Sedgwick County KS Archives Biographies.....Helmken, Louis 1869 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com March 25, 2007, 8:52 pm

Author: O. H. Bentley (1910)

   Louis Helmken, proprietor of the Model Grocery and Market, No. 1043 St.
Lawrence avenue, Wichita, Kan., is a native of Germany, having been born near
Bremen on March 18, 1869. His parents were George and Meta (Murhen) Helmken,
natives of Germany, where the elder Helmken was a farmer, and the family had
resided on the same farm, located near Bremen, for about three centuries. The
elder Helmken died in 1870 when but thirty-eight years old, at which time Louis
Helmken was only one year of age. His widow is still living. Louis Helmken was
one of a family of six boys, all of whom are living. He was educated in the
country schools of his native country and left home in 1885 and came to the
United States, locating in the city of New York, where he served an
apprenticeship in the grocery business. Five years later he moved to Chicago and
for a couple of years clerked in grocery stores. In 1892 he opened up in the
grocery business for himself, and in 1896 found himself without a penny. He
again began as a clerk, and in 1900 began again for himself with a small
capital, and in four years' time had a chain of stores on the south side of
Chicago, all paying well and employing a large number of salesmen and delivery
employes. In 1905 he sold all his mercantile interests in Chicago and removed to
Oklahoma. There he organized a company to build a large cement mill with
$150,000 capital, of which he was president and manager for three years. Then he
sold his interest and came to Wichita and bought the Cottage Grocery on South
Topeka avenue, and after two years bought the store at his present location of
W. H. Shoemaker, removed the old building, and by August, 1909, had completed
his present building, the only one in Wichita built expressly for the business,
and which represents an investment of $25,000. The store is a model of its kind,
and is equipped with every modern appliance and sanitary device and convenience
known to the retail grocery business. Mr. Helmken does a strictly cash business
and has a force of ten employes in the carefully-kept, hygienically clean and
finely-managed food emporium. Neatness, cleanliness, pure, fresh stocks of
goods, courteous, obliging manners of proprietors and employes, all have united
to make this store a model one, a credit to the genius of the owner and to the
advantage of the large patronage he enjoys. Mr. Helmken is a thirty-second
degree Mason, a member of the Shrine and of the Woodmen of the World. He is the
president of the Wichita Grocers' Association and a member of St. Paul's
Evangelical Church. He was married on September 23, 1900, to Miss Emelie Golk,
of Chicago. Of this union five children have been born, viz.: Meta, Elnora,
Martha, Louisa and Louis, Jr., the latter being deceased.

Additional Comments:
Extracted from 

History of Wichita and Sedgwick County: past and present, including an account
of the cities, towns and villages of the county

Editor in chief: O. H. Bentley
Chicago: C.F. Cooper & Co. (1910)


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