Henry Stockhoff

HENRY STOCKHOFF. - Among the most prosperous and best known of the agriculturists of Wyandotte county must be mentioned Henry Stockhoff, who, upon a fertile and finely situated tract of two hundred and seventy-nine acres, conducts extensive operations in general farming and fruit growing. He belongs to that brainy, honest and generally admirable stock - the German - which has proved one of America's finest sources of immigration. Mr. Stockhoff, who is a son of George and Elizabeth (Sorenkamp) Stockhoff, was born in Hanover, Germany, March 10, 1842. At the age of nineteen years he came to the conclusion that he would find greater opportunity for success in America and he accordingly severed the associations of his youth and set forth. The old sailing ship in which the voyage was made required thirty-four days to cross the Atlantic and the landing was made at Baltimore. Mr. Stockhoff soon drifted westward to Ohio and spent eleven years in the city of Cincinnati. He learned the saddler's trade and was an employe of great usefulness in connection with a livery barn.

After having been in the new land for more than a decade, the subject returned on a visit to his native land and his parents. This delightful renewal of old associations was of about four months' duration and when he came back he came on to Kansas, whither his brother Fred, who came to America in 1866, had preceded him. He arrived in the Sunflower state in the year 1876 and immediately set about becoming a land owner. He purchased forty acres in the woods, this being a wilderness except for a log cabin in which lived a colored man he had hired. In a short time he constructed a good frame house in which he has ever since lived. He has added to his holdings from time to time and now owns, as previously mentioned, two hundred and seventy-nine acres. He does general farming and raises a large amount of fruit, having set out upon his place, three hundred apple trees and nine hundred peach trees. He is recognized as a substantial and public spirited citizen and at one time served the county as tax collector. He is an active member of the German Lutheran church and has been very zealous in its good works.

Mr. Stockhoff was married on the 14th day of December, 1876, the lady to become his wife and helpmeet being Minnie Winker, daughter of Christian and Margaret (Van Buren) Winker. Their union has been blessed by the birth of the following eight children: Emma Caroline, now Mrs. Henry Ellberg, lives on one of her father's farms; John Frederick, who remains under the paternal rooftree; Catherine Sophia, who became the wife of Emanuel Roemerman and resides upon the Stockhoff homestead; Louisa Margaret, Henry George, William August, Gertrude Dorothea, and Frederick Carl, all of whom are at home.

Mrs. Stockhoff was born in the Province of Westphalia, Prussia, July 29, 1858, and was but six years of age at the time of her parents' immigration to America. The sailing ship upon which she and her parents made the voyage was six weeks upon the ocean. The Van Burens were of noble stock, but wars and other calamities deprived them of their property, as well as of their position, official and social. Upon coming to America, the father Christian F. Van Buren located first in Decatur county, Indiana, and went thence to Kansas in 1870, locating in Quindaro township. It is a pathetic circumstance that both parents died upon the same day - January 14, 1892, with pneumonia. Mr. and Mrs. Stockhoff hold high place in popular confidence and esteem and they and their family are well known from boundary to boundary of Wyandotte county.