HISTORY OF MANITOWOC COUNTY


them to proceed to Manitowoc county. Locating at Cooperstown, the father
fol-
lowed his trade of cooper and purchased twenty acres of land, and occupied
his
time at his trade and in cultivating grain upon such portions of his land
as were
cleared from stumps. He continued to be thus engaged until he met an acci-
dental death in 1870 on the plank road running from Manitowoc. His widow
survived him a number of years and died at the age of seventy-eight.
After his father's death Joseph Mrskosh remained at Cooperstown on the
bome place until his marriage to Mary Vodvaska, a daughter of an old settler,
and they purchased a farm of one hundred and twenty acres in Cooperstown,
which ,Mr. Mrskosh operated for twelve years. At this time he came to his
pres-
ent property, situated on section i8, town of Two Rivers, on the Range Line,
where he owns five acres and a brick tavern. He has made many improvements
on the property and built a number of additions to the hotel, and has added
thirty acres to his property, on which he is engaged in farming. He has a
splen-
did location for his hostelry, where he has built up a large and steady patronage.
Mr. Mrskosh is a good business man, and his success is due to this as well
as to
his kindly personality which has won him numerous friends in this part of
the
township. Mr. and Mrs. Mrskosh have had seven children, Anna, Mary, Emma,
Francis, Stella, Edward and Joseph. The family has always been connected
with
the Catholic church, and Mr. Mrskosh's father was instrumental in establishing
a number of the early churches here.
REV. OTTO KOLBE.
Rev. Otto Kolbe, resident priest of SS. Peter and Paul Catholic church of
Kiel, was born in Charleston, Manitowoc county, Wisconsin, March 7, I874.
He is a son of Joseph and Ernestine Kolbe, farming people. Father Kolbe
was educated at the Chilton German Catholic school, the Appleton German
Catholic school and the Josephinum College at Columbus, Ohio, where he was
ordained priest in i900. He was then made assistant priest to Father O'Brien
at Green Bay, Wisconsin, for eighteen months, following which he was at
Kilbourn, Wisconsin, for three years. During the period he was there, he
built a church and parsonage, the former being of brick with a seating ca-
pacity of five hundred people. Going to Gillet, Wisconsin he not only had
charge of that parish, but two missions as well, ministering in all to sixty-five
families. After two years there during which he built an addition to the
church, and the priest's house, on July I5, i908, he came to Kiel as resident
priest. The first priest of this parish was Geo. Weiss, succeeded by M. J.
Schmitz, Joseph Hemmer and Rudolph W. Nickel, Father Kolbe being the
fifth to have charge here. He is now building a new church edifice of stone
and brick, and has remodeled the priest's house. There are about one hun-
dred and ten families in his parish, and he also conducts missions at Elkhart
Lake, where he has twenty families, and New Holstein, where he built a new
church for the twenty families connected with it. He is a Knight of Columbus
of
the fourth degree, a Knight of Wisconsin and a Forester of the third degree.
All
of the priests have done good work here, for prior to 1892 Kiel was but a


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