Charles F. Gunther

Charles Frederick Gunther (March 6, 1837 – February 10, 1920) was a German-American confectioner and collector. He purchased many of the items now owned by the Chicago History Museum.

Gunther and his family moved from Württemberg to Pennsylvania in 1842, then resettled in Peru, Illinois. In 1860, Gunther traveled south and landed a job with Bohlen, Wilson & Company, an ice distributor based in Memphis, Tennessee. When the American Civil War broke out, Gunther pledged to "stick by Memphis", and helped transport Confederate soldiers along the tributaries of the Mississippi River. He was captured by Union troops in 1862, but was released and traveled back to Illinois. During the later years of the war, he worked as a traveling salesman for a Chicago candy manufacturer, mainly selling goods throughout the southern states.

After the Civil War, Gunther traveled to Europe to learn from the candymakers there. He started his own candy company in Chicago in 1868, specializing in caramel, which he is sometimes credited with introducing to the United States. Gunther's business was destroyed in the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, but he quickly recovered and built a new factory on State Street. With wealthy customers like socialite Bertha Palmer, Gunther amassed a fortune, and began purchasing historical artifacts to display in his factory. Many of these were artifacts from the Civil War, but there were also more unusual items in his collection, such as shrunken heads. Gunther even claimed to own the skin of the serpent from the Garden of Eden and the mummy of Moses' foster mother, Bithiah (both assumed to be fakes). One of Gunther's most important authentic items was Abraham Lincoln's deathbed, which he purchased in 1877.

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