Mathias Jacob Leinenkugel was born in Vital, Adendorf, Prussia. He received his primary education, and his training as a distiller in his home country. On the 16th of June 1834 he married Mary Christina (Schmeuler) Schneider and together they would have six children, one of whom is a household name yet today.
In 1848 Leinenkugel was an established distiller, but Prussia was in political and economic turmoil so he packed up his family for the two-month journey to the New World. He settled his family in Sauk County, Wisconsin and by 1850 had established a brewery in Westfield. At some time during the next decade he relocated to the town of Sauk City, a river town with easy access to both customers and water for brewing.
Leinenkugel gradually brought his sons into the business. The oldest, Joseph Mathias, was fifteen years old in 1850, Henry was twelve, Jacob was eight, Johan was five, and Francis Lambert was just one. In 1855 Joseph Mathias moved 150 miles northwest to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to start a brewery of his own. In about 1859 his brother Heinrich followed him to that town and became a hotelier. In 1867 Jacob and his friend Jon Miller started their own brewery in a nearby railroad outpost called Chippewa Falls.
In 1870 Mathias Leinenkugel was 61 years old and employed as live-in workers 22 year-old Frederick Zech and his 19 year-old sister Albertina. When Leinenkugel retired Frederick Zech was well trained to take over the brewery, and the firm passed into his hands in 1874.
The 1880 census shows the retired Leinenkugel residing in the home of his longtime rival brewer William Lenz in Sauk. Mathias Jacob Leinenkugel died on the 15th of October, 1885 at age 75 years. The brewery he founded went through a series of owners after Zech before finally closing down in 1898.
