Biography of Gottfried John ("GJ") Kunz
by Ronald W. Galloway Sr.
edited by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
"Johann Gottfried Kunz, the fourth son and sixth child of John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz, was born 30 June 1853 on the family farm "auf dem Moos" in the hamlet Riedern in Diemtigen Valley in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. He was christened in the local Swiss Reformed parish church in the village of Diemtigen on August 7th. Although he was given the name "Johann Gottfried" at the time of his christening, he was known by the second of his given names, as was generally the case during the 19th century in the Swiss canton of Bern.
It was customary in the old Republic of Bern for a male child to have two godfathers and one godmother. In keeping with this tradition, John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz selected the following godparents for Gottfried: David Wampfler Jr., living on the farm "im Riedli" in the hamlet Zwischenflueh in Diemtigen Valley; Johannes Itten, a citizen of the community of Wimmis; and Magdalena Kunz, Gottfried's aunt and one of John Kunz II'sisters.
Nothing is known about Gottfried's early years growing up in the hamlet of Riedern, where he attended grade school.
According to family history, it was John Kunz II, Gottfried's father, who first heard about Mormons and their faith healings through the laying on of hands. Because his sister Rosina (known in the family as Rosa) suffered from an unknown spinal illness and knowing that she would be afflicted throughout her lifetime, John II wrote his father a letter and told him of his hearsay knowledge.
About a week before his ninth birthday in June of 1862, Gottfried's aunt Rosa and his paternal grandfather, Johannes Kunz I, were baptized as Mormons by Ulrich Buhler, who lived near Thun and was the presiding elder in the Oberland region. Their conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was something that caused immediate disruption in the Kunz family and greatly affected Gottfried's life.
Upon learning of the conversion of his father and sister, John II became extremely critical and rebellious about their acceptance of Mormonism, as did many other relatives, friends and neighbors. John II specifically expressed his anger at having written his father about Mormon beliefs.
How did John Kunz II come to learn of the Mormons? In December of 1862, he was working as a cheesemaker in Amsoldingen near Thun; perhaps he was already employed there in the springtime and heard about Mormon activity in the area. The fact that he wrote his father a letter to tell him about the Mormons would seem to indicate that he was not in the Diemtigen Valley.
It seems most likely that Gottfried's godfather – David Wampfler Jr. – could have been the one who first told John Kunz II about the Mormons because godparents were nearly always among the closest friends, family or associates of an infant's parents.
David Wampfler Jr. was a nephew of one of his own godfathers, school master Jakob Wampfler Sr., who died of pneumonia in the spring of 1850 in the schoolmaster's apartment in the village of Oppligen near Thun. Four years later, Margaretha Boss Wampfler, Jakob's widow, was baptized by Jacob Foutz Secrist, the first Mormon missionary to preach in Canton Bern. Some two months after her conversion, Elder Secrist baptized Ulrich Buhler and his wife, Anna Burgdorfer Buhler.
The vast distances between the scattered Mormons living in the Bernese Oberland prevented their meeting together on a regular basis. Nearly a year after Johannes I and his daughter Rosa had been baptized, Ulrich Buhler and a fellow companion came to visit the Kunz family on the "Schwand" farm at Meniggrund in Zwischenflueh. News that the Mormon emissaries were in the Diemtigen Valley spread quickly. Neighbors of John Kunz II in Riedern – nearly a 2 hour walk down the canyon from Zwischenflueh – confronted him and they together organized a small mob of local men who marched up to Zwischenflueh in order to run the Mormon elders out of the valley.
The old door on the "Schwand" home was built in two sections, enabling the top half to be opened without opening the bottom half. Upon hearing the noise of the group gathered at the entrance to his home, Johannes Kunz I opened the top half of the door and was confronted by neighbors, relatives and those he had thought to be his friends. The disorderly crowd informed Johannes that they wanted the Mormon missionaries to immediately leave the area.
Johannes was particularly disturbed to see his son from Riedern at the rear of the hostile group and emphatically told John II to return to his home and family. Johannes I talked to the others in the mob and finally they left without further bothering Elder Buhler and those gathered in the "Schwand" home.
Although the inhabitants of Zwischenflueh and the other hamlets in the Diemtigen Valley remained bitter and hostile toward the Mormons, representatives of the Church were able to make visits to the Kunz family without being molested. Through the renewed contact with Elder Buhler and other converts, twin Catherine Kunz was baptized in Lake Thun in the summer of 1863. A number of other relatives were baptized in the following months and years.
It was Ulrich Buhler who on 26 August 1866 baptized 13-year old Gottfried Kunz, the first of John II's ten children to join the Mormons. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the circumstances surrounding his conversion, but it is particularly significant because it shows the strong influence and activity of the family members already in the Church, as well as the growing division of the family as some of them affiliated themselves with Mormonism.
How and when John Kunz II learned of Gottfried's Mormon baptism is also unknown. However, John II's attitude toward Mormonism prior to 1869 is well documented, thus making it certain that GJ was baptized without his father's approval. During his mid-teenage years, GJ's relationship to his father was definitely very strained.
In mid-November of 1868, nearly six and one-half years after the baptism of Johannes I and his daughter Rosa, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz, Johannes I's wife, was baptized. Grandson John Kunz III, GJ's oldest brother, and his wife, Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz, were baptized at the same time in the cold waters of the Meniggrund Creek just below the "Schwand" family home, all three being baptized by mission president Karl G. Maeser.
Those three baptisms kindled additional anguish for John II and his wife in Riedern. In an attempt to convince their son of the grave mistake he had made in joining the Mormons, John II and Rosina asked John III to come to Riedern and get them a load of wood for the winter.
While at their home, they asked John III numerous questions and tried to prove from their understanding of the Bible that he had made an error in having been baptized. From that which he had learned from the missionaries and through his own studying, John III defended his decision with the scriptures. When John II realized that his efforts were futile, he became angry and raised points based on slander and falsehoods. Nevertheless, before John III left he bore a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel.
Was GJ at home during John III's visit in Riedern? It is well possible, indeed most likely. Certainly his own conversion some two years before had pricked John II's self-esteem. However, it also seems to be most certan that it was the sincerity of John II's two Mormon sons (GJ and John III), his parents (Johannes I and Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz) and twin sisters (Rosa and Catherine) that touched him sufficiently to agree to meet with the missionaries and listen to their message.
Willard B. Richards and a local elder made their way through the mid-winter snow to Riedern. In spite of Elder Richards' broken German and the translations of his companion, John II and his wife understood the teachings. On 27 February 1869 they were baptized along with their daughter Catherine ("Kaeti") in the icy waters of the nearby Kirel Creek. In the following months, a number of the other members of the family were also baptized.
Despite his earlier having vigorously opposed the Mormons, John II experienced a drastic change in spirit and became a staunch supporter of the doctrines which were at first new to him. Aware of the immigration to Utah of earlier Mormon converts in the region, John II stipulated at the time of his conversion that he would be baptized only upon condition that he not be asked to emigrate from Switzerland.
Numerous inhabitants of the Diemtigen Valley had indeed emigrated during the first half of the 19th century, many of them going to Russia, as did three of John II's cousins along with several other relatives, friends and associates. As a respected Simmental cheesemaker, John II could have at any time taken advantage of such an opportunity, but apparently never seriously considered such an option.
His conversion to Mormonism caused him to change his thinking and within a short time he and his wife soon began making plans to immigrate to Utah with their family.
At the beginning of July 1870, 47 year-old John Kunz II bid goodbye to his aged Mormon parents, his eldest married son and married daughter, both of whom were Mormons, and his non-Mormon siblings, sister (Magdalena) – Gottfried's godmother – and brother (Christian), and their families, as well as other relatives, neighbors and friends. Along with his wife and their eight single children as well as his twin sisters and other Mormon converts in the Diemtigen Valley, they departed their native home to embark on their immigration to Utah.
The emigrants met in Basel at the Red Ox Inn on July 5th and departed the next morning via railroad for Mannheim, where they arrived that same evening and were joined by several German Mormon converts. On July 7th the emigrant party boarded the Rhine steamer "Viktoria" and traveled to Duesseldorf, where they changed boats and continued to Rotterdam, staying overnight there in the City of Antwerp Inn.
On Saturday evening, 9 July 1870, they boarded the steamer "Lord Cardigan" and crossed the English Channel, arriving in Grimsby on Monday morning. They left that town shortly thereafter and arrived in Liverpool that same evening about 5 p.m. and were permitted to embark at once on the ship "Manhattan" which sailed for New York on July 13th.
GJ turned 17 just before he left Switzerland. His travels to Britain, crossing the Atlantic and then the long train journey to Utah were – without doubt – something he never forgot. The emigrants were met in Farmington, Utah, by the entire First Presidency (Brigham Young and his counselors George Albert Smith and Daniel Hanmer Wells), who shook hands with each of them. That news and learning of their safe arrival in Zion was a source of great comfort to Johannes I and Rosina Katharina, as well as to John III and Magdalena and the other Mormons in the area of Zwischenflueh. And, in accordance with the opinion of the time, Johannes Kunz I expressed his special gratitude "…for seeing the deliverance from Babylon of such a large number all at once…of his nearest blood relatives."
Mormon leaders asked the family to settle in the Bear Lake Valley, where their cheesemaking would be of importance to numerous pioneer settlers in that region. In August the family headed north and while camped for the evening at Wellsville, GJ and three of his brothers – Christian, Samuel and David – walked to Providence to see Joseph and Susanna Klossner Herzog and their family. Susanna, a first cousin of Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz (GJ's paternal grandmother), had been baptized in the fall of 1863 by Ulrich Buhler, and immigrated to Utah in 1866.
Joseph Herzog convinced the Kunz's not to settle in the Bear Lake Valley that fall but to wait until springtime. He offered to go there with them that fall to get logs with which to build a house the next spring. In his account of the family's move to Bear Lake, Robert Kunz, GJ's youngest brother, comments that "Mr. Herzog, Christian, Gottfried and David had gone over the fall before and got logs out for the two rooms. When we got to Ovid [in the spring of 1871], Herbert Horlsey and John Ulrich Stucki came with an axe and a saw to help us build the cabin. They put up a room a day. Father, Samuel and David helped these two men do this work."
Why not Christian and GJ? Christian had married Eliza Buhler (daughter of early Bernese Mormon convert Ulrich Buhler) in December of 1870 and was no longer living with his parents. GJ, as will be shown, was working in Utah.
It was during the winter of 1870/71 that 67-year old Johannes Kunz I contracted pneumonia , which caused his death in the old "Schwand" farm house on 17 February 1871. It is difficult to sense the division of the otherwise close family as they gathered for the funeral service in the little cemetery at Zwischenflueh. In the cortege that followed the horse-drawn casket down the precipitous canyon path between Meniggrund and the valley floor, Johannes' non-Mormon children and grandchildren joined with their Mormon mother and grandmother and mingled with John III and Magdalena as well as with the mixed congregation of Mormon and Swiss Reformed relatives and friends.
Following the death of Johannes I, John III and his family moved from the neighboring "Lower Blatten" farm to the "Schwand" home where his grandmother lived. In October of 1871 Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz gave birth to a second daughter, Magdalena Matilda Kunz, who lived only a month. For a second time the Reverend Johann Gottfried Kopp in Diemtigen noted in the parish registers that the infant had not been christened in the Reformed Church because the father "belongs to the Mormon sect," similar to what he had written in July of 1869 when he recorded the birth of John Kunz IV.
Only a month after Magdalena Matilda's burial, the family filed down to the Zwischenflueh cemetery for a third time that year when Magdalena Kunz Wiedmer – John II's eldest sister who died a month before her 39th birthday – was buried.
It took several weeks for the news of the three deaths in the immediate family in Zwischenflueh to reach the Bear Lake Valley. Exactly when John III made definite plans to immigrate with his family and his widowed grandmother is not known. Not only a military obligation prevented John III from emigrating as soon as he had hoped to go; the money necessary to finance the voyage had to be raised.
A 20th-century Kunz family history written by Oliver and Ezra Kunz, Thekla Kunz Walk and Maxine Kunz Blaser significantly ascertains that "Gottfried, Christian and Samuel later helped finance John's trip, Gottfried doing the biggest part." At some point between helping to get out house logs near Ovid in the fall of 1870 and the family of John II moving from Cache Valley to Ovid in the spring of 1871, 17-year old Gottfried went to the south Salt Lake area to work as a miner, presumably in the Emma Silver Mine near Alta in Little Cottonwood canyon.
