Milwaukee Historian and Researchers, Today is my first day subscribing to the Milwaukee Rootsweb site. I have made a "query" on one section of rootsweb site but am worried that I might have posted it in the wrong place to get a response from people that know the history of the families living in Milwaukee during the early 1900's. I am posting the same message here to make sure the people that I think might know something of the history of the Milwaukee Beer Barons will have the opportunity to reply to my question. Forgive me if the same message comes up twice on your computer. Here goes: Subject: Wilwaukee Beer Baron Families Family Name: Anna Herbst Woldt Hembel My Question: When I visited my grandmother Anna Herbst Woldt Hembel in the summer of 1976, she told me the story of her going with her sister to work in Milwaukee Wisconsin at the home of a wealthy beer baron. Anna Herbst was born in Door County Wisconsin in 1889. Grandmother told me the name of the brewery that the family owned but I have forgotten the name. She said that the beer baron�s family home had been deeded to the city of Milwaukee and was open to the public (the date of the interview was 1976). The beer baron�s house was very grand with a complete wait-staff, butler, upstairs maids, downstairs maids, head housekeeper, cooks, gardeners and a chauffeur. The owner had a large study on the main floor. It was furnished with grand tables, large leather chairs and divans. One wall was covered from floor to ceiling with a bookcase filled with beer steins of every color, from every country and every size imaginable. Grandmother told me the following story about working in this home in Milwaukee; "One of my main jobs was to dust the steins everyday and to pour the one bottle of beer that the owner drank each day. I had to keep track of which stein was used the day before and pour the beer into the next stein in order on the shelf. I was instructed by the owner to take the full bottle of beer and tip in over into the bottom of the stein until it almost touched the bottom of the glass. Then as the beer emptied into the stein, I was told to slowly raise the bottle, keeping the mouth of the bottle submerged in the beer, until the bottle was empty and the stein full of beer. The owner didn't like a foam head to form on his beer and told me that was the only way to pour beer into a glass. It took almost a year to get through all the glasses before I started over again." She also told me the story of the house being prepared for the arrival of a Viscount and his family from Austria, whose daughter was engaged to the son of the family grandmother worked for. The staff had been working for days getting the house in order for their arrival. The mistress of the house had ordered new curtains and linens for all the rooms through out the house. Everything in the house was washed down, dusted, polished and waxed. At the downstairs entrance to the kitchen, the drive was lined with wagons and carriages delivering pheasants, quails, chickens, turkeys, lambs, fish, beef and pigs, fruits, vegetables and wines. The cooks baked all kinds of cakes, pasties, pies, puddings and breads. There was a large walk-in "pie safe / icebox" that had shelves that lined the walls to the ceiling and all of them were full of foods that had been prepared for the arrival of these very special guests. All of Milwaukee was talking about the "royalty that was coming to town" a! nd everyone wanted to get an invitation to at least one of the many parties that were being held in their honor. The Viscount arrived with a large party traveling with him. It was such a fun story to hear from my grandmother. Until that evening, I had never known that she worked as an "upstairs maid" in a grand house. My favorite TV program at the time was "Upstairs Downstairs". I could visualize vividly everything that grandmother was talking about; the house, the wait staff, the people attending the parties, their dress, everything! This setting that grandmother had lived a small part of her life was like an episode right out of the PBS television series "Upstairs Downstairs". Are there any "Milwaukee Wisconsin Beer Baron" history buffs out there who could help me connect this story to the name of the family that grandmother worked for at the turn of the century circa 1908? What is the Milwaukee Beer Baron family's name, what was the title and name of the family that their their son married, and what country was that titled family from??? It is such a great story about grandmother�s past that I wanted to make sure that I had all of my facts correct. Sandra Wright sandrawright2001@yahoo.com --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Find a job, post your resume on Yahoo! Careers.

Catherine Schmid is almost certainly right that the Pabst Mansion is the one in your story. The history of the Pabst Mansion http://www.pabstmansion.com/history/ states that it was owned by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1908 to 1975. Then for 3 years it was in danger of becoming a parking lot until purchased by Wisconsin Heritages, Inc. (not the City of Milwaukee) and opened to the public. Your grandmother remembers working there in 1908; however, the online history states that Captain Pabst died in 1904 and his wife in 1906 and the mansion was sold in 1908. Perhaps she worked for an heir? The Alfred Uihlein Mansion (the family that owned Schlitz) on 5th Street was demolished, if my memory serves, in the early 70s. A room from that mansion, however, was reconstructed in the Milwaukee County Historical Society Museum. A book entitled "Milwaukee Landmarks" by Richard W.E. Perrin, first published in 1968 and updated in 1979, does not mention any mansions from the Miller or Blatz families. (The appendix of this book has photos of houses demolished since the original publication.) As to who the noble Viscount was -- that's something that would be fun to research in the old newspapers of the day. I'm sure that there would have been mention of such a visitor in the society pages. The Milwaukee Sentinel is on microfilm at the Milwaukee Downtown Library. (The Journal is on microfilm too, but the Sentinel was "the" paper back then.) I understand you can order microfilms to be sent to your local library via interlibrary loan (assuming your local library has a microfilm reader). You would have a fairly narrow range of years to look for through, but it could take quite a while if you're like me and get caught up in looking through the ads and letters to the editor and all those other wonderful insights into life as it was almost a century ago! Mary Popovich Phoenix, AZ