Frederich William Emmert was born Mutterstadt Rhine, Bavaria. At the age of nine he came to America with his parents and settled in Lawrenceburgh, Indiana. His father was a night watchman and his brother, who was three years older than Frederich, worked as a cooper. Frederich followed his brother into the barrel making career and was hired in Mansfield, Ohio to make flour barrels.
For several years Frederich toured the American middle west in search of a life of his own. He worked in Columbus, Ohio as a butcher then started up a wood-yard in Chicago. He lived in St. Louis, and Council Bluffs, and finally in 1854 found a home in St. Paul, Minnesota Territory.
In that city he partnered with Julius Gross in a hotel called the St. Paul House. Minnesota was in the process of becoming a state and St. Paul was in the running to be its capital. As statehood approached money started pouring to the local hotels around town and Emmert's was no exception. Emmert and Gross expanded the St. Paul to a new location. They purchased a saloon named the Bucket of Blood that sold beer two for 5¢. They opened a second hotel, the Emmert House. Despite the Panic of 1857, or perhaps partially because of it, Emmert was becoming a wealthy man.
In 1859 Frederich married Anna Martha Stressinger Schilling, the daughter of a wealthy Carver County farmer. They had six children over the next nine years. At some time after 1866 Frederich and Anna divorced. In 1870 Friedrich remarried to Ellen Jane Alexander, with whom he had three more children.
While Emmert wasn't effected by the 1857 panic some of those around him were. Dominick Troyer's City Brewery on Eagle and Exchange Streets had become perilously in debt. Troyer sold a partnership in his business in 1860, then sold out completely in 1863. The new owners William Funk and Ullrich Schweitzer struggled under the competition from Stahlmann and Hamm, Yoerg and Drewery. The brewery needed cash. Frederich Emmert would supply it.
In 1865 Emmert purchased Funk's minority share in the City Brewery and embarked on massive improvements - so much so that the next year it was Emmert who was recognized as the controlling partner.
Emmert focused more and more time on his brewery. When Schweitzer died in 1870, Emmert and his sons were in full control. Up against St. Paul's brewing royalty the Emmerts soon elbowed their way to number two in production, second only behind young Theodore Hamm.
In 1883 his wife Ellen Jane died leaving three children under the age of eleven. She was buried in Lawrenceburgh, Indiana. At this point Emmert's previous wife apparently came back into the picture and raised the children as her own.
In 1885 at age 54 years, Emmert took a trip to Germany. 25 years in St. Paul's elite society made a reputation that preceded him. Emmert let it be known that he was a great admirer of Bismarck, and that opened all doors in newly unified Germany. The notion of a wealthy German-American who admired the chancellor (who in the 1848 uprising was a royalist legislator) was such a novelty that Emmert was given an audience with the ruler.
Frederich William Emmert died on November 23, 1889 at age 58 years. His sons, well trained in the brewery business, carried on the City Brewery and reamed it the F. Emmert Brewery in his honor. Eventually, in 1903 the brewery was sold to Theodore Hamm and used for storage.
When Anna Martha died in 1916 her children and her step-children buried her in St. Paul, next to their father under a large marble monument in Oakland Cemetery.
