Adolphus Busch, honorary Dallasite and his powerhouse wife, continued.
I didn’t want to be a bummer on Valentine’s day, so I only mentioned Adolphus and Lilly’s large family of 13 children. The part I left out: only seven children made it to “old age” (age 60+). Three of their children lived for less than a year, one son died at age 15, and three more sons died in their early 30s.
Elisa “Lily” Eberhard Busch outlived her husband and seven of her children. While her husband Adolphus was revolutionizing the beer brewing industry, growing Anheuser-Busch beer production from 3000 barrels in 1865 to 700,000 barrels in 1870, Lily was almost continuously pregnant. She gave birth in the following years:
1863 (age 18/19)
1864
1865
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1875
1876
and, after taking a breather,
1882 (age 39ish)
Lily herself lived to be 83 years old, dying in 1928.
If you want to hear more about these fascinating people and see the buildings that their beer money built in Dallas, please book a tour!
