Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men!

Born in a small Ohio town into a family of modest resources, Daniel “Dan” Breen, shown here, figuratively “followed the telegraph lines” west to San Antonio, Texas, where he prospered as a saloonkeeper in particularly violent times.

Breen’s 1866 birthplace was Ada, Ohio, a quiet community about 70 miles south of Toledo, a town whose claim to fame is having the shortest name in Ohio. Dan’s parents were Daniel Breen and Johanna Buckley. Their 1864 marriage license was unusual since it was applied for by Johanna’s father, Jeremiah, and initially his name was inked in as the groom. The couple would go on to produce eleven children of whom Daniel Jr. was the second. The 1880 census listed his father as a railroad worker and “crippled.”

One asset Ada boasted was the presence of a post-elementary educational institution called the Northwestern Ohio Normal School, now Ohio Northern University. Likely by working his way Breen was able to attend and graduate in 1884 at the age of 18, licensed as a telegraph operator. That was someone who used a telegraph key to send and receive Morse code in order to communicate via land lines, a 19th Century "high-tech" occupation. Young men like Breen left farms and hamlets to take high-paying jobs “reading the wire.” In those early days the demand was such that operators could move from place to place and job to job for ever-higher salaries.

Breen followed the telegraph lines out of Ada and away from his immediate family to travel west. Shown left is a photo of a typical Old West operator, his hat and clothing advertising his professional status. Dan’s intermediate stops are unrecorded but by 1893 when he was 25, he had located in San Antonio, Texas. Not long after his arrival Dan married Mabel Donovan, a woman of Irish heritage who had been born in Illinois. Their only child, a son, would be born the following year.

At some point Breen exited telegraphy. In the 1899 San Antonio city directory, he was listed as working in a company called the San Antonio Brokerage Office, in which C.C. Breen, likely a relative, was a partner. It may have been through that occupation that Dan met William R. “Billy” Simms.

Considered a “desperado” by some, Simms, shown here, was co-owner of the Vaudeville Theater in San Antonio in 1884 when notorious Western gunman Ben Thompson and a companion were shot down at that burlesque house, gambling hall, and saloon. [See my post on Thompson, September 27, 1917.] Simms was charged with aiding and abetting the murder. Considered a friend by Thompson, Billy was accused of having lured him to the scene. When the accused gunmen were tried in 1887, however, charges were dropped against Simms.

Perhaps as a way of restoring a more legitimate persona, the native-born Texan subsequently sold the Vaudeville Theatre and with partners opened a new drinking establishment. Called “The Crystal Saloon,” it boasted impressive crystal glass chandeliers and an elaborate interior, by far the fanciest watering hole in San Antonio and one of finest in Texas. By the time Breen arrived in town, according to one author, Simms had become: “…One of the leading figures in San Antonio and was a member of the most influential social organizations. Politicians and businessmen courted his favor and he was consulted on major city projects.”

Billy Simms must have seen potential in Dan Breen. When the Texan branched out with a combination saloon and gambling hall named the “Crystal Turf Exchange” he brought the Ada, Ohio, product into the operation as a partner and the manager. Located on San Antonio’s Main Plaza, The Turf Exchange may have been a cut or two below Simms’ saloon. Called a “bookie joint” by some, the business advertised: “If you want to make a bet on the races, they will accommodate you.”

More telling was the inclusion of the Turf Exchange in the notorious San Antonio “Blue Book,” a guide to a good time for visitors including information on the location and quality of its brothels. The author of the Blue Book told readers on the prowl: “If about town during the afternoon, drop into the Turf Exchange…you can here get some very desired information.” Simms and his partners in the Turf Exchange were reported to become “very wealthy men.”

Earlier in his career Breen had lived in an apartment with his wife, Mabel, and his son. His growing wealth now allowed him to buy a spacious home at 518 West Craig Place. Still standing, the photo here shows how the house looks today. Breen also used his newly acquired riches to leave the Crystal Turf Exchange and open his own saloon on Houston Street, below, a major thoroughfare.

As seen here from a postcard, Breen’s saloon was itself an upscale place, boasting tile floors, overhead fans in the days before air conditioning, and an ornate bar. Among the liquors available at Breen’s was “Four Roses” brand, a whiskey originated in Atlanta by Rufus Rose and developed into a national brand by Paul Jones in Paducah, Kentucky, after the Civil War. As package goods it was available in quart bottles and pint and half-pint flasks.

For whiskey over the bar, Dan provided tokens to frequent customers worth, as he put it, “XII 1/2.” Customers would know that the reference was to a “bit,” a unit of common currency derived from the early Southwest tradition of cutting a Spanish milled dollar into eight pie-shaped pieces or bits, each worth 12 and 1/2 cents. “Two bits” made a quarter as that coin sometimes is called today.

Breen’s very simple business card advertised “wine, liquors, and cigars.” The flip side of the card held a verse with a stanza that would prove prophetic:

“Cutoff in the prime of a useful life,”

The headlines glibly say, —

Or “snatched by the grim reaper”

He has crossed the great highway,

They bury him deep, while a few friends weep,

And the world moves on with a sigh.

San Antonio had not yet seen the end of the reckless violence of its past and it would erupt in Dan Breen’s saloon on the night of August 18, 1910. The shooter was a wealthy businessman and public official from Hidalgo County, located about 230 miles south of San Antonio near the Mexican border. His name was Dennis B. Chapin.

Chapin, shown here, had been the kingpin of developers who laid out a new community at a crossroads that eventually became the county seat. Because of his leadership, residents named the town “Chapin” in his honor. For several years he served as a Hidalgo County judge and recently had been nominated without opposition to the Texas legislature.

Chapin’s target that night at Breen’s was Oscar J. Roundtree, shown here, an Arizona Ranger from 1903 to 1906 and a Texas Ranger from 1906 until 1910. Roundtree's service with the Rangers was unblemished and he bore a good reputation. After resigning as a lawman the previous January, he had been living in San Antonio for about four months.

An altercation began after Chapin and a friend entered Breen’s about 9:30 p.m. and encountered Roundtree. After Chapin invited the former Ranger over for a drink, the two had a heated argument over what the newspapers called “old troubles.” Drawing his eight-shot 45-caliber Colt, Chapin fired at Roundtree five times. One bullet hole was found in the ceiling of Breen’s saloon, two in the walls, one in a rear screen door, and one squarely in the center of Rountree’s forehead that tore through his brain and exited back of his right ear.

Roundtree died at the San Antonio hospital the following morning. Later examination found that he had a pistol in his back pocket but had not had an opportunity to draw it. Unmarried, he was buried in the Sonora Texas Cemetery. Chapin was arrested immediately and spent six days in jail until a judge granted his release on $15,000 bond.

During his trial the following December, Chapin claimed that Roundtree was working as bodyguard and pistoleer for a hostile former business partner. According to press reports Chapin told the jury: “Roundtree was hired to murder me. I know what I am talking about, because I have copies of a cypher translated, which he sent to his employer while spying on my actions.” Perhaps awed by his wealth, the jury believed him and after deliberating only 20 minutes acquitted him. Breen’s reaction to the violence committed in his saloon has gone unrecorded.

Chapin, however, did not go unpunished. His political career was at an end and his reputation in Hidalgo County plummeted. The populace there regretted naming their town for him and officially changed it to “Edinburg” to honor John Young, a prominent local businessman who had been born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Today Edinburg has a population approaching 90,000.

The Ohio native appears to have operated his saloon until about 1917 when it disappeared from San Antonio directories. It might have been the result of the tightening noose of prohibition in Texas or an effect of declining health. Breen died on April 15, 1918 at the age of 51, apparently the result of stroke. He was interred in the Mission Burial Park of San Antonio. Unusually, neither his wife or any Breen relative is recorded buried with him.

The road from sleepy Ada, Ohio, to gun-toting San Antonio was a long one for Dan Breen. He had escaped a humdrum life working in his tiny home town to running his own saloon in a wide open — and too often violent —booming Texas city. For an adventurous youth of America’s mid-19th Century, the choice had been clear.

Memorialized recently as among the “100 Who Helped Shape St. Louis,”David Grace Nicholson has been hailed as a grocer who broadened the palate of the local citizenry, the developer of a notable downtown building, an outspoken Union patriot in a divided Missouri, and even the author of “a high order of verse.” Yet the single accomplishment that has kept Nicholson’s name alive before the American public was that inspired day in a back room of his store when he created the recipe for an historic whiskey, known ever after as “David Nicholson’s 1843.”

Nicholson was born December, 1814, in the Scottish village of Foster Wester, County Perth, into a family of modest means. After rudimentary schooling and largely self-educated, he became a grocer’s apprentice in Glasgow, and later in Oban, the West Highlands. About 1832 Nicholson emigrated to Canada, landing at Montreal, proceeding to Ottawa. Unsuccessful in finding employment, he learned the carpenter’s trade and as an itinerant traveled to a number of Canadian towns and eventually found his way to the United States.

Beginning in Erie, Pennsylvania, moving to Chicago and ultimately on to St. Louis, Nicholson plied the carpenter’s trade. An 1883 biography commented: “Physically strong and mentally quick, he was…noted for rapid and superior workmanship. Some of the finest ornamental woodwork in St. Xavier’s Church, St. Louis, was his work….” Although a devout Presbyterian, in later years Nicholson often referred with pride to his labor for the Jesuits.

In St. Louis, David met Jane McHendrie, an immigrant from Scotland who was 10 years his junior. They wed about 1840. Their marriage would produce six children, three boys and three girls. Nicholson settled his family in a large home, shown here. An imposing structure it had 84 feet of frontage on Garrison Street near the corner of Franklin. Later the home would be presented by grateful St. Louis citizens to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman for his service to the Nation during the Civil War. As a passionate pro-Union partisan, the grocer must have been delighted.

In 1843 at the age of 29, Nicholson gave up carpentry to join with a fellow Scotsman and wine merchant to form a specialty grocery and liquor dealership. With a genius for business, David flourished, moving several times as the volume of customers increased. Shown here is an illustration of one of his early stores. As a wholesaler, Nicholson did a brisk trade helping to supply wagon trains with food and drink as they headed west from St. Louis. As the ad below demonstrates, he also was doing business in the East from a sales office in New York City.

After several moves Nicholson in 1870 settled into a large building at Nos. 13 and 15 North Six Street between Market and Chestnut, one constructed on his own specifications. Shown here, the structure featured five floors, each 50 by 135 feet. He employed 50 clerks to deal with the constant customer traffic.

Nicholson was the first St. Louis grocer to import foreign comestibles, sometimes chartering ships and loading them with cargoes from abroad. Said a biographer: “He did more than any other man in the St. Louis trade to educate the community in the importance of purchasing superior goods, and to induce the consumption of commodities hitherto unknown in this market.”

One previously unknown commodity of Nicholson’s doing was his recipe for whiskey. Whether in 1843, as he started in business, or later, he developed recipes for bourbon and rye that found ready acceptance from the drinking public in Missouri and across the Mississippi River in Illinois. For more distant sales in places like New York, he also seems to have emphasize nationally known brands, like “Old Crow.”

In naming Nicholson as one of the 100 people who shaped the city, the St. Louis Magazine commented: “Where would we be without David Nicholson, the only distiller who didn’t leave town after the Whiskey Ring scandal.” Nicholson, however, was not a distiller but rectifier, that is, someone blending whiskeys purchased from distillers, of which Missouri had many. Shown here is a separate warehouse Nicholson kept to store for liquor. My assumption is that his company “master blenders” also operated there, producing “David Henderson’s 1843.” Many St. Louis rectifiers had been caught up in the crimes of the Whiskey Ring, however, and Nicholson’s honesty became his hallmark: According one biographer: “He had great contempt for the ‘sharp practices’ common in the trade and despised those who were guilty of them,”

Characterized as sometime gruff and outspoken, Nicholson also was portrayed as “tender as a woman” with a gift for poetry. According to the biographer: “In his early days he wrote numerous compositions in verse that were of a high order of merit, and during the Civil War wrote several patriotic odes that were characterized by unusual poetic inspiration and fervor.”

As he aged, Nicholson involved other relatives in his busines. He brought his wife, Jane, into the firm as an officer. His nephew Peter Nicholson, who had trained as a grocer in England, came to the U.S. in 1852 and was hired immediately by his uncle. Starting as a clerk, Peter proved to have exceptional energy and mercantile acumen. The customer base was said to reach “gigantic” proportions as Peter increasingly was given management responsibilities. Among the company’s prime profit centers was David Nicholson 1843 whiskey.

Nicholson died in November 1880 at the age of 65. He was buried in Block 167/168 of Lot 2344 in the Bellefontaine Cemetery of St. Louis. Jane would join him there 31 years later. Their graves are marked by a tall obelisk and a joint gravestone. Peter Nicholson subsequently took over directing the grocery and liquor house. The building burned in 1891 and after finding other quarters temporarily on Sixth St., the nephew moved to North Broadway, operating the liquor house and marketing David's whiskey until 1920.

As for the fate of David Nicholson’s 1843 whiskey, the following years are murky and somewhat conflicted. The assumption is that with the coming of National Prohibition, Peter sold the rights to the name. Shown right, the Peter Hauptmann Company of St. Louis appears to have owned the label in 1934, immediately after the end of the “dry era.” The brand eventually became the property of Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle and the Stitzel-Weller Company who continued to issue a Nicholson whiskey. Those whiskey men then sold the rights to an outfit known as Luxco.

Exactly who is making the whiskey today is not well understood. The bottles shown above are the current manifestation. One critic has opined: “This bottle is highly recommended as a hype-free, lower-cost alternative to some of the classic rye-kissed Kentucky Bourbons available today….This brand has survived over 170 years and continues to impress.” David Nicholson would be proud.

Notes: The major quotes regarding David Nicholson are from a biography called “Saint Louis City and County, From the Earliest to the Present Day, including Biographical Sketches of Representative Men” Vol. II. by J. Thomas Scharf, published by Everts & Co, Philadelphia, 1883. My vignette on “Pappy” Van Winkle was posted on this blog on November 22, 2014.

Working from the premise that every bottle “has a story,” the whiskey jug at left provides a pathway into the story of Moses Luna “Mose” Littleton, a man who began life without formal education in Tennessee, struggled in the whiskey trade in Texas, learned the law in New York City, and eventually became Assistant District Attorney of Dallas.

Mose was born in 1864 in one room log cabin in hardscabble mountainous Roane County, Tennessee, below. At the time his father was serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, a lieutenant in the First Tennessee Voluntary Infantry. Although much of the state was secessionist, Thomas Jefferson Littleton originally was from Indiana and did not own slaves. Shown here, he served for four years and survived hot combat from the Battle of Mill Springs to the Siege of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea.

With the end of the fighting, Lt. Littleton returned to his Tennessee farm and began to raise hogs and father more children. When Mose was seven, his mother, Hannah B. Ingram Littleton died at the age of 38. His father married again within a year and in total sired nineteen children. The family was desperately poor, unable to send the children to school. In the 1880 federal census, Mose and three brothers, including an eleven year old, were listed working as farm laborers. Their father and an older sister taught the others to read using the Bible and the few books the family owned.

In 1881 T. J. Littleton, seeking better opportunities, moved his family 870 miles west to Weatherford, Texas, a town not far from Fort Worth. The Littletons came via the Texas & Pacific Railway that had arrived at Weatherford a year earlier and spurred the town’s economy as an agricultural, banking and commercial center. The railroad also opened up national markets for local cotton and watermelons.

At the time of the move, Mose Littleton was 17 and, as shown here, growing into a handsome young man with wavy brown hair and regular features. His first decade in Texas has gone unrecorded but his early years likely were spent in farming and later he appears to have gravitated to the liquor trade.

