Denton Freeman’s Bitter Harvest

Denton Freeman left Michigan in search of another way of living. He found it in Winnebago County. His life here was like nothing he could have ever expected.

Denton Garrison Freeman

He was born in 1839 on a small farm in Aurelius Township in south-central Michigan. The Freeman family had moved there three years earlier from upstate New York. It was a hardscrabble existence. Freeman's father could neither read nor write. His seven children grew up working the land they carved out of the forest. Denton Freeman got out of there as soon as he could.

Clemansville
Freeman was 17 when he left Michigan heading west. His destination was Clemansville, a small farming community that spanned the border separating the townships of Oshkosh and Vinland in northern Winnebago County.

A marker dedicated in 1946 to the memory of Clemansville still stands near the intersection of County Road T and Brooks Road.

Freeman arrived in Clemansville in 1857. He made his home on a farm owned by his older sister Hannah and her husband, a recent New York transplant named Spencer Kellogg. Early on, Freeman’s life in Clemansville was much the same as it had been in Michigan. He worked as a laborer on Kellogg’s farm. And he again found himself surrounded by New York settlers who had come to the Northwest in search of open territory.

An 1862 map with Spencer Kellogg's Clemansville farm in Section 27 in the Town of Oshkosh. It was located on the south side of Brooks Road about a mile west of County Road T.

Freeman remained intent on changing the course that had been set for him. He enrolled at Lawrence University in Appleton and began taking classes at the college’s preparatory school. Between his studies and his farm work, Freeman found time to find a wife. He was 22 in 1861 when he married Mary "Delia" West. Her family had a farm on the other side of Brooks Road in the Town of Vinland. The couple's first child came 11 months after the wedding. She was named Evelyn.

In 1862, Spencer and Hannah Kellogg moved to Brown County, leaving the farm in Freeman's hands. The land wasn’t his, but now he at least had a say over what would be done with it. Freeman appeared to be on his way. But the restlessness persisted.

On December 12, 1864, Delia gave birth to their second child, a boy named George. Freeman left them a month later. He enlisted in the U.S Army and went to Camp Randall in Madison for training. Freeman was going off to fight in the Civil War as part of Company C of the 46th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry.

Union Soldiers training at Camp Randall.

On March 5, 1865, Company C left Wisconsin and proceeded south. For the next seven months, Freeman helped guard the Nashville & Decatur Railroad line against attacks by Confederate forces. The rail line was a major supply route for the Union Army running between Nashville and Athens, Alabama.

A fortified railroad bridge across the Cumberland River at Nashville during the Civil War.

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered. The war began winding down. Freeman remained on active duty until September 27. By then he had been made a sergeant. Company C arrived back in Madison on October 2, 1865. Freeman returned to Clemansville and his family. He had a long, cold winter to think about what he would do next.

Hop Fever
When winter ended, Freeman bought the farm from Spencer Kellogg. He paid $500 upfront and borrowed another $2,300 (about $40,000 in today's money), for 80 acres of land in the northeast quarter of Section 27 in the Town of Oshkosh.

A recent satellite view showing the 80 acres (bounded in red) that Freeman purchased from Kellogg in 1866. The blue line marks County Road T. The yellow line marks Brooks Road.

In the spring of 1866, farms in the Town of Oshkosh and the adjacent Town of Vinland were being transformed. Wheat culture had predominated there since the arrival of the Yankees in the 1840s. But wheat prices had stagnated. Throughout the area, farmers were turning to hops. "Hop Fever" had seized Winnebago County.

For Freeman, the allure of hops proved irresistible. Stories of farmers getting rich on the crop were abundant. Prices were ascendant. A single harvest had the potential to bring in enough revenue to pay off his debt. Freeman went all in.

“A Hop Yard better than a Gold Mine.” Farmers throughout Wisconsin were inundated with ads like this one promising riches from hops. Watertown Republican; February 26, 1868.

Establishing a hop yard was laborious and expensive. In addition to preparing the soil for a new crop, Freeman purchased rootstock and hundreds of tall oak poles along with wire and twine to build trellises for the vining plants. He needed equipment for harvesting and a kiln for drying. Freeman appears to have spent much of his remaining savings and much of 1866 getting his hop yard in order.

In the spring of 1867, he began planting. By summer, any doubts Freeman may have had were surely being put to rest. Hop prices continued to soar and at the end of the season had reached a record in Wisconsin of well over 50 cents a pound. But Freeman had nothing to sell. The first year of growing was given over to establishing the roots. If all went well his first harvest would come the following year.

