Courtesy of National Park Service, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial
The former Adam Lemp Western Brewery and Saloon on South Second
Editor's note: This story has been updated with new information on John William Kaeckell's death.
John William Kaeckell remains one of the great mysteries in the story of the first decade of Adam Lemp’s Western Brewery. He comes out of nowhere, with no past that can be found in documents before becoming a partner of Adam Lemp's. He was born sometime around 1809 in what is now Germany. We don’t even have a photograph of him. Kaeckell, in some ways, is like a black hole in astronomy; his presence is observed only by how he interacts with others. Even Kaeckell’s own last name is spelled differently in documents as Kaeckel, Kackell or even Kegel. His eventual reburial in an unmarked grave in the Adam Lemp Plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery has him listed as William J. Kaeckell. However, newly discovered documents and contracts reveal that we cannot understand the story of the Lemps without looking at this mysterious businessman.
As we saw last week, Kaeckell appears early in advertisements and contracts as a partner of Adam Lemp and their third associate, Louis Bach. Before the partners even closed on the purchase of the South Second Street brewery property in 1847, we discover that Kaeckell and Lemp solidified their business ties with marital ties. As I wrote three years ago, Lemp’s third wife was also on her third marriage, and she had daughters from her first two husbands. Records reveal in Marriage Book 3, page 264, that Kaeckell (as John Wilhelm Kackell) married Auguste “Lemp” on April 7, 1846, in the Evangelical Protestant Church by Father Picker, a famous and well-known German pastor in the city at the time. Interestingly, as early as 1846 we see Louise Bauer Lemp, Auguste’s mother, and stepfather Adam Lemp were putting forth the façade that she was born a Lemp. We know from an affidavit from Auguste’s second husband, Henry Foerg, when his mother-in-law passed away in 1893, that Auguste’s father was Louise’s first husband, Deichmueller. Why they were embarrassed or sought to hide her real father’s name is unknown, but it was not a well-kept secret.
Regardless, Kaeckell and his new wife started their life together, and it seems that he wanted to make a name for himself separate from his now stepfather-in-law Adam—who, it should be noted, was only around a decade his senior. While the older brewer had been making savvy real estate speculative purchases in the St. Louis Commons around the Lemp Cave, many other unwise speculators had been losing large amounts of money on the difficult-to-develop karst topography of South St. Louis. What was good land for beer caves was not so much for real estate development. When Kaeckell and his new wife Auguste bought the northeast quadrant of Block 61 (now the southwest corner Jefferson and Cherokee), they were probably making a poor financial decision. The contract reveals the details: Lewis Flugger and his wife Margaretha sold the northeast quarter of Block 61 to John Kaeckell for $4,000, containing 8 82/100 acres, which Flugger had bought from the City of St. Louis on October 18, 1847. This was an enormous sum at the time, and not much less than what the brewery partners were paying for their property in the highly valuable Levee District.
And we know Kaeckell was still in partnership with Adam Lemp at the time, as we also have a record of a loan with taken with a widow living in Frankfurt, Maria Sophia Andreas. The loan on April 8, 1850, for $3,000 was backed with the “Lemp’s Cave Tract” as collateral, with two influential German American businessmen, Alexander and Henry Kayser, securing the lien for Mrs. Andreas. The loan would be paid off on April 20, 1855, at 6 percent interest. But Kaeckell was busy making another real estate transaction, this time for land just across Second Carondelet Avenue (today DeMenil Place) owned by Henry and Odille Chatillon just north of their own house. Paying $4,500 for what was a slender triangle of land (where William J. Lemp Sr. would later build a house) on April 10, 1850, one must wonder if Adam Lemp was a little worried about his business partner’s real estate skills. Similarly sized quarter blocks of land in the St. Louis Commons routinely sold for under $1,000 directly from the city, as a ledger in the collection of the Missouri History Museum shows.
Regardless, Green’s City Directory of 1851 shows that Kaeckell and Lemp were still in partnership in the Western Brewery, and apparently lived together at the South Second Street location with their families. And the vinegar business was still proving to be an important component of at least Kaeckell’s long-term financial plans. In 1851, Dr. Adam Hammer, of later Bavarian Brewery fame, and his wife, Helena, sold Kaeckell a “certain brick house and other buildings” for $550 in Block 29, Lot 4 of Soulard’s Addition on land owned by Erasmus Keys.
But 1851 was the last year that Kaeckell would be listed as a business partner of Adam Lemp. In 1852, the Morrison’s City Directory now listed Kaeckell in partnership with a one William Deichmann, operating a grocery store with wine and liquors at the southwest corner of Second and Market streets. Kaeckell had moved a block north of the brewery, to a residence in between Market and Walnut. This is also when the problems begin with the Kaeckells’ real estate ventures in the St. Louis Commons. I wonder if Adam Lemp was tired of his business partner and stepson-in-law.
