Читать книгу Memoirs of Milwaukee County, Volume 3 - Josiah Seymour Currey - Страница 39

Fred C. Barkow. secretary and treasurer of the H. Barkow Company, manufacturers of automobile bodies and tops, was born in Milwaukee, September 17, 1876, his parents being Herman and Minnie (Schmidt) Barkow, who were natives of Germany. The mother arrived in Milwaukee in 1858. It was a decade later when Herman Barkow took up his abode in this city, where he was afterward connected with industrial activity. In 1879 he established the Barkow wagon shop at NO. 195 Milwaukee street and this constituted the nucleus of the present enterprise, of which Fred C. Barkow li one of the owners. The father began business in a small way but was making gratifying and substantial progress when in 1892 his establishment was destroyed in the great third ward fire. This left him with comparatively little capital, so that he Was again forced to begin business in a restricted way, but he gradually built up the enterprise and continued its further development, eventually transforming the output from wagons to that of automobile tops and bodies. In 1914 the business was Incorporated under the name of the H. Barkow Company and as such has since been continued. The father, however, died October 26, 1919.

Fred C. Barkow obtained his early education in the parochial schools of Milwaukee but put aside his textbooks when only thirteen years of age and entered his father's shop. There he learned the carriage making trade and since that time he has been continuously connected with the business. At the time of the Incorporation in 1914, under the name of the H. Barkow Company, he became secretary and treasurer and has since occupied this official connection with the enterprise. The company has a large plant, two hundred and forty by one hundred and twenty feet, supplied with the latest improved machinery for the building of automobile bodies, and the business is capitalized for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Their output is sold to automobile and truck manufacturers and in this way reaches to all parts of the United States, Canada and various sections of the world. The vice president of the company is John A. Giebish, who has been superintendent of the paint department for eighteen years. He learned his trade with the house and became vice president at the death of Herman Barkow.

It was in the year 1905 that Fred C. Barkow was united in marriage to Misa Alvina Rose, a daughter of August Rose of Milwaukee, and they have become parents of five children: Alvin, August, Elizabeth, Minnetta and Herman. The parents are members of the Bethany Lutheran Evangelical church. Mr. Barkow votes with the republican party and on the whole endorses its principles yet does not consider himself bound by party ties. He is ready at all times to support any project of progressive citizenship and stands loyally in support of those interests which are a matter of civic virtue and of civic pride.