In 1892 at the age of 27 Littleton married Eva Esther Smith in Weatherford, a woman five years younger than he. Eva was a native born Texan, whose father was a Texan married to a Mississippi women. The couple is shown here in one of the formal poses that photographers fancied in those days. The first of the couple's five children, a girl, would be born two years later.

Family responsibilities appear to have set Littleton seeking more lucrative opportunities. A 1894 Dallas business directory listed him as a traveling salesman for the M. T. Bruce & Co., located at 217 Elm Street. Owned by Maynardier T. Bruce, this was a firm specializing in wholesale liquor, wine and cigars. By 1900, however, Littleton had moved on to Waco, Texas, 95 miles south of Dallas, where he was running a saloon located at 322 Austin Street, the major commercial avenue shown below. The jug that opened this vignette was the product of that period. Littleton was buying whiskey by the barrel and decanting it into jugs with his label promising a “full measure.”

Mose’s attempt to run his own saloon were short-lived. What happened to his enterprise and why he left Waco is unclear, but by 1901 he had moved his family 55 miles northeast to Corsicana, Texas. There business directories listed him as the manager of the Benjamin H. Allen saloon and liquor store. Not only was his life in the liquor trade seemingly going nowhere, he was watching his younger brother, Martin, carve out a spectacular career as a highly-paid, successful lawyer in New York City.

Martin Wiley Littleton, a man with a lengthy Wikipedia biography, shared the same upbringing as Mose but from childhood was attracted to the law. Offered a job as both clerk and janitor at the Weatherford courthouse, Martin took it, studied law on his own time, passed the Texas bar exam at the age of 20, and then set his sights on New York City. His success in the Big Apple was meteoric.

Shown here, Martin was retained by multi-millionaire Harry K. Thaw as chief defense counsel in Thaw's second trial for the high-profile murder of prominent architect Stanford White after Thaw learned of White's past relationship with Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit. The transplanted Texan also defended controversial movie producer-director D. W. Griffith in Congressional hearings and industrialist Harry Ford Sinclair on charges related to the Teapot Dome Scandal. Time magazine called Martin“one of the world’s richest lawyers.”

Seeing his brother’s struggles to make a living in Texas, Milton invited Mose to come to New York, study the law under his tutelage, and become an attorney. Likely encouraged by Eva, Mose uprooted his family and moved to Brooklyn where Milton had his offices. Despite the drastic change of venue, Mose learned the law, passed the New York bar exam, and by 1907 was listed in city directories in a practice with his brother. Whether the Littleton brothers had a falling out or by agreement in 1912 Mose left his direct association with Martin and was in a solo law practice renting space in a skyscraper at 44 Court Street, Brooklyn, shown above.

Perhaps because of his or Eva’s becoming homesick for Texas, by 1921 the family had returned to Dallas where they lived in a modest home at 718 South Story Street, shown above as it looks today. Mose hung out his shingle at Rooms 217-218 of the Slaughter Building, shown right and conducted there what he called “a general practice.” He subsequently was appointed to the prestigious post as the Assistant District Attorney of Dallas. Ironically, one of the former saloonkeeper’s duties in that post would have been prosecuting individuals caught violating the laws against selling alcohol.

As to Mose’s attitude on issues of the day, I have been able to glean only one public statement. In the summer of 1920 Littleton was quoted in a national anti-women’s suffrage publication called “One Woman Patriot.” It quoted him opposing the right of women to vote, writing: “May your message awaken the old mountain patriots to a realization of the imperialism that threatens the rights of the States and the individual liberty of the citizens.” Then he threw in a seeming non-sequitur: “The National Government is now trying to regulate the price of ice in Dallas.”

Mose continued to practice law into his later years, dying in 1934 at the age of 69. He was buried in Weatherford adjacent to other family members in a plot in the city’s Greenwood Cemetery. His gravestone is shown below. Eva would survive him by more than two decades, dying at 90 years of age in 1959.

Beginning in utter poverty and having no formal education, floundering in the liquor business, attaining skills as a lawyer, and finally appointed Assistant District Attorney of a major city, Mose Littleton — reflecting the motto on his whiskey jug — had experienced a “full measure” of life.

Note: The Littleton jug that opens this post likely was issued only during the short time that Mose operated his saloon in Waco, a matter of months. The jug sold at auction on eBay in May 2019 for $332.77.

Foreword: Most whiskey men were willing to operate successfully one or at most two liquor stores in the same city, apparently not wishing to dissipate their time and talent in dashing among multiple locations. For a few distillers and liquor dealers, however, building an “empire” of outlets was an attractive and attainable option. The experiences of three such are recited briefly below.

Before the concepts were common in American business, the M. Wollstein Company was a multifaceted conglomerate liquor dealership, as suggested above in an illustration that listed its various entities. The management structure was presented in tree form, perhaps to resemble a sturdy oak. Behind this multi-limbed enterprise was the mysterious figure of Theodore Wollstein.

Throughout his life, Wollstein seemed to have avoided the U.S. Census taker. He first surfaced in the public record operating a short-lived whiskey dealership in Chicago (1877-1878). About 1880, he established a liquor business in Kansas City, Missouri, at 1070 Union Avenue that the company variously called “Main House” or “Station A.” It is shown below. The Wollstein liquor empire eventually would spread over four states.

Ten in all, the additional stores were: M. Wollstein & Co., West Main Street, Sedalia, Missouri; M. Wollstein & Co., 1420 East 18th Street, Kansas City; H. Brann & Co., 304 Main Street, Kansas City; M. Glass & Co, 1625 W. Ninth Street, Kansas City; M. Wollstein & Co., 222 North 16th Streets, Omaha; Chicago Liquor House, 222 16th Street, Omaha; M. Wollstein & Co., 522 South 13th, South Omaha; *M. Glass & Co., 224 North 10th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska; H. Brann & Co., 311 Larimer Street, Denver, Colorado; M. Wollstein & Co., 535 Broadway, Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The Wollstein “tree” that looked so firm and healthy eventually suffered considerable damage The company’s mail order sales were severely curtailed by Congressional action in 1913. Five retail “limbs” were sawed off in 1916 as Colorado, Iowa and Nebraska all went “dry.” During World War One and after, U.S. officials began hacking at the liquor empire trunk with accusations of German influence. National Prohibition provided the final blow of the axe. The Wollstein empire “tree” toppled to the ground. With its demise went all further traces of Theodore Wollstein, back into the mists of history.

George H. Goodman, a whiskey man from Paducah, Kentucky, was described by a contemporary this way: “He possess the power of scattering his energies without lessening their force.” True words. Goodman was amazing in his ability to keep his liquor business operating smoothly and profitably in no fewer than six widely scattered cities.

In 1900 at the age of 24, Goodman borrowed $500 from his father to start a retail liquor business in Paducah. As his enterprise became increasingly profitable, he branched out into mail order sales and began to open branch stores in a succession of cities. They included Jackson, Tennessee; Evansville, Indiana; Cairo, Illinois; and Shreveport and New Orleans, Louisiana. George called these “Branch Houses.” At one point he also claimed to own the Early Times Distillery in Nelson County, Kentucky, but records fail to sustain the claim. More likely he was buying all or most of the liquor produced at that facility to create his own brands of whiskey.

Goodman’s multiple outlets were often recorded on the ceramic jugs he often used to hold his whiskey. They display a variety of labels, in black and cobalt blue, that likely reflect the places from which they were shipped. He also bottled his product in glass, once again with his far-flung houses mentioned. The shot glass shown here lists Cairo, Paducah, Evansville and New Orleans.

In his merchandising literature, Goodman boasted that the combined business of his houses enabled him to place contracts with distilleries that insured the very lowest market prices. His many outlets, the folder claimed, allowed transport from one to three days earlier than his competition. A Goodman pamphlet, entitled “Our Success” also asserted that in 1910 his firm realized a total of $800,000 in trade. If true, the $500 from Goodman’s father been had been multiplied 1,600 times in less than a decade.

In his later years, Goodman’s prominence was such that President Roosevelt named him as Kentucky State Administrator of the WPA, the Depression-era works organization. He served in that position for at least the next four years. He is shown here, second from left, front row, with a number of Democratic politicians.

A third multi-city liquor enterprise involved a family — the Sprinkles of whiskey. Shown here with his wife, Martha, is the progenitor of three generations of whiskey men, Hugh Sprinkle of Liberty Township, Yadkin County, North Carolina. Following his return from the Civil War Hugh distilled whiskey on his farm for decades, eventually taking two sons, Benjamin and Hugh C. Sprinkle into his operation. Benjamin in turn passed the skills down to his three sons — Benjamin Jr., James T., and Henry L. After North Carolina voted “dry” in 1909, the family spread out to several locations in the South.

The H.L. Sprinkle Distilling Company -- named for Henry L. “Hence” Sprinkle —was incorporated in 1912 in the town of Girard (now Phoenix City), located in Russell County, Alabama. The purpose of the business, as recorded with the state was the: “manufacture, purchase & sale of whiskey.” During this period the Sprinkles also operated a distillery in or near Pensacola, Florida and had a retail outlet in Jacksonville.

As shown here, much of the Sprinkles' whiskey was sold in glass gallon jugs with the embossed motto,“Sprinkle Whiskey Wants Your Business.” As shown here, the three cities appeared on each bottle. After Alabama went dry, the Sprinkles moved their Girard retail outlet to Monroe, Louisiana. That city subsequently was embossed on the company’s gallon jugs.

With the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, the Sprinkles were forced to shut down their distillery and sales offices. According to descendants, the family had a stock of liquor when America went dry and members booked passage on ships and took their whiskey to sell in countries abroad.

Note: More complete vignettes on each of the whiskey outfits treated here can be found on this website. Wollstein, December 3, 2014; Goodman, May 5, 2012; and Sprinkle, April 22, 2014.

A saloon owner known widely as “Con” Oram gained national fame for his 185-round, semi-bare knuckles prize fight in Virginia City, Montana, against a man who outweighed him by 52 pounds. Proving he was more than a pugilist, Oram, shown here, also has been credited by historians with advancing Montana toward statehood.

John Condle Oram was born in 1835 and reared in Ft. Finley (now just Findlay), Ohio. Originally from Maryland, his father was a blacksmith and a noted wrestler. He taught his son both skills. When he was about 20 years old and working in his father’s shop, Con decided to tour the West as a wrestler, challenging the locals for money. Along the line he also picked up boxing skills.

By 1861, he had accrued sufficient winnings to open a blacksmith’s shop in Denver, Colorado. Business proved to be brisk and soon he was able to hire several assistants allowing him, he said later, “earn money very fast.” Having a staff also gave Oram leisure time, according to a press account, to spend time in the mountains “buffalo hunting and shooting game, living pretty much like a western pioneer, camping out and roughing it generally.” He also honed his boxing ability in Denver and began prizefighting as a middleweight on the East Coast, including bouts in New York City.

By 1864, he returned West to Virginia City, Nevada, where Oram, said to be a non-drinker himself, opened a liquor establishment he appropriately called “The Champion Saloon.” It was located on the town’s main thoroughfare, Jackson Street, above. The saloon is shown here in its reconstructed state as part of Virginia City’s historic district. In an ad in the local Montana Post the saloonkeeper declared that his fighting days were over and he wished to run his saloon and live “as a private citizen.”

Oram’s ads for the Champion Saloon emphasized that he carried a stock of the best liquor and cigars. They also advertised his lessons in “boxing and sparring once a week,” signaling that Con had not entirely left the ring behind. Additional evidence is a “sparring license,” like one shown below, issued to him by the Territory of Nevada.

Not long after he arrived in Virginia City, Oram was challenged to a boxing match by a whiskey-drinking Irish heavyweight named Hugh O’Neil. The winner’s purse was set at $1,000, equivalent to about $15,000 today. That payoff was sufficient to coax Con once more into the ring. Given his size and weight advantage, O’Neil was a 3 to 1 favorite. The prospective bout caused considerable excitement in the region. On New Years Day 1865, people began to pour into Virginia City in anticipation of the fisticuffs the next day. One account called it: “A dense crowd clad in as motley style as ever the sun shown upon.”

Because no building was large enough to hold the bout, a local saloonkeeper and liquor dealer named Nelson built a log arena on property he owned behind his store. Called Leviathan Hall, it was the only boxing arena in the entire Pacific Northwest. It held about 1,000 people who paid between $10 ($150 equiv. today) and $5 ($75) for general admission.

For their money they saw what Sports Illustrated has called: “One of the longest and most brutal fights in American ring history.” Some accounts have called it a “bare knuckles” event. It was not. Both Oram and O’Neil wore tight-fitting unpadded gloves. Round after round ensued as both men battled valiantly. O’Neil’s height, weight and reach obviously gave him an advantage but Oram was wiry and quick, said by one observer to be a “bundle of venom” in the ring. During three hours and 185 rounds the fighters hit the canvas 91 times, often deliberately to end a round. Finally as Con seemed to be getting the worst of it, the referee stopped the fight, declaring it a draw. The pot was split between the two contestants.

Today the Leviathan Hall site, later the location of a frame house, bears a sign as part of the Virginia City historic district and is on the Department of the Interior’s National Register of Historic Places. In contrast, no plaque commemorates Con Oram’s important role in the movement to create a new Montana Territory out of the existing Idaho Territory.

According to a Montana historian in the late 19th Century, the men of Virginia City gathered early in 1864 on Jackson Street for a Western version of a town hall. Among them was Oram, a man said to be “much given to orating when in convivial mood.” Con mounted a wagon and began to harangue the crowd about their present hardships and the need to take immediate action to separate from Idaho and form a new political entity, with its capital at Bannock, Montana.

Apparently galvanized by Oram’s rhetoric, the crowd voted to raise money to send Sidney Edgerton, a Virginia City resident and former Ohio congressman, to Washington to present President Lincoln with a petition to create a Montana Territory. The group, its work done, then repaired to a saloon, likely The Champion. Lincoln agreed to the split and signed a decree creating the new territory. He appointed Edgerton, shown here, the first governor.

Oram’s fame as a boxer when coupled with his leadership in the territorial movement led to his being lionized in Virginia City. A 20th Century historian has written: “Con was one of the most popular men in town when he first arrived…He made friends with everyone and once was serenaded by the City Brass Band, an honor reserved for bigwigs.”

Over the next few years, possibly lured by the money to be made, Oram continued to participate in the fight game, winning some, losing some, while continuing to operate his saloon in Virginia City. In 1866 he expanded his operation, renovating The Champion and renaming it Melodean Hall, “the place of sweet songs.” It became a theater and dance hall in addition to a bar. Some called it a “hurdy-gurdy” palace, implying that the music for dancing was provided by cranking a handle on a mechanical device. The sign is visible at far left.

When the Melodean failed to be profitable, Oram closed the hall and moved to Helena, Montana, where he opened a similar establishment. After a few months experience in Helena also proved disappointing, he moved back to Virginia City and opened another saloon theater on Jackson Street. One of the advertised attractions was Oram himself in a sparring match and an exhibition with barbells.

Eventually retiring from the ring and amusement business, Con spent his last years on a 125-acre ranch he purchased near Dillon, Montana, about 60 miles west of Virginia City. There he raised oats and hay, much of which went to feed 80 horses and a similar number of cattle. By this time Oram had married a woman thirteen years his junior. She was Susan Alice Tout, an immigrant from Wales. They would have four children. As children they were not told, it is said, that their father had been a prizefighter.

