Was a source of information about Frederick and Paulina Wendt.

Obituary from a newspaper clipping which my grandmother had kept (Press Democrat?), with "1954" handwritten on clipping:

Leonard Wendt, 84, Santa Rosa Native, Dies

An 84-year-old native of Santa Rosa, Leonard Wendt, died yesterday at the General Hospital where he had been hospitalized for a month.

Mr. Wendt was born in Santa Rosa Sept 1, 1870, the third child of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Wendt, a German-born couple who came to Alpine Valley in 1860. He was born in the house at Second and E sts. that recently was demolished.

Leonard Wendt attended school and engaged in farming in the Pine Mountain District of Alpine Valley. He later moved to Rincon Valley where he had a prune ranch. His entire life was spent in the Santa Rosa area.

Mrs. Wendt, the former Martha Hesse, died 31 years ago.

Surviving are a daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Karl Stolting; two grandchildren, Mrs. Joan Larsen and Ted Stolting, and a brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Wendt, all of Santa Rosa.

Funeral services will be private. Memorial gifts may be made to favorite charities.

MR. WENDT, in an interview two years ago, recalled how the 500-acre homestead of his father in Alpine Valley was "grubbed out by hand" to plant a vineyard.

"In places the bedrock was right on the surface," he remembered, "but it grew grapes - fine grapes."

His father had homesteaded the property, 10 miles from Santa Rosa, after moving from his initial property investment, present site of the City Hall and Sonoma Country jail.

Fred Wendt Sr. cleared the rugged, wooded land and sold cut wood for the hearths of Santa Rosa.

The straight-grained redwoods on the homestead were split and sold. Leonard Wendt recalled, "All the pickets in Rincon Valley and along Sonoma Ave. and the rails and posts for fences were cut in Alpine Valley."

He remembered one fallen tree with a diameter of 20 feet.

When the fever for gold gripped the state, Mr. Wendt recalled tales of how pioneers prospected the hill slopes and then turned to the soil when gold eluded them.

It was a neighborly survival, said Mr. Wendt, "the road wasn't much but a trail. They could get over it with a horse and cart, but when better roads were neeeded to haul the wood and timber, the men of the neighborhood got out with picks and shovels and dug them out by hand."