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Surnames: Gottschalk, Shigley, Fox, Betzner, Walters, Shepherd, Hoffman,
Sheets, Monger, Welty, Simison, Shally
Classification: Biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/Ui.2ADI/2330
Message Board Post:
>From "Standard History of Adams and Wells Counties, Indiana," Chicago:
Lewis Publishing Co., 1918, p. 866-869.
ANDREW GOTTSCHALK. Without doubt Andrew Gottschalk is one of the most
widely known men of Adams County. His business and personal interests have
been identified with the town of Berne almost from its establishment, and
through his business and participation in business affairs he has been one
of the constructive forces in the growth and development of that
community. Mr. Gottschalk is a former county treasurer, and viewed from
whatever angle his life presents many achievements which reject honor upon
the name.
While he is himself a native of Indiana, he belongs to a long line of
German ancestors of the Kingdom of Wuertemberg. A professor in a
Pennsylvania college as a result of much research has established the fact
that this branch of the Gottschalks has a continuous history in
Wuertemberg for fully a thousand years. Mr. Gottschalk's grandfather
Andrew was a tiller of the soil and spent all his life in Wuertemberg. The
family were Lutherans. The grandfather had six children, three sons and
three daughters. All of them came to the United States. The oldest was
Jacob Gottschalk, who was born October 15, 1808. His first wife died in
Germany, leaving two children, Barbara and Mary, the former now deceased,
and the latter the widow of John Shigley, living at Berne. For his second
wife Jacob Gottschalk married Christina Fox, who was also born in
Wuertemberg. Their oldest child, George, was born in that country. In 1845
Jacob Gottschalk and his little family consisting of his wife, thei!
r one child and his two older children, set sail from Havro, France, and
after ninety-three days on the ocean landed in New York City. They first
located in Montgomery County, Ohio, where three other children were born.
The oldest of these, Sarah, is now a widow, Mrs. Betzner, living in Miami
County, Indiana. Michael is a resident of Wells County, Indiana, and has a
family. John died after his marriage in Fulton County, Indiana, and left
sons and daughters.
Towards the close of the decade of the '40s the Gottschalk family came
over the rough roads and through the woods into Wells County, Indiana,
locating on a farm in Nottingham Township, where the industry of Jacob
Gottschalk cleared up about eighty acres. He lived there as an industrious
and competent farmer until his death on January 26, 1877. His wife died in
1855. He was a democrat and both were active members of the Evangelical
Association. Several other children were born to them after they moved to
Wells County. Mathias is now a farmer in Miami County and is married and
has a family. Jacob, Jr., died in childhood in Wells County. The next in
age is Andrew. Fred R. lived for many years on the old homestead in Wells
County, where he died January 26, 1907, just thirty years to the day after
his father's death. He was then forty-nine years of age and left a family
of children. Noah, the youngest child, still lives on a part of the old
homestead in Wells County and is marrie!
d and has a family. Mr. Andrew Gottschalk was born on a farm in Nottingham
Township of Wells County, November 13, 1850. He was only five years old
when his mother died. His father afterwards married Mrs. Elizabeth Walters
Shepherd. She was a native of Germany and by her first marriage had two
sons and by her marriage to Jacob Gottschalk was the mother of five. One
of these second children, Amanda, now makes her home with Mr. Andrew
Gottschalk.
Andrew Gottschalk grew up on his father's farm, was educated in the
district and private schools of his native county and his first occupation
away from the farm was teaching in his home township. He followed that
occupation for about two years. Besides the local schools he attended a
normal school at Bluffton.
On May 7, 1872, Mr. Gottschalk moved to Linn Grove in Adams County, and
there went to work as a druggist. A few months later he formed a
partnership with Mr. Peter Hoffman under the name of Hoffman & Gottschalk.
Mr. Hoffman took the business at Linn Grove, while in November, 1872, Mr.
Gottschalk came to Berne, which was then just an incipient village,
possessing only two general stores and a blacksmith shop and saloon. The
railroad had passed through this section of Adams County in the summer of
1871. Their pioneer drug enterprise was established in a small building
east of the railroad, where the office of the Berne Lumber Company was
later established. Mr. Gottschalk began selling drugs from that site on
November 12, 1872. On July 1, 1874, they moved the stock into a new
building, and in September, 1907, the partnership was dissolved, Mr.
