Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men!

If, as is said, a picture is worth a thousand words, then the saloon sign above can afford a few choice ones. With the assumption that it is his likeness on a label of his whiskey, D. L. Arey, a liquor dealer from Salisbury was clearly in love with his North Carolina birthplace. Instead of giving local drinking establishments the typical lounging nude, Arey provided wholesale customers with a panorama of the state’s industries.

Let’s begin with the sow and piglets at lower left side of the picture. Hog farming has been an important part of North Carolina agriculture since colonial times. The Berkshire breed had been introduced in Arey’s day. This major upgrade in the quality of hogs was the spark that led to a massive industry with a gross value today in excess of 2 billion dollars annually.

Now move right to the man in the hat whose back is to us. He has a small shovel and a pan in his hand while kneeling over a stream. He is panning for gold. Few know that North Carolina was the site of the first discovery of gold in the United States. Although the mines have long since been exhausted, for decades resident and visitors — I among them — have visited local streams to pan for gold.

Almost directly above the panner is a second man looking approvingly at a leaf of tobacco. Tobacco and tobacco growers put North Carolina on the map. Beginning in the 1800s tobacco was North Carolina's key product. Farming and industry in the state were built around the crop, and two of the four largest cities developed as company towns for the world's largest tobacco companies.

Moving off the left shoulder of the miner we view the distinctive equipment required for making whiskey — the kettle, the coil, the barrel and a sluice of water. This does not appear to be a licensed, revenue-paying operation. Amidst apparently legitimate occupations, the men in the picture seem to be operating a moonshine still.

But wait! Over the shoulder of the standing moonshiner, barely seen in the picture, is a man elegantly dressed in a hat, coat and tie. He is carrying a rifle in his hand. Although he might be a customer for whiskey and the rifle is for protection against bears, a more logical explanation is that he is a revenue agent about to initiate a raid on the still — perhaps an omen of the future.

The final element of the saloon sign are two cases of “Pride of North Carolina” whiskey, the flagship brand of the D. L. Arey Company, showing both flask and quart sizes. Arey expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for this entire scene. It was replicated on the labels of his “Pride of N.C. Corn Whiskey.” Moreover, he took the time and expense of registering the image with the Patent & Trademark Office, claiming it had been in use by his company beginning in 1897, possibly dating the origin of the saloon sign.

Dougal Lindsey Arey was born in April 1856 in Rowan County, North Carolina, the son of farmer Milas and Nancy Arey. From his name his origins might be inferred as Scotch-Irish or English. His surname, however, originated with a pioneer ancestor named Peter Ihrig who immigrated from the German Palatinate in 1749 and settled in Rowan. There he changed his name to Eary; many of his descendants subsequently changed it once more to Arey.

When he was four years old his father died and Dougal grew up working as a farm hand. He was still farming at 22 when he married Nancy Lugenia Shemwell in 1880. Both were from Rowan and about the same age, possibly childhood sweethearts. They would go on to have eight children, two of whom died in infancy. Perhaps it was his growing family that propelled Aery off the farm and into Salisbury, the seat of Rowan County, where during the 1890s he opened a wholesale grocery business that specialized in liquor sales.

The 1900 federal census found the Areys living in Salisbury with five children, three sons and two daughters, whose ages ranged from 4 to 19. A fourth son would be born a year later. Also living with family were two servants, a cook and a “day laborer.” Aery apparently found alcohol sales very profitable, providing funds for real estate investments. Upon his death, his obituary accounted the liquor dealer “a man of considerable means and…probably the largest property owner in the county.”

As he prospered, the prohibition noose was slowly tightening around liquor sales in North Carolina. Imposed initially in small towns and rural areas, the ban did not affect Arey’s operation in Salisbury, In 1908, however, a referendum enacted statewide prohibition twelve years before National Prohibition. North Carolina became the first state in the South to ban alcoholcompletely. The “Pride of North Carolina Corn Whiskey” no longer could be made or sold. Revenue agents like the one on Aery’s sign above swarmed over the Tarheel State destroying stills and whiskey.

By this time Dougal had brought his son, Ernest Cass Arey into his liquor business. While the father stayed behind in Salisbury to look after his real estate and other business interests, Ernest moved the D. L. Arey Company to Danville, Virginia, a city immediately on the North Carolina border with excellent railroad access to its southern neighbor. From there the company could send mail order liquor via railroad express to virtually any part of the state. I have found only a single Aery artifact from the Danville location. It a folding card with an “Ourgood Bank” outside cover that inside contains a mail order price list for bourbon and corn whiskies and other liquors.

By 1909, as Virginia itself inched closer to a ban on alcohol, D. L. Arey Company also opened an outlet in Baltimore at 21-23 Pratt Street. There Ernest made an agreement with Maryland’s Cecil Distillery to provide him with whiskey for Arey brands. Among them was “Arey’s Malt Whiskey” that sold in gallon glass jugs and carried a picture of an older gentleman that I have identified with Dougal himself.

With whiskey production a major Maryland industry, that state seemed unlikely ever to go “dry.” Despite that assurance, Arey’s Baltimore experience was far from trouble free. In March 1911, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia seized two barrels of Arey whiskey shipped from Baltimore to Savannah, Georgia. The charge was misbranding.

A violation of food and drug laws was alleged by Federal authorities because “Pride of North Carolina” had not been aged five years nor had it been made in Salisbury as indicated on the barrels: “…The whiskey actually used in the manufacture of the product consisted of 50 percent new corn whiskey and 50 percent corn whiskey of older grade, all of said whiskey being procured from Distillery No. 19…in the State of Maryland, known as Cecil Distillery….” D. L. Arey pleaded guilty and was fined today’s dollar equivalent of $15,000.

The coming of National Prohibition in 1920 brought an end to all aspects of D. L. Arey Distilling Company and its brands. In Salisbury, the founder himself had other investments to merit his attention. In declining health as he aged, on March 20, 1922, Arey suffered a fatal stroke while at home and never regained consciousness. He was 65 years old. Arey’s funeral took place in his home on North Boundary Street and he was interred in Salisbury’s Chestnut Hill Cemetery. His monument is shown here.

Given Aery’s lifelong dedication to North Carolina, a commitment expressed in he saloon sign that opened this vignette, he must have mused frequently how his home state abruptly had terminated his thriving liquor business, requiring a scramble to Virginia, thence to Maryland and then nothing. Could it be, Dougal, that the revenue officer with a rifle lurking in the underbrush of your saloon sign was a peek into the future of things to come?

In the early 1890s, the New York City tour buses regularly stopped at the door of a saloon at 114 Bowery Street and passengers rushed inside to see the proprietor who was waiting for them behind the bar. What they saw was the suave gent shown here who was eager to tell them the story of his leap off the Brooklyn Bridge and how he lived to tell about it. His name was Steve Brodie and this was his “Famous Bowery Saloon.”

Born in Gotham in December 1861 into a poor family, Brodie early worked as a newsboy, bookmaker, and gambler to scrape by. As he grew to manhood he watched the construction of the engineering marvel of the time, the Brooklyn Bridge. At 1,600 feet long and 135 feet above the water the span time was considered the highest bridge in the world. By now 23, the young Brodie was married but broke and owed large gambling debts. He solicited a bet that if he survived a jump from the Brooklyn Bridge, he would win $200 and, more important, a local liquor dealer pledged to back him in opening a saloon.

On the morning of July 22nd, 1886, Brodie said goodbye to his wife, Bridget, and climbed on a wagon that was crossing the bridge. Down below friends sat in a rowboat waiting. Stories differ. Bystanders shouted “suicide” as they saw the form of a man preparing to jump and in a moment it was over as the form hit the water. Suddenly the rowboat was moving rapidly toward a man flailing in the water. Brodie’s friends pulled him into the boat and rowed to the Manhattan side of the bridge where Brodie was arrested. Headlines in New York papers the next day gave banner coverage to the story of Stevie Brodie and his jump. Soon the entire country knew.

But there were skeptics. Just a year earlier a trained swimmer and diver named Odlum had tried the stunt and been killed instantly upon hitting the water. Out of jail and lionized by the press, Brodie claimed that he had developed a special technique for the dive, perfecting his form for months by taking practice jumps off lower bridges and the masts of ships. Moreover, as a competative athlete he was in prime physical shape. The only total eye witness of the jump, however, was Brodie himself.

Still basking in the public limelight, Brodie opened his saloon shortly after his release from jail. He made sure that his three room drinking establishment was a cut above the usual Bowery dive. The floors were inlaid with silver dollars, the walls covered with humorous quips, and above the bar was a huge oil painting replicating Brodie making his famous Brooklyn Bridge leap. Next to it was a signed affidavit by a boat captain that he was the one who dragged Brodie from the East River. Below, a photo montage exists of the saloon interior with Brodie, now approaching middle age, standing behind his bar and working in his picture-filled office. One author has said that Brodie’s drinking establishment “partially served as a temple dedicated to himself.”

A second large painting of the bridge graced the outside of Brodie’s place. The sign indicated that his was a “tied saloon,” featuring only one brand of beer in return for financial incentives from the brewers — in this case the William H. Frank Brewing Company in Brooklyn.

Frank, an experience brewmaster, had invested in an existing brewery, in 1893 and changed its name to his. He soon expanded the beer output to 150,000 barrels or 4,650,000 gallons annually. From his brewery. shown below, he issued glass bottles that featured elaborate embossing of an eagle rampant on a horseshoe.

Meanwhile Brodie was pursuing a second career. He became an actor, appearing in vaudeville musical skits. One theatrical in 1894 focussed on his own exploits. Called “On the Bowery,” it used a set fashioned after his saloon and as a finale had him make a faux jump. One of the playbills from “On the Bowery” depicts Brodie behind the bar serving a top-hatted customer while a Bowery bum siphons alcohol from a cigar lighter.

As time passed and questions continued to be asked about the veracity of his story, Brodie reacted negatively to the skeptics and the cooling of his fame. He moved to Buffalo, New York, where he opened a new saloon. There he made it known that he contemplated a new stunt — jumping over Niagara Falls. He never did.

Subsequently Brodie pulled up stakes again and moved 1,460 miles west to San Antonio, Texas, perhaps for reasons of health. There in 1901 at the age of 39 he died. The cause was variously laid to diabetes or tuberculosis. His body was returned to New York where he was interred in Section 9, Plot 443, Grave 13 of Queens County’s Catholic Calvary Cemetery. To his dying day Brodie proclaimed vehemently that he had indeed made that famous jump in 1886.

