Wilhelm Doerder

DOERDER

Posted By: County Coordinator (email)
Date: 4/21/2010 at 14:20:21

For over four years Wilhelm Doerder has lived retired in Boone after a successful agricultural career in Jackson township. He resides in a handsome home at No 1818 Boone street, which is his property and where he is surrounded by the comforts of life, to which he is entitled because of his many years of arduous and successful labor. He was born in the province of Silesia, Germany, April 2, 1849, and is a son of Karl and Ernestina (Sanger) Doerder, natives of that province. The father was a cloth weaver an died in his native land aoubt 1900, at the age of sixty-seven years. His wife attained the age of sixty-four. In their family were ten children, eight of whom died during their youth, the only living sister of our subject being Mrs Hannah Bittner, who resides in Germany. Wilhelm Doerder recieved his education in Silesia, laying aside his textbooks when about fourteen years of age. He then worked for farmers living in his neighborhood and also found emplyment in the coal mines. Being impressed with the opportunities awaiting a young man in the new world, he came to the United States in 1876, sailing from Rotterdam to London and thence traveling to Liverpool, where he took the steamship Abyssinia to New York. On the later trip this boat went to the bottom of the ocean. When Mr Doerder began his voyage to Americaa he had little more than the necessary traveling expenses. After arriving in New York he made his way to Nebraska, settling in Lancaster county, where there was a friend living from the old country. The first summer he engaged in farm work, remaining with the friend during the winter, and in the spring joined a party of gold seekers who were bound for the Black Hills of South Dakota. He with five other men walked all the way from Nebraska to the Black Hils, and may times they awoke in the morning to find themselves covered with snow. Mr Doerder had no blankets and traded a knife to an Indian for a buffalo robe. There he remaiend only one month, at the end of which time he returned east, walking the whole distance to Boone county, where he worked in the Canfield coal mine in Logan. He then was emplyed for a few months in the Herman Brewery and subsquently became a section hand on the Northwestern Railroad. Toward the end of summer he traveled over the country with one Henry Bowman, selling goods. He then worked in Jackson township on the farm of Mrs John Adix a widow whom he married in 1879. Mr Doerder successfully cultivated the farm until he retired four years ago, moving to Boone on November 10, 1909. He always followed the most modern methods and became prosperous in his farming pursuits.
On April 26, 1879 Mr Doerder married Mrs John Adix, who before her marriage was Miss Hannah Goetsch. She was born in Pomerania, Germany, and died Apirl 6, 1914, at the age of seventy-six years. She bore her husband the following children: Albert, who is in charge of the home farm in Jackson township and who married Rose Linniger, by whom he has one son. Lawrence, and Paulia, who married Lee Koepenhaver, residing near Jordon. By her first mariage Mrs Doerder had five children: Charles of Jackson township. William also a resident of that township, John who makes his home in Harrison township, Kate who marreid John Murken, of Harrison township, and Ida the wife of Joseph F Gutt of Boone. Mr Doerder enjoys the full confidence of all those who know him and is well entitled to the respect and esteem which he receives on all sides because of his manly qualities of character and the success which he has achieved in life.

1914 Boone County History Book