JOHANN HEINRICH LUETJE KOHRS

JOHANN HEINRICH LUETJE KOHRS

1830-1917

Born: 15 November 1830 in Wewelsfleth Holstein, Germany- Died: 31 December 1917 in Davenport, Iowa.

Notes for JOHANN HEINRICH LUETJE KOHRS (HENRY):
When he was fifteen years of age, the year of his father’s death, he was apprenticed to a relative in Altona (a suburb of Hamburg) to learn the butcher's trade. At age nineteen, both he and his step-father, Claus Bielenberg, were conscripted into the German Army to serve in the war between Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark. Henry, as Johann was called, was wounded and nursed back to health by a Mrs. Kruse, an army nurse. Mrs. Kruse had two daughters, one of whom being Augusta Kruse, who would, in later years, would marry Henry's younger brother, Conrad Kohrs

After the war Henry followed his sister Catherine and her husband, Henry Berwald to America. Henry Kohrs landed in New York on June 11, 1853 with only $5.00 in his pocket. He worked as a helper in a grocery store until he had saved enough money to join his sister in Davenport, Iowa. He then came West reaching Davenport March 13, 1854 and began clerking in a dry goods store on a salary of $25 per month. His mother and step-father, with their three sons, John, Charles, and Nicholas Bielenberg also arrived in Davenport in 1854. For about a year Henry worked in a store owned by Phillip Stein that was located on Western Avenue, between 4th and 5th Streets. In 1857, Henry opened a meat market on Harrison Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets supplied from a small slaughterhouse on West Second. This land and slaughter house was later purchased by Henry and it was here that he established the Kohrs Packing Plant. Meanwhile at the market on Harrison Street, he began making his rounds in an old horse drawn wagon to serve local customers. Henry continued this for almost twenty years, and in 1875 he branched out into the business of packing and shipping meats, establishing the Kohrs Packing Company. 1

References

1. The ancestors and descendants of the Bettendorf-Kohrs and related families : a memorial to William Edwin Bettendorf, 1902-1979 by Darlene Ward Paxton; L T Sloane. Decorah, Iowa : Anundsen Pub. Co., 1984.