The Randolph Society Foundation Board is pleased to announce that Harry Sickmeyer, a visionary who worked hard to make rural electrification a reality, will be their second inductee into the 2023 class of honorees.
Sickmeyer was born in the small town of Welge in Randolph County on Sept. 25, 1892. He was the fourth of seven children of Heinrich Sickmeyer and his wife, Caroline Welge Sickmeyer, both of whom were the children of immigrants from Germany. He left school after finishing the eighth grade and went to work on his family’s farm. Life for the German-American farming community changed rapidly in the years that followed.
For more on Sickmeyer, please see this week’s print edition.