History of Detroit, a chronicle of its progress, its industries, its institutions, and the people of the fair City of the straits, / by Paul Leake ... [Vol. 3]

HISTORY OF DETROIT

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steadily increased. The Republican party have twice chosen him to
represent them in their national conventions; when McKinley was nominated and again in Chicago in 1908. His attendance of the latter convention was prevented by the serious illness of his wife.
Mrs. August Marxhausen was Miss Marie Eberts before her marriage
in 1857. The union of August and Marie Marxhausen was an ideal one.
For fifty-one years they were loyal and loving companions and his life
was almost literally bound up in hers. He would not consider leaving
her at the time of the convention which nominated Taft, as she was seriously ill, and when two weeks later she drew her last breath he was at her
side-a fact which consoled him for the rest of his life, as far as anything could console for an irreparable loss. Grief for her was the real
cause of his own death two years later.
In the affairs of the city, Mr. Marxhausen was as active as in national
concerns. He was a member of the famous "four M's," the commission
which gave Detroit its beautiful island park, Belle Isle. The place is a
monument to the commissioners who planned it and the city is fortunate in having these plans carried out so well. Upon this as upon
every other matter in which he was engaged, Mr. Marxhausen worked
unremittingly and conscientiously. It was said of him that in his mind
"duty" was always written in capitals. Any public office with a salary
he would never accept. "Give it to some one that needs it; I don't want
it," he would say when offered such a post. His service to the community was rendered without money and truly without price.
In his association with the members of his newspaper staff, Mr.
Marxhausen was as a father in the last days of his life and always his
relations with them were the most cordial. He had asked them to a
"before-Christmas Trinkfest, 7 and had given out his gifts to them before
the day, fearing no doubt that he might not be there to make merry
with them at the time. The paper which he has made into such a power
in Michigan will be carried on under the able management of his son,
but the loss of the founder and original proprietor of the Abend-Post
will be felt by the journalistic fraternity, as well as by Mr. Marxhausen's
personal friends. At the time of his death, he was the oldest active newspaper man in the United States.
Mr. Marxhausen leaves two children: Mrs. Louise Burghard, widow
of Julius Burghard, and August Marxhausen, Jr., proprietor and manager of the paper which his father founded more than forty years ago.
Besides his children, five grandchildren survive the departed: Elsa
and Robert Burghard, and Erna, Curt and Thelma Marxhausen.
President of the Harmonic Society, and a member of nearly every
German society in Detroit, as well as of the Lutheran church, Mr. Marxhausen's loss in one which the whole city must feel, even as the whole
city had a share in the many good offices of his life. It is well
said of him: "He has brought us the proof that a good German can
also be a good American; something which is questioned by so many
who have not heart enough to love both mother and wife devotedly at the
same time. To August Marxhausen, Germany was the mother, America
the wife."
HENRY W. RICKEL. Measured by its sterling worth and large and
definite accomplishment, the life of the late Henry W. Rickel counted
for much. For more than half a century he was identified with business
interests in Detroit, and* here he rose through his own efforts to a
position of marked prestige as one of the most substantial and successful
business men of the Michigan metropolis. He came to America as a
youth, without any financial resources and dependent entirely upon his