My Genealogy Hound

FRANK H. LAUGING, a successful farmer and stock-raiser of Pettis County, was born in Germany, December 10, 1826, and is a son of Ernest H. and Eliza Lauging. As was the custom in that portion of the Fatherland where the family lived, the children were known by the name of the mother, who owned the home farm. At the age of seventeen Frank H. accompanied his parents to America, his two elder brothers and one younger coming with them. Settling in St. Charles County, Mo., the father purchased eighty acres, and upon that place he made his home until death. His wife also passed away in St. Charles County, the same year as that in which he died.

At that time our subject was a youth of nineteen years, and as his parents had left but a small property, he began to work for neighboring farmers. He never attended school after coming to America, but received a fair education in Germany. For a time he was employed in St. Louis, working at anything by which he could obtain an honest livelihood. When about twenty-four years of age, he was united in marriage, in St. Louis, with Miss Mary Eliza Klostermeier, a native of Germany, who was about twenty-six years of age at the time of her marriage.

Embarking in agricultural pursuits, Mr. Lauging rented the farm which his father had left, after a year’s experience upon another rented place. From St. Charles County he removed to Bates County, Mo., where he entered three forty acre tracts from the Government, at the same time entering eighty acres in St. Clair County. This entire property, with the exception of eighty acres, was swamp land, too wet to be improved, and has never yet been placed under cultivation. The tillable portion he improved into a valuable farm, residing upon it until the war broke out.

On account of the depredations committed by bushwhackers, and as they had also threatened his life, he moved to Pettis County, where he rented a farm for three years. Later he bought the tract of one hundred and forty acres in Bates County on which J. A. Heck now lives, making it his home for four years. He then traded it for the farm near Green Ridge, paying $300 to boot — a poor trade, he now considers it. Prospered in his undertakings, he added to his original purchase, until he finally acquired the ownership of over one thousand acres of land, all in one body. The place is well improved with a neat house, good barn and granaries, substantial fences, and other improvements.

Politically Mr. Lauging is a Republican, but has never taken an active part in political affairs. He was reared in the Lutheran faith, to which he has always adhered. For many years he has made a specialty of stock-raising, in which enterprise he embarked on a small scale and with a very limited capital, but by degrees enlarged the scope of his operations, and is now devoting a large portion of his time to the work, which he finds quite remunerative.