VALENTINE STOSKOPF, of Freeport, Ill., was born March 6, 1817, in the village of Enghien, Alsace, France (now Germany). He was sent to the public schools until fourteen years of age, and studied the common-school branches under Valentine Keck and also French and German, they being the common and familiar languages spoken. The French Government was as careful to engraft the French language, literature and customs on the German people who inhabited that district, as doubtless the German Government now is to obliterate all traces of them. His father, Leonard Stoskopf, was a blacksmith and farrier, who proceeded to initiate young Valentine, on his leaving school, into the mysteries of that trade. His mother having died when he was nine years old, and his trade being partially learned, young Stoskopf proceeded to Paris in 1834 to try his fortunes in the Frenchmen's ideal capital. There he worked in a carriage factory over a year, during which time he varied the monotony of daily labor by attending a night school. In the winter of 1835-36 he turned his face toward the New World, embarking on a large sailing-vessel, which occupied thirty-six days in carrying him across the ocean, landing him in New York in January, 1836. Here he remained until spring, when he entered a carriage-shop in New Jersey, where he worked six months on carriages, which were sent to New York and mostly found a market in the South. After working four months at Hackettstown, N. J., he returned to New York, on his way to Canada, which he reached by the way of Buffalo, making his home for two months with an uncle near Stratford, Canada. At the age of twenty he started a shop on his own account in Glasgow, Canada, and carried on the business there for three years.

On the 6th of October, 1839, our subject was married to Miss Paulina Schaub, an Episcopal clergyman performing the ceremony. In May, 1841, he packed his belongings in two canvas covered wagons, and with his wife and infant son, started on his journey in search of a new home in the great unknown and apparently boundless West. Passing through Southern Michigan by the way of Detroit and Watertown, they stopped one day in Chicago, then a town of 4,000 inhabitants, with little promise of its future remarkable history. They reached Freeport about July, 1841, then a little hamlet of about a dozen houses. Hitherto his life had been by no means an idle or uneventful one, but with his advent to the West a new career opened before him, with changed conditions and ever varying circumstances. To his sagacity in reading the signs of the times, to his facility in directing his energy to the objects from which the best results were obtainable, as well as to his untiring energy and industry, his exceptional success in life is due. This adaptability is well shown in the checkered character of his history. He was a farmer when this was the most available means of obtaining a livelihood, a mechanic when there was a demand for his labor, a teamster when a distant market had to be reached, a manufacturer when a market for his products was attainable at home, and an explorer and judicious buyer of wild and seemingly worthless land. And he did whatever his hands found to do with all his might.

Mr. Stockopf's first place of residence in Freeport was in the block fronting on Van Buren and Galena streets. He carried on a shop near where the Illinois Central Depot now stands, which he afterward moved to the corner of Galena avenue and Spring street. He then lived three or four years on a farm which he bought in Silver Creek, carrying on a shop there at the same time, and hauling his surplus grain to Chicago. In 1846 he returned to Freeport, buying the property on Van Buren street, between Spring and Jackson streets. Here he opened a shop which he gradually enlarged until he found himself carrying on the business of manufacturing carriages and wagons on what was, for those days, an extensive scale. He scoured the forest wilds of Illinois and Wisconsin in search of hardwood lumber. He made frequent trips to Chicago to buy supplies - carriage trimmings, irons, paints and oils - many of which were freighted part of the way by a team. Old settlers will remember the time when one could not drive many miles in any direction without meeting a wagon on which his name as maker was painted on the end-board.

In 1859 our subject withdrew from the wagon-making business to make room for a brother whom he had trained for the work, and subsequently devoted himself to developing and improving his property. Probably no man in Stephenson County, not himself a builder, has erected more substantial houses than he. During this time he raised, maintained and educated well a large family, all of whom except a son who died in infancy, are still living in Freeport. Leonard is a lawyer; Louis, a physician; Michael, a lawyer; John, a hardware merchant, and Mary, Sarah, Emma and Luella, still live under the parental roof. Many of his employees are now prominent and honorable citizens of Freeport; among them being George Wolf, in the paint-shop, Michael Huber, Adam Miller and C. Fred Mayer, in the blacksmith-shop, and Henry Metz in the wagon-shop.

Contributed by Carol Parrish from Portrait and Biographical Album of Stephenson County, Ill. (1888), p. 657