Multnomah County OR Archives Biographies.....Zehntbauer, J. A. August 4, 1884 - 
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Ila Wakley iwakley@msn.com February 14, 2011, 1:28 pm

Source: History of the Columbia River Valley From The Dalles to the Sea, Vol. III, Published 1928, Pages 929  - 932
Author: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company

     J. A. ZEHNTBAUER.  About twenty years ago two young men, becoming 
acquainted, were drawn together through their mutual interest in outdoor 
sports and they strengthened this connection by a decision to engage in 
business together. From this early friendship have sprung the Jantzen Knitting 
Mills of Portland, today one of the chief enterprises of this character in the 
world, of which J. A. Zehntbauer is the president. From a humble beginning, 
under the leadership of J. A. Zehntbauer and his partner, Carl C. Jantzen, the 
business has been developed in spite of many difficulties and obstacles until 
it is an outstanding productive industry of the northwest, and that it has 
reached a point of leadership in the production of certain classes of knit 
goods which it manufactures is evidenced in the fact that it has many 
imitators.

     Mr. Zehntbauer is a native of Missouri. He was born in Purdin, Linn 
county, August 4, 1884, his parents being Joseph and Lucinda M. (Renfrow) 
Zehntbauer. The father was a native of East St. Louis and his parents were 
born in Germany. The Renfrow family, too, was of German lineage but on the 
maternal side, through the grandmother, whose name was Dunn, the family is 
likewise of Scotch extraction. In early youth Joseph Zehntbauer learned the 
cooper's trade and he was but fifteen years of age when he enlisted as a 
drummer boy for service in a regiment of Illinois volunteer infantry, 
continuing on duty throughout the period of the Civil war. He was married in 
Kewanee, Illinois, to Miss Lucinda M. Renfrow and afterward removed to 
Missouri, where he lived in a two-room log cabin about four miles north of the 
little town of Purdin, and in that primitive home the birth of J. A. 
Zehntbauer occurred. Two years later the father took his family to Kansas, 
settling near the town of Lucas, and three years later left Kansas for 
Nebraska, where the family lived in a sod house on a farm. In both states the 
family experienced all of the hardships and conditions of pioneer life and J. 
A. Zehntbauer still remembers the prairie fires which occurred in Nebraska and 
which were serious things because of the high prairie grass. When J. A. 
Zehntbauer was six years of age the family home was established in Loup City, 
Nebraska, where he attended school for the first time, but a little later the 
father decided to return to Missouri and settled at Utica, where he engaged in 
the cooperage business, returning two years later to Purdin, where he 
continued in the same line of activity. As there was no schoolhouse in Purdin, 
the children of the family had to walk about a mile to a country school. A few 
months later the family home was established on a small farm about three miles 
from the town. There as the years passed on J. A. Zehntbauer aided more and 
more largely in the work of the farm. It is said that the boy is father to the 
man, and it was clueing his boyhood that he determined that he would follow 
some other pursuit than that of agriculture. On one hot day he was working in 
the garden when he saw some of his boy friends drive by in a buggy, while 
others were riding horses. It was then that he determined that he would get 
into some business where he would not have to hoe corn on such hot days. Thus 
in the period of his youth was his character being formed and desires were 
taking shape that ultimately were to mold his later life. He completed the 
grammar school course at Purdin and when fifteen years of age went to Denver, 
Colorado, with his parents, while subsequently the family home was established 
in Portland, where his father and mother still reside.