High-climbing hops being harvested in a typical Wisconsin hop yard of the 1800s.

The 1868 season got off to a promising start. By this time, though, Freeman was nearly broke. In early June, he borrowed another $1,600 (about $27,000 in today's money) at 10 percent interest. Freeman had reason to be bullish on his prospects, but he was creating a predicament that could only be rectified by the continuing inflation of hop prices and a banner harvest. Freeman soon faced the stark realization that 1868 was not going to be the year for either.

The first signs of trouble came early that summer. Growers saw their yards infested with a hop-louse that quickly ravaged portions of their crop. More devastating was the drop in prices. The record crop of 1867 led to a surplus that was about to be compounded by a glut of hops from growers new to the market. Prices spiraled down to as little as 10 cents a pound by August.

Freeman knew he was in trouble. On August 18, he sold the eastern half of his property, most of it given over to pasture, to a local farmer named Thomas Rice. The income from the sale wasn't a solution, but it allowed Freeman to stay afloat through the harvest season.

Mature hop cones. Freeman almost certainly grew Cluster Hops, the varietal seen here.

Freeman brought in his first harvest in early September 1868. The yield was acceptable. The quality was not. He took his hops to market and was offered about 4 cents a pound. Freeman went home with $300 in hand. It was nowhere near enough. Denton Freeman was ruined.

He began preparing for the inevitable. Freeman used the meager $300 and bought an acre of empty land from his neighbor, Henry Smith. Then he returned to the trough, borrowing more money so he could build a house there. The loss of his farm was inevitable. He would need someplace for them to go.

Digging Out
Freeman had another long, Wisconsin winter to stew over what a reckless pursuit it had been. He wasn’t the only victim of hop fever. As one report on the calamity of 1868 noted, "It seems strange that such a large number of intelligent men should be led astray financially, when the facts could be definitely known which pointed to disaster." The clearest path out was bankruptcy. Freeman couldn't accept that.

In the spring of 1869, he began making arrangements with his creditors for dealing with the overwhelming debt he had accumulated. He owed more than $2,000 (about $35,000 in today's money) than he and his farm were worth. Freeman put his remaining 40 acres up for sale. Then he hit the road again.

The southeast corner of County Road T and Brooks Road. After the failure of their farm, the Freeman family moved into a home that was located here on a one-acre lot.

Freeman's next idea for making money appeared to be every bit as dicey as his gamble on hops. He was going to be a traveling shoe salesman for Niles Stickney & Company of Oshkosh. It was a peculiar career choice for a person who had never earned a living from anything other than the land. He had, however, just stumbled into what would become his life's work.

It was a rambling sort of existence and it seemed to suit him. While Delia and the two kids were bunked at the Clemansville home, Freeman was on the road traveling by rail from town to town in the upper midwest. Armed with a catalog and samples of Stickney-ware Freeman haunted shoe and clothing stores trying to entice new buyers. He was wildly successful. Soon, Freeman was recruited by a larger shoe and boot wholesaler in Milwaukee. All the while he continued to pay down the accumulated debt on his dormant hop yard.

In the spring of 1871, Freeman sold the remaining 40 acres of his Clemensville land. The buyer, Charles Hoffman, also agreed to assume a portion of Freeman’s debt. Freeman was that much closer to being free of the financial failure that dogged him. He was still paying for it six years later when he hatched a scheme designed to take him out of the hole.

Freeman's Gift Concert
Private lotteries were somewhat common and somewhat legal in the 1870s. There was enough gray area around the law that it allowed room for interpretation. Freeman was going to stake a claim in the gray area.

In November of 1877, he announced that he would hold a "Gift Concert" wherein he would sell lottery tickets for a drawing that promised scores of cash prizes and his home in Clemansville as the grand prize.

“Mr. Freeman would say to the public and his friends, that he takes this course to dispose of his Clemansville property as a bonafide business transaction, and not to get money out of his friends and neighbors…” Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; December 24, 1877.

These games of chance were notoriously corrupt. Freeman, in his promotional material for the Gift Concert, made it clear that his lottery would be free of fraud. He referenced his own "integrity" and "uprightness" promising ticket buyers that "He is a fair and honorable gentleman as all who know him will testify." Perhaps, but Freeman's habit of referring to himself in the third person was less than reassuring.

