Historic Beer Birthday: Frederick Pabst

March 28, 2025 By Jay Brooks

pabst
Today is the birthday of Frederick Pabst (March 28, 1836–January 1, 1904). His full name was Johann Gottlieb Friedrich Pabst. According to Wikipedia, he was born in the village of Nikolausrieth, which is in the Province of Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia,’ which today is part of Germany. “Friedrich was the second child of Gottlieb Pabst, a local farmer, and his wife, Johanna Friederike.”

Here’s his biography from Find a Grave:

Businessman. Beer magnate who founded the Pabst Breweries. Born in Nicholausreith, Bavaria, Germany, he immigrated with his parents to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1848, worked for a time as a cook in Chicago and later became captain and part owner of one of the Goodrich Steamship Lines’ ships, theHuron, on the Great Lakes. In Milwaukee, he met the prominent brewer, Phillip Best, son of Jacob Best, and before long married Phillip’s daughter Maria. After a December 1863 shipwreck near Milwaukee, Pabst bought a half interest in the Phillip Best Brewing Company so that his father-in-law could retire; at that time annual production was 5,000 barrels. Nine years later, the output was 100,000 barrels and he had become President of the company, was 37 years old and just hitting his stride. He went after the best brewmasters of his day, even traveling abroad hire the right men for his brewery. He increased its capacity by convincing the stockholders that the profits should be put into bigger and better equipment. He also traveled extensively, utilizing his personality and salesmanship to promote a nation-wide market by making the beer synonymous with fashionable people and places. Milwaukee’s German immigrant and second-generation population had more than doubled and this community was a ready market and skilled workforce for the lager breweries there. Eventually 40 distributing branches were established across the nation (12 of them in Wisconsin alone), with Chicago leading in sales, and the company’s export volume reached was nearly one-third of U.S. export sales. Under his leadership, the company became the largest national brewery in 1874; the name was changed to The Pabst Brewing Co. in 1889; and it became the largest lager brewery in the world, the first to produce over a million barrels of beer in a single year, 1892. The well-known “Pabst Blue Ribbon” label evolved from marketing and from a host of awards won at various fairs and expositions; his beer won gold medals at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and the 1878 Paris World’s Fair. In 1882, the company began tying blue ribbons around the neck of each bottle of its “Select” beer to distinguish it from other brands and customers began asking for “blue ribbon” beer even before it became the official name after winning the blue ribbon at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Pabst was also prominent in civic affairs, and was noted for the establishment of Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater and he had also established a traveling library providing German language books for immigrants. Afflicted with both diabetes and emphysema, he attempted to regain his health in 1903 with a trip to California. After two strokes during his trip he returned to Milwaukee, soon transferred $4 million in stock to his children and died six months later.

Another account from the Wisconsin Historical Society. The WHS also has a “Historical Essay” entitled Frederick Pabst and the Pabst Brewing Company, with a deeper dive into the history of both.

Pabst, Frederick (Mar. 28, 1836-Jan. 1, 1904), brewer, business executive, b. Thuringia, Germany. He migrated with his parents to the U.S. and to Milwaukee in 1848, worked for a time as a cook in Chicago and later became captain and part owner of one of the Great Lakes ships of the Goodrich Lines. In Milwaukee, Pabst met the prominent brewer, Phillip Best, soon married Best’s daughter Maria, and invested his savings in his father-in-law’s brewing business. After Phillip Best retired, Pabst became co-manager of the company with Emil Schandein, and together they built it into one of the largest enterprises of its kind in the nation. Schandein handled the production end of the business, while Pabst traveled extensively, utilizing his personality and salesmanship to promote a nation-wide market by making beer synonymous with fashionable people and places. Eventually 40 or 50 distributing branches were established, with Chicago leading in sales, and the export volume of the company for a time was nearly one-third of U.S. export sales. In 1873 Pabst became president of the company, and in 1889 the firm name was changed to The Pabst Brewing Co. Pabst was also prominent in Milwaukee civic affairs, and was noted for the establishment of the Pabst Theater.

Fred as a younger man.

Pabst with his wife Maria Best.

