Today is the birthday of Julius Hermann “James” Griesenbeck (April 6, 1830-February 28, 1877). He was born in Materborn Gutersloh, Germany, but in 1852, when he was 22, his family took a ship to Galveston, Texas, and emigrated to the United States. Initially, they were in Comal County, but Julius, who begn using the first name ‘James,’ moved to nearby Waco, which had been incorporated in 1856. There he founded the James Griesenbeck Brewery in Waco, Texas, in 1870, but it was not successful, and closed just five years later, in 1875. Two years after that, he left his wife and their twelve children, supposedly to look for work, and rented a room above McPherson’s Saloon in Denison, Texas, where he turned his Navy pistol on himself, committing suicide.

And this is an account of Griesenbeck’s suicide, from Tavern Trove: