Butte County
Biographies
JOHN STEPHEN SCHILLING
JOHN STEPHEN SCHILLING.--In acceptance
of the opportunities that may have come his way, John Stephen Schilling, born
in Sigourney, Iowa, May 28, 1849, and at present the sole proprietor of the
pioneer blacksmith shop of Nelson, Cal., has evinced both discretion and sound
business judgment, and has won an enviable place among the upbuilders
of his locality. His father, Christian Stephen Schilling, was born in Germany,
at Suhl, near Hamburg.
He came to American and went to Iowa
in the early days of the frontier and engaged in the hardware business. He was
a tinner by trade, and built up a good business in
the new country where he had settled. He carried on business for many years,
also homesteaded land near Sigourney, and in time became very well-to-do. He
married, in 1847, Labetta Burnmiller,
born at Dresden, Germany,
and who came to America
when she was seventeen. She died in Iowa,
December 6, 1915, aged ninety-one years. Mr. Schilling
lived to reach the age of eighty-five years and one day before he answered the
final call. The old Schilling homestead is still in the hands of the heirs, no
division having been made of the estate. There were eight sons and one daughter
born into the home of this pioneer family, and all survive and are: John
Stephen, Augustus, Albert, Emil; Amelia, wife of Albert Krocht;
Henry, Francis, Hugo, and Charles. John Stephen is the only one in California.
The
education of John S. Schilling was obtained in the public schools at Sigourney,
and he was raised in the Lutheran faith. He early learned the trade of
blacksmithing, working in a shop operated by his cousin, George Klet. At the age of seventeen, having finished his trade,
he enlisted for service in Company A, Fourth United
States Infantry, and served from 1866 to 1869, when he was honorably discharged
at Fort Fetterman, Wyo.,
in August, 1869. During his service he did duty as a bearer of dispatches
between Fort Fetterman
and Fort Laramie,
and to Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne.
He also worked in the government blacksmith shops for a time. He made the
acquaintance of William Cody (Buffalo Bill), and served in the command of Capt.
John Miller; General Slemmer,
U. S. A., commanding
officer.
Mr.
Schilling had many thrilling escapes from the Indians, who were very hostile at
that time. At one time he saved his own life and the lives of seven companions
by strategy and through his acquaintance with a friendly half-breed warrior,
John Reshaw, who was hanged at a later date in Cheyenne.
On most of his trips as a dispatch-bearer he was alone, making trips from
eighty to one hundred miles. He would start from Fort
Fetterman and ride all
night to reach Fort Laramie
about ten o'clock the next morning, and in returning would do the same. The
hostile Indians were everywhere and he had many skirmishes and narrow escapes
from death. After his discharge from the army he took a contract to pile wood,
continuing until 1871, when he returned to Keokuk County, Iowa, and remained
one winter, then made up his mind to come to California.
Arriving
in Marysville, he intended to go to work at his trade there, but he chanced to
meet a Mr. McCormick, an old army acquaintance who ran a sawmill in the
mountains east of Chico, Butte County, and the latter, knowing Mr. Schilling to
be a good blacksmith and good mechanic, engaged him for the mill. Mr. Schilling
worked twenty-six and one half days for his friend, then went to Chico
and took a job in a shop there. In the fall of 1873 he came to Nelson to work
for S. J. Worley, who had a shop at Nelson, and the following year he bought an
interest in the shop and, in 1875, bought the entire business and has since
carried on a fairly successful trade. He has suffered losses by fire twice, but
with his characteristic perseverance went to work to rebuild, and little by
little he has accumulated a competence. In the fall of 1917 Mr. Schilling was
granted a pension by the government. For twenty-five years Mr. Schilling has
been agent for the Sacramento Bee.
In
1876 Mr. Schilling married Miss Catherine Strange who was born in Butte
County, the daughter of Benjamin and Rachel
(Gross) Strange, the former born in Tennessee, and who
came as a pioneer to California from Missouri
in 1856. There were eight children in the Strange
family, six of them born in California.
The year following their marriage, Mr. Schilling built their two-story house at
Nelson, where he has lived ever since. Their two children were born there.
Annie May, the widow of Charles D. Hansen; Jesse Francis, now thirty-six years
old, is an employe in the California National Bank in
Sacramento. Mrs. Schilling passed
away in 1910, aged fifty years, mourned by all who knew her. Mr. Schilling is a
member of Chico Lodge, No. 111, F. and A. M., and is a man who is highly
respected by his friends, for he lives up to the precepts of the order. In
national politics he is an Independent and for twenty years he has served as
constable and deputy sheriff. He was also postmaster at Nelson for four years.
Transcribed by Sande Beach.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 681-682, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Sande Beach.
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