Here’s yet another account, this one from the Pabst Mansion website, which today is a popular tourist attraction in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Captain Pabst was born on March 28, 1836 in the small town of Nicholausreith, Saxony, Germany. In 1848, at the age of twelve, his parents, Gottlieb and Fredericka Pabst, made the momentous decision to immigrate to the United States and settled in Chicago. At the age of 14, young Frederick signed on as a cabin boy on a Great Lake steamer and by the age of 21, he became a Captain. Henceforth, until the day he died, he always retained the title of Captain.
Captain Pabst’s vessels plied the waters between Chicago, Milwaukee and Manitowoc. As Captain of a side-wheeler christened Comet, he found his future wife, Miss Maria Best. Maria, born on May 16, 1842, was the eldest daughter of Phillip Best, a brewer from Milwaukee. Frederick and Maria courted for two years and were married in Milwaukee on March 25, 1862. Two years later Captain Pabst took his father-in-law’s offer to buy a half-interest in the Phillip Best Brewing Company.
Captain and Mrs. Pabst would eventually have ten children from 1863-1875. However, only five survived to adulthood, a common occurrence during the nineteenth century.
Elizabeth 1865-1891 Gustave 1866-1943 Marie 1868-1947 Frederick, Jr. 1869-1958 Emma 1871-1943
They raised their new family in a home built in the shadow of the brewing company buildings. After the company’s name was changed in 1889 to the Pabst Brewing Company, Captain Pabst pursued the idea of building on property he had acquired some years earlier on Milwaukee’s prestigious Grand Avenue. During the summer of 1892, the Pabst family moved into their new home.
At the turn of the new century, Captain Pabst’s health started to deteriorate due to a number of ailments including pulmonary edema, diabetes and emphysema. In 1903, while traveling in California, he suffered two strokes before returning to Milwaukee. After his family rallied around him, Captain Pabst slipped away and died shortly after noon on New Year’s Day 1904. His funeral, which took place in the Music Room of the mansion, was meant to be a private affair, but the enormous crowds of mourners that surrounded the mansion made it all but impossible.

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The Pabst website also has a time of brewery history they call the whole story.

Also, Immigrant Entrepreneurship has a more thorough account of both Captain Pabst and his brewery. This is relevant part about Frederick Pabst.

Frederick (originally Johann Gottlieb Friedrich) Pabst was born on March 28, 1836, in the small village of Nikolausrieth, Kingdom of Prussia (today Mönchpfiffel-Nikolausrieth, Province of Saxony) and was the second child of the farmers Gottlieb Pabst (1800-1880) and Johanna Friederika (née Nauland) Pabst (1806-1849).[10] His older sister, Christine (1828-1905), remained in Prussia when the rest of the family migrated to the United States in 1848. The family’s migration was initiated by several promotional letters from relatives who had settled in Wisconsin. Shortly after his father arrived in New York from Hamburg, he booked a passage for the rest of the family. Reunited, they first joined their relatives in Milwaukee, and the following year they resettled in Chicago, where Frederick’s mother died in a cholera epidemic.
In some respects, Pabst’s family story reads like the archetypal “rags to riches” narrative of the era. Initially, Gottlieb and Frederick worked in hotels (Mansion House and New York House) as a waiter and a busboy earning $5 (approximately $156 in 2014$) per month. Around the age of twelve, Frederick found employment as a cabin boy abroad a Great Lakes steamer, the Sam Ward, of the Ward Line – a job in which he established a reputation for fairness, honesty, and determination as his 1904 obituary in the Milwaukee Sentinel attested. Stationed at the cabin door on day, his superiors instructed him not to allow passengers to leave the side-wheel steamer without showing a valid ticket. When the vessel’s owner attempted to pass without showing his ticket:
Young Pabst confronted and stopped him. Capt. Ward attempted to force his way out but was thrust back with considerable energy by the sturdy young German. The owner of the steamer stormed about and at last tried to bribe young Pabst to let him pass by offering him a dollar. This was indignantly refused, and Capt. Ward returned to the cabin in the worst temper possible. Then he began to think over the incident and as the integrity of the young man appealed to his better judgment, he not only relented, but from that time forward to the end of his life was one of Frederick Pabst’s best friends.
In 1857, Frederick Pabst received his maritime pilot’s license and “the Captain” was born – not only by occupation but also by personality. During the next six years, he navigated the ships of the Goodrich Transportation Line: theTraveler between Milwaukee and Chicago; the Huron between Milwaukee and Two Rivers; the Sea Bird between Milwaukee and Manitowoc; and the Comet between Milwaukee and Sheboygan, an important barley market that provided the key ingredient in beer. This last route brought him into contact with Phillip Best, who was a frequent passenger on his ships and sometimes took his eldest daughter Maria along with him. After two years of courtship, Frederick and Maria wed on March 25, 1862, and out of eleven children born to them, five survived to adulthood: Elizabeth Frederica (1865-1891), Gustav Phillip Gottlieb (1866-1943), Marie (1868-1947), Frederick Jr. (1869-1958), and Emma (1871-1943).
After marrying Maria, Frederick decided to remain a ship captain, but he changed his mind after the Sea Bird ran aground off the shore of Whitefish Bay on its way to Milwaukee during a winter storm in December 1863. Unable to pay for repairs to the vessel himself, he decided to join the brewing business of his father-in-law. Under the guidance of Phillip Best, “the Captain” learned the brewing business and served as an equal partner in the operation until his father-in-law retired in 1866 and sold his remaining stake in the business to his other son-in-law, Emil Schandein, a former travelling salesman who had migrated from the German lands to the U.S. in 1856 and had married Lisette Best.
Due to emphysema and pulmonary edema caused by years of smoking cigars, diabetes, and two strokes while on vacation in Southern California in 1903, Pabst’s health declined rapidly. When he died on January 1, 1904, newspapers around the world lamented his passing. At the height of his success, he passed on to his children and his eldest granddaughter, Emma (child of Elizabeth and Otto von Ernst), one million dollars’ (approximately $27.4 million in 2014$) worth of company stock (at a time when the average working class salary was about $600 per year or approximately $16,500 in 2014$) and his sons Gustav and Fred Jr. – both educated at military academies and trained as brewers at Arnold Schwarz’s United States Brewers’ Academy in New York – took over the business as president and vice president, respectively.