As he aged, Oram’s hair turned white and he grew a long salt and pepper beard. The pounding his body had taken in the ring almost inevitably led to consequences and his health declined while his children were still young. He died in Butte in 1892 at the relatively young age of 57. His youngest daughter was only about three years old. I have been unable thus far to find the place of his burial.

Con Oram’s life was a study in persistence and courage. He had come West with no credential other than his physical prowess and written a page in its history. In what might serve as a fitting epitaph, the Montana Post called him “Con the Fearless.”

Note: Shown here is the cover of a 1969 book by Warren J. Brier entitled “The Frightful Punishment: A new facet of the Montana frontier hammered out by the fists of Con Orem in the 1860s,'' published by the University of Montana Press. It is a good account of the saloonkeeper/pugilist’s life, with emphasis on his prize fights. Much of the information provided here is derived from its pages, as is the photo of Jackson Street. The 113-page book is still available from used book sources and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the fabulous life of Con Orem.

In a 1860 Atlantic Monthly article called “The Brahmin Caste of New England,” physician and author Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote of the region’s rich and well-born, like the men shown above. Subsequently the term has been applied to upper crust families particularly in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Hailing from the the Quaker City, the Carstairs family, despite getting rich by selling liquor, were well qualified as “Brahmins.”

The progenitor of the clan was Thomas Carstairs, born in 1759 in Fife, Scotland, who emigrated to the Pennsylvania Colony as a youth, marrying Sarah Hood Bradford in Philadelphia in 1775. Although Carstairs’ advertising put the origins of their liquor house at 1788, data on Thomas gives no evidence of such a business. Thomas’ obituary listed him as a “paymaster.”

The next Carstairs, James, was not born until 1789. His early occupation was in finance, having married Sarah Britton Summers, daughter of Andrew Summers, a wealthy Philadelphia banker and intimate friend of Robert Morris, known as the “Financier of the Revolution.” Sarah’s mother was the sister of Admiral Charles Stewart, who commanded a number of Navy ships, including USS Constitution, during the War of 1812. Confirming the “brahmin” nature of the marriage, Jerome Bonaparte, youngest brother of Napoleon I, was an usher at the wedding.

About 1834, James took a sharp turn from banking and established a business as a wholesale grocer and ships’ chandler, providing supplies and equipment for the many vessels porting at Philadelphia and, it was said, he “did a large and profitable business.” Key among his stock was rum and whiskey, and in the 1870 census, James Carstair’s occupation was given simply as “liquor.”

It was James’ son, James C. Carstairs Jr., seen left, who took the family firmly into the whiskey trade. By 1860 he had entered a partnership with Philadelphia merchant Joseph F. Tobias in a liquor dealership that bore the Tobias name. That same year James Jr. married a Philadelphia “blue blood,” Mary White Haddock. Her father, Daniel Haddock Jr., was a well-known Philadelphia boot and shoe manufacturer, banker, and a director for other local companies.

By 1870 James Jr. had left Tobias and with a new partner, John C. McCall, created a liquor house called Carstairs, McCall & Co. The business was highly successful. An 1893 write-up of the firm reported that“their extensive operations as importers, exporters and wholesale dealers constitute them an important factor in the wine and liquor trade of the country.” By this time Carstairs, McCall had opened outlets in both New York and Boston.

Citing the firm’s purported 1780 beginnings, the item continued: “Such a protracted standing and close, perpetual touch with growers, distillers, and leading sources of supply in this country and Europe have resulted in an enormous trade….” The company also was exporting American rye and bourbon “in heavy and regular shipments to Europe, Central and South America and elsewhere,” according to the report.

Carstairs, McCall issued a blizzard of whiskey brands, among them (with trademark dates) “American Club” 1897; “Belle of Pennsylvania,” 1896; “Carstairs Monogram,” 1894; “Carstairs Rye,” 1905; “CMC&C,” 1884; and “Invincible,” 1905. Not registered were “Carstairs No. 6,” “Diplomacy Rye AAA,” “Monongahela Monogram,” and “Orator Rye.” For retail sales the company packaged their whiskey in both quart and flask sizes.

Particularly arresting is the label on Orator Rye, showing a stump speaker in full throat who apparently is being fueled by the whiskey on the dais with him. It likely depicts Edwin Dickenson Baker, a noted American orator killed during service as a Union officer in the Civil War.

Like other successful whiskey houses, Carstairs, McCall provided wholesale customers, including saloons, hotels and restaurants, with giveaway items. They included saloon signs such as the one at left that depicts a wounded Union soldier on horseback receiving a bottle from a nurse — a bottle identified as Carstairs Rye. Other gifted items were shot glasses and back of the bar bottles, examples to be found throughout this post.

Before 1890 James C. brought his two sons, Daniel H. and J. Haseltine Carstairs, into the firm. Shown right in a passport photo, Daniel was the elder, born in 1962; his brother had come along a year later. In 1893 Daniel was recorded as the manager of the Philadelphia office. Shortly after, both his father and John McCall died, leaving the firm in the hands of the next generation of Carstairs.

By that time each brother had wed. David married Louise Sowers Orne, the daughter of Philadelphia Judge Edward B. Orne. They would have two children before apparently divorcing. David then married Viola Howard in April 1906. No children have been reported. J. Haseltine wed Belle A. Wolfe Wilson in 1884 and had one daughter. After 34 years of marriage in 1918, Belle died and he re-married. J. Haseltine’s union with Gertrude Reinhart produced a second daughter.

The Carstairs brothers continued the name of Carstairs, McCall until 1909 and then dissolved the company only to re-appear in the liquor trade in a somewhat different guise. Because Carstairs, McCall had been rectifiers, not distillers, they were dependent for raw product from which to construct their brands on distilleries located elsewhere. The availability of supply could fluctuate significantly, sometimes through natural causes, sometimes by machinations of “Whiskey Trusts.” In the late 1800s, the Carstairs attempted to alleviate the shortages by buying into and controlling their own distillery.

The facility they chose was The Robert Stewart Distilling Co., shown here, located in Highlandtown, Maryland, about one hundred miles southwest of Philadelphia. Federal records show the Carstairs drawing whiskey from that source by 1898. The brothers appear to have purchased the Stewart Distillery outright in the early 1900s. Under their ownership production appears to have increased significantly. In 1905 Maryland’s State Tax Commissioner reported that the taxable value of distilled spirits for the year had increased to $328,984, jumping again to $421,292 in 1907.

The siblings also reincorporated after 1909 as the Carstairs Bros. Company having consolidated Carstairs, McCall into the Stewart Distilling Company. In a 1911 ad, shown here, they claimed that Carstairs Rye was “the oldest American whiskey” and boasted that it had been sold “in every high class [read Brahmin] New York club, cafe and hotel for the past 112 years” — a clear exaggeration.

The Carstairs family continued to guide the fortunes of the liquor house they had inherited until the coming of National Prohibition. The last withdrawal in federal records occurred in 1920. Both brothers died in 1934, just as Repeal was occurring. Daniel succumbed on January 25, cause unknown, and J. Haseltine the following December 21. According to his death certificate, he died from cirrhosis of the liver and diabetes.

The Carstairs brand name was revived for a time after Prohibition, attached to a whiskey called “White Seal.” Said to be a product of the Barton 1792 Distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, White Seal is a blend of bourbon, grain whiskey and neutral spirits. The product reputedly does not meet the legal definition of whiskey in some states and is available only in limited markets. It clearly is a “bottom shelf” label and a far cry from the “Brahmin” origins of the brand. The Carstairs must be turning over in their graves.

Note: This post was gathered from a wide range of sources. The quotes on Carstairs, McCall above are from an 1893 booklet entitled, “A Souvenir of New York’s Liquor Interests,”no author given, from the American Publishing & Engraving Co. of New York City.

Shown here, George Rudy Washburne, gave up his pursuit being a “big butter and egg man” in Louisville, Kentucky, to turn his attention to a more lucrative trade — liquor. It led to his founding and leading for 32 years a publication called the “Wine and Spirits Bulletin” where he became a vocal and influential leader in the ultimately losing fight against “Dry” forces pushing toward state and national prohibition of alcohol.

George was born on June 1, 1860, the fourth of seven children of Jermaine and Mary Ann Rudy Washburne, at a town called St. Mathew in Jefferson County, Kentucky, about nine miles from Louisville. Jermaine was a farmer and both George and his older brother, Delaney, were recorded in the 1880 census as “assisting farmer.” The family lived in the frame house shown here, at 711 Fountain Avenue in St. Mathew. Built by an ancestor on a 50 acre tract, Jermaine Washburne had inherited it when his father died and added a two-story rear wing. Shown above, the house still stands and is considered a county historic landmark.

Neither Washburne boy fancied farming life. Dulaney headed to medical school and became a well-known professor of medicine. George skipped higher education and went into the dairy business. Louisville directories in 1883 and 1884 listed him as foreman in a local dairy. By the following year Washburne had moved to the Louisville Creamery and Supply Co. The pivotal year was 1886 when George was 26. He partnered with Harry Tramplet, a local businessman, as commission agents for a variety of products, including dairy, soft drinks, and as indicated by the trade card below, a distinct emphasis on alcohol.

Although Tramplet & Washburne was an short-lived venture, George, described as a “hustler,” also was publishing a small newsletter aimed at the Louisville liquor industry. He called it the“Wine and Spirits Bulletin.” Washburne proved to have a natural ability as an editor and publisher. Originally a four page weekly eventually the Bulletin became a monthly of some 50 pages, well-illustrated and providing substantial news and information.

In 1893, a competitive trade journal, the Pacific Wine and Spirits Review, did a brief profile of Washburne describing him as “…young comparatively, but he has been identified with the liquor trade for some years” and congratulated him the growth of his publication. The item concluded: “Mr. Washburne is a jovial, good-natured man personally, whom it is a pleasure to meet and his visitors always receive a royal welcome.”

Despite the success of the Bulletin, other ventures had proved less so. Washburne joined a group of colleagues in investing in a real estate development call Warwick Villa, an area in the countryside about 20 minutes from Louisville. George was recorded buying ten lots for resale. The panic of 1893 doomed the effort as the land company of which he was a member went bankrupt and lawsuits resulted. Washburne himself declared bankruptcy the following year. The Courier-Journal reported: "... No estimate of assets and liabilities could be given. It seems that there is small demand for real estate in the country, which is said to form a considerable portion of Washburne's assets, he being one of the promoters of the Warwick Villa scheme ... It is understood that his liabilities are much larger than his assets.”

These untoward events occurred not long after George had found a bride. She was Mary A. Moore, the eldest daughter of W. B. Moore of Louisville and a native-born Kentuckian. Shown here later in life, Mary was 22 at the time, he was 34. On April 28, 1893, they were married in the First Christian Church, the Rev. Mr. Powell officiating. The Louisville Courier-Journaldescribed an elaborate wedding and a church “crowded to suffocation.” The couple would go on to have two daughters.

Eventually Washburne recouped his wealth. He bought a four-acre lot at LaGrange and Ash Avenues in a hamlet about 22 miles east of Louisville called “Peewee Valley” and built a large family home, shown above as it looks today. Now on the National Register of Historic Places and known as the Washburne-Waterfill House, the structure is described as “eclectic” in architecture. Also located on the property were two sets of historic gates, servants’ quarters, a pump house and a carriage house.

Despite the failure of the Warwick Villa venture, Washburn continued to dabble in real estate, emphasizing land in Peewee Valley. Elected mayor of the small town, George was responsible for a brochure called “Beautiful Pewee Valley” with scenic photographs. It extolled: “Every resident of the city desiring a change of scene, and to escape the grime and clatter of the metropolis, would do well to consider Pewee Valley as the site for either a summer or permanent home.” Increasingly popular as a summer resort, the sales of cottage sites proved brisk.

Meanwhile Washburne was building his magazine. In a special editorial in the January issue welcoming in the 20th Century, he commented about progress since he founded the Bulletin: “We cannot but look with pride to what has been accomplished in the past, and with regard to the future we desire to renew our pledge to our patrons that we will spare no means and expense to maintain the high standard we have set and to improve on…the excellent news service furnished our readers.”

The publisher emphasized that the Bulletin was primarily an organ of the whiskey industry in the Ohio Valley, covering Kentucky and Cincinnati, at the time the leading city in liquor marketing. Eventually the publication would open adjunct offices in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee and New Orleans. A review of Bulletin front covers indicates that the publication was drawing advertisements from distillers and rectifiers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other eastern cities.

The Bulletin was well illustrated, including photographs of leading distillers, whiskey wholesalers and others in the liquor trade, as well pictures of their store fronts. The magazine’s attention grabbers, full pages scattered among more serious items, were of European paintings known as “salon nudes,” and analogous to the naked ladies often found displayed in American saloons.

Washburne did not ignore the general population. In 1911 and again in 1914 he published a booklet he called “Beverages de Luxe,” a prelude to the “drink books” that currently flood the reading marketplace. He explained in a foreword: “Despite a spirit of fanaticism that periodically passes over the land, there is no denying that fine beverages are among the things that make life brighter, happier and worth while. A knowledge as to the best of them, their selection, their care and their serving, is, therefore, not amiss.” The publication provided recipes for cocktails of the era to the drinking public.

Most of Washburne’s efforts, however, were providing news and editorials about the growing trend in America toward banning alcohol in localities, states, and ultimately the entire country. As the U.S. inched closer to National Prohibition, a group of brewers in 1918, hoping to make friends of the powerful Anti-Saloon league, pointed fingers at distilled spirits as the culprit while championing beer as “food.” In effect, those beer makers were breaking with the distilling industry in last ditch effort to save themselves.

Washburne wisely saw the folly in that approach, writing that: “If the brewers begin a warfare on distilled beverages, they will, in our opinion, make a very great mistake….” He understood that the forces of “dry” were intent on shutting down every saloon in America and cared not at all if liquor were served or only beer. Events soon would prove him right. As National Prohibition became assured in 1919, his client base doomed, Washburne after 32 successful years was forced to cease publishing the Wine and Spirits Bulletin.

Still only 59 years old, George’s immediate reaction was to go into the advertising business. After all, he had been successful in filling his publication with ads. With a Cincinnati businessman, Alfred B. Flarsheim, he founded an advertising agency with headquarters in Cincinnati and branches in Louisville and five other cities in the Ohio Valley. The motto of the firm was “Sales promotion through business-building advertising.”

Shown here about 1920, Washburne also founded a second company called “Revista” that published a trade journal in the Portuguese language aimed at Latin America and most particularly Brazil. This resulted in the government of Brazil appointing him its Vice Consul in Louisville. Said the Courier-Journal of the appointment: “The selection of this city indicates clearly that the Brazilian government expects American manufacturers in this section will be deeply interested in developing and extending their sales in Brazil.”

Washburne had only three years to serve as Vice Consul. In February 1923, he became seriously ill and died on the 12th at the age of 62. He was interred in Section Q, Lot 109, Grave #2 of Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery, the grounds where many of Kentucky’s most famous distillers are buried. It was a fitting resting place for a man whose journalism had done so much and for so long for the liquor industry. George’s widow, Mary Anne, would join him at Cave Hill 36 years later.

Note: Most of the information and illustrations for this post have been drawn from a single source, a pictorial history of the Washburne family published online under the title “Washburne-Waterfill House” by Donna Andrew Russell and the Peewee Valley Historical Society. My thanks to them for this valuable resource on George R. Washburne, a truly remarkable “whiskey man.”

Foreword: During the 18th Century, more than a few distillers, whiskey rectifiers and wholesale dealers found that the profits made in making and selling liquor could be used profitably in other productive enterprises. By canny investing some became “captains of industry” and exceedingly wealthy. The Midwest, experiencing boom times after the Civil War, presented a particularly favorable economic climate. Presented here briefly are three stories involving whiskey men in Illinois and Indiana.

