Amos Schwob was born in Germany, March 22, 1859. He is a son of John Schwob, a native of Germany, born about 1835, and Mary (Miller) Schwob, also a native of Germany, in which country they were married. They settled and lived there for a time, John working at the shoemaker's trade. When he emigrated to this country they were thirty-seven days out from Hamburg, Germany, to New York, where he landed in 1861, with his family and without money. He managed to get enough from some one to pay their way to Columbus, Ohio, where John began to work at his trade, and Mary, by the week, to earn money to repay that which he had borrowed to pay their way to that place.
They remained in Columbus, Ohio, awhile, when they moved to a town in Fairfield county, Ohio. Here Mr. Schwob worked at his trade until about 1865, when they came to Huntington county, Indiana. He then rented Daniel Burman's farm and began farming, the owner of the land living at the time in Ohio. Mr. Schwob had met him while there, and in this way he became a resident of Huntington county. He traveled from Ohio to his destination in Indiana by wagon, arriving here during war times.
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Amos Schwob First Home.
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After arriving in Huntington county he worked at his trade, also farming, which he continued more or less until about 1877. He then bought three acres of land, three miles north of Warren, Indiana, and built alog house on it. After owning that for about five years, he sold it, and bought forty-eight acres of the old Alexander Morgan farm in Huntington county. Later on he added twenty acres adjoining, and is nowliving on this farm. Mary having died about 1889, Mr. Schwob married Adeline Heenenberger. To his marriage twelve children have been born, six of whom are yet alive: Amos; Mary, who is the wife of William J. Ellerman, a farmer of Huntington county, Indiana; John, deceased; Rosina is the wife of Augustus Ballhoffer, and they reside in Grant county, Indiana; an infant, deceased; Katherine, the wife of Leopold Ruef, a resident of Huntington county: Willie, deceased : Agnes, burned to death in childhood ; Charlie, deceased ; Henry a resident of Huntington county, Indiana: Luella is the wife of Harry Posev, and they are residents of Marion, Indiana, and an infant, deceased.
When John Schwob started life he had nothing and after coming to Indiana he had much sickness in his family, ague and other diseases incident to a new country.
Amos Schwob was nine years old before he could speak English. Soon after coming to Huntington county, his mother decided that her son should have some schooling.She accordingly made him ready and proceeded to take him to school herself, he crying all the time on the way. At that time three months was the longest and only term taught in the common school during the year. Amos had to learn to speak English, and it was three years before he made much headway in his mastery of the common branches taught in the schools.
He attended his last term of school when he was sixteen years old. Being the oldest in the family of children, he did not get more than two months schooling in each year during the time of his attendance in the district school.He is now a fair scholar, having picked up a great deal of scholastic knowledge since his school days, and speaks both the German and English languages fluently.
Amos remained at home until he was eighteen years old, at which time his father told him he did need him any longer at home and that he might work out. The subject then engaged himself to Kale Wylie for nine months work, but while he was gone to make his contract his father rented thirty acres more land for a corn crop and he found upon his return that his father had made arrangement to keep him home, consequently he had to break the contract for work which he had already made. In the new arrangement which he made with his father, the latter was to give him a team of horses and a set of harness and a wagon if the son would remain at home until he was twenty-one years of age. January i, 1880, Amos was married, being at that time a few months under twenty-one years old. He got the team promised by his father, and took, instead of a wagon, a buggy and harness.
He still has one of the horses received from his father, which is now more than twenty-five years old. His wife, before her marriage, was Ella Wharton, born July 29, 1862, in Montgomery county, Ohio. She is a daughter of Mark and Minerva (Dyke) Wharton, natives of Ohio, and she was born in Montgomery county, that state. They came to Huntington county, Indiana, about the year 1870, and both of them are still living in Warren, Indiana. Mark Wharton has devoted his life to farming. He is the father of three children, Charlie, a resident of Gas City. Indiana, is a minister in the Church of Christ ; Elorence, the wife of Peter Lines, a resident of Huntington county, Indiana, and Ella, wife of Amos Schwob.
After their marriage, Amos Schwob and his wife went over to the Wabash river and rented the "Holt" place, a farm of one hundred and eighty acres. All they had was a team and the clothes which they wore. In the fall of 1879 Amos and his brother-inlaw, William J. Ellerman, had rented this place and put in a wheat crop. He was not thinking of marriage at that time, but seeing a good chance to start in life, he and Ella Wharton decided to consummate their union at once. While they were very poor, yet they were contented with their lot, and especially with themselves.
They remained on this farm for three years, when he rented a farm from John Roach, but after putting out a wheat crop on the farm, he sold his interest. He then traded his buggy and set of double harness which his father had given him, for a first payment on the purchase of forty acres of land and moved onto that. After remaining on this land for one summer he sold his forty acres for the reason that he could not, as he had intended, buy after awhile an adjoining forty-acre tract. It was so situated, however, that it could not be sold. For that reason he did not desire to keep his tract ; added to this was the fact that he was making four hundred dollars in the deal, which of itself was no small incentive. He then moved on to the farm owned bv his father-in-law, an eighty-acre tract, and was there for two years. He then bought eighty acres in Wells county, Indiana, where he now lives.
In the fall of 1886. when he purchased this farm, Mr. Schwob assumed an indebtedness of fourteen hundred dollars. At that time there was only a garden patch cleared on the land and the improvements in the way of building consisted of a log cabin only.He has since then cleared, fenced and improved it in ever}- way. and he has now sixty-five acres under a good state of cultivation, having twenty-six hundred rods of tiling on the eighty acres. Neither he nor his wife have ever had a dollar given to them. He now owns one hundred and twenty acres of land in one Ijody which, with the exception of his woodland, is all under a fine state of cultivation.
He says that he has worked night and day for seven years, but thinks if it had not been for the chicken production he could niit hiiye bought a postal card. After the oil boom came on, he was a pumper for eight years. His farm is in the oil territor^' and his income from that source will average probably fifty dollars per month. During the last one or two years he has engaged in the breeding of shorthorn cattle: he had previously bred Poland China hogs, but at present he has a variety of the latter stock, including Duroc, Poland China and Chester White breeds. He also has a house and lot in Warren, Indiana, and eighteen acres of land adjoining the town site.
He has devoted his entire life to. the vocation of farming, yet, as he says, he could make a boot. The subject of the present sketch is the father of three children: Artie E., born April 1, 1884. at home with parents, will take up high school work in \\'arren, Indiana ; Arvie E.. born April 19, 1889, and Eva E., born June 3, 1897. Both himself and wife are members of the Disciples church. Generalh- speaking, he has been a Democrat in politics, warming up some and doing active work for his party during campaigns. Both his boys are in school and have done well in their school work, standing well in their respective grades. His youngest son will enter the eighth grade next year.
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Amos Schwob Home of today.
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In the personage of Amos Schwob we find the best type of the German American Yeomanry and American citizenship, possessing in his make-up all the attributes of pertinacious industry, patience and thrifty habits which characterize his German ancestry. He has risen from a condition of penury, through which his father struggled, surrounded by the adverse circumstances of an ignorance of our language and the serious diseases incident to a new country to a plane of citizenship and a position in the and he has pride in the progress of his sons in the schools, which so far surpass his own meager opportunities. His own and his father's success, as portrayed in the present sketcli, afford a striking illustration of the rewards that await, not only the industrious and worthy emigrant from a foreign shore, but every citizen in our faxored land. community in which he lives which does him the highest honor. His labors have been rewarded in the possession of a competency
