Charles Frederick BLUNCK

BLUNCK, ATZ

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 2/7/2009 at 03:05:24

CHARLES FREDERICK BLUNCK

Charles Frederick BLUNCK ranks among the most successful farmers and lamb dealers in Larimer County. In June, 1886, he came to Fort Collins and has since engaged in agricultural pursuits, owning a farm of one hundred and seventy-five acres three miles southeast of Fort Collins, upon which he has made valuable improvements in fencing and ditching and which he devotes to raising alfalfa for feed. He also owns another farm seven miles southeast of this town, in Harmony District, consisting of eighty acres, which he rents. He was among the first to engage in the lamb-feeding industry in this section of the state and for three years or more he has also engaged in dealing in sheep, which he brings here from Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico and southern Colorado. He feeds about four thousand and handles twenty-five or thirty thousand per annum, raising for their feed almost one thousand tons of alfalfa.

The BLUNCK family is of German origin. Henry BLUNCK, father of our subject, was born in Sybeck, Germany, and removed to Davenport, Iowa, where he followed the carpenter's trade. From there he went to Winona, Minnesota, where his son, our subject, was born December 23, 1856. In that city he engaged in business as a contractor and builder for a time, also homesteaded a claim near the town, but on account of trouble with the Indians he deemed it best to return to Davenport, where he resumed carpentering. During the war he enlisted in the Sixth Iowa Infantry and was injured in the service. While in Germany he had served for four years in the Danish war. In 1868 he moved to Johnson County, settling on a farm near Iowa City, then moved to Ringgold County, Iowa, where he died in 1895, at the age of seventy-five years. He was a member of a Grand Army post. His wife, Dora, bore the same family name as his own, but was not related; she was born and married in Germany, and now lives in Ringgold County, Iowa. Of her seven children all but two are living, three of these in Iowa, and two in Colorado, John being near Loveland.

In 1868 the subject of this sketch [Charles Frederick BLUNCK] accompanied his parents to Johnson County, where he attended the district schools. At the age of twenty-two he began farming independently, remaining in Iowa until 1886, when he came to Fort Collins. Politically he is an adherent of Republican principles. He was a charter member of the Larimer County Sheep Feeders' Association, in the work of which he takes a warm interest. Fraternally he is identified with the Woodmen of the World. His marriage, which took place in Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa, December 18, 1883, united him with Miss Mary ATZ, who was born in Switzerland and accompanied her parents to Iowa when she was twelve years of age. They are the parents of four daughters, Viola G., Elva M., Mary A. and Ruth D.

Portrait and Biographical Record of Denver and Vicinity, Colorado Pp. 1124-25. 1898.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, February of 2009