The prizes were to be awarded on January 10, 1878. A common ploy among these lotteries was to schedule the drawing for a date in the near future and then quietly reschedule it for a later date. The tactic led people to believe their ticket had not been drawn and was therefore useless, leaving a share of the prizes unclaimed. That's exactly what happened with Freeman's lottery.

The final drawing wasn't held until July 2, 1878. A sparse crowd gathered for the event that evening at the Turner Hall on the corner of Jefferson and Merrit. Most went away disappointed. The drawing for the grand prize, the home in Clemansville, was a fiasco. Freeman said he was unable to determine who held the winning ticket. Two weeks later he announced that it had been sold to A.W Straw, a Milwaukee hat maker.

No individual named Straw was ever awarded the grand prize. Freeman retained ownership of the home in Clemansville until he sold it in February of 1879 to a man named David Kronnenberg. Every aspect of the lottery had a crooked look to it. But it appears to have had the desired effect. Freeman was out of Clemansville and out from under the debt that had pinned him there.

The Captain
Denton and Delia Freeman moved to Oshkosh with their two children who were now in their teens. In Oshkosh, Delia gave birth to a girl they named Lulu Belle. The Freeman family lived in a home that once stood on the north side of High Avenue between Division and Jackson streets.

The layout of Freeman’s home from a 1903 map superimposed over a recent view of High Avenue.

Denton Freeman didn't spend a lot of time around the house. He was often on the road selling shoes. He kept a separate apartment for himself in Milwaukee, which had become his base of operations. In December 1887, Freeman was called back home when both Delia and Lulu Belle contracted diphtheria. Both were dead by the end of the month. He buried them and went back to work. 

Freeman remarried in 1903, but still spent most of his time traveling the state selling shoes. He was 72 when he finally ended his commercial travels. After that, Freeman sold shoes from his home.

Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; October 13, 1911.

In 1913, Freeman turned 74 and took a new job as the Quartermaster of the Grand Army Veterans Home at King in Waupaca County. He remained there for the next decade. The folks at the Veterans Home took to calling him The Captain.

The Commandant's House at the Veterans Home in King. Built in 1890, the house was designed by Oshkosh architect William Waters.

As Freeman aged, his identity seemed to coalesce around his nine-month association with the Union Army during the Civil War. After he came back to Oshkosh in 1923, The Captain – as everyone now called him – often spoke about his impressions of the war to local organizations and at functions memorializing Union soldiers. At 90 years of age, Freeman had become the torchbearer in Oshkosh for what remained here of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Denton Freeman appears on the left in the back row. Click the image to enlarge it. Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; June 7, 1930.

Denton Garrison Freeman died on June 22, 1933 at his home on High Avenue. He was 93 years old. At the time of his death, Freeman was one of just seven surviving Civil War Veterans living in Oshkosh. His grave is in Riverside Cemetery.

Nass, the Fishing Shanty Bootlegger

In the summer of 1921, a 35-year-old Oshkosh bootlegger named Herman Nass set up a moonshine distillery in a floating fishing shanty on the Fox River near the Wisconsin Street Bridge. On a Saturday night in late October that year, four young men broke into the shanty and robbed it of several gallons of moonshine. Later that evening, the men were pulled over by police. Their truck was searched and they were arrested for transporting the illicit booze. The thieves led the cops back to the shanty where Herman Nass was found "asleep and partially intoxicated." Nass was arrested. The cops confiscated his still and destroyed his remaining moonshine by pouring kerosene into it. It was Nass’ second bust for bootlegging in less than five months. His first arrest had cost him $200 (about $3,000 in today's money). This time, they threw the book at him. Nass got a nine-month prison sentence.

The Nass shanty is long gone, but a few of the old fishing shanties are still left along the south shore of the Fox River near the Wisconsin Street Bridge. 

It Was the Other Pommerening

Now what makes that announcement special is that it was published on November 11, 1921. That's almost two years after the start of Prohibition. They didn't really expect Oshkoshers would stop drinking, did they? The Pommerening who was arrested was one of a half-dozen men nabbed in Oshkosh for drunk and disorderly that particular Saturday evening.

Opening the Beer Vault

On Sunday May 17, 1857, the summer lager began flowing in Oshkosh…

“The Lager Beer vault of one of our breweries was opened yesterday, for the first time this spring, with appropriate ceremonies. There was a large crowd present, to test the quality of the lager. We have heard various reports concerning the effect of the liquid upon those who imbibed it. Upon reflection, we have concluded not to give publicity to any of the aforementioned rumors.” 