The wheeling and dealing starts on December 1, 1851, when the Kaeckells mortgaged their property on Second Carondelet Avenue for a loan of $2,120 from Felix Coste and Peter Camden. They managed to pay that off the next year. Shortly after that, on June 7, 1852, they again put the same property up as collateral for a loan of $3,587 from Julius Mivorse and Robert Barth. They again managed to pay this loan off in 1855. But next, on August 18, 1852, they put up the northeast quadrant of Block 61 “with buildings” for collateral on a loan of $3,000, from his business partner in the grocery store, William Deichmann. The partners were also taking out their own loans together in the amount of $2,100 from Ernst Neuer on February 21, 1852. They may have been raising capital for their vinegar business, on Carondelet Avenue between Wood and Convent streets. Their grocery store was still continuing to operate, as well.
Kaeckell must have been getting into some sort of serious trouble by 1853, however, as he began to sell his property, as well as engage in strange real estate transactions with his old business partner Louis Bach, who had gone into a successful career in St. Louis politics after his foray in brewing. After repeatedly mortgaging the three acres on Second Carondelet Avenue, Kaeckell finally sold the property for $6,000 on January 2, 1853, to Robert Barth and Felix Coste. That spring, on May 10, 1853, the Kaeckells sold the northeast quadrant of Block 61 to Louis Bach for $10,500 “free and clear with no guarantor or deed of trust, eight and 82/100 acres.” Bach had clearly become quite well off to buy the property outright.
But then circumstances become strange. A month later, Louis Bach and his wife, Anna, sold the northeast quadrant of Block 61 back to John Kaeckell for $10,500 on June 5, 1853. No explanation of why they were engaging in this back-and-forth sale was given in the contract. However, a clue as to what the old friends and business partners may have been doing becomes clear in another contract signed the same day, and recorded officially on June 25.
“Whereas Kaeckell is embarrassed and unable to pay his debts and the debts of the late firm of Kaeckell and Deichman Grocers,” states the opening lines of the contract written and signed by Kaeckell on June 5, 1853. Kaeckell gave up title to the northeast quadrant of Block 61, all assets in the grocery store business at the corner of 2nd and Market Streets, all stock and implements in the vinegar business on Carondelet Avenue, and any stock or debts of any kind held by “Kaeckell or Kaeckell and Deichman.” Louis Bach was asked to sell or auction any property as he saw fit to pay off any debts. The contract further explained that Kaeckell owed debts of $425 to Eugene Miltenberger, Kaeckell, and Deichman of $400 to Firm of Bogy Miltenberger, and $900 to David Strudel. His wife, Augusta, released her dower, which was a means of support if she were widowed.
It appears John William Kaeckell’s luck had run out, and his respected friend Louis Bach had been asked to come in and salvage the situation. As far as I can tell, Bach succeeded admirably in his task. Somehow, the Kaeckells held on to their ownership of the northeast quadrant of Block 61 (probably nobody wanted it), and even tucked away some money in savings.
Unfortunately, Kaeckell was not around to see Louis Bach’s legal magic.
The Thursday, September 2, 1853, edition of the German language newspaper Anzeiger des Westens made the following shocking report:
“Corpse found. For about 14 days the friends and relatives of Mr. Kaeckel, who used to have a grocery store in the house with Mr. Deichmann at the southwest corner of Market and 2nd Street, had been missing and diligent inquiries were made on him. Yesterday morning it occurred to a friend of the vanished man to look up the coroner's reports on examinations of corpses held by him. He found that on Sunday a fortnight ago the body of a man had been found near English’s Cave, whose clothing corresponded to the ones that Mr. Kaeckel was wearing at that time. It was found out that the body found was really that of the missing person and yesterday the friends went to the city cemetery to find out where the grave possibly was. We didn't find out whether they succeeded. Mr. Kaeckel probably died of sunstroke.”
The staff at the Anzeiger were not aware that Kaeckell’s friends and family had already found and identified his body and had buried him on September 1, as a follow-up article in the paper revealed on the 3rd:
“The day before yesterday Mr. Kaeckel's body was buried by the relatives and friends of the deceased in Picker’s churchyard.”
They paid a gravedigger named Francis Giles $22 to disinter the body at the old Potter’s Field on Arsenal near Sublette and rebury it. Adam paid for the funeral, which came in at only $44, services provided by Henry Linkemeyer and billed September 1, 1853. Kaeckell’s coffin cost $5, and there were six carriages and two buggies rented for the trip out to Old Picker’s Cemetery, now the location of Roosevelt High School in Tower Grove East. In contrast, less than a decade later, Adam Lemp’s own funeral would cost $312, with a coffin that cost $75 alone and requiring the renting of 32 carriages for the journey to Bellefontaine Cemetery.
