Philadelphia Brewery (Sonora)
Sonora, California, USA
Tally's Take
Why this matters
John Bowman rented the Philadelphia Brewery in Sonora in 1861 and remained its proprietor until 1865, per a Tuolumne County biographical history. Read that carefully, because the archive did: 1865 is when Bowman's tenure ended, not when the brewery closed, and the record refuses to convert the one into the other. It also stood on different ground from the Sonora Brewery he bought the following year, so the two are held as separate entities despite sharing a proprietor.
The Museum
Timeline
- 1861Bowman rents the brewery
Proprietor, not owner.
- 1865Bowman's tenure ends
Explicitly NOT treated as the brewery's closure date.
The People
Behind the beer
Leased the brewery in 1861 and conducted it for four years before building his own Sonora Brewery in 1866. Recorded elsewhere as John Bowman; the same man.
Corrected by
- Rob Gordon, Tuolumne County Historical Society — one change to the people, 2026-08-20
Corrections from outside the archive are logged permanently and credited here. Every one of them replaced something this archive had wrong.
Show your working
Sources
- recordProbable
Brewery record taken from Tally's California master, Pass 187, which cited https://www.cagenweb.org/tuolumne/bio2.htm for this entry. The cited page has not been opened by the archive.
Tally's California master, Pass 187 (research workbook) · Tally's Beer Universe research workbook · 2026
CommercialMedium reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-19Reviewed 2026-08-19 - historyProbable
Dated evidence as recorded in the source pass: 1861, 1865.
Tally's California master, Pass 187 (research workbook) · Tally's Beer Universe research workbook · 2026
CommercialMedium reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-19Reviewed 2026-08-19 - peopleConfirmed
John Bauman — also recorded as John Bowman — leased this brewery in 1861 and ran it for four years. The Tuolumne County Historical Society confirms the lease and reports that the brewery's OWNERS have not been identified; that remains unknown rather than assumed to be Bauman.
Period biographical sketch of John Bauman, supplied by the Tuolumne County Historical Society · Tuolumne County Historical Society · 1800s
PrimaryHigh reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-20Reviewed 2026-08-20
Only the claims above are sourced. Everything else on this page is the archive's own research and has not yet been tied to a document — which is worth knowing rather than hiding.
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