RUDOLPH
STECKER. One of the important industrial enterprises contributing to the
commercial precedence of the thriving city of Murphysboro, judicial center
of Jackson county, is that conducted under the title of the Rudolph Stecker
Brewing Company, and he whose name initiates this article is virtually the
sole owner of the business, which is conducted upon the highest standard,
with a plant that is modern in all equipments and facilities. The enterprise
dates its inception back to the year 1886 and was originally conducted under
the title of the Murphysboro Brewing Company. The capacity of the original
plant was for the output of fifteen hundred barrels per year, and the
noteworthy expansion of the business is evidenced by no one thing more
emphatically than by the fact that the annual capacity of the institution at
the present time is forty thousand barrels. The original corps of employes
numbered only three persons, all members of one family, and the present
force numbers eighty men. The plant covers a tract of five acres, and the
company owns one hundred and twenty-seven acres, on which the plant is
located. Operations are based on a capital stock of one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars and the plant and business represent a conservative
valuation of fully eight hundred thousand dollars. The products are of the
best order and constitute their own most effective advertising. The most
scrupulous attention is given to every detail of manufacture, insuring
purity and uniform excellency of output, and every department is provided
with the most modern and approved equipment. A large and substantial local
business is controlled by the concern and its products also find an
appreciative demand throughout a wide radius of country for which
Murphysboro is the normal distributing center.
From the foregoing
brief statements it is evident that Rudolph Stecker merits classification
among the substantial and essentially representative business men of
Murphysboro. and his sterling character and genial personality have gained
to him unqualified popular esteem in the community that has long represented
his home and to the material and civic advancement of which he has
contributed a generous quota. Mr. Stecker is a native of the grand duchy of
Baden, Germany, where he was born on the 24th of August, 1850, and he is a
son of Bassilius and Agnes Stecker, who passed their entire lives in their
native land, where the father followed the vocations of brewer and cooper.
Rudolph Stecker was afforded the advantages of excellent schools in his
fatherland and there served apprenticeships at the trades of brewer and
cooper. In 1868, as a youth of eighteen years, he severed the home ties and
set forth to seek his fortunes in America. He landed in New York city and
thereafter continued to be employed at his trades in the Empire state until
1871, when he came west and located in the city of St. Louis. Shortly
afterward he returned to Germany for a visit, and in 1872 he came again to
America, of whose advantages and institutions he had become deeply
appreciative. He became foreman in the Anheuser-Busch brewery, St. Louis,
and served in this capacity for three years, at the expiration of which, in
1875, he engaged in the cooperage business on his own responsibility in St.
Louis. He built up a large and prosperous enterprise in this line and he
still owns the business, to which he continues to give a general
supervision.
In 1886 Mr. Stecker came to Murphysboro and purchased
the small brewery conducted under the title of the Murphysboro Brewing
Company, as has already been stated in this context. For the first ten years
he continued his residence in St. Louis but carefully supervised his
interests in Murphysboro, where the practical details of the brewery were
assigned to capable managers. He established his home in Murphysboro in
1896, and the succeeding years have been marked by the development of his
brewery into one of the large and important concerns of the kind in this
section of the state. He is known as a reliable, circumspect and
conservative business man and as a citizen who is ever ready to lend his
influence in support of measures and enterprises projected for the general
good of the community.
In politics Mr. Stecker is aligned as a
stanch supporter of the cause of the Republican party and both he and his
family are communicants of the Catholic church. He is affiliated with the
Masonic fraternity, in which he holds .membership in a Lodge, Chapter and
Commandery in St. Louis. He is a popular member of the Murphysboro lodge of
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of which he was one of the
organizers, and in St. Louis he is identified with the Haru Gari.
In
the year 1872 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Stecker to Misa Louisa
Miller, and concerning their children the following brief record is given:
Katie is the wife of Herman Suber, of St. Louis; Pauline is the wife of
Frank Herman, of that city; Ann is the wife of John Eiler, of Murphysboro;
Irwin, who is active manager of his father 's brewery, married Miss Mary
Pinkerton, a native of Ohio; Julia is the wife of August Giske, of St.
Louis; and Louisa is the wife of Dr. Charles Post, a representative
physician and surgeon of Murphysboro.
Extracted 16 Jan 2018 by Norma Hass from 1912 A History of Southern Illinois, volume 2, pages 1053-1054.