Mathias Frahm was born in Wurtemberg, Germany, the son of a farmer. He worked his father's land until the age of age 21, at which time he went in to the coopering business and learned the trade of brewer. He served 16 months in the German army during the failed Schleswig-Holstein revolution of 1848, then came to America on the ship Brarens out of Hamburg. He was traveling with his brothers and sister, but also on the ship was fellow German refugee John Milot, emigrating to the new world with his daughter, Katharina.
The ship arrived in the port of New York on May 12, 1848 and Mathias Frahm first settled in that city. Mid-century New York was full of opportunities for one who wished to get a job as a brewer, but it was all but impossible for a newcomer to start a brewery without a large amount of capitol.
Guided perhaps by ambition, or perhaps by other things, Frahm left the city in the spring of 1850 and headed west. He found a home in Davenport, Iowa, where by coincidence or not Katharina Milot and her father were living. Katharina and Mathias were married on October 26th of that year in a union that would produce four children.
The newlyweds opened a brewery the same year. It was the first brewery in Davenport. Although the city Brewery was by title in Mathias's name, it was very much a partnership. Their beer was popular and by 1853 the next generation of Frahm family brewers had been born. Henry, the oldest, was followed in 1855 by twins Charles and William. The baby August Frahm made his debut in 1857. The family did well enough to hire a domestic servant, two employees and two more brewers named Frank Ebling and John Rymers. In 1860 all were living in the brewhouse together with Mathias and Katharina Frahm.
Henry was being groomed to take over the business end of the brewery and the twins were being trained as brewers. In may of 1875 Mathias sent Charles and William to Germany to lear the brewer's art, as their brother had three years earlier. In New York the twins boarded the steamer Schiller for the week long journey to Plymouth, England. But the ship never made it. It struck Bishops Rock, floundered, and took 435 of her 450 passangers with her to the bottom of the English Channel, among them was William Fram.
This would mark the first of a sucession of tragedies for Mathias Frahm. On the 25th of January 1881 26-year-old Charles died of apoplexy. His brother August followed him in death less than a month later at age 23. Katharina died two years later, in January of 1883.
After this the brewery for Mathias must have been a strange and lonely place. He made his remaing son Henry a partner in July of 1884 then slowly retired from the day-to-day brewery operations. In 1881 Henry had married Julia Tritschler, the daughter of Philip Tritchler, another prominent Iowa brewer. But thoughts of a Frahm dynasty of brewers were of naught. Local prohibition laws squeezed out Iowa's brewers one by one, and in 1890 Frahm & Son sold out to the Zoller Bros.for $100,000.
On October 1, 1894 Mathias's last surviving son Henry suddenly died at age 41. A trained brewer in an all-but dry state he was retired and had been living a gentleman's life. His wife Julia had just given birth to a boy they named Mathias Henry Frahm just four months earlier.
Mathias Frahm died on December 29th of 1898 at 77 years of age. Mathias's estate, valued at over $90,000 was left to his 6-year-old grandson Mathias Henry Frahm, or Mathias Jr., as he was called.
