Wednesday, February 5, 2014

52 Ancestors week 4 - Albert Fisher

I'm a bit behind on the blog posts.  School is killing me this semester.  I keep telling myself that I have this semester to go and then I'm done, but still.  Whew!

My mother always told me that our nationality was "Heinz 57" since it was made up so many different nationalities.  I never really believed it until I started working my family tree. I'm always surprised when a new relative pops up from somewhere that I never realized that I had ancestors from. Maybe some day I will discover I have ancestors from every country in the world, now wouldn't that be fun!

For this entry I'm going to write about my 3rd great grand uncle - Albert E. Fisher. Albert was born in 1852 in Baden, Germany.  He arrived in the United States in 1869 at the age of 16.  I don't have the record of him actually coming over, so I'm not sure who he travelled with, if anyone at all.  In 1880,he married Alma Amanda Youngberg.  The first census I can find him is in 1900 where he is living in Salt Lake City, Utah with his wife, 5 children and 2 servants.  The fact that he had servants intrigued me the most.  What type of person had servants in the 1900s?  His occupation listed him as a manufacturer. I believe it was at this time that I decided to Google him to see what I could find.  Surprised is an understatement!

It turns out that Albert owned a brewery in Utah.  I was able to find out that Albert built the brewery, Fisher Brewery Company, in around 1884 when he purchased 15 acres of land.  In 1893, he built his mansion on the same parcel of land.  An interstate was eventually put through the land and all of the other houses around the mansion were torn down, except for the Fisher mansion which still stands today as a historic site.  See the link below if you would like to read the entire story or see pictures of the mansion.

The brewery lasted until 1916 when Prohibition was just starting to hit Salt Lake City.  Instead of taking the loss and not selling alcohol, Albert boarded up the windows and closed the doors of the brewery.  He died 1 year later in 1917.  I included an article about the brewery below also.

Quist, R. (2010) From Brewer's home to? Retrieved from http://www.examiner.com/article/fisher-mansion-from-brewer-s-home-to

Markosian, R (2013) Fisher Brewing Company.  Retrieved from http://www.utahstories.com/2013/03/fisher-brewing-company-part-i/

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