Biographies
For
Muscatine County Iowa
1889



Source: Portrait and Biographical Album, Muscatine County, Iowa, 1889, page 533

WILLIAM HUTTIG, who is probably associated with more public and business enterprises than any other citizen of the county, was the subject of an interesting sketch in the Muscatine Daily Journal, of May 15, 1886, to which we are indebted for the many salient features of this biography. Mr. Huttig was born near Jena, the old capital of the Duchy of Saxe-Jena in 1836. To the student of history the name of Jena will recall one of the most famous battles and victories of Napolean I., and to the lover of belles-lettres and the arts the still more famous and noble seat of learning, founded here as the central university of the Saxon States, surrounded with its halls of art and schools of music. In the companionship of three elder brothers and one younger sister William Huttig passed his boyhood, attending the village school until completeing its course at the age of fifteen, when he took up his residence in Jena as a pupil in music of the distinguished Professors Winkler and Held, little dreaming at the time that the first practical use of his art would be to lead a brass band through the streets of an infant town, thousands of miles away, across the Atlantic, in the prairie wilderness of Iowa. He pursued the prescribed tuition under these eminent teachers, and then went to Cahle, and subsequently to Leipsic, and it was from this latter city that at the age of twenty-one he departed for America. It is often remarked that nature delights in violent contrasts, and human fortune is certainly subject to the same law. What greater transformation could occur to a young man than to be taken out of the scenes of historic old Leipsic, nestling by the walls of the ancient castle of Pleissenburg, its Easter Fair, of 600 years' observance still attended by crowds of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Persian, and Chinese merchants ; its streets paraded by the thousands of students of its university, five centuries old, and a like number of pipils of its art schools and conservatories of music ; the trade of its 150 bookstores making it the principal seat of the publishing business in scholarly Germany, and ranking only second in the world to London and Paris ; a city five times besieged and taken in the Thirty Years' War; the scene also of that battle in which Napolean's victory at Jena was more than counterbalanced by his overwhelming defeat-- out of the scenes and associations, and from the art studies of old Leipsic, to suddenly find himself, in June,1855, on the west bank of the Mississippi at Muscatine. In his recounting of that earlier experience in the West it was laughable, though revealing a very somber state of things, to hear him say that he spent the first two years in Muscatine at odd jobs of masonry and other work in trying to get enough money to take him back home. If there was ever a genuine case of homesickness we can believe that this was one. But the dark clouds began to break after the strain of the first two years. More congenial occupation was found. He began teaching music, and was given the leadership of the brass and string bands of Muscatine. On the breaking out of the war this patriotic young music-student of Leipsic and Jena organized a band to accompany the 35th Iowa Regiment, but before they left Camp Strong an order was issued to discharge all regimental bands, and Mr. Huttig returned home. He consoled himself in this disappointment by the happiest of all alternatives in his marriage with Miss Catherine Becker, of this city, in which auspicious union the last strand of regret parted which had bound his allegiance to old Saxony. It was about this time also that he entered the grocery business, opening a store adjoining the Weed & Bridgman block. The following year his brother Fred, the present member of the County Board of Supervisors, now absent in Europe, was admitted to a partnership, and since then the two have gone through their business career under the well-known title of Huttig Bros., which they still retain.

In 1868, the brothers started a lumber-yard, the initiatory step to the creation of that fame and fortune which made the name of Huttig Bros., the whole country over, synonymous with the highest business enterprise and success. After two years in the lumber trade it was superseded by the sash, door, and blind business, which has been followed to date. The brothers confined themselves to trade until 1881, when their present mammmoth factory and works were built in this city, and a company incorporated with the following organization : Fred Huttig, President ; William Huttig, Manager and Treasurer ; Er. Lumpe, Vice President ; Harry Huttig, Secretary.

In 1883 the firm incorporated the Western Sash and Door Company of Kansas City, with William Huttig partner and President, as now conducted.

In 1885 the Huttig Bros. established the Huttig Sash and Door Company of St. Louis, Mr. Charles H. Huttig being admitted to the new company and elected to the management of its operations, with Mr. William Huttig, Secretary.

