John Rauh Page 372-373 - John Rauh, who is now living retired from active business, has been a resident of Grand Rapids, during a period of more than half a century, and among the memories of his youth are those touching the middle-pioneer history of this section of Michigan. He has witnessed much of the development of Grand Rapids, now a city of metropolitan status, and he maintains deep interest in the history of the city and state that have so long represented his home. Mr. Rauh was born in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, January 26, 1857, and is a son of the late Henry and Anna Rauh, both natives of Germany, where the former was born in 1831 and the latter in 1832. The subject of this review was an infant when his parents came to the west and established their residence at Ashland, Wisconsin, whence they later removed to Milwaukee, that state, the year 1868 having recorded the family removal to Grand Rapids, where Henry Rauh became associated with the representative lumbering and timber firm of A. D. Long & Company, with which he served as a skilled lumber inspector during the long period of twenty-seven years, his death having occurred in 1914, when he was more than eighty years of age, and his wife having passed away in 1904. John Rauh gained his early education in the public schools of Milwaukee and was a lad of nine years at the time of the family removal to Grand Rapids, where he continued to attend school until he assumed the practical responsibilities of life. He was employed five years as a stationary engineer for the lumber firm of Long & Son, and thereafter he gave similar service with other lumber concerns. In 1884 he engaged in the retail liquor business in Grand Rapids, and after having conducted several establishments of this kind he erected the substantial two-story brick building at 118 Michigan street, Northwest, on the well appointed upper floor of which he has maintained his residence during the long intervening years. He used the first floor of the building in the conducting of his well ordered retail liquor business until the new prohibition clause of the national constitution caused him to close his establishment and retire from active business. Mr. Rauh is well known in Grand Rapids, where he has a host of friends, and where he is a life member of Grand Rapids lodge, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He continues to take lively and loyal interest in all that concerns the civic and material welfare and progress of his home city. He was married in 1899 to Josephine L. Traxler of Van Wert, Ohio.

Transcriber:  Nancy Myers
Created: 6 July 2003