J. Fred Mohning J. Fred Mohning, whose well improved farm is situated in Section 28 and 33, Clayton township, is a scion of one of the well known pioneer families of Clayton county and has here proved his resourcefulness and enterprise as one of the representative agriculturists and stock-raisers of his native county, the while he is fully upholding the prestige of a family name that has been prominently and worthily linked with the annals of civic and industrial development and advancement in this favored section of the Hawkeye State. On the old homestead farm of his parents, in Clayton township, this county, Mr. Mohning was born on the 7th of April, 1868, and he is a son of H. H. and Maria (Pefmeyer) Mohning, who were born and reared in Germany, whence they came to the United States in the '50s. Soon after their arrival in America they established their home on a pioneer farm in Clayton county, Iowa, where their first place of abode was a primitive log house, with clapboard roof and with no chimney save a stovepipe protruding from the roof line. The father gave himself energetically to the reclamation of his farm, was successful in his operations as an agriculturist and contributed his quota to the development of the resources of the county. In later years he removed to Remsen, Plymouth county, where both he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives. Of their nine children, seven are now living. He, whose name initiates this article passed his boyhood days under the conditions and influences of the pioneer period of Clayton County's history, early began to aid in the work of the home farm and in the meanwhile profited by the advantages afforded in the local schools. Upon attaining to his legal majority he rented the old homestead farm, with the affairs of which he had been associated up to that time, and one year later he purchased a tract of eighty acres adjoining the home place He is now the owner of the entire landed estate, which comprises one hundred and seventy acres of fertile land, and which constitutes one of the well improved and specially productive farms of the county, the same being most eligibly situated in Sections 28 and 33 Clayton township and on rural mail route No. 3 from the city of McGregor. As a loyal and progressive citizen, Mr. Mohning has shown a lively interest in community affairs, and in 1916 he is serving his third consecutive term in the office of township trustee a preferment that indicates the high estimation in which he is held in the community that has always represented his home. He is also secretary of the school board of his district, a position of which he has been the efficient incumbent since 1897. He is essentially one of the representative citizens of Clayton township, was one of the organizers of the Clayton Savings Bank, of which he is a director, and both he and his wife are zealous and valued communicants of St. Paul's Lutheran church at Garnavillo, of which he is a trustee. In the year 1893 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Mohning to Miss Amelia Otting, who likewise was born and reared in this county and who is a daughter of J. F. and Fredericka Otting, both now deceased, her father having been born in Hanover, Germany, and having been one of the sterling pioneers of Clayton county, where he became a substantial agriculturist. Mr. and Mrs. Mohning have four children - Evangeline F. M., Lester F. H., Georgena M., and Foster H. A., and the family is one of prominence and popularity in the social activities of the community. source: History of Clayton
County, Iowa; From The Earliest Historical Times Down to
the Present; by Realto E. Price, Vol. II; page
283-284 |