BUHRER, STEPHEN (25 Dec. 1825-8 Dec. 1907), Democratic mayor of Cleveland from 1867-71 and 4-term city councilman (1855-57, 1863-67, 1874-76), was born to Johann Casper and Anna Maria Miller Buhrer on the Zoar farm in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. When his father died in 1829, he was bound to the Society of Separatists, who operated the communal farm at Zoar, until he came of age. Buhrer received education in evening classes and Sunday school, learned the coopering trade when he was 12, and left Zoar at 17 to work as a cooper in Cleveland. After a time as a traveling salesman, he returned to Cleveland in the late 1840s and opened his own coopering shop. He sold the shop in 1853, and by 1856 was in business rectifying and distilling alcohol, expanding that business to manufacture gentian bitters and sewer gas traps, and bottle of mineral waters. By the turn of the century, he was a wholesale distributor of alcoholic beverages.
Buhrer served 3 terms on the city council and was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1867. He urged the building of the Cleveland House of Correction & Workhouse, later serving on its board of directors. After his second mayoral term, Buhrer returned to the city council for another term. He remained in business until he died in Cleveland. Buhrer married Eva Maria Schneider in 1848, and had 3 children, John, Mary Jane, and Lois Catherine (Mrs. Frank Q. Barstow). After the death of his wife in Mar. 1889, he married Marguerite Paterson.