Santa Clara County
Biographies
BALTASAR KUNDERT
That men from many climes, and representing many shades of thought, are forwarding the industries of Santa Clara county, is an advantage shared in common with the entire west, and one upon which its unusual success and supremacy largely depends. Fully appreciated by thinking minds is the stability and assurance of the sons of Switzerland, large numbers of whom have left their hemmed in horizon, and brought the vigor and fair mindedness of their ancestors to share the prosperity of a region which has no superior in any country in the world. Typical of this class of citizen is Baltasar Kundert, born in Canton Glarus, Switzerland, May 4, 1827, and who, after a half century of dairying and farming in different parts of this county, commands the esteem of all, and enjoys a competence in keeping with his industrious and honorable career.
The Kundert family was well known in Canton Glarus, where were born also Abraham and Sarah (Fergile) Kundert, the parents of Baltasar. In a typical Swiss village the father pursued his occupation of fuel manufacture, thereby providing fair advantages for his thirteen children, seven of whom were sons, and all of whom attained maturity. Baltasar, the seventh of the children, was ten years old when his father died in 1838, at the age of fifty, and he afterward assisted with the support of his mother and the younger children, remaining in his native land until his twenty-first year. Locating in Green county, Wis., after a successful voyage by sea and land during the summer of 1848, he engaged in farming, an occupation in which he had become expert in his native land, and which he had followed since the death of his father. In the effort to become permanently located, he removed to near Council Hill, Wis., in 1851, later settling in Iowa, from where he returned to Green county, and was eventually joined by his mother.
March 20, 1853, Mr. Kundert was engaged by John Ross to drive his cattle across the plains to California, an opportunity which he gladly accepted, traveling with his employer as far as the Sierra mountains. Here he joined Massey Thomas, one of the prominent pioneers of this valley, and for whom he worked as a dairyman on a farm one and a half miles south of Gilroy, for about two years. The first cheese manufactured in this part of the state came from the Thomas ranch, and on several occasions Mr. Kundert was sent to the mines with a supply of this article, regarded by the miners as a rare culinary treat. Embarking in the dairying business on his own responsibility thirty miles southeast of Gilroy, at Canada Los Murtus, Mr. Kundert removed in 1859 to Salinas, making that his dairying headquarters until the fall of 1860. The same year he married Sarah Kane, who was born in Ireland in 1823, and who came to America when young, living for two years in New York, and coming to California in 1858. Shortly after this marriage, the young people settled in French Redwoods, west of Gilroy, where their land proved productive, and their dairy a money-making proposition. In 1881 Mr. Kundert removed to his present farm of one hundred acres two miles east of Gilroy, where he engaged in dairying for two years, but has since devoted his land to general farming and stock-raising. Many fine improvements attest his skill and progressiveness and in a community where he has risen from comparative poverty to influence and a sound financial position, he is regarded as a successful farmer, a devoted husband and father, and a representative of good morals, industry, and sobriety. His influence in the Catholic Church is backed by strict observance of its demands, and liberal contributions to its societies and charities. As a Democrat he is loyal to the best tenets of his party. Three children have added incentive to continued well doing, the oldest of whom, Abraham, has been his father's able assistant on the farm ever since his graduation from Heald's Business College in 1887. The younger Mr. Kundert possesses his father's business sagacity and ambition, and is now in the prime of life, having been born November 27, 1861.
Transcribed
1-23-16 Marilyn
R. Pankey.
ญญญญSource:
History of the State of California &
Biographical Record of Coast Counties, California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A.
M., Pages 956-957. The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
ฉ 2016 Marilyn R.
Pankey.