Gunnison County CO Archives Biographies.....Eilebrecht, Herman November 9, 1855 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net February 18, 2006, 11:25 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     Herman Eilebrecht, of Gunnison county, whose well improved and well

cultivated ranch of seven hundred acres of good land, of which about six hundred

acres are under irrigation, is a lasting tribute to his enterprise in business

and his skill in husbandry, as well as to his loyalty to the genius of

improvement, and is located in a highly favored region on Ohio creek six miles

north of Gunnison, is a native of Prussia, and was trained in the severe but

wholesome discipline of that progressive country, whose people are distinguished

for thrift and industry wherever they pitch their tents, and are always likely

to make the most of their opportunities and of the conditions with which they

are surrounded.  His parents, Herman and Carolina (Stork) Eilebrecht, were also

Prussians by birth and belonged to families resident in their native land for

many generations.  They never wandered from their home country, but passed their

lives there usefully employed in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture.  Their

offspring numbered eight, five of whom are living, Herman being the fourth born.

 His life began on November 9, 1855, and he was reared on the paternal homestead

and educated in the common schools of the neighborhood. After remaining at home

until he reached the age of twenty-four, he was married on November 22, 1879, to

Miss Frances Michaels, of the same nativity as himself, and a daughter of John

and Carolina (Wintermeier) Michaels, who were also natives and life-long

residents of Prussia.  In 1881, with his wife and infant son, Mr. Eilebrecht

came to the United States, and after lingering a week in the city of New York,

and three weeks at Hays, Kansas, where he intended to locate and build a home,

turning the virgin prairie of that prolific state to his purposes, but did not

find the outlook agreeable for farming just then, left his family there and came

on to Colorado, arriving at Gunnison in June.  During the rest of the summer he

worked on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad and the South Park branch, and in the

fall returned to the Mississippi valley and took up his residence in Illinois,

where he remained two years employed in the coal mines at Pontiac and Mannk.  In

the spring of 1883 he brought his family to Colorado, and again located in

Gunnison county, where during the next four years he performed faithful and

appreciated service at whatever he found to do.  In 1887 he bought one hundred

and sixty acres of the ranch on which he now lives, which he has since then

enlarged to seven hundred acres, and transformed into one of the most valuable

and desirable properties of its kind on the creek, having it improved with a

good modern dwelling and outbuildings to correspond, well watered with ample

ditches which irrigate six hundred acres of it, and yielding an annual return

for his labor of some five hundred tons of hay with good crops of grain and

other products.  He has also gradually worked into cattle and now has about four

hundred well-bred Shorthorns.  He constructed his own ditches, one of which is

six miles long and cost him two thousand dollars.  He has in addition a fine

dairy outfit in which he has averaged for a number of years forty to

seventy-five pounds of butter a week.  When he settled on his land it was nearly

all given up to an unprofitable growth of wild sage brush and destitute of

improvements of every kind.  His first habitation here was a rude shack, such as

many pioneers live in until they win from the soil means of building a better,

and although such dwellings were crude and inconvenient, they were no roofs to

conceal guilt but the homes that sheltered men, and contented spirits and quiet

consciences dwelt within them.  In political faith Mr. Eilebrecht is a Democrat,

but he is seldom active in campaign work and has never aspired to public office.

 Fraternally he belongs to the Woodmen of the World with membership in the camp

of the order at Gunnison.  He and his wife are the parents of eight children,

Herman, Frank, Joseph, Lena, Fred, Charley, Emma and Tillie.  It is from

material like that in this worthy man that the more useful qualities of American

citizenship are fashioned, the bone and sinew of the country, which takes its

broad and bountiful benefactions at first hand and makes them fruitful of good

to the world and develops in the very wilds, remote from the haunts and

blandishments of cultivated life, a civilization that meets all the requirements

of a free and independent people and commands the admiration of mankind.   

Additional Comments:
From Progressive Men of Western Colorado.  Chicago:  A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905

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