Born in Oldenburg, Germany, he was taken to the US while a child. He worked in New York and Savannah, Georgia, and then settled in San Francisco in 1849 initially to mine gold. He turned to business and soon dominated the California flour market, building the Eureka Flour Mills, the largest in the state of California. Known as the Grain King, by 1872 Friedlander controlled almost all exported Californian grain. He financed grain elevators and an irrigation project and was one of the first regents of the University of California and president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

 

Bibliography:

Breadbasket of the world: California's great wheat-growing era, 1860-1890. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1984. (10 pamphlets: ill.)

Links:

The Regents of the University of California Through the Years