Beer In Ads #4922: It’s Wise To Ask For Braumeister Bock Beer

March 27, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Last year I decided to concentrate on Bock ads. Bock, of course, originated in Germany, in the town of Einbeck. Because many 19th century American breweries were founded by German immigrants, they offered a bock at certain times of the year, be it Spring, Easter, Lent, Christmas, or what have you. In a sense they were some of the first seasonal beers. “The style was later adopted in Bavaria by Munich brewers in the 17th century. Due to their Bavarian accent, citizens of Munich pronounced ‘Einbeck’ as ‘ein Bock’ (a billy goat), and thus the beer became known as ‘Bock.’ A goat often appears on bottle labels.” And presumably because they were special releases, many breweries went all out promoting them with beautiful artwork on posters and other advertising.

Thursday’s ad is for Braumeister Bock Beer and was published March 27, 1950. “Braumeister Bock Beer: The Only Genuine Milwaukee Bock Beer at the Regular Price,” which was originally published March 22, 1955 in the Saginaw News, which I believe was in Saginaw, Michigan, a medium-sized town in Eastern MIchigan located just below Saginaw Bay by Lake Huron. The brewery was the Independent Milwaukee Brewery of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1901 by five partners: Henry N. Bills, William Gutknecht, Charles Evers, Emil Czarnecki, and William Jung. It’s flagship brand was Braumeister. The survived Prohibition and lasted until 1962, when the G. Heileman Brewing Co. of nearby Lacrosse bought the brewery and closed it down the following year. This ad ran in the Cincinnati Post, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and includes the headline: “It’s WISE to Ask for ‘Milwaukee’s Choicest’ Bock beer” and features our intrepid genius goat, wearing glasses and mortarboard and tassel. The same ‘wise’ goat was featured in an earlier ad for Braumeister Bock and elicited several comments pondering why it was wearing eyeglasses. I think we can safely say it was to make him appear smarter.

Beer In Ads #4917: Now! It’s Bock Beer Season!

