From: mslace@netins.net

Henry J. Brueggeman and Maggie Florence Ihnen were married December 13, 1921. They were engaged in farming and operated a corn sheller and trucking business for many years.

Henry J. Brueggeman, son of Adolf and Hattie (Hasstedt) Brueggeman, was born January 3, 1899, at Boone, Iowa. In 1908, he came with his parents to a farm near Ocheyedan, Iowa. Maggie Florence Ihnen, daughter of Albert and Bertha (Fechter) Ihnen, was born March 11, 1902, in O'Brien County, Iowa.

After their marriage they lived on a farm near Worthington, Minnesota. In 1927, they moved to a farm on the west edge of Harris, and became members of St. John's Lutheran Church. They also had a corn sheller and trucking business for many years. In December, 1941, they moved to a farm three and one half miles northwest of Harris, where Henry passed away on February 1, 1956.

Maggie moved to Harris in 1958. She and Lester Heppler were married September 8, 1959; he passed away October 5, 1973. Maggie moved to the Golden Years Apartment in Sept, 1974. She entered the Lake Park Care Center in October, 1977, and passed away there February 14, 1893.

Their children: Della Mae Rubsam of Harris, Marlyn (Bud) of Lake Park, and Elaine Mehan of Millford.

Harris, Iowa Centennial

Harris--The past 100 years

Roseanna Mary Zehner
County Coordinator
Lyon County, Iowa
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ialyon/

Herbert E. Dean

Senator from the forty-ninth district comprising Osceola, Lyon, O'Brien and Sioux counties, was born in O'Brien county, Iowa, December 5, 1872, of American parentage. Attended school at Primghar, and Morningside college, Sioux City, Iowa. Served two years as deputy clerk of the court of O'Brien county, under J.W. Walter. Entered the Northern Indiana Normal school at Valparaiso, Indiana, and graduated with the class of 1896. Entered the law department of the State University of Nebraska and graduated with the class of 1898. Was married to Estella M. Bowser of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and has two sons, Wilbur M. and Forest C. Moved to Harris, Iowa, in 1899, and was elected president of the school board. Moved to Ocheyedan, Iowa, in 1901. Was once appointed and three times elected mayor of that town. Devotes most of his time to his farm interests. Elected representative in 1916. Reelected in 1918. Elected senator in 1924. Appointed member of state highway comission by Governor Hammill and confirmed by the senate in 1927. A republican in politics.

Iowa Official Register 1927-1928 - Biographies of State Senators, pg. 230

Submitted by Sharyl Ferrall

The following is a report, written by a unknown boy between 1913 and 1929, presumably for school. It is a character sketch on George Mennig (19 JUL 1841 - 8 JUN 1929) of Sheldon, Iowa.

I will take for the subject of my sketch Mr. George Mennig who lives in Sheldon at the present time.

He was born in Pennsylvania in 1841 where he spent his boyhood days among the pioneers of that section. At the age of thirteen he, with his parents, emigrated to Davenport, Ia where he worked in the sawmills and other work until 1861 when the Civil War broke out. He was one of the fist volunteers to sign the muster roll. He served in the Union army during the duration of the war. He was in Sherman’s march to the sea, Donelson, Corinth, Shilo. After the war, he worked on the steamboats of the Mississippi River running from St. Paul to lower points on the river. In the fall of 1870 he and N.F. Worth drove a team overland to O’Brien County to look the territory over for a location. He liked the looks of the country and the following April he bought two yoke of oxen and a wagon then loading his wife and baby and all their possessions in the wagon, they started for O’Brien County. They traveled with a number of their old neighbors whom they left at Storm Lake, the others going to Plymouth County, Ia. Mr. Mennig arrived at Peterson, Ia in about three weeks, he soon preempted 160 acres near the present town of Sutherland where they lived in a tent. A year or two later they homesteaded the S.E. ¼ of section 18 Carroll township. A brother-in-law homesteaded the N.E. of the same section and another brother-in-law the N.W. ¼ and Mr. Mennig's mother an 80 of the S.W. ¼ of 18 (Soldiers having the right to homestead 160 acres). The rest of the relation left the country at various times, but Mr. Mennig and wife remained on the same farm for about forty years or until 1913 when they moved to Sheldon. They went through all the usual hardships and privations of the typical homesteader such as going forty miles to market, having crops destroyed by grasshoppers etc. etc. This is but an outline of the life of a pioneer, much more can be written.

The grasshoppers destroyed all his crops one year and damaged them on other occasions. He hauled the lumber for his house from Cherokee to the farm which is 4 miles south of Sheldon. He frequently made trips to Cherokee with four oxen to a wagon and cut a load of poles along the banks of the little Sioux which he hauled home for firewood and for a frame work for a straw or hay shed. On one occasion of his absence, his wife and her sister (now Mrs. Byron Donovan) counted a drove of thirty-five elk on section 17 Carroll township. They were traveling in a northwest direction followed by hunters who later slaughtered them all in Dakota. At another time his nephew Geo Klindt saw a fawn pass through the yard. Mr. Mennig occasionally saw deer and elk on his trips but no buffalo. At one time when lost in a blizzard he unhitched his oxen and tied a rope to the yoke and followed, holding on to it, trusting to one ox that could usually find his way back to where he had been fed at sometime, and so they took him to a settler’s house.

Submitted by Christine Murcia, Missouri Valley, Iowa (George Mennig was my great-grandmother's first cousin)

George W. Smith

Representative from O'Brien county, was born in Richland county, Ohio, January 24, 1868, coming to Benton county, Iowa, in 1884. He was educated in the public schools of Ohio and Tilford Academy at Vinton, Iowa. Moved to Sioux county in 1889 and was married in 1890 to Effie Troutman of Benton county. Four sons were born to them, Clarence E., Orlo H., Jesse E. and Marvin W. Jesse E. died while in S.A.T.C., Morningside college in 1918. Mr. Smith moved to O'Brien county in 1902, where he engaged in farming and the raising of pure bred cattle and hogs. He retired from the farm in 1920 and has since lived in Paulina. He is a member of the M.E. church, a Thirty-second degree Mason, a member of the Eastern Star and Modern Woodmen of America, and is a republican in politics. Member of the forty-first and forty-second general assemblies.

Iowa Official Register 1927-1928; Biographies of State Representatives; pg. 254

Submitted by Sharyl Ferrall