In a biographical account of her father, Christian Kunz, Ida Kunz Boss wrote: "After their marriage [in Salt Lake City in December of 1870], Christian and Eliza went back to Idaho and lived by Aspen Creek and worked for Charles C. Rich, caring for sheep and feeding cattle. The following year he worked in the Cottonwood mines to earn money to secure passage for his brother John to bring his family to America from Switzerland."
Alta had been founded about 1865 in order to house miners working in the Emma Silver Mine in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Although rich silver ore had once been obtained in the Emma Silver Mine, its fraudulent sale in 1871 to British investors was the cause for the US ambassador to Great Britain – a director of the mining company – being recalled.
Gottfried Kunz had been working in the Cottonwood canyon mines for perhaps a year, maybe even longer, when his older brothers Christian and Samuel also went there to work as miners. At that time, communication between the Kunz brothers in Idaho and Utah could only take place through letter writing. GJ no doubt thus learned of John III's financial need in order to help pay the immigration costs for his family and, presumably, also for his 70-year old grandmother Rosina Katharina. GJ's letters obviously convinced his brothers that the needed cash could be earned through working in the mines.
GJ was barely 19 and had only been in the US for two years. Although he went to Bear Lake in the fall of 1870 to help get out house logs, he thereafter was apparently only there for an occasional visit because he was working in the mines. Despite his young age, he was able to help in doing the biggest part financially to get John III and Magdalena, their three children and also Grandma Rosina Katharina to America from Switzerland. Gottfried was also the link which enabled Christian and Samuel to get the necessary work in the mines which they needed in 1871/72.
At the beginning of July in 1873, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz bade her son and her grandchildren in Zwischenflueh farewell and departed Zwischenflueh, accompanied by John III, Magdalena and their three children. Two years before his death, John III looked back and commented, "Thankful to the Lord for preserving our lives up to our arrival in Zion, being my grandmother was a fellow passenger in my care in the seventy-first year of her life, and my wife with ruined health and three small children, and rejoicing to meet Father, Mother, seven brothers and one sister all well, we proceeded to start pioneer life. We built the first house in the Bern district, Bear Lake Co., Idaho, which we used for a dwelling the following year, but my wife leaving us thru her death on May 22, 1874, which brought an entire change into our family affairs, having to leave my children in the care of relatives and seeing that time would bring a barrier between my children and myself, I married my deceased wife's sister Sophie to fill at least in part the place of a mother to my little children, which she vey nobly did. From that day I married her, October 26, 1874, to the latter part of the year 1888, I married four more times, which gave me six wives in all, four of which bore me 25 children."
Up until 1874, Gottfried was a part of the immediate Kunz family circle, having what appears to be normal interactions with his folks and other family members, including going up to Ovid in 1870 to get out house logs for building a house the following spring, and giving financial aid to help his brother John's family and his grandmother pay for their immigration in 1873. He enjoyed a normal, caring and helpful relationship with everyone in his family.
After 1874/75, all interaction seems to have come to a halt, and there is virtually no mention of him in anybody's written histories nor does any kind of an autobiographical account exist. Why did GJ suddenly estrange himself from his family and move away?
It seems most likely that Gottfried's intention to marry in the late fall of 1874 was the cause for his long break in family ties. In October of 1874, at the time that John III and Sophia Straubhaar went to Salt Lake City to be married in the old Endowment House, GJ went along with his fiancée – Magdalena Linder – to also be married. They stopped along the way for a night's stay – perhaps in Smithfield, where Aunt Catherine Kunz Roberts ( a sister of John II) lived – and during the night, Gottfried literally disappeared in the proverbial "night fog." John III and the two women proceeded to Salt Lake City, where John was married to Sophia on October 26th by Apostle Daniel H. Wells who presided there from 1868 to 1884 and performed marriages and administered other sacred church ordinances.
Exactly one week later, after having "counseled" with Apostle Wells, John Kunz III then married Magdalena Linder, who had initially been engaged to marry Gottfried Kunz. Once again, no further details whatsoever are known about this significant incident in GJ's life.
In October of 1874, GJ was 21 years old; his intended bride-to-be was just a couple of weeks short of turning 35. Was this difference of some 14 years in age any kind of factor for Gottfried's action? No one knows.
John III's first wife, Magdalena Straubhaar, was some seven years her husband's senior, i.e. two and one-half years older than Magdalena Linder. Towards the end of 1872, 21-year old brother Samuel Kunz had married Elizabeth Haenni, who was just a couple of months short of her 33rd birthday. As a note of comparison, the Kunz brothers' mother, Rosina Knutti Kunz, was some three and one-half years older than their father.
For whatever reason, still unknown, Gottfried's marriage plans failed; he abandoned his fiancee and apparently went back to working as a miner.
In accordance with apostolic counsel, John Kunz III became a polygamist only a week after marrying his second wife. One can only speculate on the discussion between Apostle Wells and John III. Through marrying Magdalena Linder, John perhaps tried to help right Gottfried's wrong. Fact is that John III returned to Bern, Idaho, as the first polygamist in the Kunz family. Surely this must have created an awkward, uncomfortable situation for GJ and could very well explain his bizarre change of attitude towards his family and the separation from them.
Gottfried never married nor, as far as known, did he ever own any property. He remained a miner throughout his life.
At the time of the 1880 US census, Gottfried Kunz was living in Midway, Utah, and noted as being a mineral miner, the last along with seven others, as well as the Irish-born mine superintendant, three mining engineers and a Chinese-born cook, all living in what was enumerated as dwelling number 106, presumably some kind of a barracks-like building. Whether or not this group of men actually mined in Midway is unknown. Fact is that by the 1880s, the mines in nearby Park City were of economic importance in the Midway area.
No known record or history reveals why the early part of Gottfried's career as a miner took place in Midway, Utah. His previous experience in laboring in the Cottonwood canyon mines could very well have been the reason why he knew that work might be available for him in the Midway area.
Or, is it possible that GJ went there because that is where Ulrich Buhler was living? Forty-nine year old Ulrich Buhler arrived in the United States along with his wife and other family members in 1872, two years after Gottfried Kunz's own immigration. Could it be that when Gottfried – for whatever reason – abruptly abandoned his marriage plans in 1874 that he was convinced that outside of his family circle, he could still turn to Ulrich Buhler without fear of being shunned or rejected?
Ulrich Buhler, who had been known by his nickname "tobacco Ueli" prior to his having been baptized as a Mormon, was one of the stalwart early Mormon leaders in Switzerland. As a result of the persecution by Reverend Karl Howald and the Swiss Reformed parish consistory court in Sigriswil in 1854, Mormon missionary Jacob F. Secrist was banned from Switzerland and given a police escort to the Swiss border adjoining St. Louis, France, near Basel.
Shortly thereafter, mission president Daniel Tyler came from Geneva and met with the Saints in the home of Margaretha Boss Wampfler at Maurachern near Kiesen, setting apart Ulrich Buhler as the local presiding elder. When Elder Secrist informed the mission president that he had been banned from four Swiss cantons, President Tyler replied and added a comment about having "…received a letter from Brother Buhler, the tobacconist. They [the Saints in the Bernese Oberland region] were all in good spirits. I have full confidence that he was the right man for the place and I feel assured that you will yet have much joy in the foundation you have laid for although you have been compelled to leave, the truth still remains and will grow and beat fruit in spite of all opposition."
Despite the geographical distance between the scattered Mormons in the Bernese Oberland, Ulrich Buhler maintained as much contact as possible with all of them. After having baptized Johannes Kunz I and his daughter Rosa in 1862, Ulrich Buhler remained closely associated with the Kunz family. A number of relatives living in the Diemtigen Valley were baptized by Ulrich Buhler, including, of course, 13-year old Gottfried Kunz in the summer of 1866.
Although it possibly has nothing at all to do with GJ's biography, it is not necessarily unimportant to note that neither Ulrich Buhler nor his four sons ever became polygamists. Although four of his five daughters were the plural wives of two polygamists, it is a fact that in 1878 Anna Burgdorfer Buhler actually opposed daughter Caroline's becoming the second wife of Gottfried's brother Christian, who as above mentioned had married Eliza Buhler in December of 1870. Obviously, a number of questions concerning GJ's personal story will always remain unanswered.
A fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington DC in 1921 damaged and destroyed most of the original 1890 census materials. By the mid-1930s, the surviving materials had been destroyed by government order. No microdata from that enumeration exists.
The LDS ward records of Bern (Idaho) show that 43-year old Gottfried Kunz was re-baptized on 2 September 1896 by his oldest brother, John Kunz III, the Bishop of the Bern Ward (1890-1918), and confirmed by David Kunz, another elder brother. To date, not any kind of background information concerning GJ's rebaptism is known.
In the census enumerations of 1900, 1910 and 1920, Gottfried is living in Nicholia, Lemhi County, Idaho. In 1920, GJ appears as the "partner" of Kentucky-born Henry C. Edelman, the "head" of their two-man household. Edelman appeared in the 1910 census of Nicholia as the partner of Utah-born Peter Tulgreen; the two men were close neighbors of Gottfried, who was living alone in 1900 and 1910.
Nicholia, which became the permanent settlement at the mouth of Smelter Gulch, is near where the Viola Mine was discovered by accident in the Birch Creek Valley in 1880/81. By 1882, over 400 inhabitants in the town were the main support of a three-story mercantile company, a fraternal organization, a skating rink, and ten saloons, which sold drinks for 12 ½ cents each. High grade lead ore was mined in the Viola Mine between 1882 and 1885. Lead poisoning from the smelter killed men who worked in the plant and animals in the surrounding region. In 1887, after lead prices collapsed and a disastrous fire destroyed the shaft, stulls and hoist, the mine was forced to close and the smelter was dismantled (http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/resources/minerals/mine_cleanup/completed_projects/viola.pdf).
Whether or not GJ actually worked in the Viola Mine remains unknown. Perhaps he worked in the Gilmore mines just past Gilmore Summit, some 65 miles south of Salmon, Idaho. The discovery of lead and silver lode deposits (along with trace amounts of gold) at the head of Liberty Gulch in 1882 is the reason why the mining camp of Gilmore was established. By the 1920s, "Gilmore became the largest lead-silver camp outside of the mines at Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho, and at one point produced the richest silver ore in the United States" (http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/fo/salmon/special_areas/gilmore_town_site.html).
No one knows to what extent Gottfried maintained contact with the Mormon Church. In the areas in which he worked and lived for the last decades in his life there were but few opportunities to foster membership in an organized branch.
John III's youngest child, daughter Lula, was not yet eight years old when her father died. She remembered having known her Uncle GJ from his occasional – perhaps only annual – visits with her father in Bern, Idaho, and recalled that he always brought a lot of dirty clothes with him to be washed, something which her mother did.
In her book "This Quiet Ground" by Julia I. Randolph, there is a notation that says "Kuntz, John…died at the Salmon Hot Springs." He had lived at Nicholia and was 79 years old when he died (Idaho Recorder, December 5, 1928).
GJ was actually 75 years old at the time of his death. But how could anyone have known that fact? There was an "old folks home" at the Hot Springs ranch where Lemhi County was able to assist indigent residents.
As of 20 November 1928 Gottfried was being treated for influenza by Dr. J. Martin in Salmon, Idaho, and about a week later, GJ was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia. Gottfried Kunz died on 1 December 1928 and, according to his death certificate, was buried in the Salmon City Cemetery on 2 December 1928. No autopsy was performed and undertaker William C. Doebler had to guess on much of the information as he filled out a death certificate because he did not know the deceased.
There is a so-called "county section" in the Salmon City Cemetery with many unmarked graves where indigent individuals were buried. Inasmuch as GJ does not appear on any of the cemetery plats and there is no marker, he may well have been buried in the county section."
Courtesy of Ronald W. Galloway Sr., Biography of Johann Gottfried Kunz edited by by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
by Ronald W. Galloway Sr.
edited by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
"Johann Gottfried Kunz, the fourth son and sixth child of John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz, was born 30 June 1853 on the family farm "auf dem Moos" in the hamlet Riedern in Diemtigen Valley in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. He was christened in the local Swiss Reformed parish church in the village of Diemtigen on August 7th. Although he was given the name "Johann Gottfried" at the time of his christening, he was known by the second of his given names, as was generally the case during the 19th century in the Swiss canton of Bern.
