John Miller was born Cobleng, Prussia. His family emigrated to America in 1854 and settled in Sauk County, Wisconsin where relatives owned farmland. John found employment in a mill near Baraboo but quit at age 19 to work the fields with his family. Among his neighbors was another family of Prussian immigrants, the Leinenkugels. They were brewers in the town of Westfield. John took up a friendship with a younger son Jacob Leinenkugel, despite the latter being more than 4 years John's junior. In 1864 John courted and married another Prussian emigree, Susanna Welter. The next year Leinenkugel married Josephine Imhoff. In 1867 both men decided to form a brewery of their own. For a location they picked Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, a nascent village 150 miles to the northwest, deep in the woods of Wisconsin. The community was a Railroad loading point for timber corralled from Lake Wissota on to the Chippewa River. The West Wisconsin Railway had just extended tracks to the river and the logging camp had sprung up at the intersection. The partnership was christened the Spring Brewery after the Chippewa Spring upon which the brewhouse was built. The combination of pure water and thirsty loggers was a good one for the brewery. Soon they expanded operations and production, and both families and employees lived together in the large house on the brewery grounds. Then in late May of 1880 John's father died. This sent John, as the Chippewa Falls Weekly Herald suggests, into a period of spiritual doubt. When John's wife died three years later Miller quit the brewery business altogether, selling his stake in the Spring to his best friend Jacob. Jacob Leinenkugel commissioned a towering obelisk for Susannah's headstone, and in October of that year it was placed atop her grave in the Catholic Cemetery. She would be joined under the monument by Jacob's father Mathias in 1885 and Jacob's wife Josephine in 1890. John Miller died on the 13th of August, 1906 at the age of 68 years. The brewery he helped found, now called the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company, is still in operation to this day.

Jacob Mathias Leinenkugel was born in Vital, Adendorff, Prussia. In 1845 his father Mathias Leinenkugel, a distiller by trade, fled the cultural and political turmoil of Prussia and took his family to America. Mathias was 35 years old and Jacob was only 3.

The Leinenkugel family found a home in Sauk County, Wisconsin where Mathias set up a brewery in the town of Westfield. It was here that Jacob and his four brothers learned the ropes of the brewing business. It was also here that Jacob made the acquaintance of John Miller, a nephew of a neighboring farmer.  Later Jacob met and courted fellow German immigrant Josephine Imhoff. They married in 1865 and over the next 25 years she and Jacob would be partners in both life and in business.

In 1867 the Leinenkugels and the Millers left Sauk County and moved their families 150 miles northwest to the town of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. At this time Chippewa Falls was little more than a logging settlement. The town had a population of just a couple hundred people, mostly railroad workers and lumbermen.

In addition to the scores of thirsty workers there was a natural spring providing plenty of water within walking distance of the river. It was the perfect location for a brewery. Leinenkugel and Miller built a brewhouse over the spring and named their business the Spring Brewery.

It was the first brewery in Chippewa Falls and it was a success. The men rose to prominence in the town and Leinenkugel was elected mayor. Sadly in May of 1883 John Miller's wife Susanna died and a few months later Miller decided to retire and sold his stake in the Spring Brewery to Leinenkugel. Jacob Leinenkugel from then on ran the brewery as sole proprietor.

The Leinenkugel family grew as did the company payroll and the two populations lived together in a large dwelling at the brewery. By the late 1880s Josephine was in charge of preparing meals for her family plus 20 employees. But the long cold Wisconsin winters were taking their toll.

In January of 1890 Josephine contracted pneumonia. Her illness soon became acute and on the 28th of that month she died at the age of 44 years. The consensus was that she had simply worked herself to death.

Leinenkugel carried on, once more expanded his brewery and later remarried. That marriage produced one child. In the summer of 1897 Jacob Leinenkugel contracted an infection of the intestines and died on the 21st of July. He was 57 years of age. His brewery however would continue on, guided ably by his descendents through Prohibition, the rationing of the war years, and the brewery consolidations of the 1960s.

By the 1980s the small-town survivor gained prominence as one of America's most fiercely celebrated regional breweries. In 1988 the family sold the brewery to the Miller Brewing Co. of Milwaukee Wisconsin, who in turn sold it to multinationals. While the company is no longer owned by the family, the plant in Chippewa Falls continues to turn out beer to this day with a Leinenkugel descendant at the helm.