Will County IL Archives Biographies.....WILHELMI , JOHN 
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Paula Winke-Martisek wranglerjack@comcast.net September 19, 2007, 5:14 pm

Author: GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

JOHN G. WILHELMI has been engaged in contracting and building in Joliet since 

1891.  For a year he was a member of the firm of Wilhelmi & Wagner, but since 

then he has been alone.  Among his most important contracts may be mentioned 

those for the E. Porter Brewing Company's plant, St. Patrick's school, the 

German society hall on  North Hickory street, the high school at  Lockport, the 

high and ward schools at Sandwich, Ill., and the building for school district 

No. 6, Joliet Township.  Besides these he has had a large number of contracts 

for residences and stone buildings in Joliet and elsewhere.  He is a member of 

the Joliet Builders' Association, of which, at this writing, he is the 

treasurer.

In Jackson Township, this county, Mr. Wilhelmi was born December 2, 1864.  His 

father, John Adam Wilhelmi, was a native of Hamburg, Germany, and grew to 

manhood on a farm in his native land.  In 1853 he came to America.  After one 

year in Detroit he settled in Joliet, where he lived for two years.  In 1856 he 

established his home on a farm in Jackson Township, and after a time purchased 

property on section 29, Joliet Township, where he carried on farm pursuits

until his death, in March, 1896, at seventy-three years.  He took an interest 

in local matters and held the offices of school director and highway 

commissioner.  His wife, who bore the maiden name of Margaret Wirtz, was born 

in Coblentz, Germany, and died in Joliet in 1890.  They were the parents of 

eight children, of whom the following survive: J. C., a contractor in Hastings, 

Neb.; Barbara, wife of John Korst, of Jackson Township;  N. H., a machinist, 

in  Chicago; Anna, wife of Frank Kramer, of Joliet; J. G.; and Lizzie, Mrs. 

William Pelkey, of Joliet.  From three years of age our subject was reared in 

Joliet Township, where he attended school and grew to manhood, with a fair 

knowledge of farm work.  His taste, however, was rather in the

line of carpentering than in agriculture, and when he was eighteen he began to 

learn the trade with Mr. Wagner, whose partner he later became.  He has 

continued steadily at his work and has met with unvarying success, being 

rightly judged to be one of the most efficient and painstaking contractors in 

the city.  He owns the old family homestead of twenty-seven acres on the Elwood 

road, two and one-half miles from Joliet, where he has a comfortable 

residence.  In Joliet, in 1890, he married Miss Emma Richter, who was born in 

Mackinaw, Ill., and grew to womanhood in Lockport.  They have three sons, 

Richter A., Frederick C. and Clarence W.  The family are connected with St. 

John's Roman Catholic Church, in the building of which Mr. Wilhelmi's father 

assisted.  He is connected with the Western Catholic Union and is also member 

of the Modern Woodmen of America.


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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