Johann Abraham "Abraham" Sprenger (I) was born in in Albersweiler, Germany. He was a butcher and for the first five decades of his life stayed in the town of his birth. In 1820 two events would set Abraham's life in a vastly new direction. On the 27th of March Abraham's wife Maria Barbara Kunz died and later that year he married Elizabeth Lauer. Elizabeth was only 20 years old and her youth perhaps inspired Abraham to leave the old world behind and, at age 50, make a new life in America.
Abraham, Elizabeth and two of Sprenger's children from his previous marriage arrived at the port of Philadelphia on December 3rd, 1821. They made their way to the German settlement of Reading, Pennsylvania. The Sprengers were soon followed by his wife's parents, siblings and extended family.
The Lauers were brewers who soon became quite successful in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. In 1829 they persuaded Abraham to quit the butcher business and open a branch of the family business in Maytown. Demand for the family's beer was strong and just two years later, in 1831, Abraham closed down the Maytown brewery in favor of a larger facility in Elizabethtown. Sprenger remained in Elizabethtown until 1836, then moved to the town of Lancaster, where he rented a brewery owned by his brother-in-law John Borrell. He continued brewing at that facility until the age of 72, at which point his wife Elizabeth took over the firm and ran it for the next 15 years.
Johann Abraham Sprenger died on the 28th of August, 1854 at the age of 84 years, but the Sprenger reputation for good beer in Lancaster County would survive another hundred years.
