America’s Most Cursed Family: The Dark History Of The Lemp Mansion
The Lemp Mansion is considered one of the most haunted places in the country, all because of the Lemp Family that used to live there. The tragedy that befell them makes them one of the most "cursed" families in American History.
Tw: Suicide
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SOURCES
Tremeear, Janice. Missouri’s Haunted Route 66: Ghosts along the Mother Road. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
Ghost Hunters s6e16
https://www.stlmag.com/history/more-mysteries-uncovered-in-the-lemp-family-history/
https://www.stlmag.com/history/profiles/who-was-louise-bauer-lemp-adam-s-mysterious-third-wife/
https://www.stlmag.com/history/profiles/unveiling-the-real-johann-adam-lemp/
Pittman, Rebecca F. The History and Haunting of Lemp Mansion. Wonderland Productions Inc, 2015.
https://www.lemphauntedhouse.com/lemp-brewery-haunted-house-st-louis-missouri-story#:~:text=By that time%2C the family,five more deaths%2Fsuicides occurred.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/ycw0v0/for_people_who_have_visited_lemp_mansion/**
TRANSCRIPT
One morning, a woman named Rebecca woke up so early it was still dark. She blinked the sleepiness out of her eyes and looked around, but all she could make out were the shapes of bedroom furniture.
That weekend, she was staying with sister and nephew in the Lemp Mansion a victorian mansion in St. Louis, Missouri.
Now, normally waking up in the middle of the night in a hotel room isn’t all that scary, but Rebecca had heard some unsettling stories about this place. Before she left for the weekend, a friend of hers told her that the house was haunted by the ghosts of the family who built it, the Lemps.
Supposedly, the family was cursed, and legend has it that curse is now trapped in the walls of the mansion, as are their souls.
And the room was creepy, she had to agree.
The furniture was all antique, made of bulky dark wood. A massive mirror hung over a fireplace, and the curtains covering the floor to ceiling windows gently swayed from a draft.
It was as if the room was sealed off in the late 1800’s and just cracked open for Rebecca and her family to stay there, everything looked original to the home.
They were staying in the Lavender Suite, which used to be the bedroom of the Matriarch of the family, Lillian Lemp at the turn of the 20th century. It was called the Lavender Suite because Lillian had ordered everything in the room to be purple.
The place felt eerie and cold, and In the middle of the night, while her sister and nephew slept, Rebecca tossed and turned in Lillian Lemp’s four-poster bed.
She covered her head with a blanket to try and force herself back to sleep.
All of a sudden, as she’s Half awake, Rebecca felt something press down slowly on her feet, like something was sitting on the edge of the bed.
for a second she thought she might still be dreaming.
But then, she felt something — or someone — slam into her legs, like she was kicked. she shot up in the bed and looked out into the darkness.
But nothing was there.
The room was empty and dark.
She buried her head back under the covers.
Go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep she repeated to herself. There was still the same pressure on her feet, but she must be going crazy, maybe she heard too many scary stories about this place.
But the pressure started to feel like fluttering little kicks, like that of a child.
This time, when she looked up over the covers, she could see little imprints down by her feet, as if someone small had been standing there on the silk comforter.
In that moment, Rebecca joined the long list of people who have experienced something supernatural inside the lemp mansion.
Today, I want to walk you through the horrible, tragic story of the Lemp family, and the hauntings that still torment guests to this day. And as always, listener discretion is advised.
This is Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
Last week I talked to you about the most extreme haunted house attractions in the world, one that’s run by a madman. well keeping with our halloween theme of thrills and chills, today, I want to tell you about one of the scariest haunted houses in the world period. There’s no one pulling the strings behind this haunted house, no, all of the scares come from the cursed family who once inhabited it
We’re going to dive in in just a moment, but first, if you’re new here, welcome to our darkly curious community. If you’re a true crime lover, a spooky paranormal lover, someone who enjoys dark history or all of the above, like me, then you have found a home. A creepy, creaking Victorian era home on the edge of woods. So, make yourself comfortable and let’s get started.
If you were to stay at the lemp mansion today, you’d find a freshly painted inn with 33 rooms, each decorated like how they would have been when the house was built.
the Mansion is currently owned by the Pointer family who bought it in 1973 and turned it into a hotel. Ever since, Richard Pointer has invited thousands of guests, like Rebecca, to spend the night in the priceless piece of Missouri history.
