Adolphus Busch was an American brewer and benefactor. He is regarded for founding of Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company.
Background
Adolphus Busch was born on July 10, 1839 in Mainz on the Rhine, youngest of the twenty-one children of Ulrich Busch, a well-to-do dealer in wines and brewers' supplies. His mother, Barbara Pfeiffer, was a second wife by whom the father had eleven sons.
Education
Adolphus was educated in the Gymnasium at Mainz, the academy at Darmstadt and high schools of Brussels.
Career
Adolphus Busch then worked first in his father's establishment and later for a mercantile house in Cologne. In 1857 he followed relatives to the United States and went at once to St. Louis, Missouri. Here he obtained work as a clerk on a steamboat. On his father's death he used his inheritance, in 1859, to set up a brewers' supply store with his brother Ulrich.
Soon afterward Adolphus became associated with his father-in-law's brewery as a partner. His new business was interrupted by the Civil War, in which he served briefly as a corporal. When his company was mustered out he returned to the brewery and quickly became a factor in its growth. He was naturalized on February 9, 1867.
In 1875 the brewery was incorporated with a capital of $240, 000. The name was changed from E. Anheuser & Company's Brewing Association to Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association in 1879, in which year Anheuser died and Busch was advanced from secretary to president. Meantime, about 1875, the brewery had added to its products a beer light in color, pronounced in hop flavor, and not as sweet or as heavy in solids as were most of the popular brews of the time. This beer was called "Budweiser" by Carl Conrad, for whom it was brewed and to whom it was sold in barrels for bottling. When its distribution required capital beyond Conrad's resources, the "Budweiser" trademark was assigned to the brewery, and the new beer became Busch's specialty.
Reducing his list of many brands, he centered on four brews: a standard pale beer, "Budweiser, " "Faust, " and the more expensive "Michelob. "
To supply his brewery he established one of the largest of glass-bottle factories. Through the Southwest he set up a series of ice plants. The Diesel engine, which he first saw in Europe, fascinated him; realizing its potentialities, he acquired sole rights to its American manufacture and built and exhibited in St. Louis in 1898 the first such engine ever seen in the country.
This industrial empire made Busch one of the richest Americans of his time. A multimillionaire early in life, he donated freely to a long list of charitable, educational and otherwise worthy causes. His gifts included: $25, 000 to the Dayton flood sufferers, $100, 000 to the San Francisco earthquake victims, $100, 000 to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, $100, 000 to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, $200, 000 to Washington University, St. Louis, and $300, 000 to Harvard University for a museum of Germanic culture.
In later life he maintained four homes: a Gothic brick mansion at the brewery, a farmstead at Cooperstown, New York, "Ivy Wall, " a winter resort at Pasadena, California, where he developed the celebrated Busch sunken gardens, and "Villa Lilly, " a hunting-lodge named for his wife, near Langenschwalbach, Germany, where he spent part of each year in the hop-buying season.
As a user of large quantities of grain, he was intensely interested in agricultural advancement and joined in creating the Crop Improvement Bureau in Chicago. He was chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1904.
Meantime, he had it reproduced as a chromolithograph in brilliant colors and hung in barrooms the country over so that it became in all probability the most frequently viewed scene in American history. Ill with dropsy for several years, Busch died of cirrhosis of the liver in his seventy-fifth year at "Villa Lilly. "
His body was conveyed in state to St. Louis, where the funeral was attended by several thousand devoted employees. After a eulogy by Charles Nagel, secretary of commerce and labor in the Taft cabinet, the body was placed in a mausoleum in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis.
Twenty-five trucks were required to transport the floral tributes, which came from all parts of the United States. His golden wedding anniversary had been the occasion of festivals in more than thirty-five cities and now as many simultaneous funeral services were held by his widely scattered employees.
While on vacation at his home in Germany, Adolphus died on October 10, 1913 from the effects of dropsy.
Achievements
Views
An enthusiastic believer in research, he put his laboratory to work on the application of "pasteurization, " which he found made it possible for him to ship bottled beer to distant places for long keeping without refrigeration. A pioneer in this business, Busch used his skill as a commercial organizer and his powers of salesmanship to transform a local brewery into an internationally famous institution, with property in many states and agents in every American city of any size.
Personality
Adolphus Busch helped many men through their personal financial problems and aided others to start in business. Busch both looked and lived the merchant prince. Robust and erect, he was the more imposing for a flowing mustache, trim goatee, and deep voice which never lost its accent.
Interests
He was a generous patron of the opera and stage and frequently entertained their notables. His favorite painting was "Custer's Last Fight, " which he purchased and subsequently presented to the 7th Cavalry.
Connections
One of their customers was the operator of a Bavarian brewery in St. Louis, Eberhard Anheuser, whose daughters, Lilly and Anna, were married in a double ceremony to Adolphus and Ulrich respectively, March 7, 1861. He was the father of fourteen children, of whom nine grew to maturity: Nellie, August Anheuser, Edmee, Anna Louise, Clara, Adolphus II, Peter, Carl and Wilhelmina.