pflugradl
Transcribed from "An Illustrated History of The Big Bend Country, embracing
Lincoln, Douglas, Adams and Franklin counties, State of Washington",
published by Western Historical Publishing Co., 1904.
LOUIS PFLUGRAD, a farmer residing
six miles north of Lind, is a native of Russia, born eighty miles south
of Odessa, March 7, 1854. He was the son of Frederick and Dora (Apple)
Pflugrad, natives of Germany. The father removed to Russia at the
age of fifteen years. He is now living and is an extremely rugged
old gentleman, as hearty and active as scores of men twenty years his junior.
Mr. Pflugrad is a member of a family originally
comprising eight children, Samuel, Carolina, Godlys, Julia, Dora, Christina,
Louis and one who died in infancy.
Until twenty-three years of age Mr. Pflugrad
lived with his parents in Russia, there engaged in farming. In 1883,
the entire family came to the United States, setting in Kansas, where our
subject remained four years, then came to Adams county, Washington, in
1887. He took a homestead and a timber culture of one hundred and
sixty acres each, and engaged in tilling his land, but met with poor success
with his first few crops, owing to the drouth and the squirrel pest.
He thus was compelled to go to the harvest fields of Walla Walla in order
to make a living. In 1894, he broke three hundred and twenty acres,
or all the land he then had, and the same year he acquired a small start
in cattle. In 1895, he purchased one section more of land, and in
1901 three quarter-sections, all of which, with the exception of one half-section,
he has under cultivation. The remainder he uses for pasture land
for his large herd of stock. His land is well improved in all respects.
He has two handsome residence houses and large barns, granaries and other
out-of-door buildings. He raises as high as twenty-one thousand bushels
of wheat annually.
In 1877, Mr. Pflugrad was married to Louise
Meserle, daughter of Jake and Christina (Bromburg) Meserle, native Germans
who removed to Russia when young, where they spent the remainder of their
lives. They were parents of five children, Elizabeth, Christina,
Louise, Jacob and Magdalena. Mrs. Pflugrad departed this life on
August 3, 1902, leaving seven children, Jacob, Christina, Regina, Dora,
Hanna, Maria and David. Mr. Pflugrad is a Democrat in politics, and
is a devoted member of the German Lutheran church.
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