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THEODORE L. REUTER
has been identified with the milling industry at Nashville since 1869 and is a co-manager of the triumvirate chosen by the venerable John Huegely to conduct the affairs of his great
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flouring mill under the name of the Huegely Milling Company upon his retirement from active business life nearly a quarter of a century ago. Mr. Reuter is a German, born near Frankfort-on-Main, April 6, 1845, and was a child of three years when his father, Philip C. Reuter, brought his family to the United States and located, after two years in St. Louis, at Belleville, Illinois. Philip C. Reuter was a tailor, and also carried on a small grocery business at Belleville, where he resided until some sixty years of age, when he came to Nashville to be near his sons, and died here in 1872, when he was sixty-three years old. Mr. Reuter married his wife in the community where they both spent their childhood, she being Miss Elizabeth Otto, and her death occurred in 1869. Their children were as follows: Henry F., ex-county clerk of Washington county, and now engaged in the monument business in Nashville; Theodore L.; and Rev. William C., a minister of the Methodist church, who holds a pastorate in the state of Oregon.
Theodore L. Reuter acquired his education in the Belleville schools and when a youth applied himself to the trade of carriage painting. The call to arms of 1861 for the preservation of the Union roused him and prepared him for his part in the struggle, even before he attained the legal age for acceptance as a soldier. He enlisted in August, 1862, at Belleville, in Company H, One Hundred and Seventeenth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, under Captain R. A. Halbert, R. M. Moore being colonel of the regiment. This formed a part of the Third Division of the Sixteenth Army Corps, with General A. J. Smith in command of the division. General Hurlbert was the first corps commander and General Dodge succeeded him. The first active service of the regiment was on the Meridian campaign in Mississippi, following which the command was ordered to join General Banks on the Red river, and it took part in that famous campaign. Transferring back to the east side of the Mississippi river, the campaign around Tupelo, Mississippi, was made and fought out. Subsequently the regiment recrossed the Mississippi and took part in the defense of Missouri against General Price's army, known universally as �The Price Raid,� and when this work was done another order east put them across the river for the fourth time and placed them in conjunction with the Union troops operating against the Confederate General Hood around Nashville, Tennessee, and they helped annihilate that part of the Rebel force in November, 1864. After this engagement, the One Hundred and Seventeenth, with other troops, was ordered to Mobile and reached there in time to help capture Fort Blakely, one of the last Confederate fortifications in the South. While waiting for the War Department to get its bearings, the command was ordered into camp at Montgomery, Alabama, and remained around there until ordered home for discharge and muster out, at Camp Butler, Springfield, in August, 1865. During this three years of military life, which tried the metal of men as well as their courage, Mr. Reuter slipped through between the missiles of the enemy without a wound, escaped capture always, but not hunger. Having discarded his uniform for the regalia of peace, he resumed his work with bucket and brush in the town he marched out of as a soldier and among the friends of his childhood.
After a brief period he gave up his trade and took a clerkship in a store in Belleville; subsequently, in 1866, came to Nashville to accept a like position, and still later went to Chicago as a merchant's clerk. In 1869 he returned to Nashville and entered the employ of John Huegely as a clerk, and began a career with an enterprise
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which has held him during his remaining years and to the present time. The political, social and church life of the locality has felt his influence in a modest way, and the movements which have stood for sobriety, morality and order have ever commanded his interest and support. He has served on the city council of Nashville, and has spent many years as a member of its school board. He is a Republican, an-active member of the Methodist church, and has been frequently called to the superintendency of that denomination's Sunday-school. He is an active G. A. R. man locally, has attended their state and national encampments at times, has been post commander at home, and in other ways has encouraged the welfare of the now-dying but still great patriotic order.
On October 6, 1870, Mr. Reuter was married in Nashville, Illinois, to Miss Mary C. Reuter, daughter of John Huegely and a native of Mascoutah, Illinois. Mr. and Mrs. Reuter have had the following children: Miss Sue, residing in Nashville; Annette, the wife of W. R. Jones, of St. Louis, Missouri; Philip G., who married Miss Margaret Cretsinger and resides in St. Louis; Theo, who married Corwin N. Blackman, of St. Paul, Minnesota; and J. Bertram, who is a clerk in the employ of the Huegely Milling Company.