Johannes (John) Hoelzer was born on 6 August 1868 [tombstone records 1869] in Norka, the son of Johann Georg Hölzer (born 1840 in Norka) and Christina Jörg who was born in Norka in 1845. The Hoelzer family immigrated to the United States in 1886.
John married Margaretha Giebelhaus on 2 November 1890 in Nebraska. Margaretha was born in Norka on 6 August 1871.
In 1905, John completed his theological studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary and served a congregation in Park Ridge, Illinois. In 1906, he was called to serve a small congregation of 90 members in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Rev. Hoelzer was then called to the First German Congregational Church in Loveland, Colorado where he served from 1910 to 1916.
In 1924, John Hoelzer, a general missionary with the German Congregational Church, organized six congregations while visiting in Argentina.
Margaretha died on December 14, 1925. Rev. Hoelzer married Julia Graf on May 15, 1927.
By 1930, Rev. and Mrs. Hoelzer were living in Denver, Colorado where he served the German Clark Congregational Church.
Rev. and Mrs. Hoelzer came to serve the Hope Congregational Church in Bethune, Colorado in 1935, remaining until 1938. Rev. Hoelzer returned to serve the First German Congregational Church in Loveland from 1938 to 1939.
Rev. John Hoelzer died on February 24, 1944 in Fort Collins, Colorado and was buried at the Grandview Cemetery.
- Congregational Church (Wikipedia).
- Rev. John Hoelzer (FindAGrave).
- Hölzer, John, "The Earliest Volga Germans in Sutton, Nebraska." Illustrierter Kirchenbote Kalendar, 1927 (reprinted in Work Paper of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, No. 16, December 1974).