Bio: Heinemann, Benjamin (No dates given)

Contact: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Heinemann, Foster, Stewart, McIndoe, Stevens, Bernei, Uhlman, Strauss, Sexsmith, Steinam

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

Heinemann, Benjamin (No dates given)

BENJAMIN HEINEMANN is one of the foremost business men of Marathon County and has risen to this eminent position from a small beginning. His career furnishes another instance of the fact that the energetic young man who makes good use of the talents with which he is endowed may, even in this age of combination, advance by successive steps to a high place in the business world.

Mr. Heinemann came to America in 1869, and started in life for himself as clerk in a store at DePere, Wis. He came to Wausau in the year 1873 with his brother Nathan and they opened a gentlemen's furnishing store, which soon branched out into general merchandise and became the leading mercantile institution in the city.  

Desiring to embark in manufacturing and real estate he sold his interest in the firm to his brother and purchased an interest in the lumbering firm of the G. E. Foster Lumber Company, being made vice president of the corporation, which deal extensively in lumber in Marathon and neighboring counties.  

He withdrew from this concern in 1901 and started in the manufacture of lumber alone under the firm name of B. Heinemann Lumber Company, operating saw and planing mills near Antigo, Wis., until 1907, when he incorporated as the B. Heinemann Lumber Company with the following officers: B. Heinemann, president; Walter B. Heinemann, vice president; Gabriel B. Heinemann, secretary and treasurer. This corporation purchased the mills of the Alexander Stewart Lumber Company at Wausau in 1912 and they have timber enough to keep them supplied for the next fifteen years. The B. Heinemann Lumber Company's mill is the oldest established mill in the Wisconsin pinery, being the mill originally built by W. D. Mclndoe in 1849, after having succeeded to' the property of George Stevens, the first settler and lumberman in Marathon county. It has been in continuous operation since erected and employs now from 150 to 200 men annually.  

Mr. Heinemann is one of the founders of the National German-American Bank of Wausau, and has been its president since its first organization as a state bank in 1890. He is likewise one of the founders of the Wisconsin Box Company of Wausau, Wis., and vice president of that corporation, and is president of the Cisco Lake Lumber Company, a corporation holding large tracts of timber; secretary and treasurer of the Land & Loan Company, and a director in the Great Northern Life Insurance Company. These important and responsible offices filled by him are the best evidence of the confidence which other business men place in his ability as a business manager and in the integrity of his character.

B. Heinemann reached this high station in the course of an active, honorable business and private life of forty years by diligent application of honest business methods, but making use of and grasping opportunities which others passed by without taking notice.  

He was born at Gruensfeld, in Baden, Germany, on the 8th day of June, 1850, a son of Samuel Heinemann and his wife Jedda, nee Bernei. He was married to Miss Johanna Ullman, daughter of B, Ullman and his wife Dorothea, nee Strauss, of Appleton, on the 30th day of November, 1873, and the following children were born to them, namely: Gustav N.., Walter B. and Gabriel B., sons, and Belle, Dorothea Heinemann Sexsmith and Lita Heinemann Steinam, daughters. The sons are each interested in the B. Heinemann Lumber Company and actively engaged in the business. The daughter Belle is at home, a member of the Tuesday Musical Club, herself an accomplished musician.