This honored and highly respected citizen of Spring Bay is now living a retired life. He was born in Wurtemburg, Germany, September 23, 1844, secured a good practical education in the public schools of that country, which he attended until twelve years of age. Later he was a student in high institutions of learning, and became familiar with the German and French languages, but his knowledge of English has been self-acquired. His father, Godfrey Guenther, operated a wooden mill and oil mill in Wurtemburg, in which our subject worked until 1863, when he emigrated to America, and worked at his trade for several years at Rockwell, near Hartford, Connecticut. Subsequently he was employed in a woolen mill at Maumee, Ohio, for nearly three years, and in 1868 moved to Peoria, Illinois, where he conducted a dyeing establishment until 1873.

During the following thirteen years he was engaged in business in Toledo, Ohio, and then returned to Germany, spending about a year in visiting his old home and some of the prominent cities of the old world. In 1887 he returned to Peoria, and the following year accepted the general agency of the German Fire Insurance Compnay at that place, and devoted four years to that business, retiring at the end of that time on account of ill health.

In 1893, Mr Guenther came to Spring Bay, and on the 7th of August, that year, married Mrs Catherine Eichhorn, a daughter of Christian Wenckler, one of Woodford country's earliest settlers, having located here about 1830 or 1832. Mrs Guenther was reared and educated in this county, and in 1870 married Peter Eichhorn, a prominent brewer of Spring Bay, who died August 25, 1885, leaving four children: Herman G., a successful physician of Spring Bay; William, a farmer; Charles, a farmer of Spring Bay; and Algernon, at home with his mother. Mr and Mrs Guenther were born reared in the Lutheran faith, and are people of the highest respectability. Politically he is a stanch supporter of the Republican party, and is now a member and clerk of the school board of Spring Bay, but he has never cared for political honors.