March 22, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Saturday’s ad is for “Braumeister Bock Beer: The Only Genuine Milwaukee Bock Beer at the Regular Price,” which was originally published March 22, 1955 in the Saginaw News, which I believe was in Saginaw, Michigan, a medium-sized town in Eastern MIchigan located just below Saginaw Bay by Lake Huron. The brewery was the Independent Milwaukee Brewery of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1901 by five partners: Henry N. Bills, William Gutknecht, Charles Evers, Emil Czarnecki, and William Jung. It’s flagship brand was Braumeister. The survived Prohibition and lasted until 1962, when the G. Heileman Brewing Co. of nearby Lacrosse bought the brewery and closed it down the following year. I love that their goat looks so smart. It must be the glasses and the mortarboard and tassel.

Historic Beer Birthday: John Land

March 16, 2025 By Jay Brooks

weber-land
Today is the birthday of John C. Land (March 16, 1853-January 15, 1943). He was born in Grand Island, New York, but somehow made his way to Wisconsin. There he apparently married Barbara Weber, the daughter of Stephen Weber, who owned the Weber Brewery in Waukesha, Wisconsin. On Thanksgiving Day in 1883, Stephen Weber gave his son William A. Weber and his son-in-law John Land ownership of the Weber Brewery. They renamed it the Weber & Land Brewery, and also traded under the name Bethseda Brewery. Land’s name was later removed it was more often known as the Weber Brewing Co., though the Bethseda named continued as well. It survived prohibition, and was known then as the Weber Waukesha Brewing Co. until closing for good in 1958.

weber-land-bottles

How long Land was involved in the business is unknown, and I could not find a specific biographical information beyond the tidbits I uncovered, and of course no photographs of him either. Most of what I did find was mentioned in the context of the Weber family and the brewery.

This account of the Weber brewery is from “Breweries of Wisconsin,” by Jerold W. Apps;

Weber-Waukesha-Beer-Labels-Weber-Waukesha-Brewing-Co--1934-1938-_8544-1

Beer In Ads #4906: Braumeister Bock Beer

March 11, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for Braumeister Bock Beer and was published March 11, 1951. The brewery was the Independent Milwaukee Brewery of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1901 by five partners: Henry N. Bills, William Gutknecht, Charles Evers, Emil Czarnecki, and William Jung. It’s flagship brand was Braumeister. The survived Prohibition and lasted until 1962, when the G. Heileman Brewing Co. of nearby Lacrosse bought the brewery and closed it down the following year. But in 1951, they claimed to have Milwaukee’s most famous brewmaster for brewing Prize Bock Beer.”

Beer In Ads #4900: Braumeister Genuine Bock Beer

March 5, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is is for Braumeister Genuine Bock, and is from March 5, 1956. The brewery was the Independent Milwaukee Brewery of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1901 by five partners: Henry N. Bills, William Gutknecht, Charles Evers, Emil Czarnecki, and William Jung. It’s flagship brand was Braumeister. The survived Prohibition and lasted until 1962, when the G. Heileman Brewing Co. of nearby Lacrosse bought the brewery and closed it down the following year. But in 1954, they claimed to have the only “Genuine” bock beer in Milwaukee.

Historic Beer Birthday: Geörg Ziegelmaier

March 3, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Geörg Ziegelmaier (March 3, 1852-December 27, 1908). He was born in Württemberg, Germany, but emigrated to the U.S. on July 2, 1854. He was originally trained as a baker and a miller, but became a brewer and founded the George Ziegelmaier Brewery in 1966, which was located in Boscobel, Wisconsin. He ran the brewery for nearly twenty years before selling it to William Bruer. It then went through a series of owners before becoming the Boscobel Brewing Co. in 1920, before closing for good in 1942.

Here’s his biography from Tavern Trove:

He became a farmer in New Hartford, Connecticut, then opened a milling business after the first harvest. In 1856 he established a farm in Crawford County, Wisconsin, but moved away after only one season. History next finds Ziegelmaier forty miles to the west, in McGregor, Iowa, a port city on the Mississippi River. He stayed long enough there to get married, to Mary Koss, and have two children.
In 1857 he moved his family back to Wisconsin to the town of Boscobel, where he opened a brewery and bakery shop. The brewery burned soon after, and he returned once again to McGregor. He came back to Boscobel in 1866 where he purchased the old brewery property and rebuilt it. He ran the brewhouse until 1884, when he sold it to William Bruer.
By 1890 Ziegelmaier had relocated to Milwaukee. The next decade saw him follow several of his children, now numbering an even dozen, to Washington state. Geörg died there on December 27th, 1908. He was 76 years old.

