Philip Hildenbrandt of the White Bear Brewing Company

 

       Philip Hildenbrandt (aka Philipp Hildenbrand), one of the most respected citizens of Philadelphia, was born in Hesse in 1853 and came to America in 1872. He immediately found a job at the Sommers Brewery in New York and worked there for nine years before he became a master brewer. In 1885 he finally left that brewery to join the Metropolitan Brewing Company as a partner. Three years later he sold his business share there and attended the brewing school (First Scientistic Station for the Art of Brewing) in New York for four months and after this period he received a 1st class diploma and a recommendation to John F. Betz & Son, Philadelphia, in whose brewery he served as superintendent until 1897. 

       At this time, Mr. Hildenbrandt was homesick. He traveled to Germany to visit his elderly parents whom he had not seen in 25 years. After staying there for four months, he returned to Philadelphia. With John C. Doyle he went from here to Arkansas, where he participated in the purchase of a large property, which soon after became known as the Little Rock Brewing and Ice Company. In the first year the company had sales of 10,000 kegs of beer and sold no less than 25 to 30 tons of ice a day. The breweries in the neighboring towns saw that the young company was becoming dangerous to them, and after a year of existence they bought the brewery for an enormous price. The brewery passed into the hands of the Anheuser-Busch and Lemp breweries.

       In 1891, Mr. Hildenbrandt returned to Philadelphia and acquired the Albert Wolf Brewery, No. 3702 North 6th Street, which he continued under the name The White Bear Brewing Company. The brewery made tremendous progress in a short period of time. 

       In 1879 Mr. Hildenbrandt married Miss Leonora Belser, a young New Yorker from a distinguished family.

       The Rifle Club, the Canstatter Volksfest-Verein, the Bavarian and Hessen-Verein count Mr. Hildenbrandt among their most popular and most enthusiastic members. Everywhere he knows how to make real friends; His acquaintance is a big one and his popularity is that of a real, hard-working, progressive German-American citizen of Philadelphia.

-from the book Hervorragende und Fortschrittliche Deutsch-Amerikaner von Philadelphia (1906)

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