Artist: Robert Wadsworth Grafton (1876–1936)
Frederick Pabst Sr.
PABST, FREDERICK SR. (1836–1904), inducted by 1920
Born in the Kingdom of Prussia (present-day Germany), Frederick Pabst Sr. immigrated to America with his parents and took a job as a cabin boy for a Lake Michigan steamship company. By the time he was twenty-one, he had earned his pilot’s license and was a steamship captain. Captain Pabst ran aground in a storm in 1863 and decided to find work on dry land instead, in his father-in-law Phillip Best’s brewery. Pabst took over Best’s shares and expanded Best Brewery production and markets, and by 1874, it was the largest brewery in the United States. The company was renamed Pabst Brewing Company in 1889, and with its success, Milwaukee became known as the beer capital of the nation.
In 1870, Pabst purchased a farm near Wauwatosa and became one of the first to utilize brewers’ grains as cattle feed, demonstrating their value in beef and dairy production. He imported Percheron breeding stock from France, taking the horses to work at the brewery and to show in the ring. Frederick Pabst Sr. made lasting contributions to his Milwaukee community, including establishing a bank, resort, theatre, and traveling library of German books. When artist Robert Grafton repainted Senior’s portrait after the fire, he modeled it after a portrait by German artist Franz von Lenbach, commissioned in 1895 to complete a portrait for the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee. Painted in the upper left is, “after Lenbach.”
Source: Saddle & Sirloin Guidebook 2026, p. 154