Research on the Lemp family shows that the brewery relied heavily on many unknown, but important, people whose work was crucial to its success. We cannot understand the rise of the Lemp family without knowing the stories of the people who worked for them. Henry Vahlkamp was perhaps the most important person to have worked for the Lemp Brewery over the past half-century.
He’s one of those guys who are in the background but was the one who kept it going. Stephen Walker, the author of Lemp History, says that he is just as important as the Lemps. “I don’t know where the Lemp Brewery could have been without him.” He is an undiscovered hero.
Henry Vahlkamp, a forgotten hero of the Lemp family and someone with possibly the most interesting young biography since Adam, was born in Lippstadt (Westphalia) on June 26, 1845. In 1851, Lippstadt was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia. This was as it would be for much of northern Germany during the decade following the defeat of Napoleon. Vahlkamp, unlike many other future immigrants to America, was born into a wealthy family of bureaucrats. His obituary would include a mention of his eight-generation-old family Bible. According to Walker’s autobiography, Henry was required to serve in the army for one year before being allowed to join the Prussian civil services. Walker did not know what those “political” reasons were. Vahlkamp appears to have escaped from the Prussian army just months before the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war.
Vahlkamp managed to get a valuable journey pass out of Prussia and traveled to Brussels, Belgium where he worked for a few months at an export company. Vahlkamp then got passage on the Ottawa British steamer. He landed in America and, because he was multilingual, found employment at a New York textile company. Vahlkamp was not interested in such safe work and soon found himself aboard a steamer bound for San Francisco via Panama. The Oregon Trail and other routes overland are more well-known than the route settlers took west. However, many migrants crossed the Isthmus to Panama, which was full of dangers.
After a three-week voyage, Vahlkamp reached San Francisco safely. He worked in various jobs along the California coast and San Francisco. After that, he traveled throughout the West, visiting Salt Lake City and Denver, Cheyenne, as well as “the entire area from Nevada to Nebraska”. I believe Vahlkamp would have helped the Lemp Brewery expand later in the 19th Century.
Vahlkamp was finally able to reach his “actual destination” in late 1869. It took quite a detour. He first started working at a lumber firm in St. Louis. He met William Lemp Sr. while recovering from sunstroke and soon began working at the brewery. He worked long hours. Vahlkamp would wake up at 4 a.m. and work until breakfast at 6:06 a.m. He may have lived in the dormitory William Lemp included in his new brewery at the time Vahlkamp hired him. Despite all his hard work, the new hire was paid $65, which was less than Adam Lemp’s 1850s employees.
Vahlkamp was able to rise quickly in this brewery, just as John Baitinger, the brewmaster, had done before him. As the Lemp Brewery started shipping beer in 500 refrigerated railroad cars, it was becoming increasingly complicated to manage the accounts books and shipping. He was surrounded by buildings at an average rate of one per five years. Vahlkamp claims that William Sr. gave him complete commercial control of the brewery.
Walker comments, “Talk about being present to history.”
This trust was evident in 1892 when William founded the brewery. Vahlkamp, the secretary, was the only non-Lemp member on the executive staff. He would later hold both that title and vice president simultaneously. Vahlkamp was also a fighter against Prohibition by trying to buy hostile newspapers together with August Busch. He was also a witness to the sad side of the Lemp family, unfortunately.
“I believe Vahlkamp was among the very few, if not the only, people who were within proximity to both William Senior’s and Junior’s deaths,” Walker said. Walker claims that he had spoken to William Sr. the day before he died from suicide. He was in the Lemp Mansion at the time Billy [William Jr.] killed himself. He was the first person to call the police.”
Vahlkamp’s autobiography is philosophical in the final. It reflects on his personal life as well as the destruction of the brewery by the government. He was married twice. The first time was to Helene Hay, on December 26, 1872, at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. When Helene died, he married her younger sister, Caroline. He would have seven children, five boys and seven girls from his two wives. He died at 3238 Copelin Avenue near the Compton Hill Reservoir.
