William J. Neidig

William J. Neidig became a resident of Henry County by virtue of his marriage to Frieda Margaret Rychener, a Napoleon girl. A more distant connection, is that his maternal grandfather, William Davis, the first president of Otterbein College, was an ordained United Brethern minister and a physician, who in his earlier years rode circuit administering to the settlers along the Maumee River. William's grandfather, Jonathan Neidig, contributed land for the campus of the new Western College in Iowa, where his son Abraham met and married Lucyna Davis, daughter of William Davis, by that time president of the new college, and where their son was born.

William J. Neidig

Mr. and Mrs. William J. Neidig

William J. Neidig

William learned the printer's trade in his father's various newspaper offices in Iowa and Nebraska. When Stanford University opened its doors, he became a student. Upon graduation he spent some time in San Francisco as a newspaper critic, short story writer, and editor of several Coast periodicals. Called back to Stanford, he became a member of the English department, later filling similar positions in the universities of Wisconsin and Chicago. A book of poems, The First Wardens, published by the Macmillan Company in 1905, won him a place in Who's Who, and the honor of a nomination for the Nobel prize in idealistic literature.

A monograph, resulting in part from his special skills in printing, containing proof that some of the Shakespeare's Quartos bear false dates, was published in 1910 in "Modern Philology," a Chicago University technical journal, - the conclusions of which were accepted by world scholars. His most popularly known works were the many short stories appearing in magazines in the United States and Europe. He was a regular contributor to the Saturday Evening Post for many years.

A novel, The Fireflingers, published by Dodd Mead & Company in 1919, was made into a motion picture by Universal Pictures and broke all records for its company for attendance up to that time. Beside his literary work he had taken out between thirty and forty U.S. and foreign patents, most of the drawings and descriptions done by himself.

Mrs. Neidig, a graduate of Bush Conservatory in Chicago, taught voice, piano, and public school music in Swanton, Delta, Wauseon, and Napoleon until her marriage in 1925, when she began sharing in her husband's work, taking dictation, and helping in the research in technical libraries in Chicago, where they lived until 1934, when they came to Napoleon to be with her aged parents. In Napoleon, she became a deputy county auditor and commissioners' clerk in 1941, retiring in 1967. Mrs. Neidig died in 1955, and is buried with her parents in the Locust Grove Cemetery near the church building which was so crucial to the family in past years.

Submitted by Margaret R. Neidig