Friedrich was born in 1834, in a small village in Hesse. He became one of the giants of American business life, but that is getting ahead of the story. His parents were wine growers, using their farm of about 15 acres. The father died when Friedrich was not yet 12 years old, and a year later Friedrich had to quit school and work on the farm. He had no brothers, only four sisters, so he was perhaps sorely needed on the farm. He came to America shortly after 1850, or when he was a little more than 16 years of age.
For a while he worked as a day laborer near Erie, Pennsylvania, where he married Elizabeth Bladel. He moved to Rock Island, Illinois, and worked on a railroad. He was also a carter. Above all, he was a quiet, shy person who listened and kept his eyes open. He quickly comprehended what it might take to get ahead in America. In one of the few interviews that he ever gave in his life, he said, “The secret lay simply in my will to work. I never watched the clock and never stopped before I had finished what I was working on.”
His bosses entrusted him with the direction of a sawmill in Rock Island. Then he was put in charge of a timber yard. When the company he was working for was ruined in the panic of 1857, he was able to buy the timber yard and the sawmill with the little money he had saved. Soon he was buying logs from the shores of the Mississippi and acquiring more sawmills. In 1864, he began to buy pine tracts in Wisconsin. Eventually, he could take a standing tree to the customer in the form of lumber using only his own facilities. Competition was severe, but by 1880 Friedrich was the winner and he had never played the game improperly.
He acquired still more land in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. He took the view that he was not working for himself but for his grandchildren. He bought more than three million acres of timber land from the railroads. When reporters found out that one man owned so much timber land, they wrote, “He was the mysterious man . . . it is astonishing that such enormous wealth could be acquired without the public knowing anything about it . . . ” Certainly Friedrich did not make any effort to inform anyone. Another author wrote, “He had a special talent for amassing millions in utter silence.” His name was not to be found in the “ Dictionary of American Biographies ”. “ Who’s Who in America ” discovered him in 1911, only three years before his death.
Even while he held more timberland than any other person in America, he held rather liberal views and showed great concern for his workers. He impressed them upon the necessity of protecting even the smallest tree. When the National German American Bank was in difficulties in 1893, he made it solvent again within a few months.
When Friedrich left Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century as a youth, perhaps it was only Frau Weyerhäuser who expected great things from him.
(23 Jun 03)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.