Charles F. Schroeder

CHARLES F. SCHROEDER, a well-known and substantial farmer and landowner of Washington township, now a breeder of purebred Duroc Jersey hogs at New Knoxville, where he and his family are very comfortably situated, is a conspicuous example in his life of what may be accomplished against apparently great odds. Bereft of his mother by death when he was but an infant, orphaned by the death of his father when he was ten, Mr. Schroeder came to America when fourteen a penniless boy dependent upon a kindly kinsman for the passage money which brought him over. Starting to work as a farm hand, he quickly found that willing hands and stout heart had a real value in this country, and he kept going until at an age when most men are still "buckling down" to the job, he was able to retire from active labor, the owner of a valuable farm and independent of the erstwhile buffetings of fortune. Mr. Schroeder is a European by birth, born in the Prussian province of Westphalia, Germany, April 5, 1870, and is a son of William and Louise (Brocksmith) Schroeder, the latter of whom died not long after the birth of her son, leaving also another child, a son, Henry. The father of these sons, a poor tenant farmer, died when Charles was ten years of age, and the latter was looked after by kinsfolk in the old country until he was fourteen years of age, when his uncle, William Hoffman, who some years before had come to this country and had become established in Darke County, this state, provided the means for his passage to this country. Upon his arrival in Darke county, Charles F. Schroeder began working as a farm hand, his pay being $4 a month for the first year of his service in this connection. For five years he worked in Darke county and then he went to California and began working in a large vineyard there, and was thus engaged for three years, at the end of which time he returned to Ohio and resumed his old employment as a farm hand in Darke County. Two years later he came to Auglaize County and became engaged in farm labor in the New Knoxville neighborhood, and was thus engaged until his marriage two years later, when he rented a farm of ninety-nine acres in Washington township and started in to farm on his own account, establishing his home there. Four years later he bought a "forty" of this place, and as his affairs prospered later bought the remainder of the tract. Mr. Schroeder carried on his farming operations in a systematic manner, and these proved so successful that in 1919 he was able to retire from the farm and move to New Knoxville, on the outskirts of which pleasant village he bought a tract of ten acres, built himself a substantial and attractive dwelling house and has since lived there, the owner of 110 acres of valuable land which is being farmed in profitable fashion. He now is giving his special attention to the breeding of purebred Duroc Jersey hogs. Charles F. Schroeder married Anna Eschmeyer, daughter of Henry and Christina Eschmeyer, and to this union have been born three children, Selma, Lawrence and Evelyn, the two latter of whom are at home with their parents. Selma Schroeder married Norman Grewe and has one child, a daughter, Magdalena Mary. The Schroeders are members of the Reformed church at New Knoxville, Mr. Schroeder is a Republican and has rendered public service as supervisor of highways in his district.