 |
|
 |
|
JOHN LORENZ is secretary of the Cedar Valley Land & Investment Company, the important real estate business which is described elsewhere in these pages. He gives all his attention to the management of the affairs of this company. He has been identified with Benton county practically all his life and was formerly associated with the banking and financial business of Vinton.
He was born in Kane township, Benton county, September 26, 1866. His parents, John H. and Anna (Detlef) Lorenz, were both natives of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, but came to America before their marriage, the former about 1860 and the latter in 1863. The mother still lives in Kane township, being seventy-seven years old. John H. Lorenz was actively identified with farming in Benton county until some fifteen years before his death, which occurred in December, 1907, when he was nearly seventy-eight years old. He was a substantial citizen, well informed on political and other affairs, and made a good business success in Benton county, where he had lived since 1865. After reaching America he had spent a short time in Indiana and then lived a couple of years in Scott county, Iowa. The children of these parents are as follows: Henry, who owns and conducts the home farm in Kane township; Mrs. W. A. Mall, of Belle Plaine; John; Herman, manager of the Co-operative Grain & Lumber Company at Luzerne; and Mrs. Harry Typper, whose husband is an attorney at Polo, Illinois.
John Lorenz spent his youth in Kane township, attended public school there and was also a student in the academy at Vinton. From the farm he became a grocery clerk in Sioux City, spent three years there, was located at Belle Plaine for a time, and then became deputy auditor under County Auditor S. P. Van Dyke of Belle Plaine, serving three years. For two years he was cashier of the Benton County Savings Bank at Blairstown (now the Benton County State Bank), was then elected on the Democratic ticket and served a two-year term as clerk of the district court, and following that was in the hardware business with H. H. McElroy. When the People's Bank was organized at Vinton in 1900 he became cashier, and was with that institution until 1907 as cashier, and since then has been vice president. He left the bank to give his entire time to the real estate business.
In politics he has always been a Democrat. He is a member of the blue lodge of Masons at Vinton and of the Knights of Pythias, and attends the Presbyterian church. He married Miss Roberta Brown, of Brimfield, Illinois. They have four children, Paul, Eleanor, Theodore and Roberta.
 |
