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On May 7, 1872, Mr. Gottschalk moved to Linn Grove in Adams County, and there went to work as a druggist. A few months later he formed a partnership with Mr. Peter Hoffman under the name of Hoffman & Gottschalk. Mr. Hoffman took the business at Linn Grove, while in November, 1872, Mr. Gottschalk came to Berne, which was then just an incipient village, possessing only two general stores and a blacksmith shop and saloon. The railroad had passed through this section of Adams County in the summer of 1871. Their pioneer drug enterprise was established in a small building east of the railroad, where the office of the Berne Lumber Company was later established. Mr. Gottschalk began selling drugs from that site on November 12, 1872. On July 1, 1874, they moved the stock into a new building, and in September, 1907, the partnership was dissolved, Mr. Gottschalk becoming sole proprietor of the store at Berne. In 1912 he supplanted his old business house by the erection of a fine block 22 by 80 feet, two stories and basement, but on the same lot which he has occupied since July, 1874. Here he is proprietor of one of the best equipped and stocked stores of its kind in Adams County. Mr. Gottschalk is a licensed pharmacist, having received his certificate as a result of many years' practical experience.
All of his early contemporaries in business at Berne have since died or retired, and he is now the oldest business man in the town and has one of the oldest stores in the county. As a business man he has been very popular as well as successful and has made his store a center of the social life of the community. Mr. Gottschalk is a director of the Bank of Berne.
Early in life he became a local leader in the Democratic Party. From 1877 to 1883 he was postmaster of Berne, and from 1880 to 1882 was local justice of the peace. He was a member of the Democratic Central Committee of the county from 1882 to 1884, and in the latter year was a delegate to the Democratic State Convention at Indianapolis. In 1884 Indiana was one of the two states that decided Mr. Cleveland's election, and Mr. Gottschalk thus had more than local prominence in the election of the first democratic president from the time of the Civil war. He was also on the county ticket the same year, and was elected treasurer, moving to Decatur in September, 1885, to assume the duties of that office. He was re-elected in 1886 and served two terms. Among other offices he has been trustee of Monroe Township, for many years was notary public and has been especially influential among the English speaking people of the southern half of Adams County. It is said that his services have been in demand more than those of anyone else in advising people in matters of business transactions, in the drawing up of wills and the settling up of estates.
On May 9, 1875, in Shelby County, Ohio, Mr. Gottschalk married Miss Laura Sheets. She was born in Texas January 22, 1852, daughter of Philip and Cornelia (Monger) Sheets, both natives of Germany. At the time of her birth her father was a regular soldier in the United States Army, stationed near San Antonio, Texas, guarding the frontier against Indian troubles. When the War of the Rebellion broke out in 1861 he was at San Antonio, and was offered the privilege of remaining with the Confederate forces or going north. He chose the northern side, and going to Shelby County, Ohio, enlisted with an Ohio regiment and was all through the Civil war. He died in Shelby County October 1, 1882, and his widow passed away in 1889 at the home of her daughter in Berne. Mrs. Gottschalk's mother was a Catholic. Mrs. Gottschalk was a devoted wife and mother and was the type of woman whose presence is greatly missed in any community. She died at Berne January 11, 1910. Mr. Gottschalk has long been prominent in the Evangelical Association, has been an official member of his church, class leader and superintendent of the Sunday school. And otherwise interested in every moral and religious influence in his home community.
Mr. and Mrs. Gottschalk had five children. The second, Oliver E., died May 15, 1883, when about four and a half years of age. The oldest, Cora B., is a graduate of the State Normal School at Terre Haute, was a successful teacher in her home county for several years, also taught at Anderson, and is now the wife of Hon. Benjamin F. Welty. Mr. Welty is a graduate of the Law School of Michigan University and is now a special attorney at Lima, Ohio, and congressman from the Fourth Ohio District. Mr. and Mrs. Welty have one daughter, Gene G. Thurman A. Gottschalk, the oldest son, was educated in the Berne High School, in an institution of higher education at Naperville, Illinois, and also in Indiana University. He lives near Berne and by his marriage to Nellie Simison has two children, John R. and Elizabeth L., both now in school. Wilda M. is a graduate of the Blaker School of Indianapolis and is now the wife of E. K. Shally of Berne. They have two children, Marcelle G. and Andrew D. The youngest of the children is True Palmer, who graduated from the Berne High School in 1912, later from Heidelberg College at Tiffin, Ohio, and had entered upon a successful career as a teacher when he resigned to enlist in the National Army. He is now in the Medical Corps of the Nineteenth Field Artillery, located at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas.
Mr. Andrew Gottschalk is a past chancellor of Berne Lodge of Knights of Pythias, and represented his district in the Grand Lodge at Indianapolis in 1900. He is a charter member of the Knights of Pythias.
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