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Founder of the Fort Wayne Binding Company and the Fort Wayne Box Company
On the record
Joel Welty was a son of Christian and Magdalena (Lugenbuehl) Welty, a Swiss Mennonite family that removed to Moniteau County, Missouri, in 1868. He studied at the Mennonite college at Wadsworth, Ohio, and taught school in Ohio and at Berne, Indiana. At Berne, on 9 May 1882, he opened a book and wallpaper store, and he later established the village’s first printing office, which grew into a printing and binding plant that passed into the control of the Mennonite Book Concern with Welty as its manager; he also served several years as Berne’s postmaster. In 1895 he moved the bindery’s machinery and equipment to Fort Wayne and founded the Fort Wayne Binding Company. He added the manufacture of paper boxes under the name of the Fort Wayne Box Company, and he remained the executive head of both companies until his death on 20 December 1903. He married Dina Lehmann of Berne on 3 April 1887.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, vol. II (1917), Welty sketch, read first-hand. No second source reached for this profile.