Santa
Clara County
Biographies
RUDOLPH
MUENDER
Sunnyvale, the beautiful and promising, owes much of its advancement to Rudolph Muender, one of its earliest residents and a representative German-American citizen. The home which his industry and ability has created on the corner of Pastoria and Evelyn avenues was purchased in 1896, when there was little promise of even a village, and the twelve acres comprising its orchard and lawn was a barren field, near which had settled but few aspirants for horticultural or other honors. The years have witnessed more changes than come to the average in their journeyings toward success, and to-day there blooms and fills the air with delightful fragrance two hundred cherry, three hundred peach, and six hundred and thirty prune trees, all of which contribute to a harvest as gratifying as it is excellent and remunerative. The cottage which furnishes shelter to the owner and his genial wife, formerly Charlotte (Schrader) Muender, is artistic and comfortable, an around it centers as delightful a home and business life as one would find in a day’s travel.
In Holzminden, Brunswick, Germany, where Mr. Muender was born April 17, 1854, the family name and prestige is still maintained by his brother, who, since the death of his father, Christian, has operated the large retail and wholesale store established by the older man. The family name is associated with the commercial and industrial importance of the northern dukedom, with its financial strength, and its example of unswerving integrity. Mr. Muender is the second of three sons and two daughters, and in his youth he was trained by a typical German mother, wise in the arts of home-making, cookery, and general domesticity, and who, before her marriage to his father, was Augusta Creutzburg, of Hanover, Germany. He was educated in the public schools and at the University of Brunswick, and gained his first business experience as manager of a large German estate. With this practical equipment he came to the United States, and in San Francisco, which he reached in the fall of 1880, worked in a grocery store for about a year. He then became identified with the compressed yeast company of San Francisco as traveling salesman for a couple of years, and in June, 1883, bought eighty acres of land in Santa Clara county, upon which he engaged in ranching until 1895. Disposing of his farm at a profit, he paid a visit to his friends in Germany, toured the rest of Europe, and came back to America in 1896 greatly benefited by his travels. The same year he came to Sunnyvale and purchased his present farm, to the development of which he has devoted zeal and enterprise, and the study of a thoughtful and earnest mind. He has taken a profound interest in the upbuilding (sic) of Sunnyvale, built and still owns the Sunnyvale waterworks, and materially assisted with the erection of the public school in the town, while a member and clerk of the board of trustees. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity and is active in the lodge of the Eastern Star of Mountainview, (sic) and a helpful and generous member of the Lutheran Church. In Mr. Muender the community has a broad-minded, earnest, and painstaking citizen, and a man who embodies the safe and reliable characteristics of the German people.
Transcribed
By: Cecelia M. Setty.
Source: History of the State of California &
Biographical Record of Coast Counties, California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A.
M., Page 689. The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2015 Cecelia M. Setty.