Richard kept the mansion in the condition he bought it, but in 2010 he decided to do some major renovations. And Richard had always heard about the mansion’s spooky past, but he never really believed it.
In the almost 40 years since he owned it, he hadn’t personally experienced anything. But once he started renovating, he realized that maybe there really was something residing in the home with him.
See, during the construction, he moved into the bedroom of Charles Lemp, the business minded grandson of the original builder. One night, Richard was in the antique bed, trying to forget someone had died in that room.
He was winding down with a book when a few loud blows rattled the doorframe.
One. after. another.
Someone must have broken into the house, and now they were trying to kick down the door.
Richard jumped to confront the intruder, but when he swung the door open (sfx door opening) …no one was there.
Rushing through the house, he found every single door and window was locked. There was zero evidence of a break-in.
So, the intruder had to be someone who was already inside, right?
Richard knew for a fact that the last Lemp died in the mansion in 1949. But now he was convinced they had never left.
But to really understand the hauntings of the lemp mansion, we need to know the story of the Lemp family, and the curse that killed them.
The house was built in 1866, at 3222 Demenil Place, and William Lemp and his wife Julia moved in quickly afterwards.
William was heir to a beer fortune, his father had founded Lemp Brewing Company. And with the money he inherited, William bought the home from his dreams.
There was a grand spiral staircase, a two-floor glass atrium full of plants and animals, and an open-air elevator, which was a newer invention at the time.
The home also sat above massive underground caves, so they built a ballroom, swimming pool, and auditorium you could only access through a secret tunnel.
He declared to the world the home was part of what would be a long line of successful Lemps’ with a slab of sandstone carved with the name LEMP that still sits outside to this day.
And while, anyone passing the mansion back in 1866 would have thought the person inside had it all, William was struggling with the loss of his father, who had died 4 years prior.
And actually, when he passed away, that was the second time William lost his dad.
In 1838, William’s father Johann Adam Lemp settled into his new life in St. Louis Missouri. Lemp made the brave decision to emigrate from a small town in, Germany with the hopes he could eventually earn enough pay for his family to come join him in America. He wanted to give them a better life.
At least, that’s the history books’ story. If you asked his wife, William’s mother, Justina Baum, she would probably tell you that her husband skipped town to escape his mounting debt.
Justina was Johann’s second wife, and when he left her and their son, Wilhelm, she was furious. She wrote a public ad on October 30th, 1941 describing the situation:
“I urge my husband, brewer Johann Adam Lemp, who fled from here in 1836, to return to me at once to resume his marital duties.” Johan had kind of already done this before. Before Justina, he had divorced Anna Clermont, the mother of his first child, Johanette, and didn’t really look back.
Whatever Johann was running from, debts, family responsibility,, it was clear that he saw opportunity in america. He joined a growing group of German immigrants flocking to the United States, in search of the already fabled American dream.
Once he got there He dropped his first name, and started going by the more american sounding “adam”, and he opened up a small grocery store.
Adam was not a good father, William could acknowledge, but he was fantastic at brewing Vinegar. So much so that he became known in the area for it, and his grocery story exploded in popularity, soon becoming a chain and making Adam a small fortune.
This american dream everyone spoke of, it turns out it was real.
But brewing vinegar wasn’t Adams true passion, no, that was brewing beer. He was able to use his stores’ success to continue brewing beer on the side, under the name The Western Brewing Company.
St. Louis was already a beer town, and Lemp’s German-style drinkable lagers made the Western Brewing Company an instant hit.
He was able to take advantage of the existing underground caves in St. Louis to store beer barrels as the operation expanded. And by 1840, he closed the grocery chain entirely, he was a beer man now.
He renamed his company the Lemp Brewing Company and by 1858, Lemp was officially credited as “the most substantial brewer in the city”.
And what’s the first thing the most substantial brewer does?
He…divorces his wife.
Yes, if you thought Adam was really going to pay for Justina to come be with him in America, you’d be mistaken.
However, he did send her $100 as a consolation, and Justina sent their son, 12 year old Wilhelm, who would be renamed William in America, to go be his dads problem.
He joined his father in the family business and eventually married a wealthy woman, Julia Feickert.
Not long after their wedding, his father got sick. It turns out, drinking copious amounts of beer was not doing him any favors, and in 1862, he died of cirrhosis of the liver, a direct result of his drinking.
William’s father had what was described as one of the most expensive funerals St. Louis had ever seen.
