Rudolph E. Wolter was born in Schlosegraf-Hatzfeld, Germany, the son of Anton Wolter, a brewmaster.  After he received his primary education, he apprenticed with his father and learned his trade.  In March of 1866, at the age of 22, he and his older brother Peter and younger brother Anton emigrated to America.

Soon after arriving, Rudolph was hired as a brewer by the Christian Moerlein brewery in Cincinnati, Ohio.  After two years, he and Anton left and moved west to joined other family members in Gutenberg, Iowa, a small Mississippi River town just north of Dubuque.  On the 27th of June, 1870, he married Katherine Biederman, and they settled on his farm where Rudolph and Anton had been growing hops.  Over the next 18 years, Rudolph and Katherine would have 8 children.

In around 1874, Rudolph opened a brewery on Bluff Street and ran it until 1885, when Iowa's prohibitory laws forced him into the soda bottling business.  He resumed brewing in 1899 and continued until 1911. 

Rudolph Wolter had become a prominent figure in town, and as he grew into his 70s, he was more and more a source of local history.  At age 91, he was a primary source for the Clayton County Centennial Edition newspaper.  And in 1935, he erected a "Rockery and Grotto" in Ingleside Park, a memorial to the Native Americans who once lived in the Guttenberg area.  It was a concrete and stone mound festooned with shells and trinkets from all over America, with a large carving of an Indian and his hunting dog at the top.

Rudolph Wolter died on the 17th of January, 1937. at the age of 92.