History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Volume 1), Part 55

Author: L. A. Fritsche, M. D.
Publication date: 1916
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

USA > Minnesota > Brown County > History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Volume 1) > Part 55

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).

Herman R. Stegeman received a common-school educa- tion and worked on the home farm during his vacations. When sixteen years old he started in to learn the carpen- ter's trade, which he followed until 1894, when he began contracting. In 1891 he came to Fairfax, Minnesota, where he lived until 1896, with the exception of six months which he spent in Oklahoma. He located in New Ulm in 1896, beginning work here as a carpenter. In February, 1904, he began contracting again and has since been very busy

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as a builder of all kinds of buildings, and has also estab- lished a small sash and door factory. He has studied archi- tecture and architectural drafting in the International Cor- respondence School of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he now draws all of his own plans, having drawn about seventy plans to date (1916). His first plan was that of a residence in New Ulm. He has since designed and built the Brown county poor farm's buildings; also those of the Redwood county poor farm, the First Methodist church in Selby, South Dakota; the German Lutheran church at Springfield, the Evangelical church in North Redwood, the Catholic church in Searles, the Evangelical church in New Ulm, and the new armory at New Ulm, his largest and best building, which was constructed at a cost of fifty-five thousand dol- lars; he also built the New Ulm roller mills.

Mr. Stegeman was married in New Ulm, October 12, 1900, to Ida Weilandt, who was born on November 1, 1876, in Ranville county, Minnesota. She is a daughter of Carl and Augusta (Fitzloff) Weilandt, natives of Pomerin, Ger- many, from which country they came to the United States on March 27, 1867, first locating in Warsaw, Wisconsin, where they spent one year, then moved to New Ulm in 1870, but a year or two later moved to Renville county, where the father took up a homestead. They returned to New Ulm in 1896 and here the father spent the rest of his life, dying on September 7, 1915. The mother died on January 6, 1916. To Mr. Stegeman and wife three children have been born, namely: Harry, born on July 26, 1901; Arthur, October 20, 1903, and Ruth, July 7, 1915. He and his family are mem- bers of the Evangelical church. He is a member of the

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Modern Woodmen of America. Politically, he is a Repub- lican, but has never sought or held office.

Carl Stegeman, father of Herman R., was born on May 1, 1831, and died on February 6, 1915; his wife was born on March 22, 1831, and died on October 15, 1890. They were married in 1852.

In 1912 Herman R. Stegeman enlisted in the machine- gun company of the New Ulm Minnesota National Guard in which he became corporal. In 1897 he enlisted in Com- pany A, Minnesota National Guard.

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COL. WILLIAM PFAENDER.

William Pfaender was born in Heilbronn, Wurtem- berg, Germany, July 6, 1826, and received a common- school education, but he was a reader and a thinker, and upon this basis he constantly built his large store of knowl- edge. The German revolution of 1848 caused young Pfaender, with many of the best men in Germany, to emi- grate to America that year, and he located in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1849. There in 1851 he married Catherine Pfau, and in 1856 he came West with a committee of the German Settlement Association of the city mentioned to find a loca- tion for a new German settlement. That search brought them to New Ulm, where they found a German colony from Chicago, then struggling in a somewhat impoverished con- dition to build a town and provide for the settlement of the surrounding country. This was reported to Cincinnati headquarters, and it was decided by the Association there, who had money, to buy a half interest in New Ulm, which was done, and Mr. Pfaender was sent here as agent and manager for the Cincinnati Association. That infused new life in the Chicago colony, then fused with the arrivals from the Ohio city, and thence forward there was steady thrift in the new German settlement, only interrupted by the Sioux Indian massacre of August, 1862, the grass- hopper raid of 1875 to 1877, and the cyclone of 1881. Mr. Pfaender took a government claim of one hundred and sixty acres about a mile north of the present city limits, and

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there for a time he was postmaster, with a cigar box as a depository for the letter mail. In after years he owned and operated a saw-mill, and then was builder and owner of a planing-mill near the business center of the present city. He always had at heart the interests of New Ulm and its people, and was ever a promoter of the best inter- ests of the locality and its inhabitants.

Mr. Pfaender had been an active member of the Ger- man Turner society in Ulm, in Germany, and he was one of the organizers of the Turner society in Cincinnati. True to his faith, he organized the New Ulm Turnverein in November, 1856.

