My Genealogy Hound

HENRY DIETRICH is the genial proprietor of the Lehigh Valley Hotel, located on the corner of Second and New Streets, which has the reputation of being the most orderly and well conducted hotel in South Bethlehem. It stands on the site of the old Lehigh Valley Hotel and has been remodeled and greatly improved.

The subject of this sketch was born March 5, 1822, in Manheim Township, Lancaster County, this state. His grandfather, who bore the given name of Henry, was a native of Germany, and was one of the early settlers of Lancaster County, where he became a well-to-do agriculturist. He was a devoted adherent of the Lutheran faith, and was a practical business man. Adam Dietrich, our subject’s father, was a native of the same township as he of whom we write, and like his father devoted his life mainly to farming. Later he became interested in a hotel in Rohrerstown, Lancaster County, which he carried on successfully. In politics he voted with the Democratic party, and in religious faith was a Lutheran. At the time of his death, which occurred when he was over ninety-five years of age, he was the oldest man in the community where he dwelt. His wife, who was his devoted companion and help-mate for sixty years, died in her seventy-seventh year. Her maiden name was Mary Swote, and her birth occurred in Lancaster County, where her father was engaged in farming.

Henry Dietrich is the fifth in his father’s family, and two of his brothers took part in the Civil War. Our subject was reared to manhood on his father’s farm, and he obtained a fair education for that day in the common schools of the neighborhood. In Eden he learned the butcher’s trade, and later became a stock-dealer, shipping cattle to Philadelphia, where his brother Adam was a stock commission merchant. In 1877 he went to Fairville, where he first became identified with the hotel business, and the following year, going to Reading, took charge of the Market House, which he carried on successfully for four years. It was in 1882 that he came to South Bethlehem, buying the old Lehigh Valley Hotel, which he proceeded to modernize and greatly improve in every respect. He has the honor of having been one of the originators, and is now one of the stockholders, of the Mountain Water Company. A good business man, Mr. Dietrich looks after all the details connected with his hotel and makes it a point to promote the comfort of his guests in every way. Among his fellow-townsmen he is highly regarded, for he has the happy faculty of making friends of one and all.

In Lancaster County Mr. Dietrich was married to Miss Sarah Rockafield, a native of that county and daughter of a well-to-do farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Dietrich became the parents of three children, who are living. The eldest of these, Barton W., is engaged in business with his father; Harry A. R., whose record appears elsewhere in this volume, is an expert machinist and practical steam-fitter, engaged in business for himself; and Mary, who completes the family, resides at home.