Albert Marsden Leichliter, 1851-1927

LEICHLITER, GRIMM, OLIVER, MUNN

Posted By: Clay County IAGenWeb Coordinator (email)
Date: 7/2/2012 at 19:51:37

REV. A.H. LEICHLITER DIES SUDDENLY HERE

Well Known Minister, Long Time Spencer Resident, Passes Away at His Home

Rev. A. M. Leichliter, a retired minister of Congregational church, a resident of Spencer for twenty three years and of Iowa for half a century, died suddenly last Thursday morning at his home on East Sixteenth street. He was nearly 76 years old.

Active to the last, Mr. Leichliter had done various chores that morning as usual and then gone to the barn and started to milk the cow. He was at that task when the end came, supposedly from an apopletic stroke. Mrs. Leichliter, going to see why he had not returned to the house, found him dead.

He had suffered for years from a severe euralgia, and had also been obliged to undergo several operations in Chicago on account of eye trouble, leaving him with impaired sight, but in his daily life be gave little hint that he was seriously ailing. He worked his little farm, and gardened, and his old-fashioned buggy was a familiar sight on Spencer streets as he drove between his home and town to his last days. He never failed to come down to the Congregational church for services and prayer meetings.

He is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters, and a granddaughter.

Funeral services were held Monday afternoon in the Congregational church, conducted by Rev. B. J. Trickey. The church was filled with the friends who had assembled to show the high esteem in which Mr. Leichliter was held by the community in which he had lived so many years. Interment was made in Riverside cemetery here.

Pall bearers were Wm. Castendyck, Homer E. Pitcher, J. A. Wahlstrom, H.J. Buck, E.D. Bisbee and Walter Lachner.

Albert Marsden Leichliter was born in Springfield, Fayette county, Penn., June 25, 1851. His parents were Jacob and Martha Williams Leichliter. His ancestors on his father's side were among the earliest settlers in western Pennsylvania. Three brothers named Leichliter came from Amsterdam, Holland with the Dutch
immigration about 1648. One brother located in Maryland, one in Virginia and the third in Pennsylvania. In the church yard adjoining the red brick church which Albert Marsden Leichliter attended as a child and young man are gravestones antedating the Revolutionary war bearing the name of Leichliter. The farm on which young George Washington erected Fort Necessity during the war between the English and Colonials on one hand and the French and Indians on the other was once the property of the deceased's grandfather.

Albert Marsden was the youngest of seven sons of Jacob and Martha Leichliter. He had also four sisters, two of whom are still living in Pennsylvania at advanced ages, survive. His boyhood was spent in the manner of all youth of that place and generation; assisting in tilling the mountain acres of his father, and attending short terms of school in winter.

At the age of eighteen he with a brother spent a summer in the then far western state of Illinois. Returning to Pennsylvania he soon was able to become a school teacher and was thus engaged when he married, in 1874, Anna Grimm, daughter of Henry and Christina Grimm, also descendants of western Pennsylvania pioneers.

Two children were born to this union; the first a girl, Leuna, died in infancy. The second, Charles H., born in 1876, survives.

In 1876, when Charles was six weeks old, the family joined that of the Grimms and removed to Saline county, Nebraska. There for approximately seven years A.M. Leichliter engaged very successfully in ranching and farming.

Always a devoted Christian, in 1883, Mr. Leichliter through the influence of the late Dr. William A. Beardshear, then president of Western college at Toledo, Iowa, and later of Iowa State Agricultural college at Ames decided to enter the ministry of the United Brethren church. He removed to Toledo and for four years, during most of which he acted as financial secretary of Western college, he studied theology and prepared himself for the long ministerial career he followed, mostly in northwestern Iowa and since 1891 when he went from the pastorate of the United Brethren church at West Union, Iowa, to the post of home missionary of the Congregational Mission at Larchwood, Lyon county, in the Congregational church.

After leaving Larchwood he served as pastor of Congregational churches at Runnells, southeast of Des Moines; at Peterson, Clay county; then at Aurelia; thence to Gowrie; then to Ruthven, then back to Gowrie. Twenty-three years ago last April he came to Spencer which has since been his home.

While not engaged during that time in any pastorate, Rev. Leichtliter was active until recent years as supply pastor for various nearby churches, he also devoted some time to evangelistic work, in which he was very successful.

His first wife died in July 1897, during a vacation she was spending in Spirit Lake. Mr. Leichliter was then pastor of the Congregational church at Peterson. Among the first Mrs. Leichliter's closest friends and co-workers was Miss Flora Oliver of Spencer, then a teacher in the Peterson schools. Late in 1898 Mr. Leichliter and Miss Oliver were married and since that time his association with the life of Spencer, particularly that of the church, although he has always been ardently interested in everything he considered for the betterment of this community, is well known.

Of the second marriage two daughters were born Miss Dorothy at Gowrie in 1900 and Miss Elizabeth in Spencer 1909. Both these young women have been prominent in church, school and social activities and have been a solace and source of great comfort to their father. Miss Dorothy was absent from home at the time of her father passing away, having been graduated a week ago, three days before Mr. Leichlieter's sudden passing, from Boston University schools of Religious Education and social service with high honors.

Mr. Leichliter's son, Charles, a former newspaperman of northwest Iowa, later connected as a writer and editor for and of newspapers and magazines in Chicago and New York, arrived Sunday from Palm Beach, Florida, where he now makes his home. He was accompanied by his wife and a four year old son, Charles H. Jr., whom Mr. and Mrs. Leichliter adopted last year. Also arriving Sunday were Rev. Mr. Leichliter's grand-daughter, Mrs. Ann Leichliter Munn and her husband,
Hiram A. Munn, whom she married last January. Mr. and Mrs. Munn's home is at Ames, Iowa.

Charles Leichliter brought with him from Florida the last letter written by his father. It was written a week ago Sunday evening and this quotation from it is a warming example of the beautiful thoughts that were ever coursing through the active mind of the friend whose passing we are gathered here to observe. Among other things Rev. Leichliter wrote his son: "This morning we had a fine sermon on 'The Open Window'. Keep our windows open to let the sunshine and pure air in. But we appreciate most of all perhaps, keeping our windows open that we may look out have the long view and enjoy the beauties of nature. The heavens are just as full of stars as ever—astronomers tell us 350,000,000—and they have lost none of their brilliancy."

Today he sits at his Open Window and enjoys "The Long View."

Mr. Trickey at the funeral service read some verses by Fred D. Cram, director of the summer normal school here, as follows:

At even the sunlight breaks thru ashen clouds—
Upon the air a solemn hush is falling;
Out where the dark fog huddles deep and beshrouds
The view, a break in the darkness comes—
And a low voice calling.
Calling to him who was loved, who served; and wept
With the sad; or gay with the glad and smiling;
A full life, feeling the pulse of the world, kept
Tuned to Eternal symphonies
Soothing and beguiling.
Here where a sad heart waits and weeps and cares,
Here where a tear on a cheek is coursing
We look to the road he has patterned,
and shares
With remaining plodders at sunset
And a Father's endorsing.

Source: Spencer Reporter, Spencer, Clay County, Iowa; June 23, 1927.

Interment in Riverside cemetery
 

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