It was customary in the old Republic of Bern for a male child to have two godfathers and one godmother. In keeping with this tradition, John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz selected the following godparents for Gottfried: David Wampfler Jr., living on the farm "im Riedli" in the hamlet Zwischenflueh in Diemtigen Valley; Johannes Itten, a citizen of the community of Wimmis; and Magdalena Kunz, Gottfried's aunt and one of John Kunz II'sisters.
Nothing is known about Gottfried's early years growing up in the hamlet of Riedern, where he attended grade school.
According to family history, it was John Kunz II, Gottfried's father, who first heard about Mormons and their faith healings through the laying on of hands. Because his sister Rosina (known in the family as Rosa) suffered from an unknown spinal illness and knowing that she would be afflicted throughout her lifetime, John II wrote his father a letter and told him of his hearsay knowledge.
About a week before his ninth birthday in June of 1862, Gottfried's aunt Rosa and his paternal grandfather, Johannes Kunz I, were baptized as Mormons by Ulrich Buhler, who lived near Thun and was the presiding elder in the Oberland region. Their conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was something that caused immediate disruption in the Kunz family and greatly affected Gottfried's life.
Upon learning of the conversion of his father and sister, John II became extremely critical and rebellious about their acceptance of Mormonism, as did many other relatives, friends and neighbors. John II specifically expressed his anger at having written his father about Mormon beliefs.
How did John Kunz II come to learn of the Mormons? In December of 1862, he was working as a cheesemaker in Amsoldingen near Thun; perhaps he was already employed there in the springtime and heard about Mormon activity in the area. The fact that he wrote his father a letter to tell him about the Mormons would seem to indicate that he was not in the Diemtigen Valley.
It seems most likely that Gottfried's godfather – David Wampfler Jr. – could have been the one who first told John Kunz II about the Mormons because godparents were nearly always among the closest friends, family or associates of an infant's parents.
David Wampfler Jr. was a nephew of one of his own godfathers, school master Jakob Wampfler Sr., who died of pneumonia in the spring of 1850 in the schoolmaster's apartment in the village of Oppligen near Thun. Four years later, Margaretha Boss Wampfler, Jakob's widow, was baptized by Jacob Foutz Secrist, the first Mormon missionary to preach in Canton Bern. Some two months after her conversion, Elder Secrist baptized Ulrich Buhler and his wife, Anna Burgdorfer Buhler.
The vast distances between the scattered Mormons living in the Bernese Oberland prevented their meeting together on a regular basis. Nearly a year after Johannes I and his daughter Rosa had been baptized, Ulrich Buhler and a fellow companion came to visit the Kunz family on the "Schwand" farm at Meniggrund in Zwischenflueh. News that the Mormon emissaries were in the Diemtigen Valley spread quickly. Neighbors of John Kunz II in Riedern – nearly a 2 hour walk down the canyon from Zwischenflueh – confronted him and they together organized a small mob of local men who marched up to Zwischenflueh in order to run the Mormon elders out of the valley.
The old door on the "Schwand" home was built in two sections, enabling the top half to be opened without opening the bottom half. Upon hearing the noise of the group gathered at the entrance to his home, Johannes Kunz I opened the top half of the door and was confronted by neighbors, relatives and those he had thought to be his friends. The disorderly crowd informed Johannes that they wanted the Mormon missionaries to immediately leave the area.
Johannes was particularly disturbed to see his son from Riedern at the rear of the hostile group and emphatically told John II to return to his home and family. Johannes I talked to the others in the mob and finally they left without further bothering Elder Buhler and those gathered in the "Schwand" home.
Although the inhabitants of Zwischenflueh and the other hamlets in the Diemtigen Valley remained bitter and hostile toward the Mormons, representatives of the Church were able to make visits to the Kunz family without being molested. Through the renewed contact with Elder Buhler and other converts, twin Catherine Kunz was baptized in Lake Thun in the summer of 1863. A number of other relatives were baptized in the following months and years.
It was Ulrich Buhler who on 26 August 1866 baptized 13-year old Gottfried Kunz, the first of John II's ten children to join the Mormons. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the circumstances surrounding his conversion, but it is particularly significant because it shows the strong influence and activity of the family members already in the Church, as well as the growing division of the family as some of them affiliated themselves with Mormonism.
How and when John Kunz II learned of Gottfried's Mormon baptism is also unknown. However, John II's attitude toward Mormonism prior to 1869 is well documented, thus making it certain that GJ was baptized without his father's approval. During his mid-teenage years, GJ's relationship to his father was definitely very strained.
In mid-November of 1868, nearly six and one-half years after the baptism of Johannes I and his daughter Rosa, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz, Johannes I's wife, was baptized. Grandson John Kunz III, GJ's oldest brother, and his wife, Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz, were baptized at the same time in the cold waters of the Meniggrund Creek just below the "Schwand" family home, all three being baptized by mission president Karl G. Maeser.
Those three baptisms kindled additional anguish for John II and his wife in Riedern. In an attempt to convince their son of the grave mistake he had made in joining the Mormons, John II and Rosina asked John III to come to Riedern and get them a load of wood for the winter.
While at their home, they asked John III numerous questions and tried to prove from their understanding of the Bible that he had made an error in having been baptized. From that which he had learned from the missionaries and through his own studying, John III defended his decision with the scriptures. When John II realized that his efforts were futile, he became angry and raised points based on slander and falsehoods. Nevertheless, before John III left he bore a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel.
Was GJ at home during John III's visit in Riedern? It is well possible, indeed most likely. Certainly his own conversion some two years before had pricked John II's self-esteem. However, it also seems to be most certan that it was the sincerity of John II's two Mormon sons (GJ and John III), his parents (Johannes I and Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz) and twin sisters (Rosa and Catherine) that touched him sufficiently to agree to meet with the missionaries and listen to their message.
Willard B. Richards and a local elder made their way through the mid-winter snow to Riedern. In spite of Elder Richards' broken German and the translations of his companion, John II and his wife understood the teachings. On 27 February 1869 they were baptized along with their daughter Catherine ("Kaeti") in the icy waters of the nearby Kirel Creek. In the following months, a number of the other members of the family were also baptized.
Despite his earlier having vigorously opposed the Mormons, John II experienced a drastic change in spirit and became a staunch supporter of the doctrines which were at first new to him. Aware of the immigration to Utah of earlier Mormon converts in the region, John II stipulated at the time of his conversion that he would be baptized only upon condition that he not be asked to emigrate from Switzerland.
Numerous inhabitants of the Diemtigen Valley had indeed emigrated during the first half of the 19th century, many of them going to Russia, as did three of John II's cousins along with several other relatives, friends and associates. As a respected Simmental cheesemaker, John II could have at any time taken advantage of such an opportunity, but apparently never seriously considered such an option.
His conversion to Mormonism caused him to change his thinking and within a short time he and his wife soon began making plans to immigrate to Utah with their family.
At the beginning of July 1870, 47 year-old John Kunz II bid goodbye to his aged Mormon parents, his eldest married son and married daughter, both of whom were Mormons, and his non-Mormon siblings, sister (Magdalena) – Gottfried's godmother – and brother (Christian), and their families, as well as other relatives, neighbors and friends. Along with his wife and their eight single children as well as his twin sisters and other Mormon converts in the Diemtigen Valley, they departed their native home to embark on their immigration to Utah.
The emigrants met in Basel at the Red Ox Inn on July 5th and departed the next morning via railroad for Mannheim, where they arrived that same evening and were joined by several German Mormon converts. On July 7th the emigrant party boarded the Rhine steamer "Viktoria" and traveled to Duesseldorf, where they changed boats and continued to Rotterdam, staying overnight there in the City of Antwerp Inn.
On Saturday evening, 9 July 1870, they boarded the steamer "Lord Cardigan" and crossed the English Channel, arriving in Grimsby on Monday morning. They left that town shortly thereafter and arrived in Liverpool that same evening about 5 p.m. and were permitted to embark at once on the ship "Manhattan" which sailed for New York on July 13th.
GJ turned 17 just before he left Switzerland. His travels to Britain, crossing the Atlantic and then the long train journey to Utah were – without doubt – something he never forgot. The emigrants were met in Farmington, Utah, by the entire First Presidency (Brigham Young and his counselors George Albert Smith and Daniel Hanmer Wells), who shook hands with each of them. That news and learning of their safe arrival in Zion was a source of great comfort to Johannes I and Rosina Katharina, as well as to John III and Magdalena and the other Mormons in the area of Zwischenflueh. And, in accordance with the opinion of the time, Johannes Kunz I expressed his special gratitude "…for seeing the deliverance from Babylon of such a large number all at once…of his nearest blood relatives."
Mormon leaders asked the family to settle in the Bear Lake Valley, where their cheesemaking would be of importance to numerous pioneer settlers in that region. In August the family headed north and while camped for the evening at Wellsville, GJ and three of his brothers – Christian, Samuel and David – walked to Providence to see Joseph and Susanna Klossner Herzog and their family. Susanna, a first cousin of Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz (GJ's paternal grandmother), had been baptized in the fall of 1863 by Ulrich Buhler, and immigrated to Utah in 1866.
Joseph Herzog convinced the Kunz's not to settle in the Bear Lake Valley that fall but to wait until springtime. He offered to go there with them that fall to get logs with which to build a house the next spring. In his account of the family's move to Bear Lake, Robert Kunz, GJ's youngest brother, comments that "Mr. Herzog, Christian, Gottfried and David had gone over the fall before and got logs out for the two rooms. When we got to Ovid [in the spring of 1871], Herbert Horlsey and John Ulrich Stucki came with an axe and a saw to help us build the cabin. They put up a room a day. Father, Samuel and David helped these two men do this work."
Why not Christian and GJ? Christian had married Eliza Buhler (daughter of early Bernese Mormon convert Ulrich Buhler) in December of 1870 and was no longer living with his parents. GJ, as will be shown, was working in Utah.
It was during the winter of 1870/71 that 67-year old Johannes Kunz I contracted pneumonia , which caused his death in the old "Schwand" farm house on 17 February 1871. It is difficult to sense the division of the otherwise close family as they gathered for the funeral service in the little cemetery at Zwischenflueh. In the cortege that followed the horse-drawn casket down the precipitous canyon path between Meniggrund and the valley floor, Johannes' non-Mormon children and grandchildren joined with their Mormon mother and grandmother and mingled with John III and Magdalena as well as with the mixed congregation of Mormon and Swiss Reformed relatives and friends.
Following the death of Johannes I, John III and his family moved from the neighboring "Lower Blatten" farm to the "Schwand" home where his grandmother lived. In October of 1871 Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz gave birth to a second daughter, Magdalena Matilda Kunz, who lived only a month. For a second time the Reverend Johann Gottfried Kopp in Diemtigen noted in the parish registers that the infant had not been christened in the Reformed Church because the father "belongs to the Mormon sect," similar to what he had written in July of 1869 when he recorded the birth of John Kunz IV.
Only a month after Magdalena Matilda's burial, the family filed down to the Zwischenflueh cemetery for a third time that year when Magdalena Kunz Wiedmer – John II's eldest sister who died a month before her 39th birthday – was buried.
It took several weeks for the news of the three deaths in the immediate family in Zwischenflueh to reach the Bear Lake Valley. Exactly when John III made definite plans to immigrate with his family and his widowed grandmother is not known. Not only a military obligation prevented John III from emigrating as soon as he had hoped to go; the money necessary to finance the voyage had to be raised.
A 20th-century Kunz family history written by Oliver and Ezra Kunz, Thekla Kunz Walk and Maxine Kunz Blaser significantly ascertains that "Gottfried, Christian and Samuel later helped finance John's trip, Gottfried doing the biggest part." At some point between helping to get out house logs near Ovid in the fall of 1870 and the family of John II moving from Cache Valley to Ovid in the spring of 1871, 17-year old Gottfried went to the south Salt Lake area to work as a miner, presumably in the Emma Silver Mine near Alta in Little Cottonwood canyon.
