by

                                                  Rob Kinney

    William Raab was born to John and Johanna Raab on August 1, 1854. Following the family tradition, he was apprenticed as a potter. After his eighteenth birthday, he came to America with friends and encouraged his family to follow. He worked with his father in the family pottery shop and, in 1881, took out a patent for a double and triple flue chimney. [1] These chimneys became an important part of the Raab business, now known as J. Raab and Son. Later that decade, John Raab bought his son's share of the company, and William moved to Waterloo where he continued his pottery. [2] He married Anna Benser in 1899, and they had six children. William is also remembered from having created the Rebecca vase, a clay piece that measured between 3/4 and 5/8 inches tall and could hold between 3 to 7 seven drops of water. What made these vases unique was that the clay was taken from the Holy Land and each had the Lord's Prayer incised on the side. [3] William gave these to prominent people in Cedar Falls and throughout the world, including William Jennings Bryan, King George V of England, and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. Raab died at age 82, in July 1937. 

Footnotes

1. Mary Logan Sweet, Stoneware in Cedar Falls, (Cedar Falls: Cedar Falls Historical Society,
1984), 13. 

2. Sweet, 14. 

3. Sweet, 21. 

Bibliography

Hake, Herb. 101 Stories of Cedar Falls. Cedar Falls: The Record, 1977. 

Sweet, Mary Logan. Stoneware in Cedar Falls. Cedar Falls: Cedar Falls Historical Society,
1984.