In April 1919, Michael Leider was 43 years old and owned 10 shares in the Vegetable Growers Supply Co., newly established at the time in Rogers Park, Chicago. Michael immigrated in 1892 from Tadler, Wiltz Luxembourg, in the northern part of the country. His older step-brother by five years, John Peter (J. P.) owned 12 shares an also emigrated in 1892. Two of Michael and J. P. Leider’s nephews, sons of a Michel Leider (who remained in Luxembourg), Joe (32 years old) and Mike (26 years old) who both arrived in 1911, owned 2 and 4 shares respectively.

Collectively, the Leider’s owned 28 shares out of 494 total shares and were the top shareholder family in the new company. In 1919, it looks like the Leider’s were already operating three greenhouses, two in Evanston and one in Rogers Park. The next leading shareholder family was the Schwind family of Gross Point with 22 shares followed by company president J. P. Smith and his brother, Charles, with 16 and four shares respectively (20 shares).

By 1919, the Leider’s had an extended family in the Chicago area but were unlike the J. P. Smith and J. B. Molitor clans, whose families emigrated in the 1840s and 1850s. These Leider’s were part of a large wave of Luxembourg immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s. More importantly, the Leider’s were quickly establishing themselves as a leading family in the truck farming industry which would, in time, translate into one of the very few Luxembourg families operating successful Chicago area horticulture businesses in the 21st century.

While the Leider’s in Chicago are establishing themselves, another large Leider family had already established themselves in the Sheboygan County, Wisconsin area with emigration starting in the 1850s. One of the Wisconsin Leider’s fought and died in the Civil war, perishing in 1865 in the late stages of the Civil War. While the Chicago Leider’s came from the northern part of the country, the Wisconsin Leider’s emigrated from Remich, Luxembourg (near the southeastern tip of Luxembourg).

One Wisconsin Leider, Barbara, married into the Evert family (George Evert in 1892) which had established itself as an earlier Luxembourg family in the Lakeview area of Chicago (then called Rose Hill) in the 1850s and 1860s and this family. Six young adult siblings, sons and daughters of Pierre Ewert of Mersch, Luxembourg in the north central region of the country, settled in this part of Chicago. Another Leider worked in the coal industry in Chicago. Four years before Wisconsin Leider Barbara married George Evert, J. P. Smith married George’s cousin, Catherine Evert, also from Rose Hill Chicago, in 1888.

Perhaps more significantly, the later Luxembourg immigrant families were marrying other Luxembourgers. J. B. Molitor’s son, John Robert (the young share holder previously mentioned), married John Peter Leider’s daughter, Anna in 1914, just a few years before the formation of the new company. J. B. Molitor and Michael Leider both married Klotz sisters (another recent Luxembourg immigrant family), J. B. and Jennie in 1892 and Michael and Margaret in 1899. J. P. Smith’s family ties don’t involve many other recent Luxembourg immigrants, but Michael Leider’s does and even more so than J. B. Molitor’s, whose extended family is in Wisconsin.

In this regard, Michael Leider represents the bulk of recent Luxembourg immigrants and becomes part of the formula needed for establishing the new Vegetable Grower’s Supply Co.: great connections between the people and families in the Chicago vegetable truck farming business. Mike Leider was a key ingredient, I think, in the formation of the company and J. P. Smith likely knew that. The rise of the Chicago greenhouse growing industry was largely built on these family connections.