FRED WAHLERT, SR.
For many years an active and well-known farmer of Audubon county, Fred Wahlert, Sr., who has passed the age of seventy-five, is still capable of doing the work of a much younger man. Since retiring from the farm and moving to Exira, he has taken the agency for the Greeley Mutual Insurance Company and also the agency for the State Tornado and Fire Insurance Company and is proving a very capable representative in this section for these companies. When Mr. Wahlert retired from farming, he owned four hundred and eighty acres of well-improved land. He now owns one of the most splendid dwellings and residence properties in the town of Exira.
Fred Wahlert. Sr., was born on March 29, 1840, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, the son of John and Arsby (Starman) Wahlert, also natives of Schleswig-Holstein.
Mr. Wahlert received a good education in the schools of his native land and after leaving school, worked out as a farm hand for twelve years. When he was twenty-six years old, or in 1866, he came to America, and locating in Moline, Illinois, worked in a saw-mill for one year. Mr. Wahlert then obtained a position with the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad as a fireman and was employed in this capacity for two years. At the end of that time he rented a farm in Henry county, Illinois, where he farmed for twelve years. Coming to Audubon county in 1881, he purchased two hundred and forty acres of land, and the same year Mr. Wahlert's parents crossed the Atlantic from the old country and came to Audubon county, where they lived until their deaths.
On August 18, 1862, Fred Wahlert, Sr., was married to Anna Polm, the daughter of John Polm, who also was a native of Germany. Mr. and Mrs. Fred Wahlert, Sr.. have had five children: Fred, Jr., John, Carrie, Winnie and Anna. Fred Jr., married Emma Porter and has five children, Clarence, Elva, Thelma, Randall and Raymond; John married Emma Fronz and has five children, Esther, Harry, Francis, Cora and Mary Elizabeth; Carrie is the wife of Arthur Schweneker and has six children, Clara, Sarah, Elsie, Peter, Carl and Helen; Winnie became the wife of Louis Schweneker; Anna married John Kibbens.
A Democrat in politics, Mr. Wahlert has served as township trustee and held other minor offices in the community where he lived while engaged in active farming. The Wahlert family are all members of the German Lutheran church. Mr. Wahlert is a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and also the Maccabees. He and his wife are members of the Order of the Eastern Star.
Fred Wahlert, Sr., is not only well known in Exira and the surrounding country, but he is also popular as a man of exceptional intelligence and kindly manners. Out of the toil of his early years he has saved a substantial competence for his declining days, which he is expecting to pass in peace and plenty.
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Transcribed 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. 746-747.
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