Heinrich Grim was born on June 28, 1825, to Peter and Maria Hoffman Grim in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. He was the third of three children. But his mother died when he was only eight years old and his father died only three years later.
Heinrich became Henry, and he learned the barber trade growing up. In 1847, Henry was married to Sarah J. Dimmick in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, by Rev. Murphy, a Methodist minister. The couple soon had their first son, Zachary, followed by sons Winfield and George.
Meanwhile, in Illinois in the early 1850s, the railroad announced that its route would pass a mile-and-a-half to the north of the Wethersfield Colony. Wethersfield entrepreneurs acquired land around the rutted dirt road running from Wethersfield northward to Dixon and which crossed the planned rails. In the spring of 1854, they laid out the boundaries, streets and lots for the village of Berrien, albeit in unusually dry weather.
Soon after, the Kewanee House was built at the intersection of Third and Tremont Streets across Third from the planned train depot. But when the rains eventually came, nature created a slough north of that intersection while rendering Tremont just south of the intersection nearly impassible, a muddy morass. So, the first few businesses in the new village were mostly sprinkled along Main Street just south of the tracks.
It was then, in early 1855 when Berrien was renamed Kewanee, that the Grim family moved to the new village.
Henry Grim set up his barber and shaving saloon in one of the first two buildings put up on the east side of Tremont between Second and Third streets, available at a reasonable price due to the muddy conditions along Tremont. His family lived above the saloon on the second story of the building (at today’s 214 N. Tremont St.). The other building then on Tremont was next door to the south where J. H. Pinney and his brother operated a grocery store (at today’s 212 N. Tremont St.).
As Kewanee grew, so did the Grim family, adding Mary, Anna, Emma, Henry and Alvadore between 1857 and 1870. Eventually, the family moved to Second Street just east of Vine Street. They attended Kewanee’s Methodist Episcopal Church.
In 1865, Grim moved his saloon to the southeast corner of Second and Tremont streets. By the mid-1870s, Grim’s sons Zachery and Winfield took up the barber trade and joined him in the saloon. In addition, his daughter Mary teamed up with Mary Bennison to open a dressmaking business in the building just to the west of Grim’s saloon.
By 1876, the one-story building at Tremont and Second was replaced by a two-story structure, and Grim’s saloon was located on the second floor. He also manufactured hair switches and curls, and a hair restorative.
Grim spent 55 years tending to his adopted village’s hair care needs. At the time of his 50th wedding anniversary held at their home in Wethersfield in 1897, it was said that he had never missed a day cutting and trimming Kewaneeans’ hair and beards.
Henry Grim died at a daughter’s home in 1899 in Kewanee, a year after his wife died and only days before the calendar turned to the 20th century. He was survived by five of his children, one living in Colorado, three in Iowa and one in Kewanee.
In his obituary, Grim was described as possessed by a “cheerful, kindly disposition, and a man of much liberality.” Certainly, he was well-suited for his profession.
