Lorenzo Crounse

Governor of Nebraska 1893 - 1894

Coming to America in 1752, the Hans Martin Weber family produced a letter from their pastor in Wurttemberg, Germany - "Having on a well-laid Christian foundation been thoroughly trained in agriculture, I, the pastor regret this man’s leaving. May God be their best guide and cause them to find good friends everywhere and in the end also bring us all together again in Heaven, the road to which is just as long from Pennsylvania as from Schwaben." The daughter of Hans Weber married in 1767 one Frederick Kruntzke, Junior, who still retained the Polish name. Frederick and Barbara were the great grandparents of Lorenzo. They settled in Sharon, New York. When Lorenzo Crounse was 27 he was mustered into Battery K of the 1st Artillery, but his service ended one year later when he was wounded at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run. His wife, Mary, was notified that the doctor planned to amputate Lorenzo’s leg. She is said to have handed her baby, Jessie, to a sister in Sharon, New York, and saying "take her", rushed to the hospital where she refused to let the doctors amputate. In 1864 the Crounses moved to Rulo, Nebraska, later settling in Fort Calhoun. Lorenzo had been admitted to the bar in 1857 and he now took up the practice of law. Active from the first in Nebraska politics he served in the legislature and helped to draft the constitution under which the territory was admitted as a state. He was associate justice of the State Supreme Court for six years following 1867 and wrote many opinions of great local import. From 1873-77 he held two terms in Congress. Four years after 1879 he was Collector of Internal Revenue for the Nebraska District. In 1892 he was elected Governor of Nebraska. In 1894 he refused renomination and from then on was out of politics. From the time of his wife’s death in 1882, he remained a widower - dignified, serious, but possessed of an unruffled tranquility. He lived quietly on his farm in Fort Calhoun until shortly before his death in 1909, when he moved to Omaha to be with his younger daughter, Marie. Submitted By Katherine Doorly Clark

Source: Washington County Nebraska History 1980, page 151. The Washington County Historical Association. Taylor Publishing Company, Dallas, Texas, 1980.