Biography

1857 -

Charles A. Muehlbronner was born in Philadelphia, May 10. 1857.  Rural education in Jefferson county, West Virginia. He became an apprentice to a painter. From 1870 to 1873 he was a clerk in a general store.   On May 10, 1873, travelled to California by means of freight and stock cars,— "side-door sleepers," to descend to the vernacular of the profession.  He remained in California fifteen months, and then came back to his native state.
The beginning of Mr. Muehlbronner's successful career was rather humble. He first became known to the public as a peddler of yeast and oysters. He got a monopoly of supplying all the grocers of Allegheny with oysters, and from that branched out into the poultry business. This proved profitable, and he continued it for seven years in the Pittsburgh market. In 1889 he established the commission firm on Liberty street, and, with yearly increased business, he has conducted it till the present time. When twenty-two years of age he was tax collector for the seventh ward of Allegheny; he served for three years as a school director, and was in the common council for the same time. He was elected to the select council for a term of four years. After serving two years in the last mentioned body, he resigned because of election to the legislature in 1890. He was a member of the lower house during the sessions of 1891, 1893, 1895, l897; was chairman of the municipal corporation committee; was the father of the prison labor bill, which has proved so satisfactory to the people of the state, and exerted his influence in securing the passage of many other laws which were beneficial to the state, among them a law providing for a change in the charters of cities.
Mr. Muehlbronner is a thirty-second degree Mason and a member of the Mystic Shrine. He also belongs to the Knights of Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. As a club man, he is enrolled on the registers of the Tariff. Elks' Club, the Americus, the Union League, Republican, Union Hunting and Fishing, American Clubs, the Allegheny Turners, and various other social organizations. Mr. Muehlbronner was married May 1878 to Miss Amelia Behm, and they are the parents of six children, two sons and four daughters.
Acclaimed for heroism in 1904, participating in the rescue from drowning of several people participating in a boat trip into Mammoth Cave, Ky. (Louisville) .