My Genealogy Hound

Fred Wilhelm Julius Busch was born in Kulm, Prussia, November 28, 1834, and is the son of John and Justina (Bloch) Busch. The father was a wagon maker by trade, and died when Fred. Busch was fifteen years of age. He began the trade of wagon making at the age of eighteen, and worked at the same for some time. He then served three years in the government military service, and received honorable discharge papers. He afterward worked at his trade for thirteen years in the government shops, eight years of which time he spent in a ship-yard at Dantzic. He served all through the French and German War in the light artillery service. In the spring of 1873 he took passage from Dantzic, and embarked at Hamburg for Hartlepool, and thence to Liverpool, and from there to America, on an English steamer. He reached New York about the middle of May, 1873, and engaged in his first work at Erie, Penn. In 1873 he went to Chicago, and worked in a planing mill there for some time. He then went to________, where he worked in Bain’s wagon shop, but moved from there to Indianapolis, where he married Miss Melinda Beckel, daughter of Tobias and Mary (Spaugh) Beckel, natives of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, respectively. He then spent some time in traveling through the South and West, and finally located at Piedmont, Mo., where he spent two years and a half engaged in wagon making. He sold out in 1881 and came to Lawrence County, where he has since resided. He is a member of the I. O. O. F., and one of the county’s best men.