A nationally known seed business grew in Queens, and its founders created a charitable legacy for the welfare of children in that borough.
William Henry Brunjes (1885-1970) | George R. Brunjes (1887-1971)
In 1882, Martin J. Brunjes and his business partner, Richard Meyerrose, cousins who had immigrated from Germany, opened a store on Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, Brooklyn, to sell seeds, bulbs, and garden and farm implements.
Martin and his wife, Marie Margaret, had four sons and three daughters. After his cousin died, Martin encouraged his two youngest sons, William H. and George R., to join the store and renamed it Martin H. Brunjes & Sons.
At that point, customers were mostly local farmers, but gradually the farms gave way to homes and office buildings. In spring 1908, they began printing illustrated garden catalogs of 80 pages or more and mailing them to customers throughout the Eastern states. Soon, much of the seed business was done by mail, with the help of a well-organized correspondence department.
The catalogs’ colorful text was accompanied by drawings and photos of luscious-looking vegetables along with descriptions for planting and harvesting. The varieties offered were overwhelming: 12 kinds of sweet corn, from Country Gentleman to Long Island Beauty; 15 types of celery; 28 varieties of lettuce. . . enough to make today’s gardeners envious.
Another section was devoted to lawns and flowers. Their special blend of grass seed, M.H. Brunjes & Sons Choice Central Park Lawn Grass, was a best-seller. The last few pages of the catalogs offered scythes, hoes, and horse-drawn cultivators.
In 1926, the city needed the ground under their building for a subway station, so they were forced to move a half-block away. When they opened the new store, Martin sent a message to customers: “It has always been our object not only to send our seed of the highest germination, but also seeds that are true to name and which can be relied upon to produce the finest vegetables and most beautiful flowers.”
Martin died December 28, 1927, but William and George kept the business growing until the 1950s, advertising their free catalogs in newspapers in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The brothers lived together in Kew Gardens, Queens, and never married. George was elected a director of Bushwick National Bank.
Many Martin H. Brunjes & Sons Seed and Garden Tools catalogs—highly prized by collectors—are included in the Biodiversity Heritage Library at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland.
William Henry Brunjes died in September 1970 at age 85. His younger brother, George, followed a year later. George created a fund in the brothers’ name for the welfare of children in Queens.