Addendum: His death, however, did not end the Brodie saga. In 1933, more than two decades after his passing, Hollywood retold his story in a film called “The Bowery.” It starred tough guy George Raft as the fearless jumper. To attempt a seemingly suicidal or high risk stunt even today is known as “to do a Brodie.” I came on the saloonkeeper’s story while doing research on automobile steering knobs, shown here. Wikipedia states that they are generally known as “Brodie knobs” because of the dangers they present when driving. Thus a knobpreserves for posterity the name of perhaps the most famous daredevil of American history.

When Saloonkeeper Tom Kelly found obtaining good timber too difficult to allow him to build a house, he turned to something he knew well — beer bottles. Kelly collected and used an estimated 51,000 bottles to construct a house of glass and adobe in Rhyolite, now a ghost town, in the Nevada desert near the eastern edge of Death Valley.

Rhyolite was a perfect example of a boom town. When gold was discovered in the vicinity in 1905, the rush was on. By the following year the town, initially called “Bullfrog” after an area mine, had 10,000 residents. Shown above in its heyday, Rhyolite reputedly was so wealthy that serving the community were three stage lines, among them the first automobile stage, and three railroads, including the Tonopah & Tidewater, the Bullfrog-Goldfield, and the Las Vegas & Tonopah. “As many as a hundred train cars waited at the depots with incoming freight, and reloaded with gold-laden ore,” claimed one account.

At its peak Rhyolite boasted an efficient water system complete with mains, 400 electric street lights, a school for 250 children, a miners’ union hospital, public baths, an ice plant, a weekly newspaper, foundries and machine shops. On the darker side of its economy were numerous brothels, gambling halls, and an estimated fifty saloons. One of these was owned by Tom Kelly who stepped into the spotlight of history only briefly at age 76 when he decided to build a house, possibly intended for family members.

Kelly’s choice of building materials was driven by a lack of good local timber. He chose bottles, he said because “it's very difficult to build a house with lumber from a Joshua tree."Beer bottles were particularly common in Rhyolite. Anheuser Busch brewery in St. Louis had made the American West its special marketing target, literally flooding mining areas with its beer. Although its ads depicted crates of bottles carried by mule trains wending through the mountains, most beer came by rail car.

As result, the most prominent bottles in Kelly’s house were from the Adophus Busch Glass Works in Belleville, Illinois, and the Adophus Busch Glass Mfg. Co. of St. Louis. The bottles are readily identified by the “AB” monogram on the base. Busch established these factories in his never-ending quest to find sufficient glass containers for his ever-increasing beer production. A second prominent bottle carried the mark “R & Co” and a number. Those were made by Reed & Company who operated the Massillon (Ohio) Glassworks. Reed was a major provider of beer bottles, including for Anheuser Busch, particularly supplying Western bottlers. The marks of both bottle makers are shown below.

From his own drinking establishment and other Rhyolite saloons, Kelly had no trouble gathering the thousands of glass items needed for construction, also including wine, whiskey, and medicine bottles, The saloonkeeper laid the bottles on their sides, with the bottoms facing out, and mortared them together with adobe mud. Few if any were cleaned before placement. Some bottles like the Hofstetter’s Bitters shown here were laid on their side, apparently to add decoration.

Estimates differ widely on how long it took Kelly to build the three room, L-shaped dwelling. Some accounts say five months, others more than a year. He is said to have spent about $2,500 on the building with most the money going for wood trim and fixtures. The structure was decorated with a gingerbread roof strip and boasted a front porch. The interior of the house had plaster walls and a wooden floor that resembled a big city home. One writer has speculated: “To the miners of the day, this was a castle.”

Whatever Kelly’s original intention was for the house, by the time it was finished he had a new idea. Whether it was his advancing age, the foresight to see the future of Rhyolite, or another reason, upon completion Tom decided to capitalize on the widespread attention the structure had attracted and raffle it off. Tickets cost $5.00, equivalent today to about $100.00. Local lore has Kelly selling about 400 tickets. If true he realized $2,000 from his effort, less than he is said to have spent. The raffle was won by locals named Bennett, three of the family shown above. They lived in the bottle house from 1906 until 1914.

Saloonkeeper Tom Kelly, having built his bottle house, faded from the scene. So did Rhyolite. Almost as fast as it had developed, the town declined. As the richest ore was exhausted, production fell. A financial panic in 1907 dried up investment money for new prospecting. A major mine began operating at a loss and closed in 2011. In an attempt at levity, Rhyolite took the penguin as town mascot with the saying: “It is as hard to find gold in the Nevada desert as it is a penguin.” Out-of-work miners moved away and the town population plummeted. By 1920 the census recorded only 14 residents and Rhyolite thereafter became just another Nevada “ghost town.”

Through it all, however, the bottle house survived. In 1925 Paramount Pictures chose Rhyolite for the filming of two movies called “Airmail” and “Wanders of the Wasteland,” the latter a silent film in early Technicolor. The studio repaired the roof of the bottle house and after filming was completed donated the property to the “Improvement Association” of the nearby town of Beatty, Nevada. That organization operated the house as a museum until 1953 when the house was sold to a couple who ran it as an antique store. In recent years the building has remained standing, although empty, and a tourist attraction for those willing to drive off Nevada State Route 374 to what remains of Rhyolite for a look at the bottle house Tom Kelly built.

Foreword: Dictionary definitions of a “pundit” suggest an individual who provides opinions on a subject or subjects to the public, usually through the media. That definition suits the three men featured here, all of whom began their careers as print journalists and moved on to more literary forms. Two grew up in smaller towns but all three developed national audiences by commenting from large cities, namely Baltimore, New York and Chicago. All three at length addressed whiskey and prohibition.

Known widely as the “Sage of Baltimore,” Henry Louis (“H.L.”) Mencken was the most influential American commentator of the first third of the Twentieth Century and a man of strong opinions on almost everything. One of his positive views was of Maryland rye whiskey. Mencken contended that a friend “always ate rye bread instead of wheat because rye was the bone and sinew of Maryland whiskey -- the most healthful appetizer yet discovered by man.” According to Mencken, the family doctor “believed and taught that a shot of Maryland whiskey was the best preventive of pneumonia in the R months.”

When Maryland distilling came to a screeching halt with the coming of Prohibition in 1920, Mencken abhorred it. “The chief argument against Prohibition is that it doesn’t prohibit,” he commented.“This is also the chief argument in favor of it.”

In a more serious mode in 1925 Mencken wrote: “There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. Not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

The author personally responded to the “Great Experiment” by selling his car and using the proceeds to purchase a large stock of “the best wines and liquors I could find.” Maryland rye was among them. Mencken stored them in a basement vault in his home whose locked door bore a custom-painted sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. The sign said: “This vault is protected by a device releasing chorine gas under 200 pound pressure. Enter at your own risk.”

No one celebrated the end of Prohibition with more gusto than Mencken. A photograph on the front page of the Baltimore Sun showed him downing the first beer to be poured at Baltimore’s Rennert’s Hotel bar in 13 years. “Pretty good. Not bad at all,” said the Sage.

Once Irvin S. Cobb was among America’s top celebrities: author of 60 books, he was America’s highest paid journalist with the New York World; a national celebrity of radio, motion pictures;and a high paid speaker on the lecture circuit. As native Kentuckian, Cobb was steeped in the taste and lore of whiskey. At the height of his popularity in 1920 National Prohibition was enacted. At first Cobb dealt with it humorously, writing that: “Since Prohibition came in and a hiccup became a mark of affluence instead of a social error as formally, and a loaded flank is a sign of hospitality rather than of menace, things may have changed.”

That jocular attitude had vanished by 1929 when Cobb wrote the only American novel devoted to the American whiskey industry. Entitled “Red Likker” and featuring a map of Kentucky on the cover, the book tells the story of a family that founded a distillery called Bird and Son right after the Civil War. It traces the history of the business to Prohibition when, like most distilleries, it was forced to close. Ultimately the distillery is destroyed by fire and the family is reduced to to running a crossroads grocery store.

Not only did Cobb inveigh against Prohibition in his literary works, he made it a personal crusade. Joining a national organization called the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, he became chairman of the Authors and Artists Committee. Under his vigorous leadership the committee ultimately boasted 361 members, including some of the nation’s best known figures. As chairman, he blamed Prohibition for increased crime, alcoholism, and disrespect for law.“If Prohibition is a a noble experiment,” he said, “then the San Francisco fire and the Galveston flood should be listed among the noble experiments of our national history.”

When Prohibition finally ended in 1934, Cobb was recognized nationally for his personal contribution to Repeal. The first night liquor became legal, he reportedly went to a hotel bar that once again had begun pouring, pulled out a $20 bill and hollered: “Drinks for everyone.”

A more nuanced approach to Prohibition was taken by George Ade, a favorite author of Mencken (who conversely did not like Cobb). Ade, from rural Newton County, Indiana, began his career as a newspaper reporter in Layfayette, Indiana, before moving to Illinois to work for the Chicago Daily News. His newspaper columns, short stories, and Broadway plays brought him national attention during the early decades of the Twentieth Century.

As many journalists, Ade was fond of strong drink and once wrote: “Do not give alms promiscuously. Select the unworthy poor and make them happy. To give to the deserving is a duty, but to help the improvident, drinking class is clear generosity, so that the donor has a right to be warmed by a selfish pride and count on a most flattering obituary.”

Breaking with his “dry” fellow Republicans, the writer supported the movement to end Prohibition. Ade was equally concerned. however, about bringing to the fore what he saw as the abuses involved in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade and saloon life. The result was a short book Ade called “The Old Time Saloon,” with a subtitle, “Not Wet, Not Dry, But History.”

Ade’s book has been republished several times, most recently in 2016, annotated by Chicago author Bill Savage. Noting that in 1931 most Americans had never been in a saloon, Savage notes:“Ade takes the liquor industry and saloon owners to task for flouting the law and bringing on their own demise, but he also brings to life the political, economic, and sentimental reality of this American institution.” The book is notable for its use of saloon-based cartoons of the “wet” era.

In a late chapter, Ade takes aim at what National Prohibition had done to America: “Whether the reader of these lines happens to be a die-in-the-last-ditch Prohi, or as I am, a member of the Association Against the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, he or she will admit that the drinking habits of…youngsters who have come from the cradle and up from the nursery since 1920, are pretty deplorable.”

Eventually each of these pundits observed the end of National Prohibition and celebrated. Ade would see the 1934 Repeal legislation from Congress require many of the saloon reforms he had advocated. Cobb would author a drink recipe booklet for Paul Jones distillery of Paducah, Kentucky. Although exalting, Menckencomplained about paying higher prices for liquor after Repeal. Now, he contended, his favorite Maryland rye cost $3 to $3.50 a quart -- not the $4.00 per gallon he had paid in 1919.

