Nickolus "Nick" Martin Jr. was born in Ruppertsberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.  He emigrated to America through New York harbor on the ship Excelsior on June 10th, 1846.  He settled in Cincinnati, Ohio where in 1856 he married Sarah Rohs.

In 1859 he partnered with Nicholas Martin, Louis Mischler and his brother-in-law John Rohs in a brewery on land the Roh's family owned called Rohs Hill.  They ran the brewery until Civil War broke out in America and Martin enlisted in the Union Army of his adopted country.

He returned from the war and settled in Mayville, Kentucky, where he opened up a brewery of his own on Fourth Street and Plum.  He made beer there for a few years before returning to Cincinnati some time before 1880.  There he worked for the sanitation department and later the post office.  He died on August 19, 1910 at the age of 80.

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.