Carriages surrounded the grave yard, and white silk gloves were gifted to every mourner who watched Adam Lemp’s $75 coffin lower into the Bellefontaine Cemetery grounds.
The plot was marked by a granite tomb, that just read “ Adam Lemp”. Even in death, he refused to acknowledge his past as Johan, the boy from Germany.
And just like his father, William, too, intended to move forward in his life without looking back.
William Sr. and Julia didn’t waste time growing a family to fill up all of that space. They had their first six children in a span of ten years: Anna, a world traveler, William Jr., his father’s first successor, Louis, a horse lover, Charles, a banker and politician, Frederick, named after William’s Best friend, Frederick Pabst, and Hilda, who would go on to marry into the Pabst family. If you’ve ever had a $2 PBR, you have the Pabsts to thank
In 1880 and 1883, Julia produced two more heirs: Edwin and Elsa. They would both become darlings of the St. Louis high society scene and close friends.
Once again, you may look at their growing family and see a picture perfect american dream. But as their family grew, the Lemps were potentially harboring a dark secret. Talk in St. Louis said the Lemps had another son. One who didn’t fit the image they were trying to present to the world.
Not knowing what else to do with him, they kept him in the attic.
His name was Zeke, and he was believed to be the illegitimate result of one of William Jr.’s affairs. William Jr was married to Lillian Handlan. Lillian was known for her love of the color lavender. She wore it everywhere,And designed one of the rooms in the Lemp Mansion to be completely purple, that’s where Rebecca was staying.
It was a well-known fact that her gun-toting playboy husband William Jr didn’t stay faithful, and Zeke was rumored to be a result of that.
Either way, Zeke was said to be the forgotten Lemp child.
Neighbors said they could see the face of a forlorn child they didn’t recognize playing by the window in the attic overlooking the front yard until the 1940s.
It’s also believed that he had down syndrome. The family supposedly referred to him as “Zeke The Monkey Faced Boy”
To this day, you may catch a glimpse of a little boy in the attic as you walk past the house.
William Sr’s son Frederick also had a child in August of 1900, though this child is born after Zeke, he is celebrated as being the first male heir to the family. Though, the next year, Frederick died unexpectedly of heart failure.
And this sent William Sr. into a tail spin. Frederick had been his favorite child, set to take over the Lemp brewing business.
And Frederick wasn’t the first to die in the house. William Sr’s in laws, Julia Feickert’s parents were living in the lemp mansion until they died in their upstairs bedroom in the 1890’s.
It was a tragic, tragic time in the Lemp Mansion, but no one in the famil thought that this was just the start of a long, morbid pattern for the Lemps.
Frederick’s death was hard on all of the Lemps but it hit his father, William Sr., especially hard. William probably wanted to hold his family together, but the truth is he could barely hold on himself.
He had been described as despondent and nervous for months in the winter of 1904, and then when things couldn’t seem lower, his best friend Frederick Pabst died.
The one his son was named after.
Around 10 o’clock on the morning before Valentine’s Day, William Sr. sat in the dining room for a light breakfast.
After eating, he told his house staff that he wasn’t feeling very well and needed to lie down. William had been suffering from stomach issues for over twelve years at this point, so his staff didn’t think anything of it. He’d even been advised he should no longer consume alcohol, which wouldn’t have been an easy task for a man running the most popular beer hall in town.
After breakfast, William spent some time alone in his bedroom upstairs.
No one knew he was getting his final affairs in order.
In fact, none of the other members of his family were even home. At 10:30, a young servant girl named Eva Wetzel heard a muffled bang from the upper level.
She ran up the stairs to check on her boss. but found the door to his room was strangely locked shut.
She called out, “Mr. Lemp?” and became even more worried when he didn’t answer.
Her first call was to Lemp Brewing Company’s vice president Henry Vahlkamp to tell him something bad had happened.
Then she quickly dialed the numbers for Lemp’s sons, William Jr. and Edwin, and nervously waited until they arrived.
The boys broke down their father’s bedroom door but what they saw once it was open stopped them in their tracks.
William J. Lemp Sr. had shot himself with a .38 Smith & Wesson through the right side of his head.
Julia Feickert stumbled into the awful scene just in time to see her husband take his final breaths.
William Sr.’s death ushered in a rough couple of years for the Lemp family. It seemed like he was the glue holding together his children, who had never known a life other than being rich and not having to work for it.
