Anton Heeb was born in Hesse-Kassel, Germany.  He emigrated to America at age 24 in 1835, arriving in the port of Baltimore.  He lived in that city for a short time then moved to Newark, New Jersey.  By 1838 he had moved to the St. Louis, Missouri, a city that at the time was on the western frontier of America.

In August of 1838 Anton Heeb married Elizabeth Fleischhauer and they had one child before she died a few years later.  Heeb married again to Carolina Knopf in 1845, but she also died just a few days after giving birth to their first child Laurenz in February 1846.  In November of that year Heeb married once again to Katharina Gehrig.  In addition to being a very brave woman she was the daughter of Joseph Anton Gehrig, a brewer who had just arrived in St. Louis from Switzerland.

The elder Gehrig at age 49 had obtained employment at the Washington Brewery in St. Louis and there he met and took under his wing fellow brewer and Swiss emigre 22 year old Matheus Tschirgi.

Gehring was not in America to be in somebody's employ.  He wanted a brewery of his own.  He saw opportunity in the Territory of Iowa, specifically in the river town of Dubuque.  In the spring of 1846 Gehrig and Tschirgi journeyed 350 miles up the Mississippi to a brand new town that had never before seen a brewery.  But when Gehrig died in August he left a fully functioning brewery in the hands of the apprentice brewer Tschirgi.  Heeb and his betrothed received the terrible news along with a request to come help young Tschirgi in the Dubuque brewery.

Reports say that Heeb was an experienced brewer and maltster, but the St. Louis City Directory of 1847 lists Anthony Heeb as a brick maker.  Nonetheless Heeb got married, wrapped up business in St. Louis and by the next spring he and his wife had arrived in Dubuque.

Iowa had now become a state and Dubuque was growing quickly.  With Heeb in charge the Dubuque brewery started making money and the Heeb family started growing as well. Ultimately Anton and Katharina had nine children together.

The Heeb brewery grew too.  In addition to being the first brewery in Iowa it maintained its position as the largest brewery in Iowa too.  Tschirgi eventually moved on to found other breweries throughout Iowa.  Heeb stayed put, ultimately guiding the brewery for 41 years until his death at age 76, on the 23rd of January 1888.

In 1892 the Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company was brought into the Iowa brewery syndicate, and over the next four years Iowa anti-saloon laws convinced the brewery to close.

Iowa brewing titan Mathias (Matthew) Tschirgi was born in Heilig Kreuz, St. Gallen Switzerland.  His father was a brewer and with his guidance Mathias learned his father's trade. 

At age 21 Tschirgi boarded the steamer Howard in Rotterdam, Holland and made his way to the United States.  He arrived at the port of New Orleans on the 15th of November 1845.  From there he journed up the Mississippi River to the town of St. Louis, Missouri, found work in the Washington Brewery and became aquainted with American ways.  Here he met Joseph Anton Gehrig, a fellow Swiss immigrant brewer 27 years his senior.  Despite a difference in age of more than a generation, the two became friends.

Tschirgi and Gehrig soon set their sights on Dubuque, Iowa, and after only two months of obtaining his position at the Washington, Tschirgi headed once again up the Mississippi for the 350 mile journey into the Iowa Territory.  Iowa at this time was in the process of becoming a state, and Dubuque, with its lead deposits and situation on the Mississippi, promised to become a boomtown.

Tschirgi and Gehrig landed in Dubuque in the spring of 1846 and the two set up a brewery on Couler and Eagle Point  Streets.  As it turns out this was the first business of its kind in the entire state.  When Gehrig died at the end of August, Tschirgi wrote to Gehrig's daughter Katharina and her fiancee Anton Heeb.  Along with the horrible news was a plea for help in the brewery.

Katharina and Anton were due to get married in November and they had their hands full taking care of his two children from his previous wives, the last of whom died earlier that year.  He wrote back saying he needed some time to get his business closed in St. Louis before he could join Tschirgi in Dubuque.

Meanwhile, Tschirgi persevered.  According to Biographies and Portraits of the Progressive Men of Iowa, Sales were slow due to competition from a more established brewery across the river in Galena, Illinois. Tschirgi, lacking equipment and resources, ground his grain in a coffee mill and distributed his product to customers by wheelbarrow. Eventually sales along the river grew, but Tschirgi later admitted, "I became despondent and wanted to return to the old country, but could not get my money out of the brewery so I remained."

Heeb eventually arrived in Dubuque.  Heeb was a newlywed, a family man, and at age 37 years had a lifetime of experience on the 24 year old bachelor, Tschirgi.  Nonetheless, Heeb became junior partner to Tschirgi.  The brewery was Christened the Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company.

 In 1848 Mathias Tschirgi married Miss Kathrina Zollicoffer.  Their union produced 8 children.  This was also the year Tschirgi claimed to have sold the first beer in Minnesota.

In 1850 Tschirgi left the Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company to Anton Heeb and set up a stand of his own on Main Street in town.  After four years he sold out to Kurtz & Welder and built a new, larger faclity made of brick at the corner of Delhi and Julien.  He found a new partner in John Schwind.  The two named the brewery the Western, and ran it together until Schwind's death in 1881.  Tschirgi leased the Western to Schwind's sons after that, then sold the business and retired in 1892.

Mattias Tschirgi died on November 11th, 1903, at 79 years of age.  The Dubuque Brewing and Malting Company he founded had long ago eclipsed the Galena brewers in sales, but ultimately succumbed to growing Pohibition forces in the state and closed in 1896. His Western Brewery suffered the same fate, and also closed in 1896.

Dubuque in 1859