      – Oshkosh Daily Courier; May 18, 1857.

Well, at least they could have mentioned the name of the brewery!

In 1857 Oshkosh had three breweries making lager beer:
↣ There was the Lake Brewery on Lake Street near Ceape.
↣ There was Loescher’s Oshkosh Brewery on Bay Shore Drive just north of Eveline.
↣ And there was the Fischer & Weist Brewery near the SW corner of High and New York.
(Go HERE to see the location of every Oshkosh Brewery from 1849-2019)

The ceremonial opening of the "vault" was in keeping with an old German tradition marking the release of the “Sommerbier." It was a stronger, hoppier lager brewed in early winter and stored away in cold beer cellars for months. The opening of the vault signaled the end of winter and the release of the new beer that would be served throughout the summer months.

The Sommerbier phenomenon is fascinating. If you want to get into it, check out Ron Pattinson of the Shut Up About Barclay Perkins blog. He’s dredged up quite a bit on Sommerbier and Winterbier and has passed it along in a four part series of blog posts that you can find here: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4.

Big Brew Day

The Society of Oshkosh Brewers are celebrating National Homebrew Day this Saturday, May 7 with an open to the public club brew at The Cellar Brewshop at 465 N. Washburn St. The brewing will be in full swing by 9 am and will go into the early afternoon. If you’re homebrew curious, this is an excellent chance to see what the world’s greatest hobby is all about. The Ginger German's Gastro-Truck will also be there serving up the best in German-inspired food. This event is always a lot of fun, stop on out and get to know those SOBs! Here's the Facebook event page (if you're into that kind of thing).

SOBs doing the sort of thing SOBs do.

Fox River Valley Beer Distributing

While I was working on that story about brewing in the “Brooklyn” section of Oshkosh, I stumbled across an odd, little piece of local beer history. In 1949, this house at the northwest corner of 21st and Doty was home to the short-lived Fox River Valley Beer Distributing Company.

21st and Doty.

As far as I've been able to tell, Fox River Valley Beer Distributing handled just one brand of beer: Patrick Henry Malt Liquor. That unassuming corner at 21st and Doty appears to have been the portal through which Oshkosh was introduced to the charms of malt liquor.

B'Gosh It's Good!

Jared Sanchez

Jared Sanchez launched the B'Gosh It's Good Breweriana Show in Oshkosh in 2020. It was the first time a breweriana show had taken place here in almost 40 years. The bi-annual event held at Fifth Ward Brewing has developed into something special. At yesterday's show, vendors from around the state displayed an array of items drawn from Wisconsin's storied beer culture. That all of this happens within a working brewery makes it a truly unique experience. The next one takes place this fall. Don't miss it! 

When You're Out of Schlitz...

Through most of March and April, Oblio's Lounge was without Schlitz due to those unending “supply-chain” issues. Todd at Oblio’s told me that during the drought there was a guy who kept coming in and asking if Schlitz was back on tap yet. Todd would tell him it wasn’t and the guy would walk back out. I sort of admire that. And I’m glad his wait is over. Schlitz is pouring again at Oblio’s. 

The first Schlitz was served there 137 years ago when Oblio’s was called the Schlitz Beer Hall. Back then, the building was owned by August Uihlein, the president of Schlitz Brewing Company.

B'Gosh It's Good

The B'Gosh It's Good breweriana show is this Sunday starting at noon at Fifth Ward Brewing in Oshkosh. This event has grown into something like a pop-up beer museum with 30 collectors on hand showing off their vintage brewery memorabilia. It's free and if you'd like to be a vendor there are a couple of spots still left (contact Jared Sanchez here). I'll be there, too, with copies of my book Winnebago County Beer: A Heady History. Stop by, grab a beer, and give a peruse to some incredible pieces of beer history. The show runs from noon until 4 pm. Check out the Facebook event page for more details.

A Brewery Tour of Oshkosh’s Brooklyn

In the early 1850s, a community began forming on the south side of the Fox River in Oshkosh. Yankee settlers living on the north side of the Fox said the emplacement of the new settlement called to mind the river-sliced arrangement of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Southsiders liked the sound of that. Brooklyn became their pet name for the neighborhood they were building.

Oshkosh's Brooklyn grew up south of the Fox River and east of Minnesota Street in the old Third Ward. By the 1860s it had developed into a thriving community with its own distinct identity.

