should be distinguished in any line of endeavor he chooses to follow, and that having selected the real estate business as his chief line, he should be the leading and most extensive operator in that line of trade in the territory in which he conducts the business, and makes it move with all the energy and mastery of his race.
Mr. Herkimer is a great-great-grandson of that brave and gallant General Nicholas Herkimer of Revolutionary fame whose timely arrival at Fort Schuyler on the Mohawk, in New York state, early in August, 1777, helped to save that important post from capture by the British Vol. II-8
686
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
and their Indian allies, and hasten the inevitable and fast-coming sur. render of Burgoyne at Saratoga. General Herkimer's own immediate command was defeated through an Indian ambuscade, and he was not allowed the pleasure of participating in the final triumph of the garrison in the fort, but his diversion of the attacking force was a very potential factor in determining the result.
He was afterward fatally wounded, before the end of that year, at the battle of Oriskany, and while lying on the field before his death, continued to give orders and encouragement to his men, even amid his expiring agonies, cheerfully laying his life on the altar of his country, and nobly serving it with his last breath. Fame has inscribed his name on the roll of her immortals, and the state he so gallantly helped to defend has also perpetuated it by giving it to one of her great counties.
In the Indian wars of that period and subsequent times, and in the War of 1812, the Mexican war and the Civil war, as well as the Spanish- American war, the Herkimers, members of this family, were valiant soldiers and creditably sustained the reputation of their house. As to the business side of the family history, Harry C. Herkimer's record is suf- ficient to properly typify that and suggest what it must be.
The family homestead was near what is now Little Falls, Herkimer county, and the great general's command of seven hundred troops was gathered from the surrounding country. The Daughters of the Revolu- tion have erected fourteen state monuments along the road over which this command passed to Fort Schuyler to their awful disaster in which one-fourth of their number fell victims to savage fury. But there have been many other members of the family who have blazed their own way into the wilderness and left their own monuments in its redemption and development to civilization.
It is from one of these that the interesting subject of this review is descended. His grandfather, Henry Herkimer, came to Monroe county in 1833, and proved himself to be a very useful pioneer. He was a car- penter and mill wright, and built saw and grist mills in the wilderness for the convenience of the scattered population and made them profitable to himself. He became possessed of a large farm and attained to great prominence and influence in the county. On the farm he owned, two generations of his descendants were born and reared, drawing their stature and their strength from its soil and obtaining their education from the country school in the neighborhood, or at least the beginning of their scholastic training.
Harry C. Herkimer was born on May 19, 1867, on his father's old homestead on Stony Creek in this county, and is a son of Robert C. and Augusta (McManus) Herkimer, who were also born and reared in this county, the former on his father's homestead and the latter, who was a sister of Niel McManus, at La Salle. The grandfather, Henry Herkimer, was born in Herkimer county, New York, and located in this county among the pioneers in 1833, as has been stated above. Robert Herki- mer was a very enterprising man. Like his father he built saw mills and operated them. But he also built and operated large brick and tile factories and carried on extensive farming operations, employing a large number of men on his farm and in his mills and factories. He
687
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
was one of Exeter township's best known and most progressive citizens. He died in the fall of 1865, and the mother passed away in the fall of 1911.
They were the parents of six children : Harry C., Otis R., Charles, Clarence S., Thomas Leo and Clara. Otis R. and Thomas are residents of Detroit, and Clarence lives on the old family farm. Harry C. grew to manhood on the home farm and assisted in tilling it, working also, at times, in the tile and brick factories. He received a good education, beginning it in the common schools, continuing it at the high school in Monroe and completing it at Ypsilanti College. At the age of twenty- six he was united in marriage with Miss Christina Hasley, a daughter of Daniel and Margaret (Mann) Hasley, late of Maybee, but both are now deceased. Mrs. Herkimer's father was one of Maybee's most prominent and enterprising men, and left his mark, deep and permanent, on the industrial life of the community by building, and, for a number of years operating successfully the large Maybee flouring mills, of which he was the energetic proprietor, and which he conducted greatly to his own ad- vantage and that of the whole surrounding country for many miles in every direction, and which also added considerably to the industrial and commercial importance of this locality.
Mr. Herkimer was one of the controlling partners in the flour milling business which his father founded and carried on for five years. He has also been engaged in shipping live stock and the meat trade for some years. But his principal line in trade now is the real estate business, and in this he has been very successful and built up a trade of great ex- tent and variety, having listed many of the best farms for sale in the city. He is recognized as entirely fair and straightforward in all his dealings, and has acquired such thorough knowledge of his business that he is considered an authority in every branch and department of it.
