Frederick Pabst

Johann Gottlieb Friedrich "Frederick" Pabst (March 28, 1836 – January 1, 1904) was a German-American brewer who founded the Pabst Brewing Company.

Pabst was born on March 28, 1836, in the village of Nikolausrieth, which is in the Province of Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Friedrich was the second child of Gottlieb Pabst, a local farmer, and his wife, Johanna Friederike.

In 1848, he emigrated with his parents to the United States, settling first in Milwaukee, and then Chicago. The following year his mother died in a cholera epidemic. In Chicago, Frederick and his father had to eke out a living. For a while they worked as waiters and busboys. Frederick soon gave this up, however. Because he had enjoyed his voyage to America, he decided to become a cabin-boy on a Lake Michigan steamer. By the time he was 21, Pabst had earned his pilot's license, and was captain of one of these vessels. In this capacity, he met a German, Phillip Best, the owner of a small but prosperous brewery founded in 1844 in Milwaukee. Pabst married Best's daughter, Maria, on March 25, 1862.

For the next year and a half, Pabst continued to ply the waters of Lake Michigan as a ship's captain, until an accident in December 1863 led to a change in career. While trying to bring his craft into Milwaukee harbor, Pabst's ship ran aground. A short while later, Pabst purchased half of Best's brewing company.

In 1864, when Pabst was taken into partnership in his father-in-law's brewery, he began to study the details of the business. After obtaining a thorough mastery of the art of brewing, Pabst turned his attention to extending the market for the beer and before long had raised the output of the Best brewery to 100,000 barrels a year. The brewery was eventually converted into a public company and its capital repeatedly increased in order to cope with the continually increasing trade. He became president of the corporation in 1873. Later, the brewing company's name was changed to the Pabst Brewing Company.

In 1889, Pabst spent $30,000 to take advantage of prime shoreline along Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin's unique location, just north of the city of Milwaukee, by developing a popular lakeshore resort, which he called the Pabst Whitefish Bay Resort.

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