Oshkosh’s Brooklyn, 1867.

Many of Brooklyn's early settlers had migrated from German-speaking lands in Central Europe. They were beer-loving people who retained their native tongue and their old-world culture of pleasure. Lager-beer saloons became commonplace along their main thoroughfare, Kansas Street, now called South Main Street.

The Beglinger Brothers’ Grocery and Lager Beer Saloon at the corner of 8th and Kansas, circa 1865.

But the Brooklyn saloons didn't serve Brooklyn-brewed beer. By the end of 1865, there had been seven breweries established in Oshkosh. All of them were on the north side of the river. Having to rely on the Northsiders for their beer irritated the independent-minded Southsiders. Brooklyn needed her own breweries. The name given to the first of them was practically pre-ordained.

The Brooklyn Brewery: 1865-1894
On October 4, 1865, a Saxon-born brewer named Leonhardt Schwalm purchased four adjoining lots on the east side of Doty Street below 16th. Schwalm enlisted the help of his Bavarian-born brother-in-law, August Horn. In early 1866 their brewery was up and running.

The Brooklyn Brewery, circa 1870. The vernacular architecture was typical of Oshkosh’s early breweries.

The Brooklyn Brewery was an immediate success, but not without its share of troubles. In 1872, a worker at the brewery fell into a vat of boiling beer and was scalded to death. A year later, the brewery's founder, Leonhardt Schwalm, died unexpectedly. And in 1879, the original Brooklyn Brewery burned to the ground.

The Horn and Schwalm families persisted. They built a new “fire-proof” brewery made of brick. It was considered the most technically advanced Wisconsin brewery outside of Milwaukee.

The rebuilt Brooklyn Brewery in the 1880s.

The Franz Wahle / John Glatz Union Brewery: 1867–1894
Franz Wahle was a German-born brewer who had helped launch the Stevens Point Brewery in 1857. Ten years later, Wahle left Stevens Point and bought a farm at the south end of Brooklyn. Naturally, he built a brewery there.

The Franz Wahle farm and brewery highlighted in red.

In 1869, Wahle leased his brewery to John Glatz and Christian Elser. Both were German-born brewers who had been making beer in Milwaukee before coming to Oshkosh. In 1872, Glatz and Elser purchased the property from Wahle after they had accidentally burned down his brewery. They built a new brewery in its place. It was called the Union Brewery.

The Union Brewery, circa 1886.

Elser left the Union Brewery in 1879 to establish the first independent beer bottling plant in Brooklyn on 17th Avenue near Doty. Glatz kept on making beer. By the early 1880s, Glatz's brewery was making more beer than any other brewery in Oshkosh.

The Ale Breweries of Brooklyn
The 1870s saw a trio of new breweries established in Brooklyn that offered an alternative to the flood of lager beer being issued by the two southside heavyweights. The new breweries made ale.

The most popular ale in Brooklyn was White Beer, an American interpretation of the Berliner Weisse style. White Beer was exceptionally pale and effervescent, low in alcohol, and refreshingly tart. It became a Brooklyn specialty.

Leonard Schiffmann’s White Beer Brewery: Circa, 1875-1882
A Prussian immigrant named Leonard Schiffmann was the first brewer of White Beer in Oshkosh. In 1875, Schiffmann purchased land at what is now 1864 Doty Street, where he built his brewery.

The former location of Schiffmann’s White Beer Brewery at 1864 Doty.

Brooklyn's ale breweries remain an obscure lot. But in Schiffmann's case, a couple of intriguing details have been unearthed. He made his beer using a "large iron boiling kettle" that was fired by either wood or coal. The kettle was surrounded by brick in an otherwise wood-frame building.

Not surprisingly, Schiffmann was plagued by fire. In 1878, his brewery was nearly destroyed after a fire broke out near his kettle. The building was severely damaged, but Schiffmann managed to save most of the beer on hand. Here's one of Schiffmann's rescued bottles.

Schiffmann packaged his beer in stoneware bottles. The thick-walled vessels were favored by brewers of the highly-carbonated white beer. At least three of Schiffmann’s bottles have survived. The bottle shown above was found near the corner of Ceape and Main in 1962 when construction work was being done there.

Leonard Arnold Brewery: 1875–78
On the heels of Leonard Schiffmann came Leonard Arnold, who established Brooklyn's most eccentric brewery in late 1875. Arnold's brewhouse was planted at what is now 1600 South Main Street.