In 1888 the Muscatine Real Estate Company, embracing a number of local capitalists, was organized, and Mr. Huttig was made its President. In the same year the Ashton Flour and Feed Company was formed, and Mr. Huttig was elected to its presidency. In this year Muscatine saw the necessity of reviving and reorganizing the Board of Trade on an active and substantial basis, and Mr. Huttig was chosed President, an office which he still fills to the advantage of this city.

In December, 1887, he associated with his brother Fred and other liberal Republicans and Democrats of Muscatine in organizine the Muscatine News Company to sustain the publishing of a daily and weekly newspaper to the city and county of Muscatine for the dissemination of liberal political ideas, of which company he was elected President, and to whose business energy and enterprise the News is largely indebted for its remarkable success. Mr. Huttig being unanimously re-elected to the presidency in the second year of the paper.

In the organization of the Muscatine Bridge Company for the building of a high bridge over the Mississippi River at Muscatine, Mr. Huttig was elected to the Board of Firectors, and at the second annual meeting held April 9, 1889, he was elected to the presidency of the company. As the company at this late date had the problem and labor before it of providing means for the construction of a $140,000 bridge, the election of Mr. Huttig was no light compliment to the executive force of that gentleman.

Our subject took an active part in the incorporation of the Muscatine Oatmeal Company, of which he was elected Vice President, holding the same office in the Muscatine Terra Cotta Lumber Company, and being prominent in the organization of the Muscatine Street Car Company and other local enterprises.

The opening of Oaklahoma to settlement, in April of this year, furnishes another illustration of Mr. Huttig's active and far-reaching enterprise. No sooner was the Presidential proclamation issued for the opening of the Territory than Mr. Huttig was immediately heard of at Purcell on the border, when the Oaklahoma Lumber and Grain Company was frothwith organized, with Mr. Huttig as President, and provision made for the establishment of three lumber-yards and depots in the Territory as soon as the stock could be shipped in by fast freight dispatch.

Following our subject into his fraternal and social fellowships with the world it will scarcely surprise to find that one of such cosmopolitan tendencies holds attachments in these kindly spheres equally broad as his business relations. He enjoys an eminent membership in both Free Masonry and Old Fellowship. He belongs to the Knights of Pythias Protective Association. A distinguished member of the United States Knights of Honor, he enjoys the prestige of being twice elected Grand Dictator of that order of Iowa. Quite as honorable and useful as these State-wide and national connections he is a member of the Muscatine School Board.

Mr. Huttig was among the founders of the Republican party in Iowa, and remained true in his allegiance to that party in State and Nation until its prohibitive legislation, in Iowa, and confiscatory enactments impelled him to the political independence which he maintains today. Before his party relations were thus strained he was frequently solicited by his party to represent it as a candidate, and, though as persistently declining, he was given, in 1883, the nomination for Mayor of Muscatine. In a city where Democracy is accustomed to carry the election by a majority of hundreds he was defeated by the nominal majority of twenty-three in a total vote of 1,461.

His youth reared in a duchy which had a population of 300,000 Protestants to 10,000 Cathohlics, and a resident student of a city celebrated for the Leipsic Conference in which Luther bore part, Mr. Huttig could not be otherwise than a child of the Reformation and a member of the German Evangelical Church of Muscatine. But he is known for the liberality of his religious culture and faith, and in no ecclesiastical view could he be classed as an offensive partisan.

Of the marriage of our subject with Miss Becker, there have been born three children : Anna, wedded to Mr.G.W.Brandt, of Brooklyn, N.Y..; Nellie, recently married to Mr. D. S. McDermid, now of Muscatine ; and Harry, the indifatigable and accomplished Secretary of the Huttig Bros. Manufacturing Company.

Here we close this brief story of pluck, energy, and application. It does not lose its moral because there flash and re-echo over it the music and lights of Leipsic and Jena, but the indomitableness exhibited rather takes on a lighter virtue and beauty for being graced with the arts of the school and the conservatory.

A portrait of this honorable gentleman is found on another page.


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