Harms, William

WOLF, WOLFGRAM, PAGEL

Posted By: BCGS
Date: 12/3/2009 at 09:07:09

William Harms is living in retirement in Sumner, having earned a period of leisure after many years of close identification with farming interests of Bremer county. He was born in Hanover, Germany, February 17, 1857, and when he was fifteen years of age came to the United States, settling in Cook county, Illinois, where he remained for two years. In 1874 he moved to Bremer county, this state, where he secured a position as binder on a Marsh harvester, working for eighteen dollars a month. After spending an arduous day at this labor he would work at midnight shucking grain and in this way accumulated enough money to rent land. At the age of twenty-three he began farming independently and after renting land for two years bought eighty acres in Franklin township. At the end of seven years he sold this property and purchased one hundred and twenty acres in Dayton township. Two years later he bought eighty acres in Sumner township and seventy in Fayette county and upon this property engaged in general farming and stock-raising, meeting with excellent and well deserved success. In 1908, having accumulated a comfortable competency, he purchased a home within the corporation limits of Sumner and retired from active life.

Mr. Harms married Miss Dorothea Wolf, a native of Germany, and they have become parents of six children: Emma, the wife of Fred Wolfgram, of Fayette county; John, who is engaged in farming in Bremer county; Louise, the wife of William Pagel, of Sumner; William, engaged in farming in Sumner township; and Lydia and Martha, at home.

Mr. Harms is a member of the German Evangelical Lutheran church and is a democrat in his political beliefs. His career furnishes a striking example of the value of industry, frugality and determination in the attainment of success, for he has worked his own way upward, standing today among the representative and substantial men of the community.

History of Bremer County, Iowa Vol. II 1914