Schultze, William

SCHULTZE, LUTMAN, VAN VORKUM

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 10/20/2009 at 10:49:27

Schultze, William

There is a great difference in this world of ours as to how we get our property, whether by small degrees and hard toil or by suddenly making it in one or a few lucky ventures or even by inheriting it from successful and thrifty ancestors. It makes a wonderful difference in a man's life also, whether he earns his home by severe toil or by easy methods or secures it from his parents. One important fact will not be disputed, that if a man earns it by hard knocks he is much more likely to retain it than if it had been handed down to him by some hard-working, economical progenitor. One of the up-to-date farmers of Elk Creek Township who has made his property solely by hard licks, who was taught to depend upon himself early in life and has therefore been independent and self-reliant all his life, is William Schultze, who was born in Hanover, Germany, August 17, 1858. He is the son of Henry and Tobina (Lutman) Schultze, both natives of Germany, the father born in 1829 and the mother in 1828. There they grew up and were married, in fact, spent their lives in the fatherland, never having come to America. The father was a ship carpenter by trade and was regarded as a very skilled workman. His death occurred in 1904.

William Schultze, of this review, was the oldest of a family of five sons. After attending school in the community where he spent his boyhood, he learned the blacksmith's trade, at which he worked, hiring to various persons, until 1888, when, believing that greater opportunities existed for him in the United States, he set sail for our shores and has since been content to make his home among us, much to our mutual advantage. He at once took up his residence at Orange City, Polk County, Iowa, establishing a shop there, which he conducted for one year. Then he went to Missouri, where he spent nine months, later worked in Chicago five months, then ran a shop of his own in Polk, Iowa, coming to Sully, this state, a year later, where he maintained a blacksmith shop until the spring of 1908 then turned his attention to farming, having saved considerable money from his earnings at the forge. He was regarded wherever he worked as a very skilled blacksmith and always had plenty of work. The place he purchased consisted of one hundred and sixty acres in Elk Creek Township, Jasper County, and he moved thereto at once and soon had a good home and the place under good improvements and in a high state of cultivation and here he still lives, being now very comfortably established as a result of his long years of hard and constant toil.

Mr. Schultze has never been much of a public man and he adheres to no political party, preferring to vote for the best man seeking the office within the gift of the people, irrespective of party. He is a member of the Christian Reform Church.

Mr. Schultze was married on April 29, 1890, to Anna Van Vorkum, who was born in Holland, from which country she immigrated to America when young and they were married in Pella, Iowa. To the subject and wife have been born seven children, named as follows: Artie, Henry, Gilbert, William, Lena, Adolph and Jennetta. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa B. F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912 Page 699.