Frank Nicolin was born in Stommeln, Prussia. He emigrated to America in 1857 with his sister Margaretha and her husband, Wilhelm Kreuer. They settled in Le Sueur County, Minnesota. In 1859 Frank married Anna Sophia Konigsfeldt, another German emigre. By the next year, they were farming 80 acres in the town of Lanesburgh.
The start of Nicolin's business empire was a general store he built in the village of Jordan in 1861. In 1866 he and Sebastian Gehring built a brewery along the banks of Sand Creek, which Nicolin soon sold, only to erect a larger one in 1872. Over the next two decades, Nicolin built a saloon, a bowling alley, a brickyard, a cooperage, a drilling company, two flour mills, and an opera house. Ultimately he employed over 100 people in and around the town of Jordan.
He ran the Sand Creek Brewery until 1885, when he sold it to Schutz & Kaiser. He was in his fifties now and easing back on his responsibilities. For someone so diversified as Nicolin was in the 1870s, it is a wonder he was so exposed going into 1893.
Winter in Minnesota is summer in South America, and a crop failure in Argentina in February triggered a cascade of bank failures around the world. It was called the "Panic of 1893", and Frank Nicolin was hit hard. Many of his investments were wiped out.
However, the coup de grâce for Nicolin came the following month when his Jordan City Mill burned to the ground. Upon hearing news of the fire, its 60-year-old owner bolted into the streets, distraught and inconsolable. He had gambled and lost. He had failed to insure the Mill adequately, and when the accounting was done, Nicolin had a $70,000 mortgage and no means to pay. Nicolin never recovered, and in 1899 - at age 66 - he was declared bankrupt. He depended on his children for support for the rest of his life.
Frank Nicolin died on the 17th of April 1923 at the age of 89 years. The brewery he built passed through many hands after Nicolin sold out. Over time the Sand Creek Brewery became the City Brewery, and finally, after the repeal of Prohibition, it became the Jordan Brewery. In 1947 the firm was purchased by the Mankato Brewing Co. and closed.