The Herget Brothers, John and George, enhanced the economy of Pekin, Illinois, through their enterprise and investments encompassing a variety of enterprises. At the center of their local business conglomerate was making and selling whiskey. A 1910 history of Illinois described the Hergets this way: “The members of the family stand high in the social circles of the city, and are universally respected for worth and nobility of character.”

The Hergetsimmigrated to the United States from Germany as young men, eventually settling in Pekin. Shown here, John on left, about 1860 they opened a grocery store that specialized in liquor.

Seeing whiskey as good investment, in the fall of 1888 the brothers built the Star Distillery in Pekin and two years later opened a second facility they called Crescent Distillery. Later selling both, with the proceeds they then erected the Globe Distillery, at the time the largest whiskey-making plant in Pekin, having the capacity to mashing 5,000 bushels of grain daily.

During the late 1890s the brothers shut down their grocery and liquor enterprises actively to pursue other business interests. John was involved with the Pekin Steam Cooperage Company, Pekin Gas and Electric Light Company., Turner-Hudnut Grain firm, Globe Cattle Company, Farmer’s National Bank, a beet sugar factory, and was a large landowner in Tazewell County. George was a major investor in the founding of the Illinois Sugar Refining Company; the Globe Cattle Company, and the Pekin Stave and Barrel Manufacturing Company, of which he was president. In 1905, with sons Henry and William, he founded the Herget & Sons Bank, shown right. Whiskey had fueled their business success.

Born into an immigrant Scottish family, brothers Thomas, James and John Gaff found opportunity in America’s midsection to create a commercial empire of extraordinary size and breadth. The Gaff saga began in 1811 when parents James and Margaret Wilson Gaff pulled up stakes in Edinburgh, Scotland and immigrated to the United States with their three-year-old son, Thomas. The family settled first in New Jersey where son James was born in 1817 and John in 1820. Far from wealthy, the brothers from early on honed their skills in the mercantile trade.

After an initial move to Pennsylvania where the Gaffs ran a profitable general store and distilling operation, they were enticed to move to Aurora, a small town in along the Ohio River in southeastern Indiana, by an offer of free land and tax incentives. With James Gaff, shown here, in the lead, upon arrival the Gaffs almost immediately built a distillery near town on the banks of Hogan’s Creek, a waterway that emptied into the Ohio River. This distillery eventually produced rye, bourbon, and a scotch-type whiskey that the brothers dubbed “Thistle Dew.” The brothers called their facility “T. and J. W. Gaff & Co.” By 1850 it had become one of the largest distilleries in the United States. An illustration of the complex in the 1800s shows its growth and proximity to the Ohio River.

The success of their whiskey-making spurred the brothers to build a brewery in Aurora, stretching for 300 feet along Market Street, an enterprise they called the Crescent Brewing Company. With their access to the Ohio River multiplying products, it was almost natural that the Gaffs would gravitate to shipping. They built and owned a fleet of steamboats,

Founded on revenues from distilling and brewing, Gaff Brother investments came to encompass the Fleischmann Yeast Company, Indiana grain and hog farms, a Louisiana plantation, a silver mine in Nevada, turnpike construction, railroad financing, banking, and a factory that reputedly produced the world’s first ready-made breakfast cereal. An 1880 history of Indiana's eminent and self-made men captured Thomas Gaff's wide range of interests, both business and philanthropic, noting: “His executive ability is remarkable. No transaction within the range of his complicated affairs escapes his observation.

Crawford Fairbanks, shown here as a young man, has been characterized as a poor boy with limited education who studied by candle light. A Union soldier during the Civil War, Fairbanks returned to Terre Haute, Indiana to start a grain business that soon transitioned to distilling. After a number of false starts, explosions and fires in his facilities in 1884 he turned to John H. Beggs, a distillery executive from Peoria, for help. Together they organized the Terre Haute Distilling Co., that ultimately would be accounted the world’s largest of the time. In time Fairbanks became immensely wealthy, owning the Terre Haute Brewing Company, a strawboard factory, Terre Haute’s principal newspaper, and paper mills in Massachusetts, Chicago and New York.

Additionally, Fairbanks liked owning hotels, buying the Terre Haute House, shown above; the Denison Hotel in Indianapolis; and co-owning the French Lick Springs Hotel, a resort popular for its warm springs and reputed healing waters. He also was principal investor in Indiana Sonora Copper & Mining Co., and president of the Terre Haute Water Works and Terre Haute Street Railway Co. At the time of his death Crawford also was the principal owner of the Standard Wheel Co. and president and major stockholder of Wabash Realty & Loan Co., that held title to most of his real estate, including several farms where he raised race horses.

May 1924 obituaries of Crawford Fairbanks ran in newspapers throughout Indiana and beyond. One state journal hailed him as “Indiana’s greatest financial genius.” Another newspaper declared him “Indiana’s Richest Man.” What too frequently was ignored was the original driving source of Fairbanks' wealth and enterprises — making and selling whiskey.

Note: Longer profiles of each of these men may be found posted on this blog. Herget Brothers: June 5, 2018; Gaff Brothers, July 8, 2018; and Crawford Fairbanks, June 13, 2018. There also is a vignette on J. C. Beggs and his family, Oct. 17, 2017.

As twenty-year-old Ferdinand P. Roddewig, shown right in maturity, endured a 64-day ship’s crossing from Germany to New Orleans he scarcely could have envisioned his future in America. It would include combat service in the Civil War, starting a cigar factory in Missouri, recognition as a leading Iowa businessman, a run for mayor of Davenport, and founding a hugely successful liquor house that, with his sons, endured for more than six decades.

Ferdinand was born in Westphalia, Prussia, in June 1828, the son of Charlotte and Frederick Roddewig, clerk of courts in the large city of Biedefield. His parents had a “mixed marriage”: Charlotte was a Catholic, Frederick a Lutheran. One of eight children from their union, Ferdinand was educated in German public schools until the age of 15 when he went to work in a local wholesale linen store.

Five years later he decided to leave for America aboard the Bremen Barque Erhard, a combination sailing and steam ship, shown below.

The ship stopped at ports along the Atlantic coast, arriving nine weeks later in New Orleans. The manifest records Roddewig coming alone, his luggage as “one chest, one trunk” and his occupation “trader.” He initially found employment in a cigar factory. Learning the craft and saving his money, he moved to St. Louis, with its heavy German population, where he opened his own cigar factory in 1851.

In 1853, Roddewig returned to Germany to see his parents, a visit that appears to have sparked the 25-year-old bachelor to thoughts of marriage. Upon his return he hied to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where he wooed and won Henriette (known as “Metta”) Koehler, 23, the daughter of Ferdinand and Ernestena Koehler. Shown here, Metta had been born in Biedefeld and it is possible the couple knew each other growing up.

After their marriage, the couple returned to St. Louis where Ferdinand resumed running his cigar factory. In 1855, perhaps wanting a location closer to Metta’s family, Roddewig disposed of his cigar business and moved his family east to Davenport, Iowa, a heavily German-American city. There he opened a grocery and liquor store at 413-415 Harrison Street in a double frame house, described as an enterprise with a modest beginning that grew year by year.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861 and President Lincoln asked for volunteers, Roddewig immediately answered the call of his adopted country. Although he had a successful business, a wife and three children, and was 33 years old, Ferdinand joined the 1st Iowa Voluntary Infantry Regiment as an enlisted man and was mustered in on May 14,1861. Made up entirely by men from Davenport and the surrounding Scott County, the following August the regiment was engaged in the first battle of the Trans-Mississippi Theater near Springfield, Missouri, a place called Wilson’s Creek. An artist’s depiction of the battle is shown below.

Union forces were defeated and the commanding general was killed. The 1st Iowa lost one officer and 19 soldiers in the battle. Roddewig emerged unscathed but when the regiment was mustered out after the required 90 days of service, he seemingly had enough of hot combat and did not re-enlist.

Ferdinand returned to Davenport, his family and his business. As it flourished, he increasingly emphasized liquor sales and in 1869 eliminated groceries to concentrate on wine and whiskey. A 1922 article about him in the Davenport Democrat & Leader newspaper credited his success and recognition in the community to his being “…the embodiment of good fellowship and sound business principles, and he was a valued member in the prominent social circles.” Roddewig was a member of the German Turnverein, the Harmonia singing society, the Shooters Association and eventually accounted “the oldest wholesale liquor man in the city.”

So popular was Roddewig that although considered an independent in politics, he was drafted by the Democratic Party in 1881 to run for mayor of Davenport. Praising his selection, the Quad City Times reported that: “…His nomination was made without his knowledge, but his acceptance of it, as a duty, will be a matter of course.” Shown here is a flyer for a rally for “Roddewig and the Whole Democratic Ticket.” Note that the rally was to be held in the German Turner Hall. “This is no 1st of April joke,” the flyer asserted, “but means business.” In heavily Republican Davenport, however, Roddewig lost.

As he aged, Roddewig brought his sons — Peter and Ferdinand Jr. — to work at the liquor house. With their father’s training they were able to relieve him of a variety of management burdens. Roddewig was still fully in charge, however, when in December 1885 he suddenly was stricken and died at age 57. He was buried in Davenport’s Oakdale Memorial Gardens next to Metta who had pass ten years earlier, only 45 years old. The monument that marks their graves is shown here.

Peter and Ferdinand Roddewig lost no time taking over the reins of management, changing the company name to “Ferd. Roddenwig’s Sons.” They also financed a new headquarters on Harrison Street for their establishment called the Roddewig Block. An 1887 brochure from the city of Davenport, hailed “the fine premises, so centrally located, have no superior in the west.” The main floor, where the liquor and wine were stocked, was 32 by 152 with a 15 foot high ceiling. The cellar allowed for more storage as did a warehouse in the rear. That was completely filled with wine and liquors, said the brochure, enabling the Roddewigs “to fill the largest wholesale orders.”

The brothers also opened a store across the Mississippi River in Rock lsland, Illinois, likely as a hedge against the growing movement toward statewide prohibition in Iowa. During their tenure they issued multiple shot glasses, most of them advertising the company flagship brand, “Uneeda Whiskey.” The glasses are shown throughout this post.

Under the second generation of Roddewig management, the liquor house continued to flourish. According to the Davenport Democrat & Leader: “The gentlemen are popular and respected citizens, noted for their honorable methods and sterling integrity, and worthily maintain the lead as importers of wines and liquors, controlling, as they do, the best class of trade in this city and all through the state.”

The elder brother, Peter Roddewig lived at 713 1/2 West Third Street with his wife Minnie. They had one son, Harry. Peter died in 1905 at the early age of 46 and was buried in Davenport’s Fairmont Cemetery. After his death Ferdinand Jr., shown here, carried on with the liquor house. He and his wife Annie (nee Martzahn) raised their family of five, four boys and a girl, while living above the liquor store. Ferdinand Jr. also was an officer with the Davenport Paving Brick and Tile Company and an incorporator of the Downs Hotel, later called the Saratoga.

With the coming of Iowa statewide prohibition in 1918, two years in advance of National Prohibition, the remaining Roddewig was forced to shut down sales of wine and liquor and shut the doors permanently on the business his immigrant father had begun in 1855. In the 1920 census Ferdinand Jr., age 55, gave his occupation as “merchant - retired.” He died nine years later and was buried in Fairmont Cemetery not far from his brother. Over its 63 years in existence the Roddewigs’ liquor house had survived the Civil War, political defeat, and several national financial “panics.” It could not outlast the forces of Prohibition.

Note: This post is drawn from four major sources: 1) History of Scott County, Iowa (1882) Chicago: Interstate Publishing Co.; 2) First Album of the City of Davenport, Iowa (1887); 3) Newspaper article, Davenport Democrat & Leader, June 25, 1922, and 4) Davenport Iowa History, posted October 7, 2017.

“History is the essence of innumerable biographies”— Thomas Carlyle

The post that follows marks the 700th on this blog devoted to what I have chosen to call “Pre-Prohibition Whiskey Men,” that is, the distillers,“rectifiers” (i.e. blenders), wholesale and retail liquor dealers, saloonkeepers and others who played a role in that national industry before January 1,1920.

As noted on April 6, 2011, when I began this blog, making and selling whiskey from the very founding of the United States was a major occupation. George Washington, we know, was an important early distiller. The men who over time built and maintained this industry often had interesting and notable careers. In addition to their histories are the artifacts they have left behind in many forms, items that often are avidly collected today.

At this writing the site has had more than 784,000 page views. They have come primarily from the United States but daily from other countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia, Ireland and Germany. I also have received hundreds of comments, the overwhelming majority of them positive, from descendants of individuals profiled, collectors of bottles and other whiskey memorabilia, and professional and amateur historians. I try to respond to all messages.

A source of particular pride is the 232 individuals who have signed on as followers of this blog. Starting out with a handful of friends and relatives, the numbers have grown beyond my wildest imagining. I am grateful to these individual for their expression of interest and support.

As each 100th milestone has been reached, I have reassessed the prospect of continuing to write. My decision is based on whether sufficient good stories of whiskey men remain to be told. The post that follows here is indicative of rich histories that heretofore have been untapped. Despite being in my 84th year, my plan is to continue to 800 posts — and hope be around to reassess once again.

My practice has been to present a new post every four days. That I expect to continue. Although the great majority of the vignettes are about individual whiskey men or families, in recent months every fourth post has been a summary of three or four previous posts in order to explore commonalities of experience among those in the liquor trade. Those also will continue.

Finally, I want to bring attention to a new activity begun this year. Under the umbrella phrase “Wet” Enterprise my intention is to bundle substantial numbers of posts in order to illuminate even larger historical element of the liquor trade. The first topic is Western saloons and saloonkeepers. It can be accessed via Google as “Wet” Enterprise: Selected Saloons of the Old West. If the blog proves successful it may be followed by others that feature numbers of notable whiskey men (and women) considered on criteria including geography, gender, ethnic origin, and religious affiliation.

Burned out of his home and business by the massive Pittsburgh fire of 1845, Ireland-born Michael Kane traveled a long, rough, and sometimes discouraging road to California to find gold. Kane found it eventually, not in the ground, but by operating a San Francisco liquor business.

Michael Kane was born in County Londonderry (Derry), Ireland, in March, 1817, the names of his parents unrecorded. With other family members, while still a teenager, he emigrated to America, settling in Pittsburgh. The Kanes may have been a clan of carpenters in Ireland and arriving in the U.S. several members, including Michael, took up the cabinet-making trade. Teaming with a cousin, he eventually established a business that apparently was successful enough to warrant a factory and warehouse.

About 1840 Michael also felt confident enough about the future to marry. His bride was a woman named Margaret whose origins differ in the records, some naming her as born in Maryland, others Virginia. Even the year of her birth is variable, her gravestone indicates 1819 but census records have it as late as 1823. Over the next six years, four of their seven children would be born.

At dawn April 1845, the lives of the Kane family would change forever. Beginning in a girl’s unwatched fire heating wash water, flames spread quickly, destroying 10,000 buildings in Pittsburgh, leaving 12,000 people homeless and doing an estimated $9,000,000 in damage. A contemporary drawing caught the inferno. Among the smoldering ruins were the Kane home and business. How the family coped has gone unrecorded but in the process, Michael’s reputation for leadership grew in the community.