When Shakespeare has Juliet intone to Romeo, “What’s in a name?,” he was blissfully unaware of the confusions, collisions, and conflicts that would characterize the pre-Prohibition liquor trade over the name of a whiskey. Among brands, the history of the “The Old Judge,” is among the most convoluted. That background failed to bothered the Rothenbergs of San Francisco: When the family acquired rights to “The Old Judge,” they ran with the name and never looked back.

The Old Judge brand is said to have originated on whiskey in 1857, a product of M.T. Mitchell distillery of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. Another source claims that the name had been used since 1866 by Emil Stern's Son & Co. of New York City. On the West Coast a short-lived San Francisco liquor house named Kane, O’Leary & Company in 1881 were granted a federal trademark for “The Old Judge.” Perhaps as part of a bankruptcy, that company apparently transferred ownership of the brand to another Frisco liquor house, Newmark, Gruenberg & Co., that trademarked the label again a year later under its own name. Subsequently those partners split and Max Gruenberg became sole proprietor.

Throughout this period a facility was operating near Frankfort, at Benson Creek, Kentucky, known in federal parlance as Distillery No. 11, 7th District, and popularly as “The Old Judge Distillery.” It was acquired in 1899 by S.C. Herbst, a Milwaukee liquor wholesaler who then issued an Old Judge bourbon. Just a short time later the Rothenbergs come on the scene.

The confusion carries forward with this family. An article in “Bottles and Extras” in 2005 claimed that Sara Rothenberg with a son, Samual (sic), opened a liquor store in Oakland, California, in 1887 and a year later bought out Gruenberg at 525 Front Street in San Francisco. My research indicates a considerably different story. Sara was the wife of Louis Rothenberg who founded the Oakland operation under his wife’s name as “S.B. Rothenberg & Co.” She was active in the firm as a director and trademarks were applied for in her name, but husband Louis was running the liquor house. Nor did the Rothenbergs buy out Max Gruenberg who continued to operate at the Front St. address until at least 1896. What the family apparently bought from Max was the The Old Judge brand name.

Once owning the rights to the name, the Rothenbergs made it their flagship and in 1902 trademarked it in their own name. While featuring other labels, including “Quaker Club” and “Rosemond,” the company’s full attention was given to advertising and marketing Old Judge. Key to the Rothenbergs’ merchandising were giveaway items to customers like saloons, restaurants and hotels featuring their whiskey, particularly gifting colorful serving and tip trays. Tray bottoms were clear about the source.

Back-of-the-bar bottles were also a favorite giveaway item. They came to the customer filled and after being empty, expectation was they would be refilled with Old Judge. Far too often, however, bartenders would refill them with substandard, cheap whiskey and charge premium prices. That practice caused them to be banned from bar shelves in 1934 as part of Repeal legislation.

The company also advertised through shot glasses. Less costly to produce than the lithographed trays and back-of-the-bar bottles, these items also might be handed out to retail customers to remind them to buy Old Judge. The lithographed cardboard sign below indicates that the Rothenbergs were capable of catching popular scenes of the times to aid Old Judge sales. It is a 17 and 1/8th by 12 and 1/2 inch saloon sign. On hefty 7/8th of an inch thick cardboard, a color lithograph celebrates May 1, 1898 when Admiral Dewey caught the antiquated Spanish fleet at anchor in Manila Bay and destroyed it in the ensuing battle.

Clearly the most unusual item given away by the Rothenbergs was a heavy black iron daschund foot scraper. Many streets in San Francisco remained unpaved in the late 1800s, exposing what locals call “Bay mud,” consisting of thick deposits of soft, water-saturated clay. When it rained, this soil stuck insistently to shoes and might be tracked by customers into local drinking establishments. An Old Judge foot scraper might have been a welcome addition to any Frisco saloon.

As they prospered, the Rothenberg household grew. The 1900 Census found them living at 2421 Washington Street in San Francisco. Louis was 44 years old, born in Germany. Sara was 12 years younger, born in England of German parentage. The couple had been married for 14 years. Their children were two: Sanford, age thirteen and Madeline, nine. Also in the household was an Irish maid and Henry Rothenberg, Louis’ younger brother, who was working as a traveling salesman for the liquor house. When the company incorporated the same year at $150,000 (roughly equivalent to $3.3. million today), Louis, Sara and Henry were principals.

Son Sanford grew to maturity and was brought into the liquor house initially as a clerk. The young man, however, had other ideas and hankered for a life on the stage. He made his vaudeville debut in 1910 to audience acclaim and by 1916, using “Sandy Roth” as his stage name, had joined the movie industry where he was playing bit parts in films as well as serving in production roles. “Sandy” has earned a brief biography on Wikipedia.

Symbolic of the wealth that sales of Old Judge were bringing the family was the purchase by Louis of an obsolete Navy tender, called “Prairie,” built during the Spanish-American War. He paid $22,666.66 (equivalent today to almost a half million dollars) for the ship, a vessel large enough to hold dozens of Rothenberg relatives and friends on joy rides around San Francisco Bay.

As prohibitionary laws mounted in localities and states where Old Judge had been a best seller, the Rothenbergs began to experience financial difficulties. When a creditor pressed to collect a loan, Louis, ignoring California law, dissolved the corporation without seeking a vote of all stockholders. Instead he transferred the entire assets of the business to his own account and continued to operate. A California appeals court took a dim view of this gambit and found for the creditor.

With the coming of National Prohibition, the Rothenbergs were forced to shut the doors on their liquor business. The 1920 census lists Louis, now sixty years old, as “retired,” living with Sara and Sanford. There the trail ends as I have been unable to track the family further. It is my hope that some sharp-eyed relative will stumble on this vignette and help fill in the blanks. The many Old Judge artifacts the Rodenbergs have given to posterity deserve nothing less than to know how the story ends.

When National Prohibition arrived in 1920, Leo Salamandra, a successful and wealthy Trenton, New Jersey, liquor dealer still had thousands of bottles of valuable whiskey on premises — but was forbidden to market it legitimately. For months he anguished about what to do. Late in 1921 Salamandra determined to sell the stash to a gang of New York bootleggers. It cost him his life.

Salamandra was born in Menteleone, Spoleto, Central Italy in 1878. Two older brothers, Louis and Rosato, had immigrated to the United States earlier and apparently already were engaged in the liquor trade in Trenton when Leo, 20 years old, arrived in 1898. He soon met and married Antonette Anna, still in her teens, who also was an Italian immigrant. They would have a family of four children, two girls and two boys.

For reasons unknown, Salamandra did not join with his brothers in the whiskey trade but struck out on his own, opening a grocery about 1904 at 611 Roebling Avenue, a store that emphasized liquor sales. His quick success was evident. By 1908, according to Trenton business directories, Leo was operating a wholesale and retail liquor store at 200 Fulton and a bottling plant at 113 Cummings Avenue.

Salamandra was wholesaling whiskey, likely buying product from distilleries in the region by the barrel and decanting it in large ceramic jugs for sale to the many drinking establishments boasted by Trenton. As shown here, one of Leo’s jugs could hold as much as three gallons of whiskey The saloon would sell it by the drink over the bar probably as the “house” low cost brand. A jug like the one shown here would serve up roughly 256 shots.

The marketing strategy adopted by Salamandra involved copious advertising. Shown above is an ad he placed multiple times in the 1908 Trenton business directory. He emphasized his sole bottling rights to the beers of F. A. Poth Brewing Corporation of Philadelphia. He employed glass bottles for beer and house soft drinks with a wire mechanism holding the stopper in place. Of note is his embossing on the glass. Looking closely one can see that the “S” is actually a snake-like critter, e.g. a salamander. Leo was using his name as a branding device.

Along the line the Italian immigrant also incorporated. A 1914 ad that ran in Trenton newspapers claimed that: “You make no mistake in calling on Leo Salamandra & Co. Inc, for beer, wine, whiskies and liquors of all kinds.”

The ad also claimed that: “You not only save money by dealing with us, but get the highest quality as well.”

Salamandra’s advertising investments also may be responsible for an item in the Trenton Times extolling the musical talent of his two daughters, Theresa and Iola, both accounted by the newspaper as musical prodigies even at 10 and 11 years old. In the story the tots’ piano teacher predicted“a bright future for them in the musical world.” Leo and Anna must have beamed at the publicity.

In 1920, the passage of the Volstead Act and imposition of National Prohibition dealt a blow to Salamandra. Even though New Jersey never voted for the Constitutional amendment and resistance was strong in the state, the liquor dealer was forced to suspend all sales of alcohol. Apparently hoping to recoup lost income, he opened a new bottling plant in Trenton, apparently to make soft drinks. According to trade publications, his plant had the latest in mechanized equipment. Salamandra also bought a pair of two-ton trucks.

Unable to sell all the whiskey he had on hand when the axe fell, Salamandra fretted over for months over what to do with the stash of liquor still in his warehouse. Determined to make Prohibition work, federal agents energetically led raids all over New Jersey, shutting down speakeasies, roadhouses, stills, and breweries. Nevertheless, virtually any resident who wished to could drink with impunity. Bootlegging operated openly.

Salamandra made a fateful decision. He would sell his residual whiskey supply to the mob. Through intermediaries, likely fellow Italians, he made contact with a New York City gang headed by Meyer Lansky, shown here, who in association with “Bugsy" Siegel and “Lucky” Luiciano ran a prominent bootlegging operation. Leo presumably made a deal to sell 51 cases of whiskey to the gang, valued then at $30,000 and worth in today’s dollar about $600,000. The conspirators agreed to the handoff near Kingston, New Jersey, about 14 miles north of Trenton when the money would be turned over. The route is shown on this map.

On the night of February 13, 1921, with Salamandra and a brother following in their automobile, his truck carrying the whiskey set out from Trenton for the rendezvous. The liquor dealer apparently was apprehensive about the deal as he and associates were armed with pistols. As they neared Kingston about 3 a.m. suddenly a Cadillac touring car with four men in it — hired by Lansky — pulled up beside them, guns drawn, and forced both the truck and Salamandra’s car off the road.

The New York Times story the next day is imprecise but it appears Salamandra and the others in his party were then escorted to a nearby New Jersey village called Rocky Hill. Apparently the hijackers did not disarm Salamandra’s party and during a dispute a gun battle broke out. The leader of the bootleggers, a notorious gunman named Frank Walsh, was wounded with a gunshot to the eye. Leo Salamandra was shot five times at close range and died on the spot. A painting by W. H. Koerner (1878-1938) called “Bootleggers” captures a similar scene.

