Julius A. Kleppisch: The rest of the story

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These are the tombstones in Bowling Green City Cemetery, Pike County, Missouri (downstream along the Mississippi from Hannibal) of a Lucas Countyan who got away --- Julius Albert Kleppisch. Although Julius, known familiarly as Al, and his wife, Lena, only lived in Chariton for four years, he left behind in the the 1881 history of the county a memorable autobiographical sketch that reads a bit like the outline of an adventure film. Here it is, as found on Page 665:

KLEPPISCH, J. A., post-office, Chariton. Proprietor south side billiard parlor, and poultry yard --- has light Bramahs, Plymouth rocks, Brazilian pheasants, Houdans, bronze turkeys and pea-fowls. Mr. K. was born in Prussia, in the city of Petersburg. When three years of age, his father was sent to Liberia for life, and his mother and her nine children were imprisoned for nine months, from the effects of which she died. His father, traveling in disguise, visited England, Germany, and then returned to Prussia and gathered up his children. Mr. K. grew up to manhood in his native country, where he obtained a high school education. At the age of seventeen years he went to live with an uncle on the West India Islands, Aquia in Hada, where he remained until the fall of 1871, when he inherited a fortune at his uncle's death. A revolution broke out soon after, in which his property was destroyed, and he barely escaped with his life. Came to Baltimore, in the fall of 1871, thence to St. Louis and Burlington in 1873, where he performed on the stage in the German theater. In 1879 he moved to this county, and has divided his attention between farming and his present business. Married in Burlington, 1877, to Miss Lena Thienes, a native of Indiana, but of German parentage. They have had two children, Arthur, eighteen months old, living, and one lost in infancy.

There's no particular reason to doubt Julius's account of his early years, but there's no way to confirm it either. He probably was born in Petersberg, Saxony, a province of Prussia at the time of his birth. Neither "Aquia" nor "Hada" are places in the West Indies, although Hada might have been Haiti, which did experience considerable unrest and warfare during the 1870s.

Passenger records show that he arrived in Baltimore aboard the ship Leipzig, but during 1872, from Bremen, with occupation given as merchant. He was naturalized in Burlington on Oct. 17. 1876, and married Lena Thienes there on Oct. 29, 1877. Their first child was born and died in Burlington, buried in Aspen Grove Cemetery.

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The family probably arrived in Chariton during the spring of 1879. The Leader of May 17 reported that Julius had opened on the south side an "elegant bowling alley" accompanied by a "fresh supply of beer, pure native wine and the best of cigars."

During January of 1880, the "genial saloon keeper on the southwest corner" had a run-in with the law when he was fined $50 for selling beer to a drunken man. A year later, he was fined $10 for operating a gambling house.

The couple also purchased an acreage on the east edge of town, complete with equipment, and that probably is where his interest in poultry was expressed and where his career a farmer began --- and ended. Lena gave birth to their second son, Julius Arthur, in Chariton during March, 1880.

By 1882, Julius and Lena were ready to move on, moving back to Burlington --- where Lena's family was located --- where he opened another saloon. They departed during March and The Leader noted that Julius had made in Chariton "many warm friends who will regret his going."

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Julius did not remain in the saloon business in Burlington for long, however, and by 1884-5 was operating both a wholesale and retail grocery operation and serving as proprietor of the Grand Central Hotel, corner of Main and Division streets.

During November of 1887, Julius entered politics and was somewhat unexpectedly elected sheriff of Des Moines County. He had run on an anti-prohibition platform  --- Iowa's river cities, looked upon as wicked places by their inland neighbors, were strongholds of the opposition to various efforts to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages in the state, primarily a Republican issue.

One term in that office was sufficient, but he remained active in Burlington politics for as long as he lived in the city, serving as alderman and, occasionally, as mayor pro tem.

By the turn of the 20th century, Julius also had become one of Midwest's larger dealers in Queensware, fine cream-colored Wedgwood pottery, often elaborately decorated, that was very popular at the time.

He also was one of the leaders in development of Burlington's annual German Day celebration, a huge event that did not survive the general hostility that developed toward many things German during World War I. He also was instrumental in promoting Burlington's German Theatre, which every year brought a group of German players to southeast Iowa for a season of performances.

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About 1909, the Kleppisch family, which now included five sons, moved downriver to Fort Madison where they lived briefly before a new field of entrepreneurial opportunity opened in Missouri.

That was the Bowling Green Mineral Springs Co., located not far upstream from St. Louis in Pike County, a popular place for residents of St. Louis and elsewhere to retire to for a "cure" and to bathe in and drink its healing waters. With Julius at the helm, capitalizing on his hospitality background, the family developed Bowling Green Mineral Springs into a large hotel, resort and spa --- and sold bottled water on the side.

Julius was no longer active in that business, but retained an interest, when he died at age 77 of a stroke on Feb. 13, 1931. Lena had died two years earlier, on July 12, 1929, at the age of 69. Both are buried in the Bowling Green Cemetery.

Looking back to the 1881 autobiographical sketch in Lucas County, note that Julius had operated a poultry yard as well as a saloon.

In Bowling Green, his sons --- the Kleppisch Bros. --- developed during the teens and 1920s the largest chicken hatchery operation in the Midwest with branches elsewhere in the South serving a market that stretched from one end of the Mississippi River to the other.

In the end, in the Kleppisch family, poultry prevailed.