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The first and greatest Weyerhaeuser arrived in the U. S. in the middle of the last century. Frederick Weyerhaeuser was a sturdy, tireless young German immigrant farmer from Niedersaulheim. For two years he worked in a brewery at Erie, Pa., giving it up "when I saw how often brewers became their own best customers." His next job was in a sawmill on the banks of the Mississippi at Rock Island, Ill. Then he was made manager of a lumberyard. Thrifty Frederick came out of the 1858 panic with his boss's lumberyard and $8,000 profit. Then he turned to the source of the lumber business, the forest. Snow in his beard, year after year he sleighed through the northern woods buying timber, selling part of it to others, forming holding companies, but always retaining the biggest individual share, what was in practice the controlling minority. When the north woods were stripped, he moved into Idaho, into Oregon and Washington.
"This is not for us," Frederick Weyerhaeuser told his partners when he bought his first acreage west of the Rockies, "nor for our children, but for our grandchildren." Frederick had by that time begotten John Philip and three younger sons, three daughters. He had settled in a great house in St. Paul, whose richest citizen he was. But with shyness and dislike of ostentation characteristic of Weyerhaeusers to this day, Frederick's house was not quite so big as James J. ("Empire Builder") Hill's next door.
In 1914, Frederick Weyerhaeuser died without ever having lost his German accent. Eldest Son John Philip, already a well-aged man, had moved to Tacoma to take over the western part of the Weyerhaeuser empire, leaving younger brothers Rudolph and Frederick in control at St. Paul. Two of John Philip's sons went to Yale. Of the third generation, these are so far the most outstanding Weyerhaeusers. When Son Frederick got out of college (1917) he nailed a rubber hook to his office door, amused himself at his father's repeated attempts to hang his coat on it. He is now president of Weyerhaeuser Sales Co. John Philip Jr. took to the forests after graduation (1920), started the firm on selective cutting, is now executive vice president of the biggest Weyerhaeuser operating company.
Fortnight ago John Philip Sr. died. John Philip Jr. had returned from the interment at Rock Island the morning his Son George was abducted.
A bed sheet was flown from the rear of the Weyerhaeuser home, visible far out on Puget Sound and apparently a signal to the kidnappers. Mrs. Weyerhaeuser departed for Seattle and two notices were published, according to the kidnappers' directions, in the Post-Intelligencer, the first saying, "expect to be ready to come Monday," the second pleading: "Due publicity beyond our control please indicate another method reaching you. Hurry relieve anguished mother." But the week-end passed without George's return. Of all George's friends and relations, most optimistic was his schoolteacher. Said she: "He has such an endearing personality I don't think his kidnappers would harm him."