This is from another history of Boscobel beer that discusses the early history of the brewery.

This short biography is from “The History of Grant County, Wisconsin,” by Willshire Butterfield, and published in 1881.

Historic Beer Birthday: Henry Gund

March 2, 2025 By Jay Brooks

gund
Today is the birthday of Henry Gund (March 2, 1859-July 2, 1945). He was the son of John Gund, who co-founded what would become the The G. Heileman Brewing Company with Gottlieb Heileman. They formed a partnership in November 1858 to operate the City Brewery in La Crosse, but “after nearly fifteen years in business together, Heileman and Gund dissolved their partnership in 1872.” After leaving City Brewing, Gund immediately “established a new brewery on the southern edge of La Crosse that he named the Empire Brewery, and which was incorporated in 1880 as the John Gund Brewing Company.” Gund employed all three of his sons in his new venture, and eventually Henry Gund became president of the brewery after his father’s death.

There’s not much biographical information on Henry, and I couldn’t find a photo of him, either. But there was a short write-up in the Biographical History of La Crosse, Trempealeau and Buffalo Counties, Wisconsin, published in 1892, when Henry was still alive, and so was his father. This biography starts with John Gund, and then has limited information about each son.

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gund-letterhead
Immigrant Entrepreneurship, under German-American Business Biographies, has a lengthy tale of both John Gund and Gottlieb Heileman

In May 1910, John Gund passed away a few months shy of his eightieth birthday. Fifty-one-year-old Henry Gund assumed control of the firm, which had expanded significantly to become the largest brewery in the Old Northwest outside Milwaukee. It employed 450 workers and owned numerous saloons throughout the region that carried Gund beer exclusively. Despite the firm’s success, the second decade of the twentieth century would be a trying time for Gund Brewing. The First World War fueled the prohibitionist movement in the United States and denunciations of German-American brewers became commonplace. In November 1918, shortly after the armistice ending the war had been signed, Congress passed the curiously misnamed Wartime Prohibition Act banning the production of intoxicating beverages starting in May 1919 and the sale of such beverages starting on July 1. Legal wrangling in the federal courts regarding the definition of “intoxicating beverages” occupied much of the spring of 1919. Many brewers including Gund held that beer with an alcohol content lower than 2.75 percent was non-intoxicating and resumed low-alcohol beer production. Later in the fall, Congress ratified the Volstead Act enacting national Prohibition and set January 16, 1920, as the start date.

gund-brewery-1902
The Gund Brewery in 1902.

Despite the enactment of national Prohibition in early 1920, Gund and many other breweries continued producing 2.75 percent beer as various lawsuits made their way through the federal courts challenging the legality of the law and the meaning of various provisions. While the officers of the Gund Brewery awaited the outcome of the national legal battles, they faced a more immediate crisis. Local 81 of the International Brotherhood of Brewery Workers went on strike against local La Crosse breweries to ban open shops. Henry Gund refused to negotiate with the strikers and instead hired replacement workers to fill the vacant positions. The situation remained unresolved when the United States Supreme Court upheld the Volstead Act in the summer of 1920 and reinforced the complete ban on sales of alcoholic beverages. The ongoing labor unrest combined with the ban on beer production eventually led Henry Gund and the other corporate officers of the company to shutter the brewery. The corporation was dissolved in 1938 and the Peerless trademark was sold to the Michel brothers who resumed production of the brand. The Heileman Brewery later purchased Gund’s brew house.