In a biographical account of her father, Christian Kunz, Ida Kunz Boss wrote: "After their marriage [in Salt Lake City in December of 1870], Christian and Eliza went back to Idaho and lived by Aspen Creek and worked for Charles C. Rich, caring for sheep and feeding cattle. The following year he worked in the Cottonwood mines to earn money to secure passage for his brother John to bring his family to America from Switzerland."
Alta had been founded about 1865 in order to house miners working in the Emma Silver Mine in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Although rich silver ore had once been obtained in the Emma Silver Mine, its fraudulent sale in 1871 to British investors was the cause for the US ambassador to Great Britain – a director of the mining company – being recalled.
Gottfried Kunz had been working in the Cottonwood canyon mines for perhaps a year, maybe even longer, when his older brothers Christian and Samuel also went there to work as miners. At that time, communication between the Kunz brothers in Idaho and Utah could only take place through letter writing. GJ no doubt thus learned of John III's financial need in order to help pay the immigration costs for his family and, presumably, also for his 70-year old grandmother Rosina Katharina. GJ's letters obviously convinced his brothers that the needed cash could be earned through working in the mines.
GJ was barely 19 and had only been in the US for two years. Although he went to Bear Lake in the fall of 1870 to help get out house logs, he thereafter was apparently only there for an occasional visit because he was working in the mines. Despite his young age, he was able to help in doing the biggest part financially to get John III and Magdalena, their three children and also Grandma Rosina Katharina to America from Switzerland. Gottfried was also the link which enabled Christian and Samuel to get the necessary work in the mines which they needed in 1871/72.
At the beginning of July in 1873, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz bade her son and her grandchildren in Zwischenflueh farewell and departed Zwischenflueh, accompanied by John III, Magdalena and their three children. Two years before his death, John III looked back and commented, "Thankful to the Lord for preserving our lives up to our arrival in Zion, being my grandmother was a fellow passenger in my care in the seventy-first year of her life, and my wife with ruined health and three small children, and rejoicing to meet Father, Mother, seven brothers and one sister all well, we proceeded to start pioneer life. We built the first house in the Bern district, Bear Lake Co., Idaho, which we used for a dwelling the following year, but my wife leaving us thru her death on May 22, 1874, which brought an entire change into our family affairs, having to leave my children in the care of relatives and seeing that time would bring a barrier between my children and myself, I married my deceased wife's sister Sophie to fill at least in part the place of a mother to my little children, which she vey nobly did. From that day I married her, October 26, 1874, to the latter part of the year 1888, I married four more times, which gave me six wives in all, four of which bore me 25 children."
Up until 1874, Gottfried was a part of the immediate Kunz family circle, having what appears to be normal interactions with his folks and other family members, including going up to Ovid in 1870 to get out house logs for building a house the following spring, and giving financial aid to help his brother John's family and his grandmother pay for their immigration in 1873. He enjoyed a normal, caring and helpful relationship with everyone in his family.
After 1874/75, all interaction seems to have come to a halt, and there is virtually no mention of him in anybody's written histories nor does any kind of an autobiographical account exist. Why did GJ suddenly estrange himself from his family and move away?
It seems most likely that Gottfried's intention to marry in the late fall of 1874 was the cause for his long break in family ties. In October of 1874, at the time that John III and Sophia Straubhaar went to Salt Lake City to be married in the old Endowment House, GJ went along with his fiancée – Magdalena Linder – to also be married. They stopped along the way for a night's stay – perhaps in Smithfield, where Aunt Catherine Kunz Roberts ( a sister of John II) lived – and during the night, Gottfried literally disappeared in the proverbial "night fog." John III and the two women proceeded to Salt Lake City, where John was married to Sophia on October 26th by Apostle Daniel H. Wells who presided there from 1868 to 1884 and performed marriages and administered other sacred church ordinances.
Exactly one week later, after having "counseled" with Apostle Wells, John Kunz III then married Magdalena Linder, who had initially been engaged to marry Gottfried Kunz. Once again, no further details whatsoever are known about this significant incident in GJ's life.
In October of 1874, GJ was 21 years old; his intended bride-to-be was just a couple of weeks short of turning 35. Was this difference of some 14 years in age any kind of factor for Gottfried's action? No one knows.
John III's first wife, Magdalena Straubhaar, was some seven years her husband's senior, i.e. two and one-half years older than Magdalena Linder. Towards the end of 1872, 21-year old brother Samuel Kunz had married Elizabeth Haenni, who was just a couple of months short of her 33rd birthday. As a note of comparison, the Kunz brothers' mother, Rosina Knutti Kunz, was some three and one-half years older than their father.
For whatever reason, still unknown, Gottfried's marriage plans failed; he abandoned his fiancee and apparently went back to working as a miner.
In accordance with apostolic counsel, John Kunz III became a polygamist only a week after marrying his second wife. One can only speculate on the discussion between Apostle Wells and John III. Through marrying Magdalena Linder, John perhaps tried to help right Gottfried's wrong. Fact is that John III returned to Bern, Idaho, as the first polygamist in the Kunz family. Surely this must have created an awkward, uncomfortable situation for GJ and could very well explain his bizarre change of attitude towards his family and the separation from them.
Gottfried never married nor, as far as known, did he ever own any property. He remained a miner throughout his life.
At the time of the 1880 US census, Gottfried Kunz was living in Midway, Utah, and noted as being a mineral miner, the last along with seven others, as well as the Irish-born mine superintendant, three mining engineers and a Chinese-born cook, all living in what was enumerated as dwelling number 106, presumably some kind of a barracks-like building. Whether or not this group of men actually mined in Midway is unknown. Fact is that by the 1880s, the mines in nearby Park City were of economic importance in the Midway area.
No known record or history reveals why the early part of Gottfried's career as a miner took place in Midway, Utah. His previous experience in laboring in the Cottonwood canyon mines could very well have been the reason why he knew that work might be available for him in the Midway area.
Or, is it possible that GJ went there because that is where Ulrich Buhler was living? Forty-nine year old Ulrich Buhler arrived in the United States along with his wife and other family members in 1872, two years after Gottfried Kunz's own immigration. Could it be that when Gottfried – for whatever reason – abruptly abandoned his marriage plans in 1874 that he was convinced that outside of his family circle, he could still turn to Ulrich Buhler without fear of being shunned or rejected?
Ulrich Buhler, who had been known by his nickname "tobacco Ueli" prior to his having been baptized as a Mormon, was one of the stalwart early Mormon leaders in Switzerland. As a result of the persecution by Reverend Karl Howald and the Swiss Reformed parish consistory court in Sigriswil in 1854, Mormon missionary Jacob F. Secrist was banned from Switzerland and given a police escort to the Swiss border adjoining St. Louis, France, near Basel.
Shortly thereafter, mission president Daniel Tyler came from Geneva and met with the Saints in the home of Margaretha Boss Wampfler at Maurachern near Kiesen, setting apart Ulrich Buhler as the local presiding elder. When Elder Secrist informed the mission president that he had been banned from four Swiss cantons, President Tyler replied and added a comment about having "…received a letter from Brother Buhler, the tobacconist. They [the Saints in the Bernese Oberland region] were all in good spirits. I have full confidence that he was the right man for the place and I feel assured that you will yet have much joy in the foundation you have laid for although you have been compelled to leave, the truth still remains and will grow and beat fruit in spite of all opposition."
Despite the geographical distance between the scattered Mormons in the Bernese Oberland, Ulrich Buhler maintained as much contact as possible with all of them. After having baptized Johannes Kunz I and his daughter Rosa in 1862, Ulrich Buhler remained closely associated with the Kunz family. A number of relatives living in the Diemtigen Valley were baptized by Ulrich Buhler, including, of course, 13-year old Gottfried Kunz in the summer of 1866.
Although it possibly has nothing at all to do with GJ's biography, it is not necessarily unimportant to note that neither Ulrich Buhler nor his four sons ever became polygamists. Although four of his five daughters were the plural wives of two polygamists, it is a fact that in 1878 Anna Burgdorfer Buhler actually opposed daughter Caroline's becoming the second wife of Gottfried's brother Christian, who as above mentioned had married Eliza Buhler in December of 1870. Obviously, a number of questions concerning GJ's personal story will always remain unanswered.
A fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington DC in 1921 damaged and destroyed most of the original 1890 census materials. By the mid-1930s, the surviving materials had been destroyed by government order. No microdata from that enumeration exists.
The LDS ward records of Bern (Idaho) show that 43-year old Gottfried Kunz was re-baptized on 2 September 1896 by his oldest brother, John Kunz III, the Bishop of the Bern Ward (1890-1918), and confirmed by David Kunz, another elder brother. To date, not any kind of background information concerning GJ's rebaptism is known.
In the census enumerations of 1900, 1910 and 1920, Gottfried is living in Nicholia, Lemhi County, Idaho. In 1920, GJ appears as the "partner" of Kentucky-born Henry C. Edelman, the "head" of their two-man household. Edelman appeared in the 1910 census of Nicholia as the partner of Utah-born Peter Tulgreen; the two men were close neighbors of Gottfried, who was living alone in 1900 and 1910.
Nicholia, which became the permanent settlement at the mouth of Smelter Gulch, is near where the Viola Mine was discovered by accident in the Birch Creek Valley in 1880/81. By 1882, over 400 inhabitants in the town were the main support of a three-story mercantile company, a fraternal organization, a skating rink, and ten saloons, which sold drinks for 12 ½ cents each. High grade lead ore was mined in the Viola Mine between 1882 and 1885. Lead poisoning from the smelter killed men who worked in the plant and animals in the surrounding region. In 1887, after lead prices collapsed and a disastrous fire destroyed the shaft, stulls and hoist, the mine was forced to close and the smelter was dismantled (http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/resources/minerals/mine_cleanup/completed_projects/viola.pdf).
Whether or not GJ actually worked in the Viola Mine remains unknown. Perhaps he worked in the Gilmore mines just past Gilmore Summit, some 65 miles south of Salmon, Idaho. The discovery of lead and silver lode deposits (along with trace amounts of gold) at the head of Liberty Gulch in 1882 is the reason why the mining camp of Gilmore was established. By the 1920s, "Gilmore became the largest lead-silver camp outside of the mines at Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho, and at one point produced the richest silver ore in the United States" (http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/fo/salmon/special_areas/gilmore_town_site.html).
No one knows to what extent Gottfried maintained contact with the Mormon Church. In the areas in which he worked and lived for the last decades in his life there were but few opportunities to foster membership in an organized branch.
John III's youngest child, daughter Lula, was not yet eight years old when her father died. She remembered having known her Uncle GJ from his occasional – perhaps only annual – visits with her father in Bern, Idaho, and recalled that he always brought a lot of dirty clothes with him to be washed, something which her mother did.
In her book "This Quiet Ground" by Julia I. Randolph, there is a notation that says "Kuntz, John…died at the Salmon Hot Springs." He had lived at Nicholia and was 79 years old when he died (Idaho Recorder, December 5, 1928).
GJ was actually 75 years old at the time of his death. But how could anyone have known that fact? There was an "old folks home" at the Hot Springs ranch where Lemhi County was able to assist indigent residents.
As of 20 November 1928 Gottfried was being treated for influenza by Dr. J. Martin in Salmon, Idaho, and about a week later, GJ was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia. Gottfried Kunz died on 1 December 1928 and, according to his death certificate, was buried in the Salmon City Cemetery on 2 December 1928. No autopsy was performed and undertaker William C. Doebler had to guess on much of the information as he filled out a death certificate because he did not know the deceased.
There is a so-called "county section" in the Salmon City Cemetery with many unmarked graves where indigent individuals were buried. Inasmuch as GJ does not appear on any of the cemetery plats and there is no marker, he may well have been buried in the county section."
Courtesy of Ronald W. Galloway Sr., Biography of Johann Gottfried Kunz edited by by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
Biography of Gottfried John ("GJ") Kunz
by Ronald W. Galloway Sr.
edited by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
"Johann Gottfried Kunz, the fourth son and sixth child of John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz, was born 30 June 1853 on the family farm "auf dem Moos" in the hamlet Riedern in Diemtigen Valley in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. He was christened in the local Swiss Reformed parish church in the village of Diemtigen on August 7th. Although he was given the name "Johann Gottfried" at the time of his christening, he was known by the second of his given names, as was generally the case during the 19th century in the Swiss canton of Bern.
