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HENRY SCHWAB, one of the most prosperous of the German-American farmers of Benton county, resides on a fine homestead of two hundred and forty-one acres in section 33, Taylor township, and is also the owner of an additional eighty acres in section 27. He has lived in that locality for three decades, is now in his seventy-second year and has thrown many of the heavier burdens of life on to younger shoulders, his son having the active conduct of the home farm. Mr. Schwab was born in the Rhine province of Germany in 1838; was reared there and first assisted his father, Henry, in the working of the paternal farm. The latter died on the old place near the Rhine, and afterward the son followed an independent agricultural career in the fatherland until his departure for Iowa in 1879. He was already in fairly prosperous circumstances and brought considerable capital with which he purchased his farm in Benton county. His first purchase was a quarter section, to which he made additions of various tracts, improving his property faithfully and according to modern and up-to-date methods of the American west.
Mr. Schwab had wedded, in Germany, Miss Abbie Glock, also a native of the Rhine country, born in 1858. Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Schwab, as follows: Henry J., who is operating the home farm; Mary, residing at home; Rev. John Schwab, who is now pastor of a German Evangelical church at Jackson, Ohio; Arthur, who is connected with the Northern Pacific Railroad in Idaho; and Frank, who is also living at home, assisting in the farm work. Mr. Schwab himself is a firm member of the German Evangelical church, as were both his deceased father and mother; the former died May 1, 1896, at the age of ninety years, and the latter (nee Phillipena Espenschied) died in 1856. Mrs. Schwab is a daughter of Nicholas and Opelonica (Knoblock) Glock, the former of whom (a veteran cooper) is still alive at the age of eighty-three, and the latter died in 1900, when seventy-two years old.
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