John-Gund-Brewing-Co-Workers

John Gund’s vision of his brewery evolving into a major shipping brewery did not come to pass, and La Crosse did not emerge as a major rival to Milwaukee, St. Louis, or Cincinnati. Nevertheless, Gund had a major economic impact on the community and he influenced the entrepreneurial path of his sons. All three pursued careers in brewing: George in Washington and Ohio, John Jr. in Illinois and Kentucky, and Henry in Wisconsin. They also diversified their business activities into other fields. George entered the financial and mining sectors and earned a fortune through banking and real estate. John Jr. operated a malting facility in Chicago, the Lexington Brewery in Lexington, Kentucky, eventually became head of the Swiss Oil Company and the president of the First National Bank of Lexington. Henry stayed in La Crosse and became a director and later president of the National Bank of La Crosse (later the First National Bank La Crosse) and the president of the Pioneer Real Estate Company, a holding company for the defunct Gund Brewery’s real estate.

gund-brewery

Historic Beer Birthday: Adam Sander

March 1, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Adam Sander (March 1, 1832-July 8, 1901). He opened his first brewery with Andrew Schneider in 1857, located in Plymouth, Wisconsin. In 1864, he sold his portion of the brewery to his partner and moved to Fond du Lac, where he founded the Sander Brewery in 1873. In 1897, Sander brought his two sons, Albert and Edwin into the business, renaming it Sander Bros. Brewery, and retiring in 1898. The brewery was closed by prohibition, and briefly reopened in 1933 as the Pioneer Brewing Co. before closing for good the same year.

There was almost no information about Adam or his breweries other than a few bits and bobs, all fairly general. This is about all I could find:

Adam Sander began production of his beers from his plant on eleven acres of land one mile south of the city on the Fond du Lac and Milwaukee Road. Sander’s brewery, under different names, remained in business for almost fifty years. Sander was born in Germany in March 1832. As a young man, he married Gertrude Gaubenheimer and moved first to Baltimore, Maryland, and then to Wisconsin, living briefly in Milwaukee and Plymouth before finally settling in Fond du Lac in 1864. Late that year, he began a modest brewing enterprise.
During the following decades, Sander’s brewing company grew into a family business. When they were teenagers, his sons Edwin and Albert began working at the brewery. By 1880, the enterprise was producing 750 barrels per year. In 1898, at the age of sixty-six, Adam Sander decided to retire and handed over the brewing operations to his sons.
As new brewery owners, Edwin and Albert decided to institute major improvements to their facility. These changes included physical plant additions, state of the art bottling equipment, and a modern ice plant. The improvements paid off, and by 1912, Sander Brothers Brewing was selling six thousand barrels annually. At the top of their game, the brothers were finally forced out of business when alcohol prohibition came to America.

Historic Beer Birthday: Frederick C. Miller

February 26, 2025 By Jay Brooks

miller-old
Today is the birthday of Frederick C. Miller (February 26, 1906–December 17, 1954). Fred was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “the son of Carl A. Miller of Germany, and Clara Miller (no relation), a daughter of Miller Brewing Company founder Frederick Miller.

1954-Fred-C.-Miller

Succeeding his younger cousin Harry John (1919–1992), Miller became the president of the family brewing company in 1947 at age 41 and had a major role in bringing Major League Baseball to Wisconsin, moving the Braves from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953. He coaxed Lou Perini into moving them into the new County Stadium and the Braves later played in consecutive World Series in 1957 and 1958, both against the New York Yankees. Both series went the full seven games with Milwaukee winning the former and New York the latter.

Fred-Miller-with-Warren-Spahn-Courtesy-of-David-Klug

Fred Miller was also notably a college football player, an All-American tackle under head coach Knute Rockne at the University of Notre Dame, posthumously elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1985. He later served as an unpaid assistant coach for the Irish, flying in from Milwaukee several times a week.

He also “volunteered as a coach for the Green Bay Packers and, during a difficult financial period, even helped fund the team. Miller Brewing remains the largest stockholder of the Green Bay Packers,” which probably explains why they played half of their home games in Milwaukee before Lambeau Field was refurbished.

Here’s his biography from the College Football Hall of Fame:

A native of Milwaukee, Fred Miller was the grandson of the founder of the Miller Brewing Company. The qualities which later made Fred a great business executive were already evident when he entered Notre Dame in 1925, and they were quickly recognized by the immortal Knute Rockne. It was under Rockne’s tutelage that the 6-1, 195-pounder came to his gridiron peak, earning All-America mention in 1927, and again in 1928, and achieving the ultimate Notre Dame football honor by being named captain of the 1928 team. His quest for perfection was not limited to the gridiron. During his years at Notre Dame he coupled athletic prowess with academic proficiency and established the highest scholastic average of any monogram winner. Miller was involved in real estate, lumber, and investments before becoming president of the Miller Brewing Company. In 1954, he and his son, Fred Jr., were killed in an airplane crash. Miller was 48 years old. He was survived by his wife, six daughters and a son.

fred-miller-stadium
Miller at Milwaukee’s County stadium, where he helped moved the Boston Braves to in 1953, along with paying $75,000 for the County Stadium scoreboard in the background.

