This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Surnames: Petro, Klingerman,
Classification: Biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Ck.2ADE/359
Message Board Post:
This book has no cover, and no index, and no author. I bought it on Ebay; it just has the
insides, but it is full of Indiana biographies. I am not researching this family, just
thought I would share. I do not know anymore about these families or these surnames. NOTE:
I don’t know if there is any additional mention of this family in the book, it has no
index. I do not want to sell this book. I am typing the biographies from it.
Typed by Lora Radiches:
Surnames in this biography are: Petro, Klingerman,
MASON LONG PETRO was elected Mayor of the City of Mishawaka, November 4, 1928, by a
majority of 701 votes, being the largest majority vote ever received by a candidate of his
party for the office of executive of the city, for that matter, of any office ever held by
a Democrat in said city. His job as mayor is his first attempt and experience in holding
office. His previous activity in various civic agencies in behalf of a broader program for
civic and city development, including parks, playgrounds and better fatuities and
opportunities for the youth of the city, were powerful influences in bringing the
nomination and election to him. As regular and old-time influences in the party deserted,
or by turn looked askance and with Luke warmness upon his candidacy, scores of the
independent voters of both parties stepped in, at his behest and formed a political
organization that reached into every precinct and almost every block in the city. Mr.
Petro was born in a log cabin on a f!
arm near Inwood, Center Township, Marshall County, Indiana, June 7, 1890. His parents,
James H. and Ellen Long Petro, were also natives of Indiana. His grandfather, Harrison
Petro, was an Indiana soldier in the Civil war. He was one of the pioneer settlers of
Starke County. Mr. Petro’s father was also a farmer in Marshall County, later conducting a
grocery business at Lapaz and at Culver. In 1915, the father and his son moved to
Mishawaka, where the first mentioned was in business as a merchant until his retirement in
1922. The mayor’s father died at Mishawaka, in 1926. The widowed mother resides in that
city. Mayor Petro was a second of three sons born to this honored Indiana husband and
wife; the eldest of said children being deceased. The youngest, Clarence H. Petro, resides
with his family in Mishawaka. The subject of this sketch completed the high school at
Lapaz, and worked in his father’s grocery store. Since coming to Mishawaka he embarked in
!
the real estate business, and became a fully qualified realtor. As an effective worker in
organizations that represent and express the civic welfare purposes of the city; as past
president of the Lions Club; as director of the Fellowship Club; as vice president of the
South Bend Mishawaka Real Estate Board; and as president for five years of the Salvation
Army Advisory Board (during which last mentioned incumbency he was largely instrumental in
raising a twenty thousand dollar fund for the erection of a new building for that
organization); as member of minor and executive committees of both Boy and Girl Scouts; as
member of Chamber of Commerce and the Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Petro has
exemplified, in a genial personality, frankness of approach and commitment to duty, not
the blatant characteristics of the go-getter-Babbitt, but that type of man whose
leadership confidence and loyalty and increase in aspirering admiration because of the
aspects of desire to be of serv!
ice to his community as well as to his own family. These personal qualities, surmounted by
a friendly though diffident mien served him in good stead in recent labor troubles in his
own city, wherein, championing the cause of those who walked out of an industrial
establishment (for which action he was naturally severely criticized by the proprietors of
the industrial concern), he so successfully and with sympathetic tact conducted
such strike as to avoid violence and disorder. His rare moral courage involved in the
stand taken by the mayor with reference to the employees was exemplified on the second day
of the strike by a like physical courage in disarming at serious risk of great personal
injury to himself two rash adherents of the factory owners, who had appeared in the large
mob of strikers heavily armed. Mr. Petro was united in marriage November 27, 1917, with
Miss Irene L. Klingerman, of Tyner, Marshall County, Indiana, and the daughter of a
farmer, Mr.!
U. S. Klingerman, who departed this life in 1925. Her mother occupied the old homestead
in Marshall County until her death in the early part of 1931. Mr. and Mrs. Petro have a
daughter, Elma Rose, born December 12, 1918.