Adolphus Busch

Early life

Adolphus Busch entered the world on July 10, 1839, in Kastel, a part of Mainz within the Grand Duchy of Hesse. He was the youngest of 21 brothers, born to Ulrich Busch and Barbara Pfeiffer. The family was well-off, operating a wholesale business dealing in winery and brewery supplies. All the Busch brothers received a solid education, and Adolphus finished his studies at the Collegiate Institute of Belgium in Brussels.

At 18, in 1857, he left the German Confederation with three older brothers for St. Louis, Missouri, a popular hub for German immigrants. With so many siblings, Adolphus couldn't count on a large inheritance, so he had to forge his own path. St. Louis offered a huge German community and a strong beer market, plus the Mississippi River supplied abundant water and the city's many caves provided natural cooling for beer storage. His brother Johann started a brewery in Washington, Missouri.

Ulrich Jr. married Eberhard Anheuser's daughter and settled in Chicago. Anton dealt in hops and eventually went back to Mainz.

Career

Adolphus Busch started out in St. Louis as a clerk in a commission house and later worked at William Hainrichshofen's wholesale company. During the American Civil War, he served as a corporal in the Union Army's 3rd Missouri US Reserve Corps Infantry Regiment from May to August 1861, seeing action in Missouri, including the Camp Jackson Affair. While serving, he learned of his father's death and inherited part of the estate. Back in St. Louis, he partnered with Ernst Battenberg to launch a brewing supply business, selling to the city's three dozen breweries.

One of his customers was Eberhard Anheuser, a soap maker who had taken over a bankrupt brewery and renamed it Anheuser. In 1861, Busch married Eberhard's daughter, Lilly. After the war, he joined his wife's family brewery and bought out Eberhard's partner, William D'Oench. In 1879, the company became Anheuser-Busch.

Busch dreamed of a national beer with broad appeal, embracing scientific and technological advances, a wide-reaching sales strategy, and a marketing plan built around a single flagship brand, Budweiser. He set up a network of icehouses beside railroad tracks and introduced the industry's first refrigerated freight cars to distribute it nationwide. Despite his success, he jokingly called his beer "dot schlop" and personally preferred wine. He adapted the old European slogan "the Beer Of Kings" to "the Kings Of Beers" for his brand.

Philanthropy

Busch was a lifelong philanthropist who supported both education and disaster relief. After the 1882 Rhine flood devastated his hometown of Mainz-Kastel, he helped fund repairs. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he gave $100,000—half from his own pocket, half from his company. He also donated $350,000 to Harvard, which used the money to establish Adolphus Busch Hall, a Germanic museum.

Death and legacy

Busch died at his villa in Lindschied on 10 October 1913 while on vacation, having suffered from dropsy since 1906. He was survived by his widow, five daughters and two sons, August A. and Carl Busch, both of St. Louis. His body was brought back to the United States in 1915 by ship and transported by train to St. Louis. Almost thirty thousand people paid their respects when his body lay in state in the family mansion.

Notable guests included the U.S. secretary of agriculture, the president of Harvard University, and the president of the University of California. The procession consisted of twenty-five trucks needed to transport all the flower arrangements, plus a 250-piece band. The procession spanned twenty miles, from No. 1 Busch Place to Bellefontaine Cemetery. As many as 100,000 mourners lined the streets.

Five minutes of silence were observed at the request of Mayor Henry W. Kiel, lights were turned off at the Jefferson and Planter's House hotels, and streetcars were halted. Lilly Anheuser had a new mausoleum built in Bavarian Gothic style, completed in 1921, costing $250,000. It features grapevines and the inscription 'Veni, Vidi, Vici.' Lilly died on 17 February 1928 in Pasadena, California, and was buried beside her husband.

Did You Know?

• He donated $100,000 to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake—$50,000 personally and $50,000 from his company.
• He bought the rights from Rudolf Diesel to assemble diesel engines in America, establishing the Diesel Motor Company.