Biography of Jesse Joel Musser, pages 363/364. History of 
DeKalb County, Indiana; B. F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 
Indianapolis, 1914.



Among the younger generation of DeKalb county citizenship 
who are giving promise of fruitful lives and who are now 
laying the foundations for their future careers is the 
gentleman whose name forms the caption to this sketch.  
Jesse Joel Musser was born in Sherwood, Ohio, on July 22, 
1891, and is a son of Jacob G. and Lovina (Rock) Musser, 
now residents of Auburn. Jacob G. Musser was also a native 
of the old Buckeye state, having been born in Defiance 
county, Ohio, on November 7, 1852, and is a son of Joel and 
Sarah C. (Gier) Musser. Both of these parents were of 
rugged old Pennsylvania Dutch stock, and both came to 
Wooster, Ohio, with their respective parents in an early 
day, their marriage occurring in that city. Immediately 
after that interesting event, which occurred in the early 
forties, they moved to Defiance county, that state, where 
they made their permanent home. Joel Musser was a shoemaker 
by vocation and for many years followed that business in 
Brunersburg, that being at a period when boots and shoes 
were made to order.  Eventually he abandoned the 
shoemaker’s bench and took up farming which he followed 
during the remainder of his active life.  He died in 1899, 
and his wife in1901. Jacob G. Musser was born and reared on 
the parental farmstead between Defiance and Brunersburg, 
and at the age of seventeen years he went to the latter 
place and learned the blacksmith’s trade, which he followed 
for about forty-five years.  When twenty-five years old, he 
started a shop of his own at Sherwood, Ohio, and after a 
period of six years operated a farm at the same time. In 
the fall of 1901 he moved to Auburn and established a 
blacksmith shop, which he is still operating. His years of 
experience have qualified him for the most difficult jobs 
of horse shoeing, in which he specializes, and as a general 
blacksmith he has few equals and no superiors.  Though only 
medium in physical build, he is a man of extraordinary 
endurance and on more than one occasion has shown unusual 
presence of mind and courage when shoeing nervous or 
vicious horses. At the age of twenty-six years, while 
residing in Sherwood, Ohio, Mr. Musser was married to 
Lovina Rock, a sister to Dr. George Rock, whose sketch 
appears elsewhere in this work. To Mr. and Mrs. Musser have 
been born eight children, seven of whom are living: 
Charles, the first born, died in Auburn in 1910, at the age 
of thirty-two years, he had been a teacher in a business 
college in Wisconsin, and had been married less than a year 
at the time of his death;  Maude is the wife of Arthur 
Thomas, who with his father and brother runs and artificial 
ice plant and saw mill in Auburn.  She is the mother of two 
children. Arnold Clay and Charles Burgess; Albert, who is 
employed at Jackson, Michigan, is an automobile top 
builder, married Mary Schomberg, and has two children, 
Howard and Ralph; Edgar Guy, Sarah Ella, Jesse Joel, George 
and Ruth, all of whom are still under the parental roof. 
Edgar is employed at the Auburn automobile factory. Jesse 
Joel Musser came to Auburn with his parents on their 
removal from Defiance, Ohio, and has finished his education 
in the high school. Mr. Musser is an industrious young man 
of good character and splendid habits. Self reliant and 
possessing those qualities that betoken his future success. 
He is genial in disposition and is deservedly popular in 
the social circle in which he moves.

Submitted by:

Arlene Goodwin

Auburn, Indiana

Agoodwin@ctlnet.com