Biography
Herman Kountze was born August 21, 1833, in Osnaburg, Ohio, one of twelve children born to Christian and Margaret Kountze. After leaving his father's mercantile business at the age of 26, Kountze moved to join his brother Augustus, who was a real estate agent in the new Omaha City, located on the eastern edge of the Nebraska Territory. Immediately the brothers organized the Kountze Brothers Bank and bought a large amount of land in the river towns along the Missouri River in Nebraska, with holdings in Brownville, Nebraska City, Tekamah, and Dakota City, and in Sioux City, Iowa. Eventually they invested throughout Nebraska, across Iowa, Minnesota, and the forests and grazing lands of east Texas, as well as in Chicago and Denver. In 1864, Kountze married Elizabeth Davis, the daughter of Thomas Davis, a founding pioneer of Omaha. In 1899, after his first wife died, he was married for a second time to Clara Sara Whitney Cotton.
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