It was customary in the old Republic of Bern for a male child to have two godfathers and one godmother. In keeping with this tradition, John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz selected the following godparents for Gottfried: David Wampfler Jr., living on the farm "im Riedli" in the hamlet Zwischenflueh in Diemtigen Valley; Johannes Itten, a citizen of the community of Wimmis; and Magdalena Kunz, Gottfried's aunt and one of John Kunz II'sisters.
Nothing is known about Gottfried's early years growing up in the hamlet of Riedern, where he attended grade school.
According to family history, it was John Kunz II, Gottfried's father, who first heard about Mormons and their faith healings through the laying on of hands. Because his sister Rosina (known in the family as Rosa) suffered from an unknown spinal illness and knowing that she would be afflicted throughout her lifetime, John II wrote his father a letter and told him of his hearsay knowledge.
About a week before his ninth birthday in June of 1862, Gottfried's aunt Rosa and his paternal grandfather, Johannes Kunz I, were baptized as Mormons by Ulrich Buhler, who lived near Thun and was the presiding elder in the Oberland region. Their conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was something that caused immediate disruption in the Kunz family and greatly affected Gottfried's life.
Upon learning of the conversion of his father and sister, John II became extremely critical and rebellious about their acceptance of Mormonism, as did many other relatives, friends and neighbors. John II specifically expressed his anger at having written his father about Mormon beliefs.
How did John Kunz II come to learn of the Mormons? In December of 1862, he was working as a cheesemaker in Amsoldingen near Thun; perhaps he was already employed there in the springtime and heard about Mormon activity in the area. The fact that he wrote his father a letter to tell him about the Mormons would seem to indicate that he was not in the Diemtigen Valley.
It seems most likely that Gottfried's godfather – David Wampfler Jr. – could have been the one who first told John Kunz II about the Mormons because godparents were nearly always among the closest friends, family or associates of an infant's parents.
David Wampfler Jr. was a nephew of one of his own godfathers, school master Jakob Wampfler Sr., who died of pneumonia in the spring of 1850 in the schoolmaster's apartment in the village of Oppligen near Thun. Four years later, Margaretha Boss Wampfler, Jakob's widow, was baptized by Jacob Foutz Secrist, the first Mormon missionary to preach in Canton Bern. Some two months after her conversion, Elder Secrist baptized Ulrich Buhler and his wife, Anna Burgdorfer Buhler.
The vast distances between the scattered Mormons living in the Bernese Oberland prevented their meeting together on a regular basis. Nearly a year after Johannes I and his daughter Rosa had been baptized, Ulrich Buhler and a fellow companion came to visit the Kunz family on the "Schwand" farm at Meniggrund in Zwischenflueh. News that the Mormon emissaries were in the Diemtigen Valley spread quickly. Neighbors of John Kunz II in Riedern – nearly a 2 hour walk down the canyon from Zwischenflueh – confronted him and they together organized a small mob of local men who marched up to Zwischenflueh in order to run the Mormon elders out of the valley.
The old door on the "Schwand" home was built in two sections, enabling the top half to be opened without opening the bottom half. Upon hearing the noise of the group gathered at the entrance to his home, Johannes Kunz I opened the top half of the door and was confronted by neighbors, relatives and those he had thought to be his friends. The disorderly crowd informed Johannes that they wanted the Mormon missionaries to immediately leave the area.
Johannes was particularly disturbed to see his son from Riedern at the rear of the hostile group and emphatically told John II to return to his home and family. Johannes I talked to the others in the mob and finally they left without further bothering Elder Buhler and those gathered in the "Schwand" home.
Although the inhabitants of Zwischenflueh and the other hamlets in the Diemtigen Valley remained bitter and hostile toward the Mormons, representatives of the Church were able to make visits to the Kunz family without being molested. Through the renewed contact with Elder Buhler and other converts, twin Catherine Kunz was baptized in Lake Thun in the summer of 1863. A number of other relatives were baptized in the following months and years.
It was Ulrich Buhler who on 26 August 1866 baptized 13-year old Gottfried Kunz, the first of John II's ten children to join the Mormons. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the circumstances surrounding his conversion, but it is particularly significant because it shows the strong influence and activity of the family members already in the Church, as well as the growing division of the family as some of them affiliated themselves with Mormonism.
How and when John Kunz II learned of Gottfried's Mormon baptism is also unknown. However, John II's attitude toward Mormonism prior to 1869 is well documented, thus making it certain that GJ was baptized without his father's approval. During his mid-teenage years, GJ's relationship to his father was definitely very strained.
In mid-November of 1868, nearly six and one-half years after the baptism of Johannes I and his daughter Rosa, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz, Johannes I's wife, was baptized. Grandson John Kunz III, GJ's oldest brother, and his wife, Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz, were baptized at the same time in the cold waters of the Meniggrund Creek just below the "Schwand" family home, all three being baptized by mission president Karl G. Maeser.
Those three baptisms kindled additional anguish for John II and his wife in Riedern. In an attempt to convince their son of the grave mistake he had made in joining the Mormons, John II and Rosina asked John III to come to Riedern and get them a load of wood for the winter.
While at their home, they asked John III numerous questions and tried to prove from their understanding of the Bible that he had made an error in having been baptized. From that which he had learned from the missionaries and through his own studying, John III defended his decision with the scriptures. When John II realized that his efforts were futile, he became angry and raised points based on slander and falsehoods. Nevertheless, before John III left he bore a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel.
Was GJ at home during John III's visit in Riedern? It is well possible, indeed most likely. Certainly his own conversion some two years before had pricked John II's self-esteem. However, it also seems to be most certan that it was the sincerity of John II's two Mormon sons (GJ and John III), his parents (Johannes I and Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz) and twin sisters (Rosa and Catherine) that touched him sufficiently to agree to meet with the missionaries and listen to their message.
Willard B. Richards and a local elder made their way through the mid-winter snow to Riedern. In spite of Elder Richards' broken German and the translations of his companion, John II and his wife understood the teachings. On 27 February 1869 they were baptized along with their daughter Catherine ("Kaeti") in the icy waters of the nearby Kirel Creek. In the following months, a number of the other members of the family were also baptized.
Despite his earlier having vigorously opposed the Mormons, John II experienced a drastic change in spirit and became a staunch supporter of the doctrines which were at first new to him. Aware of the immigration to Utah of earlier Mormon converts in the region, John II stipulated at the time of his conversion that he would be baptized only upon condition that he not be asked to emigrate from Switzerland.
Numerous inhabitants of the Diemtigen Valley had indeed emigrated during the first half of the 19th century, many of them going to Russia, as did three of John II's cousins along with several other relatives, friends and associates. As a respected Simmental cheesemaker, John II could have at any time taken advantage of such an opportunity, but apparently never seriously considered such an option.
His conversion to Mormonism caused him to change his thinking and within a short time he and his wife soon began making plans to immigrate to Utah with their family.
At the beginning of July 1870, 47 year-old John Kunz II bid goodbye to his aged Mormon parents, his eldest married son and married daughter, both of whom were Mormons, and his non-Mormon siblings, sister (Magdalena) – Gottfried's godmother – and brother (Christian), and their families, as well as other relatives, neighbors and friends. Along with his wife and their eight single children as well as his twin sisters and other Mormon converts in the Diemtigen Valley, they departed their native home to embark on their immigration to Utah.
The emigrants met in Basel at the Red Ox Inn on July 5th and departed the next morning via railroad for Mannheim, where they arrived that same evening and were joined by several German Mormon converts. On July 7th the emigrant party boarded the Rhine steamer "Viktoria" and traveled to Duesseldorf, where they changed boats and continued to Rotterdam, staying overnight there in the City of Antwerp Inn.
On Saturday evening, 9 July 1870, they boarded the steamer "Lord Cardigan" and crossed the English Channel, arriving in Grimsby on Monday morning. They left that town shortly thereafter and arrived in Liverpool that same evening about 5 p.m. and were permitted to embark at once on the ship "Manhattan" which sailed for New York on July 13th.
GJ turned 17 just before he left Switzerland. His travels to Britain, crossing the Atlantic and then the long train journey to Utah were – without doubt – something he never forgot. The emigrants were met in Farmington, Utah, by the entire First Presidency (Brigham Young and his counselors George Albert Smith and Daniel Hanmer Wells), who shook hands with each of them. That news and learning of their safe arrival in Zion was a source of great comfort to Johannes I and Rosina Katharina, as well as to John III and Magdalena and the other Mormons in the area of Zwischenflueh. And, in accordance with the opinion of the time, Johannes Kunz I expressed his special gratitude "…for seeing the deliverance from Babylon of such a large number all at once…of his nearest blood relatives."
Mormon leaders asked the family to settle in the Bear Lake Valley, where their cheesemaking would be of importance to numerous pioneer settlers in that region. In August the family headed north and while camped for the evening at Wellsville, GJ and three of his brothers – Christian, Samuel and David – walked to Providence to see Joseph and Susanna Klossner Herzog and their family. Susanna, a first cousin of Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz (GJ's paternal grandmother), had been baptized in the fall of 1863 by Ulrich Buhler, and immigrated to Utah in 1866.
Joseph Herzog convinced the Kunz's not to settle in the Bear Lake Valley that fall but to wait until springtime. He offered to go there with them that fall to get logs with which to build a house the next spring. In his account of the family's move to Bear Lake, Robert Kunz, GJ's youngest brother, comments that "Mr. Herzog, Christian, Gottfried and David had gone over the fall before and got logs out for the two rooms. When we got to Ovid [in the spring of 1871], Herbert Horlsey and John Ulrich Stucki came with an axe and a saw to help us build the cabin. They put up a room a day. Father, Samuel and David helped these two men do this work."
Why not Christian and GJ? Christian had married Eliza Buhler (daughter of early Bernese Mormon convert Ulrich Buhler) in December of 1870 and was no longer living with his parents. GJ, as will be shown, was working in Utah.
It was during the winter of 1870/71 that 67-year old Johannes Kunz I contracted pneumonia , which caused his death in the old "Schwand" farm house on 17 February 1871. It is difficult to sense the division of the otherwise close family as they gathered for the funeral service in the little cemetery at Zwischenflueh. In the cortege that followed the horse-drawn casket down the precipitous canyon path between Meniggrund and the valley floor, Johannes' non-Mormon children and grandchildren joined with their Mormon mother and grandmother and mingled with John III and Magdalena as well as with the mixed congregation of Mormon and Swiss Reformed relatives and friends.
Following the death of Johannes I, John III and his family moved from the neighboring "Lower Blatten" farm to the "Schwand" home where his grandmother lived. In October of 1871 Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz gave birth to a second daughter, Magdalena Matilda Kunz, who lived only a month. For a second time the Reverend Johann Gottfried Kopp in Diemtigen noted in the parish registers that the infant had not been christened in the Reformed Church because the father "belongs to the Mormon sect," similar to what he had written in July of 1869 when he recorded the birth of John Kunz IV.
Only a month after Magdalena Matilda's burial, the family filed down to the Zwischenflueh cemetery for a third time that year when Magdalena Kunz Wiedmer – John II's eldest sister who died a month before her 39th birthday – was buried.
It took several weeks for the news of the three deaths in the immediate family in Zwischenflueh to reach the Bear Lake Valley. Exactly when John III made definite plans to immigrate with his family and his widowed grandmother is not known. Not only a military obligation prevented John III from emigrating as soon as he had hoped to go; the money necessary to finance the voyage had to be raised.
A 20th-century Kunz family history written by Oliver and Ezra Kunz, Thekla Kunz Walk and Maxine Kunz Blaser significantly ascertains that "Gottfried, Christian and Samuel later helped finance John's trip, Gottfried doing the biggest part." At some point between helping to get out house logs near Ovid in the fall of 1870 and the family of John II moving from Cache Valley to Ovid in the spring of 1871, 17-year old Gottfried went to the south Salt Lake area to work as a miner, presumably in the Emma Silver Mine near Alta in Little Cottonwood canyon.
In a biographical account of her father, Christian Kunz, Ida Kunz Boss wrote: "After their marriage [in Salt Lake City in December of 1870], Christian and Eliza went back to Idaho and lived by Aspen Creek and worked for Charles C. Rich, caring for sheep and feeding cattle. The following year he worked in the Cottonwood mines to earn money to secure passage for his brother John to bring his family to America from Switzerland."
