Gottlieb Heinrich Kirn (1834 - 1915)

Born 1 Dec 1834 in Sindelfingen, Böblingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Ancestors

Husband of Elizabeth (Smith) Kirn — married 1856 in Germany

Descendants

Died 20 Oct 1915 at age 80 in Norfolk, Virginia, United States

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Biography

According to research provided by city historian Peggy Haile McPhillips, Henry Kirn was born in Wurttemberg in 1834. He married Elizabeth Smith of Nuremburg a year before he settled in Norfolk in 1857. Kirn started a truck farming business at the start of the Civil War, growing crops on a large scale for sale at distant markets. He shipped his produce up the James River and sold it “at a good profit” to General Ulysses S. Grant’s army, McPhillips said. He expanded his business after the war when steam liners plied the waters between Norfolk and New York. Kirn was a charter member of The Grange, the first farmers’ organization south of the Mason-Dixon Line, formed in 1873. It evolved into the Southern Produce Company, of which Kirn was president. The couple had six children who lived to adulthood, one named Charles passed away at age 7. Daughter Bessie Kirn, who made the donation on behalf of herself and her deceased sister Clara, watched the library being built from her suite in the Monticello Hotel where she lived, according to a Ledger Dispatch story. At a ceremony to lay the cornerstone, Bessie Kirn watched photographers rush forward for a shot. “Look at all those camera hounds,” she said. She also declared the building “beautiful.” Bessie Kirn died in 1972.

Sources

• Messina, Debbie. “What's in a Name?: Kirn Library, Norfolk.” Pilotonline.com, The Virginian-Pilot, 15 Feb. 2020, https://www.pilotonline.com/history/article_2b84cc2a-5591-5113-96b2-cdddc75f9ad7.html.