John Koll was born in Bavaria, Germany. In 1849, at age 27, Koll emigrated to America and found a home among the German population of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1853 He and Mary Frances Schnek married and commenced to cranking out ten crumbsnatchers over the next 19 years. Upon completing that project in 1872 Mr. Kroll established a brewery on a hill in Fort Dodge Iowa. He passed the brewery on to his sons in 1879. The brewery closed in 1890. John Kroll died on June 24, 1915, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, at the ripe age of 93.