He and his wife are the parents of four sons : M. C., who is in his nine- teenth year; Kenneth, who is in his seventeenth year; Hazen P., who is in his sixth year, and Harold, who is turning four. In his political faith the father is a Republican of strong convictions and great activity in behalf of his party. He has frequently been a delegate to its county and state conventions here, has served as deputy sheriff of the county, and in many other ways has shown his deep, abiding and practical interest in the welfare of the organization and the people generally. Fraternally he is a member of the Masonic Lodge, at Monroe.
The home of this genial, jovial and cultivated gentleman is in keep- ing with his nature. The dwelling house is built of cement block, con- tains eight rooms, is furnished for both comfort and artistic enjoyment, and has all the appointments of modern life available, including steam heat and kindred conveniences. It is built on a choice lot with an ample lawn, fine shade trees, and such shrubbery and flowers as a cultivated taste suggests. It is one of the most comfortable and desirable homes in the village, and is always a center of refined and gracious hospitality- a fit abiding place for one of the most esteemed and serviceable citizens of the community, who is truly representative of all that is best in its citizenship and admirably suggests its loftiest aspirations.
.
688
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
REV. JOHN S. MIES. This faithful worker in the cause of righteous- ness and morality, who has won the universal respect and esteem of the whole community in which he lives, and the cordial regard and venera- tion of a large part of it, has been pastor of St. Joseph's Catholic church, of Maybee, since 1899, and in the thirteen years of his pastorate to the present time (1912) has made his energy and influence greatly felt in building up the church, increasing its membership, improving its property, and raising it to a position of commanding prominence and power in the part of Monroe county in which it is located, and in carry- ing on its beneficent work.
The history of St. Joseph's church is a very interesting and inspiring one. It shows the potency of abiding faith united with strong and determined industry. The parish grew to its present magnitude and importance from a very small and humble beginning in the short period of but fifty-seven years, in a region of country which was but slightly removed from the wilderness and but sparsely populated, for many years after it was founded. It was, in fact, started in the wilderness, and in its early days was without a local habitation. The wild beasts of the forest around it had their lairs and the birds of the air had their nests; but St. Joseph's Catholic church, like the son of God, whose gospel it teaches, "had nowhere to lay its head."
What may be called the history of this church began in 1855, when a very small but very devoted band of communicants started it at Blue Bush, two miles northwest of the present village of Maybee. These num- bered but few and were: John Klotz; Sebastian Liedel; Daniel Hoff- mann ; Taddaus Boes; Jacob Boes; Philip Liedel; Ignatius Bitz; Ber- nard Heisler; John Straub; Carl Schwarz; Jacob Hammer; Michael Gramlich ; Wendel Gramlich, and Valentine Weiss, all from Baden. These firm and faithful followers kept the light on their humble and sometimes migratory altar burning for two years, however great the diffi- culties, or how numerous the obstacles, and then, in 1857, the church was regularly organized, and a log house was built in which to conduct the services.
The new church became a mission of St. Patrick's, Carleton. Before this time, priests from Monroe ministered to the spiritual needs of the scattered and far distant flock, and said mass in the log schoolhouse at Blue Bush. The pastors of St. Patrick's, Carleton, and of the Blue Bush mission from the year 1857, were the Reverend Fathers Callert, Wermers, Herwig, Seybold, Brockmann, and Ronayne. In 1879 a new church edifice was erected on the old site. The growth of the congre- gation was steady. Natural increase added to the number as did also a new band of emigrants from the old Fatherland. Frugality, tenacious- ness in work, determination of purpose, all of which are virtues peculiar to the German character, changed the wilderness in and around Blue Bush gradually into splendid farming land.
Meanwhile a considerable number of Catholic emigrants from the Rhine country had settled on sections of land east of the village of Maybee. They were Joseph Bleser, John Franzen, Henry Arenz, John Geiermann, John B. Hoffmann, Peter Miller, Virg. Scheich, and a few others. These, like the early pioneers of Blue Bush, could call little
.
ST. JOSEPH'S SCHOOL MAYBEE, MICH
PRIEST'S HOME - MAYBEE ; MICH.
SISTER'S HOME MAYBEE, MICH
ST. JOSEPH CATHOLIC CH MAYOFEM.
BUILDINGS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ST. JOSEPH PARISH REV. JOHN S. MIES, PASTOR
691
HISTORY OF MONROE COUNTY
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.