Gottschalk becoming sole proprietor of the store at Berne. In 1912 he
supplanted his old business house by the erection of a fine block !
22 by 80 feet, two stories and basement, but on the same lot which he has
occupied since July, 1874. Here he is proprietor of one of the best
equipped and stocked stores of its kind in Adams County. Mr. Gottschalk is
a licensed pharmacist, having received his certificate as a result of many
years' practical experience.
All of his early contemporaries in business at Berne have since died or
retired, and he is now the oldest business man in the town and has one of
the oldest stores in the county. As a business man he has been very
popular as well as successful and has made his store a center of the
social life of the community. Mr. Gottschalk is a director of the Bank of
Berne.
Early in life he became a local leader in the democratic party. From 1877
to 1883 he was postmaster of Berne, and from 1880 to 1882 was local
justice of the peace. He was a member of the Democratic Central Committee
of the county from 1882 to 1884, and in the latter year was a delegate to
the Democratic State Convention at Indianapolis. In 1884 Indiana was one
of the two states that decided Mr. Cleveland's election, and Mr.
Gottschalk thus had more than local prominence in the election of the
first democratic president from the time of the Civil war. He was also on
the county ticket the same year, and was elected treasurer, moving to
Decatur in September, 1885, to assume the duties of that office. He was
re-elected in 1886 and served two terms. Among other offices he has been
trustee of Monroe Township, for many years was notary public and has been
especially influential among the English speaking people of the southern
half of Adams County. It is said that his services have!
been in demand more than those of anyone else in advising people in
matters of business transactions, in the drawing up of wills and the
settling up of estates.
On May 9, 1875, in Shelby County, Ohio, Mr. Gottschalk married Miss Laura
Sheets. She was born in Texas January 22, 1852, daughter of Philip and
Cornelia (Monger) Sheets, both natives of Germany. At the time of her
birth her father was a regular soldier in the United States Army,
stationed near San Antonio, Texas, guarding the frontier against Indian
troubles. When the War of the Rebellion broke out in 1861 he was at San
Antonio, and was offered the privilege of remaining with the Confederate
forces or going north. He chose the northern side, and going to Shelby
County, Ohlo, enlisted with an Ohio regiment and was all through the Civil
war. He died in Shelby County October 1, 1882, and his widow passed away
in 1889 at the home of her daughter in Berne. Mrs. Gottschalk's mother was
a Catholic. Mrs. Gottschalk was a devoted wife and mother and was the type
of woman whose presence is greatly missed in any community. She died at
Berne January 11, 1910. Mr. Gottschalk has long be!
en prominent in the Evangelical Association, has been an official member
of his church, class leader and superintendent of the Sunday school. and
otherwise interested in every moral and religious influence in his home
community.
Mr. and Mrs. Gottschalk had five children. The second, Oliver E., died May
15, 1883, when about four and a half years of age. The oldest, Cora B., is
a graduate of the State Normal School at Terre Haute, was a successful
teacher in her home county for several years, also taught at Anderson, and
is now the wife of Hon. Benjamin F. Welty. Mr. Welty is a graduate of the
Law School of Michigan University and is now a special attorney at Lima,
Ohio, and congressman from the Fourth Ohio District. Mr. and Mrs. Welty
have one daughter, Gene G. Thurman A. Gottschalk, the oldest son, was
educated in the Berne High School, in an institution of higher education
at Naperville, Illinois, and also in Indiana University. He lives near
Berne and by his marriage to Nellie Simison has two children, John R. and
Elizabeth L., both now in school. Wilda M. is a graduate of the Blaker
School of Indianapolis and is now the wife of E. K. Shally of Berne. They
have two children, Marcelle G. and Andre!
w D. The youngest of the children is True Palmer, who graduated from the
Berne High School in 1912, later from Heidelberg College at Tiffin, Ohio,
and had entered upon a successful career as a teacher when he resigned to
enlist in the National Army. He is now in the Medical Corps of the
Nineteenth Field Artillery, located at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas.
Mr. Andrew Gottschalk is a past chancellor of Berne Lodge of Knights of
Pythias, and represented his district in the Grand Lodge at Indianapolis
in 1900. He is a charter member of the Knights of Pythias.
[poster is not related to this family and has no further information]