POEHLER, Henry Hon. (b.1848 d.1912), Sibley Co., MN

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Arlington Enterprise
Thursday 25 July 1912

HON. HENRY POEHLER DEAD
Pioneer of Sibley County Passes Away at Old Home
Henry Poehler, territorial pioneer, founder of one of the oldest business
establishments in the entire west, member of the state legislature of 1872
to 1877, and a member from 1878 to 1880, who would have been eighty years
of age had he lived until Aug. 22nd., died Friday at the home of his
sister, Mrs. Chas. Comnick, in Henderson, Minn.  Mr. Poehler returned three
weeks ago from California, where in recent years, he has spent his winters.
 He visited his sons in Minneapolis and went to Henderson Saturday.  He
died in that little town, where he first became identified with the
development of Minnesota in 1853 and where in 1855, he founded the firm
that bears his name.  He had been ill only a few days.
 The funeral was held Monday under Masonic auspices in Henderson.
In 1848, Mr. Poehler, who was born in Hiddessen, Lippe Detmold, Germany,
arrived in new Orleans.  For a time he gave consideration to the gold
attraction at California, then at its height.  But he came up the river
instead, and settled near Burlington, Iowa, where he lived until 1853.
 In the spring of 1853 he came farther up the river to St. Paul, and in May
went to Mankato, then a small frontier outpost.  Joseph R. Brown, a pioneer
and man of prominence in that day, after whom Brown county was named,
employed Mr. Poehler to go to Henderson in 1854, and take charge of a store
for him.  It wan an Indian trading post and supply place for the few
settlers that had at that time taken up land.  Mr. Poehler arrived in
Henderson on his twenty-first birthday, Aug. 22nd, 1854, and spent the fall
and winter in the store.  In 1855 he bought the store from Brown and
established the firm that still exists, his brother Frederick being the
first partner, the name then being H. Poehler & Brother.  This firm, now
incorporated as the H. Poehler company, celebrated its 50th anniversary in
Minneapolis in 1905.
 In 1861 Mr. Poehler was married to Miss Elizabeth Frankenfield, who
survives him, with three sons, Alvin H., Walter C. and Carl, and two
daughters, Irene and Augusta.
Extension of the business of the pioneer firm of H. Poehler & Bro. made it
necessary for Mr. Poehler to make long trips by wagon, often through the
uncertain Indian country.  He was a buffalo hunter of note, and it was
while on a hunting trip for buffalo in western Minnesota, that he was
accompanied by Indians, among them being Cut Nose, and it was on that trip
that he received the knowledge that there was such disaffection among the
Indians that an outbreak was imminent.  Yet so seemingly friendly were the
Indians at that time that when Mr. Poehler crossed the reservation Cut
Nose, the most blood-thirsty of the thirty-eight, who were afterward hanged
at Mankato in one of the most tragic events of the early history of
Minnesota, loaned Mr. Poehler his gun, which was an especially good one. 
Some of his trips took him beyond the Red River Valley line of military out
posts and into Dakota territory.
 The Pacific Elevator Co., with a line of country grain elevators along the
Minneapolis & St. Louis right of way to Watertown, S.D., was established by
Mr. Poehler in 1881.  In 1889 he sold his interest in the Henderson
business and thereafter made his home in Minneapolis.  The business was
incorporated in 1893, and for a number of years past Mr. Poehler’s sons
have taken all responsibility and he has lived a semi-retired life,
spending each winter in California, yet always interested in the general
conduct of the business and a frequent visitor on change in Minneapolis
when there in the summertime.
 Mr. Poehler and Governor A. O. Eberhart were the principal speakers at
Henderson Aug. 27, 1910, the day of the unveiling of a monument to Major
Joseph R. Brown, and on that occasion he touched in a reminiscent mood upon
the early experience of himself and other territorial settlers and business
men.
	“I became acquainted with Major Brown and his family in 1853,”  Mr.
Poehler said on that occasion,  “They lived across the river from St. Paul,
where West St. Paul now stands.  I often took some of them across the river
in a row boat, as there was no bridge then.  In 1854 Major Brown moved his
family to Henderson, which he laid out as a townsite, and in August of that
year I was employed by him.  He also had a government contract that time to
transport supplies from Henderson to Fort Ridgely, which had just been
built.  In this work he helped many of the early settlers.  Most of them
had only a yoke of oxen and a wagon.”
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