Joseph André "Louis" Raspiller was born in Rosbrück, Lorraine, France. In his youth, he endured an outsized share of personal tragedies. A sister died one year after he was born. A brother died when Joseph was 10, his father passed away a month years later, and another sister died the following summer. When Louis was 24 years of age his mother passed away, then, when he was 27, he lost his wife in childbirth. Three months later his infant daughter also died.

Raspiller left all that and emigrated to the New World in 1886.  At the age of 28, he settled in Northern California to start a new life.  He found a wife and together they had four daughters and two sons. In 1893 he established a brewery in West Berkeley, California, and named it the American. His brewery and new family thrived in America.  Raspiler's beer was exported far and wide on the central coast and the Sacramento Valley. Raspiller died on January 10, 1935, at the age of 69 years.