NITARDY, Otto Carl 1865-1930

NITARDY, TOETER

Posted By: Diane M Scott (email)
Date: 10/30/2010 at 13:19:28

#1:

Reverend Otto Carl Nitardy
February 24, 1865 – July 15, 1930

Otto attended public school in Tribsees Germany, and after his confirmation on completion of grammar school, spent a year and a half as writing clerk in the Magistrates office of Tribsees. Easter 1882, he went to his cousin, Reverend Dr. Wilhelm Germann, Kirchenrat at Nordheim, to assist the latter in some literary work. In the Autumn of 1883 he enlisted in the army at Stralsund where he served from November 8, 1883 in the 11th company of the 3rd Pomeranian infantry regiment, till he received his honorable discharge on September 10, 1886.

His original intent had been to serve 12 years and thus qualify for a civil service post, but he changed his mind when he tired of army life. Otto left for the USA in September 1886 to enter a Lutheran Seminary at Mendota, Illinois, to study for the ministry. He was ordained on December 11, 1888 and accepted a call to a scattered parish covering four counties in North Dakota near Bismarck, including the towns or villages of Mandan, Salem, Hebron and Krem, where he remained till the end of 1889. Then he accepted a call to West Burlington, Iowa and on May 25, 1890, a call to Grafton, Iowa. There Otto met Alice Toeter at a mission festival held at a country church near the present Toeterville, Iowa.

When Otto's brother became very ill in the winter of 1892-93, he visited him in Baden and substituted for him by preaching some sermons. Later, after Ferdinand's death, Otto received a call from Baden, which he first declined, but on farther urging from the Baden congregation, finally accepted. Thus he left Grafton on March 31, 1893 to assume the pulpit left vacant by his brother's death.

Otto gave up the ministry on January 17, 1896 because of chronic hoarseness and severe asthma and left Baden in February temporarily to live with the Toeter family on the farm near St. Ansgar. On June 20, 1896, Otto with his brother Paul joining him, purchased a lumberyard at Meriden, Minnesota and the two families moved there on July 1, 1896. The business was first operated as a partnership. Later, after Paul's injury, Otto carried it on alone. He was practically forced to sell out to the Winona Lumber Co. of Winona, Minnesota, which threatened to put him out of business with a competing establishment in Meriden if he refused to sell. Thus, on May 1, 1897, he became manager of the yard for the new owner. Otto was not greatly pleased with his position or its meager salary of $50 a month.

Otto completed his citizenship requirements and received his final papers in the district court at Owatonna on June 8, 1898. Shortly thereafter he left for Germany to visit his sister and aging father. He gave up the managership of the yard in Meriden and left for Lincoln, Nebraska, on September 1, 1899, where he had purchased a 15 acre tract of land in a suburban area. Here he built a house and set up a truck and poultry farm.

After experiencing a severe drought, he decided to sell out again, leaving for Waverly, Iowa, on March 1, 1901, where Otto took charge of a lumberyard. He left Waverly again July 1, 1906 for St. Paul, Minnesota, first to take up work with the newspaper Volkzeitung, and later to operate a maintenance lumberyard for Swift & Co. in South St. Paul.

Otto and his family returned to Waverly, Iowa, in May 1908 where he took charge of a printer and bindery for the Wartburg Publishing Co., in which capacity he remained till March 20, 1916. Otto's son Rudolph was a born farmer and anxious to operate his grandfather's farm at Toeterville, hence the family left for there. Farming proved to be hard work for the whole family. When Rudolph hurt his back they decided to rent the farm to someone on a five year lease, sold their belongings, and on February 25, 1925 moved to Chicago, where they bought a house in the Norwood Park section. Carl was already living in Chicago then. Rudolph took up carpentry. In the beginning, Otto found work as night cashier in a restaurant for the meager pay of $18 per week, then he took work with the Wartburg Publishing Co's Chicago establishment, but that work proved too heavy for him and he finally had to give it up again.

On persuasion of Mr. Schaffnit, owner of the Wartburg Hospice in Minneapolis, he left for there on September 1, 1928 to operate the hospice. The owner, however, proved to be a selfish and difficult person to deal with, hence Otto and his wife returned to Chicago in August 1929, where they undertook the operation of a rooming house.

Otto was a man of great generosity, always doing something for others, always giving to strangers or relatives when he had little or nothing to spare. He no doubt should have and probably would have remained in his profession as clergyman had his health at the time permitted it. Later, his throat seemed to be alright again. There may have been a certain restlessness of spirit that caused him to change about so much in late years, or it may have been his dissatisfaction with some business practices. He was a man of high principles and rugged honesty. His main hobby was fishing. He also wrote German verses for various occasions.

Death, July 15, 1930, in Chicago, Cook county, Illinois.
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#2:

St. Peter German Evangelical Cemetery, Toeterville, Mitchell, Iowa:

Nitardy, Otto -- February 24, 1865 – July 15, 1930

Nitardy, Alice Elizabeth – February 23, 1871 – July 19, 1956