Can we simply assume that Kaeckell had too much to drink at the popular country beer garden of English Cave, stumbled out into the barren land of the St. Louis Commons, and fell victim to heatstroke during one of St. Louis’s infamous hot and humid summers? Unfortunately, that does not seem the likely explanation. Examining the Death Index for the week ending September 4 in the Recorder of Deeds office, listed among normal causes of death is Kaeckell’s: “his body found in the Commons.” There is nothing about dying of sun or heat stroke. In fact, it is notable in how much his “cause of death” is such an outlier in that it is not actually a cause of death like the other deceased listed on the same page of the Death Index.
And then there is the autopsy paid for by Adam Lemp on September 1, 1853, the same day as Kaeckell’s funeral. A Dr. Ch. Faust billed the brewer $10 for the “examination of Kaeckel’s dead body.” What were they looking for? Was there a suspicion of foul play? Or was this a case of denial of what had really caused the death of their friend and family member? The newspaper article from August 2 reveals that the business relationship with Deichmann had dissolved, and certainly the summer of 1853 had been a difficult time for Kaeckell. His probate file reveals that even if the business was closed, huge outstanding debts remained to many prominent businessmen, including Eberhard Anheuser associates William D’Oench and Nicholas Schaeffer.
There is also the mystery of another $25 bill in Kaeckell’s probate file; Adam had been asked to testify in a dispute over the deceased’s life insurance payout. For some reason, the insurance company was refusing to pay on the policy. Likewise, the Fisher Map from 1853 shows there simply was nothing else in the immediate surroundings of English Cave that Kaeckell could have been logically visiting. I am suspicious that he may have taken his own life out in the Commons due to the weight of his financial and personal troubles. The stigma of suicide would explain the oblique reference in the Death Index and the sunstroke explanation with no evidence in the Anzeiger newspaper article.
The settling of Kaeckell’s affairs would drag on for over a year and Louis Bach would finally announce on March 20, 1855, in the Globe Democrat that his old friend’s estate would be settled the third Monday of April. His wife, Auguste, and a son, Ferdinand, continued on with their lives. Adam helped Auguste sell her land at an auction hosted at his beer garden at Lemp’s Cave, no doubt using his business acumen to help out his stepdaughter financially after the death of her husband. Most likely due to legal restrictions on women, Adam served as her trustee.
Only later, once Adam Lemp and his friend Jacob Feickert had bought matching plots in Bellefontaine Cemetery, would Kaeckell be moved to his final resting place. A third child, Bertha, would be buried next to him shortly after. While Adam, his former business partner and stepfather-in-law was still alive and financially able to have purchased a tombstone, he chose not to, and over 160 years later Kaeckell’s grave is still unmarked and forgotten. Were the circumstances of Kaeckell’s death too shameful to warrant a marker above ground, and reburial from Old Picker’s to Bellefontaine merely a bare minimum courtesy to his stepdaughter?
Nevertheless, Auguste found a new husband, a highly respected pharmacist named Henry Foerg, who, apparently, according to his affidavit in Louise Bauer Lemp’s probate file, had known the family for many years. Pharmaceuticals were extremely profitable in the 1850s (as they are now, of course), and surely Adam and Louise were pleased at Auguste’s new husband’s profession. There are no records of Foerg engaging in risky real estate speculation and he even boasted a respectable personal estate of $3,500 in the 1860 census. Ferdinand was apparently so impressed with his new stepfather that he informally changed his last name to Foerg. The young man may have also been embarrassed at the events surrounding the death of his father and wished to move on from the cloud over the Kaeckell family name. Years later, when Adam Lemp died in 1862, his will revealed he had held in trust over $8,000 for his old friend John Kaeckell, and Ferdinand received the money on June 24, 1863. Perhaps the two men had hidden the money away while Kaeckell had gone through bankruptcy so that it could be safely passed on to his children one day.
Yet we are left with so many questions. Who really was John William Kaeckell? What was his marriage to Adam Lemp’s stepdaughter Auguste really like? He certainly provided substantial hard work and financial risk-taking in the creation of the Lemp Brewery throughout the 1840s into the early 1850s. The contracts he signed prove that. But he was someone who could have accomplished much more if he had not been reckless in his other business pursuits. Did he also suffer from drinking problems, as I suspect afflicted Adam Lemp? His premature death is shrouded in suspicious, tragic circumstances. In many ways, Kaeckell is an everyman, representing thousands, if not millions, of anonymous men and women who came to America looking to create a name for themselves. And but for just a few scraps of evidence, even he was almost forgotten.
