Anthony Benitz was born in Endingen, Baden, Germany. He emigrated to America in 1838 with his wife Maria (née Wagner)and brother Johann. They settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where sometime before 1844 they established a brewery and tavern at 137 Wood Street with partners Hoeveler & Miller. In is employed Leopold Vilsack as a brewer's apprentice. Though Benitz died on the 10th of November 1858 it was his company that would become the famous Iron City Brewery that is well known to western Pennsylvanians to this day.

Augustus Hoeveler was born in Ankum, Lower Saxony, Germany. He was the youngest of six children. His family emigrated to America in 1837 and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The family thrived in Pittsburgh.  Each sibling found their own success. Augustus engaged in the grocery trade with his brothers and established several branch stores in the county. In 1848 he established a large general store on 14th Street and Penn Avenue, then two years later sold it to fund a growing interest in the glue business. In 1858 he partnered with barrel maker John Miller to purchase a brewery owned by the estate of Anton Benitz. This brewery would go on become the great Iron City Brewery we all know today.

Augustus Hoeveler died in December of 1868 at just 48 years of age.

Sebold Leopold Vilsack was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  At the age of 17, after graduating the parochial schools of Sharpsburg, he began apprenticing in the brewery of Anton Benitz in Pittsburgh. When Benitz died in 1858 Anton's brother John took control of the firm. Then followed a succession of owners, through which Vilsack gained experience and seniority.

Finally in 1870 Leopold Vilsack became junior partner in the brewery under Edward Frauenheim. This partnership persisted until the brewery was merged into the Pittsburgh Brewing Company syndicate in 1899.

Vilsack married Dorothy Blank in 1864. It was a union that produced eight children, several of whom followed their father into the brewery.

After the turn of the 20th Century both Leopold and his wife suffered increasingly declining health. It was expected they would die during the summer of 1906 but they recovered enough to make it through the next year. Mrs. Vilsack passed on November 12th of 1907 and Leopold Vilsack, in deep mourning, died suddenly the day after Christmas.

The brewery he guided into maturity, now called the Iron City Brewing Company, continued on through Prohibition, the rationing of WWII and the industry consolidation of the 1960s. It still produces beer to this day.