Arnold Krekel

From Philosopedia

Krekel, Arnold (14 March 1815 - 1888)

Krekel was an American judge who had been born near Langefeld on the Rhine in Prussia and who went with his Catholic parents in 1832 to America, settling in Missouri.

He was elected in 1852 to the Missouri State Legislature, served as a colonel during the Civil War, was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in 1865, and signed the ordinance of emancipation by which the slaves of Missouri were set free. He was instrumental in the founding of Lincoln University.

A pronounced agnostic, he was described in Putnam’s Four Hundred Years of Freethought.

Krekel when he realized he was about to die requested his wife not to wear mourning, saying that death was as natural as birth. His wife, Mattie Parry Krekel (Born 1840), was also a freethinker. In a Truth Seeker (15 February 1890) article, she wrote, “Freethought means, first of all, mental self-assertion.”

{BDF; FFRF; JM; PUT; RAT; RE; WWS}