Salomon Wenzlaff Biography


	This biography appears on pages 972, 975 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				SALOMON WENZLAFF. 

	His activity in the field of journalism brought Salomon Wenzlaff 
a wide acquaintance and his efforts proved a potent force in molding 
public thought and shaping public action. For fifteen years he was 
publisher and editor of the Dakota Freie Presse and became a power 
among the German speaking people of the northwest. His present 
identification with business interests is that of a banker of Yankton. 
His activities have been an element in advancing the material 
prosperity and upbuilding of his county as well as in advancing his 
individual success. Few, if any, of the sturdy families that have 
emigrated to the new world have exerted a wider influence for the good 
and uplift of the people among whom they have cast their lot than that 
of which his father, John C. Wenzlaff, was the head. He and his family 
were connected with the German colony that had, at the invitation of 
the czar, made settlement in southern Russia, near Odessa and along the 
coast of the Black Sea. In the early '70s the reigning czar revoked the 
charter given the German colonists and offered them the alternative of 
becoming Russian citizens in the fullest sense of the term or removing 
beyond the boundaries of his domain. None elected to remain under the 
conditions, which would have obliged them to give up their German 
language, courts, schools, church and institutions, and committees were 
formed to seek locations in other lands. On one of these committees Mr. 
Wenzlaff was appointed and sought a location in the Caucasia, Russia, 
and elsewhere but finally decided to come to America, whither many of 
the Germans in Russia had migrated the winter before. John C. Wenzlaff 
had married Johanna Christina Heinzelmann, whose parents also came from 
Germany. 

	Of the ten children of this marriage, Salomon Wenzlaff is the 
fifth in order of birth. He was born at Alt-Arcis, near Odessa, January 
9, 1857, and was in his seventeenth year when the family came to the 
United States in 1874. He had received liberal educational advantages 
in Russia, where his father and an uncle had spent their lives in 
teaching in the parochial schools. On reaching Yankton, Salomon 
Wenzlaff attended the high school and also studied under a private 
tutor in order to more rapidly master the English language. He entered 
the office of the Dakota Freie Presse, under Charles F. Rossteuscher, 
and during his apprenticeship thoroughly mastered the business in all 
of its different phases. He later became associated with his father in 
the hardware trade and afterward opened a hardware store in Scotland, 
with a branch store in Tyndall. He not only figured prominently in 
mercantile circles but was also called to public office and for four 
years from 1882, acted as treasurer of Bon Homme county. On completing 
his term he disposed of his two stores and removed to Yankton, w-here 
he again became connected with journalism, purchasing of his father in 
1886 the Dakota Freie Presse. His father had purchased the paper of G. 
A. Wetter, to whom it had been sold by its former owner, Mr. 
Rossteuscher. Salomon Wenzlaff continued to publish the Freie Presse 
for fifteen years, making it a power among the German speaking people 
in the northwest, the policy of the paper doing much to shape the 
political history as well as the general interests of the German-
American citizens in that section of the country. The paper was 
liberally patronized, there being but eleven hundred and eighty names 
on the subscription list when he took charge, while when he sold in 
1901 he had increased the number to as many thousands. His advocacy of 
republican principles probably did more to hold the Germans of the 
northwest in allegiance to that party than any other single influence 
during the years in which he was at the head of the Dakota Freie 
Presse. In the meantime he had served as register in the United States 
land office from 1889 until 1894. On disposing of his printing and 
publishing establishment in 1901 he went to California to recuperate 
his health, which had become impaired through the stress of business. 
He had visited the Pacific coast one season before and was so much 
pleased with the climate and the country that he has since spent every 
winter season in southern California save for one winter passed in 
Florida. For a few years he remained free from business cares, but 
indolence and idleness are utterly foreign to his nature and he again 
felt and responded to the call of the business world, purchasing from 
Fred Beecher a controlling interest in the bank at Eureka, South 
Dakota, together with a chain of five other banks in that region. 
Selling the weakest member of the allied banks, he retained the 
controlling interest in those at Eureka and Artas, South Dakota, and at 
Hague and Linton, North Dakota. In 1910 he disposed of these banks to 
advantage and purchased the Citizens State Bank at Armour, of which he 
is the president. lee makes his home in Yankton but controls his 
banking interests at Armour and otherwise supervises his invested 
interests. 

	In the family of Mr. Wenzlaff are seven children, as follows: 
Grant S., who is interested in the automobile business in California; 
Leopold J. C., who is a locomotive engineer on the Great Northern 
Railroad at Spokane; Edgar G., who completed the high-school course in 
Yankton and became a student in the law department of the University of 
southern California and now acts as cashier of the Citizens State Bank 
at Armour, South Dakota; Waldemar, who is a graduate of the high school 
in Spokane and now acts as cashier of the Farmers Bank at Kendrick, 
Idaho; Ruth, who gave her hand in marriage to F. E. Anderson and 
resides in Lillooet, British Columbia; Solomon Henry, a student in the 
State University of Illinois at Urbana, Illinois; and William Bradford, 
who is attending Yankton College, Yankton, South Dakota. 

	In politics Mr. Wenzlaff has always been an ardent republican and 
has probably made more addresses and spent more time on the stump in 
the advocacy of the principles of that party than any other man in the 
state. He began making campaign speeches in his native county when 
nineteen years of age and has been active along that line continuously 
since, doing his share in the last campaign of 1914. Through the 
columns of the Dakota Freie Presse he also did much to advance 
republican interests among the German-American population of the state. 
Through the columns of that paper he sent out words of wisdom which 
were the outcome of thorough study and investigation and were the 
expression of an honest belief. He has ever been fearless in support of 
his convictions and his clear reasoning has made strong appeal to the 
minds of his readers. Mr. Wenzlaff was reared in the Lutheran faith, 
but after the family removed to Yankton they became identified with the 
Congregational church. While it seemed a hardship that the Germans in 
Russia must leave that land and the possessions which they had there 
acquired, what then appeared to be a misfortune has turned out to be a 
blessing. Seeking homes in America, the land of opportunity, many of 
those German emigrants have here attained wealth and position and some 
of them have won fame. They have contributed much to the citizenship of 
the localities in which they have lived and Yankton county owes not a 
little to the efforts of the Wenzlaff family and to him whose name 
introduces this review. Business affairs have been carefully handled by 
him and energy and enterprise have brought him to the goal of success. 
In all of his business he has followed constructive methods and his 
efforts have been an element in public progress as well as individual 
advancement.