Carrying the dying Walsh with them, gang members started north toward Brunswick, New Jersey, at a high rate of speed in Salamandra’s loaded truck and wrecked. When police quickly arrived at the scene they found Walsh dead. Two of the bootleggers were captured and taken to the Middlesex County jail in Brunswick. Investigation revealed they were from gang members from the Newark area with New York City connections.

At first the incident was treated as a hijacking but as evidence mounted it began to look like an illicit liquor sale gone bad. It appeared that Walsh previously had drawn $10,000 from a New Brunswick bank, apparently to pay for the liquor. Since that amount was only one-third of the value of Salamandra’s stash, and likely less than previously agreed, Leo and his brother may have argued with Walsh’s gang and gunfire resulted.

The dots connected back to Meyer Lansky. Brazenly, Lansky himself drove down from New York City to New Brunswick with the cash to bail out the two incarcerated gang members. The official investigation into the events that fatal night has been characterized by one observer: “There was lots of lying…by both sides and the truth was never fully determined.” As for Salamandra’s whiskey stash, federal agents confiscated and destroyed it.

None of this obviously meant anything to Leo Salamandra. At 42 years of age, he was buried in Trenton’s Our Lady of Lourdes Cemetery and a large monument, symbolic of family wealth, raised in his memory. In addition to his widow, Anna, Leo left behind four minor children. Iola and Theresa were in their late teens, sons Leo V. was 13 and Anthony was 10.

Perhaps to have a father for her boys, Anna remarried. Her husband was Tito Salamandra, Leo’s brother, possibly the one accompanying him during the botched liquor sale. The 1940 census found all the Salamandras living in a large home at 736 Greenwood Avenue in Trenton, shown here as it looks today. Anna, at 59, was head of the household. With her was husband Tito and her two unmarried sons, Leo V. and Anthony, a lawyer. Apparently with musical careers forgotten both girls had married and with husbands were living with the family. Iola was wed to an undertaker and had two daughters; Theresa was married to an insurance salesman, no children listed.

Importantly, the family was back in the whisky business. After Repeal in 1934 Leo V. Salamandra almost immediately reopened the liquor store his father had founded. A 1935 Trenton directory contained an ad for the firm, now located at 133 Morris Avenue, off Chestnut Street, claiming a 1904 origin. Tito appears to have been working for his nephew/stepson as a salesman. Despite the violent end of their “founding father,” the Salamandras had moved on from the tragic events of 1921 and crafted their lives into a close-knit family.

Shown below is a photograph of a large, prosperous German family. Parents Gebhard and Josephina are holding hands. Behind them are their nine well-dressed children, neatly arranged, five boys and four girls. They are the Zapfs of Helmhoften, Wurttemburg, Germany. Who would suspect that within several decades these Zapfs would be dominant from Jacksonville south to Miami in Florida’s liquor, soft drink, and bottling industries.

The first family member to immigrate to the United States, and the main subject of this vignette, was Franz Joseph Zapf, standing second from left. Born in 1860 and dropping the “Franz” for business purposes somewhere long the way, Joseph arrived in Joplin, Missouri, in 1884 where he may have found employment in a local liquor house.

Zapf also found a wife in Joplin, Mary Danner Muller, Missouri born of German immigrant parents. Seven years younger than Joseph, Mary was a teenager when they met and 20 when they married in November, 1887. By that time, Zapf had moved to Jacksonville where he took his new bride to live. They would have two children, Augusta Emily, born in 1888, and Franz Joseph Jr., born in 1892. A photograph shows a well-to-do young family possibly overdressed for Florida heat.

By this time Zapf was a prosperous Jacksonville merchant. He had acquired a business “gold mine” for being selected by the Anheuser Busch Brewery of St. Louis as its representative and bottler of its beer for a large swath of Northern Florida. Florida heat can work up powerful thirsts and Zapf had the brews to quench it. He would receive the beer in barrels from the brewery and decant it into bottles with his distinct embossing. Over this would be a standard AB paper label, likely with a “bottled by” designation at the bottom.

Zapf parlayed this advantage into establishing what he soon called“the best known and largest liquor house in the state.” He sold at both wholesale and retail. An array of large ceramic and glass jugs with his name testify to his selling containers of whiskey and wine to local Jacksonville area saloons, including a saloon he operated in connection with his store at 620 West Bay Street. By his own admission Zapf was not a rectifier who mixed up his own brands of whiskey in a back room. In a 1908 ad aimed at mail order customers, he asserted: “We do not bottle any whiskies, all our case goods are bottled at the distillery.”

Meanwhile, back in Germany, other Zapfs were noting Joseph’s progress. Next to come was his older brother George in 1889, the boy standing far left in the photo above. Likely fueled by funds from Joseph, George settled 280 miles south in West Palm Beach, involved in liquor sales and a bottling operation. This Zapf was best known for building the Seminole Hotel in West Palm at the corner of Banyan and Narcissus. Elected to the first West Palm Beach City Commission, George watched is hotel burn down twice as fires ravaged the city. He rebuilt it each time, the last as a “fireproof” structure, shown below. The Seminole featured several saloons at ground level, part of a row that caused Banyan to be called “Whiskey Street.”

The next to migrate to the U.S. was Gephard Zapf. In the photo above he is to the right of Joseph. Like George, he too went to southern Florida where he opened a bottling operation at Lake Worth Beach.“Lake Worth Soda Water Factory. Gephard Zapf, Proprietor,” read an ad in an 1896-97 directory for Dade County: “Soda water, sarsaparilla, lemon, strawberry, pineapple, vanilla, orange, ginger ale, root and birch beers, cream soda, distilled water.”

Last to join the family in America was Alois (a.k.a. “Max”) Zapf. In the photo above he is the little boy sitting on an older sister’s lap with an apple in his hand. Alois is recorded running a bottling operation in Miami in 1896. On December 27 of that year a fire that began in a local grocery soon engulfed two blocks of business buildings, including Zapf’s soda water factory. A generator there exploded killing one of his workers trying to escape the flames. Later Alois would join his brother in Jacksonville at the Joseph Zapf Company. He supervised Anheuser Busch bottling, and was vice-president of the Jacksonville Bottlers & Fountain Supply Company, another family enterprise.

Histories of the beverage industry in Florida are replete with references to the Zapfs: The Historic Palm Beach website: “The Zapfs…ran bottling operations across Florida.” The Archeology Society of Southern Florida: “There are records of this family’s bottling business throughout the state.” Palm Beach Past website: The Zapf family had bottling businesses in many Florida cities.”

Meanwhile in Jacksonville, Joseph continued to prosper with his multi-faceted businesses, expanding into real estate. He became a vice president of the Trout Creek Development Assn., an organization devoted to selling building lots along a stream located entirely within Jacksonville known for its brackish, swampy conditions. Joseph was exhibiting a sense of humor as he posed for a photographer with alligators in a scene reminiscent of Trout Creek. About the same time Joseph also created the Florida State Grocery Company and served as its president.

Gradually going “dry” through local option, Florida in 1918 passed a statewide prohibition against the making or sale of alcoholic beverages. The Zapfs took less of an economic blow than other liquor dealers because of their diversification. Staying at his Bay Street address, Joseph created a new entity designated the “Atlantic Distributing Company.” This firm was bottling and selling soft drinks, supporting the move by Anheuser Busch to non-alcoholic beverages. Shown here is an Atlantic Distributing Company ad for the St. Louis company’s ginger beer “mellow, yet full of pep and ginger.”

Joseph Zapf lived to see National Prohibition end but has retired by that time and did not re-enter the liquor trade. He died in 1939 at the age of 79 in Jacksonville and was buried in Duval County’s Oaklawn Cemetery next to his wife, Mary. Earlier a book of cartoon “biographies” entitled“Floridians as the World Sees Them”featured Joseph Zapf among those honored. His cartoon serves as a memorial to the German immigrant’s career. Joseph is depicted driving the American eagle of opportunity to new heights, with Anheuser Busch providing the wind at his back.

Note: Thanks to a family website on Ancestry.com a great deal of information and photos are available on the Zapfs, including the fascinating picture of the family as it looked about 1875.

Foreword: During National Prohibition (1920-1934) all legal whiskey supplies were in the hands of druggists who could issue small quantities of liquor upon presentation of a doctor’s prescription. During those 14 years, numbers of prescriptions soared and local pharmacies prospered. Even before 1920, however, druggists were active in the liquor trade, often mixing up their own brands of whiskey and advertising it widely. Below are vignettes of three druggists who saw the advantages in commercing in alcohol and, as a result, prospered.

In the Pre-Prohibition era it was common practice for pharmacies to carry a line of alcoholic beverages. Often whiskey, brandy and wine package sales were the chief economic engine of such establishments and made rich men of their owners. Edwin E. Bruce of Omaha, Nebraska, was among those American druggists who profited mightily by being in the whiskey trade.

With three partners in the 1880’s Bruce founded a wholesale drug company in Ottumwa, Iowa, and subsequently opened a firm in Omaha in 1887 that became known as E.E. Bruce & Co. Bruce quickly found success in Nebraska and beyond. His trade was reputed to extend “throughout all sections of the West to the Pacific coast.” By the early 1900s Bruce employed thirty clerks, assistants and traveling salesmen in a spacious Omaha building. Despite the facade of wholesale drugs, Bruce’s advertising emphasized his spiritous beverages.

Bruce’s flagship was Country Club Bourbon, a brand he sold in an elegant stoneware quart cylinder that was the product of Sherwood Brothers pottery in far off New Brighton, Pennsylvania. His whiskey likely was obtained from distilleries in Kentucky. Bruce also may have done some “rectifying,” that is, mixing several whiskeys to improved taste and smoothness.

Made rich by his drug and liquor business, Bruce and his family occupied a mansion, located in Omaha's Gold Coast neighborhood. A co-founder of the National Association of Wholesale Druggists, Bruce also was well-known in Omaha business circles. According to a contemporary account, he was someone respected for “his ability, enterprise and ingenuity.“

Shown here in a 1892 cartoon, George Fleming wasted no time in putting his Pittsburgh pharmacy on the map. A contemporary account called him“undoubtedly the best known druggist west of the Allegheny Mountains.”Doing business from its single location at Market and Diamond Streets, the company advertised Fleming’s Export Rye and Fleming’s Malt Whiskey across America.

A square bottle similar to one shown here has been found in a Sacramento, California state park. It is embossed on two sides: “Fleming’s Export Pure Rye” and “Bottled Expressly for Family Use.”

