Joseph Schlitz
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Joseph Schlitz (1830-1875) was a German-American enterprenuer who made his fortune in the brewing industry.
A native of Mainz, Germany, Schlitz emigrated to the U.S. in 1850. In 1856 he assumed management of the Krug Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1858 he married Krug's widow and changed the name of the company to match his own. He became more successful after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when he donated hundreds of barrels of beer as part of the relief effort. Many of Chicago's breweries that had burned were never to reopen; Schlitz established a distribution point there and acquired a large portion of the Chicago market.
Flush with success, he was returning to visit his native Germany when he perished in a shipwreck off the coast of England in 1875. The company that bore his name continued; at one point it was the number two brewing concern in the United States, but in recent years has lost most of its market share and today continues only as a minor subsidiary of Detroit's Stroh Brewing Co.