Sophronius Stocking Landt (1842-1926)

From the Watertown, Wisconsin News, January 23, 1895.

   This curiously named man is Sophronius Stocking Landt, a soldier, teacher, and one-term member of the Wisconsin state assembly. He was born in the small village of Aztalan, Wisconsin on November 1, 1842, being the son of Frederick and Anna Edwards Landt. The Landt family would remove from Aztalan to Big Spring, Wisconsin when their son was seven, and Sophronius would reside in that town until the late 1870s.
   Sophronius received his education in the common schools of Adams County and later began attending the Brunson Institute in Point Bluff. Landt eventually left his studies at the aforementioned institute in 1861, signing on for military service in Company D of the Tenth Wisconsin Infantry. His service extended until November 1864, and the 1895 Wisconsin Blue Book notes that Landt participated in many major engagements during the course of the war, including Stone River, Lookout Mountain, Perryville, Chickamauga, and the siege of Atlanta in 1864. 
   Landt was mustered out of service in November 1864 and in September of the following year married Margaret "Maggie" Wilber (1843-1917), with whom he had five children. In the decades following his military service, Landt moved to the town of Friendship, where he engaged in farming and teaching. He held local political office as township clerk and later relocated to Packwaukee, where he partnered in a mercantile firm with B.E. Willer. In 1886 he was elected as the Treasurer of Adams County, serving in this post until 1892. In 1889 Landt was selected by then-Wisconsin Governor William D. Hoard as Wisconsin's delegate to the Farmer's National Congress that was to be held in Montgomery, Alabama.

                                                                        Sophronius S. Landt

   In November 1894 the citizens of Adams and Marquette county elected Sophronius S. Landt to the Wisconsin State Assembly, besting Democratic nominee William Risk by a vote of 2416 to that of 1139. During his term (which extended from 1895-97) Landt served on the committees on Agriculture and Labor & Manufacture. Following his time in state government Landt was named as Superintendent of Schools at Sparta, Wisconsin (holding that post for four years), and in 1897 was hit with allegations of stealing, extending from his time as Adams County Treasurer. In October of that year, Landt was arrested on charges of an "alleged shortage of $900 in accounts" by then Adams County sheriff Harry Barrett and was subsequently taken to Adams County.

  Following his arrest, Landt asked to be "relieved" of his position as superintendent, and explained that he had "receipts from the county in full for the settlement of all balances found against him." The Adams County board launched an investigation that extended through most of November, and by November 22 he had been found innocent of the charges leveled against him. In a Marinette Eagle column published November 22nd, the charges of malfeasance had been an attempt to injure Landt politically, and had been orchestrated by "his political enemies."

From the Wisconsin State Journal, Nov. 22, 1897.

  With the charges dismissed by the Adams County district attorney and county board, Landt returned to his duties as Sparta school superintendent, continuing in that post into April 1899. Following a stint as superintendent of the Waupun state prison farm, Landt and his wife removed to Herman, Minnesota in 1911, where he became manager of a creamery, according to his obituary published in the Waukesha Daily Freeman. He died in Herman on October 12, 1926, at the age of 83. He was preceded in death by his wife Maggie in 1917, and both were interred at the Big Spring Cemetery in Big Spring, Wisconsin. Interestingly, Landt kept a diary of his life that extended from his Civil War service until his death, and the results of this diary were published in book form under the title Your Country Calls, decades after his death. 

                       Landt's obituary from the Waukesha Freeman, published on Oct. 16. 1926.