Wilhelm Oberle (William Oberly) was born in Rastadt, Baden, Germany.  He trained as a brewer in his native land and came to America in the 1840s.  In around 1845, at age 21, Oberly started a lager beer brewery and saloon on 6th and Union streets in Allentown, Pennsylvania.    He brewed there for nearly twenty years, until his death at age 45 on the 14th of April, 1864.  

Later that year Joseph Lieberman purchased the brewery and renamed it the Eagle.  The brewery operated under the Lieberman name for more than fifty years, until 1915, when the flames beneath the Eagle's brew kettles were doused for the last time.

Joseph Lieberman was born in Immendingen, Kingdom of Wurttemburg, Germany.  His family emigrated to America in 1854 and settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He was a wagon-driver in the old world, and his affinity for hard work would serve him well in the new one.

Joseph, his mother, father, grandmother and seven siblings first settled in Easton, Pennsylvania.  Here he obtained employment at the Cooper furnace in the neighboring town of Phillipsburg. This period was succeeded by a brief time as an assistant in a saw mill.  From there he journeyed west to Leavenworth Kansas to engage in the same business.  Finding Kansas unsuitable he returned home to Pennsylvania, and took up residence in the town of White Haven.  Here he again rejoined employment in a sawmill.  In 1860 he moved to Warren County, New Jersey, then to Northamption County, and other places, building a small fortune as a jobbing sawyer.  

Lieberman moved to Allentown in the fall of 1864 and in that town he finally found a home.  He quickly became involved in several local companies and organizations.  He purchased the Eagle Brewery from the estate of William Oberly, who had died that spring.  The brewery at this time was just one primitive building with very little capacity.  Immediately Lieberman began improving the facility and invested greatly until his firm rivaled the best in the area.  In 1890 at the age of 59 Lieberman sold the brewery to John Birkenstock and retired to private life.  In 1897, however, he again assumed charge of the brewery and had several additional buildings erected to the plant.

During this construction Lieberman fell from a scaffold and sustained broken ribs and internal injuries from which he never fully recovered.   His injuries finaly overtook him during a heat wave on the 17th of July, 1900.  Joseph Lieberman was 69 years of age.  The brewery that bore his name, by this time operated by his sons, continued until 1915.