7/21/2011:
Alcohol has destroyed more lives and livers than any other drug in North Dakota’s history. Reformers hoped for a better society when North Dakota’s founders wrote the state constitution in 1889. Voters overwhelmingly approved the constitution itself, but a separate vote on the article prohibiting alcohol was close, passing by only 1,159 votes.
Clearly, not everyone was pleased with the statewide ban on alcohol. Among those who voted against prohibition was a Grand Forks brewer named Jacob Dobmeier.
Dobmeier regularly made newspaper headlines. For instance, on this date in 1895, the Grand Forks Herald reported that Dobmeier was fined $200 for operating gambling devices at his brewery, which by then was located across the Red River in East Grand Forks, Minnesota.
Born in Bavaria, Jacob Dobmeier emigrated to the U.S. in 1874, when he was 24. He lived in Ohio and Minnesota before arriving in Grand Forks in 1877. Dobmeier had a butcher shop prior to acquiring the Grand Forks Brewery in 1881.
By 1886, Dobmeier’s brewery produced 12,000 barrels of his “matchless Bavarian beer,” said to be the “best in the west, not excepting” that made in Milwaukee. The adoption of prohibition in 1889, however, forced Dobmeier to close his brewery. Yet he made news by petitioning the state to compensate him for the loss of his livelihood. The brewer wanted the government to give him 72,640 dollars for the depreciation of his brewery, for it became “almost worthless” when the law took effect. Remarkably, seventy-two prominent Grand Forks businessmen signed his petition and backed his effort for recompense by the state government.
Legislators were unwilling. Advocates for the brewer tried compromises –50,000; 25,000; and then just 10,000. Finally, Senator John Haggart proposed “that each and every man owning a brewery in North Dakota receive the sum of $5,000.” And so Jacob Dobmeier and brewers in Jamestown, Fargo and Bismarck got a token reimbursement for losing their breweries.
But Dobmeier kept afloat – producing malt in his commodious Grand Forks building. And in 1891, he announced the opening of his new and enlarged brewery on the Minnesota side of the Red River. Dobmeier’s East Grand Forks Weiner Brewery opened for business that summer, making his own brew, “Weiner Beer.”
Jacob Dobmeier and his family continued to live in Grand Forks, and there are still plenty of Dobmeiers in the area today.
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, MSU Moorhead History Department.
SOURCES: “Nubs of News,” Grand Forks Herald, July 21, 1895, p. 2.
“New Brewery,” Grand Forks Herald, March 22, 1891, p. 4.
“Constitutional Convention, 1889,” State Historical Society of North Dakota Archives, http://history.nd.gov/archives/stateagencies/conscon1889.html, accessed on July 6, 2011.
“Jacob Dobmeier,” in Alexander Aas, “The History of the City of Grand Forks to 1885,” M.A. thesis, University of North Dakota, 1920.
“An Important New Industry,” Grand Forks Herald, December 19, 1886, p. 3.
“Jacob Dobmeier,” Grand Forks Herald, July 31, 1891.
“Jacob Dobmeier,” Grand Forks Plaindealer, January 4, 1893, p. 4.
“The Petition of J.Dobmeier,” Grand Forks Herald, January 23, 1890, p. 2; “The Petition From Grand Forks,” Grand Forks Herald, January 29, 1890, p. 2; “To Reimburse A Brewer,” Bismarck Tribune, January 24, 1890, p. 1.
Grand Forks & East Grand Forks City Directory (Sioux Falls: Pettibone Directory Company, 1893), p. 12, advertisement.
Journal of the Senate of the State of North Dakota Legislative Assembly Journal of the Senate of the State of North Dakota Legislative Assembly 1890, March 15, 1890, p. 906-907.
“Jacob Dobmeier,” U.S. Census Bureau. 1870 Federal Census of Franklin County, Ohio, HeritageQuest Online, Series: M593; Roll: 201; Page: 303.