Alta had been founded about 1865 in order to house miners working in the Emma Silver Mine in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Although rich silver ore had once been obtained in the Emma Silver Mine, its fraudulent sale in 1871 to British investors was the cause for the US ambassador to Great Britain – a director of the mining company – being recalled.
Gottfried Kunz had been working in the Cottonwood canyon mines for perhaps a year, maybe even longer, when his older brothers Christian and Samuel also went there to work as miners. At that time, communication between the Kunz brothers in Idaho and Utah could only take place through letter writing. GJ no doubt thus learned of John III's financial need in order to help pay the immigration costs for his family and, presumably, also for his 70-year old grandmother Rosina Katharina. GJ's letters obviously convinced his brothers that the needed cash could be earned through working in the mines.
GJ was barely 19 and had only been in the US for two years. Although he went to Bear Lake in the fall of 1870 to help get out house logs, he thereafter was apparently only there for an occasional visit because he was working in the mines. Despite his young age, he was able to help in doing the biggest part financially to get John III and Magdalena, their three children and also Grandma Rosina Katharina to America from Switzerland. Gottfried was also the link which enabled Christian and Samuel to get the necessary work in the mines which they needed in 1871/72.
At the beginning of July in 1873, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz bade her son and her grandchildren in Zwischenflueh farewell and departed Zwischenflueh, accompanied by John III, Magdalena and their three children. Two years before his death, John III looked back and commented, "Thankful to the Lord for preserving our lives up to our arrival in Zion, being my grandmother was a fellow passenger in my care in the seventy-first year of her life, and my wife with ruined health and three small children, and rejoicing to meet Father, Mother, seven brothers and one sister all well, we proceeded to start pioneer life. We built the first house in the Bern district, Bear Lake Co., Idaho, which we used for a dwelling the following year, but my wife leaving us thru her death on May 22, 1874, which brought an entire change into our family affairs, having to leave my children in the care of relatives and seeing that time would bring a barrier between my children and myself, I married my deceased wife's sister Sophie to fill at least in part the place of a mother to my little children, which she vey nobly did. From that day I married her, October 26, 1874, to the latter part of the year 1888, I married four more times, which gave me six wives in all, four of which bore me 25 children."
Up until 1874, Gottfried was a part of the immediate Kunz family circle, having what appears to be normal interactions with his folks and other family members, including going up to Ovid in 1870 to get out house logs for building a house the following spring, and giving financial aid to help his brother John's family and his grandmother pay for their immigration in 1873. He enjoyed a normal, caring and helpful relationship with everyone in his family.
After 1874/75, all interaction seems to have come to a halt, and there is virtually no mention of him in anybody's written histories nor does any kind of an autobiographical account exist. Why did GJ suddenly estrange himself from his family and move away?
It seems most likely that Gottfried's intention to marry in the late fall of 1874 was the cause for his long break in family ties. In October of 1874, at the time that John III and Sophia Straubhaar went to Salt Lake City to be married in the old Endowment House, GJ went along with his fiancée – Magdalena Linder – to also be married. They stopped along the way for a night's stay – perhaps in Smithfield, where Aunt Catherine Kunz Roberts ( a sister of John II) lived – and during the night, Gottfried literally disappeared in the proverbial "night fog." John III and the two women proceeded to Salt Lake City, where John was married to Sophia on October 26th by Apostle Daniel H. Wells who presided there from 1868 to 1884 and performed marriages and administered other sacred church ordinances.
Exactly one week later, after having "counseled" with Apostle Wells, John Kunz III then married Magdalena Linder, who had initially been engaged to marry Gottfried Kunz. Once again, no further details whatsoever are known about this significant incident in GJ's life.
In October of 1874, GJ was 21 years old; his intended bride-to-be was just a couple of weeks short of turning 35. Was this difference of some 14 years in age any kind of factor for Gottfried's action? No one knows.
John III's first wife, Magdalena Straubhaar, was some seven years her husband's senior, i.e. two and one-half years older than Magdalena Linder. Towards the end of 1872, 21-year old brother Samuel Kunz had married Elizabeth Haenni, who was just a couple of months short of her 33rd birthday. As a note of comparison, the Kunz brothers' mother, Rosina Knutti Kunz, was some three and one-half years older than their father.
For whatever reason, still unknown, Gottfried's marriage plans failed; he abandoned his fiancee and apparently went back to working as a miner.
In accordance with apostolic counsel, John Kunz III became a polygamist only a week after marrying his second wife. One can only speculate on the discussion between Apostle Wells and John III. Through marrying Magdalena Linder, John perhaps tried to help right Gottfried's wrong. Fact is that John III returned to Bern, Idaho, as the first polygamist in the Kunz family. Surely this must have created an awkward, uncomfortable situation for GJ and could very well explain his bizarre change of attitude towards his family and the separation from them.
Gottfried never married nor, as far as known, did he ever own any property. He remained a miner throughout his life.
At the time of the 1880 US census, Gottfried Kunz was living in Midway, Utah, and noted as being a mineral miner, the last along with seven others, as well as the Irish-born mine superintendant, three mining engineers and a Chinese-born cook, all living in what was enumerated as dwelling number 106, presumably some kind of a barracks-like building. Whether or not this group of men actually mined in Midway is unknown. Fact is that by the 1880s, the mines in nearby Park City were of economic importance in the Midway area.
No known record or history reveals why the early part of Gottfried's career as a miner took place in Midway, Utah. His previous experience in laboring in the Cottonwood canyon mines could very well have been the reason why he knew that work might be available for him in the Midway area.
Or, is it possible that GJ went there because that is where Ulrich Buhler was living? Forty-nine year old Ulrich Buhler arrived in the United States along with his wife and other family members in 1872, two years after Gottfried Kunz's own immigration. Could it be that when Gottfried – for whatever reason – abruptly abandoned his marriage plans in 1874 that he was convinced that outside of his family circle, he could still turn to Ulrich Buhler without fear of being shunned or rejected?
Ulrich Buhler, who had been known by his nickname "tobacco Ueli" prior to his having been baptized as a Mormon, was one of the stalwart early Mormon leaders in Switzerland. As a result of the persecution by Reverend Karl Howald and the Swiss Reformed parish consistory court in Sigriswil in 1854, Mormon missionary Jacob F. Secrist was banned from Switzerland and given a police escort to the Swiss border adjoining St. Louis, France, near Basel.
Shortly thereafter, mission president Daniel Tyler came from Geneva and met with the Saints in the home of Margaretha Boss Wampfler at Maurachern near Kiesen, setting apart Ulrich Buhler as the local presiding elder. When Elder Secrist informed the mission president that he had been banned from four Swiss cantons, President Tyler replied and added a comment about having "…received a letter from Brother Buhler, the tobacconist. They [the Saints in the Bernese Oberland region] were all in good spirits. I have full confidence that he was the right man for the place and I feel assured that you will yet have much joy in the foundation you have laid for although you have been compelled to leave, the truth still remains and will grow and beat fruit in spite of all opposition."
Despite the geographical distance between the scattered Mormons in the Bernese Oberland, Ulrich Buhler maintained as much contact as possible with all of them. After having baptized Johannes Kunz I and his daughter Rosa in 1862, Ulrich Buhler remained closely associated with the Kunz family. A number of relatives living in the Diemtigen Valley were baptized by Ulrich Buhler, including, of course, 13-year old Gottfried Kunz in the summer of 1866.
Although it possibly has nothing at all to do with GJ's biography, it is not necessarily unimportant to note that neither Ulrich Buhler nor his four sons ever became polygamists. Although four of his five daughters were the plural wives of two polygamists, it is a fact that in 1878 Anna Burgdorfer Buhler actually opposed daughter Caroline's becoming the second wife of Gottfried's brother Christian, who as above mentioned had married Eliza Buhler in December of 1870. Obviously, a number of questions concerning GJ's personal story will always remain unanswered.
A fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington DC in 1921 damaged and destroyed most of the original 1890 census materials. By the mid-1930s, the surviving materials had been destroyed by government order. No microdata from that enumeration exists.
The LDS ward records of Bern (Idaho) show that 43-year old Gottfried Kunz was re-baptized on 2 September 1896 by his oldest brother, John Kunz III, the Bishop of the Bern Ward (1890-1918), and confirmed by David Kunz, another elder brother. To date, not any kind of background information concerning GJ's rebaptism is known.
In the census enumerations of 1900, 1910 and 1920, Gottfried is living in Nicholia, Lemhi County, Idaho. In 1920, GJ appears as the "partner" of Kentucky-born Henry C. Edelman, the "head" of their two-man household. Edelman appeared in the 1910 census of Nicholia as the partner of Utah-born Peter Tulgreen; the two men were close neighbors of Gottfried, who was living alone in 1900 and 1910.
Nicholia, which became the permanent settlement at the mouth of Smelter Gulch, is near where the Viola Mine was discovered by accident in the Birch Creek Valley in 1880/81. By 1882, over 400 inhabitants in the town were the main support of a three-story mercantile company, a fraternal organization, a skating rink, and ten saloons, which sold drinks for 12 ½ cents each. High grade lead ore was mined in the Viola Mine between 1882 and 1885. Lead poisoning from the smelter killed men who worked in the plant and animals in the surrounding region. In 1887, after lead prices collapsed and a disastrous fire destroyed the shaft, stulls and hoist, the mine was forced to close and the smelter was dismantled (http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/resources/minerals/mine_cleanup/completed_projects/viola.pdf).
Whether or not GJ actually worked in the Viola Mine remains unknown. Perhaps he worked in the Gilmore mines just past Gilmore Summit, some 65 miles south of Salmon, Idaho. The discovery of lead and silver lode deposits (along with trace amounts of gold) at the head of Liberty Gulch in 1882 is the reason why the mining camp of Gilmore was established. By the 1920s, "Gilmore became the largest lead-silver camp outside of the mines at Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho, and at one point produced the richest silver ore in the United States" (http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/fo/salmon/special_areas/gilmore_town_site.html).
No one knows to what extent Gottfried maintained contact with the Mormon Church. In the areas in which he worked and lived for the last decades in his life there were but few opportunities to foster membership in an organized branch.
John III's youngest child, daughter Lula, was not yet eight years old when her father died. She remembered having known her Uncle GJ from his occasional – perhaps only annual – visits with her father in Bern, Idaho, and recalled that he always brought a lot of dirty clothes with him to be washed, something which her mother did.
In her book "This Quiet Ground" by Julia I. Randolph, there is a notation that says "Kuntz, John…died at the Salmon Hot Springs." He had lived at Nicholia and was 79 years old when he died (Idaho Recorder, December 5, 1928).
GJ was actually 75 years old at the time of his death. But how could anyone have known that fact? There was an "old folks home" at the Hot Springs ranch where Lemhi County was able to assist indigent residents.
As of 20 November 1928 Gottfried was being treated for influenza by Dr. J. Martin in Salmon, Idaho, and about a week later, GJ was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia. Gottfried Kunz died on 1 December 1928 and, according to his death certificate, was buried in the Salmon City Cemetery on 2 December 1928. No autopsy was performed and undertaker William C. Doebler had to guess on much of the information as he filled out a death certificate because he did not know the deceased.
There is a so-called "county section" in the Salmon City Cemetery with many unmarked graves where indigent individuals were buried. Inasmuch as GJ does not appear on any of the cemetery plats and there is no marker, he may well have been buried in the county section."
Courtesy of Ronald W. Galloway Sr., Biography of Johann Gottfried Kunz edited by by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
by Ronald W. Galloway Sr.
edited by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
"Johann Gottfried Kunz, the fourth son and sixth child of John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz, was born 30 June 1853 on the family farm "auf dem Moos" in the hamlet Riedern in Diemtigen Valley in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. He was christened in the local Swiss Reformed parish church in the village of Diemtigen on August 7th. Although he was given the name "Johann Gottfried" at the time of his christening, he was known by the second of his given names, as was generally the case during the 19th century in the Swiss canton of Bern.
