WAGNER, Robert

WAGNER, GOSS, TURNER

Posted By: P. Bergmeier (email)
Date: 5/14/2005 at 17:59:35

Robert Wagner, for many years a prominent farmer of Black Hawk County, Iowa, to which he came as a pioneer in 1856, is now a substantial and highly esteemed resident of La Porte City.

He was born January 26, 1834, in Snyder County, Pennsylvania, and is a son of George D. and Sophia (Goss) Wagner.

Robert Wagner's parents reared a family of seven children, of whom Robert was next to the youngest. Agriculture was the life occupation of George W. Wagner, who died on his own farm in Pennsylvania, aged 67 years. His wife passed away at the age of 40 years.

Robert Wagner was reared as a farmer, and in young manhood went to Freeport, Illinois, and thence, in 1856, to Black Hawk County, Iowa. When he entered the county, his team was one of a caravan of 15, all containing settlers who, like himself, had been attracted to this region by the reports of the fertility of the land along the Red Cedar River. Many of these settlers remained, as did Mr. Wagner, becoming in time the solid, substantial, forceful men who have been the making of this part of the State of Iowa. To their industry, courage, enterprise and judgement, must be attributed the present conditions of life on these beautiful prairies which when they came had not been long redeemed from the Indians. They waited, but they worked while waiting, and the results of this work are seen in the towns and cities, the great transportation lines, the churches and schools and the broad cultivated farms and comfortable homes.

During the first year, Mr. Wagner worked around Waterloo, and then he rented and operated a farm for seven years, eventually purchasing 100 acres for himself. This farm he conducted until 1903, when he erected his present beautiful residence in La Porte City, where he has lived in comfortable retirement ever since. He is one of the city's capitalists, a director in the First National Bank, and a citizen of large influence.

In 1857 Mr. Wagner married Flora Turner, who was born in Pennsylvania, and died in 1896, at La Porte City, aged 62 years. The fact that no children were born to them did not present Mr. and Mrs. Wagner from having young life about them, several children having been reared under their parental care, and given a fair start in life.

Mr. Wagner has geen a life long Republican, but has never consented to hold any but school offices. In church relations, he is a consistent Methodist.

[ History of Black Hawk County and It's People,
1915 ]