Chapter 14 of 20
The Tanner
1862 – 1927
Episode 14The TannerVideo coming soon
Edgar Siegfried Kiefer trained at the tanning school in Vienna, and in 1885, with Albert Fecht, he founded the Edgar S. Kiefer Tanning Company in Grand Rapids. It later moved to Chicago. The Saga calls it the world's largest tanner of pigskin for shoes, and the First World War made Edgar a fortune.
In 1891 he married Wilhelmina "Minnie" Kalkbrenner. They had two children. Their daughter Cora married Irving Morse Orr, and her children carried the family to New England and to Sweden.
Their son Clay was killed by a streetcar when he was nine years old.
It is one of three streetcar deaths in this family. Clay's uncle Alfred fell from a streetcar in 1909, and his cousin Carl was killed by one in Kansas City in 1916.
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Sources. The Kiefer Saga (1951), ch. XI and Genealogy. All sources →