How Adam Lemp laid the foundation of one of the greatest breweries in America

For every new discovery in the story of Lemp, another mystery is found. The tale, and the intrigue, begins in 1836.

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Three years ago, I looked at the life of Adam Lemp, the founder of the Lemp Brewery, which was originally known as the Western Brewery. His personal life was one of tragedy and triumph, one shared with and denied from three wives. But the story behind his stunning business success in St. Louis, after countless failures in Germany, remained largely a mystery. Was it just simply that the Gateway City was so fertile in the decades before the Civil War that even the most hapless brewer could succeed? My research has uncovered that Lemp was not simply a passive recipient of a booming city on the frontier. Through more than 50 newly discovered legal contracts and dozens of contemporary German-language newspaper articles, a portrait emerges of a shrewd and resourceful immigrant who built a brewery from almost nothing into one of the leading businesses in St. Louis by the time of his death, in 1862. 

I also discovered that two widows provided loans that helped his business expand at critical moments. And for the first time, I will explore his two early business partners: Louis Bach, a successful politician who became a leading citizen, and the other, a mysterious man named John Kaeckell, who became Lemp’s stepson-in-law, and who later lost thousands in failed real estate speculation schemes.

Lemp, despite his success, could not seem to keep himself out of legal trouble, and I also discovered that he frequently found himself in the courtroom even as his wealth continued to accumulate from his thriving brewery and real estate deals. For every new discovery in the story of Lemp, and how he laid the foundation of one of the greatest breweries in America, another mystery is found. The tale, and the intrigue, begins in 1836.

As I wrote back in 2017, Lemp seems to have arrived in America in 1836, first living in Cincinnati before coming to St. Louis in 1838.  While there is corroborating evidence from his abandoned second wife’s legal notice confirming his departure from Eschwege, Germany, there is no proof Lemp arrived in St. Louis in the year his biographers claim. However, by 1840, the year the Lemps claim he founded the family’s brewery, the paper trail picks up in earnest.

The federal Census of 1840 contains an entry for an “A. Lemp” in the 4th Ward of St. Louis; in this household were two males, 20–30 years old; one male, 40–50 years old; five females, 5–10 years old; one female, 30–40 years old; and three of the people were employed in “commerce.”  We have long known about a city directory published in 1840 that also mentions Adam operating a “family grocery” at 6th and Morgan.  In 1840, the boundaries of the 4th Ward included the 6th and Morgan address. Frustratingly, the census does not name the people in the household. We can assume the “one male, 40–50 years old” is Lemp, but the other residents are open to debate.

The “one female, 30–40 years old” is most likely Lemp’s third wife, Louise Bauer. As I wrote back in 2017, this was also her third marriage, having been married to two men whose lives are lost to history. We know that Lemp was almost certainly married to her by the 1840 census because of a real estate transaction recorded in October of that year. While the contract gives her name as “Lucy,” I believe it to be Louise; let us assume that Lemp was only married three times, not four. Adam and “Lucy” Lemp bought lots one and two in block 106 of Julia C Soulard’s 3rd Addition on October 8, 1840, from Julia Soulard, James B. Soulard, and Harry G. Soulard for three notes of $476.84, six months, 12 months, and 18 months after the signing of the contract with 10 percent interest. Interestingly, Louise was illiterate and signed with an X. Federal marshals began counting residents on June 1, 1840, and the original act required the count to end on October 1, 1840, a week before the contract was signed. 

If Lemp was, in fact, married to Louise by the time of the census and the contract of 1840, this raises a serious problem for him. His second wife, in her legal notice, claimed to still be married to him in 1841. Was Lemp guilty of bigamy? There is no marriage record on file for Adam Lemp and his third wife. They could have married elsewhere in America. I have not been able to determine if Lemp met Louise in Cincinnati or St. Louis. Perhaps he never legally married his third wife in order to avoid being guilty of bigamy. All I know is two women, one in Germany and one in St. Louis, claimed with solid legal footing to be married to him at the same time. Louise’s daughters can account for at least some of the “five females aged 5–10 years old,” in the 1840 census, but who are the others?

That leaves the “two males, 20–30 years old.” I suspect that one might be Bach, and the other, less likely candidate, Kaeckell, two early business partners of  Lemp. Lemp might have been an unlikely person that any young man would want to partner with, considering his failing in Eschwege. Likewise, Lemp and Louise’s first land speculation purchase from Julia Soulard had been a failure; her brothers James and Henry would auction the two lots off in 1841 when the Lemps defaulted on the promissory notes. 

