Hanover Township

Hanover Township

Hanover Township is part of the original Center Township, which also included the territory comprising the present Center, AVinfield, St. John and Ross. The steps by which it acquired its present form and area were the detachment of Winfield in 1843, the creation of St. John and Ross in 1848, and the separation of Hanover from what was left of Center, in 1853.

Although the first settlers of what is now Hanover Township, on the west shores of Red Cedar Lake, were of New England origin, the second and the larger colony was composed of sturdy Germans who stamped their nationality on the township itself. The location of the stalwart Ball family on the Lake of the Red Cedars during "the year 1837, with the founding of the famous Cedar Lake Baptist Church, has been described at some length, and account has also been taken of the Sasse, Von Hollen and Herlitz families in the following year. As the advance of those fine German emigrants who formed the strongest element in the pioneer life of the western part of the county, and whose good influence is still potent in the lives and works of their descendants, it is no more than historic justice to pause at this point and give them their dues more in detail.

At that time he had been in America but four years, having emigrated from his native province of Hanover in 1834. The father of the little family bought the claims of Aaron Cox and Josiah Chase on the northwest of Cedar Lake. Mr. Sasse came with means and also accumulated property. He was a man of much native ability and strong influence, although never prone to assume public duties. Circumstances led him to visit his old home in the Fatherland three times after settling in Hanover Township ; so that he was well-traveled and well-informed.

Mr. Sasse 's first wife died June 10, 18-10, leaving two sons. The younger, William E., born near Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 20, 1836, died in Hanover Township June 2, 1870. The father married again in 1841, his second wife being a widow with eight children. She died in 1866 and none of her children are living. Henry Sasse, Sr., married a third time in 1870, and by her he had Herman E. Sasse, now a prominent business man of Crown Point. Henry Sasse, Jr., the son by the first wife, was long a leading farmer and a successful teacher, later a dealer in agricultural implements. He died leaving one married daughter, Mrs. Henry Gromann, who, in turn, has one son, one daughter and one granddaughter. From this record of the Sasse family, it is evident that the descendants of sturdy Henry Sasse, Sr., are not numerous. So far as known, they all reside at Crown Point.

Henry Von Hollen was another of those intelligent, energetic German Lutherans who came to the lake neighborhood in 1838. He was a fine looking man, tall and strong, and gave the world the full benefit of his proportions, as he had received a military training in the cavalry service of the Fatherland. But although Von Hollen was of such fine military bearing and poor, he was not above hard work and ceaseless industry. He at once purchased some wild, cheap land on which had already been found a cranberry marsh, and this investment, with the good honest work which he put upon the property, made him in a few years a well-to-do citizen. When he died he left his wife in possession of ample means, and at her death she ranked as one of the wealthy women of Lake County. Mrs. Von Hollen lived for sixty-five years on the homestead which she founded, with her husband, in 1838, but of their small household no descendant is left.

the claim niad(' l)y Hiram Nordyke, of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, two years before, which was located north of Red Cedar Lake. His wife and ]\Irs. IT. Sasse were sisters. ^h\ Herlitz hnilt a good liouse on the claim whicli he had bought and secured his title from the (iovernment wlu'U it came reguhu-ly into tlu' market in 1839. In a few years ^Ir. and ^Irs. Lewis Herlitz had a pleasant and comfortable home, and their hirge circle of sons and daughters, who completed an intelligent and courteous household, had cause to "rise up and call them blessed. The father died in 1861). Init children and grantlcliildren are honorc in the old home neighliorliootl a)id at Crown Point.

Herman Docsclicr was another of the liest known of the early Gerlan settlers. He came somewhat later than the three families iiK'ntioned. II 1842 settling in the west(^rn part of Hanover Township with one son and several daughters. He died in December. 1886, having lived in the county forty-four years, leaving six children, thirty-seven grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren.

But whether these pioneer German settlers, who so long lived in Hanover Township, left many or few descendants, a strong and good influence remained after they had passed away ; and that, after all, is the true test of a worthy life.

