Pages 150-151

JOSEPH SCHWAB. Place the native German where you will and he will make a living for himself and those depending on him, for in him are in­grained those qualities which go to make the successful man, chief among which may be mentioned energy, perseverance and undoubted honesty. Although he was born in Germany in 1833, and there made his home until 1849, he is in every essential a loyal American citizen, and has identified himself with the interests of his adopted country as far as it has been possi­ble for him to do so. Like the great majority of German youths, he was given the advantages of the common schools of Germany, and as he was apt and ready and willing to apply himself, he acquired a good practical education, amply sufficient to fit him for the ordinary duties of life. He was a youth of considerable pluck and ambition, and he early came to the conclusion that America afforded for him opportunities for rising in the world, which his native land could not do, and thither he emigrated in 1849, coming almost immediately to the Lone Star State. He joined some, friends who had pro­ceeded him, in De Witt County, and at once turned his attention to the occu­pation of farming, but was engaged in tilling rented land until about 1860, at which time he was married to Martha Hock, a native of Germany, who came to Texas in 1845, and soon after made his first purchase of land on the Guadalupe River. This land he successfully tilled until 1862, when his sympathies became so thoroughly enlisted in the Southern cause, that he abandoned the plow to become a votary of Mars, becoming a member of Waul's Legion, C. S. A., and served in Mississippi. After the fall of Vicks­burg he returned to Texas and once more began tilling the soil on the Guadalupe River farm, where his home continued to be until his removal to Yoakum in 1893. In 1880 be became the proprietor of cotton gin which he took with him to Yoakum and which he has since operated with success and reasonable financial results. He is the owner of an excellent farm of 200 acres, of which 150 acres are under cultivation. In 1883 Mr. Schwab was called upon to mourn the death of his first wife, after she had borne him twelve children, and in 1888 he was married a second time, to Miss Mary Ann Jacobs, who is an earnest and devoted member of the Baptist Church. Mr. Schwab's parents were Valentine and Mary (Sanger) Schwab, natives of the Fatherland and farmers by occupation.