Henry W. Oelrich

HENRY W. OELRICH, former ditch supervisor for Washington township and a well known farmer and landowner of that township, proprietor of a well kept place on the outskirts of New Knoxville besides other lands in the township, was born in Washington township and has lived there all his life save for a period of several years when he was trying out conditions in South Dakota. Mr. Oelrich was born on a farm in the New Knoxville neighborhood, in section 16 of Washington township, this county, February 19, 1866, and is a son of Henry and Mary (Peterjohann) Oelrich, natives of Germany, who had come up here from Cincinnati, where Henry Oelrich had been engaged in working at his trade as a chairmaker after coming to this country, and had bought a tract of fifty-two acres northwest of New Knoxville. There he lived for several years and then he bought a tract of 160 acres of uncleared land along the creek in section 16 of Washington township, where he settled down to the hard task of clearing the place and making a farm out of it and where he spent the remainder of his life. He and his wife were the parents of eight children, of whom six are still living, the subject of this sketch having four sisters, Dina, Christina, Anna and Mary, and a brother, Fred Oelrich. Reared on the home farm there along the creek a couple of miles northeast of New Knoxville, Henry W. Oelrich received his schooling in the local schools and as a young man continued farming on the home place, where he was thus actively engaged for fifteen years, at the end of which time he went to South Dakota with a view to prospecting about a bit with the possibility in mind of locating there if conditions proved to his liking. Mr. Oelrich in addition to his training as a farmer also had become a competent carpenter and upon his arrival in South Dakota began working there as a builder. For three or four years he remained there and then decided that Auglaize county after all was about the best place in the world and he returned here and bought the tract of thirteen acres on which he is now living in the immediate vicinity of New Knoxville and has since resided there. Upon taking that place Mr. Oelrich erected a substantial dwelling house there and he and his family are very comfortably situated. In addition to this tract he has a well improved farm of 100 acres in section 16, which he rents out. Mr. Oelrich has long taken an active interest in local civic affairs and for three years served the public as supervisor of ditches in his home township. In his political leanings he is inclined to "independence" of mere party ties. Henry W. Oelrich married Sophia Hinze, daughter of William Hinze and also a member of one of the old families of this county, and to this union have been born five children, William, Huldah, Florence, Alfred and Esther, the two elder of whom are married. William Oelrich married Ella Kuck and has one child, a daughter, Catherine, and Huldah Oelrich married R. B. Meckstroth and has one child, a son, Donald. The Oelrichs are members of the Reformed church at New Knoxville and Mr. Oelrich has served the congregation of that flourishing church as a deacon.