It was customary in the old Republic of Bern for a male child to have two godfathers and one godmother. In keeping with this tradition, John II and Rosina Knutti Kunz selected the following godparents for Gottfried: David Wampfler Jr., living on the farm "im Riedli" in the hamlet Zwischenflueh in Diemtigen Valley; Johannes Itten, a citizen of the community of Wimmis; and Magdalena Kunz, Gottfried's aunt and one of John Kunz II'sisters.
Nothing is known about Gottfried's early years growing up in the hamlet of Riedern, where he attended grade school.
According to family history, it was John Kunz II, Gottfried's father, who first heard about Mormons and their faith healings through the laying on of hands. Because his sister Rosina (known in the family as Rosa) suffered from an unknown spinal illness and knowing that she would be afflicted throughout her lifetime, John II wrote his father a letter and told him of his hearsay knowledge.
About a week before his ninth birthday in June of 1862, Gottfried's aunt Rosa and his paternal grandfather, Johannes Kunz I, were baptized as Mormons by Ulrich Buhler, who lived near Thun and was the presiding elder in the Oberland region. Their conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was something that caused immediate disruption in the Kunz family and greatly affected Gottfried's life.
Upon learning of the conversion of his father and sister, John II became extremely critical and rebellious about their acceptance of Mormonism, as did many other relatives, friends and neighbors. John II specifically expressed his anger at having written his father about Mormon beliefs.
How did John Kunz II come to learn of the Mormons? In December of 1862, he was working as a cheesemaker in Amsoldingen near Thun; perhaps he was already employed there in the springtime and heard about Mormon activity in the area. The fact that he wrote his father a letter to tell him about the Mormons would seem to indicate that he was not in the Diemtigen Valley.
It seems most likely that Gottfried's godfather – David Wampfler Jr. – could have been the one who first told John Kunz II about the Mormons because godparents were nearly always among the closest friends, family or associates of an infant's parents.
David Wampfler Jr. was a nephew of one of his own godfathers, school master Jakob Wampfler Sr., who died of pneumonia in the spring of 1850 in the schoolmaster's apartment in the village of Oppligen near Thun. Four years later, Margaretha Boss Wampfler, Jakob's widow, was baptized by Jacob Foutz Secrist, the first Mormon missionary to preach in Canton Bern. Some two months after her conversion, Elder Secrist baptized Ulrich Buhler and his wife, Anna Burgdorfer Buhler.
The vast distances between the scattered Mormons living in the Bernese Oberland prevented their meeting together on a regular basis. Nearly a year after Johannes I and his daughter Rosa had been baptized, Ulrich Buhler and a fellow companion came to visit the Kunz family on the "Schwand" farm at Meniggrund in Zwischenflueh. News that the Mormon emissaries were in the Diemtigen Valley spread quickly. Neighbors of John Kunz II in Riedern – nearly a 2 hour walk down the canyon from Zwischenflueh – confronted him and they together organized a small mob of local men who marched up to Zwischenflueh in order to run the Mormon elders out of the valley.
The old door on the "Schwand" home was built in two sections, enabling the top half to be opened without opening the bottom half. Upon hearing the noise of the group gathered at the entrance to his home, Johannes Kunz I opened the top half of the door and was confronted by neighbors, relatives and those he had thought to be his friends. The disorderly crowd informed Johannes that they wanted the Mormon missionaries to immediately leave the area.
Johannes was particularly disturbed to see his son from Riedern at the rear of the hostile group and emphatically told John II to return to his home and family. Johannes I talked to the others in the mob and finally they left without further bothering Elder Buhler and those gathered in the "Schwand" home.
Although the inhabitants of Zwischenflueh and the other hamlets in the Diemtigen Valley remained bitter and hostile toward the Mormons, representatives of the Church were able to make visits to the Kunz family without being molested. Through the renewed contact with Elder Buhler and other converts, twin Catherine Kunz was baptized in Lake Thun in the summer of 1863. A number of other relatives were baptized in the following months and years.
It was Ulrich Buhler who on 26 August 1866 baptized 13-year old Gottfried Kunz, the first of John II's ten children to join the Mormons. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the circumstances surrounding his conversion, but it is particularly significant because it shows the strong influence and activity of the family members already in the Church, as well as the growing division of the family as some of them affiliated themselves with Mormonism.
How and when John Kunz II learned of Gottfried's Mormon baptism is also unknown. However, John II's attitude toward Mormonism prior to 1869 is well documented, thus making it certain that GJ was baptized without his father's approval. During his mid-teenage years, GJ's relationship to his father was definitely very strained.
In mid-November of 1868, nearly six and one-half years after the baptism of Johannes I and his daughter Rosa, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz, Johannes I's wife, was baptized. Grandson John Kunz III, GJ's oldest brother, and his wife, Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz, were baptized at the same time in the cold waters of the Meniggrund Creek just below the "Schwand" family home, all three being baptized by mission president Karl G. Maeser.
Those three baptisms kindled additional anguish for John II and his wife in Riedern. In an attempt to convince their son of the grave mistake he had made in joining the Mormons, John II and Rosina asked John III to come to Riedern and get them a load of wood for the winter.
While at their home, they asked John III numerous questions and tried to prove from their understanding of the Bible that he had made an error in having been baptized. From that which he had learned from the missionaries and through his own studying, John III defended his decision with the scriptures. When John II realized that his efforts were futile, he became angry and raised points based on slander and falsehoods. Nevertheless, before John III left he bore a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel.
Was GJ at home during John III's visit in Riedern? It is well possible, indeed most likely. Certainly his own conversion some two years before had pricked John II's self-esteem. However, it also seems to be most certan that it was the sincerity of John II's two Mormon sons (GJ and John III), his parents (Johannes I and Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz) and twin sisters (Rosa and Catherine) that touched him sufficiently to agree to meet with the missionaries and listen to their message.
Willard B. Richards and a local elder made their way through the mid-winter snow to Riedern. In spite of Elder Richards' broken German and the translations of his companion, John II and his wife understood the teachings. On 27 February 1869 they were baptized along with their daughter Catherine ("Kaeti") in the icy waters of the nearby Kirel Creek. In the following months, a number of the other members of the family were also baptized.
Despite his earlier having vigorously opposed the Mormons, John II experienced a drastic change in spirit and became a staunch supporter of the doctrines which were at first new to him. Aware of the immigration to Utah of earlier Mormon converts in the region, John II stipulated at the time of his conversion that he would be baptized only upon condition that he not be asked to emigrate from Switzerland.
Numerous inhabitants of the Diemtigen Valley had indeed emigrated during the first half of the 19th century, many of them going to Russia, as did three of John II's cousins along with several other relatives, friends and associates. As a respected Simmental cheesemaker, John II could have at any time taken advantage of such an opportunity, but apparently never seriously considered such an option.
His conversion to Mormonism caused him to change his thinking and within a short time he and his wife soon began making plans to immigrate to Utah with their family.
At the beginning of July 1870, 47 year-old John Kunz II bid goodbye to his aged Mormon parents, his eldest married son and married daughter, both of whom were Mormons, and his non-Mormon siblings, sister (Magdalena) – Gottfried's godmother – and brother (Christian), and their families, as well as other relatives, neighbors and friends. Along with his wife and their eight single children as well as his twin sisters and other Mormon converts in the Diemtigen Valley, they departed their native home to embark on their immigration to Utah.
The emigrants met in Basel at the Red Ox Inn on July 5th and departed the next morning via railroad for Mannheim, where they arrived that same evening and were joined by several German Mormon converts. On July 7th the emigrant party boarded the Rhine steamer "Viktoria" and traveled to Duesseldorf, where they changed boats and continued to Rotterdam, staying overnight there in the City of Antwerp Inn.
On Saturday evening, 9 July 1870, they boarded the steamer "Lord Cardigan" and crossed the English Channel, arriving in Grimsby on Monday morning. They left that town shortly thereafter and arrived in Liverpool that same evening about 5 p.m. and were permitted to embark at once on the ship "Manhattan" which sailed for New York on July 13th.
GJ turned 17 just before he left Switzerland. His travels to Britain, crossing the Atlantic and then the long train journey to Utah were – without doubt – something he never forgot. The emigrants were met in Farmington, Utah, by the entire First Presidency (Brigham Young and his counselors George Albert Smith and Daniel Hanmer Wells), who shook hands with each of them. That news and learning of their safe arrival in Zion was a source of great comfort to Johannes I and Rosina Katharina, as well as to John III and Magdalena and the other Mormons in the area of Zwischenflueh. And, in accordance with the opinion of the time, Johannes Kunz I expressed his special gratitude "…for seeing the deliverance from Babylon of such a large number all at once…of his nearest blood relatives."
Mormon leaders asked the family to settle in the Bear Lake Valley, where their cheesemaking would be of importance to numerous pioneer settlers in that region. In August the family headed north and while camped for the evening at Wellsville, GJ and three of his brothers – Christian, Samuel and David – walked to Providence to see Joseph and Susanna Klossner Herzog and their family. Susanna, a first cousin of Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz (GJ's paternal grandmother), had been baptized in the fall of 1863 by Ulrich Buhler, and immigrated to Utah in 1866.
Joseph Herzog convinced the Kunz's not to settle in the Bear Lake Valley that fall but to wait until springtime. He offered to go there with them that fall to get logs with which to build a house the next spring. In his account of the family's move to Bear Lake, Robert Kunz, GJ's youngest brother, comments that "Mr. Herzog, Christian, Gottfried and David had gone over the fall before and got logs out for the two rooms. When we got to Ovid [in the spring of 1871], Herbert Horlsey and John Ulrich Stucki came with an axe and a saw to help us build the cabin. They put up a room a day. Father, Samuel and David helped these two men do this work."
Why not Christian and GJ? Christian had married Eliza Buhler (daughter of early Bernese Mormon convert Ulrich Buhler) in December of 1870 and was no longer living with his parents. GJ, as will be shown, was working in Utah.
It was during the winter of 1870/71 that 67-year old Johannes Kunz I contracted pneumonia , which caused his death in the old "Schwand" farm house on 17 February 1871. It is difficult to sense the division of the otherwise close family as they gathered for the funeral service in the little cemetery at Zwischenflueh. In the cortege that followed the horse-drawn casket down the precipitous canyon path between Meniggrund and the valley floor, Johannes' non-Mormon children and grandchildren joined with their Mormon mother and grandmother and mingled with John III and Magdalena as well as with the mixed congregation of Mormon and Swiss Reformed relatives and friends.
Following the death of Johannes I, John III and his family moved from the neighboring "Lower Blatten" farm to the "Schwand" home where his grandmother lived. In October of 1871 Magdalena Straubhaar Kunz gave birth to a second daughter, Magdalena Matilda Kunz, who lived only a month. For a second time the Reverend Johann Gottfried Kopp in Diemtigen noted in the parish registers that the infant had not been christened in the Reformed Church because the father "belongs to the Mormon sect," similar to what he had written in July of 1869 when he recorded the birth of John Kunz IV.
Only a month after Magdalena Matilda's burial, the family filed down to the Zwischenflueh cemetery for a third time that year when Magdalena Kunz Wiedmer – John II's eldest sister who died a month before her 39th birthday – was buried.
It took several weeks for the news of the three deaths in the immediate family in Zwischenflueh to reach the Bear Lake Valley. Exactly when John III made definite plans to immigrate with his family and his widowed grandmother is not known. Not only a military obligation prevented John III from emigrating as soon as he had hoped to go; the money necessary to finance the voyage had to be raised.
A 20th-century Kunz family history written by Oliver and Ezra Kunz, Thekla Kunz Walk and Maxine Kunz Blaser significantly ascertains that "Gottfried, Christian and Samuel later helped finance John's trip, Gottfried doing the biggest part." At some point between helping to get out house logs near Ovid in the fall of 1870 and the family of John II moving from Cache Valley to Ovid in the spring of 1871, 17-year old Gottfried went to the south Salt Lake area to work as a miner, presumably in the Emma Silver Mine near Alta in Little Cottonwood canyon.
In a biographical account of her father, Christian Kunz, Ida Kunz Boss wrote: "After their marriage [in Salt Lake City in December of 1870], Christian and Eliza went back to Idaho and lived by Aspen Creek and worked for Charles C. Rich, caring for sheep and feeding cattle. The following year he worked in the Cottonwood mines to earn money to secure passage for his brother John to bring his family to America from Switzerland."
