W. H. Lutterbeck

W. H. LUTTERBECK, one of the best known farmers and landowners of Washington township, now living retired at New Knoxville, where he has interests in the tile works and in the gas plant, was born on the farm which he now owns, in the southwest quarter of section 8 of Washington township, two miles north of New Knoxville, January 20, 1846, and is a son of Henry and Elizabeth (Fennemann) Lutterbeck, who had settled there in the woods about three years prior to that date. Henry Lutterbeck, one of the pioneers of Washington township, was a native of Germany, where he grew to manhood and was married. Following his marriage he came to this country with his wife and proceeded on out into Ohio. That was in 1840 during the progress of work on the construction of the canal up through this part of the state. He was a skilled ropemaker and upon his arrival here he set up a rope-walk and began to manufacture snub ropes and tow ropes for use on the canal and also did a considerable business in the manufacture of bed cords for the use of the pioneers. In this manner he got a start toward the accomplishment of his design, which was to become a landowner in this then new country, and in 1843 he bought a tract of forty acres in the southwest quarter of section 8 of Washington township, which then was a part of Allen county, for that was years before the erection of Auglaize county. Henry Lutterbeck built a cabin there in the woods and settled down to the strenuous task of clearing his place and making a farm out of it, for that there between the creeks, was then all densely wooded. As he developed this place he added to his holdings until he became the owner of all that quarter section besides an adjoining tract of twenty over in section 7. On that place he spent the remainder of his days, his death occurring in 1893. To Henry Lutterbeck and wife were born five children, the subject of this sketch and his three sisters, Elizabeth, Christina and Mary, and his brother, William Lutterbeck. As will be noted by a comparison of dates above, W. H. Lutterbeck, was two years of age when Auglaize county came into being. He received his schooling in the little old pioneer school house (district No. 4) just across the road from the southwest corner of the father's farm, and from the days of his boyhood was trained in the ways of the farm. After his marriage he continued to reside there, assuming management of the place as his father retired from the active labors of the farm, and after his father's death in 1893: took over the home place of 177 acres and there continued to reside there until his retirement in 1909 and removal to New Knoxville, where he has since resided. Besides the old home farm which he owns Mr. Lutterbeck has other land holdings, the owner, all told, of 224 acres in this county. In addition to the general farming operations which he has carried on, he also gave considerable attention to the raising of livestock and has done well, his farms being well improved and adequately equipped. Since his removal to New Knoxville, Mr. Lutterbeck has maintained an active interest not only in his farming operations but in the general business interests of the community and is one of the leading stockholders of the Auglaize Tile Company at New Knoxville. He also is interested in the operations of the New Knoxville gas plant, of which concern he also is one of the stockholders. In his political views Mr. Lutterbeck is a Democrat and he and his wife are members of the First Reformed church of New Knoxville, of which congregation he was for three years a director. W. H. Lutterbeck has been twice married. His first wife (Elizabeth Smithkamp) was the mother of six children, three of whom died in infancy. She died in 1897, leaving three daughters, Sarah, Caroline and Lydia, and Mr. Lutterbeck later married Elizabeth Katterheinrich, also a member of one of the old families of this county. Sarah Lutterbeck, Mr. Lutterbeck's eldest daughter married Ernest Holtkamp and has two children, Otto and Esther, the former of whom is married and has a child, thus placing Mr. Lutterbeck in the great-grandfather class, a distinction which he very properly regards quite highly. Caroline Lutterbeck married Henry Eversman and has three children, Ferd, Julius and Sylvanus, and Lydia Lutterbeck married Maurice Knoll and has two children, Robert and Florence.