19 Facts About Gustav Koerner

Gustav Koerner married on 17 June 1836 in Belleville Sophia Dorothea Engelmann ; they had 9 children.

Gustav Koerner belonged to the co-founders and was one of the first members of the Grand Old Party, and was a close confidant of Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd, and had an essential role in his nomination and election for president in 1860.

On Christmas Eve 1830 in Munich, Gustav Koerner was involved in a somewhat drunken snowball fight that led to a confrontation with the Gendarmerie of that city in royal Bavaria where an officer was knocked down and wounded.

Gustav Koerner was one of the participants at the Hambach Festival in the spring of 1832 which was held to prepare a free, democratic, and unified state in Germany.

On 1 May 1833, Gustav Koerner boarded a ship in Le Havre sailing to North America with a group of emigrants headed by the patriarch of the Engelmann family, whose son Theodor was an old friend of his from college.

Gustav Koerner, inquiring for the cause of this unusual gathering and learning that a slave was being offered for sale, rose from his horse, went to the auction stand, bought the slave, and immediately gave him freedom.

Gustav Koerner was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1842, served on the Illinois Supreme Court from 1845 to 1848, and as the 12th Lieutenant Governor of Illinois from 1853 to 1857.

Gustav Koerner was the first citizen of German extraction ever elected to the Illinois or Missouri legislatures.

In 1861, Gustav Koerner was instrumental in raising the 43rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment but before its organization had been completed, he was appointed Colonel of Volunteers and assigned as aide to Gen.

Gustav Koerner resigned in April 1862 due to impaired health.

The expectation was that Gustav Koerner would prevent Spain from entering into the American Civil War on the side of the Southern slave states.

Gustav Koerner had to provide such funds from his private accounts.

Gustav Koerner was one of the pallbearers who carried the corpse of the president in the state funeral.

In 1867 Gustav Koerner was appointed president of the board of trustees that organized the Illinois Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Bloomington, and in 1870 he became president of the first board of railroad commissioners of Illinois.

Gustav Koerner then backed the Democratic candidate Samuel J Tilden for the US presidency in a contentious election of 1876 and remained with this party afterwards.

Gustav Koerner became the first president of the Belleville Kindergarten Association which received $2,100 in contributions from 70 shareholders and, supported by 150 other women, one year later was serving 201 pupils taught by three educators.

Gustav Koerner was an active lawyer, and wrote articles for several newspapers, among others the "Belleviller Zeitung" and the "Anzeiger des Westens", American newspapers in the German language.

Gustav Koerner had great influence on the growing German community in North America in the second half of the 19th century.

Gustav Koerner's memoirs were published in two volumes in 1909,13 years after his death and in the year of his 100th birthday, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.