William Stolte

WILLIAM STOLTE, one of the best known residents of Washington township, a substantial farmer and landowner, living on his well-kept place on rural route No. 1 out of St. Marys, is a European by birth, but has been a resident of this country and of Auglaize county since he was sixteen years of age, a period of more than fifty years. Mr. Stolte was born in the Prussian province of Westphalia, Germany, April 25, 1855, and was thus sixteen years of age when, in 1871, his parents, William and Elizabeth (Fornhorst) Stolte, came to this country with their family of three children, Henry, William and Sophia, and settled on a farm in Washington township, this county, where they spent the remainder of their lives. Upon coming here the junior William Stolte entered the night school which then was being conducted at New Knoxville, and which was designed to give newcomers from a foreign land an opportunity to acquire a working knowledge of the language spoken in their new country, and about the same time he entered himself as an apprentice to a local carpenter and builder, with a view to learning the carpenter trade. He served a three years' apprenticeship, for which he received for his service the sum of $135, and then began to work as a carpenter throughout the neighborhood, a vocation which he followed for seven years, or until his marriage, when he settled on the farm on which he is now living, renting there a tract of 120 acres, and thus entered upon the career of farming which ever since has engaged him. For some years he rented this place and then bought it and began to make the improvements which in the years since have given him a very well-equipped farm plant there. Stolte has done well in his operations and now has 180 acres, renting out the second tract of sixty acres, which he bought some years ago. He is a Republican and has rendered public service as road supervisor and for some years as director of schools in his district. Mr. Stolte married Sophia Fennemann, of the New Knoxville neighborhood, and to this union eight children have been born, five of whom are living, Louis, William (III), Harry, Matilda and Emma, all of whom are married save Harry, who is still on the farm with his father. The Rev. Louis Stolte married Mary Lutterbeck and has one child, a daughter, Naomi. William Stolte, Jr., married Sarah Clausing and has three children, Robert, Dorothy and Forest, Matilda Stolte is the wife of Benjamin Schultz, and Emma Stolte married Hugo Kattman and has had three children, Paul, Louis and Irene Ruth (deceased). The Stoltes are members of the Reformed church at New Knoxville, and Mr. Stolte is now serving in his fifteenth year as an elder of that congregation. He also served for two years as a deacon of the church. Mrs. Stolte was born in Cincinnati and was but a child when she came up into this part of the state with her parents, William and Esther Fennemann, natives of Germany, the family settling at New Knoxville, where William Fennemann became engaged in the milling business, operating a flour mill and a saw mill, and was thus engaged until these mills were destroyed by fire. He rebuilt the saw mill, and in this latter business continued active until his death, miller at New Knoxville for nearly fifty years. He also was widely known hereabout as an auctioneer, and for years cried public sales throughout this part of the state. William Fennemann and wife were the parents of eight children, four of whom are still living, Mrs. Stolte having three sisters, Minnie, Dora and Emma.