George also featured as gifts to prime customers attractive paperweights and shot glasses, as shown here. They frequently stressed the role of physician endorsements,. as might be expected for a druggist. Whiskey sales not only were brisk but apparently extremely profitable. A contemporary satirical poem about George Fleming averred: “For although he’s a druggist his earnings are high...From selling old rye.”

Flemings was a rectifier, not a distiller. He bought whiskey in bulk, mixed it with other ingredients to their taste, slapped a label on it and called it his own. Look at the cartoon again: George could be stirring up a cocktail of Fleming’s Export Rye in that giant mortar.

Philip P. Van Vleet, a prominent wholesale druggist in Memphis, Tennessee, was another whose success depended heavily on marketing a wide array of whiskeys. Liquor, along with proprietary drugs and nostrums, brought him wealth and allowed him to hobnob with the rich and famous, including the President of the United States.

After working years for other druggists, in 1884 Phillip struck out on his own, establishing the wholesale pharmaceutical house of Van Vleet & Co., located at 320-324 Main Street, a major Memphis commercial avenue. He managed this business to such affluence that he was able to buy up several other Memphis drug firms. They included the Mansfield Drug Co., a well established company, whose purchase by Van Vleet was considered a coup in Memphis business circles.

He called the resulting enterprise Van Vleet-Mansfield Co., its building shown on a glass paperweight. The new corporation was instantly profitable, attributed by one author to the exertions of Van Vleet himself: “He created this colossal pattern of success through his guidance and by his service-driven attitude. The result was one of the largest and most progressive wholesale drug companies in the country.”

Essential to this prosperity was the emphasis Van Vleet put on making and selling whiskey. In addition to mixing up drugs and proprietary medicines on his premises, he was blending, bottling and selling his own brands of booze. Among his labels were “Chickasaw,” “Clarendon,” “Gayoso Club,” “King’s Choice,” “Mossy Dell,” “Old Southern Home,” “Rosadora Rye,” “Silver Plume,” “Sweet Fern,” and “Wayside Inn.”

Accounted a multi-millionaire in his own time, Van Vleet and his wife were described as “great globe trotters.” When the couple visited the Philippines, newly acquired by the United States from Spain, they met William Howard Taft, at the time the civilian governor of the islands. According to the Washington Post, “a warm and enduring friendship was established.” When Taft was elected President, the Van Vleets were his guests at the White House.

Note: All three of these druggists as whiskey men have been written up in the past on this blog as individual biographies. Those are available as: Edwin E. Bruce, May 18, 2011; George Fleming, August 13, 2011; and Philip Van Vleet, June 24, 2016.

With its label in tatters the whiskey bottle shown right would have little interest except for the name in the smallest print: “Tex Rickard,” an artifact from one of his early drinking establishments. Born in Kansas City in January 1870, George Lewis “Tex” Rickard parlayed operating saloons into a career promoting boxing matches that made him famous throughout the United States and, indeed, the world.

While a toddler, Rickard and his family moved to Texas, where soon after his father died. Forced to truncate his education to help with family finances, at eleven years old he went to work as a cowboy on the Texas frontier and took part in several long cattle drives. By the age of 23, having indicated unusual abilities and earned the nickname “Tex,” Rickard, shown right as a youth, was elected town marshall of Henrietta, Texas. He married in 1894 and had a child but both his wife and baby died within a year.

Perhaps grieving over his losses and drawn by the discovery of gold in Alaska in November 1895, Rickard headed for the gold fields of Alaska where he and a partner staked and later sold a valuable claim. He used the funds to open a saloon, gambling hall and hotel in Dawson City, Canada, that he called “The Northern,” a name he subsequently gave to several of his saloons.

Possibly suffering from the deaths of his wife and child and a second failed marriage, in Dawson Rickard began to drink and gamble heavily. It cost him his share of the saloon and he was forced to work as a poker dealer and bartender in the Monte Carlo Saloon. It was there Tex with a partner first began to promote boxing matches. But gold still beckoned. In the spring of 1899, reputedly with only $35 to his name, Rickard headed to Nome, Alaska, where a strike had been reported.

Apparently with borrowed funds, Rickard opened a saloon and gambling house in Nome. By the fall of 1899 he had cleared $90,000 ($2.2 million equivalent today). By the following year, as nugget-bearing miners continued to drink and gamble at his establishment, he was $100,000 to the good and within five years was worth a half million. Possibly because “The Northern” was already the name of a Nome saloon, Rickard may have called his “The Southern.” The cabinet card above is of an Alaska saloon of that name with Rickard’s name prominently displayed.

One author has commented: “Physically, Tex Rickard was a most engaging person, a tall man with small twinkling eyes set into a bland, smooth-skinned face. He had the gamblers’ thin-tipped trap mouth, an infectious, boyish smile and an impish expression.”

In Nome, Rickard met and became a lifelong friend of Wyatt Earp, who for a time owned a competing saloon. Earp, shown here, was a boxing fan and previously had been hired to referee matches. Their relationship may have whetted Tex’s appetite for the boxing game. Later Rickard would hire Wyatt’s brother, Virgil, as a bartender and then saw that he was made a deputy sheriff just before that Earp brother died of pneumonia.

As had happened in Dawson, the gold soon ran out in Nome. Rickard, who had invested most of his riches in mining properties lost most of his wealth and saw the client flow at his saloon and gambling hall slow to a trickle. This time Tex looked south to Goldfields, Nevada, 247 miles southeast of Carson City. Gold had been discovered in the vicinity in 1903 and the site had become a boomtown. The yellow stuff was making prospectors rich overnight and, as usual, looking for a place to spend their cash.

By now a thoroughly experienced proprietor, Rickard in 1904 knew just what Goldfields’ spenders needed. In 1904 he packed up and moved to Nevada. Together with two partners, he opened the Northern Saloon.

It was the most elaborate of any of his watering holes, featuring 12 bartenders, 14 gaming tables, and 24 dealers. According to its bookkeeper, Tex’s place made $30,000 monthly from the tables and $12,000 monthly from liquor. A photograph from the University of Nevada, Reno, shows the interior of the Northern. It is teeming with customers, one of them gambling one-on-one with a dealer.

Wealthy once again, Rickard built the most impressive brick house in Goldfields, one that still stands. Shown below, the dwelling boasted lead glass windows and a white picket fence. Tex furnished it lavishly with oriental carpets, expensive wallpaper and fine decoration. It boasted the only lawn in Goldfields and neighbors were said to have turned out to watch whenever Rickard cut the grass.

According to one possibly apocryphal account, the house lacked a kitchen because the saloonkeeper lived there alone and took all his meals out. At the time, however, Tex had wed again. She was Edith May Haig of Sacramento, California, and the couple had one daughter who died in 1907. They were married until Edith’s death but it is possible she did not accompany him to Goldfields — or deign to cook.

By this time Rickard had achieved some recognition as a fight promoter. As shown here, he sponsored minor bouts held in the town square next to the Northern Saloon. Tex, however, had his sights on bigger goals. In December 1909, Rickard and a partner won the right to stage the world heavyweight championship fight between James J. Jeffries and Jack Johnson, billed as “The Fight of the Century.” Although Rickard had planned to hold the fight on July 4, 1910 in San Francisco, opposition caused him to move it to Reno, Nevada. The bout gained national attention and brought recognition to Rickard as a fight promoter. Tex and his partner made a profit of about $120,000 on the fight, won by a knockout by Johnson.

Despite the rich return of the Jeffries-Jackson bout, Rickard announced to the press that he was “through with the business of prize fighting.” He sold the Northern and his housein Goldfields and sailed to Latin America. There he acquired land in Paraguay, managing huge a cattle ranch for five years. Once again his investment proved faulty, the cattle business failed, and Rickard is estimated to have lost about a million dollars.

By the time of his return to the United States in 1916, Rickard had revised his thinking about the fight game. That same year he promoted a heavyweight bout between Jess Willard, the “The Pottawatomie Giant” and Frank Moran in New York City at Madison Square Garden. He followed in 1919 by with the famous bout in Toledo, Ohio, between Willard and Jack Dempsey, shown here, and promoted the 1927 rematch at Soldiers Field in Chicago. The second match brought in the first $2-plus million gate and was the first to feature a $1 million purse. Rickard made made money on both fights. His biggest payday, $550,000, resulted in 1921 from matching Dempsey against George Carpentier, “The Idol of France” in Jersey City, New Jersey.

By now firmly ensconced in New York City, a rich man and a world renowned fight promoter, Rickard continued to build his legend. His trademarks were a soft, light-colored fedora hat, the snap brim turned down, a straight gold-headed malacca cane and a cigar. In 1926 he promoted the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney fight in Philadelphia. The bout attracted a world record crowd of 135,000 and earned $1,895,000.By now fabulously wealthy, Rickard also founded and owned the New York Rangers hockey team and built the third version of Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.

In 1925, Rickard’s wife of 23 years, Edith Mae, died in New York. Earlier Tex had met Maxine Hodges,a former actress 33 years his junior. The couple married on October 7, 1926, in Lewisburg, West Virginia. On June 7, 1927, the couple's daughter, Maxine, was born. Tex had little time left to enjoy his new baby. In December 1928 while he was in Miami arranging a boxing match he was felled by an appendix attack. Complications occurred during the course of a likely botched operation and Rickard died on January 5, 1929, at the age of 59. His body was returned to New York and he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Sportswriter Davis J. Walsh memorialized him: "Rickard wasn't merely associated with boxing; he was boxing itself. He took it out of the back rooms and dropped it into the laps of millionaires. He established a monopoly by cornering its star performers. He made it the biggest money business of all professional sports.…” My analysis of Rickard’s career suggests that his years as a saloonkeeper were crucial to his success. Blessed with a genial personality and the ability to understand what his customers wanted, Tex applied the lessons he learned behind the bar to a much larger stage and found they worked for him there as well.

When describing Lemuel ”Lem” Motlow, the nephew of Jack Daniels and eventual owner of Daniel’s distillery, a company website mentions his service in the Tennessee legislature and his reputation as a businessman, concluding that he was “known to be a fair and generous man.” What it fails to mention is that in 1923, Motlow, shown here, shot and killed a man in cold blood and got away with it by playing “the race card.”

Jack Daniels, the famed Tennessee distiller, never married. His sister, Nettie, wed Felix Motlow and had four sons, among them Lem, born in November, 1869. The young man early on began working for his uncle at his Lynchburg distillery, learning the whiskey trade from the ground up. When Daniels became enfeebled near the end of his life, about 1907 he gave the distillery to Motlow.

