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CHRISTIAN A. HEINRICH. — An extensive land owner and a wealthy farmer, Christian A. Heinrich has also retired to his beautiful home in Blairstown with the record of a useful public service in the interests of Leroy township and Benton county. He is a German by birth, his native village being Tusheim, province of Magdeburg, Saxony, and his parents, Frederick William and Catherine (Krause) Heinrich, both also born in that kingdom. Eight children were born to them, of whom six are living. The father was a stonemason; moved to Australia with his family in 1849, and during the succeeding eighteen years followed his trade and engaged in farming. In 1867 he returned to Germany and two years afterward emigrated to the United States, settling on a farm near Milwaukee, whither his son, Christian A., had preceded him. After remaining in that locality for about a year the elder Mr. Heinrich returned to the fatherland to pass the remainder of his years, dying in 1888; his wife had died in 1880.
Christian A. Heinrich was born in the German village already mentioned September 4, 1849, shortly before the family moved to Australia. He was reared on a farm, received most of his education in a private German school, and was eighteen years of age when his parents and other members of the household returned to Germany. In 1869 he was sent by his father to investigate the prospects for an improvement of circumstances in the northwest of the United States, and it was his favorable reports which brought the family to Wisconsin. In May, 1871, soon after his parents and three of the children returned to Germany, he located in Benton county, and for five years thereafter was employed as a farm hand in various localities. Then, with a thorough knowledge of the locality and a little capital, he purchased a quarter section in section 1, Leroy township. Upon his land was a rude shack of a house, the fences were broken and the entire place in the worst state of neglect conceivable; but the sturdy young German cleared up the farm, and straightened things out with a vim, and in 1878 erected a good residence on his place. He continued to cultivate the soil and improve all the surroundings until December, 1900, when he retired to Blairstown, the owner not only of a most desirable homestead, but of other property in both St. Clare and Leroy townships. Mr. Heinrich is now the proprietor of four hundred and forty acres of good land, most of it highly improved, and also owns his handsome home at Blairstown. He has served his school district as director and treasurer and otherwise been most useful to the community. In politics he is a Republican, and both he and his wife are active in their support of the Evangelical Association.
On December 20, 1877, Mr. Heinrich married Miss Susan Wolf, who was born near Buffalo, New York, January 28, 1855, and is a daughter of John and Susan (Stickenger) Wolf. The parents were of German nativity, and in 1851 emigrated to the United States, their sailing vessel being forty days upon the ocean. They located in New York state, but in 1855 drove through to Iowa and settled in Iowa county, three miles south of Watkins, later moving to Benton county. When Mrs. Heinrich's parents came to this country they possessed just five dollars, her father's first work in Iowa being in the stone quarries operated by the Dutch and German colonists in Iowa county. John Wolf, who was born in Germany February 14, 1822, lived in his later days with Mr. and Mrs. Heinrich, where his death occurred February 20, 1910, at eighty-eight years of age. The wife and mother, born November 3, 1824, died in April, 1901. Besides Mrs. Heinrich the following were members of the Wolf family: Valentine, now a resident of Iowa county, Iowa; Adam, who lives at Marengo, that state; John, of Van Horne, Iowa; and Mary, who married John Thorman, of St. Clare township, Benton county. The four born to Mr. and Mrs. Heinrich are: Emma, now in the training school for nurses at Wesley Hospital, Chicago; Mary, who is a school teacher; Amanda, living at home; and George, a graduate in pharmacy at Iowa City, who is in the drug business at New Hampton, Iowa.
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