My Genealogy Hound

Ferdinand Muench, a farmer, stock raiser and horticulturist of St. John’s Township, was born in Warren County in 1841, and is a son of Hon. Frederick and Louisa (Fritz) Muench, natives of Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, born in 1799 and 1812, respectively. The parents were married about 1831, and in 1834 came to the United States, settling in Warren County, Mo., where the father died in 1881, and the mother in 1887. Mr. Muench was a man of intelligence and ability, and was very popular among the Germans and Americans of his adopted State. From 1862 to 1866 he served as a member of the State Senate, and was one of the ablest members of that body; he also held various minor offices, and was an able correspondent to some of the leading periodicals of the country, being the author of a number of works on horticulture, religion, etc., and for a number of years he acted as editor of the horticultural department of the New York Agriculturist. He devoted his attention almost exclusively to his literary work, which ranked among the ablest and most practicable of the kind produced in the country; he was a prominent citizen of Warren County fifty years. Two of his sons served in the Union army, one of them falling at the battle of Wilson’s Creek. He was a stanch Republican, and earnestly defended its principles and the Union through his writings; he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln, and was one of the first Ger mans to locate in Warren County, being at the head of a company of his people who intended to form a colony in Missouri, but on reaching this country abandoned the idea. He was for many years a minister of the gospel, as were his ancestors for several generations. Ferdinand Muench was reared at home, attending the district school a few months each year, and the private institution of his father. At the breaking out of the war he enlisted in Company I, Third Missouri Infantry, for three months, participating in the battle of Wilson’s Creek and various minor engagements. He subsequently enrolled in Company A, Fifty-ninth Enrolled Missouri Militia as first lieutenant, serving until 1864, when he again joined the United States service in Company C, Forty-ninth Missouri Volunteer Infantry, operated in Missouri and all the Mississippi River States to the Gulf, participated in the siege of Mobile, Ala., and was mustered out at St. Louis in August, 1865. In 1866 he married Miss Emma, daughter of Charley and Bernhardine Himburg, early settlers of Franklin County, where Mrs. Muench was born. They are the parents of six children, viz.: Paulina L., Sophia M., Hugo C, Walter L., Cora I. and Julius F. F. The same year of his marriage Mr. Muench settled one mile below Dundee, where he has a fine and well improved farm of eighty-four acres. Politically a Republican, he cast his first vote for Lincoln in 1864. He is a member of the G. A. R.