On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered by at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The California Gold Rush began. In the fall of 1848, Kane, an immigrant who seemingly had a knack for impressing the Pittsburgh political and social elites, formed a joint venture of local young men, many the sons of the wealthy, for the purpose of traveling to California to mine for gold. One of many such outfits that sprung up around the U.S. for that purpose, Kane called it the Pittsburg & California Enterprise Company. Each participant in the wagon train paid $260 (equivalent to about $5,700 today) to provide funds for wagons, mule teams and provisions.

One author has described members as being “gold seekers joined together more as ambitious businessmen than as carefree adventurers.” At the age of 31, Kane was elected president of the company. Recognizing that their overland trek faced many dangers, primarily from Indian attacks, the company also was organized as a protective military unit. Chosen to lead the wagon train was Colonel Samuel W. Black, shown right. He was a Pittsburgh native who two years earlier was hailed as a hero during the Mexican War when he helped save the garrison at Puebla from a Santa Anna siege.

On March 16, 1849, the company left Pittsburgh and by chartered steamboat traversed the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to land two weeks later at St. Joseph, Missouri, the “jumping off point” for many west-bound wagon trains. Collecting the mules they had purchased, on May 4 the men left St. Joseph, the beginning of a nearly 1,700 mile overland journey. In the word of one historian,”Bidding adieu to civilization, they started across the almost interminable wilds by what was called the Fremont route…”

Although the original plan was to travel as one group, 310 participants proved unwieldy and soon the company divided into smaller units. The trekkers under Kane’s leadership had a relatively uneventful crossing, except for challenges to the mules in crossing the waterless stretch pioneers called “Forty Mile Desert,” in the Lohontan Valley of Nevada. On August 22, 1849, 110 days after leaving Missouri, Kane and his group reached Placerville, California, then called “Hangtown” for its many “necktie parties.” It was the rowdy hub of the region’s mining operations.

The trip had cost Kane more than he anticipated. He had loaned other members of the company some $2,500 for the journey, loans he forgave after seeing the hard conditions in California. That fall and winter, he staked a claim in an area known as “Mud Springs” (now El Dorado) four miles south of Placerville. That and subsequent digs seemingly were unsatisfactory as ensuing months found Kane moving from place to place. By winter 1851, however, he was digging for gold near a California town called “Rough and Ready” and making $10 a day (equivalent to $220).

By that summer Kane had accrued sufficient cash to think about going home. He returned by ship in summer 1851, reacquainting himself with wife Margaret and his children. The sojourn resulted in two more births. But California was in Michael’s blood. By spring 1853, Kane was in San Francisco, having been come by way of Panama as appointed United States Mail Agent for the trip, indicating political connections. It was a patronage position.

There to greet Kane in San Francisco was an old Pennsylvania friend, John White Geary, the city’s first mayor, elected in 1850. Shown here, Geary had distinguish himself for bravery in the Mexican War. Earlier he had urged Kane to buy land in San Francisco but after looking around the town, according to a biographer,“…He returned to his friend, disgusted with the appearance of the place” and refused. Geary warned him that he would regret the decision some day.

Now Kane apparently had changed his mind about San Francisco. Likely with Geary’s support, the San Francisco Collector of Customs, Richard P. Hammond, shown left, appointed him to the plum job of Inspector of Customs. Like Geary, Hammond was a Mexican War hero, rewarded by President Polk for his service. Kane served a term as inspector, likely working from the building shown below. He then was promoted to Government Storekeeper, another patronage job, responsible for buying, receiving, storing and issuing supplies, materials and equipment for U.S. agencies in the region.

At some point during this period of U.S. government service, Kane sent for his wife and family to join him. They found a home at 611 Eddy Street. There Michael and Margaret’s last child, a daughter, was born in 1858. With Lincoln’s election in 1860 the days of a Democrat in the White House came to an end. Political positions were tenuous. Kane made a strategic decision to move into the whiskey trade.

During the early 1860s Kane bought a one-third interest in an established liquor house that bore the names of his partners, James Hunter and Thomas Wand. The firm as it prospered moved to larger quarters along San Francisco’s Front Street. When Hunter died about 1870 the remaining two partners bought his share and the firm became Wand, Kane & Company. Two years later Wand sold out and Kane, now thoroughly familiar with the liquor business, brought in a new partner, a fellow Irishman named Fergus O’Leary. The company became Kane, O’Leary & Company.

Soon after, the partners made a move to a more upscale location at 221 and 223 Bush Street in San Francisco’ financial district. Shown above, it was located on the ground floor of the Brooklyn Hotel, accounted one of the city’s most popular and successful. The photo shown here of the store, dating from 1880, shows the barrels and crates of whiskey kept on the sidewalk as advertising. Kane may be among the several well-dressed gentlemen at the doorway.

There Michael and his partner offered up a number of brands, including "Morning Glory,” "Old Cabinet,” "Old Judge,” "Old Kentucky Club,” and “Paragon,” “Double Refined Old Bourbon,” “Hunter’s Wheat Whisky,” “Kentucky Farm Bourbon,” and “Copper Double Distilled Rye.” These were packaged in glass bottles, usually amber in color and in sizes varying from quarts to pints and half-pints.

Kane, O’Leary became known for the quality of its lithographed trade cards and labels, such as the languorous lady advertising their Morning Glory Bourbon. Indicating Michael’s continuing interest in politics, the company issued a two special labels for the 1880 presidential race between Republican James A. Garfield and Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Both had served with distinction as Union generals in the Civil War and the election was close, each of them winning 19 states. The electoral vote went to Garfield, 214 to 155 — an outcome Kane would not have enjoyed, although Hancock won California.

After a decade of lucrative business selling whiskey, Kane knew he had found a new way to strike gold but at age 65 decided he had money enough to retire. In January 1882 he sold out to two local merchants, Myer J. Newmark and Max Gruenberg, who changed the name of the liquor house to their own.

Of Kane’s late years, a biographer in 1892 noted: “He has a fine, comfortable home in Alameda…where he is surrounded with a happy family and all the comforts of a quiet life.” Indicative of his wealth, Kane had purchased a dwelling built by Senator Nathan Porter, on Railroad Avenue, at the time considered the finest residence in Alameda. He continued to be active in the Pioneer Society of San Francisco, an organization of early settlers, and served two terms as a director. Kane also found time to travel, sailing to Europe and later attending the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans.

It was in Alameda, across San Francisco Bay south of Oakland, that Michael Kane died in November 1899 at the age of 82. He was buried in Oakland’s St. Mary’s Cemetery. His long-suffering but devoted wife, Margaret, erected a monument at his gravesite “Sacred to the memory of my much beloved husband…R.I.P.” She would join him there seven years later. Other family members are buried nearby.

In Ireland men from County Derry are celebrated in song and story for their bravery. Michael Kane clearly lived up to the Derry tradition. It took unusual courage to look past the destruction of his Pittsburgh home and fire, to trek 1,700 miles across the dangerous American West, to dig the earth searching for gold in a lawless land, and even to admit changing his mind on the future of San Francisco. We are left these whisky flasks as reminders of Kane’s extraordinary life story of persistence and courage.

Note: Although information for this post was gathered from numerous sources, a key document was a publication entitled “Bay of San Francisco: The Metropolis of the Pacific Coast and its Suburban Cities, A History,” (no author given) published by The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892. It contains an extensive biographical article on Michael Kane, but unfortunately no picture.

On Friday, May 7, 1915, during World War One, a German U-Boat torpedoed the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania eleven miles off the coast of Ireland. The vessel caught fire and sank in eighteen minutes. Only 723 passengers and crew survived. Killed were 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans. Among them Victor E. Shields, a prominent Cincinnati liquor dealer, and his wife Retta.

Shown here is the passport photo of Shields as he prepared to board the Lusitania in New York. He gave his occupation as “merchant” never mentioning liquor and said his purpose was “commercial business” with his destinations being England, France and Italy. In truth, it was also a pleasure trip with his wife of 19 years. It was the first time either had ever seen Europe and traveling there first class in one of world’s most luxurious liners must have been exciting and full of anticipation for the couple. They were just hours from docking in England when disaster struck.

Forty-five years earlier Victor had been born in Charleston, West Virginia, the son of Fredericka (nee Scheldesheim) and Joseph Shields. When he was only a toddler, his father moved the family to Cincinnati, where Victor was joined by a brother, Percy, in 1874 and a sister, Rosa, in 1877. About 1873 Joseph with a partner set up a Cincinnati wine and spirits company called Shields, May & Co., located at 17 Sycamore Street.

The liquor house featured a number of brands, including "Fountain Run Still,” “Gincocktail,” "Gold Finch,” "Hunter's Own Bourbon.” "Jefferson Pure Old Rye,” "May Bloom Pure Copper.” "Old Wheat.” “Shields' Mountain Rye,” and “Shields’ Maryland.” Of these the company trademarked only three, May Bloom in 1874 and Hunter’s Own and Jefferson Pure Old Rye in 1875.

Beginning about 1878, Joseph Shields was operating without a partner and also advertising his services as a “whiskey broker and distiller’s agent,” located at 97 Main Street in Cincinnati. For the next two decades he would operate a successful liquor business. When his son Victor was grew into manhood, Joseph did not immediately take him into the firm, but secured his apprenticeship as a traveling salesman with the Turner-Look Company, another Cincinnati liquor outfit. [See my post on this firm, December 4, 2917.]

In 1896, Victor wed Retta Cohen in Hamilton, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. He was 26, she was 24. Their marriage would be childless. About the same time as his marriage, he joined his father’s liquor firm, taking over the business when Joseph decided to invest his time and money in other enterprises, subsequently founding the Shields Oil & Gas Company. Victor lost little time in renaming the organization V.E. Shields & Company, eventually moving from Main Street to 117-121 East Pearl, as shown on his letterhead.

The younger Shields had his own set of brands, many likely “rectified” (blended) from Kentucky distilled whiskies readily available in Cincinnati, just across the Ohio River, or from upriver in Pennsylvania. His labels included "Buck Eye Club,” "Cream of Pennsylvania,” “Elmwood.”, "First Premium,” "Lehigh Rye,” “Pilot,” "Shields Maryland XXXX,” and "White Squadron.” He packaged his whiskey in glass bottles, ranging from flasks to quarts. There is no evidence Victor trademarked any of his brands, except a claim for the bottle design shown below right.

Like many liquor dealers, Shields rewarded the saloon, restaurants and hotels featuring his products, as well as regular retail customers, with give away items. Two of his were mini ceramic jugs, each of them holding a swallow or two of whiskey. Brands they advertised included Lehigh Club and Maryland XXX, both rye whiskeys. For twenty years Victor manage his liquor business with great success, its profitability likely leading to the fateful decision to venture abroad with his wife.

The sudden deaths of his son and daughter-in-law seemingly dealt a crushing blow to Joseph Shields, now 81. He had been involved in the couple’s planning for the trip, writing a letter of endorsement to accompany their passport application. Moreover, death had come to the family only a year earlier when his second son, Percy, only 40 years old, had died. Still an officer of the Shields liquor firm, Joseph shut it down after some fifty years in business. Less than a year after the sinking of the Lusitania, perhaps burdened with sorrow, Joseph himself died in 1916 at age 82 and was buried in the family plot.

The story does not end there. International law dictated that the heirs of any citizens of non-belligerent countries killed in warfare must be compensated. Although German authorities initially rejected that responsibility, after World War One a defeated Germany provided the U.S. with a large settlement to be divided up among families of the dead. The Joint U.S.-German Commission designated to make the payments was petitioned by the Shields’ estate for compensation.

The prospect of “blood” money, however, set Victor’s next of kin at odds with Retta’s. The Commission in its 1924 judgment described their conflicting appeals:

“It is urged that as Mr. Shields was two years older than his wife, she would, but for the wrongful act of Germany in sinking the Lusitania, have probably survived him and would then under his will have inherited his entire estate…and that her next of kin would have ultimately benefitted thereby.

“On the other hand, Mr. Shields’ next of kin urge that his ‘wife having perished with him on the Lusitania, there is no room for doubt that if he had survived,’ he, being then without wife or children, would have been generous in his contributions to them.”

In making its decision, the Commission noted the wealth of the couple. Victor had an annual income equivalent today to about $200,000 year and left an estate equivalent to $2.8 million. On the same scale, Retta’s estate was worth an additional $600,000. The Commission noted that because none of the claimants had suffered losses as a result of the deaths of the Shields [and in fact had benefited from their inheritances] their claims furnished “no sound basis on which to rest a award.” The relatives got nary a pfennig of Lusitania compensation.

It is unclear whether the bodies of Victor and Retta were recovered. Not long before he died, Joseph Shields arranged for gravestones for Victor and Retta to be installed at the Walnut Hills Cemetery in Hamilton County. Shown above, they remain a reminder of the Shields’ personal tragedy, one among many, that ultimately led to U.S. participation in World War One.

Foreword: Individuals in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade generally were not inclined to writing books. The vast majority of distillers, rectifiers, wholesalers and saloonkeepers did not have the time nor the inclination to put pen to paper so busy were they operating their businesses. This post briefly treats four exceptions, each of whose books remain available today.

If your parents named you “Byron,” after the famous British poet, it might be expected that you would have literary inclinations. Byron Veatch indeed did exhibit writing talent, authoring well-received books of fiction in the early 1900s, while at the same time contributing a well-recognized brand of whiskey to the Chicago liquor scene. Veatch, somewhat ingeniously, found a way to combine his literary aspirations with selling liquor.

While carrying on a thriving business called Security Distilling Co., begun in the Windy City in 1904, Veatch was writing stories. His major work, “Men Who Dared,” was issued in 1908 byHomer Harisun & Co, a Chicago publisher. Opening with the motto, “The bravest are thetenderest, the loving are the daring,” the book was composed of seven long short stories, all but one with settings in the West or Southwest. They were yarns that provided lots of gunfire and knife play. Although Veatch’s book seems stilted by modern standards of literature, it was the kind of fiction avidly read more than a century ago.

The book went to at least two editions and Veatch was sufficiently encouraged to extract several stories and publish them separately. “Men Who Dared,” achieved some critical acclaim. The Dial, a noted Chicago literary magazine, cited it as “One of the most remarkable books of short stories ever written.” The eminent social critic, Elbert Hubbard, while calling Veatch “a spicy raconteur,” was enthusiastic about his novella,”The Two Samurai,” calling it the best thing the author had done “...better, stronger and, to my way of thinking, more interesting and thrilling....”

Ever the promoter, Veatch saw an opportunity to mix his liquor and literary interests. In October 1910 he sent a letter to customers along with a magazine he published, called “Good Cheer.” The magazine contained literary articles but was primarily a merchandising vehicle for the alcoholic beverages to be obtained from Security Distilling. The magazine also pitched his fiction: “As the book is written by the patriarch of our firm,” we want every customer doing business with us to avail himself of the liberal offer there outlined”— and buy a book. As shown here, in 2005 Amazon saw fit to reproduce Veatch’s book in a new format,

Our next author called himself Andrew Madsen Smith, a name he assumed upon emigrating from Denmark to the U.S. In his autobiography Smith identified himself as “Soldier and Sailor, Moulder and Merchant, Tramp and Trader, Soap-boiler and Scribe, Peddler and Philosopher, Overseer and Understrapper, Jack-of-all-Trades and Master of Fortune.” He was all of those and additionally a successful whiskey man, with a thriving wine and liquor store in Minneapolis beginning in 1886.

Eventually Smith’s wine and liquor business became one of the largest in the region. As localities in Minnesota and neighbor Wisconsin were voting “dry” through local option, he also did a thriving mail order business. Discussing his success, Smith said, “And we are continuing to do better and better and better. I have increased in size, property and family.”