For the next 13 years, Motlow ran the Daniels distillery with intelligence and skill, increasing its capacity and its reputation for good whiskey. Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey cost more than than other whiskey. The company claimed no other distiller made whiskey with “pure limestone water” or mellowed the product through hard maple charcoal — both adding to the cost. Recognizing the need to market the price differential effectively, Motlow coined the slogan: “All Goods Worth Price Charged.”

Lem used that slogan with his name on jugs of Jack Daniels whiskey. Shown throughout this post, the ceramic containers came in several varieties, including two-toned jugs with Albany slip brown tops and bristol glaze bodies. The jug at left recently sold at auction for $1,576.00. Motlow also featured a range of jugs below with a bail handle, a feature that made carrying easier.

In 1920 when National Prohibition shut down his distillery, Motlow started a mule auction. Tiny Lynchburg became one of the largest mule trading centers in the southern U.S. This success meant little to Lem who was seething at having to shut down making whiskey. Morover, he had been left with a sizeable amount of liquor on his hands with nowhere legitimately to sell it. As a counter, he moved his operations to St. Louis, taking over a building on Duncan Avenue, shown below, and moving his liquor stash there. In 1923 he made a deal to sell it to a local St. Louis businessman.

Before the deal could be concluded, an incident occurred that cast suspicion on Motlow. Prohibitionary laws dictated that liquor already distilled had to be kept under strict guard and a crew were employed by the Feds to watch Motlow’s 1,000 barrels of Jack Daniels whiskey. In August 1923, however, thieves in St. Louis managed skillfully to siphon away 893 barrels of liquor through a hidden hose that fed the whiskey to containers outside and disappeared. Federal authorities fingered Motlow as the culprit and charged him with bootlegging.

Whether Lem was a habitual drinker seems unlikely but the stress of suspicion and a court appearance early on March 17, 1924, may have impelled him that afternoon to drink heavily with friends. Drunk and packing a pistol, Lem boarded the Louisville & Nashville night train back to Tennessee. Tired, he headed for a Pullman berth.

A black sleeping car porter named Ed Wallis asked Motlow for his ticket. When Motlow was unable to produce one, Wallis refused him a berth. Motlow became enraged at being balked by a person of color. Hearing the argument, Conductor Clarence Pullis, who was white, tried to intervene. As the train slowly made its way through a downtown tunnel toward the Mississippi, Lem reached for his pistol, apparently to shoot Willis. In his drunken state, he fired two shots, one errantly, the second striking Pullis in the gut.

Taken off the train, Pullis died in a local hospital, leaving his widow and two minor children. Motlow was charged with murder. Local sentiment ran high against the Tennessee distiller. The newspapers gave the story front page treatment. As wealthy man, however, Lem had ample resources at his disposal. He hired a phalanx of lawyers to defend him. They included Patrick Cullen, a prominent St. Louis attorney. Shown below is a photo from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showing Motlow, seated far left, and seven of his legal team.

Wallis testified that an enraged Motlow had asked Pullis, “Where did you get that black….” The porter related that he was shoved by the defendant, who then pulled the pistol from his coat and fired. The defense built its case on Wallis’s race. The porter was quizzed on whether he belonged to any civil rights organizations. Cullen mocked him by adopting a black dialect. In his testimony Motlow, seen here as sketched on the witness stand, claimed that Wallis had been arrogant. The newspaper reported: “…He said Wallis grabbed him by the throat. ‘I reached for my pistol,” Motlow said, “‘then somebody grabbed my hand from behind and the pistol accidentally discharged twice.’”

No subtlety attended the defense playing “the race card.” In closing arguments one of Motlow’s lawyers said: “There are two kinds of (blacks) in the South. There are those who know their place ... and those who have ambitions for racial equality. ... In such a class falls Wallis, the race reformer, the man who would be socially equal to you all, gentlemen of the jury.” The all white, all male jury took little time in bringing a verdict of “not guilty.” The foreman told reporters: “We didn’t believe the Negro. Jurors shook hands with Motlow as he left the courtroom on December 10 — a free man. The photograph above shows him, third from left, departing with his attorneys.

In time, to his great relief, Motlow also was cleared of the bootlegging charges. If convicted he could have been stripped of his ownership of the Lynchburg distillery and subjected to other penalties. Again ably defended, his lawyers convinced the jury that the Tennesseean had been double-crossed by his associates. For a second time a St. Louis jury absolved him.

With the slate clean, Motlow returned to Tennessee to resume trading mules and subsequently decided to run for office when local courts denied him the right to begin distilling immediately after Repeal. He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1933 and was successful in being licensed to distill in 1938, although his county officially continued to be a “dry.” In 1939, Lem ran and won a seat on the Tennessee Senate. With his wealth, Motlow bought thousands of acres of farmland in at least two counties while engaging in his hobby of raising Tennessee walking horses.

Motlow was married twice. His first wife, Clara Reagor died in 1901, leaving him a son, J. Reagor Motlow. He then married Ophelia Williams with whom he had a daughter, Mary, and three more sons. Connor, Evans — called “Hap” — and Robert. As the boys matured he employed them in the Jack Daniels Distillery learning the business. After Lem suffered a stroke in 1940 the youths began to play more important roles in the operation, Reagor as general manager. Dying in September 1947 at the age of 77, Motlow was buried in the Lynchburg Cemetery.

The Motlow brothers, with Reagor now as the president of the company, continued to increase production and maintained the reputation for quality initiated by Daniels and their father. Although Jack Daniels remains the titan of Tennessee whiskey, Lem has been remembered from time to time with a brand of his own. In 1956 the Motlow family sold its distilling interests to Brown-Foreman of Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1903, the New York Sun proclaimed Jerome, Arizona, to be "the wickedest town in the West.” As the proprietor of the Fashion Saloon, Johannes “John” Keller knew that his establishment, advertised as “The Leading Sporting House in Northern Arizona,” was an important element in that reputation. There is no reason to believe Keller cared.

Shown here in a passport photo about age 40, Keller was born in Oberlengingen, Wurttenburg, Germany, in 1880. When he was just thirteen, likely with family members, he came to the United States, embarking from Bremen, Germany, aboard the steamship Darmstadt, shown below. Keller seems almost immediately to have headed for the Arizona Territory, settling for a time in Prescott, a town noted for its “Whiskey Row.” He may have learned the saloon keeping in one of those drinking establishments.

What would have brought the German youth to Jerome is unclear. The 1890s had been important decade for what heretofore had been a small mining camp at the edge of a low mountain called Cleopatra Hill. Eastern money men, seeing a future in copper mining, built a small smelter there and constructed wagon roads connecting it to larger Arizona towns and a railroad junction.

Shown here as it looked in 1893, Jerome’s population grew from about 250 in 1890 to more than 2,500 by 1900. By then its United Verde Mine had become the leading producer of copper in the Arizona Territory, employing about 800 men, and was one of the largest mines in the world. Experts have attested that the copper deposits of Jerome were among the richest ever found, with an estimated value of $1 billion.

By 1900 Jerome boasted a post office, a school, a public library, churches and a downtown with telephone service and electric lights. Holding a population that was 4/5ths male, the town’s fleshpots were thriving. Saloons, gambling parlors and prostitutes proliferated, the last, as shown here, openly plying their trade on the streets. Looking at Jerome from 2,400 miles away the New York Sun declared it “the wickedest town in the West.”

Meanwhile, Keller, aware that fires had ravaged Jerome and its wooden buildings repeatedly in the past, set out to construct in brick the most elegant drinking and gambling establishment the Territory had ever seen. As testimony to its construction, the building, shown here at far left in a photo, still stands today.

When it opened in the late 1890s, Keller christened it “The Fashion Saloon.” It featured fancy chandeliers and eleven different games of chance, including stud poker, roulette, faro, craps and monte, a card game of Spanish origin. In the rear was a stage for musical and dance performances; the basement held a beer and lunch hall with separate rooms for couples and families. Elements of the Fashion Saloon’s interior have been reconstructed at the original site by the local historical society.

In addition to selling drinks over the bar Keller apparently was retailing whiskey received by the barrel via the railroads and bottled in his own establishment. He sold the liquor in ceramic jugs or glass containers. Half-pint jugs bearing the name “Fashion Saloon” have drawn considerable collector interest.

The jugs feature both medium and dark brown tops and an underglaze label. Those containers would have been given away to special customers, possibly at holidays. Free in their own day, today these jugs command fancy prices. As shown below, the Jerome museum also contains a variety of old glass bottles found around the town but I have been unable to establish any belonging to the Fashion.

After running the Fashion for about 25 years, Keller was forced to shut the doors on his saloon and gambling hall in 1915 when Arizona, with women allowed to vote, passed laws prohibiting the making or sale of alcohol. He soon fetched up as the manager of the Connor Hotel. Built by a local businessman in 1898, the hotel for a time was the height of luxury. Originally designed with 20 rooms upstairs, the lodging house also offered a barroom, card rooms, and billiard tables on the first floor. Rooms rented for $1.00 per night.

Under Keller’s management the Connor continued to enjoy a reputation as one of the finer hotels in the boom-and-bust mining towns of the West. The hotel had its own bus for delivering guests to and from the train depot and was full to capacity much of the time. It was one of the earliest buildings in Jerome to be fully wired for electricity, and each room had a call bell for service. Keller and his wife lived there.

Because he seemed always to avoid the Federal census taker, little is known about Keller’s personal life. He was married and his wife appears with him in a 1924 passport photo. Her name and other details about her background, possible children, and other details remain to be filled in. In the post-Prohibition years, Keller made several trips to Europe, recorded on passport applications. In 1919 he returned to Germany to see his aging father. In 1922, ostensibly on business, his itinerary included Germany, France and England. In 1924, taking his wife with him, the couple visited the same three countries, adding Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. This time the objective stated was “travel and business.” On the application, Keller reassumed his original given name, “Johannes.”

Meanwhile the fortunes of Jerome were beginning to reverse. Fires continued to ravage the largely clapboard downtown and periodically had to be rebuilt. One observer has noted: “In 1918 underground mining phased out after uncontrollable fires erupted in the 88 miles of tunnels under the town. Open pit mining brought dynamiting. The hills rattled and buildings cracked... the surface began to shift and sections of the business district slid downward.” Among the damage, the town jail slid 225 feet and ended up across the road from its original site.

Despite these setbacks, Jerome today is not a ghost town, still boasting a population of about 450 and offering a number of attractions to visiting tourists. Keller’s “Leading Sporting House in Northern Arizona” today is the Jerome Historical Society Museum, containing artifacts of the mining town’s heyday. The Connor Hotel once again is open for business, offering a “Western lodging experience.”

