Tanya and Peter -

Great research, Tanya.

It is surprising that we know so little about Muth seeing as how he was one of the biggest honey and bee dealers of the latter 1800's.  Your quote below answers one of the questions I found mysterious.  In a post card written by Muth to Langstroth in 1892 he had crossed out " and Son" from the company logo of "Chas F. Muth and Son."  He communicated with Langstroth often and I found some of these letters in the archives of the American Philosophical Society. He had five children, but apparently only one - Charles Jr. - entered the business that was reputed to be worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars" at his death.

In 1898 Muth commited suicide that according the American Bee Keeper was caused by having sunstroke a few years earlier (??).  In that same year he, he wrote lamenting the slow demand for honey - 4-6 cents per pound for extracted honey and 8-13 cents per pound for comb honey.

Larry Krengel


> The last time I met him was at the State fair, last fall, in Indianapolis. He came and talked with me as much as two hours, and told me, among other things, how he had suffered when his son died. The world had never seemed the same since. He also tried to speak cheering words to me, and did all that his big sympathetic heart could to lift the burden from mine. It is too bad that we do not know how to take better care than we do of these frail minds and bodies of ours and, knowing it, do it.

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