Brown County MN Archives Biographies.....Pfaender, William 1826 - 1905
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/mn/mnfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 26, 2014, 11:47 pm

Source: See Below
Author: L. A. Fritsche

COL. WILLIAM PFAENDER.

    William Pfaender was born in Heilbronn, Wurtemberg, Germany, July 6, 1826,
and received a common-school education, but he was a reader and a thinker, and
upon this basis he constantly built his large store of knowledge. The German
revolution of 1848 caused young Pfaender, with many of the best men in Germany,
to emigrate to America that year, and he located in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1849.
There in 1851 he married Catherine Pfau, and in 1856 he came West with a
committee of the German Settlement Association of the city mentioned to find a
location for a new German settlement. That search brought them to New Ulm, where
they found a German colony from Chicago, then struggling in a somewhat
impoverished condition to build a town and provide for the settlement of the
surrounding country. This was reported to Cincinnati headquarters, and it was
decided by the Association there, who had money, to buy a half interest in New
Ulm, which was done, and Mr. Pfaender was sent here as agent and manager for the
Cincinnati Association. That infused new life in the Chicago colony, then fused
with the arrivals from the Ohio city, and thence forward there was steady thrift
in the new German settlement, only interrupted by the Sioux Indian massacre of
August, 1862, the grasshopper raid of 1875 to 1877, and the cyclone of 1881. Mr.
Pfaender took a government claim of one hundred and sixty acres about a mile
north of the present city limits, and there for a time he was postmaster, with a
cigar box as a depository for the letter mail. In after years he owned and
operated a saw-mill, and then was builder and owner of a planing-mill near the
business center of the present city. He always had at heart the interests of New
Ulm and its people, and was ever a promoter of the best interests of the
locality and its inhabitants.

     Mr. Pfaender had been an active member of the German Turner society in Ulm,
in Germany, and he was one of the organizers of the Turner society in
Cincinnati. True to his faith, he organized the New Ulm Turnverein in November,
1856.

     His capacity for public affairs and his integrity as a man were soon
recognized by his fellow citizens here, and in 1860 he was elected register of
deeds of Brown county, and he was elected to the house of representatives of the
Minnesota Legislature the same year, and then elected to the state Senate in
1870 and served one term. He was elected state treasurer in 1876, and served two
terms to 1880. Meanwhile he had served as mayor of New Ulm from 1873 to 1876,
when he resigned to take the office of state treasurer. Later he served as a
member of the city council from 1890 to April, 1893. When Hecker Post, Grand
Army of the Republic, was organized he was its commander for sixteen years.

     That William Pfaender was not only a public spirited citizen and busy man
in civil life, but a patriot of high type, is proven by his record in war, for
he served in the army with distinction from 1861 to 1865 during the civil
conflict. He and about twenty other residents of New Ulm and vicinity enlisted
in the First Minnesota Battery in September, 1861, and he was commissioned first
lieutenant of the battery, which was sent to the Southwest as soon as organized.
While the entire battery deserves great credit for courage and patriotism, the
two surviving members in New Ulm of that battery are ready to bear witness to an
act of Lieutenant Pfaender at the terrible battle of Shiloh, on the banks of the
Tennessee river, in 1862, that should have made him a brigadier-general. The
battery was in the thickest of the battle, holding its position, while the
Federal army was being driven back by the impetuous onslaught of the rebels, who
were advancing with victory in sight. As the officer in command of the troops of
which the battery was a part and the retreating army were passing, Lieutenant
Pfaender, in command of the battery, asked for orders. But he received none from
the fleeing officer. Quick as a flash Lieutenant Pfaender grasped the situation,
and with a courage never surpassed, then having two of his six guns disabled and
the remaining four dangerously hot from rapid firing, he ordered his men to hold
their position and continue firing under a terrific hail of rebel bullets, in
what was afterward named the "Hornets' Nest," as it was—a veritable Grecian pass
of Thermopylae. This act of supreme heroism checked the rebel advance for twenty
to thirty minutes, when the Federal army had time to re-form, and with the
stimulated courage of the battery to advance and drive the rebels back. It was a
test of do or die, and the battery saved the day. Had Lieutenant Pfaender
ordered a retreat, as that section of the Federal army was passing in retreat,
they would have been driven into the Tennessee river and many of them to death.
This conspicuous act of unsurpassed heroism was never reported as it should have
been by the higher officers of the command, and has never been related in public
at home. It should have made the modest lieutenant commander of a brigade and
promoted every hero in the battery.

     On hearing that New Ulm had been attacked by the Indians, his solicitude
for his family and New Ulm induced Lieutenant Pfaender to ask for leave to
return home late in the autumn of 1862, and he was sent to Minnesota on
recruiting service. The First Minnesota Mounted Rangers was then being
organized, and Lieutenant Pfaender was mustered out of the battery and
commissioned lieutenant-colonel of that regiment. He was placed in command of
the frontier, then imperiled by Indians, with headquarters at Ft. Ridgely. The
following December Colonel Pfaender was mustered out with the regiment, but he
was again commissioned Iieutenant-colonel of the Second Cavalry Regiment, and
was continued in service and in command of the frontier until 1865, when he was
finally mustered out. Colonel Pfaender died in 1905.