I mean, it really became like the show Succession, with the spoiled children trying to figure out how to function.
Over $400,000 of unpaid debts from improperly sold stocks became William Jr. and his brother Charles’ mess to clean up.
Then the children’s mother, Julia, passed away from cancer just two years after their father had died.
Then William Jr divorced the Lavender Lady by telling the court of her supposed compulsive spending and excessive drinking.
Lillian retorted by exposing plenty of her husband’s dirty laundry, like how he hosted illegal animal fights in the beer caves, not to mention the open secret of his adultery. Even by today’s standards, this would’ve been a very messy divorce.
But the fact that St. Louis was a small town and the Lemp’s were practically royalty?
You can imagine how much the gossip mill made of the new president of Lemp Brewing Company’s legal battle. In the end, Lillian won custody of their only child, William Lemp III.
Elsa Lemp had been suffering from “spells” of depression ever since she had a stillborn daughter named Patricia in 1913.
She self-medicated with a drugstore medicine called Laudanum, which was a mixture of opium and alcohol, and was a common Victorian medicine for “hysterical women”.
Laudanum basically got you so high you forgot your problems and was cheaper than alcohol, so of course it was extremely popular and abused at the time.
Elsa’s mental state was only made worse by her rocky nine-year marriage to Thomas Wright. Thomas was the heir to the Moore metal and brass fortune, which might’ve been slightly more impressive if Elsa wasn’t still much wealthier than him.
In 1919, Elsa divorced her husband but by 1920 they had reconciled after he followed her to her third home in New York.
But on the night of March 19th, 1920, Elsa told her husband she wasn’t feeling well, and went to draw a bath. A few moments later, he heard a gunshot.
The shocking headline read “Mrs. Thomas H. Wright. Kills Herself” on March 20th, 1920. The night before she died, Elsa had danced all night at a concert before returning home to Hortense Place.
Her cook Elizabeth Bender was happy to see Elsa in such high spirits when Elsa stopped by the kitchen to say goodnight between 5 and 6PM.
But by 7 o’clock Elizabeth was concerned.
Elsa’s demeanor had totally changed to “very nervous.”
Elsa spent the night tossing and turning from “being sick in her stomach.” She woke up tired the next morning after another day of barely eating.
Her husband, Thomas Wright, asked Elsa how she was feeling, and she replied “all right!” He thought it was a good idea for Elsa to rest for another hour, and kissed her before drawing his morning bath at eight.
Elsa always kept a .32 revolver in the nightstand between their tandem twin beds. Her husband would later claim he wasn’t aware there was even a gun in the house — that is until five minutes past eight when he heard a shot through the bathroom door.
When he ran out of the bathroom he saw Elsa, lying in bed, with a bullet wound to her left breast.
She was dead.
But, when the maids came to the kitchen to tell Elizabeth Bender what happened, they didn’t seem so sure that Elsa had shot herself.
There wasn’t a note left behind and the way she was lying there, tucked under the covers almost looked like Elsa had been sound asleep.
Even weirder, the revolver was spotted on the couch, ten feet across the room. Wright had phoned the family doctor, who confirmed Elsa was dead, and her brother Edwin who rushed to her side.
But for some reason, they all agreed to wait hours until they shared the news with the police.
Once the police arrived, Thomas Wright told the officers that he must have disturbed the scene by moving the gun, though now he couldn’t remember doing it.
Elsa’s end was ironically timed with the demise of her family's brewing business: prohibition was officially declared into law on January 17, 1920.
The Lemp Brewing Company had been slowly losing steam for years in anticipation of the industry shutdown. The company hadn’t brewed a “real” batch of beer since 1919.
William Jr. tried to get back in the game by copying competitors like Anheuser-Busch, who had already popularized what was called “near bears" that skirted prohibition regulations with an extremely low ABV. But the Lemps’ 2.75% ABV fermented drink, Cerva, was a financial failure that came too late to keep the company afloat.
Not long after ceasing production on Cerva, William Jr.’s employees showed up one day and found the doors boarded up.
Lemp Brewing Company had apparently been shut down without any farewell or fanfare. William Jr. sold what he could for cents on the dollar, an embarrassment to his business minded family.
Six months after dismantling his father’s legacy, William Jr.s. behavior became erratic and self-isolating.
He had also started complaining about health issues, like constant headaches, and would often be found staring listlessly at the walls of his office.