     Throughout the period of his boyhood and youth J. A. Zehntbauer continued 
to work but he also made wise use of the time that is usually termed leisure. 
For six years after coming to Portland he was a regular student in the Young 
Men's Christian Association night school, which he attended four nights a 
week, missing only two nights in six years. He was realizing the value of 
education, of industry and of perseverance. His first regular employment was 
with the Luke Knitting Company at 150 Third street, where he remained for two 
years. He then entered the employ of Fleischner Mayer & Company at Portland in 
the hosiery and underwear department, acting as a salesman there for five 
years. He represented that company on the road and in his salesmanship 
experience he added to the knowledge which he had gained of actual methods of 
manufacturing knit goods, thereby becoming acquainted with two phases of the 
business which later was to claim his entire attention. It was in this period 
of his young manhood that he formed the acquaintance of Carl C. Jantzen and 
the young men found they had much in common in their interest in swimming, 
fishing and other outdoor sports. On a camping trip on the shores of Lost lake 
in the Cascade mountains John Zehntbauer confided his ambitions and dreams to 
his friend Carl, proposing that the latter dispose of his share in a ranch and 
join him in the knitting business in Portland. Two weeks later they entered 
upon the practical adoption of this plan. Their ideas as to what they were to 
manufacture were not definite, but each forward step they took brought them a 
broader outlook and a wider vision. In a small way they began the manufacture 
of underwear, hosiery, sweaters, caps and neckties under the style of the 
Portland Knitting Company. The two young men, owners of this new enterprise, 
were enthusiastic swimmers and experience had taught them that the so-called 
bathing suits were not an excellent garment to be used in swimming. They 
decided then to make a garment the style and quality of which should 
revolutionize that popular sport. They knew to do this there must be an 
elastic knit stitch which would replace the flat stitch fabric then in use and 
which because it had no elasticity therefore had no fit. The young proprietors 
of the Portland Knitting Company found their hand-knitting machines in their 
little factory on Alder street and their Swiss-made machines entirely 
inadequate for the work and they went to the east to inspect other machines 
but were told by all manufacturers that such a sitch as they desired to use 
could not be made by machinery. With the hopefulness of youth and the 
determination of experience the young men patiently experimented for a year at 
their own plant and came to the conclusion that such a machine could be made. 
Mr. Zehntbauer then remained in Portland to continue the supervision of their 
business here, while Mr. Jantzen returned to the east, remaining there for six 
weeks in order to superintend the work of construction of such a knitting 
machine as the firm desired and at last this was produced, forever solving the 
problem of making elastic-knit swimming suits. With the installation of the 
new machines, manufacturing steadily progressed and the swimming suit of the 
present day was developed. They used Oregon-grown wool, which has to its 
credit the natural advantage of climate and an abundance of fresh soft water, 
spun and dyed in the Oregon Worsted Mills, the only plant of the kind west of 
the Mississippi. Experiments have been carried on and today the Jantzen 
swimming suits are used to a far greater extent than any other in America.