Another German i)ioneer, who, in 1850, settled in the extreme southwestern part of the township was JI. Klass. There, on the eastern edge of the Grand Prairie of Illinois which stretches across that state to the Mississippi River this solitary German planted himself and his family. After a few years other families joined him and his, school and church life commenced and the locality became Klassville, now recognized as a pretty, industrious rural community. It is about half a mile from the state line and some twelve miles southwest of Crown Point, and, like all the other neighborhoods west of the two eastern tiers of sections in the township, is quite bereft of railroad transportation. It is such little villages as these which most appreciate ;dl movements, whether private, township or county, which tend to im])rove the roads.

The Meyers and the Beckmans came a little later than ]Mr. Klass. John H. Meyer was a native of Hanover, Germany, where he was married and where all his children were born. In 1851 he and his family sailed from Bremen and forty-two days later arrived in New York. The parents and one of their children went to Savannah, Georgia, for the winter, but the other three remained in New York. In the spring of 1852 the parents started for the ^Vest with the intention of locating at Fort Wayne, Indiana, ])ut on the death of a l)rother, wlio had taken up land near Cedar Lake, they came to Lake County and purchased 200 acres of land near the western extremity of that body of water. The father and nineteen-year-old son built a log cabin on a bank of the lake, high and dry, and commenced the hard, healthful life of the pioneer. The family was absorbed by the growing connnunity of German Lutherans, and in time both father and son (also John H. Meyer) became prosperous and prominent. The younger man, who married Miss Christena Doescher, became the father of twelve children, most of whom, as men and women, moved out of Hanover Township. His Avife was also

When the younger ]\Ir. and Mrs. John H. Meyer were married in 1861 they began life as renters on section 19, just west of the central part of the township, and for six years they farmed on their rented land. The first land purchased was in section 31, east of the Klass property. Mr. Meyer went into debt for a portion of his purchase, but soon freed his property of the encumbrance, bought other land and in his later years was the owner of more than three hundred acres in Hanover Township, an excellent residence and farm buildings, with even a larger farm in Missouri. And what contributed more than property accumulation to the advancement of the community, Mr. and ^Irs. Meyer reared with wisdom a family of six sons and two daughters.

Herman C. Beckman, an uncle of Mr. Meyer, was the most prominent of the early merchants of Hanover Township, and was mainly instrumental in founding Hanover Center and Brunswick. He came to America from Hanover in 1846, was married in 1852 and in 1855 opened a large store at the little settlement just southeast of the center of the township, at the corners of sections 20, 21, 28 and 29. This soon became known as Hanover Center, and the community still shows a store, a large church, a good sehoolhouse, dwellings and the usual buildings of rural settlement.

Brunswick, two miles west of Hanover Center, was founded when Mr. Beckman transferred his general store and his other business interests to the point first mentioned. This was in 1858. For many years he carried on at that point a large general business, dealing especially in butter and eggs. For twenty-nine years he was postmaster at Brunswick, served as county commissioner, and was altogether an able, prosperous, upright, kindly and highly honored citizen. At Mr. Beckman's death in Brunswick during 1894 his son, John N. Beckman, continued the paternal career with interest, especially developing their joint raising and improvement of Jersey cattle. Brunswick is more indebted to the Beckmans for its growth and good standing than to any other personal influence.

an organization under Rev. Peter Lehman, known as Zion's Cliureh, and built a church on the west side of AVest Creek near the Illinois state line. Twenty-six members formed the original body. At first a parochial school was attached to the church, but with the growth of the township and county systems it was discontinued.

The German Methodists who had settled on the western part of Lake Prairie and the West Creek Woodlands also formed a church organization in the '50s and at a somewhat later day the German Evangelicals commenced missionary work west of Cedar Lake. A church was organized under the pastorate of Rev. G. Vetter and a small house of worship erected. Although the society existed for many years it never attained much strength.

In the immediate lake district the Baptist Church was the strongest among the English speaking settlers, whose religious faith was also satisfied through the preaching and ministrations of various Methodist missionaries of the Lowell Circuit.

At a somewhat later period than the foregoing religionists came the Roman Catholics, who had long been established in St. John Towaiship to the north. In 1861 they organized St. Anthony's Church at Klassville, and in 1869 St. j\lartin's, at Hanover Center. As is customary, intellectual and religious training went hand-in-hand with those bodies, and as the German Lutherans also conducted schools for a number of years the children of the early settlers of Hanover Township were reared into intelligent and moral citizens.