The Wisconsin State Fair was held in Madison when the Carr family lived there. One exhibitor was a young man named John Muir who in his spare time on the family farm in
Marquette County whittled a series of very clever clocks and similar devices. These caught the attention of Jeanne who saw in Muir intellectual gifts that she felt should be nurtured. She sought out Muir and through a series of circumstances, encouraged him to apply to become a student at the university. Among his instructors were Ezra Carr, as well as another professor he was to stay in contact with for most of his life,
James Davie Butler. The Carrs and the Butlers were personal as well as professional mentors. Some life events were also influenced in reverse; when Muir went to California, he was in active contact with Jeanne, and when the Carrs were deciding on locations for their next move, Muir strongly endorsed California. Jeanne was gregarious and gifted and the Carrs had a vast network of influential friends in the east. When they moved to California they picked right up cultivating important relationships. In the summer of 1869, Jeanne went to
Yosemite for her first visit, hoping to meet Muir in person. However, Muir was high in the Sierra that summer tending sheep. Jeanne stayed at
James Hutchings' hotel, where Jeanne and Hutchings' wife Elvira established a friendship that would last many years. When Jeanne discovered that Hutchings needed a millwright to run a sawmill (for lumber to build up tourist facilities), she connected Hutchings to Muir. (Muir, aside from his general mechanical aptitude, had specific experience as a millwright in Indiana.) While Muir worked for Hutchings over the next few years, Jeanne frequently suggested to friends that they seek out Muir as a personal guide/naturalist. Among those who took up this suggestion were
Ralph Waldo Emerson and scientist
Asa Gray. The relationship between Jeanne and Muir was public and platonic, yet warm and intimate. What the Carrs did to enhance Muir's career was broad and general, nurturing his contact with the elite classes of society in the late 19th-century United States. An important specific influence was when Jeanne introduced Muir to the woman he would marry, Louisa "Louie" Strentzel. Louie Strentzel's father was a medical doctor from Poland, who moved to California during the
gold rush. He practiced medicine only a little in California, but he did build up a valuable ranch in
Martinez. The Carrs knew Strentzel because he was very active in the Grange movement. Jeanne thought that Louie and John would be a good match, which led to their marriage. When Strentzel died, Louie and John inherited the estate. Income from the ranch was key in allowing Muir free rein to promote his particular wilderness philosophies, which resonated strongly among the wealthier classes of society (who were after all the only ones who could afford the expense of wilderness adventures in that era). When Louie died, Muir inherited a good part of the ranch for himself (some of the inheritance going to their daughters), which accounts for the fact that contrary to popular perceptions that he was a dreamy vagabond, when he died he was worth the 21st-century equivalent of . Almost every aspect of Muir's success, financial and otherwise, was in some part due to his relationship with the Carrs. ==Later life==