     It was in 1910 that the Portland Knitting Company was organized by J. A. 
Zehntbauer, C. R. Zehntbauer and C. C. Jantzen, who served respectively as 
president, vice president and secretary and factory manager. In 1914 they were 
joined by J. R. Dodson, who became treasurer of the company. Feeling the need 
of a trade name, J. A. Zehntbauer suggested Jantzen and today that name has 
become the synonym of perfection not only in swimming suits but in other 
knitted garments.  The Jantzen became recognized as a bathing suit par 
excellence and the Portland Knitting Company became the Jantzen Knitting 
Mills. The swimming suit was immediately adopted by professional swimmers and 
is today used not only by those who have made swimming records in America but 
throughout the entire world. The trade of the house steadily grew and 
developed and in 1919 the company erected a plant at Nineteenth and Twentieth 
streets in Portland and in January, 1924, doubled its capacity by the erection 
of another unit. One of the features of the success of this enterprise has 
been the carefully directed advertising campaign upon which they entered. They 
have largely used the press to make their products known to the world and with 
the help of a local artist brought out the windshield stickers known as the 
Jantzen Diving Girl, which in the past few years have become familiar not only 
in every city but upon every highway of the country. It was not long before 
the Jantzen Knitting Mills corporation was in command of the trade in their 
line in the west and they then turned their attention to other sections of the 
country, establishing agencies in the middle west and in the south, while in 
Chicago and New York national sales offices were opened. From the beginning 
the business has enjoyed a continuous and healthful growth and in 1921, when 
thousands of factories were closed for lack of orders, the Jantzen Mills were 
running three eight-hour shifts a day. The year 1922 chronicles a one hundred 
per cent increase in their business and in 1923 their sales were again 
doubled. This once more occurred in 1924 and in 1925 their business increased 
in like proportion. The output of the Jantzen Mills is one grade of swimming 
suits. Today the output of the factory is sent into more than fifty foreign 
countries and seventy-two salesmen carry samples out of forty foreign sales 
agencies. Recently a large factory has been established in Australia for the 
manufacture of the Jantzen goods and this, as its Portland predecessor, is 
proving a profitable enterprise. Something of the volume of business conducted 
in Portland is indicated in the fact that the company employs more than five 
hundred people, with a monthly pay roll of between seventy and seventy-five 
thousand dollars, and the annual sales amount to over three million, one 
hundred thousand dollars. With the exception of Montgomery Ward & Company, the 
Jantzen Knitting Mills is the largest parcel post shipper in Portland. The 
production for 1928 was about one million bathing suits, or over three hundred 
dozen suits per day, and in their manufactured products they use three-fourths 
of a million pounds of yarn annually, amounting to one million, three hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars. Although the cost of yarn in the last four years 
has increased fifty-four per cent, the company has reduced its selling price 
seventeen per cent owing to the increase in volume and efficiency. Among the 
features, besides the absolutely perfect fit, which they have made for the 
popularity of the Jantzen bathing suits are the rubber buttons which they use 
and which can be put through the wringer. At the head of this vast enterprise 
which has been built up still stand the original proprietors, working in 
absolute harmony, the labors of the one supplementing and fully rounding out 
the efforts of the other. From the beginning Mr. Zehntbauer has continued as 
president of the organization and from the beginning he and his associates 
have manifested the greatest interest in the welfare of their employes. Clubs 
have been organized among them and annually a picnic is held, while each 
employe is given a vacation of from ten days to two weeks with full pay. Aside 
from his connection with the Jantzen Knitting Mills as president, Mr. 
Zehntbauer is a stockholder in the Oregon Worsted Company, is vice president 
of the Oregon State Bank of Portland, a director of the Oregon Life Insurance 
Company, and is connected with the Jantzen Amusement Park Company at Jantzen 
Beach, Portland, and other business interests.

     In Portland, on the 20th of August, 1910, Mr. Zehntbauer was marired to 
Miss Elizabeth A. Cormack, who was born in San Francisco, a daughter of James 
and Annie Cormack, both of whom were of Scottish birth, coming from the Orkney 
islands. Her father is in charge of the shipping and warehousing of the 
Jantzen Knitting Mills and resides in Portland. Mrs. Zehntbauer was reared and 
educated in this city, is a graduate of the Lincoln high school and taught in 
Portland for several years prior to her marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Zehntbauer have 
become parents of four children: John Alfred, who is a student in Moran 
College at Atascadero, California; Evelyn Ruth and Elizabeth May, students in 
St. Helens Hall of Portland; and Jane Lois, a grammar school pupil. Mrs. 
Zehntbauer is president of the parent Teacher Association of the Laurelhurst 
district and is an officer in the Women's Rotary Club of Portland. Mr. 
Zehntbauer has always been keenly interested in educational progress here and 
served as director of School District No. 1 in Portland for three years. He 
gives hearty aid and cooperation to all projects which he deems of worth and 
benefit to the city and his labors have been a tangible asset in public 
progress along various lines. He and his family are members of the Community 
Presbyterian church at Laurelhurst and his political faith is that of the 
republican party. Fraternally he is a Mason, belonging to Hawthorne Lodge, No. 
111, F. & A. M. He has membership in the Rotary Club and in 1922 served as 
president of the Portland Manufacturers Association. He likewise belongs to 
the Chamber of Commerce, the Auto Wheel Club and the Multnomah Auto and Golf 
Club. He has always been a lover of outdoor life, being in perfect tune with 
the great open spaces in Oregon. Always athletic, he is a good swimmer, 
golfer, hunter, fisherman, hiker, autoist and traveler and has found time from 
his strenuous business requirements to travel with his family in China, Japan, 
Australia and the Hawaiian islands.

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