Weather: Partly Cloudy, 64/81F
Route: From Omaha 345 miles ENE on I-80 E, I-35 N, US-20 E, IA-187 N.
Population: less than 10?
Genealogy: Today is the last family day for awhile. This is where my great-great grandmother Anna (from Marysville, PA) came to marry Frederick Froelich. Fred was born in this town, but his parents Henry and Katherine were from Germany and Switzerland respectively. Fred's brother John was a farmer and a tinkerer. In 1892 he did something nobody had ever done before - he used a gasoline powered tractor to plow a field of wheat. I know it seems unlikely that this small town in northeast Iowa would produce the man to father the modern tractor, but it's the truth. Unfortunately for John (and all Froelich descendants) he wasn't much of a business man. He simply couldn't make machines that people would buy. In 1895 he sold his shares in the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company. The company actually didn't make tractors for some time - until 1911 - and none were sold successfully until the Waterloo Boy in 1913 - well after John had left the company. In 1918 John Deere Company bought Waterloo - which were the first gasoline tractors made under the John Deere name. John Froelich eventually moved to St. Paul, Minnesota - where he died in 1933 - without even enough money for a headstone.
The general store in Froelich has been turned into a museum and every September they host the Froelich Fall-der-all to celebrate John Froelich's accomplishment. I haven't been to the Fall-der-all, but my mom has. I have stopped by the museum many times - being a Froelich descendant you kind of get the royal treatment - which is always fun, but a little odd.
Images:
Me, my sister, and my dad in front of the general store in Froelich. It has actually since been rehabbed and has a museum inside.
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