IAGenWeb.org Iowa in the Great War

 

Henry F. Strohl

 

HENRY F. STROHL has been a resident of Iowa since he was a lad of ten years, and here he has found opportunity for useful and responsible service in connection with the railway transportation service of the state. He has been station agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad at Garden Grove, Decatur County, nearly forty years, and this prolonged service shows that is is a valued representative of the railroad company and also distinctive in the community in which he has thus lived and to the service of which he has given loyal and efficient attention.

Mr. Strohl was born in Dollstadt, Saxe-Coburg, Germany, May 3, 1863, and is a son of William and Henrietta (Appenfelder) Strohl, who passed the closing years of their lives in Iowa. Though he was bur seven years of age at the time, Mr. Strohl recalls vividly one experience in his native land, that pertaining to the calling and mobilizing of soldiers for the Franco-Prussian war, in 1870. Soon afterward, in 1871, he accompanied his parents on their immigration to the United States, and the home was first established in Lee County, Illinois. In the fall of 1873 the family came to Iowa and made settlement on a farm near Red Oak, Montgomery County, and it was in that locality that the subject of this review completed his final study in the public schools. He has been actively associated with railway service since 1878 and was about fifteen years of age when he initiated his service. He became a skilled telegraph operator, and his service through the years has been mainly as operator and station agent for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. For this great system he has been station agent at Garden Grove since January 1, 1893, and he is now one of the veterans in the Iowa service of this road, with secure place in the confidence and esteem of officials of the system and also of the general public. He is affiliated with the Brotherhood of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers and also with the Order of Burlington Veterans. He is a member of the board of directors of the Garden Grove Trust & Savings Bank, has served as a member of the city council, and was for eight years a member of the local board of education, of which he was president at the time of the introduction of normal training in the schools of Garden Grove. His political convictions place him loyally in the ranks of the Republican party and he and his family hold membership in the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Strohl gives also a general supervision to his well improved farm near Garden Grove.

October 17, 1887, recorded the marriage of Mr. Strohl to Miss Mary Schreiner, daughter of Jacob and Margaret (Gutesohn) Schreiner, who were born in Bavaria, Germany, who came to the United States in the late '50s, who first established residence in Ohio, and who eventually came from the old Buckeye State to Iowa, where they passed the remainder of their lives. William J., eldest of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Strohl, remains at the parental home. Leo C., who with his wife and their one child, Shirley Jean, now resides at Albany, Missouri, was in overseas service in the World war, he having been a member of a Saint Louis regiment of railroad engineers and with this unit having given loyal and valuable service overseas. Leslie Paul likewise gave World war service with the same unit of railway engineers as did his older brother, and he now resides at Pacific Junction, Iowa. Mildred Marie, a graduate of the University of Southern California, has been engaged in educational work in Iowa and Oklahoma, as well as in California, and at the present time she is supervisor of a girls' training school at Inglewood, California. Margaret Henrietta, who has been a popular teacher in the public schools of both Iowa and Michigan, is now the wife of John Harlan, and they maintain their home in the City of Flint, Michigan.

~ source: A Narrative History of The People of Iowa, Edgar Rubey Harlan, LL. B., A. M., Chicago and New York, 1931

~ transcribed and contributed by:  Debbie  Clough Gerischer, Iowa History Project