The former location of Leonard Arnold’s brewery, 1600 South Main.

Arnold was the first American-born brewer in Brooklyn. His beer was a reflection of that. Among his specialties were spruce beer, lemon beer, and ginger beer. He also produced vinegar, yeast, and ink. The advertisement below has Arnold hawking his various wares in the Wisconsin Telegraph, a German-language newspaper published in Oshkosh.

Wisconsin Telegraph, October 22, 1875.

Here's my rough translation...

L.G. Arnold

Manufacturer of

Vinegar, Ink and Beer

Building located at 16 Kansas Street

Post Office Box 176 - Oshkosh, WI

Orders can be left at 7 Main Street

Arnold's old brewery remained standing long after the memories of his arcane ales had faded. Vinegar was still being made there in the 1930s. This next picture is circa 1940 and shows the former Arnold Brewery. It was torn down in the 1950s.

Frederick Voelkel Brewery, late 1870s
The last of Brooklyn's ale breweries was established sometime around 1878. The brewer was Frederick Voelkel, an immigrant from Saxony. Voelkel's brewery was at the northwest corner of Doty and 17th; just across the street from the Brooklyn Brewery.

The northwest corner of Doty and 17th where Frederick Voelkel had his brewery in the 1870s.

Voelkel's brewery produced white beer. In conjunction with his brewery, Voelkel also ran a taproom where he appears to have been pouring Brooklyn-brewed lagers in addition to his ale.

Brooklyn's ale-brewery sites.

Brooklyn's ale breweries were short-lived. Voelkel's brewery survived less than three years. Arnold's brewery had closed by 1879. The Schiffmann Brewery, the most prominent of the three, had gone out of business by 1883.

It was lager beer that put Brooklyn on the brewing map. By the late 1870s, Brooklyn’s two lager breweries had eclipsed their northside competitors.

Brooklyn’s dominance would continue to grow. It culminated in 1894 with a merger that made the name Oshkosh practically synonymous with beer.

The Oshkosh Brewing Company: 1894-1971
The Oshkosh Brewing Company was created on March 21, 1894 from the merger of Horn & Schwalm's Brooklyn Brewery, Glatz's Union Brewery, and Lorenz Kuenzl's Gambrinus Brewery. Kuenzl's brewery, located north of the Fox River on Harney Avenue, was converted into a bottling plant. The Brooklyn and Union breweries continued pumping out beer.

The Brooklyn Brewery, with its 40,000 barrel capacity, became the hub of the OBC operation and the primary brewhouse for its beer. It was where OBC's premium beers were produced, including a new high-end bottled beer named Gilt Edge.

Glatz’s Union Brewery was used as the production facility for "Standard," OBC's amber-hued lager that was on tap in almost every Oshkosh saloon.

The Glatz brewery rebranded as the Oshkosh Brewing Company.

By the turn of the century, 75 percent of the beer sold in Oshkosh was coming out of the two OBC breweries in Brooklyn. The explosive growth necessitated the construction of a new brewery that would consolidate production. OBC's new facility was completed in 1912. The imposing, six-story brewery loomed over the 1600 block of Doty Street.

OBC's presence was felt well beyond Doty Street. The brewery grew into such a force that it was able to dictate the price of beer sold in Oshkosh. But OBC’s bullish ways didn’t sit well with local saloon keepers. They banded together and in 1913 launched their own brewery in Brooklyn.

Peoples Brewing Company: 1913-1972
Peoples Brewing Company was a cooperative brewery financed by Oshkosh saloon owners and other local investors. They built a modern brewery on the east side of the 1500 block of South Main, just a stone’s throw away from OBC’s new plant.

Beer from Peoples Brewery began flowing on June 21, 1913 and quickly gained a loyal following. It sold especially well in Oshkosh saloons where bar keepers who owned stock in Peoples had a vested interest in pouring their brewery’s beer.

November 24, 1913.

For the first time since 1894, Brooklyn had competing breweries. Year by year they grew larger. In 1956, the last of the northside breweries closed when the Rahr Brewing Company failed. Brooklyn was now the sole source of Oshkosh-brewed beer.

By the late 1950s, more than 90,000 barrels of beer was being brewed annually in Oshkosh’s Brooklyn. That beer was sold in every tavern in town and throughout much of the state.

