Bio: Kopplin, Gustave E. (1869 – 19??)

Contact: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Kopplin, Kiepke, Wendorff, Stettin

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

Kopplin, Gustave E. (16 March 1869 – 19??)

GUSTAVE E. KOPPLIN, one of the representative men of the town of Stettin, for many years a satisfactory public official and the owner of 280 acres of fine land in section 10, lives eleven miles northwest of Wausau, this being known as the Basswood Grove Farm. He was born in the town of Stettin, Marathon County, Wis., March 16, 1869, and is a son of Frederick and Caroline (Kiepke) Kopplin.  

The parents of Mr. Kopplin were born, reared and married in Germany and the oldest of their six children was born there, the two survivors both living in the town of Stettin. A cabinetmaker by trade, Frederick Kopplin worked at the same for one year after reaching Milwaukee, Wis., and as he was skilled in all kinds of fine carpenter work could, no doubt, have provided well for his family in that way in the course of time but he was anxious to own land and in 1857 settled on eighty acres, in section 13, in the town of Stettin, this land being now the property of Herman Kopplin. There were very few Indians yet remaining although then the country was mainly unsettled. There Frederick Kopplin engaged in farming during his active years and on that place both he and wife died, she in 1890, when aged sixty-one years. He was of more robust constitution and lived to be eighty-six years old; dying in 1910 and their burial was in the Stettin Cemetery Association ground. They were excellent people, worthy of remembrance and were members of the Evangelical Lutheran church.  

With his brothers and sisters, Gustave E. Kopplin attended the public schools in the town of Stettin and afterward took a full business course in a commercial college at Wausau. He made farming and stock raising his choice of occupation and has followed the same in his native town. He has cleared thirty acres of the farm on which he lives and put up all the substantial buildings and after purchasing his other land also made improvements on that. He devotes his summers to his land and his winters mainly to lumbering.  

Mr. Kopplin was married November 21, 1895, to Miss Elise Wendorff, a daughter of Albert Wendorff, and they have had eight children: Else, an infant son deceased; Hertha, Florence and Emma, twins; Franklin, Elise and Gilbert. Mr. Kopplin and his family belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, of which he is president. He is interested in the Stettin Insurance Company and is a stockholder in other enterprises. In politics a republican, Mr. Kopplin has very often been selected by his party and fellow citizens for public office, and has served as school director of District No. 6, three terms as assessor and twelve terms as constable. He belongs to the local singing society "Eintracht."