Hugo Knecht was born in Solingen, in the Kingdom of Prussia.  He emigrated to America in 1856 and moved to Scott County Iowa.  He met and married Klementine Louise Arndt there in 1859.  It was a union that produced one child, Hugo Junior.

Around this time, the Knechts moved to Kansas, where Hugo partnered with Albert Weinman, a barrel-maker, to form the Knecht & Weinmann brewery.  Knecht was listed in the 1860 Atchison Kansas city directory as a brewer and paid taxes on beer made in 1862 through 1865.  By 1865 he had relocated to Brownville, Nebraska, and by 1870, at age 44, he was a brewer in Nodaway, Iowa.

The Knechts divorced, and Klementine (Caroline) moved to Chicago, where she died in 1908.  Hugo moved to Uintah County, Utah, and became a rancher.  He died on September 17th, 1915, after accidentally shooting himself with a shotgun.  He was 89 years of age.

Albert Weinman was born in Wurtemburg, Germany.  At the conclusion of his primary education, he took up an apprenticeship as a cooper.  He emigrated to the new world in 1850, living first in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  In 1859 he moved west into America's vast prairie frontier, where he settled in Atchison, Kansas, a farming community that had been founded only four years earlier. There for over 40 years, he was the junior partner and barrel maker in the Southwest Lager Beer Brewery.

Joseph Weinmann built the brewery with Hugo Knecht.  After five years Knecht left Kansas and Weinmann brought on Louis Arras.  In 1867 Arras was replaced by brewer John Stamm.  In 1871 Weinmann worked under partners Hermann Zibold (Ziebold) & Joseph Haegelin.  When Zibold died in the summer of 1891 his widow Rosa Franz stepped in.  When Haegelin died 16 months later, his widow Emma assumed the rest of the brewing responsibilities.  For the next decade, Weinmann was a junior partner to the two lady brewers. 

When Kansas prohibition laws finally closed the doors of the Southwest Brewery in 1902, Weinmann continued on in his cooperage.  He retired at age 71 in 1903 after which his son took over the business.  Albert Weinman died on the 3rd of March, 1911, at 79 years of age.

Corporal Herman Ziebold was born in Granion, Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.  After his primary education in Germany he apprenticed as a brewer.  He emigrated to the United States in 1854 and after working at breweries in the Indiana town of Lawrenceburg, Chicago he settled finally St. Louis.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War Ziebold was 24, and he enlisted to fight for the Union.  He served almost the entirety of the war.  After Lee's surrender at Appomattox he lived again in St. Louis, where met Miss Rosa Franz.  They were married in August of 1867.  The Ziebolds then moved to St. Joseph, Missouri where Herman got a job in the Nunning Brewery.  There he met his Josef Hagelin, a man who not only would soon be his brother-in-law, but also his business partner.  In 1871 both families moved to the Great Plains where they purchased the brewery owned by hotelier John Stamm in Atchison, Kansas.

For 20 years Herman Ziebold and Josef Haegelin were partners in the brewery in Atchison.  Ziebold & Hagelin's Southwest Lager & Beer Brewery became nationally famous as the brewery that stubbornly refused to go out of business despite the best efforts of God and the Government.  The firm became defendants in an important Prohibition-related lawsuit that made its way all the way to the Supreme Court.  The firm ultimately won their case as the court affirmed that municipalities had the right to enact laws that forbid the sale of alcohol, under the guise of public health, but could not forbid its manufacture for sale elsewhere.  The Southwest's extensive distribution network on the other side of the Missouri state line sustained it, for the time being.

Herman Ziebold died on the 20th of July, 1891 at the age of 56 years.  Hagelin died on the 25th of January, 1893.  The brewery, thereafter run by the widows of the original partners, continued into the next century, and finally closed, after three decades of defiance, in 1902.

Joseph Hagelin was born in Grunern, Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.  After the death of his father he and his brother Frank emigrated to America where they both found employment in the Nunning Brewery in St. Joseph, Missouri.  There Joseph met Emma Jacobine Ziebold, the sister of co-worker Herman Ziebold.  The two married in October of 1870 and by 1871 the two families had relocated together in Atchison, Kansas

In Atchison, Ziebold and Hagelin purchased the brewery owned by Hotelier John Stamm.  They ran the brewery together for 20 years until Ziebold's death in 1891.  Hagelin contined on as sole proprietor for another two years before he himself died on the 25th of January, 1893.  Thereafter the brewery was run by the widows and sons, who managed it ably into the next century.  The firm finally shut its doors in 1903.

Ziebold and Hagelin's Southwest Lager & Beer Brewery made national news in the 1880s for holding out in the face of the Prohibition laws of Kansas.  It was involved in a lawsuit that made its way all the way to the Supreme Court.  The court ultimately allowed the brewery to remain open so long as it's product was sold in territories where it is legal.  The Southwest's extensive distribution across the Missouri State line kept the brewery afloat, despite the efforts of the desiccatious Kansas legislature.

After a vote on November 2nd, 1880 Kansas enters statewide Prohibition the following January 1.  The new law made the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors punishable by a fine of $100.  Most businesses simply paid the fine, which could only be levied once a month.