Biographical Sketch of Frederick Steines, Franklin County, Missouri

>From "History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and 
Gasconade Counties", Biographical Appendix, Goodspeed Publishing 
Company, 1888.

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Frederick Steines, one of the most celebrated educators of Missouri,
was born December 4, 1802, in Rettwig-on-the-Ruhr, Germany.  At the 
age of sixteen he began teaching, which occupation he followed at
Lohderf, Solinger, near Eberfeld, until he left his native country
for the United States, and landed at Baltimore, June 4, 1834, at the
head of the Solinger-Geselschaft.  From Baltimore he went to St.
Louis, arriving there July 2, of the same year, where in 1837, he
organized the "St. Louis Germany Academy," which was incorporated
February 6, 1837 and was the first German-America institution of
learning in the West.  Later, Prof. Steines founded the Oakfield
Academy, in Franklin County, which he kept up until 1869, after which
he taught in the public schools five years, thus completing his fifty 
years of duty in the schoolroom.  He is considered the pioneer English
and German educator west of the Mississippi River.  About 500 students
have been educated at Oakfield Academy, in attendance from Missouri
and four or five adjacent States.  The building is 25 x 40 feet, and
one and one-half stories high.  Among his pupils who have become dis-
tinguished are Charles Nordhoff, Henry Weinheimer, Fred T. Ledergerber,
Conrad Faith, Eugene Papin, Henry F. Harrington and William J. Lemp.
Prof. Steines was married January 1, 1835, to Miss Bertha Herminghaus,
and January 1, 1885 his gold wedding anniversary was celebrated.  He
has three sons and two daughters living.  He lost his first wife and
all his children by her from cholera in 1834, shortly after his arrival
in St. Louis.  Mr. and Mrs. Steines are members of the Evangelical
Church.  Politically, he is a Republican, and has served seven years as
justice of the peace of his township.  He was a lieutenant in the Ger-
man regular army, and served in the Missouri Home Guards during the
late war.  He was a son of John Frederick William and Anna Catherine 
(Unterlehberg) Steines, natives of Kettwig, Germany, the former of whom
was a manufacturer and dealer in boots and shoes; he was also a captain 
in the army under Frederick the Great, and with his wife and two sons,
Peter and Herman, came to this country in 1834, settling near where our
subject now resides.  Prof. Steines is a Master Mason, having take the
first degree in his native country, in 1825.  He is now about eighty
five years of age, and his wife, who is still living is sixty-nine 
years of age.

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