Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Stryker, Frederick R 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com September 7, 2007, 8:21 pm

Author: Genealogical & Biographical Record

FREDERICK R. STRYKER. The Joliet Mound Drain Tile Company, of which Mr. 
Stryker is general manager and a director, is one of the leading organizations 
of the kind in Illinois.  When he took a position with it as a workman in the 
mechanical department, just prior to the thirtieth anniversary of his birth, 
the plant was small and the output meager.  In 1880 he was made manager of the 
works, on section 19, Joliet Township, and afterward completely remodeled the 
plant, built new kilns and made important additions, so that the works were 
the most complete in the state.  For years the company controlled the price of 
tile in the state.  The capacity of the works is three million feet per 
annum.  Formerly the products were sold almost exclusively in this locality, 
but now shipments are made throughout this state and into Iowa, Minnesota, 
Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.  Employment is furnished to between twenty 
and forty men, the number varying with the amount of work to be turned out, 
and the product is drain tile exclusively. The other directors and officers of 
the company being men who have business interests of their own, Mr. Stryker is 
responsible for the entire management, and its prosperous condition is the 
result of his able oversight.  He is a stockholder in the works, as well as 
manager and a director.

In Cook County, Ill., our subject was born May 8, 1847, a son of John Adam and 
Elizabeth (Miller) Stryker.  His father, who was born December 1, 1804, in 
Wurtemberg, Germany, came to America from Germany in 1828 and spent two years 
in New York, thence migrated to Illinois in 1830.  He had previously worked as 
a cabinet-maker, but on coming to Cook County took up a claim and engaged in 
farming, which he followed until his death at sixty years.  He was a man of 
great physical strength and powers of endurance.  Up to the time of Fremont's 
candidacy he was a Democrat, but afterward voted the Republican ticket.  
During the early days he served in all of the township offices; and in the 
deciding of disputes regarding claims he was called upon to act as judge.  By 
his marriage to Elizabeth Miller he had eleven children.  Of these ten reached 
maturity and nine are now living.  Mrs. Elizabeth Stryker was a daughter of 
George Miller, a native of Berlin, Germany.

When sixteen years of age our subject secured a clerkship in Chicago, 
receiving $3 a week at first.  Afterward he became an agent for the sale of 
farm machinery, in which he was employed from nineteen to twenty-nine years of 
age.  He then came to his present location, and has since engaged in the 
manufacture of drain tile.  He owns and occupies a farm of one hundred and 
fifty-four acres on section 24, Troy Township, but the place is cultivated by 
tenants, his time being given wholly to his business.  Politically he was an 
enthusiastic Republican up to the time of Cleveland's second election, when he 
favored his candidacy and voted for him.  Since then he has been independent, 
preferring to support the men whom he deems best qualified to represent the 
people rather than follow strict party lines. He is interested in the 
questions of the day, but his business takes his time to the exclusion of 
other things, and he is therefore not a politician in the ordinary usage of 
that word.  In 1873 he was made a Mason and has since then joined the chapter 
at Evanston, Ill.

In April, 1875, Mr. Stryker married Carrie Eloise, daughter of Ira Millard, 
who was a pioneer of Cook County and a native of Connecticut, but a resident 
of New York state prior to coming west.  Her maternal grandfather was Gen. 
Lewis Peet, who fought in the war of 1812, and on the maternal side she was 
also connected with the Seymours, of New York.  Her father's father and 
Millard Fillmore's mother were brother and sister.  Seven children were born 
to Mr. and Mrs. Stryker, six of whom are living.  The oldest, Ira Millard 
Stryker, who is cashier in the works here, married Alice M. Sammons, daughter 
of Duane Sammons, a pioneer farmer of this county. The other children are: 
Gertrude Frances; Elizabeth Bell; Clara Winifred; Mary Seymour, whose middle 
name comes from Dr. Seymour, of Troy, N. Y.; and Frederick Fillmore.

Additional Comments:
Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County Illinois Containing 
Biographies of Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present, Biographical 
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1900

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