One thing for certain is that the Lemp Brewery’s longtime claim that its founding occurred in 1840 becomes very difficult, but not impossible, in the extremely short time allowed in that year. As mentioned above, Lemp was still operating his grocery store in the summer in a different part of the city that year. It is certainly possible that the move to the Second Street address occurred after he was counted for the 1840 census. But perhaps the Lemps considered the founding of their brewery to be when Adam began brewing beer in the back of his store, and not when he moved to the Second Street address. Or they simply lied. We may never know.

One fact we know for certain is that Lemp and his business partner Bach first show up in a city directory in the heart of the Levee in 1842, at 32 South Second Street, operating as Adam Lemp & Co., brewery and vinegar makers.

We learn from a contract Lemp and Bach signed for a $700 loan with 10 percent interest from Conrad Austin that they had signed the lease for their brewery building on April 1, 1841, renting from James Clemens, Jr. The brewery lease served as collateral for the loan to Austin. If we cannot believe the 1840 date for the founding of the Western Brewery, we can for certain establish the opening of brewing operations by this later date of 1841. Bach seems to have brought much-needed business expertise to Lemp’s life, as the loan seems to have been paid back successfully nine months later, as laid out in the terms of the loan contract. We can assume the loan was used for capital to further develop the brewing and vinegar-making operation.

Interestingly, the first extant advertisement I could find from Adam Lemp & Co. was not for beer, but rather for vinegar. Vinegar is a natural byproduct of any alcohol production, and there would have probably been a certain amount of beer that was spoiling during production. Consequently, the spoiled beer could be converted into vinegar that could be sold for many different uses in a 19th-century household. While certainly not as profitable as brewing, it would have otherwise been wasted product.

However, Lemp and Bach were certainly brewing beer and using a cave to store it, as an incredibly fascinating legal document reveals. Previously, an 1845 Daily Missouri Republican newspaper article had led Lemp researchers to believe the famous lagering cave had opened in that year. However, we now know that is not the case; it was much earlier.

According to a contract dated December 16, 1842, Lemp and Bach took out a loan of $300 from Pelagie Boyer, widow of Francis Boyer, using “Lemp’s Cave” as collateral, stating: 

“this land is well enclosed with good fence and partly improved thereon is erected a good frame house with several rooms and below is the natural and very important cave nicely fitted out in masonry in use actually for the [Adam Lemp and Louis Bach] to keep in their beer in large quantities. The whole tract of land afore described with the said a part to premises having been conveyed to the latter by the City aforesaid by indenture made and entered on the 15th of September 1841…” 

Frustratingly, there is no record as to what the “indenture” the City of St. Louis and the brewers had signed entailed, but Lemp would not officially purchase the land until 1847. The indenture clearly allowed him to rent out and improve the land. However, 1843 would prove to be busy for Lemp and Bach. First, we see the entrance of the mysterious Kaeckell as a business partner, first appearing in a contract with Lemp and Bach that the three men signed with a farmer named Christopher Charles Huth. The contract reveals important details of the appearance of the land above the cave in the mid-1840s.

The contract carefully stated that the three partners only rented the surface of the “Cave Property” to Christopher Charles Huth for farming until January 1, 1849. The cave was not included in the lease and was to remain undisturbed by Huth. Access was to be left for “man, beast and vehicle to the public road” (future Cherokee Street or Carondelet Road), and a half-acre on the east side of the premises for the erection of a building without any deduction of rent. Rent from January 1, 1844, would be $60, 1845 would be $70, 1846 would be $80, 1847 would be $90, and 1848 to the end of the lease would be $100. They also would pay Huth $85 to clear the land, $5 per acre. Huth would plant fruit trees and shrubbery provided by the partners. Wood cleared from the land went to Huth. The farmer also received all the beer and ale he could drink if he laid out a “pleasure ground.” The partners promised there would be no house of entertainment/beerhouse; the landscaping would remain property of the partners. Interestingly, years later, much of what Huth planted and landscaped seems to be visible in the painting in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum by Carl Wimar that shows the cave property in the 1850s. It seems the farmer kept his end of the contract, beautifying what had been rugged karst topography before he began cultivating and planting fruit trees.

Lemp’s previous failures in Germany were in the past, and we can see from his business contracts that he was now experiencing success in St. Louis. Next week, we will see that Kaeckell, Lemp’s mysterious business partner, would begin to get into his own trouble, and find a wife with ties close to the brewery.

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