His capacity for public affairs and his integrity as a man were soon recognized by his fellow citizens here, and in 1860 he was elected register of deeds of Brown county, and he was elected to the house of representatives of the Minnesota Legislature the same year, and then elected to the state Senate in 1870 and served one term. He was elected state treasurer in 1876, and served two terms to 1880. Meanwhile he had served as mayor of New Ulm from 1873 to 1876, when he resigned to take the office of state treasurer. Later he served as a member of the city council from 1890 to April, 1893. When Hecker Post, Grand Army of the Republic, was organized he was its commander for sixteen years.

That William Pfaender was not only a public spirited citizen and busy man in civil life, but a patriot of high type, is proven by his record in war, for he served in the army with distinction from 1861 to 1865 during the civil conflict. He and about twenty other residents of New (26a)

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Ulm and vicinity enlisted in the First Minnesota Battery in September, 1861, and he was commissioned first lieu- tenant of the battery, which was sent to the Southwest as soon as organized. While the entire battery deserves great credit for courage and patriotism, the two surviving members in New Ulm of that battery are ready to bear witness to an act of Lieutenant Pfaender at the terrible battle of Shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee river, in 1862, that should have made him a brigadier-general. The battery was in the thickest of the battle, holding its posi- tion, while the Federal army was being driven back by the impetuous onslaught of the rebels, who were advancing with victory in sight. As the officer in command of the troops of which the battery was a part and the retreating army were passing, Lieutenant Pfaender, in command of the battery, asked for orders. But he received none from the fleeing officer. Quick as a flash Lieutenant Pfaender grasped the situation, and with a courage never surpassed, then having two of his six guns disabled and the remain- ing four dangerously hot from rapid firing, he ordered his men to hold their position and continue firing under a terrific hail of rebel bullets, in what was afterward named the "Hornets' Nest," as it was-a veritable Grecian pass of Thermopylae. This act of supreme heroism checked the rebel advance for twenty to thirty minutes, when the Fed- eral army had time to re-form, and with the stimulated courage of the battery to advance and drive the rebels back. It was a test of do or die, and the battery saved the day. Had Lieutenant Pfaender ordered a retreat, as that section of the Federal army was passing in retreat, they would have been driven into the Tennessee river and many

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of them to death. This conspicuous act of unsurpassed heroism was never reported as it should have been by the higher officers of the command, and has never been related in public at home. It should have made the modest lieu- tenant commander of a brigade and promoted every hero in the battery.

On hearing that New Ulm had been attacked by the Indians, his solicitude for his family and New Ulm induced Lieutenant Pfaender to ask for leave to return home late in the autumn of 1862, and he was sent to Minnesota on recruiting service. The First Minnesota Mounted Rangers was then being organized, and Lieutenant Pfaender was mustered out of the battery and commissioned lieutenant- colonel of that regiment. He was placed in command of the frontier, then imperiled by Indians, with headquarters at Ft. Ridgely. The following December Colonel Pfaender was mustered out with the regiment, but he was again commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the Second Cavalry Regiment, and was continued in service and in command of the frontier until 1865, when he was finally mustered out. Colonel Pfaender died in 1905.

The corner stone of Mr. Pfaender's character was a high sense of justice and honor, and whether in civil or military life he was always a courteous gentleman. In any and all positions, or however busy, he was always approachable by the humblest alike with the most exalted. It was these qualities that won for him the universal respect of his fellow-citizens and their implicit confidence. While he was firm in his convictions of his rules of life, he was always tolerant of differences of opinion; and he was ever a peace-maker. In all the relations of life, as friend and

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adviser, as leader or co-worker, remembering his courage in war and his many good deeds in peace, Col. William Pfaender was easily the foremost and most honored citizen of New Ulm, and should by right be looked upon as its father. He will be missed as no other resident could be. He will be missed especially by his comrades in arms and all old soldiers and settlers whose friend he was and for whose welfare he always labored. That the last Legis- lature a few months prior to his death did tardy justice to the memory of himself and comrades for gallant deeds at the battle of Shiloh by appropriating a small sum to erect a monument to their memory on the battle-field, was some consolation in his last days. In his domestic life his kindness of heart and gentle government were all that could be asked of husband and father; and his pure life must ever beckon those who remain to follow where he blazed the way.