With his growing prosperity Smith decided, using a nom de plume, "Hans Lykkejaeger” to write the story of his early life and likely self-financed its publication. Originally entitled “Up and Down in the World: Or Paddle Your Own Canoe” and later “Luck of the Wandering Dane,” the book ran 130 pages, with illustrations on virtually every page by an unnamed artist. A reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly said sourly of Smith’s autobiography: “Occasionally the tale is told with snap and cleverness, but on the whole its humor is rather of the swaggering sort and hardly worth smiling over.”

Smith alsowas a world recognized collector of rare coins, beginning earlier in Philadelphia where he worked as a coin dealer as well as a liquor merchant. He subsequently wrote three books on coins, beginning in 1881. His“Encyclopedia of Gold and Silver Coins of the World” is still prized by numismatists. “Luck of a Wandering Dane” has been reprinted by Hewlett Packard as part of a series of reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library.

No figure looms larger in the early history of New Mexico than George Curry, a transplant from Louisiana who ran an early saloon in the territory but ultimately became the governor and then a congressman. Along the way Curry, shown here as a young man, met Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson and other notorious Western figures. He became a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider and later served in the American occupation of the Philippines.

Fortunately Curry described his colorful life in an “as told to” autobiography, an account that touches briefly on his life as a saloonkeeper. In 1888 Curry was in Lincoln Station, part of the New Mexico Territory, working for a wealthy merchant named Dolan, whose general store included a large stock of hard liquor. There he met Jack Thornton, a Dolan clerk, who asked Curry to partner with him in a saloon, hotel and livery stable. Already experienced in Las Vegas, New Mexico, with running a hotel, restaurant and bar, handling as he said, "everything from dishwashing and bookkeeping," Curry agreed and paid his share by borrowing $1,000 from a friend. The resulting establishment, shown above, became known as the Thornton-Curry Saloon and more recently as simply the Curry Saloon. The building, shown here, now is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Curry’s adventurous life was captured in the book, George Curry,1861-1947, an Autobiography, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1958. The editor was Horace Brand Henning, who knew Curry well and added a foreword. A paperback reprint was issued in 1995.

It is likely that the world would never have heard of Joseph J. Mersmanif Dr. Linda A. Fisher, a public health physician, had not been doing research for a lecture on the 1849 St. Louis cholera epidemic and came across Mersman’s diary in the Missouri Historical Society where it had laid “undiscovered” for years. She found the whiskey merchant’s story intriguing, edited the diary with annotations, and put it into book form. It was published in 2007 by the Ohio University Press. As a result, the day to day activities and thoughts of the German-born St. Louis rectifier and liquor house owner have enjoyed a wide audience.

In November 1847 while serving an apprenticeship in a Cincinnati wholesale liquor business, Mersman began his diary, documenting his work in the whiskey trade and other aspects of his daily life. He soon moved to St. Louis, and 25 years old, with a partner, established a wholesale whiskey and tobacco house. The company did well. St. Louis boasted hundreds of saloons and other establishments selling alcoholic goods that Mersman could supply. In March 1855, he abandoned his diary only to take it up again in 1862 after the outbreak of the Civil War. Mersman’s last diary entry was made in 1864.

Dr. Fisher sees Mersman’s diary as “a record of a man transforming himself from an impoverished, unschooled newcomer into a successful, skilled merchant…a path many took in the mid-nineteenth century.” All that is true but seen from a slightly different perspective, his story also demonstrates how the liquor trade in particular hastened the economic and social rise of immigrants who understood — as Joseph Mersman clearly did — the riches to be made.

Note: All the books by whiskey men cited above are either still in print or available from used book sources.

Originating as pioneer immigrants from Germany, three generations of the Jaeger family made and sold whiskey for almost half a century in Dubuque, Iowa. In 1904 a local newspaper commented: “Jaegeris so closely identified with the trade that it is a household word.” The family also was recognized by their sense of duty to their community and adopted country.

Appropriately christened “Adam.” the progenitor of the Jaegers was born in 1811 in Darmstadt, Germany, and educated in the public schools of that country. Of his early life little has been recorded, including his occupation. When still in his early twenties in Germany he married Margaretha Mueller, a woman about his own age. Their first son, christened Adam F. Jaeger Jr., was born in Germany just before the young family embarked for America, in 1840 settling in Dubuque, Iowa, shown here.

There Adam Sr. established what the Wine & Spirits Journal referred to as “…The pioneer [liquor] house of Northwest. Its history is dated back to the earliest days of the state.” He appears to have been successful from the very beginning in building up a strong business in wholesale liquor. This Jaeger also set the standard for community service. During the years 1857-1858, he ran and was elected to the Dubuque City Council from the 5th Ward and said to have served “ably.” During the same period, Adam Sr. expanded from selling liquor to building Dubuque’s first distillery.

As soon as his eldest son, Adam Jr., reached maturity, the father providently brought him into the firm. The young man quickly showed an aptitude for the whiskey trade, recorded as establishing his own distillery in 1861 on Bee Branch, a Dubuque waterway. In 1859 the 21-year-old Jaeger married, his bride Sarah Schaffner, a woman of similar age from Dubuque and the daughter of German immigrants. Their first child, son Henry, would be born in 1862.

The liquor trade and his family apparently were left behind when the Civil War broke out and Adam Jr. heard his country’s call to arms. He enlisted as a private in Company E, Iowa 21st Infantry Regiment in August 1862. For the next three years, this Jaeger would face hot combat repeatedly, participating in 24 battles in Mississippi, including at the siege of Vicksburg (shown above), Texas and Alabama. The regiment lost 5 officers, 77 enlisted killed, and 168 dead of disease or accident. Jaeger apparently emerged unscathed and was mustered out in July 1865 in Baton Rouge.

Adam Jr. returned home to assist his father and soon found himself in charge of the liquor house. In May 1887 Adam Sr. visited his native Germany for six month. Upon return he became sick and entered a slow decline. In February 1868, he was confined to bed and died on April 10. The Jaeger “pater familias,” age 57, was buried in Dubuque’s Mount Calvary Cemetery. His obituary in the local newspaper declared of Adam Jaeger Sr.: “He was an active and enterprising man, a good citizen, respected by all who knew him, and an honor to the city.”

Adam Jr.’s initial efforts as a distiller were not crowned with success according to a report of the The Wine & Spirits Journal: In 1865 The distillery was destroyed by a boiler explosion. Jaeger then entered a new partnership and rebuilt the distillery, which afterward also burned.” Subsequently, along with his brother-in-law, Liberat Alphonse “L.A.” Rhomberg, Jaeger Jr. joined Paul Traut, Adam’s son-in-law and a local merchant, in establishing a wine and liquor business at 521 Main Street, Dubuque, that claimed to be distillers as well as dealers.

This partnership lasted until 1879, when Traut departed to open a hat shop. Subsequently, Jaeger and Romberg formed a new firm bearing their names at 465 Main Street, the building shown here. This association lasted until 1889 when Rhomberg sold his interest to Louis A. Lang and a new business emerged called Jaeger, Lang & Company.

In the meantime, the liquor dealer was pursuing a political career. Following in the footsteps of his father, Jaeger Jr. was elected an alderman in 1866. His credentials as a newly returned Union army veteran and bearing the respected Jaeger name likely contributed to his victory. He proved up to the responsibility and served multiple terms on the Dubuque council until 1874, becoming a familiar figure around City Hall, shown here. In September 1872, at the age of 34, he was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the sudden resignation of the mayor, but did not run for the office subsequently.

Always interested in public causes, Jaeger Jr. organized and led the Illinois chapter of a group known as the Personal Liberty League. This organization attempted to mediate between so-called “Temperance” groups and brewers and liquor dealers, attempting to ameliorate the worst aspects of the spirits trade. For example, local chapters campaigned to have saloons close during church hours.

The business of Jaeger, Lang & Co. flourished and the partners saw the need for larger quarters, moving into 356-364 Main Street, shown here. This building had fifty feet of frontage, three stories, and a sub-basement that served as a wine cellar. Following the explosions and fires at his earlier distilleries, Adam Jr. apparently was discourage about making whiskey and moved to blending products from outside sources and issuing the results under proprietary labels. The company flagship brands were “William Penn” and “Dubuque Club.”

As they reach maturity, Jaeger Jr. brought two of his sons, Alphonse “Ollie” and Charles F. Jaeger, into the business. Ollie was the elder of the two, born in January 1862, just before his father marched off to war. He preceded Charles by two years. Educated in the schools of Dubuque, both young men served apprenticeships under their father, working as clerks and traveling salesmen.

Jaeger Jr. at 57 year old was still firmly in management control with Lang and apparently in good health in August 1894 when he ventured on an extended fishing trip up the Mississippi River with friends. Said to have been enjoying the outing, he suddenly had an attack of severe cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting. Brought home and believed recovering, he suddenly suffered a relapsed and died. Like his father, he was buried in Calvary Cemetery.

His obituary in the Dubuque Daily Herald provided this tribute to Jaeger Jr: “Mr. Jaeger was truly one of God's noblemen. He was the soul of geniality, kind-hearted and ever charitable and pleasant. In his business dealings he has made an enviable reputation. Honesty and integrity have been characteristic of him and few men possessed the esteem and warm friendship of his associates as he did. He has ever been a public spirited man.”

Despite Jaeger’s death Louis Lang continued the firm under the original name and continued to employ his sons. In 1905, however, he sold an interest to local merchant, John Brede, and the company became Brede, Lang and Company. Apparently seeing limited opportunities with Lang, Ollie and Charles in 1904 decided to strike out their own by founding their own liquor house, calling it Jaeger Brothers Company. They are shown here, Ollie on right. By this time Ollie was married to Lizzie E., but no children reported. Charles’ wife was Ida A. (nee Lynburner). They would have a family of seven.

Charles appears to have managed the operations of the company while Ollie worked as a roving salesman for its products. The brothers had kept the rights to their premier label, William Penn Rye. They issued an advertising trade card for the brand that featured a scantily clad young woman. As Iowa edged closer and closer to statewide prohibition the Jaegers shut down their operation after 1907.

Thus came to an end three generations and 53 years of Jaeger productive involvement in the liquor trade of Dubuque.

Ollie went to work as a travel agent, before dying early at 46 years old in 1912. Charles became a salesman for another Dubuque liquor company, switching to tobacco sales after Iowa’s prohibition. He died in 1940, age 76. The Jaeger burial plot where lie the two Adams, their spouses, and other members of the family is marked by a towering obelisk. It serves to remind us that at a time when Prohibitionists were vilifying liquor dealers as tools of Satan, the Jaegers were serving their adopted country in war and their local government in peacetime, proving to be sterling citizens and honored by their community at their passing.

Note: This post is drawn from a variety of sources, the principal ones being: The Wine & Spirits Bulletin1903 and the obituaries of both Adam Jaeger Sr. and Adam Jaeger Jr.

In the highly competitive world of the Cincinnati wholesale liquor trade, It was necessary for proprietors to stand out from the crowd. The strategy chosen by Isadore Trager and his two sons, Isaac Newton Trager and James Garfield Trager, was to emphasize the risqué in their advertising. Hence the revealing portrait of the “Cream of Kentucky Girl” whose winsome features on a metal tray were given away to good customers and meant to be affixed to saloon walls.

Cream of Kentucky Whiskey was the flagship Trager brand. While they recommended it for “family, medicinal, and sideboard purposes,” their advertising suggested its utility for less open activities. Shown here is a trade card that when closed, has two chambermaids listening at what is happening inside “Parlor C.” When opened it reveals quite a party going on inside.

With the caption “Have a drink of Cream of Kentucky on me,” the scene is of three men and three women, all but one drinking whiskey. The exception is a man on the right who either is about to strangle a woman holding a glass or, more likely, embrace her. At center is a man pouring a whiskey and offering more to a women who, scandal of scandals, is smoking a cigarette. At left is a woman in a provocative pose and a man — my goodness, where is his left hand resting?

Another boudoir scene marks the cover of a Trager pamphlet entitled “Famous Paintings.” The introduction provides a clue to the contents: “Who does not…admire a pretty women and relish a drink of good whiskey. To those who do, this book is respectfully dedicated and the publishers trust they will find many moments of pleasure from its perusal.”

A catalogue of the liquor house products, the publication also includes a number of black and white photographs of nudes from paintings known as “salon art,” fashionable in Europe in the 19th Century. At left is “Diana” by Louis J. M. Perrey, a Frenchman born in 1856. At right is “Flora,” the work of Max Nonnenbruch, a German, born in 1857.

As ad men say, “sex sells” and the Tragers seemed to have profited thereby. Their firm originated about 1887 and operated profitably until shut down by Ohio prohibition in 1918. The founding father, Isadore Trager, born in 1846 in Elberfeld, Germany, was brought to the U.S. by his family when he was six years old. The family settled in Louisville, Kentucky, where Isadore was educated in the local schools and at an early age went to work, likely in one of the many distilleries or liquor houses in that city. By 1870, however, he had moved to Cincinnati.

In February 1877 Trager married Katherine “Kate” Hirschfield, born in Tennessee of German immigrant parents. He was 31, she was 23. They would have five children, three girls and two boys. Perhaps as a result of his growing family responsibilities, in 1887 Trager with a partner struck out on his own, opening a liquor wholesale business at 103 Sycamore in Cincinnati. Needing more space as business grew, the company moved to 327 Walnut and finally in 1906 to a six-story headquarters at 317-321 East Eighth Street, shown here.

In addition to “Cream of Kentucky,” the Trager featured a number of other brands, including: “Black Warrior,” “Creme De La Creme,” “Deerfield,” “Edgemont,” "Forest Hollow,” "Old Colony Club,” "Tulip Rose,” ”Union Rye,” and "Youghiogheny Malt.” Some of these labels it trademarked: Cream of Kentucky in 1901 and in 1906, after Congress strengthen the laws, Deerfield, Edgemont, Forest Hollow, and Old Colony Club.

The company merchandised its whiskey in labeled clear and amber bottles, ranging in size from half-pints to quarts. As can be seen here, below the labels the containers were embossed in the glass with the Trager name and Cincinnati. Some echoed the claim that I. Trager & Co. was a distiller and the firm often implied owning Distillery No. 10 in the 7th District of Kentucky.

This was the Peacock Distillery of Bourbon County, founded in 1857. While Trager may have had a financial interest in this facility, there was no evidence he was the sole proprietor. He also apparently was getting supplies from the Old Darling distillery in Prestonville, Kentucky owned by Elias Block & Sons. In truth, the company was “rectifying” (blending) whiskey obtained from these and other sources.

Being competitive in the Cincinnati market required more than sexual innuendo. Wholesale liquor houses had to gift its customers with advertising items such as back-of-the-bar bottles and most particularly shot glasses. Just a few examples of the Trager output are shown here.

As Isadore’s two sons reached maturity the father brought them into his wholesale liquor business: J. Garfield as company bookkeeper and I. Newton likely as a traveling salesman. In the 1910 census, Isadore and Kate were living in their mansion home, shown below, with son J. Garfield, a daughter, Elina, a German housemaid and an Irish cook. Clearly the strategies employed to stand out among the liquor competition had paid off.

The 1910 census would be Isadore’s last. He died in July of that year and was buried in the Walnut Hills United Jewish Cemetery. I. Newton Trager took over as president of the liquor house that continued to bear their father’s name. J. Garfield Trager was the treasurer. Together they managed the firm their father had built until forced to shut the doors after Ohio voted statewide prohibition in 1916. Despite that unfortunate ending, the Tragers have left us artifacts from which future generations, as their advertising promised, can “find many moments of pleasure….”

