More Fun with August Horn

I’m a sucker for these little stories about the misadventures of brewers that pop up from time to time in old Oshkosh newspapers. August Horn of Horn and Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery, and later the president of the Oshkosh Brewing Company, seems to have been a particularly ripe subject for Oshkosh newsmen back in the day. Here he is again in the summer of 1882 giving the hacks something to scribble about.

Backed Into the River
On Saturday afternoon the brewer Mr. Horn drove his large beer wagon to the Northwestern freight depot after some bales of hops. In backing down the inclined plain from the depot platform he cramped his horses too much and backed off the platform into the slip beside the depot. The horses and wagon with Mr. Horn on top of them went plunging into the water below. The men at the freight house ran to the rescue, but the rub came in getting the team out. The horses plunged and reared and pitched, as they could just touch bottom with their hind legs. It was with great difficulty that the team was unhitched from the wagon. As the team could not be lifted out of the slip on account of the piling, the horses had to be let loose and compelled to swim quite a distance, being driven by men in boats. I took some three hours to get the team and wagon out of the slip.
      -Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, Monday, July 10, 1882

In case you’re wondering, the Northwestern freight depot was located on the south shore of the Fox River near the crossing of the new CN Railroad bridge.

But my first question when I saw this was whether or not the hops had been loaded onto the wagon before Horn plunged his rig into the drink. Did Horn drown all those lovely hops? Tells you where my sympathies lie. And what kind of hops were those and where were they sent from? Wouldn’t you love to know? These newspaper guys always leave out the important stuff.