Last week, this blog’s creators celebrated a twenty-year friendship at The Savoy in Kansas City, Missouri.

We’re Rachel and John, and we were also toasting the success of our company, Metapix.us, with a trip to Kansas and Missouri. We believe our business collaboration of twenty years—which has survived a recession, a worldwide pandemic, and hard times and good—should be celebrated.

Part of our celebratory trip includes visiting Atchison, KS, early home of the Mangelsdorfs.

Three of our four parents are immigrants and although we live and work in Silicon Valley, John’s paternal line runs through Kansas and Honolulu and is the main subject of The Mangelsdorf Seed Company Blog.

JOHN P. MANGELSDORFJohn Mangelsdorf - Owner

John P. Mangelsdorf’s great-grandfather was a child when his family sailed to New Orleans from Prussia. They immediately traveled north to Kansas where they put down roots, and where John’s grandfather was born. The sugar cane industry brought John’s grandfather to Honolulu where his father was born. John was born in Mountain View, California, to John E. and Lucette Brulhart, a lovely lady from Lucerne, Switzerland.

The Mangelsdorfs kept so many mementos of their work and play. This blog is our attempt to tell the stories behind these photos, souvenirs, articles, letters, and journals and post these American stories in remembrance of American pioneers.

RACHEL HUNTERRachel Hunter - Creative

I met John in 2005 and we soon became friends and business partners. Our company, Metapix.us, offers print and online design and management for small business marketing.

I was born in England and immigrated to Silicon Valley with my brother and parents in 1980. Other than one year spent in Thermopolis, WY, I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area (Sunnyvale, San Jose, Hayward, San Francisco, and Campbell) since.

I love to organize and started working on boxes and boxes of Mangelsdorf Family papers stored at his home. Learning about this family made me realize what a treasure of American history these artifacts represented and so this blog started with a pile of dusty old papers which had been boxed up and stored for decades.

Together, we hike, swim, travel when we can, and John cooks and I eat! As well as collaborating on this blog and Metapix.us, we also have an ebay eclectica store.

We hope that as we have the time to add content to this blog, you will enjoy learning about the Mangelsdorf history as much as I do.