At his funeral, the Catholic archbishop of Pittsburgh eulogized: “…Anything that I could say would be a poor tribute to a man, who according to his means and opportunities, was so large-hearted, so generous, so humble, so unostentatious in his exercise of his goodness and the bestowal of his benefactions. Peace be to him.” The archbishop was speaking of the man whose photo is at right — John O’Connor, a whiskey man through and through.

Unlike many Irish-American liquor dealers, O’Connor did not come from impoverished circumstances. His father, the first Catholic settler of Auburn, New York, had arrived in 1810 and rapidly established himself as a community leader, including becoming warden of the State Penitentiary. Born in 1825 John was accorded an exemplary education at Auburn Academy, left, and later as a student at the college of St. Suplice, Montreal, Canada, below.

Venturing west to Pittsburgh in 1847 at twenty-two years old, O’Connor carried a letter of introduction from William Seward, shown here, an Auburn attorney who would gain fame as Lincoln’s war secretary in the Civil War. The youth’s early employment was as a successful hotel proprietor along the city’s bustling waterfront, shown below in a lithograph from that era.

In Pittsburgh, O’Connor met and in 1854 married Irish-born Mary Connelly, the immigrant daughter of a prominent merchant in County Donegal. John was 29 and she was 24. Educated beyond most Irish women, Mary has been described as “…A woman of the highest culture and refinement, and a heart overflowing with charity….” The couple would have six children, four sons and two daughters.

At some point during the 1850s, O’Connor left the hotel business in favor of the liquor trade. Pittsburgh was a thriving and important city during the Civil War, a significant source of arms, ammunition, and supplies to the Union Army. The population burgeoned as workers arrived to find work, many of them new immigrants. O’Connor, obviously having noted the profitability of alcohol sales in his hotels, shifted occupations. An 1868 business directory recorded him operating a wine and liquor store at 104 Water Street on the waterfront and a saloon at 46 Ross Street. The family was living above the saloon.

By the next decade, O’Connor’s liquor business and living quarters had moved to a new and larger location at 1814 Carson Street. Shown here, the building still stands. He advertised as “distillers and wholesale dealers in Pure Rye Whiskies, imported wines of every variety.” In truth, he was not a distiller, instead obtaining his whiskey from elsewhere and often “rectifying” (blending) it before sales to saloons, restaurants and hotels.

O’Connor packaged these goods in gallon or two gallon jugs for clients who in turn would decant them into smaller containers for retail use. Shown here is an example of a cobalt stenciled jug used by the liquor house.

As his sons matured, John took them into his liquor business. An 1899 directory entry lists Edward G. O’Connor working with his father. In 1894 the name of the company was changed to “John O’Connor & Son.” That name appears on a give-away item, a small barrel that contained several swallows of whiskey that would have been given to a select group of customers. Later a second son, Paul, would be brought into the business and in 1912, “sons” was substituted in the company name.

Throughout this period the O’Connors continued to live above their store. Money that the liquor dealer might have used to build a mansion went to the philanthropic causes that the couple pursued. John O’Connors' particular interest was in the orphans of Pittsburgh. According to a biography: “The building of the first St. Paul’s Orphan Asylum was the result of his study of conditions and untiring championship of its founding.” Pittsburgh’s City Controller called O’Connor’s effort “a heroic achievement.” Shown above are the orphanage structures; below, the sleeping quarters.

At his funeral, the Archbishop related of John: “In earlier days when the orphans…were in greater need than at the present time, he not only gave what he could afford, he went from door to door and from one business house to another gathering food and clothing for the orphans….Almost every Sunday he visited the orphanage and inquired into their wants.”

In addition to orphans as the object of O’Connor’s philanthropy, he contributed generously to charitable institutions assisting the needy elderly, including the Little Sisters of the Poor home, and women in distress helped by the Sisters of Good Shepherd.

O’Connor also was a major financial backer of the “Great Sanitary Fair” held in Pittsburgh during the Civil War, part of a national campaign. That event opened in June 1864 to raise funds for wounded Union soldiers throughout the United States. Through exhibitions and lectures on the grounds of the old Town Hall, more than $300,000 was raised — equivalent to $6.6 million today. O’Connor was hailed as instrumental in making the event one of the Nation’s most successful fairs. Accordingly, he was given a vote of gratitude by the local implementing committee and presented with the model of a mortar gun cast in a Pittsburgh foundry.

After 47 years of marriage, during which she had worked for many charitable causes side by side with her husband, Mary O’Connor died in 1901. She was buried in Section N of Saint Mary Catholic Cemetery, Allegheny County. About the same time John retired from active management of his liquor house and son Edward took over. As he aged, O’Connor suffered from a gradual loss of energy and muscle strength, eventually dying in 1912 at 86. He was buried beside his wife in St. Mary Cemetery.

John died as he lived, still residing above the liquor business he had founded more than sixty years earlier -- the source of the funds that fueled his philanthropy. In death he continued as a benefactor to the needy, willing the greater part of his estate to charitable organizations. The liquor house was continued by Edmund O’Connor until shut down by National Prohibition in 1919.

As a final word, a biographer of John O’Connor provided this memorial: “The warmth and generosity of his nature found its outlet in the performance of countless small deeds of kindness and in larger benefactions almost beyond number.”

Note: Much of the information for this post and all direct quotes are taken from a 1922 biography of John O’Connor in a volume entitled “History of Pittsburgh and Environs” by Contributors and Staff Members of the American Historical Society, Inc., New York and Chicago.

Long before the advent of Viagra and Levitra, in the 19th and early 20th Century remedies for “male weakness” (i.e., erectile disfunction) abounded in the marketplace. Among the most popular was “The Sporty Days Invigorator,” a nostrum that originated not from a pharmaceutical company but a St. Louis liquor house run by a family named Simon. After passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act, their invigorator would bring them into direct conflict with government authorities.

The Simons’ chief antagonist was Dr. Harvey Washington Wylie (1844-1930), a physician who in 1882 became chief chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shown here, the doctor was a crusader for passage of a pure food and drug law and instrumental in its approval by Congress in 1906. Known as the “Father of the Pure Food and Drug Act,” Wylie and his Chemistry Bureau became the initial enforcers of the legislation.

Dr. Wylie immediately took special aim at certain egregiously fraudulent patent medicines, such as “cures” for cancer and narcotics addiction, and eventually was successful in eliminating them. Another particular objective of Wylie was suppressing nostrums that promised increased male sexual vigor. They proliferated on the national market, often using provocative advertising, such as the dancing woman on the Sporty Days Invigorator pocket mirror above.

Other Simons’ advertising for their enhancer was even more suggestive. The liquor house featured a postcard on which a winking cherub is holding a pair of female bloomers, with the caption: “A pair of lace curtains for sister’s sitting room.” The clear inference here is that the “youthful feelings” generated by Sporty Days Invigorator has allowed the user not only to work his will but to claim the lady’s undergarment as a trophy.

Wylie might have made the Simons a specific target because of brazen advertising on its billhead that featured the Sporty Days Invigorator and then included the rampant falsehood: “All goods guaranteed under national pure food law.” Dr. Wylie was known to be particularly outraged by such statements. Accordingly, in November 1908 his Bureau of Chemistry seized a shipment of the Sporty Days Invigorator and subjected it to testing.

The initial version of the law did not allow the government to judge a product on efficacy but only to prosecute for failure to list ingredients on the label. Sporty Days Invigorator was absolutely silent on its make-up: “…The label on said bottle did not declare the amount of alcohol contained therein, nor that said product contained any alcohol.” The chemists found that the male enhancer exceeded 35% alcohol, almost the strength of straight gin.

Hauled into Federal District Court for Eastern Missouri in May 1910, the Simons pleaded guilty, were convicted, and fined $50 and costs. This was the usual ploy of nostrum proprietors, most of whom were reluctant to engage in a court battle. Fines were relatively modest and a guilty plea avoided negative publicity. Wylie and his Bureau, however, were not finished with the Simons. Less than three months after the Missouri verdict authorities in Texas seized two drums, each containing 200 bottles of Sporty Days Invigorator.

This time the federal charge was the Simons’ failure accurately to list the ingredients. The amount of alcohol listed was wrong, the authorities claimed, as was accounting for other ingredients, including sugar and flavorings. This time Wylie indictment went further: Sporty Days Invigorator“had no aphrodisiac properties, was not a cure for disease, and had none of the properties claimed for it” on the label. The fine was $400 [equivalent today of almost $9,000] and court costs, with a proviso that the shipment would be destroyed if payment was delayed beyond six months.

Although the verdict was a setback, the Simons’ primary business was selling whiskey, not medicine. The liquor company was formed in St. Louis about 1878 by Jacob Simon, birthplace unknown, when he was 36 years old. By this time he was married to Sallie Bakrow Simon and was the father of one son, Julian. Two more boys, Ira and Herbert, would follow. My assumption is that Jacob had been working in Louisville’s brisk whiskey trade for some years and decided to strike out on his own. He called his liquor store J. Simon & Co., located at 118 West Main Street.

Almost from the outset, Jacob called himself a distiller, claiming the Ashton Distillery Co. (RD#442, 5th District) located about twelve miles north of Bardstown, Kentucky, as his property. While the record is fuzzy on that ownership, the Simons continued to identify themselves as proprietors throughout their company life. Shown here are two back-of-the-bar bottles advertising “Old Ashton Sour Mash” whiskey, a brand name they did not trademark.

As his sons matured, Jacob took them into his business. Julian the eldest came on board about 1900 and the liquor house became J. Simon & Son. Within several years, first Ira and then Herbert joined the firm, subsequently known as J. Simon & Sons. At the time of the struggles with Dr. Wylie and the FDA, all four Simons were listed on company letterheads. In January 1910 Jacob died. He was buried in New Mount Sinai Cemetery and Mausoleum in Affton, Missouri.

The sons continued on with the family liquor trade, working under the original name. They continued to use the “Ashton" brand as well as “Old Timbrook” and “Dairy Maid.” Like many liquor houses of the time, they issued advertising shot glasses for their brands, as shown here. With the coming of National Prohibition they were forced to shut down the business inherited from their father. When each of them died years later their bodies were laid to rest with Jacob in a plot marked by the Simon name.

Despite the many years since The Sporty Days Invigorator disappeared from the market, a quick search of the Internet reveals a variety of non-prescription substances currently being sold as “male enhancers.” Some things apparently never change. Dr. Wylie must be turning over in his grave.

With memories of religious discrimination in Europe, at least four generations of a “Pennsylvania Dutch” family channeled their efforts over three centuries to make and sell quality rye whiskey. As a consequence the Steins of Greenwich Township, Berks County, wrote themselves into state history.

The story of the Stein family began in Evangelish, Siegen, Westfalen, Prussia in 1735 when their progenitors, Jacob (I) and wife, Anna, had twin boys. One they named Jacob (II), the other John. When Jacob (II) reached maturity he emigrated from his homeland to the United States and to Pennsylvania where religious tolerance had attracted many of his fellow Evangelical Germans and other dissenters from traditional Lutheranism.

Jacob (II) married and raised a family while occupied as a farmer on the rich lands of Berks County. There his son, Johannes “Jonas” Stein was born in 1766. He like his father was a farmer, tilling the soil in a district called Greenwich that had been incorporated as a township in 1755. He and his family likely worshiped in freedom at a nearby Reformed Lutheran congregation in a primitive log church that was replaced by a second log house of worship in 1790.

The concept of distilling was common among these immigrants. In Europe, dissenter from established religions often were discriminated against in the common trades of the time and excluded from craftsmen guilds. As a result, having no religious scruples about alcohol, some turned to making strong drink; others to running saloons. No evidence exists that Jonas Stein had any background in distilling but the picture changed with the next generation.

In 1791, a baby boy was born to Jonas and spouse unknown. Unsurprisingly, they named him Jacob (III). He grew up on his father’s farm, eventually owning five hundred acres that he divided into five properties, building houses and farm buildings on each and leasing them. He also built a schoolhouse to accommodate his tenants’ children.

Known as the Stein family “whiskey pioneer,” Jacob, shown right, in 1830 built the original distillery in the southern part of Greenwich Twp. and began producing “Stein’s Pure Rye” Meanwhile one of the two major cattle driving routes in Pennsylvania had brought prosperity to the area spurring a large cattle auction, three stores and seven taverns to service the thirsty drovers. Although other distilleries operated in the area, Jacob Stein’s was the largest and best known, celebrated for its quality whiskey. Twenty years later he started a tavern called the Three Mile House not far from his distillery.

Religious faith had continued to animate the Stein family down the years. Log structures as churches increasingly were becoming obsolete. Jacob and his neighbor religionists in 1861 banded together to build a substantial house of worship in Greenwich, known formally as the Bethel Zion Church. Shown here, it was originally constructed of bricks and replaced by stone in the 1920s.When Jacob (lll) died in 1874, age 80, he was buried in the church cemetery.

By that time he had been replaced as the family distiller by his son, Adam Stein, born in 1819 of Jacob and Susan Sontag Stein. Shown here, Adam bought his father’s property in Greenwich, including the farm and the distillery. He continued to make the rye whiskey whose fame was spreading across Pennsylvania. About 1847, at the age of 28, Adam married Floranda Bieber, a woman eight years younger. He would be married twice, with both wives dying early.

Like his ancestors, Adam was a doer. In 1857 he built a four story Federal style mill on a site where earlier mills had been owned and operated. Shown here, it stands today as one of the oldest buildings in the township and on the Federal Register of Historic Places. He also continued operation of the Stein Tavern on what became Pennsylvania State Highway 737. In addition to distilling a popular applejack, Adam continued to produce the family rye. According to an obituary, he “…kept up the reputation of that famous distillation in this section during the time when very little other spiritous liquor was used.”

Adam was known for his civic work, particularly his interest in education. Following in his father’s footsteps, when the Keystone State Normal School at nearby Kutztown was envisioned, the farmer/distiller saw the need for an advanced education to train teachers and gave “liberal encouragement and support.” As a result he was named one of the school’s first trustees and served for eleven years at the institution, shown above in a postcard view. In 1864 Adam was elected a Berks County Commissioner for a three years term.

As he aged, Adam’s health declined and he died in May 1897 at the age of 77. He was buried adjacent to his father Jacob in the cemetery at New Bethel Zion Church, the place where he had worshiped his entire life.

Adam’s first child had been a son, born in 1848 and baptized Isaac. As soon as he reached maturity the Isaac had been brought into the management of the farm, distillery and tavern. As his father faltered, the son took charge, buying the distillery outright in 1893 and continuing production of Stein’s Pure Rye. Shown here, Isaac is credited as an innovator among the Steins. Although farming had been the major occupation of his Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, Isaac was primarily interested in distilling.

According to a biography: “Having years of experience in the business, he started out with more progressive ideas.” Among them was updating the whiskey-making technology of his forefathers. “The Old Stein Distillery was replaced with an entirely new plant, introducing all the latest equipment known in the distiller’s art.”

In 1876 at the age of 28 Isaac had married, his bride Tillinia E. Sechler, a local Pennsylvania woman. They would have four children, the eldest a son, Charles, born in 1879, and three daughters. As Charles advanced in age Isaac saw the need for more education in the 20th Century and sent him to the Keystone State Normal School, where he graduated in 1900. After a brief teaching career, Charles joined his father in running the Stein distillery, designated in Federal records as RD #79, Pennsylvania Tax District #1.

Father and son formed a new firm of I. B. Stein and Son, Distillers and Wholesale Liquor Dealers. Indicative of this move into the wholesale whiskey business is a metal tray that carried the color portrait of a winsome young woman and advertised the slogan,“For Goodness Sake Drink…Stein’s Pure Old Rye.” This lithographed object would be given to special customers like saloons and restaurants featuring the Steins’ whiskey. Not meant as a carrying tray it was configured on the back to hang on the wall of a drinking establishment.

