People – John Michael Kohler
The Founder's Journey
John Michael Kohler, the founder of Kohler Co., immigrated to the United States in 1853 from Austria. He traveled with his family by horse-drawn carriage, by foot, and across the ocean in the hull of a ship.
To fully understand our intrepid and independent company founder John Michael Kohler, we need to start in his early life. After his mother died when he was just 9, his father remarried, and the family fled their remote village in the Austrian Alps for the promise of new opportunities in America.
Their immigration to America was a journey of epic endurance lasting several months: more than 600 miles by horse and carriage and on foot from Austria to France; a 54-day transatlantic voyage among hundreds of other steerage passengers in the cargo hold of a ship; another 1,200 miles from New York to what is now St. Paul, Minnesota. Finally, John Michael and his family reached the farm belonging to his uncle, who immigrated 10 years earlier.
Over the next several years, John Michael and his growing number of siblings (13 in total) worked to clear land and develop a thriving dairy enterprise. Dairy farming and cheesemaking had been in the Kohler family roots for generations in Austria. But John Michael, at age 18, had different ideas for his legacy.
He left the family farm and ventured to the rapidly growing city of Chicago, where he went to college at night and worked as a traveling furniture salesman by day, covering territory that included most of the Lake Michigan shoreline north of Chicago. On a sales trip to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, John Michael called on a local business owner named Jacob Vollrath.
The visit changed everything for John Michael, who fell in love with and married the businessman’s daughter, Lillie Vollrath. Welcomed into the family, he moved to Sheboygan and began working for the Vollrath-owned Sheboygan Union Iron and Steel Foundry.
After two years on the job, John Michael’s bold and opportunistic spirit drove him to make a daring investment. On Dec. 3, 1873, the 29-year-old and his business partner Charles Silberzahn bought Vollrath’s iron foundry business for $5,000. At the time, it was an investment as risky as it was pricey.
In 1873, the U.S. was in the midst of the most severe financial depression of the 19th century, forcing thousands of companies into bankruptcy.
But for John Michael, investing everything he had in a business he could call his own was the only way to fulfill his bold ambitions. After journeying the long road from Austria to Sheboygan, he was just getting started.
