Bio: Fehl, John (1852 - 19??)

Contact: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Fehl, Pfeil,

---Source: History of Marathon County Wisconsin and Representative Citizens, by Louis Marchetti, 1913.

Fehl, John (11 September 1852 - 19??)

JOHN FEHL, who is the senior member of the firm of John Fehl & Sons, dealers in bicycles, motorcycles and sporting goods, occupying their own building at No. 202 Washington street, Wausau, has been a resident of this city since 1882 and is one of its representative men. He was born at Janesville, Wisconsin, September 11, 1852, and is a son of Jacob and Elizabeth (Pfeil) Fehl.  

The parents of John Fehl moved in his childhood to a farm in Milwaukee county, and there he lived until he was sixteen years of age when he went to the city of Milwaukee, where he learned the tinner's trade, one that he found could be profitably followed in almost any section, and after leaving Milwaukee worked through Washington county and from there came to Wausau. Here, for several years, he was tinsmith for the Montgomery Hardware Company. In 1898 he started into business for himself, on Washington Street, a few doors east of his present location, which latter he bought in 1900 and has since occupied. The situation of the building, on the corner of Second and Washington streets, is an admirable business site, but lie has made many improvements and it is now an exceptionally fine structure, a two-story brick, with a frontage of thirty feet and a depth of seventy-five feet. Here he continued his tin shop until 1910, his son, the late Benjamin J. Fehl, being the practical tinner of the establishment. After his death Mr. Fehl closed the tin department and since then has devoted his time, as have his two other sons, Alexander and Antone, as partners, to the handling of the goods mentioned in the opening paragraph, and they also have the agency for the Indian Motorcycle Company. This is a business that is not only a constantly growing one at the present but has a certain future for each year athletics assume a more and more important place in the life of every community and the supplying of the demand for equipments becomes an exceedingly profitable line of business.

In 1875 Mr. Fehl was married, at Milwaukee, to Miss Mary Wondra, who was born in Germany, and four sons have been born to them: Henry, who died in 1908, aged thirty-three years; Benjamin J., who died June 9, 1910, aged thirty-one years; and Alexander and Antone, junior members of the firm of John Fehl & Sons. This establishment is headquarters for the Wausau Motorcycle Club. Mr. Fehl is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America.