Johannes Butscher (John Butcher) was born in Volkertshausen, bei Vacha, Thuringen, Prussia. He emigrated to America at age 23 through the port of New Orleans. With him was his father, Caspar and mother, Barbara. They settled in Campbell County Kentucky where Johann met and married Catharina Zolleis. They had five children together.

In the 1850 census John was listed as a stone mason and living with his father and mother in Newport, Kentucky. Some time during the next decade he established a small brewery on Jefferson Street in that city, and in that concern Butscher contentedly practiced his trade for the next several years.  But in 1870 two events occured that greatly altered the trajectory of Butcher's life. On the 18th of June his wife Catharina died. Later that year he was joined in business by George Wiedemann. Wiedemann had a good business sense and the partnership was a fruitful one. Butscher's modest 15-barrel-a-day brewery soon became a large business concern.

Butcher married once more to Maria Reis, with whom another two children were born. On September 24, 1878, at age 54, Butcher retired from the brewery, perhaps because of ill health (He is listed on the 1880 census as having Dropsy and Asthma). On Christmas Day of 1887 Johannes Butscher died, just hours after his 64th birthday. The brewery he founded, now named the George Wiedemann Brewery, would go on to become the largest in Kentucky and a regional powerhouse, surviving both Prohibition and WWII. The brewery was purchased by the G. Heileman Brewery in 1967 and closed in 1973.

George Wiedemann was born in Eisenach,Thüringen, Prussia. He was educated in the brewer's art in Saxony and in 1853 at the age of 19 years, emigrated to America. Wiedemann found immediate employment in a brewery in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, but it being not to his liking he remained there only three months.

Upon his release Wiedemann moved 750 miles southwest to Louisville where he had found a position in another brewery. Six months later he was hired away by Frank Eichenlaub to work in his brewery in the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati. The addition of John Kaufmann as partner in the Eichenlaub firm inspired the erection of a second brewery on Vine Street, over which Wiedemann was made foreman.

In 1856 Wiedemann was joined in marriage to another German emigre Agnes Rohmann. The union produced four children, including sons Charles and George Junior.

Wiedemann presided over Eichenlaub's Vine Street Brewery until 1870, when he took his savings and bought a minority share in John Butcher's brewery in Newport Kentucky. The business was ideally located but Butcher was modest in ambition. Ambition was a trait Weidemann had in spades, though, and the partners quickly grew the brewery from 15 barrels a day to the largest in Kentucky. When Butcher retired from the firm in 1878 Wiedemann continued as sole proprietor.

By this time Wiedemann's sons Charles and George Jr. were employed in the firm. Their education in the business proved so thorough that when the elder Wiedemann died unexpectedly at age 57 the transition of management to his sons was seamless. George Wiedemann died on the 25th of May 1890. His sons Charles (age 32) and George Jr. (age 24) carried the business on into the 20th century.

The family brewery operated through Prohibition and two World Wars. The firm was sold in 1967 to the G. Heileman Brewing Co. of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and closed in 1973, a little over a century after George Wiedemann persuaded John Butcher to think big.

The George Wiedemann Brewery added $5000 to the endowment of the Newport Public Library.