Calendar of Events
Note: Meetings are usually held on the second Sunday of each month, September through May, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Currently we are meeting via Zoom, but in-person meetings are held at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland, and occasionally at other venues. The meetings are open to anyone. However, certain meetings may require a fee.
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The Nation’s Capital Brewmaster: Christian Heurich and his Brewery
October 8, 2023 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Speaker: Dr. Mark Benbow
Alexandria, Virginia
TALK DESCRIPTION
Christian Heurich (1842-1945) was not only Washington D.C.’s most successful brewer, but he was also the world’s oldest, with 90 years of experience. He walked across central Europe learning his craft, survived a shipboard cholera epidemic, recovered from malaria, and worked as a roustabout on a Caribbean banana boat—all by age 30. Heurich lived most of his life in Washington, becoming its largest private landowner and opening the city’s largest brewery. He won a “beer war” against his rivals and his beers won medals at World’s Fairs. He was trapped in Europe while on vacation at the start of both World Wars, once sleeping through an air raid, and was accused of being a German spy plotting to assassinate Woodrow Wilson. Drawing on family papers and photos, Benbow will discuss Heurich’s life and the evolving beer industry before and after Prohibition.
BIO 
Dr. Mark Benbow is Associate Professor of American History at Marymount University. He earned his Ph.D. from Ohio University. From 1987 – 2002, he worked in the Directorate of Intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency, and from 2003 – 2006, Benbow was the Historian at the Woodrow Wilson House Museum in Washington, D.C.
Benbow’s first book, Leading Them to the Promised Land: Woodrow Wilson, Covenant Theology, and the Mexican Revolution: 1913-1915, was published by Kent State University Press in 2010. His biography of D.C. brewer Christian Heurich, The Nation’s Capital Brewmaster: Christian Heurich and His Brewery, 1842-1956, was published by McFarland in 2017. In 2022 the Naval Institute Press published Woodrow Wilson as Commander in Chief, as part of their new Commanders in Chief series. His articles have appeared in multiple scholarly journals as well as essays in books on Wilson, on American foreign policy, and in specialized reference works. He is currently mulling over writing a book on Woodrow Wilson and the movies in his upcoming retirement.
Members will receive a link and passcode for the Zoom Meeting.