Event to take place at Naper Settlement, where Stenger Brewery artifacts remain
The 10th annual Oktoberfest will take place Oct. 4 and Oct. 5 at Naper Settlement, where a handful of the original Stenger Brewery artifacts – including the brewery’s headstone – remain.
The event will also honor the 50th anniversary of the Naperville Heritage Society, and families like the Stengers, who have lived in Naperville since 1850, are seven generations embedded into the community and have ties to Joliet.
One member, Ron Stenger, a financial services professional in Oak Brook, speakers to offenders at a prison in Joliet, according to a news release about the Stenger family.
Oktoberfest activities include a stein holding and pretzel eating competitions. Visit napersettlement.org/237/Oktoberfest.
A Naperville family seven generations deep exemplifies the city’s entrepreneurial history
Peter Stenger arrived in Naperville in 1848, and the family has thrived in the city ever since, first as founders and owners of the Stenger Brewery that flourished for decades, and now as wealth advisors for a financial service company.
“When you look at Naperville, it’s the epitome of the American dream unfolding,” s\Ron Stenger, a financial services professional in Oak Brook, said in the news release.
“I’ve been blessed to work in a city that is great expression of the American Dream. Naperville has transformed from an agrarian city, to one dominated by a quarry, to a brewing community, then a furniture town, and now it’s led by high-tech businesses. And the values that defined us back then are still defining us today, and it’s what’s helped Naperville thrive.”
“We take our legacy and our family’s enduring ties to our city very seriously. We feel a special obligation not just to honor the past, but to protect Naperville’s future.”
The Stenger Brewery’s most famous employee was a 22-year-old immigrant named Adolph Coors, who was hired in 1869 by Peter Stenger’s son, John, and worked at the brewery for about three years before heading west to start the Coors Brewery in 1873 in Colorado.
Ron Stenger said Coors left for one of two reasons: To earn a promotion at the Stenger Brewery, he needed to marry a Stenger; or Coors fell in love with one of the Stengers and was rejected.
“He came in as a penny-less worker and when he left, he was the highest-paid person at the brewery,” Ron Stenger said of Coors in the news release.
The Stenger Brewery survived until the late 1800s, and the building eventually housed a mushroom factory before it was demolished in 1956.
But Naperville has a downtown mural featuring a picture of the brewery, and the Stenger family has a street – Stenger Commemorative Parkway -- in the city in their honor.
Ron Stenger named his son, Nicholas, after John Stenger’s (pictured above) brother, Nicholas, who co-ran the brewery.
Nicholas, 24, is a financial advisor at Ron’s company, and the father-son have next-door offices with a sliding glass window in between so they can easily communicate.
Ron Stenger’s office is filled with odes to the past, including ties to his family’s history to Naperville.
“Our family’s story is a story of humble entrepreneurship,” Nicholas Stenger, who represents the seventh generation of his family to hail from Naperville, said in the news release. “And it all goes back to the community that we live in and surround ourselves with.” Continuing the legacy
Ron Stenger said his roots have been key to the growth of his financial firm and his family values have shaped his life.
He volunteers at a food pantry in Naperville and at Hesed House in Aurora, helps victims of domestic violence, supports numerous schools, participates in walks to benefit Alzheimer’s patients and speaks to offenders at a prison in Joliet.
“We live in this frantic digital world where humanity seems harder and harder to find, but we should celebrate a time when all these small-town values thrived,” Ron said in the release.
He's making sure his family’s legacy – he restored the original gravestones of his distant Naperville relatives -- continues to prosper.
“My great-great grandfather Nicholas and his brother John were true pioneers and entrepreneurs in their own right,” Ron said in the release. “They would marvel at how the entrepreneurial spirit of the Stengers has continued to make a mark in the community that they loved. And that makes me feel good.”