Early Life
Linda Ronstadt was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1946 to Gilbert Ronstadt (1911–1995), a prosperous machinery merchant who ran the F. Ronstadt Co., and Ruth Mary Copeman Ronstadt (1914–1982), a homemaker .
Ronstadt was raised on the family's 10-acre (4.0 ha) ranch with siblings Peter (who served as Tucson's Chief of Police for ten years, 1981–1991), Michael J. and Gretchen (Suzi). The family was featured in Family Circle magazine in 1953.
Linda's father Gilbert came from a pioneering Arizona ranching family and was of German and English American descent, with some Mexican ancestry. Their influence and contributions to Arizona's history, including wagon making, commerce, pharmacies and music, is chronicled in the library of the University of Arizona. Linda Ronstadt's great-grandfather, graduate engineer Friedrich August Ronstadt (who went by the name Federico Augusto Ronstadt) immigrated to the West (then a part of Mexico) in the 1840s from Hanover, Germany, and married a Mexican citizen, and eventually settled in Tucson. In 1991, the City of Tucson opened its central transit terminal on March 16 and dedicated it to Linda's grandfather, local pioneer businessman Federico José María Ronstadt. Ronstadt was a wagon maker whose early contribution to the city's mobility included six mule-drawn streetcars delivered in 1903–04.
Her mother Ruth Mary, of German, English, and Dutch descent, was raised in the Flint, Michigan, area. She was the daughter of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of many patents. Lloyd, with nearly 700 patents to his name, invented an early form of the toaster, many refrigerator devices, the grease gun, the first electric stove, and an early form of the microwave oven. His flexible rubber ice cube tray earned him millions of dollars in royalties.
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