Rehberg, John C. (1832-1888)

REHBERG, HARMAN, POWERS, SCHROEDER, BAUSTIAN

Posted By: Don Wherry (email)
Date: 8/16/2010 at 03:57:40

JOHN C. REHBERG

It is almost twenty-three years since John C. Rehberg, who was engaged in the cultivation of a farm of one hundred and twenty acres in Sheridan township, passed away.

He was born in Pumman, Germany, on the 18th of February, 1832.  The first twenty-two years of his life were spent in his native land, in which country his parents passed away during his early childhood.  In 1854 he decided to become a citizen of the United States, so in company with some relatives he crossed the Atlantic, locating in Princeton, Bureau county, Illinois.  Upon his arrival there he obtained employment as a farm hand with which occupation he continued to be identified for a year.  Ambitious and thrifty he carefully saved his earnings in order to buy a farm, so that he was able when he came to Poweshiek county the following year to purchase forty acres of land in Sheridan township.  Later he added to this another eighty acres on section 33, thus increasing his holdings to one hundred and twenty acres, in the cultivation of which he engaged until the 18th of October, 1888, at which time he passed away.

Mr. Rehberg was united in marriage on the 27th of March, 1858, to Miss Susan Harman, a native of Crawford county, Missouri, who was born on the 27th of September, 1841.  She was a daughter of Jacob and Frances (Powers) Harmon, who migrated to Iowa in 1854, locating on a farm in Sheridan township, Poweshiek county.  There the father passed away on the 20th of March, 1881*; the mother, however, survived him until the 18th of March, 1905**.  Six children were born unto Mr. and Mrs. Rehberg, four of whom are surviving as follows:  Mary, the wife of August Schroeder, a retired farmer residing in Grinnell, and with whom Mrs. Rehberg now makes her home; Fred, an agriculturist of Sheridan township; Clarence, a farmer residing in Sioux county, Iowa; and Henry, a farmer of Grinnell township.  Those deceased are:  Nettie, the wife of Henry Baustian, a farmer of Sheridan township; and John, who passed away at the age of ten months.

Mr. Rehberg affiliated with the German Lutheran church of Malcom township, and his wife with the Methodist Episcopal church of Grinnell.  In politics he was a Jeffersonian demeocrat, but not being an office seeker he never actively participated in civil affairs, and fraternally he was identified with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows of Brooklyn.  Mr. Rehberg possessed the dominant characteristics of the Teuton, energy and thrift, by means of which he attained a position which entitled him to the respect which was accorded him by the community.

- pp. 426-427, History of Poweshiek County, Vol. II; Parker, Prof. L. F.
The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, IL; 1911

(*) Jacob Harman died on either the 20th, 21st or the 22nd of March, 1891.
(**) Frances (Powers) Harman died March 13, 1905, per her gravestone inscription and obituary.