June 10, 2016

Charles M. Schulz: An American Peanut


I had no idea that Charles Schulz was first published in Ripley’s Believe It or Not until my family visited the museum named for him in Santa Rosa, CA. I was a big Ripley’s fan as a child and can recall the actual drawing from one of my books.  The Peanuts comic strip was published on October 2, 1950.

Charles M. Schulz, an American icon and award-winning cartoonist for over 50 years, was born in Minneapolis, MN, in 1922. His surname, Schulz, is of Old High German origin; his father’s parents, Carl Ludwig Schulz and Emma Alvine Auguste, emigrated from Germany in 1897. His maternal grandparents, Torgus Halverson, and Anne Sophie Borgen, were born in Norway and met and married in Wisconsin in 1885. Although Schulz’s parents had third-grade educations, his father managed to earn a license to barber and support the family with his own shop. Coincidentally, Schulz married Joyce Halverson, who had the same maiden name as his mother Dena, though no relation.