Daniel Wertz
Daniel P. Wertz, of Evansville, became familiar with the operations of logging and saw milling when a boy in Southern Indiana, and his life work has been in the lumber industry. He is president of one of the largest organizations in this section of the state, the Maley & Wertz Lumber Company of Evansville. Mr. Wertz was born on a farm in Shelby County, Indiana, January 1, 1864. His father, Mathias Wertz, was born in Ohio, in August, 1840, lived in Indiana from the age of eight years, and died July 6, 1905, at the age of sixty-five. He spent his life as a farmer. He married Mary Maley, who was born in Germany, in 1838, and passed away in 1923, at the age of eighty-five. They had a family of seven sons. The son Henry was killed in an automobile accident in 1921. Four of the sons, George, Frank, Walter and Jesse, are farmers in the vicinity of Edinburg, Indiana. Charles until recently was a lumberman and is conducting an automobile business at Columbus, Indiana.
Daniel P. Wertz attended country schools, helped his father on the farm, and as a boy hauled saw logs to his uncle’s mill. When he was twenty-four years of age he bought a tract of timber, and cut and hauled the logs, selling them to his uncle, Henry Maley, who was one of the pioneer lumber manufacturers of Southern Indiana. Mr. Wertz in 1890 formed a partnership with Bedna Young, and they bought a sawmill at Flat Rock, Indiana, and in 1892 put up another mill at Grammer. The late Henry Wertz then came into the partnership, but in 1894 he sold his interests to his two associates, who continued their business together until 1896, when the partnership was dissolved, Mr. Young taking the Flat Rock Mill and Mr. Wertz the Grammer Mill. Mr. Wertz in 1901 became associated with Mr. Henry Maley, of Edinburg, Indiana, in the firm of Maley & Wertz, and they bought the Evansville plant of the Thompson-Bonnell Lumber Company. In July 1903, Claude Maley succeeded to the interests of his father, and Daniel Wertz and Claude Maley continued the business until the latter’s death in 1917. Since his death the old firm name of Maley & Wertz Lumber Company has been retained, and in 1920 the business was incorporated. Mr. Wertz’ son Claude has been his active partner since 1917. During the past score or more of years Mr. Wertz has been identified with a large number of lumber mills, veneer and furniture manufacturing corporations and similar interests over Southern Indiana and other states. He is a stockholder in several furniture factories at Evansville. Besides being head of the Maley & Wertz Lumber Company he is vice president and general manager of the Sterling Products Company, is president of the Evansville Malleable Castings Company, is vice president and a director of the Thompson Veneer Company of Edinburg. He is also vice president and chairman of the board of directors of the Central Union Bank, formerly the Mercantile Commercial Bank of Evansville, and the Morris Plan Bank having been combined with it. Mr. Wertz married, April 25, 1895, at Hope, Indiana, Miss Susie Rand, daughter of Thomas and Fanny (Campbell) Rand. Her father was a merchant at Grammer, Indiana. Mr. and Mrs. Wertz had four children: Claude, born July 22, 1896; Audrey, born September 9, 1899; Mary T., born April 12, 1903; and Ruth, born May 22, 1906. Claude, who since 1917 has been actively associated with his father and is secretary-treasurer of the Maley & Wertz Lumber Company, married in 1922 Miss Frances Bradley, of Shawnee town, Illinois, and has a daughter, Barbara Jean, born in 1923. Frances Bradley Wertz died in June 1929, and in November 1930, Mr. Claude Wertz married Victoria Howard, of Evansville. The daughter Audrey was married in 1923 to L. R. Mitchell, a furniture salesman at Phoenix, Arizona, and they have a son, Daniel Wertz Mitchell, born in 1928. The daughter Ruth was married in 1926 to Thomas Morton, Jr., president and manager of the Hoosier Lamp & Stamping Works at Evansville, and has a son, Thomas Rand Morton, born in 1928. The daughter Mary was married in 1927 to Dent Burnette, a veneer salesman for Maley & Wertz Company, and they have a son, Charles Dent Burnette, Jr., born in 1928. Mr. Wertz is a Democrat in politics, is a member of the English Lutheran Church, the Knights of Pythias, the Evansville Country Club and the Chamber of Commerce. He is a successful businessman with a keen sense of individual responsibilities to the community, and while living in Bartholomew County he served as county commissioner and for seven years held a place on the Evansville School Board. He is a member of the National Panel of Arbitrators of the American Arbitration Association for the Settlement of Business Controversies, with headquarters in New York City.
Unmarked Indiana history book, page 86
Submitted by Lora Radishes
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