Adolph Coors - Golden Brewery, Death by suicide

Brewer, born in Barmen, Prussia. He went to the USA in 1868, and after working in a Denver brewery, he founded Adolph Coors Brewing Co in Golden, CO (1873). He was president of the company after its incorporation (1914), steering it successfully through most of the Prohibition period. He left the firm to his sons, who developed it on a national scale into one of the most successful American breweries.

Adolph Coors (February 4, 1847 – June 5, 1929) was a brewer who started the Adolph Coors Company in Golden, Colorado in 1873.

Adolph was the son of Joseph Kuhrs (c1820-1862) and Helena Hein (c1820-1862), and was born in Barmen in Rhenish Prussia on February 4, 1847. In July of 1862, Adolph was apprenticed for a three year period at a brewery owned by Henry Wenker in Dortmund. Orphaned, Adolph completed his apprenticeship and continued to work as a paid employee at the Wenker Brewery until May of 1867. He then worked at breweries in Kassel, Berlin, and Uelzen in Germany. He worked in the spring as a laborer, and during the summer he worked as a brewer. He became foreman of John Stenger's brewery on August 11, 1869, in Naperville, Illinois, about 35 miles west of Chicago. He resigned from Stenger's brewery on January 22, 1872, and arrived in Denver in April. He worked in Denver as a gardener for a month, then on May 1, 1872 he purchased a partnership in the bottling firm of John Staderman. Company's Directory of the City of Denver for 1873 on page 242 showed Adolph Coors as a dealer in "bottled beer, ale, porter and cider, imported and domestic wines, and seltzer water." The same directory shows that Coors lived on Curtis Street between IC and L (20th and 21st) Streets.

Golden Brewery

On November 14, 1873, Coors and the Denver confectioner Jacob Schueler purchased the abandoned Golden City Tannery and converted it to the Golden Brewery. In 1880 Coors purchased Schueler's interest, and the brewery remains majority family-owned as of 2006. When Prohibition was passed in Colorado in 1914, he converted his brewery to make malted milk.

Death by suicide

He took his own life on June 5, 1929, at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach, Virginia when he jumped to his death from the hotel window.