Alta had been founded about 1865 in order to house miners working in the Emma Silver Mine in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Although rich silver ore had once been obtained in the Emma Silver Mine, its fraudulent sale in 1871 to British investors was the cause for the US ambassador to Great Britain – a director of the mining company – being recalled.
Gottfried Kunz had been working in the Cottonwood canyon mines for perhaps a year, maybe even longer, when his older brothers Christian and Samuel also went there to work as miners. At that time, communication between the Kunz brothers in Idaho and Utah could only take place through letter writing. GJ no doubt thus learned of John III's financial need in order to help pay the immigration costs for his family and, presumably, also for his 70-year old grandmother Rosina Katharina. GJ's letters obviously convinced his brothers that the needed cash could be earned through working in the mines.
GJ was barely 19 and had only been in the US for two years. Although he went to Bear Lake in the fall of 1870 to help get out house logs, he thereafter was apparently only there for an occasional visit because he was working in the mines. Despite his young age, he was able to help in doing the biggest part financially to get John III and Magdalena, their three children and also Grandma Rosina Katharina to America from Switzerland. Gottfried was also the link which enabled Christian and Samuel to get the necessary work in the mines which they needed in 1871/72.
At the beginning of July in 1873, Rosina Katharina Klossner Kunz bade her son and her grandchildren in Zwischenflueh farewell and departed Zwischenflueh, accompanied by John III, Magdalena and their three children. Two years before his death, John III looked back and commented, "Thankful to the Lord for preserving our lives up to our arrival in Zion, being my grandmother was a fellow passenger in my care in the seventy-first year of her life, and my wife with ruined health and three small children, and rejoicing to meet Father, Mother, seven brothers and one sister all well, we proceeded to start pioneer life. We built the first house in the Bern district, Bear Lake Co., Idaho, which we used for a dwelling the following year, but my wife leaving us thru her death on May 22, 1874, which brought an entire change into our family affairs, having to leave my children in the care of relatives and seeing that time would bring a barrier between my children and myself, I married my deceased wife's sister Sophie to fill at least in part the place of a mother to my little children, which she vey nobly did. From that day I married her, October 26, 1874, to the latter part of the year 1888, I married four more times, which gave me six wives in all, four of which bore me 25 children."
Up until 1874, Gottfried was a part of the immediate Kunz family circle, having what appears to be normal interactions with his folks and other family members, including going up to Ovid in 1870 to get out house logs for building a house the following spring, and giving financial aid to help his brother John's family and his grandmother pay for their immigration in 1873. He enjoyed a normal, caring and helpful relationship with everyone in his family.
After 1874/75, all interaction seems to have come to a halt, and there is virtually no mention of him in anybody's written histories nor does any kind of an autobiographical account exist. Why did GJ suddenly estrange himself from his family and move away?
It seems most likely that Gottfried's intention to marry in the late fall of 1874 was the cause for his long break in family ties. In October of 1874, at the time that John III and Sophia Straubhaar went to Salt Lake City to be married in the old Endowment House, GJ went along with his fiancée – Magdalena Linder – to also be married. They stopped along the way for a night's stay – perhaps in Smithfield, where Aunt Catherine Kunz Roberts ( a sister of John II) lived – and during the night, Gottfried literally disappeared in the proverbial "night fog." John III and the two women proceeded to Salt Lake City, where John was married to Sophia on October 26th by Apostle Daniel H. Wells who presided there from 1868 to 1884 and performed marriages and administered other sacred church ordinances.
Exactly one week later, after having "counseled" with Apostle Wells, John Kunz III then married Magdalena Linder, who had initially been engaged to marry Gottfried Kunz. Once again, no further details whatsoever are known about this significant incident in GJ's life.
In October of 1874, GJ was 21 years old; his intended bride-to-be was just a couple of weeks short of turning 35. Was this difference of some 14 years in age any kind of factor for Gottfried's action? No one knows.
John III's first wife, Magdalena Straubhaar, was some seven years her husband's senior, i.e. two and one-half years older than Magdalena Linder. Towards the end of 1872, 21-year old brother Samuel Kunz had married Elizabeth Haenni, who was just a couple of months short of her 33rd birthday. As a note of comparison, the Kunz brothers' mother, Rosina Knutti Kunz, was some three and one-half years older than their father.
For whatever reason, still unknown, Gottfried's marriage plans failed; he abandoned his fiancee and apparently went back to working as a miner.
In accordance with apostolic counsel, John Kunz III became a polygamist only a week after marrying his second wife. One can only speculate on the discussion between Apostle Wells and John III. Through marrying Magdalena Linder, John perhaps tried to help right Gottfried's wrong. Fact is that John III returned to Bern, Idaho, as the first polygamist in the Kunz family. Surely this must have created an awkward, uncomfortable situation for GJ and could very well explain his bizarre change of attitude towards his family and the separation from them.
Gottfried never married nor, as far as known, did he ever own any property. He remained a miner throughout his life.
At the time of the 1880 US census, Gottfried Kunz was living in Midway, Utah, and noted as being a mineral miner, the last along with seven others, as well as the Irish-born mine superintendant, three mining engineers and a Chinese-born cook, all living in what was enumerated as dwelling number 106, presumably some kind of a barracks-like building. Whether or not this group of men actually mined in Midway is unknown. Fact is that by the 1880s, the mines in nearby Park City were of economic importance in the Midway area.
No known record or history reveals why the early part of Gottfried's career as a miner took place in Midway, Utah. His previous experience in laboring in the Cottonwood canyon mines could very well have been the reason why he knew that work might be available for him in the Midway area.
Or, is it possible that GJ went there because that is where Ulrich Buhler was living? Forty-nine year old Ulrich Buhler arrived in the United States along with his wife and other family members in 1872, two years after Gottfried Kunz's own immigration. Could it be that when Gottfried – for whatever reason – abruptly abandoned his marriage plans in 1874 that he was convinced that outside of his family circle, he could still turn to Ulrich Buhler without fear of being shunned or rejected?
Ulrich Buhler, who had been known by his nickname "tobacco Ueli" prior to his having been baptized as a Mormon, was one of the stalwart early Mormon leaders in Switzerland. As a result of the persecution by Reverend Karl Howald and the Swiss Reformed parish consistory court in Sigriswil in 1854, Mormon missionary Jacob F. Secrist was banned from Switzerland and given a police escort to the Swiss border adjoining St. Louis, France, near Basel.
Shortly thereafter, mission president Daniel Tyler came from Geneva and met with the Saints in the home of Margaretha Boss Wampfler at Maurachern near Kiesen, setting apart Ulrich Buhler as the local presiding elder. When Elder Secrist informed the mission president that he had been banned from four Swiss cantons, President Tyler replied and added a comment about having "…received a letter from Brother Buhler, the tobacconist. They [the Saints in the Bernese Oberland region] were all in good spirits. I have full confidence that he was the right man for the place and I feel assured that you will yet have much joy in the foundation you have laid for although you have been compelled to leave, the truth still remains and will grow and beat fruit in spite of all opposition."
Despite the geographical distance between the scattered Mormons in the Bernese Oberland, Ulrich Buhler maintained as much contact as possible with all of them. After having baptized Johannes Kunz I and his daughter Rosa in 1862, Ulrich Buhler remained closely associated with the Kunz family. A number of relatives living in the Diemtigen Valley were baptized by Ulrich Buhler, including, of course, 13-year old Gottfried Kunz in the summer of 1866.
Although it possibly has nothing at all to do with GJ's biography, it is not necessarily unimportant to note that neither Ulrich Buhler nor his four sons ever became polygamists. Although four of his five daughters were the plural wives of two polygamists, it is a fact that in 1878 Anna Burgdorfer Buhler actually opposed daughter Caroline's becoming the second wife of Gottfried's brother Christian, who as above mentioned had married Eliza Buhler in December of 1870. Obviously, a number of questions concerning GJ's personal story will always remain unanswered.
A fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington DC in 1921 damaged and destroyed most of the original 1890 census materials. By the mid-1930s, the surviving materials had been destroyed by government order. No microdata from that enumeration exists.
The LDS ward records of Bern (Idaho) show that 43-year old Gottfried Kunz was re-baptized on 2 September 1896 by his oldest brother, John Kunz III, the Bishop of the Bern Ward (1890-1918), and confirmed by David Kunz, another elder brother. To date, not any kind of background information concerning GJ's rebaptism is known.
In the census enumerations of 1900, 1910 and 1920, Gottfried is living in Nicholia, Lemhi County, Idaho. In 1920, GJ appears as the "partner" of Kentucky-born Henry C. Edelman, the "head" of their two-man household. Edelman appeared in the 1910 census of Nicholia as the partner of Utah-born Peter Tulgreen; the two men were close neighbors of Gottfried, who was living alone in 1900 and 1910.
Nicholia, which became the permanent settlement at the mouth of Smelter Gulch, is near where the Viola Mine was discovered by accident in the Birch Creek Valley in 1880/81. By 1882, over 400 inhabitants in the town were the main support of a three-story mercantile company, a fraternal organization, a skating rink, and ten saloons, which sold drinks for 12 ½ cents each. High grade lead ore was mined in the Viola Mine between 1882 and 1885. Lead poisoning from the smelter killed men who worked in the plant and animals in the surrounding region. In 1887, after lead prices collapsed and a disastrous fire destroyed the shaft, stulls and hoist, the mine was forced to close and the smelter was dismantled (http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/resources/minerals/mine_cleanup/completed_projects/viola.pdf).
Whether or not GJ actually worked in the Viola Mine remains unknown. Perhaps he worked in the Gilmore mines just past Gilmore Summit, some 65 miles south of Salmon, Idaho. The discovery of lead and silver lode deposits (along with trace amounts of gold) at the head of Liberty Gulch in 1882 is the reason why the mining camp of Gilmore was established. By the 1920s, "Gilmore became the largest lead-silver camp outside of the mines at Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho, and at one point produced the richest silver ore in the United States" (http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/fo/salmon/special_areas/gilmore_town_site.html).
No one knows to what extent Gottfried maintained contact with the Mormon Church. In the areas in which he worked and lived for the last decades in his life there were but few opportunities to foster membership in an organized branch.
John III's youngest child, daughter Lula, was not yet eight years old when her father died. She remembered having known her Uncle GJ from his occasional – perhaps only annual – visits with her father in Bern, Idaho, and recalled that he always brought a lot of dirty clothes with him to be washed, something which her mother did.
In her book "This Quiet Ground" by Julia I. Randolph, there is a notation that says "Kuntz, John…died at the Salmon Hot Springs." He had lived at Nicholia and was 79 years old when he died (Idaho Recorder, December 5, 1928).
GJ was actually 75 years old at the time of his death. But how could anyone have known that fact? There was an "old folks home" at the Hot Springs ranch where Lemhi County was able to assist indigent residents.
As of 20 November 1928 Gottfried was being treated for influenza by Dr. J. Martin in Salmon, Idaho, and about a week later, GJ was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia. Gottfried Kunz died on 1 December 1928 and, according to his death certificate, was buried in the Salmon City Cemetery on 2 December 1928. No autopsy was performed and undertaker William C. Doebler had to guess on much of the information as he filled out a death certificate because he did not know the deceased.
There is a so-called "county section" in the Salmon City Cemetery with many unmarked graves where indigent individuals were buried. Inasmuch as GJ does not appear on any of the cemetery plats and there is no marker, he may well have been buried in the county section."
Courtesy of Ronald W. Galloway Sr., Biography of Johann Gottfried Kunz edited by by Paul-Anthon Nielson and Joy Kunz Peck
Inscription
Front of Monument: "KUNZ JOHANN GOTTFRIED JUNE 30, 1853 DEC. 1, 1928".
Back of Monument: "BURIED IN AN UNKNOWN LOCATION IN THE LEMHI COUNTY CEMETERY, SALMON CITY, IDAHO SON OF JOHN II (KUNZ) AND ROSINA KNUTTI (KUNZ.
CHRISTIAN (KUNZ), SAMUEL (KUNZ) AND GOTTFRIED (KUNZ) CONTRIBUTED TO JOHN III (KUNZ) AND MAGDALENA (STRAUBHAAR KUNZ) IMMIGRATION FUND WITH GOTTFRIED KUNZ DOING THE BIGGEST PART."
---Note: Items in Parenthesis were added for clarification purposes)
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