     The corner stone of Mr. Pfaender's character was a high sense of justice
and honor, and whether in civil or military life he was always a courteous
gentleman. In any and all positions, or however busy, he was always approachable
by the humblest alike with the most exalted. It was these qualities that won for
him the universal respect of his fellow-citizens and their implicit confidence.
While he was firm in his convictions of his rules of life, he was always
tolerant of differences of opinion; and he was ever a peace-maker. In all the
relations of life, as friend and adviser, as leader or co-worker, remembering
his courage in war and his many good deeds in peace, Col. William Pfaender was
easily the foremost and most honored citizen of New Ulm, and should by right be
looked upon as its father. He will be missed as no other resident could be. He
will be missed especially by his comrades in arms and all old soldiers and
settlers whose friend he was and for whose welfare he always labored. That the
last Legislature a few months prior to his death did tardy justice to the memory
of himself and comrades for gallant deeds at the battle of Shiloh by
appropriating a small sum to erect a monument to their memory on the
battle-field, was some consolation in his last days. In his domestic life his
kindness of heart and gentle government were all that could be asked of husband
and father; and his pure life must ever beckon those who remain to follow where
he blazed the way.

     Mrs. Pfaender died in 1892, and after that a daughter, Miss Josephine, made
the home pleasant for her father. Mr. and Mrs. Pfaender were the parents of
fifteen children, five of whom died, most of them from diphtheria in 1881, and
ten children are living. These are William, Frederick, Herman and Albert
Pfaender, Mrs. L. A. Fritsche and Misses Josephine and Minnie Pfaender, in New
Ulm; though the last named is most of the time teaching school in St. Paul,
where Mrs. G. Stamm, Mrs. Charles Albrecht and Mrs. Charles Hauser reside. The
sons and daughters and some of their children, as also Dr. G. Stamm, were all at
the funeral.

     The funeral attendance was one of the largest seen in New Ulm, and in the
escort to the city cemetery were the members of Hecker Post, Captain Burg's
battery, the Second Regiment band, Company A of the National Guard, and members
of the New Ulm Turnverein. At the grave the band played a dirge, when the Grand
Army of the Republic service was given, and after some appropriate remarks by
Commander Klossner, Judge B. P. Webber paid the last tribute in words to the
departed in the admirable address that follows:

     "Friends and fellow citizens—We meet with those who mourn the loss of a
dear father and with other relatives at the grave of Col. William Pfaender. You
have listened in the language that his ears first heard, in the language in
which his mother expressed her love for him in his cradle, to a brief history of
his achievements and the high esteem in which he is held by those dear to him by
reason of his nativity. As an American citizen and as his neighbor, I wish to
express, in the language of his adopted country, the high esteem in which his
memory is held by every American citizen of his acquaintance, and the deep grief
which they feel at the termination of a noble manhood. We recall his birth,
nearly eighty years ago, in the far off land beyond the sea; we recall the
struggles of his boyhood and early manhood, in the school room and
counting-house; we recall his emigration and settlement in his adopted country
at the age of twenty-two; we recall his settlement with a little colony of
Germans in the then wilderness among the Indians at the age of thirty, and his
continuous residence at the same place for nearly fifty years. We recollect that
he took a leading part as a municipal and county officer in the early history of
our city and county; that he cast one of the electoral votes of the state for
the noblest of American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln; that he served his country
well as an officer in the War of the Rebellion and in protecting the homes of
the early settlers from the savage Sioux; and that he afterward served his state
honestly and faithfully in a responsible state office. Prom all of those
positions, boy, emigrant, neighbor, officer, soldier, citizen, come only the
words 'well done, good and faithful servant.'

     "And now, in the neighborhood where he has been known and loved so long,
almost in sight of his home for nearly half a century, below the branches of the
trees that Ids own hands have planted, beneath the flowers strewn and planted by
loving hands, with the birds singing and the breezes whispering in the branches
above him, shall his ashes rest until the resurrection morn; and it requires no
effort for me to believe that the loving father, true friend, neighbor, soldier,
citizen and patriot, will enjoy the best there is beyond the 'dim seen strand of
that untrodden, silent land, that covers all the past.' "


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:
HISTORY OF BROWN COUNTY MINNESOTA
ITS PEOPLE, INDUSTRIES AND INSTITUTIONS

L. A. FRITSCHE. M. D.
Editor

With Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records
of Many of the Old Families

VOLUME II
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana


Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/mn/brown/photos/bios/pfaender477gbs.jpg

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mn/brown/bios/pfaender477gbs.txt

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

File size: 11.9 Kb