Lets today remember David Gottlieb Yuengling, Junior. He was born in Pennsylvania sometime in January of 1842. Despite being the first-born son of the founder of the famous Yuengling Brewery, we have no idea of the date he was born, or even what year he died.
Like many sons of successful men, Yuengling seems to have been intent on making a name for himself separate from that of his father. As the namesake of the founder of the famed brewery in Pottsville, the younger Yuengling surely could have carried on in the family business, but he didn't. At age 16, full of the knowledge of the brewer's art that he'd learned from his father, David Jr. moved to the city of New York where he obtained employment in his uncle John Frederick Betz's Eagle Brewery.
It was a position in which he soon rose to foreman. At age 21, in 1863, he furthered his education by touring the breweries of Europe. At his return in 1866, still working for the Eagle, he partnered with his uncle Betz and brother-in-law John A. Beyer to form a brewery on the James River in Richmond, Virginia. Just a year earlier Richmond, as the capital of the Confederacy, had been destroyed in the Civil War by both the bombardment of the Union advance and the evacuation fire set by the Confederates in retreat. The devastated city was ripe for new investment. Yuengling supervised the construction of the five-story James River Steam Brewery brewhouse and the excavation of its network of cellars.
In 1871 David G. Yuengling Jr. refocused his attention back to the union side of the Mason-Dixon line and established the Champagne Ale Brewery at 213 Front & 4th Avenue, in the Carmansville neighborhood of New York City. It was a state of the art facility built on the site of a brewery first established a hundred years earlier. It was a large brewery spread across a campus of several acres. He then purchased yet another brewery, William Maack's Manhattan Brewery in 1875.
But at age 33 Yuengling had stretched himself too thin. The Champagne Ale Brewery was a big investment, and it failed to meet its obligations. William Tunis Ryerson, who was from a well-established Manhattan family, was brought in as partner, but it was of no use. The brewery failed in 1882. The James River Brewery in Richmond closed in 1878. The Manhattan was also failing.
By 1897 Yuengling was in debt to the tune of $800,000, the bulk of which was owed his uncle John F. Betz and his Philadelphia malting company. On February 4th of that year Betz assumed control of the failing Manhattan and paid off the rest of Yuengling's debts. Thus, the heir apparent to the Yuengling dynasty fell into obscurity.
David G. Yuengling, Jr's last known record was the 1910 census which shows the 65 year old residing in a boarding house in Manhattan. His family believes he died some time later that decade.