One day, his personal secretary, Miss Bercheck heard a loud noise that she could only assume was a worker on the basement renovation dropping an iron tool.
But one of the Lemps’ porters instantly recognized the gunshot and had already raced to the second floor.
William Jr was there in his office, bleeding from a .38 caliber shot to the chest, gasping for air.
He had been carefully laid on the floor, with his head resting on a pillow. The gun was lying just out of reach from his right hand, smoke still exiting the chamber.
When the police declared William J. Lemp Jr. dead, His son, William the third’s sad reaction was “I knew it. I was afraid this was coming.”
Though it seems impossible for one family, especially one with so much fortune, to suffer from such bad luck, the Lemp curse continued with William III. He failed to revive the family beer label through a partnership with the Central Brewing Company.
On an otherwise perfectly lovely day in 1943, Billy III dropped dead from a heart attack in the middle of the street while taking a stroll.
At this time, Charles, William Jr.s brother, was becoming paranoid.
He had seen what had become of his family, the untimely deaths, the suicides, and he feared that he was next on the grim reapers list. He lived in the mansion, where all of this tragedy had happened, it all haunted him.
At 77 years old, Charles was suffering from arthritis, which had recently forced him to move his second-floor bedroom suite to the ground floor. It had easy access to his father’s old private bathroom with the Italian-imported standing shower which was perfect for Charles’ frequent showers and ice footbaths in the porcelain tub. It was believed at the time cold water and gloves were a solid defense against infectious disease, so Charles used both to ward off the germs he was sure were going to invade his body.
He spent these quiet years alone in the mansion he’d played in as a child. His family had either moved away or were dead. His only company was Zeke, who was said to still be living in the attic.
Charles was a world traveler and art collector in his youth who spent his final days holed up with books and collector’s pieces from around the world while cuddling with his Doberman Pinscher, named Cerva, after the failed near beer that led to his brothers demise.
The mansion represented so much for the Lemps.
It was a symbol of the american dream, how a German immigrant with nothing grew one of the most successful businesses in the country. His wealth was supposed to ensure that his family was forever taken care of, and yet, Charles watched it kill family member after family member.
At this time, His closest human companions were Lena and Albert Bittner, who Charles had employed for 32 years.
Because they lived in the rear of the Lemp Mansion, the Bittners didn’t hear much the morning of May 10th, 1949.
Around 6:30AM, Albert placed a tray with Charles's breakfast in front of the door between his office and his bedroom, just like every other day.
But when Albert returned to collect the dishes around eight he was confused to find the food untouched. When he went inside the bedroom he was greeted by a heartbreaking horror: Charles Lemp was the fourth of his family to use a gun to end his life.
Police arrived so quickly that the light on Charles’ nightstand was still burning when they got there. It flickered over a note that simply read “In case I am found dead blame it on no one but me.”
The .38 caliber bullet was eventually found buried in down feathers from his pillows.
A doctor pronounced Charles dead at 9:10AM, on May 10, 1949, from a self-inflicted wound to the right temple. The same spot of his father’s fatal wound. Before that, Charles had shot his dog Cerva, presumably to spare it life without his master. He had put down the dog in the basement, but the loyal companion had dragged itself up a flight of stairs to try to die by Charles’ side.
Charles and Cerva marked the ninth and tenth untimely demise in Lemp family history since Adam Lemp started their dynasty 100 years earlier. The death toll actually creeps hauntingly higher when you consider the numerous relatives who took their last breaths while staying in the Lemp Mansion.
None of the Lemps could’ve guessed thousands of strangers would one day live in the walls they once called home, even in their lowest moments.
After Charles’ unceremonious departure from the family manor, the space became a boarding house.
Edwin Lemp was the last of William Sr.’s sons still standing. He renounced his claim on the property and instead focused on his charitable efforts with The St. Louis Zoo. You might say Edwin broke the family curse by dying of natural causes at the age of 90.
Meanwhile, from 1950 to 1975, travelers and locals short on cash found affordable short-term lodging in his childhood palace.
Over time, some of the features that made Lemp Mansion so opulent were taken down or neglected. The invasive construction of Interstate 55 through the area stripped the grounds of some of its grandeur, but luckily Lemp Mansion as a whole was able to be preserved.
No matter how many changes the family estate has gone through, The Lemp’s legacy could never be forgotten.
