Peter Hauck was born in Kling Munster, Bavaria. His family fled Prussia when he was six years old and moved to America. They settled in New York City where Peter's father Johann Adam Hauck established a brewery at the corner of Broome and Wooster Streets. Demand for Hauck's beer prompted such rapid expansion that by the late 1860s it had become one of the largest breweries in the city. It was in this fertile ground that Peter Hauck learned the art and business of beer brewing. The quality of his education enabled Peter to take full control of the business in his 20s when his father retired to Germany. In 1869 Peter moved the entire New York brewery to a larger, modern facility in Harrison New Jersey. Ten years later a fire prompted another rebuilding, and an even larger facility was built that would suit the brewery well into the 20th Century. In 1889 the Hauck Brewery was merged in to the United States Brewing Company, Ltd. conglomerate and was run as such until National Prohibition shut down beer making nationwide in 1920. Peter Hauck died on the 21st of February, 1917. He was 78 years old. The brewery reemerged after Prohibition and operated under several names, the most prominent of which was the New Jersey Branch of New York's Peter Doelger Brewing Company.

Max Hassel was born in Latvia.  During Prohibition he was bootlegger of reknown enough to be dubbed the "Beer Baron of Berks County".  He was planning to go legit upon repeal and was in talks to purchase the Harrison Brewery in Harrison, New Jersey when he was shot just five days after Repeal, on the 12th of April, 1933.  He was just 32 years of age.