ERNST SCHNABEL
FREDERICKSBURG BREWERY

 Bio-Pen Pictures
SURNAMES:  KISTRIRZ, BRETSCHNEIDER, KOENIG,

the subject of this sketch, was born in 1829, in Saxony, Germany. His parents, Gottlieb and Christina (Kistritz) Schnabel, were natives of Saxony, his father being a cabinet-maker and conducting his business in Pehig, Saxony, until his death in 1862. His mother died in 1865. Mr. Schnabel learned the mercantile business in Pehig and Altenburg, having previously attended the primary schools, gymnasium, and private schools of his native place. He continued in the mercantile business until the Revolution of 1849, when he came to America, settling in Philadelphia. In the spring of 1850 he came across the plains to California, with a party of Philadelphians, from Parksville, Missouri, with ox teams, leaving them in April, and arriving in Sacramento in September, 1850, the day that California was admitted into the Union. Mr. Schnabel went immediately to the mines of Amador County, but in a few months returned to Sacramento. He then alternated between mining and hotel-keeping for eleven years, in Trinity County.

        In 1860 he visited his old home in Germany, returning by way of Philadelphia, where he was married to Miss Clara Bretschneider, a native of Altenburg, Germany, whom he had known in his boyhood. Mr. and Mrs. Schnabel came to California by way of Panama, going immediately to the former home in Trinity County, where they remained for a year, when they removed to San Francisco on account of Mrs. Schnabel's health. Mr. Schnabel engaged in the saloon business in this city, keeping the Eintracht Saloon, and being very successful financially. In 1872 he bought out one of the partners in the Fredericksburg Brewery in San Jose, which was at that time a small concern, making only about thirteen barrels of beer per day. He continued developing this business with great success, changing from the old process to making lager beer by cold fermentation, until the brewery now turns out sixty thousand barrels a year, and the beer has a first-class reputation throughout every section of the Pacific Coast, Sandwich Islands, South and Central America, Mexico, and Australia, and is known as that of the Fredericksburg Brewing Company.

        Mr. and Mrs. Schnabel have four living children; Edward, now in Los Angeles, conducting the wholesale business of the brewery in that section; Emma, the wife of George Koenig, of San Jose; Ernest and Erna, both attending school in San Jose. Mr. Schnabel is a member of Germania Lodge, No. 116, I.O.O.F., of San Francisco, also of the Teutonic Association of San Francisco. His home is very pleasantly situated on Lenzen Avenue, off the Alameda.

Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.

Pg. 465

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