Hermann, as he was known, was born in Berndorf, Waldeck, Germany, on November 20, 1838. He was the son of Carl Friedrich Gustav Dieterichs and Emilie Karoline Luise Graubner. He came to America in 1857, and settled in Cedar township, in Mitchell county. He became a naturalized citizen in 1865.
Hermann was a farmer. His full name is: Gottfried Friedrich Heinrich Hermann Dieterichs, but he was always called Hermann.
He was a Deacon in the St. John's Lutheran Church in Cedar Township, Mitchell County, Iowa. He had donated land for the construction of the church, and worked to make sure the parishioners donated money to the church.
A book by German author, and blood relative, Ernst Dieterichs, entitled GESCHISCHTE DES NIEDERSACHSISCHEN GESCHLECTS DIETERICHS, tells a far better story of Herman's life than anyone else can tell. What was written in the book about Hermann was composed by Pastor Bertram of St. John's Lutheran. The book states:
Our dear Pastor Bertram, of Osage, reported in the year 1923: "Something of the life of Hermann Dieterichs, his children, and his children's children." Hermann Dieterichs attended the school in Berndorf, and for one year he received private lessons from Pastor Klapp in Muhlhausen (Waldeck), and learned farming. Then, for two years he was the manager of an estate in Waldeck. For a long time he had had a desire to go to America. When his sister, Adolphine left for America in 1857 with her husband Hermann Muller, nothing could hold him back. At that time the state of Iowa, which was now the richest of the rich states of the Middle West and the breadbasket of the union, had just been opened up to settlers. One could often still see Indians. Trains did not exist, and country roads were only on surveyor's maps. Travel past Dubuque, Iowa, was made with horse and buggy.
Hermann's brother-in-law, Hermann Muller, bought a little farm in Mitchell County. Hermann Dieterichs lived with him for one year. Then he worked another year for a Yankee. Two years later he took his savings and bought the first forty acres of land, at a price of three dollars an acre. Hermann also got married at that time. Two years later he exchanged this land for eighty acres which were located near by.
Here he built a log cabin, and here he still lives today (1923), an old man of eighty-five. Surely to the first forty was added another forty so that his holdings today come to about three-hundred and twenty acres. Every acre is worth about a hundred and fifty dollars.
From the log cabin a fine home was developed, surrounded by barns and stables. Beside the house stands the farmhouse of his son, Hermann Jr., who today manages the estate of his father in addition to his own little farm.
His wife Anna, born Kneisel, from Hessenland, was always a true help to him; and contributed to his present prosperity through her work in the very difficult early years.
Hermann Dieterichs is a truly honorable character: honest, industrious and thrifty; a man whose word carries a lot of weight in the Parish and in the surrounding area. Also, in his house he always preserved the German language and still speaks German today to those who understand it.
In the year 1877 when the St. Johannes Lutheran Parish was founded here, they voted him as first Deacon. And this position he held uninterruptedly for 49 years. He was also Parish Treasurer for 60 years. The church, school and parish house still stand on land donated by him. He helped build two churches. When the old wooden church became too small and dilapidated he gave $500, in the year 1913, for a new brick church. One of the most beautiful country Lutheran churches in the state of Iowa. The services he missed in all those years one can count on the fingers of two hands.
Among the descendants of Hermann Dieterichs you cannot find a single black sheep. His sons are all honorable men, all giants in stature and bodily strength. The youngest child, Hermann Jr., measures six feet and three inches. They all dedicated themselves to farming, as did the husbands of the two married daughters. All sons have German wives, and the daughters all married German men. The same can be said of the married Great-grandchildren. Every one of the descendants of Hermann Dieterichs belong to the Lutheran Church; the majority belongs to the local St. Johannes Parish in rural Osage, and two families belong to the Immanuel Parish in the little town of St. Ansgar, sixteen miles away.
The children, in-law children, and most grandchildren still speak the German language, Pastor Bertram continues, and still read and write it; but it is a pity that the mother tongue in their houses is slowly but steadily disappearing. Some of the youngest grandchildren speak only English; but in our Parish school, which they all attended, they get German reading lessons.
In the war with Germany, to the great pleasure of the parents and grandparents, none of them took part; not one was drafted. Hermann Dieterichs married Anna Christine Kneisel on June 12, 1859. She was born, as the Parish and church records of the church-village of Breitenbach, near Bebra in Kurhessen, verify, on August 29, 1840, in Blankenheim near Bebra. Her parents were Christoph Kneisel, a farmer, and Anna Catharina, born Vollmer. Father Kneisel was born on March 13, 1797, and died on March 14, 1842.
On May 14, 1923, when Hermann Dieterichs' wife reached nearly eighty three years of age, Pastor Bertram writes: Mother Dieterichs, born Kneisel, still lives. She is still very active for her great age, and still independently manages for herself and father Dieterichs' household.
The Dieterichs are nearly all blond, although not of the lightest shades. A large number of the grandchildren attended the high schools of the surrounding cities. The Dieterichs family are in general very alert and intelligent people. The fathers and their sons are among the old settlers in this area, and through hard work they have obtained their present prosperity.
Father Dieterichs has very beautiful stands of trees on his own farm, as his land lies on a creek only two miles from where the Cedar River Flows.
I hear every day in the month of May the rumble of the tractors working with gasoline and kerosene, pulling two or even four harrows at a time. In addition they have pulverizors. Although many farmers prefer to work with horses, as the costs of the tractors are too high. Every farmer also has his reaper for the oat harvest. Also, we can find on every farm, gasoline-powered machines for separating the grains and for pumping water, etc.
The automobile is so popular among our people that they think they could no longer manage without it. Last Sunday at the church there were nearly forty cars, but only one buggy, whose owner was the only inhabitant of the community who could not call a car his own.
This is our beloved Pastor Bertram's unusually visual and lively report. To our Father Dieterichs, Mother Dieterichs has given ten children in twenty years of marriage, and then after another seven years, she gave him a little daughter who did not live. Herr Emde, the economics advisor in Muhlhausen (Waldeck), knew Hermann Dieterichs well, and described him as a tall, strong, well-built man; and also as a sincere, honest and religious man.
God's rich blessings rested on him, his family, and his work. Five sons -- the oldest would be seventy in December, 1930 -- continue his work. His daughters are helpmeets of farmers also, and many healthy grandchildren, both boys and girls, looked up to the honored head of the family.
Hermann and Christine had the following children: Friedrich Hermann Gustav (1860), Louis August (1862), Amelia Marie (1865), Anna Katharina (1868), Heinrich Christian (1869), Wilhelm Louis (1871), Anna Christine (1873), Carl Johann (1876), Margaretha Elizabeth (1878), Herman Friedrich August (1880), and Caroline Marie Friedrike (1887).
Hermann Dieterichs died on September 25, 1932 at the age of 93. He was buried in the Calvary Cemetery in Cedar township.