Wiechen, G. G.

The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.

G. G. Wiechen, who came to Kansas over forty years ago, had found his best and most congenial activities in the line of grain merchandising. He is the leading grain merchant and elevator proprietor of Robinson, Kansas, where he had built up a large and successful business.

Mr. Wiechen is a son of a veteran resident of Rush County, Kansas, J. H. Wiechen, who is still living, though past ninety years of age. J. H. Wiechen was born at Schweringen, Germany, in 1826. At the age of eighteen he came to America, living for a time in New York City and afterwards going to Pettis County, Missouri. In the Southern Missouri district, near the City of Sedalia, he was one of the pioneer farmers. In 1875 he sought a new home on the frontier of Kansas in Rush County, and went through all the experiences of dry seasons, grasshoppers and other plagues and vicissitudes. He stuck to his post when many of his neighbors were glad to get out of the country and his reward came surely and steadily. He acquired 400 acres of fine farming land, and part of his original farm is now in the Village of Bison, where he resided. Politically he is a republican and had always been an active supporter of the Methodist Episcopal Church in his section of Rush County. During the Civil war he was living in Missouri and served as a member of the Home Guard. J. H. Wiechen married Catherine Fecken, who was born near Schweringon, Germany, in 1836, and died at Bison, Kansas, in October, 1912. They were the parents of nine children: Mary, wife of William Walter, a stone mason and farmer living at Bison, Kansas; Henry, who is a farmer and died at Bison at the age of fifty-two; William, a merchant at Bison; G. G. Wiechen; Ed. ward, who was a farmer and died at Bison aged thirty-four; John, a mercbant at Robinson, Konsas; Joseph, who died at Bison aged twenty-eight, and was also a farmer; Tilly, wife of Julins Myer, formerly engaged in farming, now in the telephone business at Bison; and Laura, wife of Chris Fishgrabie, a Colorado farmer.

Mr. G. G. Wiechen was born in Pettis County, Missouri, April 5, 1868, and was about seven years of age when he came to Kansas. He began his education in the rural schools of Rush County, and had sufficient training for the needs of a practical business man. Until he was twenty-seven years of age he lived on his father's farm and took an active part in its management. His experiences as a farmer have proved of great value to him in his subsequent business career. When he loft the farm he engaged in the general mercantile business at Bison for four years, and in 1899 took up the grain business at that point. In 1906 Mr. Wiechen removed to Garden Plain, Kansas, where he continued in the same line of activity four years, and in the spring of 1910 removed to Robinson, where he bought the local elevator and had been rapidly developing this town as a center of the grain trade. He had added cribs and other facilities, and his plant and offices are situated on the St. Joseph and Grand Island Railway tracks.

Besides his grain business Mr. Wiechen owned a farm of 320 acres in Graham County. He also had one of the modern homes of Robinson on Parsons Street, built in the bungalow style of architecture and erected in 1910-11. Mr. Wiechen is a democrat and is a trustee and active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He also belongs to the Kansas Grain Dealers' Association and to Robinson Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America.

In 1898, at his home town of Bison, he married Miss Lucy A. George, daughter of B. F. and Rebecca (Abraham) George, both of whom are now deceased. Her father was a pioneer in the State of Iowa, where he located in 1852, when practically all the counties of that great state were in a primitive stage of their development. He followed farming and stock raising in Iowa for many years. Mr. and Mrs. Wiechen have two daughters: Gladys, a student in the Robinson High School; and Helen, who is in the grade schools.

Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans

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