WALLACE, Dedrick - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

DH Wallace, Living Dean of Veedesrburg to celebrate his 100 0years on Sunday. By Hugh Miller – 1956

“Chust do the best you can,” epitomizes the life philosophy of Dederich W. Wallace, retired Veedersburg druggist who will attain his 100th birthday on March 21.  His friends, however, will observe the occasion Sunday when open house will be held for him between 2 and 4 o’clock at the Wayne Hotel in Waynetown where he spends the winter months. A birthday cake will be provided by Mr. Wallace’s daughter, Dorothy Elizabeth and Mrs. Hazel Small, proprietor of the hotel and many of his friends and a large group of Veedersburg business men, including representatives of the Veedersburg State Bank of which he continued as a director, will call to extend their congratulations and present him with a birthday floral piece.  Born Dederich Herman Wohlers near the village of Altenfield in the Kingdom of Hanover, Germany on March 21, 1856, Dederick at age 8 went to live with his grandmother< Gretchen when his mother married Wilhelm Huchenmeyer. At 14, he was apprenticed to a farmer at $9 a year. His wage was raised to $12 the second year and to $18 in the third year when he quit and went to Bremen to see his mother and obtained employment in the government telegraph service at $45 A MONTH.  He remained until he was 21 when he entered the army, his service being postponed because of supposed weak lungs. His army pay started at 7 cents a day and when he left the service at the end of his 3 year term as a Lt. his wage was 75 cents a day. Unable to return to the telegraph service, he took employment in the postal department at $22.50 a month. Having heard of prosperity in the US from his stepfather’s sister who lived in Crete, Ill and had visited in Germany, Dederich evaded recall to the army to train recruits by taking passage as a stoker on a North German-Lloyd steamer which docked at Hoboken, NJ and after looking over the NY area, and notwithstanding he did not know English, he decided to cast his lot with America. Stoking his way home on the same boat, he packed his way to the US to stay.  (photo) – landing at Hoboken on Aug 2, 1882, Dederich worked in a railroad construction gang until fall and then went to work in the coal mines at Antrim, PA at $1.50 a day. By the following April he had saved $200 and finding his lungs seemed uncomfortable, he went to Crete, Ill to visit his aunt. A kindly priest in PA had helped him learn some English and in Chicago he worked for a moving contractor and lived near Haymarket Square later the scene of the anarchists’ riots. Although he thought he made good wages, he found at the end of the summer he had not been able to save any more money.  He boarded in the home of the superintendent of the old Chicago and Indiana Coal Railroad who offered to help him obtain work in western Indiana mines through whom Dederich went to work in the mines at Yeddo.  Dederick was a tall, strong young fellow who laughed at his own mistakes as a “foreigner” and many many friends among them the late Dr. FA Shoaf who acquired the Yeddo drug store and took Dederich in as a part owner.  Dederich boarded with the Shoafs and was fond of the doctor’s little daughter, Elizabeth who became the wife of the late Congressman Fred S. Purnell, a Veedersburg native who practiced law in Attica in Attica where Mrs. Purnell still lives.  He learned pharmacy from the Dispensary and Pharmcopeia in the days when tinctures and fluid extracts were not available in bottles but were prepared by the druggist. Thus the druggist learned about the use and effects of the materials both from the books and from local doctors. Yeddo days were happy days for Dederich; he made many friends, with some of whom he would occasionally go fishing and hang a sign on the door: “Gone fishing.”  He also attended singing school and was so fond of the singing master, Professor French that he gave him his silk hat brought from Germany.  He bought Dr. Shoaf’s interest in the store and saved $1000 by the time he sold the store to HH Philpott. He obtained naturalization papers in 1888, and on the advice of Dr. Shoaf and other friends had his name registered as Wallace instead of Wohlers.  He spent six months in Germany visiting his mother and then returned to the US to spent his most fruitful years.  In 1889 he bought Frank Miller’s drug store in Veedersburg and soon began to prosper. He purchased the three-story brick building at Main & Second streets in 1900 after 11 years in the Nixon’s Hall building where he often heard the late Clarence Nixon well known pianist practice for hours as a youth in the hall overhead.  Quite a few Yeddo people came to greet and buy from “Doc Dederich” as many called him.  Mr. Wallace had met Mollie DCox of Fairmount, Ill who taught school in Yeddo where she helped him with English and he taught her German. They were married at Danville, Ill in 1892 and took a wedding trip to Niagara Falls. The Wallaces built a new home at Newlin and Third streets which Mr. Wallace still occupies in summer. Their daughter was born there in 1898. Incidentally, Dorothy is a chemist with a Chicago firm and worked on many secret government formulae during and after WWII. She attended the University of Illinois, did graduate (ending does not seem to be there – sorry).