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Mayor of Fort Wayne
On the record
Of the Berghoff brewing family.
The election itself is documented to the vote: on 7 May 1901 Berghoff took 5,176 of 9,209 votes against Frank Reese and William Wefel — an immigrant brewer beating the field in a German city. His administration built the South Wayne Sewer (1902) and created the city’s first Board of Park Commissioners (1905).
Henry Carl Berghoff was born 6 January 1856 in Dortmund, in the Kingdom of Prussia, immigrated to the United States in 1872, and settled in Fort Wayne in 1874. Before the mayor's office he held the city's purse strings: three terms as City Treasurer (1883–1889) and then City Comptroller (1896–1901). In business he and three of his brothers — Herman, Hubert, and Gustav — founded the Herman Berghoff Brewing Company in 1887 and opened the Berghoff brewery in Fort Wayne in 1888, brewing Dortmunder-style beer; he also co-founded the German-American National Bank in 1905. Elected mayor in 1901 in a campaign in which opponents attacked his German birth, he served from 9 May 1901 to 1 January 1906 — a four-and-a-half-year term no other Fort Wayne mayor has matched in length of a single tenure. His administration opened the city's first electric interurban line and completed the present Allen County Courthouse. He died in Fort Wayne on 28 June 1925, of a stroke.
Find them on this page
- § 04 — the mayoral roster
Roster cross-checked between the City of Fort Wayne’s official mayors page and the full dated list — sources printed under the roster in § 04; Wikipedia, "Henry C. Berghoff"; Fort Wayne beer history (fortwaynebeer.com), Berghoff Brewery history by Farmer and Berghoff-Prowant. Further sources: Randolph L. Ott, 'Herman Berghoff' (Indiana German Heritage Society, 2014); Peggy Seigel.