Jacob Widman was born in Wurtemburg, Germany.  He emigrated to America in around 1860 and found work as a brewer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  In 1865 he  moved west to Lock Haven, in the central mountains of the state.  There he partnered in a brewery with Fidel Pfeiffer to purchase Joseph Bacher's Mountain Spring Brewery.  The very next year Pfeiffer bowed out of the partnership and Widmann continued in the beer-making business alone.

In 1869 Jacob took a position in Allentown as the brewmaster in Joseph Liebermann's brewery and left the daily operations of the Lock Haven brewery to his brother Rudolph.  Rudolph was younger than Jacob by twenty two years and had been training in the brewery since he was a boy, so although Rudolph was just nineteen, management was in capable, familiar, hands.  As such, in 1874 the brewery's name was officially changed to Rudolph Widman, Mountain Spring Brewery.  While the older brother had retained ownership of the firm,young Rudolph was now officially in charge.

Jacob Widman and Joseph Liebermann ran the Eagle brewery Allentown for twenty years, until 1889.  In October of that year the 62 year old Widman sold his stake in the Mountain Spring Brewery, quit the Liebermann firm, and moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he and Freeman Moyer purchased Charles Eckhardt's Monocacy Brewery on Old York Road.  He was associated with that company for just four years when he was found dead in his home on December 20th, 1893.  He was 66 years of age.

The Mountain Spring Brewery made it to Prohibition, reopened after repeal and operated until 1944.  Joseph Liebermann's Eagle Brewery closed in 1915.   Despite his short 4 year term as head of the firm, the Monocacy Brewery operated under his name until Prohibition shut it down in 1920.  Upon repeal of the dastardly amendment the brewery once again came to life, and once again the brewery operated under Jacob Widman's good name.  It closed down for good in 1938, fifty five years after its namesake's death.

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Associated Breweries