Mrs. Pfaender died in 1892, and after that a daughter, Miss Josephine, made the home pleasant for her father. Mr. and Mrs. Pfaender were the parents of fifteen chil- dren, five of whom died, most of them from diphtheria in 1881, and ten children are living. These are William, Frederick, Herman and Albert Pfaender, Mrs. L. A. Fritsche and Misses Josephine and Minnie Pfaender, in New Ulm; though the last named is most of the time teach- ing school in St. Paul, where Mrs. G. Stamm, Mrs. Charles Albrecht and Mrs. Charles Hauser reside. The sons and daughters and some of their children, as also Dr. G. Stamm, were all at the funeral.

The funeral attendance was one of the largest seen in New Ulm, and in the escort to the city cemetery were the

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members of Hecker Post, Captain Burg's battery, the Second Regiment band, Company A of the National Guard, and members of the New Ulm Turnverein. At the grave the band played a dirge, when the Grand Army of the Republic service was given, and after some appropriate remarks by Commander Klossner, Judge B. F. Webber paid the last tribute in words to the departed in the admir- able address that follows:

"Friends and fellow citizens-We meet with those who mourn the loss of a dear father and with other rela- tives at the grave of Col. William Pfaender. You have listened in the language that his ears first heard, in the language in which his mother expressed her love for him in his cradle, to a brief history of his achievements and the high esteem in which he is held by those dear to him by reason of his nativity. As an American citizen and as his neighbor, I wish to express, in the language of his adopted country, the high esteem in which his memory is held by every American citizen of his acquaintance, and the deep grief which they feel at the termination of a noble man- hood. We recall his birth, nearly eighty years ago, in the far off land beyond the sea; we recall the struggles of his boyhood and early manhood, in the school room and count- ing-house; we recall his emigration and settlement in his adopted country at the age of twenty-two; we recall his settlement with a little colony of Germans in the then wilderness among the Indians at the age of thirty, and his continuous residence at the same place for nearly fifty years. We recollect that he took a leading part as a municipal and county officer in the early history of our city and county; that he cast one of the electoral votes of

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the state for the noblest of American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln; that he served his country well as an officer in the War of the Rebellion and in protecting the homes of the early settlers from the savage Sioux; and that he after- ward served his state honestly and faithfully in a respon- sible state office. From all of those positions, boy, emi- grant, neighbor, officer, soldier, citizen, come only the words 'well done, good and faithful servant.'

"And now, in the neighborhood where he has been known and loved so long, almost in sight of his home for nearly half a century, below the branches of the trees that his own hands have planted, beneath the flowers strewn and planted by loving hands, with the birds singing and the breezes whispering in the branches above him, shall his ashes rest until the resurrection morn; and it requires no effort for me to believe that the loving father, true friend, neighbor, soldier, citizen and patriot, will enjoy the best there is beyond the 'dim seen strand of that untrodden, silent land, that covers all the past.'"

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REV. EDWARD F. WHEELER.

The pastor of the Congregational church at New Ulm, Rev. Edward F. Wheeler, is doing a commendable work and is popular with all classes. He was born at Grafton, Ver- mont, January 20, 1862, and is a son of Melanchthon Gil- bert and Frances C. (Parkinson) Wheeler. The father was born at Charlotte, Vermont, May 22, 1802, and the mother at Columbia, Coos county, New Hampshire, March 9, 1819. She was a daughter of Robert and Elizabeth (Kelso) Park- inson. Her grandfather, Henry Parkinson, came from Londonderry, in the north of Ireland, and settled near Con- cord, New Hampshire. He graduated from Princeton Col- lege, then called Nassau Hall. He excelled as a classical scholar and fitted many students for Dartmouth College. He served in the Revolutionary War and was at one time quartermaster in Col. John Stark's regiment.

Robert Parkinson was born in Francestown, New Hampshire, May 18, 1781, passed his youth in Concord and Canterbury, then secured a farm in Columbia, where he built of hewn timber the best house at that time in the county. The embargo of the War of 1812 with England brought him financial distress by making unsalable a large consignment of lumber which he had delivered for ship- ment at Portland, Maine. He also lost through endorse- ment of a friend's note. He had been honored by election to the state Legislature, but now with wife and six children, went to live in poverty in New Boston, New Hampshire, where his wife's father had secured to her a house and lot.

