St. Louis may have been founded by French fur traders, but as Jim Merkel shows in his new book, Beer, Brats, and Baseball, this is truly a German town. Behold, five facts that illustrate the point.
Union Star: In 1861, Germans provided the manpower for the Union takeover of Camp Jackson, just north of St. Louis, ending any chance that the city would fall to secessionists.
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Dear Mr. President: German-American mayor Bernard F. Dickmann was a major supporter of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. When federal funding looked like it might be withheld from the project, he threatened to personally campaign against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the next election. A few days later, the funding was approved.
Wild Midwest: Flamboyant owner Chris von der Ahe led the St. Louis Brown Stockings to four championships in the 1880s and entertained fans with a Wild West show that featured 50 Indians and 40 cowboys. The team later changed its name to the Cardinals.
Tragedy Strikes: On Sunday, August 1, 1943, German-American mayor William Dee Becker and nine others boarded a military glider for an exhibition at Lambert–St. Louis Municipal Airport. A plane towed the glider into the sky and released it. Then its right wing broke off, killing mayor and his fellow passengers in front of an audience of 10,000.
Brew Brothers: Adolphus Busch was one of 22 children, so it might not be surprising that his was the third Busch brewery in St. Louis, after two founded by his brothers.
