Henry N. Hahn

HAHN, FRAHM, HEINTZ, BLUNK, ANDERSON, MOMMSEN, WEEKS, PERRY

Posted By: Barbara Gehlsen Nugent (email)
Date: 7/26/2011 at 23:19:49

Wolfe's History of Clinton County, Iowa by P. B. Wolfe, Volume I, Biographical Sketches
Page 635-638

HENRY N. HAHN.

It is with a great degree of satisfaction that we advert to the life of one who has made a success in any vocation requiring definiteness of purpose and determined action. Such a life, whether it be one of prosaic endeavor or radical accomplishment, abounds in valuable lesson and incentive to those who have become discouraged in the fight for recognition or to the youth whose future is undetermined. During a long, strenuous and honorable career Henry N. Hahn, one of the substantial and representative citizens of Clinton county, directed his energies and talents toward the goal of success in this locality and by patient continuance has won, now living in retirement at his cozy and beautiful home at Grand Mound, Orange township.

Like many of the thrifty citizens of this county. Mr. Hahn is of German birth, having first seen the light of day in the fatherland on April 5, 1829, but the major part of his life has been spent in America, and now in the mellow autumn of his years he can look backward over a well spent career with no compunction for misdeeds, for he has always done his duty in all the relations of life. He grew to maturity in his native land and was educated there, remaining with his parents, Hans and Minnie (Heintz) Hahn, until he reached manhood. The parents were born, reared and spent their lives in Germany. They were the parents of five sons and two daughters. All but the oldest daughter came to America. One son, Augustus, was a soldier in the Union army and was wounded at Pittsburg Landing and died there.

Henry N. Hahn, of this review, began life as a farmer in Germany and in 1854 he came to America, the trip across the great Atlantic requiring fortynine days in an old-fashioned sailing-vessel. He located in the city of Baltimore and began working at five dollars per week putting up stoves and furnaces, continuing thus for one entire year. In 1860 he came to Clinton county, Iowa, reaching his destination in the then new but rapidly developing Middle West on March 20th. He located one and one-third miles northwest of Grand Mound, where he rented land for a period of eight years in order to get a start. By close application and hard work he laid by a competency. The town of Grand Mound had then just started. On March 1, 1868, he moved to the farm of eighty acres that he had purchased in 1865, and where he still resides. In 1866 he bought forty acres additional. In that year he turned the prairie sod on fifty acres and sowed it in grain in the spring of 1867. In the fall of that year he built the house in which he still lives. He has continued to buy land until now he has one of the "banner" farms of the county, consisting of two hundred and eighty acres, on which stand three good dwellings and a number of substantial outbuildings, nearly all of which Mr. Hahn has erected himself. He has kept his land well improved and the soil has been so adroitly tilled that it has retained its original fertility, and Mr. Hahn has long been regarded as one of the leading agriculturists of Orange township. He is also the owner of three hundred and twenty acres of good land in Martin county, southern Minnesota. No small part of Mr. Hahn's income has been derived from handling live stock, of which he has always been an excellent judge, and he has the reputation of owning the best stock in the community, and being of such superior quality he has always found a very ready market for them. He retired from active farming in 1889. Ne has long been prominent in local financial circles. He was at one time a director in the bank at Grand Mound and for a period of twenty-six years he was secretary of the Mutual Insurance Company. He was connected with the Farmers' Store at De Witt for a period of thirteen years. He has been very successful in whatever he has turned his attention to, and is eminently deserving of the competency he can today call his, owing to the fact that he started in life emptyhanded and has made unaided the property he now owns, and made it, too, in a perfectly honest and legitimate manner.

Mr. Hahn was married on December 28, 1849, while still living in Germany, to Sophia Frahm, who, like himself, was of an excellent family. This union resulted in the birth of the following children: Henry M., of De Witt; Emilia married John Blunk, of Grand Mound; Lizzette, now Mrs. Anderson, of Greene county. Iowa; Sophia, now Mrs. Monsen, of Oklahoma; Mrs. Louise Weeks, of Minneapolis, Minnesota; Louis is living on the farm; Julius lives two miles west of De Witt; Minnie, now Mrs. Perry, lives south of De Witt. They all received good educations and were reared in a wholesome home atmosphere. The mother of these children passed to her rest on March 8, 1899.

Mr. Hahn is a member and liberal supporter of the German Lutheran Evangelical church, and, politically, he is a Democrat. He has been trustee of Orange township for many years, and has been school director. He has always been interested in the general development of his community and county, but he has never aspired to public office.