But beyond his sports accomplishments, he was an effective leader of his family’s brewery, as detailed by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in Remembering Frederick C. Miller, Milwaukee brewing’s 1st rock star:

Frederick C. Miller was the first brewery rock star.
Industry types praised Miller in the 1940s and early ’50s in the same way they gush over leading craft brewers today.
Frederick J. Miller was the builder of the brewery that is marking its 160th anniversary this year. Frederick’s son, Ernest, who took over after his father’s death, was a caretaker for the brewery keeping the status quo.
But Frederick C. Miller, part of the focus of a monthlong celebration of the company’s history that wrapped up last weekend, was the innovator who sparked new relationships, new buildings, put new ideas in motion and marched the family brewery past regional dominance to become the nation’s fifth-ranked brewery.
When you sip a beer at Miller Park or Lambeau Field it’s because of Fred C. He identified the relationship between beer and sports, and ran with it like the all-American football player he was.
“Fred was iconic,” said David S. Ryder, MillerCoors vice president for brewing, research, innovation and quality. “He was named as president of Miller Brewing in 1947, and from the day that he was named president, Miller Brewing started to grow.”
Frederick C. died when his plane crashed on takeoff at what is now Mitchell International Airport on Dec. 17, 1954. He was 48. His son Fred Jr., 20, and two pilots on the Miller Brewing payroll were killed on impact in the crash; Frederick C. was thrown clear of the crash but died hours later in the hospital.
A crowd of 3,000 mourners attended the funeral services, and the overflow was described by The Milwaukee Journal as “everyday folks — men in overalls and other rough work clothes, mothers carrying babies, young people and old.”
During Frederick C.’s time, Miller’s brewery expanded and sales grew from 653,000 barrels in 1947 to more than 3 million in 1952. He added buildings, including a new brewhouse and a new office building. He turned the former ice caves into The Caves Museum, a place where brewers could assemble for lunch or special occasions.
Liberace, a West Allis native, cut the ribbon for The Caves in 1953, according to John Gurda’s book “Miller Time: A History of Miller Brewing Company.”

Miller-airplane

Here’s a newspaper account of the tragic death of Fred and his son in 1954.

1949-Miller-tops-1-million-barrels

And lastly, here’s some interesting speculation from my friend, historian Maureen Ogle, that Miller Brewing might have done considerably better against their rival, Anheuser-Busch, if Fred Miller had not died prematurely in that place crash when he was only 48 years old.

It’s rare that the presence or absence of one person makes a historical difference (I said “rare,” not impossible). But I think that the death of Fred C. Miller in 1954 altered the course of American brewing. Miller was aggressive, ambitious, smart — all on a grand scale. He was the first beermaker to come along in decades who showed the potential to go head-to-head with the Busch family, particularly Gus Busch, who ran A-B from the late 1940s until the mid-1970s.
Miller became company president in 1947, and over the next few years, he shoved, pushed, prodded, and otherwise steered his family’s brewing company not-much-of-anything into the ranks of the top ten. But in late 1954, he died (in a plane crash) — and Miller Brewing lost its way.
As Miller faltered, A-B solidified its position as the dominant player in American brewing. Had Fred Miller not died, I believe the course of American brewing would have turned out differently: Fred Miller would have transformed his family’s company into a formidable powerhouse. He would have challenged A-B’s dominance. He would have been able to command-and-direct in a way that, for example, Bob Uihlein was not able to do at Schlitz during the same period.
Put another way, in the 1950s, Gus Busch met his match in Fred C. Miller. Things might have turned out differently had Miller lived
I can’t prove that, of course, but hey — what’s all that research good for if I can’t express an informed opinion.

And lastly, the Wisconsin Business Hall of Fame created a short video of Miller’s life that’s a nice over view of him.

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