Henry L. Keilman

    Henry L. Keilman, President of the First National Bank of Dyer and a prominent farmer of St. John Township, has spent all his life in Lake County and is of the third generation of the well known family who located in this county sixty years ago. He has spent most of his active years in farming pursuits, which he has followed for over thirty years, and he ahs resided on his present fine farmstead for twenty-five years. Outside of his financial and agricultural interests he has concerned himself in a public-spirited manner with the administrative affairs of his county and township, and is everywhere known as a good citizen, a good neighbor and a man of unusual energy and business capacity.

    Mr. Keilman was born in St. John Township, September 22, 1856, being the eldest son of Leonard and Lena (Austgen) Keilman, who in childhood came from their native land of Germany. His father, who is still among the active and enterprising business men of St. John Township, is written of elsewhere in this work, and various details of family history are to be found under the name Keilman in various portions of the history.

    Mr. Keilman was reared in his native township, and was educated in the district school and then attended, in 1872, Pionono College, near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On his return home he at once took up farming, and after his marriage, in 1879, located on the farm where he still resides. He owns three hundred acres, and does general farming, stock-raising and dairying. At the time of the organization of the First National bank in Dyer, in 1903, he was elected its President, which office he still holds, and his direction of the bank's affairs has been most satisfactory to the stockholders and is resulting in giving the institution considerable prestige among the business interests of St. John Township.

    Mr. Keilman was elected, on the Democratic ticket to the office of Trustee of St. John Township, in 1894, and he held that office for five years and three months. He and his family are members of the Catholic Church, St. Joseph's Church at Dyer.

    In 1879 Mr. Keilman was united in marriage to Miss Maggie Schaefer, who is also a native of St. John Township. They have eight children, all born on the old homestead farm in St. John Township, as follows: William H., Frank L., Emma, Frances, Raymond, Leonard, Verna and Helen.

Encyclopedia of Genealogy and Biography of Lake County, Indiana, with a compendium of History 1834-1904 . A record of the Achievements of its people in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation. By Rev. T. H. Ball of Crown Point, Editor-in-chief. The Lewis Publishing Company, 1904, page 335-36.