Note: So far I have been unable to ascertain much about Johannes Keller’s private life or his date of death and place of interment. My hope is that, as has happened with some frequency in the past, a sharp-eyed reader will see this post and provide additional information about this extraordinary saloonkeeper.

Foreword: In researching the lives and careers of pre-Prohibition distillers, liquor dealers and saloonkeepers, court records often are an excellent source of information. They provide insights into the activities and sometimes the character of whiskey men. Featured here are vignettes of three such proprietors who spent copious amounts of time and effort involved in the justice system, often for different reasons.

Billy Sunday

To suggest that Kinsey “Stormy” Jordan of Ottumwa, Iowa, was a complicated character is an understatement. The famous Prohibitionist preacher, Billy Sunday, hailed him “as the only liquor owner who told the truth about booze,” after Stormy had called whiskey “The Road to Hell.” On the other hand, Jordan was described by another anti-alcohol zealot as“a man, known the State and nation over for his shameless, law-defying wickedness….”

In the late 1879’s Jordan opened a saloon in Ottumwa, one he called “The Corn Exchange.” The local newspaper called it “the finest in the city.” He prospered until 1881 when legislators added an amendment to the state constitution essentially voting the state “dry.” With the law due to go into effect on July 4, 1881, Stormy was faced with the prospect of having to shut down The Corn Exchange. Taking the advice of a sympathetic Chicago federal judge, however, the saloonkeeper decided to sue the state.

Accordingly Jordan brought suit in U.S. District Court and continued to run his saloon. He was arrested, convicted in a local court, fined — which he refused to pay — and tossed into the Ottumwa jail, shown here behind the courthouse. His attorneys took Stormy’s incarceration to Federal Judge Love. Love was not a “Dry” sympathizer and, despite the pleas of state officers, ordered Stormy released and ruled that his saloon could continue to operate until the federal case was settled.

Undetered, local officials jailed Stormy a second time and again the matter was referred to Judge Love. This time he scolded, not Jordan, but the local prosecutor. Any subsequent arrest of Stormy, the judge asserted, would taken as meddling in a case pending before his court and would result in the offending local official being fined or even jailed. With this ruling, Stormy kept his drinking establishment wide open day and night. His defiance made headlines across America. As result, Jordan was able to conduct what was said to be the only operating saloon in Iowa. Only many months later when the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him did Stormy shut down The Corn Exchange. Then, in a startling about-face, Jordan became an advocate for National Prohibition.

Harry W. Metcalf, a Florida liquor merchant, frequently had a case, but not of whiskey, for the courts of justice. The Florida State Supreme Court building in Tallahassee, shown here, must have seemed like a second home to him. Metcalf won, he lost, but the results never seemed to affect his growing prosperity.

Orlando was the scene of Metcalf’s first court fight. In 1907 an election was held to determine if the sale of intoxicating liquors, wines and beers should be prohibited in Orange County. The Commissioners certified that in the the election 592 votes had been cast against liquor sales and only 589 for them. His saloon in jeopardy, Metcalf took the Commissioners to court, charging that the election was rigged and the results should be voided. In a 3-2 split decision, the Florida Supreme Court agreed with him and nulled the vote. His saloon stayed open.

The year 1915 found Metcalf back in the Florida Supreme Court. In 1913 he had taken a five year lease on space in the Terminal Hotel, located on Bay and Johnson. There he ran a saloon and package liquor store. The Florida Legislature, in another move toward Prohibition, passed what became known as the Davis Package Act. It decreed that a business selling liquor by the bottle on thesame premises could not sell liquor by the drink. With other affected whiskey men, Metcalf fought the law right up to the State Supreme Court. This time he lost; the law was declared valid.

Although forced to shut down his liquor business in 1919, ending sales of his flagship whiskey,"Briar Cave," Metcalf, by now a rich man, began to invest in fruit orchards. Despite his prosperity, however, Harry could not stay away from the Florida Supreme Court. In 1935, he sued a fruit wholesaler for failing to abide by a contract to take produce from his citrus grove. After losing in the local court, he once more repaired to Tallahassee where the Florida Supreme Court justices rewarded him by once more finding in his favor.

Metcalf’s “last hurrah” in the courts was in 1939. He was 77 years old. He sued to void a deal in which he had sold some road bonds then in default, to speculators in return for warehouse receipts representing 400 barrels of whiskey. When the bonds suddenly became valuable and were sold at a huge profit, Harry claimed he had beencheated. This time the Florida’s highest court upheld a lower court ruling that dismissed his complaint. That marked the last time Metcalf shows up in official records.

A lightning rod for trouble, Isaac Ettinger ran a liquor business and saloon in Cleveland for about twenty years. In the process, through his own stubbornness or just bad luck, Isaac seems frequently to have ended up in court. A photo, showing Ettinger in a tender scene with his granddaughter, Doris, seems to belie the fiery and litigious nature of this whiskey man.

Ettinger made headlines in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a early morning of February 1893 when he, his wife and two of her lady friends, were forcibly ejected from a horse-drawn street car operated by the Woodland Avenue & West Side Street Railroad, the line shown here. After a verbal battle with Ettinger over buying tickets the conductor threw the four off the trolley and called the police. Isaac was arrested. Taken to the police station at 3 a.m., he made bail and the group was not detained but forced to tramp home through the snow. After a judge dismissed the charges against him, Ettinger filed a damage suit against the streetcar company for $2,000 ($44,000 equivalent today.) The case hopped in and out of Ohio courts for two years — results unknown.

The saloonkeeper frequently was suing and being sued. In 1881 he hauled a woman named Rosa L. Block into court for default of a loan, asking for compensation in money and land. Isaac himself had faced a bankruptcy suit in 1878 but emerged relatively unscathed. Then Clevelander Mathias Nickels claimed that as he was passing by Ettinger’s saloon a heavy sign had fallen, breaking an large arc light and a piece of glass had flown into his eye. He sued Isaac for $10,000 (equiv. $220,000) in damages. In 1899 Henry Russon, Ettinger’s business partner in a company called Buckeye Hair & Fiber, charged in Cleveland’s Common Pleas Court that Ettinger had converted to his personal use the company’s entire stock and accounts worth $2,400. It is unclear how either lawsuit turned out.

Note: More complete biographies of each of these whiskey men have appeared earlier on this website: Stormy Jordan, March 30, 2017; Harry Metcalf, May 12, 2012; and Isaac Ettinger, August 9, 1018.

Established in America by early colonist John Bellows in 1635, his extended family became one of the country’s historic clans, a close knit group with a motto meaning “All from On High” and a crest of a disembodied hand pouring something into a goblet. It ironically might have been whiskey, the liquid that led to the unfortunate unraveling of the Charles Bellows family of New York City.

Born in February 1825 at 21 Leonard Street in Manhattan, Charles Bellows was educated in New York schools and began his business career in the employment of Arthur Tappan, a well known New York merchant and abolitionist. An indication of Charles’ grit was his being one of the defenders of Tappan’s store when it was attacked by pro-slavery rioters in 1845.

By that time Charles had moved to the leading New York mercantile house of Archibald Gracie where he learned the wine and liquor business. By 1848 he had gained sufficient funds and experience to buy the company’s interest in that trade, moving in 1850 to open his own store at 42 New Street, selling whiskey and wine, both domestic and imported. From 1853 to 1862 his brother Theodore was in business with him. Operating as Charles Bellows & Company, the firm outgrew its first quarters and moved to 50 Broad Street, shown below in the 1800s,

An 1898 history of the Bellows family described Charles’ success: “The business of the firm became very extensive and profitable, and brought them into relations with wine producers all over the world. In the extent of their business they stood at the head of the wine merchants of the United States.” Also dealing in imported whiskey, Charles made buying trips to the British Isles and Europe in 1860 and 1864. Shown here is a bottle of Glenlivit Scotch with a Bellows label.

In 1848 Charles, age 23, had married Eliza Delano in New York in May, just after her twentieth birthday. She was the daughter of Christopher and Rachel Fenton Delano. Hers was an even more distinguished American lineage. Eliza’s Delano family forebears include the pilgrim who chartered the Mayflower, seven of its passengers, three signers of the Mayflower Compact, and later two American Presidents. The couple would have only one child, a son born in 1852 that they named Charles after his father.

Eliza proved to be of frail health and after only thirteen years of marriage, she died in April, 1861. After waiting the obligatory year and few days after her death Charles married again. This time his bride was Eliza’s older sister, Mary Ellen Delano. That is when the family ties began to unravel. Charles Jr., age 14, now was faced with a stepmother who also was his aunt. Moreover, Charles and Mary would have four children of their own, a daughter who died in infancy and three sons: Arthur C., born in 1865; Clarence Ernest Stanley (known as “C.E.S”), 1866; and Albert Edward, 1871. Charles Jr. may well have felt himself the “odd man out” of the family.

Meanwhile his father was continuing to flourish, said to be “in receipt of a large income.” He soon found a way to spend it. In addition to a residence in Brooklyn, Bellows bought a country mansion sixty miles north of New York City at Cornwall on Hudson, shown above. He lavished large amounts of money on the property, improving and terracing the gardens to resemble those at Versailles that he had seen and admired on one of his trips to Europe. He also began to entertain his friends extravagantly, providing them with food and drink on the scale of a rich country squire.

By 1878, because of business reverses in his liquor and wine house, Bellows found himself deeply in debt. Forced to sell his country house, he declared Charles Bellows & Co. bankrupt and what few assets remained were allocate by a judge to his creditors. Not long after, Charles started a new spirits business at the same 50 Broad Street address. Perhaps apprehensive about his post-bankruptcy reputation, this business was in the name of his wife, Mary Ellen. He called it “M.E. Bellows Co., Charles Bellows, Agent.” A bottle closure shown here bore the new name.

Meanwhile Charles Jr., shown here in 1897, was reaching maturity. During his father’s years of luxury he was able to gain a college education, including some legal training, and spent the three years from 1873 to 1876 traveling throughout Europe. He made hiking trips through France, Switzerland, and Germany; visited Belgium, Holland, England and Scotland, and took a series of cruises around Europe and the British Isles. While Charles Jr. may have been working on behalf of Bellows business interests in those jaunts, his Bellows family biography mentions only that he sent “occasional letters” to the New York newspapers.

Summoned home as his family’s finances failed, Charles Jr. joined his father in a management role in the new Broad Street enterprise, now operated under the name of his stepmother. Over the next 12 years the pair rebuilt a successful liquor house. Then Charles Bellows, the founding father, died in March 1890 at the age of 65. He was buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, Section 111, Plot 379. A statue of a grieving woman marks the grave.

