Friedrich (Frederick) Weyerhäuser (November 21, 1834 – April 4, 1914), also spelled Weyerhaeuser, was a

German-American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

timber mogul and founder of the Weyerhaeuser Company, which owns saw mills, paper factories, and other business enterprises, and large areas of

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

ed land. He is the eighth-richest American of all time, with a net worth of $85 billion in 2016 dollars. He was known as the "timber-king of the Northwest."

Biography

Friedrich was one of 11 children of Johann Weyerhäuser and his wife. The family supported itself by working a farm and a vineyard near Nieder-Saulheim in the independent

Grand Duchy of Hesse The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine (german: link=no, Großherzogtum Hessen und bei Rhein) was a grand duchy in western Germany that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Grand Duchy originally formed from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1806 ...

. Friedrich started attending the Lutheran school at Nieder-Saulheim when he was 6, and at 8 began helping on the farm. When he was 12, his father died, and Friedrich had to give up most of his studies to help out on the farm. The

Revolutions of 1848 in Germany In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

prompted several members of his family to emigrate to western

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. They sent back glowing letters describing the conditions they found. In 1852, at the age of 17, Weyerhäuser emigrated with a group of his family from Hesse to the United States. They landed in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in July and proceeded to Pennsylvania, settling at North East. Frederick went to work for an earlier immigrant in a brewery. After two years, he abandoned the brewing business, because, as he put it, he felt that a brewer "often becomes his own best customer." He then worked on a farm for a year. His share of the funds from the sale of the family farm in Germany enabled him to move on further west in search of opportunity, and 1856 found him in Rock Island, Illinois, working on the construction of the Rock Island and Peoria Railroad. After a short time, he entered the

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

of Mead, Smith and Marsh as a night fireman, quickly moving up to tallyman and then yard manager and salesman.Ritter, Luke
"Frederick Weyerhaeuser."
In ''Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present'', vol. 3, edited by Giles R. Hoyt. German Historical Institute. Last modified May 27, 2015. When the company opened a new yard in Coal Valley, he was sent to manage it. Though his yard prospered, the firm got into financial difficulties, and with savings from his salary Frederick bought the business. Thus he began doing business under his own name. With his brother-in-law,

Frederick Denkmann Frederick Denkmann (April 8, 1821 – March 2, 1905) was an American lumber baron based in Rock Island, Illinois. He teamed up with his brother-in-law Friedrich Weyerhäuser and formed Weyerhäuser-Denkmann Lumber Company. Biography Early life ...

, he formed the Weyerhaeuser-Denkmann Lumber Company and began to acquire interests, including some majority interests, in many other timber companies. He became the central point in what was later called the "Weyerhauser Syndicate," a network of lumber interests, "reputed to have almost a hundred partners, none of whom knew the business of the others," with Weyerhaeuser as the common link. In 1872, he established the Mississippi River Boom and Logging Co., an alliance that handled all the logs that were processed on the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

. In 1900, Weyerhäuser bought of timberland in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

from

James J. Hill James Jerome Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916) was a Canadian-American railroad director. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwes ...

and founded the Weyerhäuser Timber Company. One of the 30 factories in which he held an interest was Potlatch, later

Potlatch Corporation PotlatchDeltic Corporation (originally Potlatch Corp) is an American diversified forest products company based in Spokane, Washington. It manufactures and sells lumber, panels and particleboard and receives revenue from other assets such as mine ...

. He also owned interests in the

Boise Cascade Boise Cascade Company (), which uses the trade name Boise Cascade, is a North American manufacturer of wood products and wholesale distributor of building materials, headquartered in Boise, Idaho. with sales over $7.9 billion in 2021, it is trad ...

Corporation. The

Weyerhaeuser Weyerhaeuser () is an American timberland company which owns nearly of timberlands in the U.S., and manages an additional of timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada. The company also manufactures wood products. It operates as a real e ...

Company is still the world's largest seller of timber. In 1906, Weyerhäuser's business concerns entered the public eye when the Interstate Commerce Commission recommended to

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

that the lumber industry be investigated for possible anti-trust violations. Weyerhäuser ignored the resulting attention. Weyerhäuser married Sarah Elizabeth Bloedel on October 11, 1857. The couple had seven children: John P. Weyerhauser, Elise (Weyerhauser) Bancroft Hill, Margaret (Weyerhauser) Jewett, Apollonia (Weyerhauser) Davis, Charles A. Weyerhauser, Rudolph M. Weyerhauser, and Frederick E. Weyerhauser. In thanks to his home community, in 1904 he established a music hall in

Saulheim Saulheim is an ''Ortsgemeinde'' – a municipality belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'', a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Geography Location The municipality lies in Rhenish He ...

. Weyerhäuser was buried in the family mausoleum in Chippiannock Cemetery in Rock Island, Illinois. Weyerhäuser was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1978.

References

External links

* The
Weyerhaeuser Family Papers
an
F. Weyerhaeuser and Company Records
are available for research use at th
Minnesota Historical Society
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Weyerhauser, Friedrich 1834 births 1914 deaths German emigrants to the United States 18th-century American businesspeople Businesspeople in timber Weyerhaeuser People from Alzey-Worms American company founders American billionaires Burials in Illinois 19th-century American businesspeople

Biography

See also

References

Further reading

External links