Shown here, Charles rapidly established himself as a Kutztown businessman. In addition to his post at the distillery, he helped organize the Kutztown Telephone and Telegraph Company, a business that could count 345 subscribers in 1916. Charles was also a director of the Farmer’s Bank in Kutztown and active in local fraternal organizations. In 1902 he married Nora A. Dietrich in Kutztown. One son, Russell, was born from this union.

In 1915, a publication compiled for the Kutztown Centennial (1815-1915) paid special tribute to the family. Under the headline “The Stein Family: Distillers for Four Generations,” it featured a full page of photos of Jacob, Adam, Isaac and Charles along with short biographies. The coverage and lauding of Stein’s Pure Rye Whiskey must have been a source of pride for Isaac and Charles. At the same time, however, they could see the advance of National Prohibition and knew that almost ninety years of distilling good Pennsylvania rye would soon come to an end. The exact date of the shutdown I have not found, but the 1920 census recorded Isaac living in Kutztown, where the family had moved in 1905, and giving his occupation as “merchant.” He was living with wife, Nora, and three daughters — all unmarried in their 30s.

Neither Isaac nor Charles lived to see the end of Prohibition. Isaac died in July 1928 at the age of 80. Charles, only 52, died three years later. Both are buried in Hope Cemetery at Kutztown. Their adjacent graves are marked with a monument. Thus a family dynasty of whiskey-makers that began in the early 1700s apparently because of a search for religious freedom in America ironically was ended by a religious crusade determined to stamp out any freedom to imbibe spiritous beverages.

Note: Although this post was compiled from a number of references, as cited above a principal source of the Stein photos and biographical materials was “The Centennial History of Kutzown, Pennsylvania,” compiled by the Historical Committee of the Kutztown Centennial Assn., Chairman, W. W. Deatrick.

A Southerner whose life revolved around the “deep water” of the Gulf of Mexico, Harry Hoyle persisted in selling liquor in the face of prohibitionary forces that forced him from Mississippi to Louisiana. In New Orleans Hoyle found tolerance and success for his whiskey trade but tragically suffered an untimely fate that ultimately orphaned his children.

Hoyle was born in Whistler, Alabama, a small community seven miles from Mobile. Two apparent early influences were the waters of the Gulf of Mexico forming Mobile Bay and the arrival of railroads. The Mobile and Ohio Railroad, an early land grant railway, had established its shops in Whistler. After receiving his early education there, the young man saw better opportunities in Gulfport, Mississippi and moved the 78 miles.

Now Hoyle had the Gulf of Mexico right at his doorstep. Shown above, the lively port city with its many thirsty sailors, fishermen, and roustabouts rapidly took him into the liquor trade. With many saloons to service with whiskey, he built up a large wholesale and retail trade in Gulfport and opened a branch office in Slidell, Louisiana.

At the age of 23 Harry also found a wife in Gulfport. She was Rosa Lillia (“Rosie”) Seals, a 21-year-old woman from a prominent local family. Her brother Florin Seal was sheriff of Harrision County. According to the records, their marriage followed by several months the birth of their first child. Over the course of the next fourteen years their union would produce six more children.

Hoyle’s acquaintance with railroad followed him to Mississippi when Gulfport was chosen as the central hub for The Gulf, Florida & Alabama Railway, known as the “Deep Water Route.” The liquor dealer immediately saw a good name for his flagship brand of whiskey and created a container for his “jug trade” that celebrated the line with a ceramic container labeled “Deep Water Route Fine Old Whiskey.”

Hoyle was receiving whiskey from distilleries by the barrel via the railroad, likely blending it, and decanting the result into small smaller containers that would be sold to his customers. He trademarked the name in 1905 and issued a celluloid advertising match safe With its unusual, ornate label, a Hoyle jug recently sold at auction for $800.

Ultimately, however, Mississippi was to disappoint Hoyle’s ambitions. So-called Temperance forces were flourishing in the state, first passing a “local option” law that allowed individual counties to outlaw alcohol. Although counties along the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River remained “wet” for a time, in 1907, thirteen years before National Prohibition, Mississippi voted to go “dry” statewide, penalizing liquor sales with fines and jail terms.

Forced to close his saloon and whiskey trade , Hoyle’s initial response apparently was to go underground. In January 1909 the Biloxi Herald reported a raid on what was known as a “blind tiger,” an illegal drinking establishment, located near the “Deep Water Route” railroad tracks. Police seized thirty-two barrels and twenty-three cases of liquor — all of it belonging to Harry Hoyle. The raid was not without incident. A shot was fired by a watchman. Implicated too was Roderick Seal, Rosie Hoyle’s nephew, and the son of former Sheriff Seal.

While Hoyle does not appear to have been arrested, the loss of the equivalent of $44,000 in liquor apparently convinced him to abandon Gulfport and relocate his business 80 miles west in New Orleans. The move must have been wrenching for him and his family. Said one account: “Harry Hoyle was one of the best known men in Southern Mississippi. His business affiliations extended to persons in almost every town of any size….”

Hoyle’s success in Louisiana seemingly was as rapid as it had been in Gulfport. By 1910, Hoyle was recorded in New Orleans business directories operating saloons and liquor stores at 326 Magazine and 174 Rampart Streets. He kept his Slidell location and was sending liquor legally by railway express back to his old customers in Mississippi. He also bought a major share of the National Brewery of New Orleans, shown here, and became a director.

The Alabama transplant’s ascendancy apparently alarmed established publicans in “The Big Easy.” When Hoyle sought a license from the city to open a saloon at 135 Royal Street, his competition in the neighborhood raised “spirited opposition” to his request. After a protracted struggle, Hoyle won out and was granted the license by New Orleans authorities. The site is shown here as it looks today — now a French Quarter souvenir mart.

Events would soon change everything for Hoyle and his family. In mid-February 1914, after attending a party where alcohol likely was served, Harry with three friends was taking what the press called an after-midnight “joy ride” along a New Orleans canal. Hoyle was in the rear “rumble seat” when the car went out of control, hit the incline of the canal and turned over. Although others were only slightly injured in the crash, Hoyle was killed instantly.

According to a press account: “The men who had been extricated managed to draw the body of Harry Hoyle out from under the machine. As they pulled it out the head fell loosely about the shoulders and they feared the worse….It is the opinion of the medical authorities that he died instantly when the heavy back of the machine pinned his neck to the ground.” The whiskey man was only 34 years old.

After a brief funeral service at the family home at 4713 Iberville Street, shown here as it looks today, Hoyle was buried in Greenwood Cemetery. In addition to his widow, the newspapers noted he left six children — May, Harry Jr., Thelma, Rodick, Rosa and Clara. All were under 14 years old It also appears Rosie was pregnant with a seventh, Lorena, born several months after Harry died.

Over the ensuing two years, the liquor business including the Royal Street saloon and a liquor store at 521 Bienville was continued under Hoyle’s name, managed by Roderick Seal,. Within two years, however, tragedy struck the Hoyle family once again. Beginning in October 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic that killed millions across the globe hit New Orleans with a vengeance. The city experienced a staggering 54,000 cases of flu, of whom 3,489 died, among them two Hoyles. In mid-January 1919, the toddler, Lorena, succumbed. Four days later she was followed in death by her mother, Rosie, leaving the six Hoyle children orphaned, the youngest only seven.

As mother and child were laid to rest beside Harry in Greenwood Cemetery, the enterprises that bore the Hoyle name came to an end. My efforts to find out what became of the other children have been fruitless. I am hopeful that a descendant of the Hoyles will be in touch and complete the story.

Note: The material for this post was taken from a number of sources. The information on the accident was from the St. Tammany Farmer newspaper of February 14, 1914. Other key information was from Hoyle’s obituary in the New Orleans Times-Picayune on February 15, 1914.

Foreword: Trademark fights among distillers and whiskey merchants with proprietary brands were common in the pre-Prohibition era. The laws were lax, often poorly written, and subject to interpretation by judges. Although a number of individual past posts have detailed those disputes, I have selected three examples here that illustrate various aspects of such conflicts.

The number of disputes over brand names of whiskey actually taken to court were relatively small, likely because the legal situation. An exception were the liquor house owned by partners and brothers-in-law Aaron Bluthenthal and Monroe Bickart of Atlanta, Georgia. Their experience in trying to protect their popular brand “Old Joe Rye” from competition is instructive.

In 1905 Bluthenthal & Bickart brought a suit in the Florida courts against Theodore Mohlmann, a Jacksonville liquor dealer. They claimed Mohlmann had violated their trademark on their Old Joe Rye, including the size, shape and color of the bottle, a similarly designed and colored label, and the name given the whiskey: “Old Geo.” The crowning indignity, the plaintiffs said, was Mohlmann copying even the small corkscrew that the Atlanta firm attached to the Old Joe bottle. The Florida corkscrew was claimed to be identical in “size, shape, quality and appearance.”

A Georgia liquor company attempting to shut down a Florida competitor in Florida courts clearly faced daunting challenges. When the lower court in Jacksonville denied B&B an injunction and dismissed their case, B&B appealed to the State Supreme Court. While that court had some legal quibbles with the initial decision, it did not overturn it. Mohlmann’s Old Geo remained on the market.

Seemingly undaunted by this setback, the brothers-in-law subsequently pressed similar charges against a Montgomery, Alabama, liquor dealer named J. W. Epperson. Like Mohlmann, Epperson was aping the Old Joe bottle right down to the corkscrew. He called his booze, “Old Jack.” Once again, Bluthenthal and Bickart found it hard sledding in an out-of-state court. After a lower court denied their action for an injunction against Epperson, B&B appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court.

That court upheld the verdict but went further. The judges scolded the Georgia partners on the grounds that examination had shown that their Old Joe brand was not as, as advertised, very old stock, fine old whiskey, or even rye whiskey. B&B had misrepresented the whiskey on their labels and marks with false statements, the judges said, and by so doing had vitiated any trademark protection that the partners might claim. Although Epperson’s conduct was “without justification,” the Alabama Supreme Court ruled, it was unwilling to issue an injunction and make him stop selling Old Jack Rye.

William S. Turner and Charles S. Looker joined forces sometime before 1880 to create a new Cincinnati liquor house. The pair saw an opportunity to cash in on the popularity of a whiskey called Canadian Club that was finding favor with the American public, a brand from Hiram Walker at his giant distillery at Walkerville, Canada, near Windsor, Ontario. They created a copy-cat brand they called “Windsor Club Whiskey,” and claimed it was made in Walkerville, distilled and bottled under the supervision of the Canadian government — all patently untrue.

Ferocious in protecting his trademarks, Walker, shown here, was furious. He gained the support of the Canadian Commissioner of Inland Revenue who abjured publicly any notion that his office was supervising Turner-Looker’s whiskey. Forced by the publicity to back off that claim the Cincinnati firm subsequently went on the attack against Walker and Canadian Club, asserting that their Windsor Club brand…must not be confused with the low, common, trashy goods bottled in bond in Canada.”

In 1898 Hiram Walker & Sons Ltd escalated the conflict, taking full page ads in U.S. journals. The ads claimed as fraudulent the idea that Turner-Look’s whiskey was made by The Windsor Club Distilling Co., Walkerville, Canada: “There being no such concern….We are good for heavy damages if Turner-Looker Co. can show that this is a libel; and we will test the matter in their own courts if they ask us to.” Turner-Looker knew that if the Walkers had their day in court, they might very well win. A year earlier, detectives hired by Hiram had triggered an investigation of whiskey fraud in Chicago that led to several arrests and convictions. The Ohio partners stayed away from the justice system, preferring to mount a vigorous, some even might say vicious, counter-attack in the press.

Turner-Look claimed publicly that Walker’s Canadian Club tested “under-proof,” i.e., less alcohol than stated, and was issued in short measure bottles. The Walkers could not sue Turner-Looker for trademark infringement since technically none had occurred. Turner-Looker’s ploy in claiming to be of Canadian origin was not illegal — just part of the accepted chicanery that was common in the whiskey trade. The dispute between the whiskey companies dragged on for years to no conclusion, ended only by National Prohibition in 1920.

Charles Knecht and his son Louis began a Cleveland, Ohio, liquor business about 1886, concentrating on only a single brand, one they called “Raven Valley Whiskey.” Shown here on an advertising paperweight, the illustration was of three stylized birds, presumably ravens, sitting on a leafy branch. In 1905 they trademarked the name. Their application described the mark as “The words ‘Raven Valley,’ beneath which is a representation of three ravens perched upon the branches of tree.” Although all of this seems straightforward and innocent enough, it would bring down on the Knechts the fury of one of the most powerful distillers in Kentucky, W. A. Gaines Co. of Frankfort, maker of “Old Crow Bourbon.”

The Kentucky distiller constantly faced trademark challenges, appropriating or approximating the Old Crow label, by whiskey oufits hoping to profit on the national popularity of the brand. Gaines almost always was successful in court. When word of the Knecht’s application for “Raven Valley” reached Gaines executives, they took immediate legal action alleging that the name and image violated their trademark. When the Commissioner of Patents ignored their protest and approved the application, the Old Crow crew appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.

The Gaines legal challenges must have caused a great deal of concern on the part of the Knechts. Not only did they have the expense of defending Raven Valley Whiskey against a “deep pockets” foe, but if they lost it would only be a matter of time before they would be served a desist order and their flagship brand would be terminated under pain of law. While this was uncharted territory for the Cleveland company, the Gaines outfit by contrast could count on highly-paid, well-practiced attorneys to handle the case. Brimming with confidence, its attorneys contended that the ravens would “naturally lead to a confusion and enable the applicants [Knechts] to perpetrate a fraud.”

In the end, however, the appeals court disagreed and the judges’ opinion stated, in part, “when the words ‘Raven Valley’ are considered they are so different from the words ‘Old Crow’ that any confusion or deception would be very improbable.” While recognizing that ravens and crows were both birds, the Court found no similarity in their depiction on the whiskeys. When Gaines owners sought to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the high court denied them a hearing. Almost improbably, the Knechts had won. The Ohio raven had triumphed over the Kentucky crow.

Addendum: Some further comment seem appropriate on the image of the Old Crow, as it changed over time. As shown here, in the 1940s the crow became a dandified gent with top hat, bow tie, vest and spats. A cartoon of that era was headlined “How to distinguish a Raven from a Crow.” It pointed out that the raven is bigger and took a swipe at Old Crow and its anthropomorphized corvid.

Dan Breen and the Wild Side of Life in Texas

David Nicholson’s 1843 Whiskey Inspiration

“Mose” Littleton: A Life in Full Measure

Whiskey Men with Multi-City Enterprises

“Con” Oram Punched His Way to Montana Fame

The Carstairs Were Philly Brahmins of Booze

George Washburne: A Voice for Spirits in a “Drying” Nation

Whiskey Men Who Became Midwest Millionaires

Introducing the Roddewigs of Davenport

Reaching Post #700 & the Way Forward

Michael Kane and a Rocky Road to California Gold

The Tragic Demise of V.E. Shields, Whiskey Man

Whiskey Men as Authors

The Jaegers: Doing their Duty in Dubuque

The Tragers Had a Taste for the Titillating

Pittsburgh’s John O’Connor: Benefactor to Young and Old

The “Sporty Days” Simons of St. Louis

The Pennsylvania Steins Put Their Faith in Whiskey

The “Deep Water” Life and Death of Harry Hoyle

Whiskey Men and Trademark Disputes