Though, if you ask some of the people who have stayed at Lemp Mansion over the years, it seems like certain members of the family are still actively making history.
The lemp mansion ghost sightings, after a short break.
For decades now, Lemp Mansion guests and staff have reported an overwhelming amount of supernatural disturbances: the sound of paws clicking on the floor as if Cerva is still there patrolling the grounds, the overwhelming smell of sweet perfume wafting over them in the middle of the night, and shockingly clear apparitions of a man with a beard and a top hat they swear bore an undeniable resemblance to William Lemp Sr.
One teen girl, Bea and a couple of her high school friends were staying for the weekend to celebrate her sixteenth birthday.
Bea’s mom was a very petite woman, tasked with chaperoning the group who was staying in the adjoining Frederick and Louis suites.
The first stop for them was the gift shop but when they got downstairs, one of Bea’s friends realized she had forgotten her wallet.
The girls ran up to the top floor to grab it but they couldn’t seem to get the door to unlock, no matter how hard they twisted the key. Bea put down her camera on the hall table between the two suites to help and eventually, the girls yanked it open. Old doors, they figured.
But Later that night, they realized there were new photos on the camera. One’s that were taken while the camera was on the table.
As they clicked through the unexplained images one of the girls gasped. Bea quickly zoomed in — there was no denying a disembodied face was floating in the background, peeking out through the darkness
That night after the staff was gone for the night they heard a loud crash coming from the Elsa suite.
They forced themselves to check it out but when they got to the room, it was completely empty, and nothing had been broken.
When they finally tried to sleep, they heard loud footsteps coming from the attic above them,
There were also footsteps coming from behind a door in their bathroom, which hotel staff said led to the attic.
Knowing the rumors about a hidden child named Zeke, they all agreed to avoid that bathroom.
That night, Bea’s friend saw someone go into the bathroom. They were definitely less than 5 feet tall, so it must have been Bea’s mom.
the next morning Bea’s friend had to know if Bea’s mom had seen anything in the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Bea’s mom looked confused, and said she wouldn’t touch that bathroom with a 10-foot pole.”
But her friend was certain she saw someone no taller than 4’10 go into the bathroom and close the door. Something the height of a child.
The downstairs has it’s fair share of ghost sightings as well.
Half a century after Zeke would’ve been playing in the attic, the work to restore Lemp Mansion to its former glory began.
Claude Breckwoldt was an artist who the Pointer family commissioned to repaint a mural that was on the grand parlor ceiling. But during Claude’s work, he found it hard to focus, which was rare for him. He said that he constantly felt an evil presence looking up at him from below while he painted.
Claude couldn’t describe how he knew this, but whatever was watching him was clearly trying to make it known that what he was doing was wrong.
Eventually, the presence was too overwhelming, and Claude left the project early. Years later long after the restoration was done, he came back for a tour and heard a story that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
apparently William Lemp Sr. had once gotten into a fight with a German painter originally hired for the ceiling who angrily vowed it would never be finished. Someone must have been preventing Claud from completing the painting.
Almost everyone who spent time living like a Lemp for the weekend has a story to tell about how someone in the family touched them from beyond the grave.
But what happened to make the Lemp family so cursed during their time on Earth? Some have suggested growing so much wealth in so little time was testing the graciousness of the universe.
Or maybe, the darkness that overtook William Sr. stemmed from a genetic predisposition that he passed down to his children. Even for men, The Victorian Era wasn’t exactly a safe space to explore mental health awareness.
The terrible truth is they weren’t the only German immigrants suffering from violent deaths.
Prohibition was hard on American industry, including expats who pioneered a huge portion of the alcohol business. Police eventually coined the term “Dutch Act” to refer to the alarming number of German immigrant entrepreneurs who took their lives during the financially paralyzed era.
Patrick Nolan of the Mutual Brewing Company, Otto Stifel who led Union Brewery, and Anheuser-Busch founder August A. Busch Sr. all died by suicide in the early 20th century.
But By creating beers that became a staple in America, they almost found a way to keep themselves alive forever.
I guess it’s fair to say, every dream has a price. Johann Adam Lemp risked everything leaving Germany with nothing to his name. He wanted to forget the past and forge a new future for his family. But in the process, he sacrificed his old family. He never once thought about his first wife and child after he made his way in America. But that’s the thing about the past, it always comes back to get you, and now his families horrible past is forever trapped within the walls of the lemp mansion.