AUGUST KIENAST.
This country has long been known as the land of opportunity, but it required a high degree of courage and industry to turn the possibilities into reality. When a young man is willing to forsake the land of his birth, and allow hundreds of miles to separate him from his dear ones, it is evident that he considers American the finest country on the face of the globe, and is willing to pay the price in resolute endeavor that will win success in his adopted country. This has been exemplified in the life of a man whose name heads this sketch.
August Kienast, general farmer and stockman, of Lincoln township, Audubon county was born in Germany, June 29, 1865. He came to America at the age of eight years. He attended the public schools of Michigan until he was fourteen years old, and then worked on a farm for four years, when he traveled through the western states for a few years. Returning home in 1887, he bought one hundred and twenty acres of land, and in 1909 bought the balance of his present home place in Lincoln township, amounting in all to four hundred and twenty acres, and on which he has spent about ten thousand dollars in improvements. His principal crops are corn and small grain, the former of which averages about fifty bushels to the acre, and the latter about thirty-five bushels, the most of which is fed to the stock on the place. He has for sale each year a large number of cattle and about a carload of hogs. He is a faithful member of the German Lutheran church, in which he has held the office of trustee. He is a stanch believer in the principles of the Republican party.
The parents of our subject were both born in Germany, the father being a day laborer and truck farmer. He came to America in 1873, locating in Michigan, where he worked in a saw-mill for four years, after which he moved to Atlantic, Iowa, and worked on a railroad construction train. Having accumulated sufficient funds, he purchased a farm of forty acres near Audubon, and farmed for three years, at the end of which time he sold out and went to Lincoln Center, where he bought eighty acres, and soon after added sixty acres more to his possessions, and lived on the place until he died. Their children were Wilhelmena, August and Charles.
August Kienast was married in 1889 to Barbara Ullrich, of Audubon county. They are the parents of six children, Herman, Helena, John, Mary, Eliza, Ids, all of whom are at home but two girls, Helena and Mary, who are in Sioux City. Mrs. Kienast died in 1900 and in 1912 Mr. Kienast married Mima Reekman, daughter of Henry Reekman, by whom he had three children, Arthur, Harry and Hulda, who are all at home.
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Transcribed by Gunter Schanzenbacher, Waynesboro, PA, March 30, 2013 from History of Audubon County, Iowa Its People, Industries and Institutions With Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records of Many of the Old Families, by H. F. Andrews, editor, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Company, 1915, pp. 660-661.
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