Pioneer Iowan brewer Simeon (Simon) Hotz was born in Fützen, Baden, Germany. He was educated and trained as a shoemaker in his native land.  In the late 1840s he emigrated to America and first landing in New York he went to Rochester of that state, then south to Memphis, then Holly Springs, Mississippi, all the while working as a cobbler. 

In 1851 he came to Muscatine, Iowa to practice his trade.  In that city he met Miss Barbara Williams, a widow with four children.  They were joined in matrimony on December 27th of that year.

After a while Hotz combined a grocery store with the shoe business, and that progressed naturally to the brewing of beer.  He opened his brewery on Linn & Market Streets, Iowa City, Iowa in 1857.  His partner was Louis Englert and together they brewed until 1860 when Englert left to form his own brewery in another part of town.

In 1864 Hotz took on his son-in-law, Antone Geiger, in the brewery.  The brewery was renamed the Union, and the two continued in partnership until Geiger died in 1876.  At this point Hotz leased his brewery to brewers Joseph Schultze and Conrad Graff, another son-in-law to Hotz.  Eventually Simeon Hotz was drawn back into brewing business and he took over management of his old firm in 1878.  By this time he had grown the brewery into one of the largest in Iowa.

About this time Hotz was involved in a railroad accident in which he received severe burns.  This was compounded by further burns caused by a mishap while making salve for his previous injuries.  Holz's health declined from this point and he died at age 62 on November 6th of 1881.

From that day the brewery Simeon Hotz founded was run by his wife Barbara, who was administatrix of the estate.  In 1885 Conrad Graf purchased the Union and ran the brewery until Iowa state Prohibition finally got around to closing it down in 1888.

On May 3rd 1893 Iowa's Mulct Law went into effect and Conrd Graf reopened the brewery on a small scale.  When Graf died in 1894 the brewery became managed by his widow who soon brought in Chris Senner to do the oversee the brew house.  Senner eventually married the widow Graf and at this point her sons took over brewery operations.  The family switched over to the manufacturing of soft drinks during the Prohibition years, but the firm closed upon repeal in 1933 and never reopened.

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Associated Breweries