Scheel, John

Born: 1808-05-20 Germany

Died: 1864-01-17

Flourished: Saint Clair County, Illinois

John Scheel, public official, studied at a forestry academy in Aschaffenburg, in his native Bavaria, in 1823, then worked as an assistant to his future father-in-law, a master of forests. In 1833 he emigrated to the United States with a group of Germans that included his future wife and her family, as well as Gustave P. Koerner. The party settled together in St. Clair County, Illinois, where Scheel lived in Muscoutah, and later settled in Belleville. He was appointed to one of the civil engineering positions provided for under the 1837 Illinois Internal Improvement Act , and held the position until about 1839, when the act began to be dismantled. Scheel subsequently served as St. Clair County assessor and as county clerk for eight years beginning in 1849. At the time of the 1860 census, he described himself as a trader and owned real estate valued at $15,000 and personal property in the same amount. In politics, Scheel was a Republican, and Abraham Lincoln reportedly visited his house in Belleville during the election campaign of 1856. Though he was absent on a visit to Europe at the time, the voters of St. Clair County elected Scheel to a single term in the Illinois House of Representatives in 1858. In 1860, he represented the county at the Illinois Republican Convention and ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois Senate. Scheel was appointed by Lincoln in a recess appointment as assessor for the twelfth collection district of Illinois in 1862, was confirmed in the appointment in February, 1863, and held the position until his death. Scheel married Elisabeth Engelmann in 1838 and the pair had three children. Elisabeth Engelmann Scheel’s sister was the wife of Gustave P. Koerner. In addition to being related by marriage, John Scheel and Gustave Koerner were longtime friends, with Scheel acting as Koerner’s agent while the latter was U.S. minister to Spain in the 1860s.

History of St. Clair County, Illinois (Philadelphia: Brink, McDonough, 1881), 202; Gustave P. Koerner, Memoirs of Gustave Koerner 1809-1906, ed. by Thomas J. McCormick (Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch, 1909), 1:265, 296, 324, 419; 2:32, 68-69, 101, 103, 397-98; The Engelmann Family in the United States with Some Historical Background ([Shiloh, IL]: n.p., [1934]); Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, St. Clair County, 18 October 1838, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Belleville, St. Clair County, IL, 443; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 222; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), St. Clair County, IL, 394; Wayne C. Temple, “Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92 (Autumn 1999), 296; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 13:11, 17, 113; Illinois Daily State Journal (Springfield), 19 January 1864, 2:1; Gravestone, Walnut Hill Cemetery, Belleville, IL.