Andrew Rahe

RAHE, WEEKMAN, BUCHENSTETE, SCHIMMEL, WESSELL, BROCKMANN

Posted By: Oregon Rain
Date: 9/2/2006 at 23:15:11

Andrew Rahe is a well known and wealthy farmer, living in New Wine Township, Dubuque County, adjoining the village of New Vienna. Our subject was born at Munster, Westphalia, in the United Kingdom of Prussia, in May, 1824. His parents both died when he was but a child, hence but little can be learned of them. He was taken by relatives to bring up and passed his boyhood on the farm, receiving only a limited education. When he attained his majority, in 1845, he set sail for the New World, and on landing in the United States first located at Hamilton, Ohio, where he remained until 1847, in the spring of which year he came to Iowa, and for a time worked on the mill then being built by Schimmel Bros., near the present site of New Vienna.
In August, 1848, Mr. Rahe was united in wedlock with Mrs. Catherine Weekman, a widow, who was born in Oldenburg, Germany, and came to America with her parents when a child. In 1843, with her husband, she made the journey from Ohio to Iowa, making the trip by ox team. Mrs. Rahe has one daughter by her first marriage, Mary, now the wife of Clarence Buchenstete, a wealthy farmer in Delaware County, of this state.

Directly after his marriage Mr. Rahe located on the farm where he has ever since resided. Coming to this county as he did, without means, he early set about making for himself a competency, and now aside from the large farm on which he makes his home he owns several farms in Dubuque and Delaware Counties, being one of the wealthiest residents of this vicinity.
To Mr. and Mrs. Rahe have been born the following children: Clement, who wedded Mary, daughter of Joseph Schimmel, and is engaged in farming near Dyersville; Henry, whose wife died, leaving four children, and who now resides with his father on the farm; Frank, a farmer of Delaware County, who wedded Miss Mary Wesell; and Annie, the wife of Theodore Brockmann, a well known agriculturist of Delaware County. Our subject was brought up in the Catholic faith, to which he still belongs. He uses his right of franchise in favor of the Democratic party, and both as a business man and for his own well known qualities of true worth is held in the highest respect by one and all.

~ source: Portrait and biographical record of Dubuque, Jones and Clayton Counties, Iowa; Chicago: Chapman Pub. Co., 1894, pg. 164-165