Father Johann Rudolf Meyer, Citizen of Aarau: A Memorial

married the daughter of a respected family from his home city, Elisabeth Hagnauer, who brought him fifteen years of life's happiness through her domestic reclusiveness and gentle, faithful disposition.

He himself now devoted his entire self to his main business, the preparation of silk ribbons. A natural enemy of all half-measures, he could not rest as long as he found something still to be perfected. His business offered him inexhaustible material, and his mind an unquenchable source. He invented ways to dye silk black more heavily, to water ribbons better, and to decorate them with raised ornaments, for which he made the most varied designs himself; a new method for the manufacture of velvet ribbon and the glazing of half-silk fabrics. Naive as he was, he guarded the secret of his inventions too little, and believed the discretion of the more skillful workers sufficiently guaranteed by promised benefits. Yet almost everything was betrayed to him. The betrayal pained him more than the loss. For he himself was accustomed to turn away with contempt those people who offered him foreign secrets for sale. The same noble pride also told him to scorn many petty commercial advantages, regardless of their profitability. He confidently trusted his own strength, and the ingenious man never lacked new inventions to procure and maintain wide sales for his ribbons, if not through the inner quality of the material, then through the luster and durability of the colors, pleasing decorations, and low prices. Soon his trade expanded far beyond the borders of his fatherland: to Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland, Russia, indeed even to the East and West Indies. In many neighboring villages of Aargau and Basel, spinning mills and looms began to operate, which helped to promote the prosperity of these regions not a little. Through this, his wealth increased so considerably that he was soon, and with good reason, counted among the richest citizens of Aargau. He owed this, next to a natural skill to do the right thing at the right time and in the right place, to his inventive spirit, for which many acquaintances, experiences, and knowledge acquired abroad stood him in good stead, but mostly to his strict honesty; in short, to that combination of insight and virtue which he calls wisdom in the speech mentioned above.