Captain Johann Anton Huck was born in Einbach, Baden, Germany.  His parents, Hieronymous von Huck and Gertrude Baroness von Sieders, were German aristocrats.  At age 14, a family trip to Baltimore put the promise of the new world into John's head, and it apparently never left.  Sixteen years later, on the eve of Revolution in his homeland, he emigrated to America.  He came to the town of Chicago, which at the time was the world's fastest growing city.  Huck was twenty-nine years old, and made his home among the many new immigrants in the booming metropolis on the lake.

The next year (1847) Huck partnered with John Schneider (Snyder) and financier (and former Chicago Mayor) William Ogden to build a lager beer brewery at Chicago Avenue and Division Street.  Their Eagle Brewery was the first lager beer brewery in Chicago.

It was a simple two-story wooden structure which backed up to a grove of trees, and it was an instant success. In 1849 they were advertising an expanded "Brewery and Peasure Grounds" at a new location(?) on the corner of Rush and Chicago Avenue.  By 1855 Huck had bought out his partners and was running the firm as a sole proprietor.  He had a new brick bulding, employed eight men, and was purchasing 25,000 bushels of barley a year.  The brewery's success and growth continued.  In 1860 Huck was listed in the census as having an estate worth $30,000.

Over the years Hauck's factory grew into a large campus of brick buildings and well manicured topiary - the largest brewery in Chicago.  But in the fall of 1871 the Great Chicago Fire burned it all to the ground.  Huck, now 53, vowed to rebuild, but fate would intervene once again.  On the evening of 26th of January, 1878 John A. Huck collapsed at his front door after returning from work.  He was discovered there at nightfall, a victim of an attack of apoplexy.  He was 59 years old.

The Great Chicago Fire devastates the city of Chicago.  3.3 square miles of the city were leveled, 300 people are killed and an estimated 100,000 people were left homeless.  In addition the breweries of John A. Huck, Conrad Seipp, Lill & Diversey, Busch & Brand, J. J. Sands, George Metz and others were destroyed.  Some rebuilt, some were gone forever.