Biography of Daniel Stomm, page 158 /. 159.  History of Northeast Indiana; 
LaGrange, Steuben, Noble, and DeKalb Counties, Vol. II, under the editorial 
supervision of Ira Ford, Orville Stevens, William H. McEwen, and William H. 
McIntosh.  The Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago and New York, 1920.

   Daniel Stomm. The best way to identify Daniel Stomm with the citizenship 
of DeKalb County is to say that he is proprietor of Vistawald in Farirfield 
Township.  He was born May 20, 1862, and is now the senior in the house of 
Stomm in the United States.  He looks both backward and forward over two 
generations of the family of DeKalb County.
   The house of Stomm was first established in this country when his 
uncle, Daniel Stomm, whose name he bears, accompanied by a sister, 
Margaret Stomm, located in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1851. They were 
soon followed by the rest of the family from Baden, Germany.  In 1854 
George Henry Stomm and his family arrived in DeKalb County, after living 
for a short time in both Pennsylvania and Ohio. The son Daniel, who was a 
blacksmith in Pittsburg, died there unmarried, but the daughter Margaret 
came on with the family to the new home in Indiana.  When George M. Stomm 
and wife, Margaret (Holtzworth) Stomm, crossed the Atlantic to join their 
son and daughter in America, they were accompanied by four children, Henry, 
Elizabeth, Barbara and Catherine.  
   Henry, who was the father of Daniel, the present head of the Stomm 
family, was born in Germany March 24, 1833, and had just attained to 
manhood when he came to DeKalb County.  He had learned the weaver's trade 
in Germany, but agriculture has been the forte of the Stomm family in this 
country.  The naturalization papers of Henry Stomm are now a matter of 
record in the DeKalb County court house. Today the history of all that 
generation of the Stomm family has been written on the tombstone in DeKalb-
Steuben County Line Cemetery in Steuben County.  The Stomm family name was 
identified with the German Reformed Church, and in politics the family 
vote always to democratic candidates.
      Henry Stomm married Anna Maria Gettz on January 9, 1856. She had 
come with her parents, William and Eliza (Hosler) Gettz, from Pennsylvania.  
Two of her sisters, Sarah and Susannah Putt, who married brothers, are 
living at Garrett, Indiana.  The seven living children born to Henry and 
Anna Maria Stomm are: Daniel, Elizabeth, Moses, William, Mary, Nora and 
Clara.  Three others deceased were Sarah, Amanda and Cora.  The mother 
died October 1, 1882, and Henry Stomm married Catherine Bickle, who helped 
rear his younger children.
   On January, 1, 1886, Daniel, who, it will be noted, was born about 
eight years after the family came to DeKalb County, married Nancy 
Elizabeth Urey. She became the mother of two sons. Voyde G. and Roy C.  
She died January 3, 1891.  On October 10, 1894, Mr. Stomm married Mary M. 
Borger, of Owen County, Indiana. She is a daughter of Joseph and Emma 
(Hostetler) Borger, whose eight children were: George M., Costa M., 
William R., Mary M., Ida A., Esther, Martin J. and Jacob E.  An older set 
of children than these were seven half brothers and sisters bearing the 
name Borger: Rachel, Benjamin, Levi, David, Elizabeth, Catherine and 
Sarah. 
   Three children born to Daniel and Mary M. Stomm are Ralph B., Ruth O. 
and Emma M.  The two older sons, Voyde and Roy, were reared in the same 
household.  Voyde married September 18, 1917, Iva High, and they have one 
child, Lois M.  Roy married, May 31, 1914, Mary Benjamin, and their son, 
Austin Leroy, and the father Roy, are both now deceased. The son Ralph B. 
married Theresa M. Hanes December 2, 1917. They have one son, Robert G.  
Ruth O. was married January 1, 1919, to Hubert Boyd.  Lois May and Robert 
Gerald Stomm are the two representatives of the fifth generation of the 
Stomm family in DeKalb County.
   Since 1887 Daniel Stomm had lived in his present home in Fairfield and 
today Vistawald is one of the most picturesque and attractive farmsteads 
in the entire county.  The hilltop building site is high and dry, and the 
home buildings are well set in orchard and small fruit groves. Strawberry 
culture is a specialty. Spraying and other necessary work is done in 
season in order to secure high class fruit. A small apiary is maintained 
with the double purpose of honey on the dinner table and the better 
polenization of fruit.  There is a stucco house with full basement story, 
modern heating, electric lighting and water system, the water being forced 
into the house by hydraulic ram from a spring that supplies sufficient 
water for all domestic purposes and for the live stock as well. Winter or 
summer there is no water to pump and a stream down the hillside from the 
fountain, encased in cement, has a continuous and bounteous supply.
   There is the second basement barn, one having been destroyed by 
lightning in a storm in which six other barns were burned in the same 
neighborhood.  The silo back of the barn was one of the first built in 
DeKalb County.
   Vistawald is a scene of thrift and contentment and of work in which all 
members of the family participated. The farmstead is hills and dales and 
adapted to diversified farming and fruit, live stock and agriculture.  
There are yet some unfinished plans, the World war delaying some of them, 
but the traveler will go along way before he finds a more attractive spot 
in Vistawald.

Submitted by:
Arlene Goodwin
Auburn, Indiana
Agoodwin@ctlnet.com