The Bartholomay Brewing Company was originally founded in 1852 as Will and Bartholomay. In 1857, Philip Bartholomay bought out his partner and renamed the company Bartholomay Brewing Company. Bartholomay grew to be a very substantial brewery, with production of about 180,000 barrels in 1888. In 1889, it absorbed two other local breweries (Rochester Brewing and Gennesee Brewing) as well as two Rochester malting house to become the Bartholomay Brewing conglomerate. The company's symbol was a rather unusual one, a wheel with two outstretched wings. Like many Rochester Brewers, Bartholomay had agents that bottled and sold its products in other states, including W.W. Walker & Company of Hagerstown, Maryland, John S. Low of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and William Albrecht of Boston, Massachusetts. Bartholomay operated successfully until Prohibition but, although both Rochester and Genesee reopened after Repeal, Batholomay did not. Some of Bartholomay's brands, such as Apollo Beer, were later used by the American Brewing Co. of Rochester.

Featured is an impressive metal serving tray from the American Brewing Company which was in Pekin, Illinois prior to Prohibition.  This tray is a stock tray, meaning it is one where the image was sold to potential breweries, and the breweries simply had the manufacturing tray company insert their name on the tray.   This tray features an older man tilting his beer stein as if almost to say he is out of beer.   This image is very similar to another image which shows a monk in the same type of basement cellar who is pouring beer or even whiskey perhaps out of a wooden barrel.  The edge and coloring of these two trays are eerily similar, both from the 1900-1910 and produced by a tray company in Coshocton, OH.   The American Brewing Company used the wording “of Pekin” because there were many breweries at that time which called themselves The American Brewing Company, including one just south of Pekin based in St. Louis, MO.