My Genealogy Hound

Frederick Steines, one of the most celebrated educators of Missouri, was born December 4, 1802, in Rettwig-on-the-Ruhr, Germany. At the age of sixteen he began teaching, which occupation he followed at Lohdorf, Solinger, near Eberfeld, until he left his native country for the United States, and landed at Baltimore, June 4, 1834, at the head of the Solinger-Geselschaft. From Baltimore he went to St. Louis, arriving there July 2, of the same year, where, in 1837, he organized the “St. Louis German Academy,’ which was incorporated February 6, 1837, and was the first German-American institution of learning in the West. Later, Prof. Steines founded the Oakfield Academy, in Franklin County, which he kept up until 1869, after which he taught in the public schools five years, thus completing his fifty years of duty in the schoolroom. He is considered the pioneer English and German educator west of the Mississippi River. About 500 students have been educated at Oakfield Academy, in attendance from Missouri and four or five adjacent States. The building is 25x40 feet, and one and one-half stories high. Among his pupils who have become distinguished are Charles Nordhoff, Henry Weinheimer, Fred T. Ledergerber, Conrad Faith, Eugene Papin, Henry F. Harrington and William J. Lemp. Prof. Steines was married January 1, 1835, to a Miss Bertha Herminghaus, and January 1, 1885, his golden wedding was celebrated. He has three sons and two daughters living. He lost his first wife and all his children by her from cholera in 1834, shortly after his arrival in St. Louis. Mr. and Mrs. Steines are members of the Evangelical Church. Politically, he is a Republican, and has served seven years as justice of the peace of his township. He was a lieutenant in the German regular army, and served in the Missouri Home Guards during the late war. He was a son of John Frederick William and Anna Catherine (Unterlehberg) Steines, natives of Kettwig, Germany, the former of whom was a manufacturer and dealer in boots and shoes; he was also a captain in the army under Frederick the Great, and with his wife and two sons, Peter and Herman, came to this country in 1834, settling near where our subject now resides. Prof. Steines is a Master Mason, having taken the first degree in his native country, in 1825. He is now about eighty-five years of age, and his wife, who is still living, is sixty-nine years of age.