Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Leising, Leo H 
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Deb Haines http://www.rootsweb.com/~archreg/vols/00003.html#0000719 February 6, 2008, 3:15 am

Author: Past and Present of Will County, IL; 1907

Leo H. Leising is one of the wide-awake, ambitious and resolute young business 
men of Will county, living in Goodenow, where he is engaged in the coal, 
lumber and grain trade and also in the live-stock business. He was here born 
in 1881. His father, James F. Leising, a native of Germany, came to the United 
States about 1872 and settled in Crete, this county, where he clerked in a 
store for a time and also became bookkeeper for the Crete Manufacturing 
Company. Carefully husbanding his earnings, he removed to Goodenow in 1876 and 
built an elevator, after which he engaged in the grain trade in addition to 
conducting a coal and lumber yard and carrying on operations in live stock. 
There he remained until 1903, when he went to Chicago Heights, where he had 
established a similar enterprise in 1901, and where he has since made his 
home. He has been a very successful business man, carrying forward to 
prosperous completion whatever he has undertaken, and now, at the age of sixty-
two years, he is most comfortably situated in life, his former labors 
relieving him of all business anxiety for the future. He is a well educated 
man, having studied for the priesthood in his native country, and has marked 
literary taste, manifest in the refinement and culture which such a taste 
always engenders. He has filled some local offices but is independent in his 
political views, nevertheless keeping well informed on the political situation 
of the country and the issues which divide the parties. He married Elizabeth 
Swindeman, who was born in Buffalo, New York. Her father was a native of 
Germany and a machinist by trade. He died leaving a widow of five children who 
came to Illinois and settled near Crete. Mrs. Leising was a member of the 
Lutheran church and died in that faith at Goodenow, in 1899, when forty-six 
years of age. By her marriage she had become the mother of six children: 
Henrietta, who died in infancy; Ida, the wife of William Graham, a farmer of 
Beecher; Ella, the wife of Warren W. Smith, a member of the firm of J. F. 
Leising & Company, of Chicago Heights; Leo H.; Augusta, the wife of Lee 
Graham, with the firm of Leising & Company at Chicago Heights; and Adeline, 
who is with her father. Mr. Leising has married again, having in 1902 wedded 
Mrs. John Rohe, a widow. Leo H. Leising was reared in Goodenow. He attended 
the country schools and continued his studies in Chicago Heights, in the 
Metropolitan Business College at Chicago and in the Cook County Normal School 
at Englewood. He qualified for the business in which his father was engaged 
and at the age of nineteen years entered his father's office in Goodenow, 
acquiring practical experience in the trade in all its departments. In 1903, 
upon his father's removal to Chicago Heights, he took charge of the branch 
here and has since remained as manager, conducting the trade in coal, grain, 
lumber and live stock. He possesses the spirit of laudable ambition without 
which effort would cease, and gradually he is working his way upward. Mr. 
Leising is a member of the Modern Woodmen camp and of the Mystic Workers lodge 
at Crete. His political allegiance is given the republican party and he has 
served as school director, but his energies are concentrated upon his business 
affairs, in which he is meeting with signal success. He is a director in the 
Crete State Bank, and in Goodenow is controlling an enterprise of large 
proportions and is showing himself thoroughly acquainted with progressive 
business methods. 

Additional Comments:
PAST AND PRESENT OF WILL COUNTY, ILLINOIS By W. W. Stevens President of the 
Will County Pioneers Association; Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1907

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