Howard County IN Archives Biographies.....Schafer, George 1863 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com April 21, 2006, 3:48 pm

Author: Jackson Morrow

GEORGE SCHAFER.

    The best history of a community or state is the one that deals most with the
lives and activities of its people, especially of those who, by their own
endeavor and indomitable energy, have forged to the front and placed themselevs
where they deserve the title of progressive men. In this brief review will be
found the record of one who has outstripped the less active plodders on the
highway of life and achieved a career surpassed by few of his contemporaries, a
career of marked success in agricultural affairs and a name which all who know
him delight to honor owing to his upright life and habits of thrift and industry.

    George Schafer was born in Darke county, Ohio, March 19, 1863, the son of
Philip and Regina (Stuber) Schafer. Grandfather Schafer was a native of Germany,
where he spent his entire life. There were three sons in the family, two of them
came to America about 1851. The father of the subject was about twenty years old
at that time. He first stopped at Cincinnati and worked for a butcher. He later
moved to Darke county, Ohio, near Phillipsburg, where he worked as a farm hand,
later going to Mercer county, Ohio, where he was married and. where he farmed on
his father-in-law's farm for a time; he then bought a farm of his own, part of
which was in Mercer and part in Darke counties. There was a log cabin on the
place. It was built of round logs; later he purchased a house of hewn logs,
which he tore down and removed to his farm and it was in this house that our
subject was born. It was here that the subject's father cleared the land, made a
comfortable home and reared his children. He lived there until the fall of 1882,
when he sold out and moved to Howard county, Indiana, buying an improved farm of
one hundred and sixty acres on which he has made his home to the time of this
writing (1908). He has added much to the improvement of the place, especially in
drainage. There were ten children in this family, eight of whom are now living,
seven of them having families of their own. Philip Schafer is a member of the
Evangelical church. His wife, who died at the age of fifty-seven years, was also
a member of this denomination. The subject's father is a Republican and a
Prohibitionist, and he is a man of influence in his community.

    George Schafer, our subject, attended the public schools in Darke county,
Ohio, until he was nineteen years old, but he did a great deal of systematic
studying after that. During the time that he attended school he worked at
intervals on his father's farm, remaining under the parental roof until after he
was twenty-one years of age. He then worked for about seven years as a farm hand
for various parties, during which time he bought a lot in Kokomo, on which he
built a home; this was as an investment of the money he had earned and saved by
habits of industry and economy from his labor. When he married he moved on the
place where he has since resided and carried on the various departments of
farming with marked success. The farm at that time belonged to Henry Metz, who
was the father of Mr. Schafer's wife. Since that time he has purchased eighty
acres in Liberty township, which he still owns and which he rents for grain
rent. He also bought a forty-acre piece adjoining the home farm. Of this
two-hundred-acre farm he has cleared fifty acres. The forty he bought was only
partly drained. Mr. Schafer has since installed an excellent system of tile
drainage over the entire place and the fields are well fenced. The
productiveness of the soil has improved since he came in possession of it, owing
to his skillful rotation of crops and other methods employed by all modern and
scientific farmers. In 1906 he had a field of wheat which averaged forty-seven
bushels per acre. He feeds all the corn raised on the place to hoge [sic] which
he ships to market. His favorite breeds are Chester Whites and Poland-Chinas.

    The domestic life of Mr. Schafer dates from 1891, when he was united in
marriage with Katie Metz, daughter of Henry and Catherine Metz. M. Metz was a
native of Germany who came to America as a young man. He first settled in Ohio
and from there moved to Indiana, where he lived until his death in 1908. He was
a man of much influence in his community, having been a very industrious man and
led an honorable career, setting a worthy example to the younger generation of
his community, and giving his children a splendid training. Mrs. Metz also came
from Germany and is described as a woman of many admirable traits which, her
daughter, who is the wife of our subject, seems to have inherited.

    The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Schafer: Edwin, born
in October, 1892, is living at home and attending school in 1908: Oris DeWitt
was born in April, 1894; Rea Regina was born in July, 1897: Sereno Drece was
born in May, 1902.

    Mr. and Mrs. Schafer and their two oldest sons are members of the
Evangelical Association. In politics the subject is a Prohibitionist. He has not
aspired to political offices, but he has held about all the offices of the local
church, proper.

     Mr. Schafer is a man of genuine practical ideas, thoroughly upright in all
his dealings with his fellow men and a pleasant man to meet. He is training his
children in the way they should conduct themselves to become honorable and
successful in their subsequent lives and the Schafer family is well known in
Howard township where they maintain uniformily good reputations and have a very
large number of friends.


Additional Comments:
From:

HISTORY OF HOWARD COUNTY INDIANA
BY
JACKSON MORROW, B. A.
ILLUSTRATED
VOL. II
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

(circa 1909)

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