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From that time all the honors of the battle. went to the de- voted wife, a woman of sincerest piety, cheerful disposition, and untiring energy. The children had to work hard, but studied early and late to secure such education as the town furnished. After finishing the course of the district school, they attended a high school kept three months in the year by a college student. After her mother's death in 1837, Frances C. Parkinson went with her brothers and sisters to live in Nashua, where part of the family attended an acad- emy kept by David Crosby. She did excellent work in this school, reading much Latin, and excelling the boys of her class in mathematics. In 1838 she was elected to teach in one of the graded public schools of Nashua. She spent her vacations in study at the academy. After about three years she was offered a much better position as teacher in the Young Ladies' Seminary at Milford, New Hampshire, where she remained four years. She thus earned a special course in Mt. Holyoke Seminary at South Hadley, Massa- chusetts, where she made the acquaintance and friendship of the principal, Mary Lyon, a wonderful woman in many ways. Then she was engaged to take charge of the girls' high school at Northampton, Massachusetts, where she re- mained until her marriage to M. G. Wheeler, May 4, 1848, at Nashua, New Hampshire.

M. G. Wheeler was the son of Hon. Zadoc Wheeler, who was chief judge of the county court and represented the town of Charlotte, Vermont, for several terms in the state Legislature. M. G. Wheeler's mother was Mary Holbrook, of Boston. Her father taught a ladies' school in Boston for many years, in a building standing on the corner of Washington and West streets. Melanchthon knew that his

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mother longed and prayed that he might enter the ministry. His uncle, Judge Wheeler, of Whitehall, New York, who had become a man of wealth, invited him to enter his office after graduating from college and promised to do all in his power to advance his worldly interests, on condition that he would take up the study of law and abandon his purpose to become a pastor; but in memory of his mother's wish, he put aside the temptation and decided to press on with his preparation for the ministry. He graduated from Union College, Schenectady, New York, in the class of 1825, re- ceiving the second honor-"The Philosophical Oration." In 1826 he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied for two years, then joined the seminary at Ando- ver, Massachusetts, in hope of receiving benefit from man- ual labor, for which there was more opportunity than at Princeton. He graduated here with honor on September 23, 1829. His first pastorate was at Falmouth, Massachu- setts, where the severe climate, coupled with the sometimes reckless zeal of his young manhood, caused serious throat trouble, from which he never fully recovered and which required frequent, though brief, periods of rest and many refusals to urgings to make his pastorates more permanent. He held the following positions with unvarying success, when not disabled by poor health-pastorates at Abington Center, Massachusetts, October, 1831, to August, 1833; Con- way, Massachusetts, December, 1833, to August, 1841. Fol- lowing this he worked a year as financial secretary of the Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary; then, against medical ad- vice, resumed preaching, as pastor of the Congregational Church in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, October, 1842, to March, 1846; then as supply, for a few months, of the Jona-

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than Edwards Church in Northampton. In 1848 he fol- lowed Dr. Caleb Tenney as agent of the Massachusetts Colo- nization Society, and continued this work seven years, then resumed pastoral labors for the rest of his life, as pastor of the church at South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, from Octo- ber, 1855, for four years; then at Grafton, Vermont, from the fall of 1859, for three years; then at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, now included in Boston, for three years until July, 1865, when he was installed over the North church in Woburn, Massachusetts, where he remained until his death on February 9, 1870. Here, with the savings of a lifetime, he purchased ten acres of land and a fine old colo- nial house built in 1880 by Colonel Baldwin, after whom the Baldwin apple was named. This house is now the home of E. F. Wheeler's youngest sister, Mrs. W. W. Hill. Rev. Melanchthon Wheeler's widow survived until January 1, 1905, and was buried from this home in Woburn. By al- most superhuman effort she kept the home out of debt, kept the children in school until they became self-supporting, and frequently entertained old friends and visiting cler- gymen.

