John Wilhelm William Seeger was born in  Lauenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.  At age 21 he was living in England and baptized into the Anglican Church.  Nine years later, in 1840, he and his wife Johanna Christiana (née Wolf) were living in Moscow, Russia.  In 1852 the family decided to emigrate once again and set sail for America.

Johanna, John and their ten children arrived in New York on September 23rd, 1852.  They had an eleventh child in Covington, Kentucky on their way to their final destination of St. Peter, in the Territory of Minnesota.  St. Peter was growing town in strong running to be the Capital when Minnesota gained statehood and Seeger had a mind for politics.  Perhaps this is what drew him there.

It was In St. Peter thatSeeger met fellow German emigre Mattis Engesser.  In 1856 the two decided to form a brewery on the banks of the Minnesota River.  They ran the St. Peter Brewery for eight years, Seeger taking the senior partnership. 

When the War Between the States broke out Seeger felt the call of his adopted country, and despite being 52 years old he enlisted in September of 1862.  He served his tour and reenlisted in 1864.

Aft the end of the war Seeger returned to St. Peter, but he didn't reunite with Engesser in the brewery by the river.  He set his sights on politics and land speculation.  In 1871 he was elected State Treasurer. Then in 1873, at age 63 years, he was impeached for embezzling and was forced to resign.

Seeger lived out the rest of his life in the Minnesota's Capital, St. Paul.  When his wife died in 1886 Seeger fell ill with grief and never recovered.  John Wilhelm Seeger died on the 22nd of May, 1888.  He was 78 years old.

Matthew "Mattis" Engesser was born in Donaueschingen, Baden,Germany. He emigrated to America in 1840 and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio where he took up the profession of boot and shoe maker. Something caused him to conclude that his destiny lied elsewhere so in 1856 he packed up his family, left his shoe making business behind, and set out for the country's frontier.

He found his next home in Nicolett County in the territory of Minnesota. It was there he and William Seeger established a brewery in Saint Peter, a town that was at the time in contention to be the state capital. Despite not being chosen as capital city their Brewery thrived in Saint Peter.

In August of 1862, despite being 52 years old and wealthy, Seeger signed up to fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.  When the war was over Seeger went into politics.  He never rejoined Engesser in the St. Peter brewery.

By this time the brewery was very much an Engesser family business, and Matthew guided it to growing success right until his death on February 2nd, 1891.

His sons took over the business and enjoyed continued prosperity until Prohibition ended all beer brewing in 1920. The company reopened after Repeal and survived another nine years. In 1942 the Engesser Brewery joined a long list of small breweries forced to close by the national defense necessities of World War II.

The president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis orders his general P. G. T. Beauregard to bombard Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor, marking the beginning of the Civil War.

Many German immigrants in America who were driven out of Europe in the aftermath of a failed reformist revolution of 1848 signed up for the Union cause.  In fact the Republican abolitionists scrapped the temperance plank in their platform to prevent alienating the Germans.