Brooklyn with her two big breweries in the background. Peoples is on the left. The Oshkosh Brewing company is towards the right side of the frame.

The Fall of the Brooklyn Breweries
The downfall of brewing in Brooklyn began after each of its breweries was acquired by outside investors who had little appreciation for local beer culture. In both cases, the new owners averted their focus from the home market in hopes of reaching a larger customer base.

The Oshkosh Brewing Company was sold in 1961 to David Uihlein, a member of the family that held controlling interest in Schlitz Brewing. In 1970, Peoples was sold to a group of Milwaukee investors led by Theodore Mack, a former employee of Pabst Brewing.

David Uihlein (left) and Theodore Mack.

Both men made critical blunders at a time when there was no room for error. Regional breweries, like those in Brooklyn, were caught in a pricing war that led to an unprecedented rash of brewery failures. Meanwhile, much larger “shipping” breweries such as Pabst and Schlitz were engaged in high-dollar marketing campaigns fostering the impression that locally brewed beer was inferior.

Neither Mack nor Uihlein were prepared to face those challenges. Neither man had run a brewery before. Their miscalculations precipitated the downfall of their respective breweries. Oshkosh Brewing Company closed in 1971. Peoples closed in 1972. For the first time since 1866, Brooklyn was without a brewery.

The abandoned Peoples brewery seen from the vantage point of the abandoned brewery of the Oshkosh Brewing Company, 1974. Photo courtesy of Dale Hunt.

The Return of Brewing to Brooklyn
Peoples closed and 23 years passed before Oshkosh had a brewery again. It began on the northside with a brewery on the river: Fox River Brewing Company opened on Arboretum Drive in 1995. It was another 22 years before Brooklyn got back in the game.

On November 9, 2017, Fifth Ward Brewing Company opened its doors in the heart of the old Brooklyn at 10th and South Main.

Fifth Ward Brewing at 1009 South Main.

Ironically, the new brewery adopted its name from one of the old northside breweries. The original Fifth Ward Brewery had been in operation on Algoma Boulevard from 1858 until 1880 when the deluge of beer coming out of Brooklyn sank it.

In 2018, a second brewery opened in Brooklyn. HighHolder Brewing Company operated from a suite behind O'Marro's Public House at 2211 Oregon Street. This one got its name from the old sixth-ward “High Holder” neighborhood adjacent to Brooklyn. Unfortunately, the brewery didn't last. HighHolder ceased production in 2020.

Pieces of the Past
Oshkosh’s old, northside breweries have been thoroughly erased. There's nothing left of them. But in Brooklyn, remnants of the early breweries remain.

The rebuilt Brooklyn Brewery, constructed in 1879, still stands in the 1600 block of Doty Street.

Then and now: the Brooklyn Brewery on Doty.

A couple of doors down is the former mansion of August Horn, who ran the Brooklyn Brewery and was the first president of the Oshkosh Brewing Company. Built in 1879, it was a home befitting Brooklyn's first beer baron.

The former home of August Horn, 1602 Doty.

At the south end of Doty is Glatz Park, named for the family that once ran a brewery on that land. There, you can still see some of the old stonework that formed part of the Union Brewery's lagering cellars.

On the eastern side of Glatz Park.

Adjacent to Glatz Park, at the southwest corner of 24th and Doty, stands a magnificent home built in the early 1890s for John Glatz and his family.

The Glatz home at 24th and Doty.

Further north in the 1500 block of South Main, is the old bottling house of Peoples Brewing. The brick building is surrounded by newer structures that make up the Blended Waxes Company complex.

The former bottle house of Peoples Brewing.

At the north end of Blended Waxes complex, loading docks that had been attached to Peoples Brewery are still intact. But the rest of the brewery is gone. It was demolished in 1974. The Oshkosh Brewing Company's towering brewery was demolished in 1986.

July 1974, at the start of the Peoples demolition.

Demolition of the Oshkosh Brewing Company in the fall of 1986.

References to the "Brooklyn" section of Oshkosh began falling out of use in the early 1920s. But the nickname has never been entirely abandoned. The Brooklyn Grill, which closed in 2019 after 37 years at 6th and South Main, was perhaps the best known of the more recent adopters of the moniker.

You still see the old Brooklyn when you head south over the Main Street Bridge onto what used to be Kansas Street. To your right stands the Brooklyn No. 4 Fire House, built in 1868 from a design by William Waters. It remains a striking reminder that you’ve entered Oshkosh's Brooklyn.