To the union of these parents five children were born: Elizabeth Parkinson, now deceased, who taught in the Wo- burn high school and married John R. Carter, a civil engi- neer of Woburn, and became the mother of three boys, Charles, who graduated from Dartmouth College and is now clerk in the Bank of the Metropolis, New York; Mor- ris, who led his class at Harvard and is now custodian of the Boston Art Museum; and Royal, a Dartmouth graduate, now in business in the Philippines; John Henry Wheeler, the second child, who graduated at Harvard University,

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standing third in rank in the large class of 1871, taught for one year in the private classical school in Boston of Pro- fessor Noble, entered the Harvard law school and was admitted to the bar in 1873, received from Harvard the degree of Master of Arts at the annual commencement in 1875, was appointed Fellow in Greek at the Johns Hop- kins University in Baltimore in 1876, received an appoint- ment to a Parker Fellowship of Harvard, which enabled him to study three years in Europe; in August, 1879, re- ceived from the University of Bonn, Germany, the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, then from September, 1879, to July, 1880, studied the manuscripts of classical authors in the libraries of Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, and Paris, was tutor in Greek and Latin at Harvard 1880- 1881, then professor of Latin at Bowdoin College, Bruns- wick, Maine, from June, 1881, to June, 1882, then profes- sor of Greek at the University of Virginia until his death on October 10, 1887. He left a valuable library, most of which was presented to Middlebury College. Caroline A., the third child, is a graduate of Wellesley College, and is now the wife of Pres. Charles H. Cooper, of the Mankato, Minnesota, State Normal School. Their children are Helen, who teaches in the East high school, Minneapolis; Margaret, who teaches in a college at Des Moines, and Robert, who is a student in Carleton College. Cornelia Frances, the fourth child, took a special course at Wellesley College and is the wife of William W. Hill, general agent of the Northwest- ern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, resid- ing in her father's home in Woburn, Massachusetts. They have two daughters, graduates of Wellesley; Avis, the wife of Rev. Theodore Berle of Reading, Massachusetts, and

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Elizabeth, who is still a student. Avis has three daughters. Edward Francis, the subject of this sketch, was the young- est child.

Rev. Edward F. Wheeler spent his childhood from the age of three in Woburn, Massachusetts, graduated from the high school there, when sixteen years old, after a three years course, and entered Dartmouth College in the class of 1883, but the serious interruption of typhoid fever in the spring of the sophomore year, combined with an invitation from his brother, Professor Wheeler, to live with him at Brunswick, induced him to change to Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where he graduated in 1883. He then taught in the evening school of the Woburn high school for a short time; then was commissioned by the Congregational Home Missionary Society, and came to Appleton, Minne- sota, in the fall of 1885, and for a year preached here and in various country school houses, founding the missions- now churches-at Dawson and Madison, Minnesota, driv- ing long distances and enduring the usual hardships of a new country and severe climate until the fall of 1886, when he entered the Theological Seminary at Hartford, Connec- ticut, graduating there with the class of 1889. Invitations to supply in the vicinity of Hartford enabled him to take a post-graduate course there until May, 1890, when he ac- cepted a call to Grace Union church, North Wilbraham, Massachusetts, where he was ordained and installed on May 14, 1890. In January, 1893, he accepted a call to the Church of the Redeemer, St. Louis, Missouri, where he labored five years; then for nearly four years was pastor of the First Congregational church of Austin, Minnesota; then served as pastor at Newell, Iowa, for three years, and on July 1,

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1905, after supplying here for several Sundays, began his present pastorate at New Ulm, which is making a reputa- tion for keeping her public servants.

Rev. Mr. Wheeler was married on July 11, 1891, to Clarissa Anna Goar, a daughter of Joseph J. and Lavinia (Fisher) Goar. She was born in the town of Berlin, Tip- ton county, Indiana. Her father served throughout the Civil War in Company C, Tenth Indiana Volunteer Regi- ment. He is still living in good health and has a fine farm at Montevideo, Minnesota, which he took as a homestead soon after the war. To Rev. and Mrs. Wheeler three chil- dren have been born, namely: Clara, who died when one year old; Elizabeth Parkinson, and Joseph Edward. These two graduated together from the New Ulm high school, then Ellizabeth finished the three years' course at the Mankato State Normal School and is now teaching in the Lincoln school in St. Peter, while Joseph worked as bookkeeper in the Eagle roller mill, and has finished his second year of study in the University of Chicago.

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History of Brown County, Minnesota: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Volume 1), Part 55

Author: L. A. Fritsche, M. D. Publication date: 1916 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: L. A. Fritsche, M. D.
Publication date: 1916
Publisher:
Number of Pages: