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Becker Brewing and Malting Company records, 1893-1954

Overview of the Collection

Title
Becker Brewing and Malting Company records
Dates
1893-1954 (inclusive)
Quantity
68 boxes, (32 linear ft.)
Collection Number
UUS_CAINE COLL MSS 31
Summary
This collection consists of sixty-eight boxes containing documents relating to the Becker Brewing and Malting Company (BBMC), its successor companies, and members of the Becker family. The collection documents economic activity nationwide, especially throughout the American West.
Repository
Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections and Archives Division
Special Collections & Archives
Merrill-Cazier Library
Utah State University
Logan, UT
84322-3000
Telephone: 4357978248
Fax: 4357972880
scweb@usu.edu
Access Restrictions

No restrictions on use, except: not available through interlibrary loan.

Languages
English.
Sponsor
Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, 2007-2008
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Historical Note

The Becker Brewing and Malting Company (BBMC) was founded in 1890 in Ogden, Utah, by the Becker family and was located on the southwest corner of 19th Street and Lincoln Avenue. Gustav L. Becker was president and treasurer, and his father, John S. Becker was secretary. Albert E. Becker, Gustav's younger brother, became vice president in 1893.

The company manufactured and sold various kinds of beer, over time expanding its manufactures to include near beer, soft drinks, including "Zest," ice, and related products. The company sold to a regional market, including the states of Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, and California. A few sales were made as far away as Illinois and Pennsylvania. In 1906, BBMC became agents for the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association.

By the mid-1910s BBMC's operations began to be challenged by local and state laws restricting the sale of alcohol. As Utah began passing Prohibition laws forbidding the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages, the Becker family examined alternatives. In 1917, BBMC began the production of "Becco,"a very low alcohol (0.3% by volume) near beer. That same year BBMC split its operations. The Ogden operation was renamed the Becker Products Company, and the Becker Brewing Company, which took over beer production, was established in nearby Evanston, Wyoming, which was still a "wet" state. When national Prohibition laws took effect in 1920, however, the Becker companies ceased all beer production. These two businesses operated independently for some years, and apparently remained separate entities even after national Prohibition ended in 1933. By 1968, both Becker companies had ceased operations.

>Gustav Lorenz Becker

Gustav Lorenz Becker was born 7 April 1868 in Winona, Minnesota, to German immigrants Johann Stephan Becker and Katharine Marie Fehr Becker. G. L. Becker attended Lambert's College in Winona before moving in 1890 to Ogden, Utah, with his father, J. S. Becker, and brother, Albert E. Becker. There they established the Becker Brewing and Malting Company. On 18 August 1892, G. L. Becker married Thekla Bohn, sister of Conrad Bohn, office manager for Becker Brewing and Manufacturing Company.

Becker resided in Ogden for the rest of his life, but maintained family, business, and recreational ties to the upper Midwest, and appears to have traveled there frequently. In addition to running the Becker Brewing and Malting Company, Becker served as president of the United States Brewers' Association and the National Brewers' Association. He was also a director of the Amalgamated Sugar Company, the Ogden State Bank, the Utah-Idaho Central Railway Company, the Superior Rock Springs Coal Company, the Ogden Morning Examiner, the Tintic Standard Mining Company, and the Lion Coal Company. He maintained memberships in various Masonic organizations, the Elks, and the Eagles. Becker was also active in many athletic associations and clubs, including the Chicago Athletic Club and the South Shore Country Club in Chicago, and the Weber Club, Rotary Club, Ogden Golf and Country Club, Bear River Duck Club, and Ogden Gun Club in Ogden, Utah. He was also a world-class trap shooter.

Apparently to show his loyalty to the United States, Becker joined the Utah National Guard in 1893, and in 1918, at the age of fifty, the Home Guard. At the time of his death, Becker was one of only twelve people to have been awarded the American Legion Medal for Distinguished Service. Becker died in Ogden, 12 January 1947, at the age of seventy-eight.

Albert Ernest Becker

Albert Ernest Becker was born 4 August 1871 in Winona, Minnesota. A. E. Becker attended Northwestern University before serving a brewing apprenticeship in Chicago from 1890-92. Subsequently, Becker spent a year studying at the Wahl and Henius Research Laboratories. He moved to Ogden, Utah, in 1893 to serve as vice president of the Becker Brewing and Malting Company. In 1906, Becker married Josephine Aadneson of Ogden. After her death in 1909, Becker married Nell Caruth of Coalville, Utah, in 1910.

A. E. Becker was active in the Ogden Chamber of Commerce and was director of the Wasatch Insurance Company and the Rotary Club. He was also a member of several Masonic organizations. Becker served as a member of the Utah House of Representatives in 1929. He became president of the Becker Products Company late in his life, when he bought out the heirs of his brother, Gustav L. Becker. A. E. Becker died in Ogden, Utah, on 15 January, 1961, at the age of eighty-nine.

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Content Description

This collection consists of sixty-eight boxes (approximately 35 linear feet) containing documents relating to the Becker Brewing and Malting Company (BBMC), its successor companies, and members of the Becker family. BBMC operated in Ogden, Utah, from 1890 until 1917 when that state's prohibition laws forced it to split into two separate concerns: the Becker Products Company, of Ogden, and the Becker Brewing Company, of Evanston, Wyoming. A small number of documents in the collection postdate this split, but the vast majority of the collection cover the years 1896-1917, more especially 1913-1917.

The collection is separated into four series. Series I comprises correspondence primarily relating to orders of Becker products, and is organized alphabetically by state, then city or town, and finally by company name or surname. Customer orders for beer make up the majority of documents in this series, and the remainder relate to sales of near beer (especially after Utah prohibition came into effect on 1 August 1917), soft drinks, ice, malt, barley, barley sprouts, potato sacks, chaff, and yeast. This series contains the records of several BBMC agents and distributors around the region as well as letters to BBMC from individuals and companies requesting an agency for Becker products. The expense account books and correspondence of six BBMC traveling agents are also included in boxes 27 and 28. Sales made by these agents may not appear in the alphabetized portion of this series. Correspondence from these agents either not relating to individual purchasers or naming multiple purchasers, is filed by the agent's last name in box 26. The following details of each agent's "rounds" is provided to assist researchers in locating individuals or businesses who made purchases through these agents.

Records of customer bottle returns are filed along with orders as BBMC allowed buyers credit for these returns on future orders. These transactions therefore related directly to customers. Finally, credit reports obtained by BBMC regarding customers and agents are also included in this series.

Series II consists of BBMC's correspondence with its suppliers. This correspondence documents specific BBMC purchases of goods and services. Like Series I, this series is organized geographically by state, then city or town, and finally by company name or surname. This organization provides a strong regional focus; purchases in the intermountain region appear to be dominated by raw materials such as barley, while West Coast, East Coast, and Midwestern purchases tend to be for equipment and expert beer-making services. boxes 21, 22, and 23 consist of railroad bills of lading. Due to the illegibility of many of these documents and the inability to determine the nature of the goods being transported, it was deemed inadvisable to incorporate these records into either sales or suppliers' records.

Series III is made up of BBMC office files, business correspondence not directly related to sales or purchases, and records of the company's print advertising. Office files include G. L. Becker's business correspondence; labor and employee records; stockholder and dividend records; government correspondence; insurance; BBMC stockholdings; legal services and litigation; correspondence relating to state and national prohibition; and correspondence regarding local, state, and federal taxes. A small collection of oversized records relating to Becker Products Company sales in Twin Falls, Idaho, in 1935, is located in the Caine Collection oversize box (Caine Oversize box 1 folder 13).

Series IV contains personal correspondence and documents of J. S. Becker, G. L. Becker, A. E. Becker, and C. E. Bohn, office manager for BBMC and brother in law of G. L. and A. E. Becker. The documents in this series appear to have no direct connection to BBMC.

Series I: Boxes 1 (Addendum)-3 (Addendum), Series II: Box 1 (Addendum), and Series III: Box 1 (Addendum) were purchased from Ken Sander's Rare Books and added to the Collection in August 2011. The addendum follows the same method of organization according to state, town and customer/supplier, etc. as the primary portion. The folders in said boxes are labeled "Addendum" to differentiate them from the earlier set of folders and boxes and to avoid duplication of their numbers.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless the Utah State University Libraries, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Permission to publish material from the Becker Brewing and Malting Company records must be obtained from the Special Collections Manuscript Curator and/or the Special Collections Department Head.

Preferred Citation

Becker Brewing and Malting Company records, 1893-1954. (CAINE COLL MSS 31). Utah State University. Special Collections and Archives Department.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Organized into 4 series: Series I Sales Orders; Series II Suppliers; Series III Office Files; Series IV Becker Family personal papers. A fifth series, an addendum added at a later date, is similarly structured.

Acquisition Information

The Marie Eccles Caine Foundation funded the purchase of the bulk of this collection from Ken Sanders' Rare Books in Salt Lake City in 2001. Previously, fifty-one documents related to the Becker Brewing and Malting Company had been purchased from the same source, and held in USU Special Collections and Archives as MSS COLL 270. Those records have been subsumed into this collection. Additional materials were purchased from Ralph W. Taylor in 2007 and Ken Sanders Rare Books in 2010 and 2011. Another donation came from Karen Becker Edson in 2012, and Marty Judd donated the serving tray in February 2017. USU Special Collections purchased the letter dated March 1895 (addendum, series 3a, box 1, fd 2) was purchased from Tschanz Rare Books in 2021, and the 1902 letter from J.R. Edwards (addendum, series 1a, box 5, fd 2) was purchased from Jeff Carr Ephemera in 2022.

The vast majority of the collection consists of original documents, although a few are photocopies, the originals having been extracted prior to purchase by USU. All photocopied documents were acquired in this form from the seller.

Little evidence of this collection's original order remained upon acquisition by USU. That which did exist suggested that the company may have filed its sales and purchase records chronologically by year, then geographically by state, then town, then company name or individual's last name. The geographic organization has been retained where it existed, and recreated where it did not, to provide the most objective entry points to the collection.

Additional records related to the Becker companies are located at Weber State University, the University of Utah, and Brigham Young University.

Processing Note

Collection Processed by: Robert Sidford, John L. Powell, Bill Shelton, Jolyn Hunting, and Alisha Tolman, May 2003; amended by Trevor Alvord June 2007; amended by Andrew Izatt and Clint Pumphrey August 2011; amended by Cody Patton and Clint Pumphrey in February 2017. Revised in 2025 by Heather Housley to include additional purchased materials.

Related Materials

Gustav Lorenz Becker Photograph Collection (P0361).

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Beer--Utah--History.
  • Breweries--Utah--Ogden--History.
  • Breweries--Wyoming--Evanston--History
  • Brewers--Utah--Ogden--History.
  • Prohibition--Utah--History.

Personal Names

  • Becker, Albert Ernest, 1871-1961.
  • Becker, Gustav Lorenz, 1868-1947.

Corporate Names

  • Becker Brewing and Malting Company.

Geographical Names

  • Ogden (Utah)--History.

Finding aid created by Special Collections and Archives.
2008

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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