Lake County IN Archives Biographies.....Thiel, John M. 1832 - 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/in/infiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 9, 2006, 11:31 pm

Author: T. H. Ball (1904)

JOHN M. THIEL.

    John M. Thiel, the genial old "village blacksmith" of St. John, came to Lake
county as a German lad of ten years old, and has been numbered among the
citizens of the county for all the subsequent sixty odd years. He learned his
trade in the county, and established his shop in St. John forty-seven years ago,
so that his place of business is the oldest of its kind in the county, and he
himself holds the palm for long continuance at his trade. At the age of
seventy-three, he is still hearty and strong, does a day's work that he need not
be ashamed of, and is respected and honored throughout the township not only
because he has so long been a factor of its industrial enterprise but also
because of his personal character and genuine worth of citizenship.

    Mr. Thiel was born in Prussia, Germany, May 15, 1832, a son of John and Mary
(Klassen) Thiel, who emigrated from their German fatherland in 1842 and settled
in Lake county, Indiana, about a mile and a half from St. John. His father
devoted himself to the improvement and cultivation of a farm, and lived there
till his death, when he was about eighty-two years of age, and his wife died in
the same place at the age of seventy-seven. They were parents of twelve
children, and seven of them grew to manhood and womanhood.

    John M. Thiel is the fourth son. He was ten years old when he came to Lake
county, where he was reared and received his English education. At the age of
twenty be left his parents' home and went to Crown Point, where he served his
time at learning the blacksmith trade. After his apprenticeship of two years he
worked at his trade in Crown Point for three years, and in 1857 came to St. John
and opened his own shop, which he has conducted from that year to this, always
giving satisfaction to his large patronage and at the same time being on good
terms with every person in the community. Besides this business, which he still
carries on, he owns a fifty-acre farm in the town of St. John, and this is
managed by his son Joe. In politics Mr. Thiel has always been a Democrat, and he
and his family are all members of the Catholic church in St. John.

    In 1857, the same year in which he located in St. John, Mr. Thiel married
Miss Susan Davis, who was born in the same province of Germany as Mr. Thiel, but
preceded him to America by two years. They are the parents of seven children,
all of whom were born in St. John: Jacob married Lena Thiesen, who died, and he
now lives in Whiting; George married Flora Sneider and lives in Chicago;
Eberhard married Mary Scheidt, and works in the shop with his father; Joe,
mentioned above, is the only one of the children who has not married.; Frances,
who married John Dietz, died in 1894; Clara, also deceased, was the wife of
Jacob Keilmann; Thresia, wife of Henry Neibling, resides in St. John.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF
Genealogy and Biography
OF
LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA,
WITH A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY 
1834—1904

A Record of the Achievements of Its People in the Making of a Commonwealth and
the Founding of a Nation.

REV. T. H. BALL
OF CROWN POINT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ILLUSTRATED
CHICAGO   NEW YORK
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1904


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/in/lake/bios/thiel427gbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/infiles/

File size: 3.8 Kb