Christain H Poehls

Chris and Elizabeth ( Krabbenhoft) Poehls, who became residents of Clay county in 1883 and were prominent and influential resi dents of Elmwood township.

Both Chris Poehls and his wife are of European birth, natives of Schleswig-Holstein, who came to this country in 1866, settling with their respective families in Scott county, Iowa, where they were married in 1868 and where they remained, engaged in farming, until the latter part of 1883, when they came to Minnesota and established their home in Clay county, arriving at their new home there on December 10 of that year. Chris Poehls had bought a farm in Elmwood township, during the previous summer, and came well-equipped for successful farming. As he prospered in his opera- tions, he graduallv added to his land holdings until now he was the owner of eleven hundred and fifty-three acres of excellent land. During eight years of his residence in Iowa, Mr. Poehls was supervisor of roads in his home district, and, after taking up his residence in Minnesota, gave considerable attention to general local affairs, one of his active business connections being with the local telephone company. He and his wife are were active members of the Lutheran church and their children were reared in that faith. There were twelve of these children, Eureka, Minnie, Henry, Emma, Jorhn, Laura, Ernest,. Hulda, Fred , Emil, Lena and .Anna.

On December 29, 1992 Chris applied for a passport for him and his son John to Germany to visit. He filed it under his original name Pohls. It states that he emigrated on June 10, 1868, He lived in Scott county Iowa for 24 years. He was naturalized on November 4, 1876 in Davenport, Iowa. He was a farmer It states that he is 48 at the time 5 foot 4 inches round forehead, blue eyes, fair complexion, brown hair.

In some sources they say Schleswig Holstien was under Denmark's control at the time of his birhh , Pohls in German,has been around for at least several hundred years. Thought to be originated in modern day Schleswig-Holstein, the northern-most federal state (Bundesland) of present Germany, It is said that the name is a place-name. Today in Germany, just a few miles northwest of Lubeck are two villages, one is named Pohls and the other is Politz. Both of these villages were settledby Slavic tribes from the east, probably a thousand years ago or more. As people left Pohls, they were probably called so-adn-so from Pohls when the moved to a new village. Eventually, the "from" was dropped and just the name Pohls remained. Before the emigration of the last century there were at least 3 distinct groupings of Pohls families in Germany. The first group remained in northern Germany, around areas just north of Hamburg. The second group moved to the southeast after the Slavic peoples living in those areas fled. The germans were encouraged to settle there and farm the land. This area is in modern day Mecklenburg. The third group, moved even further to the southeast, settleing in the area of the Prignitz. The Prignitzis located in the federal state of Brandenburg, in a tight corner in the northwestof Province, bordering Mecklenburg to the north and northeast ans Saxony to the southeast. In modern day Germany, These three groups still exist according to Telephone book listings. T