Captain John Klepser

Captain John Klepser, who for the past twenty-five seasons has been in the employ of the Falcon Wood Club as master of their yacht Falcon, is a son of Frederick and Regina (Sterely) Klepser, who were natives of Wurtemburg, Germany. They emigrated to America in 1836, and settled in Tonawanda, N. Y., where our subject was born October 15, 1842. The father was a farmer in the Fatherland, and also followed that occupation for a time in this country.

After receiving a very ordinary education in his native place John Klepser, the subject of this sketch, worked on a farm until about the twentieth year of his age, and then, in the year 1862, began his sea-faring life as a deckhand on the Jennie-Bell, owned by John Nice, of Grand Island, at the end of the third season finding himself in the position of mate. In 1865 he was master of the tug Buffalo, of Port Day, near Niagara Falls, upon which he remained three seasons consecutively, the tug being sold at the end of the last season. The following seasons, 1868-69, he was made master of the harbor tugs Addie and Robert Cooper, and after two seasons in this employ, or in 1871, became master of the old steamyacht Falcon, owned by the Falcon Wood Club. In 1887 this tug was sold and replaced by a new one of the same name. Captain Klepser was made master of the new Falcon, and was in control of her in that capacity at the close of the season of 1896; thus he is serving his twenty-seventh season in one employ.

Captain Klepser was married on April 30, 1869, to Barbara Leib, and they have the following named children: Lydia now (1898) twenty-five years old; Frederick, twenty-three; Regina, twenty; Frank, eighteen; Florence, thirteen; Harold, ten; and Lillian and Luella, each six years of age. The son Frank is in the employ of the North Buffalo Planing Mill at Tonawanda, New York.

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Volume I

This version of Volume II is based, with permission, on the work of the great volunteers at the Marine Captains Biographies site. To them goes the credit for reorganizing the content into some coherent order. The biographies in the original volume are in essentially random order.

Some of the transcription work was also done by Brendon Baillod, who maintains an excellent guide to Great Lakes Shipwreck Research.