Hyman Shlomo Klinkle was born December 11, 1836, on a small farm outside Ludwigsburg in southern Germany.

His father, a brewmeister and idealistic member of the short-lived Junges Deutschland reform movement, died before Hyman was born. A fire erupted in a cafe where papa was speaking out against the ban on Heinrich Heine's writings and he and eleven reformers met their end at a barred exit. Heinrich and another reformer escaped through the front window.

The lengthy gestation period required by the grieving widow Klinkle (Hyman was born twelve months after papa's death) raised a few eyebrows in the neighborhood and Mama escaped this mean-spirited talk by fleeing to Stuttgart with her baby boy.

Life there was much better and the gay new widow enjoyed the company of painters and artists and writers (which is, perhaps, a clue into Hyman's own dislike for anyone associated with a "creative" art).

The widow Klinkle was particular, but prolific in her choice of male companionship. And, times being what they were, Hyman found himself welcoming a steady stream of new brothers and sisters into the fatherless family (Mama was too liberated for marriage).

When the good people of Stuttgart finally noticed and made their disapproval of these goings-on known, Mrs. Klinkle gathered her tribe and departed for America, where her late husband had relatives in Northfield, Minnesota, just south of the booming farming and ore cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Hyman went to work when he was merely a boy (if only to reduce the congestion around the house). But he did not go to work in the mines or the mills of America's fledgling Industrial Age as did so many of his peers.

No, he went to work in a soap factory office run by his uncle, Hans Flaegel Klinkle, in South St. Paul.

Where other destitute little boys and girls gained experience in coal dust and cotton fiber diseases of the lung, Hyman learned about numbers and ledgers and profit margins and the business of running a business.

As he grew older, he was given more responsibilities and more pay and made his Uncle Klinkle proud. Without Hyman's financial help, widow Klinkle's clan would have floundered in the seas of penury and shame. Instead they enjoyed the benefits of a solid middle-class existence.

Their grief was great, but the Klinkle clan could at least take comfort and satisfaction in Hyman's ascent in the world of business. By this time, he was already a general manager for a DuPont chemical plant and spending most of his time on the road in search of natural resources.

When the U.S. Civil War broke out, Hyman was exempted from service as the sole support of his many siblings. Seeing where the money would be made, he had himself assigned to the company's munitions works and was soon selling ammunition to the Union Army.

Commissions were good and Hyman invested wisely. By war's end he had saved enough to buy partial interest in a hometown chemical company and become its managing partner.

This industry had long attracted Hyman, who was familiar with Plains farmers' complaints about thinning soil and crop yields. After his purchase of the chemical company, he set out to learn everything he could about fertilizer. That meant several trips to the Rothamsted Experimental Agriculture Station in Hertfordshire, England.

It was also around this time that he married Gathelea Mary Engels of Rochester and built a home in West St. Paul. There were no children.

His youngest brother, Hiram, remained in Minnesota and managed the Klinkle Mercantile Bank & Trust for the family. Ironically, Hiram was killed during the great Northfield Raid of 1876 when he was struck by a stray shot while taking a bath. He had just moved from St. Paul because it was getting too dangerous.

As you might expect, the great guano find on Poco Cabesa made Hyman a legend in the fertilizer industry of the Gilded Age.

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