Tasked immediately with managing the liquor house, Charles Jr. after several months asked his stepmother, Mary Ellen, to buy the business outright. She refused. By this time her sons were well grown and had experience working in the 40 Broad Street establishment. Arthur C. was 35 and married, with a child on the way. Clarence was 34 and engaged. Their mother wanted her boys to have the company. In 1891 she assigned a half interest in the firm to Arthur and in her will gave the other half to Clarence.

The crack in the Bellows family was now irreparable. Charles Jr., clearly disappointed and angry, set up his own wine and liquor establishment, opening at 42 Broad Street, immediately next door to M. E. Bellows and in direct competition. When that location apparently proved problematic, Charles Jr. moved to 52 New Street, not far from the address where his father had first started. An 1898 Bellows family history described him as the head of a firm he called “Charles Bellow & Company”: “He is an enthusiast on the subject of wines, and by long study has become an expert as to the quality of rare old wines, to the care and sale of which he devotes his principal attention in business hours.”

Meanwhile Arthur Bellows was proving to be a highly competent manager of the enterprise his father had begun 43 years earlier. Once again the name changed, this time to M.E. Barrows Son (and later, Sons’). The company was selling its own brands of whiskey, including Monogram 1880 Rye and 1890 Scotch Whiskey. As shown above, the brother sold it in unembossed clear and amber glass bottles with paper labels that have been damaged or destroyed over time.

The company also was bottling its own Scotch whiskey, including a brand it called “Old Mackenzie,” some labeled as “expressly” made for Arthur G. Vanderbilt, a wealthy American businessman and a member of the famous Vanderbilt family. The bottle is shown right.

Arthur and C.E.S. Bellows carried on their business under the firm name of M.E. Bellows Sons, representing themselves as successors to the business carried on by their father as “Charles Bellow, Agent” until July 1897. At that point, for reasons unknown, they assigned the firm to Arthur’s wife, the former Kittie Strang. As a result of this change Charles Bellows was now identified as the forerunner of Kittie Bellows Company, Charles Jr. was infuriated. He sued and in August 1898 the case of Bellows vs. Bellows came before the Supreme Court of New York County. Now the family unraveling was on view for all of New York to see.

Charles Jr. claimed that his New Street enterprise was the successor to the firm of Charles Bellows and exclusively was entitled to the use of the name. Moreover, the continued use of the founder’s name on his half-brothers’ business was a fraud on the public. Judge J. Stover disagreed. “The business at 50 Broad Street has been continued since the death of Charles Bellow by various successors and there is no attempt now to deceive the public…There is no fraud practiced upon the public or the plaintiff.” Stover then dismissed Charles Jr.’s charges and charged him with court costs.

Both Bellows firms continued to exist in Manhattan until at least 1915, according to Manhattan directories. Charles Jr. died in 1934 at the age of 74, the same year as his half-brother, Arthur, age 69. Clarence followed in 1937 at 71. Both are buried adjacent to their father, Charles, in the family plot. But the family ties remained broken: Charles Jr. appears to have been buried elsewhere, outside the family circle.

Note: The information for this post was drawn from a variety of sources. Two principal were“The Bellows Genealogy,”a family history compiled by Thomas Bellows Peck and published in 1898. It contains biographies of both Charles and Charles Jr. A second source was the lengthy decision of Judge Stover in Bellows v. Bellows.

It has always been somewhat of a mystery to me how Western saloons, often in isolated mining camps or other communities with no easy access to the outside world, managed to get the liquor needed to satisfy their thirsty clientele. For many “Old West” locations, railroads were distant, stage coaches sporadic, and mule trains infrequent. The answer may lie with Samuel Jaggers, a saloonkeeper and liquor dealer in the mining town of Bannack, Montana, during the 1860s. In a 1903 newspaper interview Jaggers told all.

Sam Jaggers was an Englishman, born in March 1832 in Beulah, a small town in Wales, the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Jaggers. He was baptized into the Church of England. When he was 16 he emigrated to the United States along with other family members and settled in Illinois near Galena, a town on the Mississippi River, famous for being the home of Ulysses S. Grant and other Union generals after the Civil War. Sam’s earliest career is lost in the mists of history. His first recorded employment was in the hospitality industry, spending three years as manager of Galena’s United States Hotel. He also appears to have gained some standing in the community, serving as the town’s justice of the peace for eight years.

In 1851 at the of 23 Sam married Jane Moore, 20, a woman of Irish ancestry, in Lafayette, Wisconsin, a town about 35 miles from Galena. They had six children: James, Mary Anne, Joseph, Robert, Elizabeth and Henry Manuel. After 12 years of marriage, Jane died in 1863, leaving her husband to raise their minor children. In 1866, apparently drawn by a gold strike in Montana, Jaggers uprooted the family and headed for Virginia City, a boomtown of thousands of prospectors and fortune seekers in the midst of a frantic gold rush — today a “ghost town.”

Apparently not finding rowdy Virginia City to his liking, Jaggers soon looked 85 miles west to Bannack, Montana. Shown above during its heyday, the town was founded in 1862 after an area gold strike. Named after the local Bannock Indians. it had served as the capital of the Montana Territory briefly in 1864.

At its peak, Bannack had a population of about ten thousand. There were three bakeries, three blacksmith shops, two stables, two meat markets, a grocery store, a restaurant, a brewery, a billiard hall, three hotels, including the Meade shown above, and four saloons. All of the businesses were built of logs as were the private houses. Jaggers settled his family in one of them.

In 1870 Sam also married a second time. His new wife was Mary Catherine Hamilton, born in Huntington County, Pennsylvania, the daughter of native Pennsylvanians who had migrated to Montana. The couple would have four children, Grace, Fanny, Harry and Madline. Grace and Harry died as youngsters.

Extremely remote, Bannack was connected to the rest of the world only by the Montana Trail. This was a wagon road that served settlements during the gold rush era of the 1860s and 1870s. The trail was used for freighting and shipping supplies and food goods from Salt Lake City to sites in Montana. It could be a dangerous journey. Outlaws and marauding Indians, as well as uncertain weather, made the Montana Trail a risky road to travel.

Arriving in Bannack, Jaggers looked around for opportunities and found one in a saloon for sale by local James Harvey. As later described by the Englishman, Harvey’s was one of the best in the mining camp. “It had a first class bar, not one of the hand-made ones like the majority of the saloons of pioneer days had, but it had real oak furniture and it had a real plate glass mirror behind the bar.”

Those remarks were part of an extensive interview Jaggers gave in 1903 to reporters for the Dillon (Montana) Examiner in which he described the life of a frontier West saloonkeeper and confided: “I now want to tell you boys about how we made our liquors…,” adding humorously I suspect,“…and I am sure you will not give it away.”

According to Jaggers, all the liquors coming to Bannack saloons originated from Los Angeles in a form he called “high wines,” in effect, “white lightening.” “Once the high wines had been safely landed in our cellars, us saloon keepers set about making various liquors demanded by the horny-handed miners….If a man wanted any kind of liquor, he got it, and it did not make any difference whether he asked for whiskey, brandy, rum, gin or some brand of wine, he got it, and it all came originally from the same barrel.” The taste could be altered, Jaggers said, by the amount of fusel oil the proprietor added, a mixture of alcohols extracted from the fermentation process.

Remember events in 1867 Jaggers continued, “…There was a whiskey famine in the territory and for while it seemed as if a dire calamity was staring the country in the face.” Hearing that there were two barrels of whiskey for sale at Deer Lodge, Montana, Sam in haste made the 115 mile journey there on horseback and bought the whiskey for $750 in gold dust— equivalent to $16,500 today. One of the barrels was good stuff, he related, but the other was the worst whiskey he had ever tasted. While the liquor was being delivered, Jaggers got an idea. He bought two cases of peaches and returning to Bannack mashed them into pulp and dumped them into the rot-gut, mixing them well. “…The result was it was converted into a whiskey that miners would walk ten miles after the close of a hard day’s work, in order to pay 25 cents for a sample of it.”

After about five years running his Bannack saloon and serving a term as justice of the peace, Jaggers may have sensed that the boom in Bannack was headed toward “bust.” He sold his saloon and for several years tried his hand at prospecting. By now a wealthy man, Sam subsequently purchased a ranch outside of Bannack and began to raise cattle. An ad for a lost cow at Horse Prairie and the Big Hole range displays Sam’s brand, a horseshoe-shaped mark burned on both sides of his steers.

Jaggers’ life as a rancher was not placid. Montana was still the Wild West where dangers lurked everywhere. His young daughter, Fanny, caught the eye of Bob Wells, described by a local newspaper as “a bold, bad man of Montana.”

When Sam objected to his attentions to Fanny, Wells “in true brigand style” met her returning to her father’s ranch home on horseback, with a male escort. Drawing a gun the outlaw forced the man to ride on. He then tied the girl’s bridle rein to the pommel of his saddle and headed for Idaho. Jaggers was quick to offer a reward for Wells’ capture. In the end Fanny was returned home, apparently unharmed, but not long after was married to a 39-year-old man from Horse Prairie, Montana.

Three years later Sam and his family would be embroiled in a murder trial. The dead man was John Bushnell, a Bannack saloonkeeper with a grudge against Jaggers and his sons. Drunk, in mid-September 1887 Bushnell met James “Jim” Jaggers in the bar of a local hotel and began cursing him. According to a press account in theHelena Independent, Jim tried to be friendly and did not retaliate. Nevertheless, Bushell went home, got his six-shooter and went back to the bar. Bushnell took “deliberate aim” at Jim’s back but was seen by the hotel proprietress who screamed, alerting Jim Jaggers. He drew his pistol and the two fired almost simultaneously. Bushnell missed and Jim got off a second shot that killed his assailant instantly. A sheriff’s inquest and trial ensued in which the jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.

Sam Jaggers survived these traumatic incidents to live just short of 83 years old, ancient by Western standards. In 1885 he earned a biography in a book on Montana history, hailed as “one of the extensive stock men of the prairie.” He died on March 2, 1810, and was buried in Mountain View Cemetery at Dillon, Montana. Sam’s family provided him with a unique gravestone, featuring an elaborate carved design, a poem, and the motto, “Gone but not forgotten.” I agree. Jaggers will forever be memorable for his candor in revealing how drinking establishments in isolated Western towns could obtain enough liquor to satisfy their thirsty clientele.

Note: The impetus for this post came from the verbatim publication of Jaggers’ 1903 interview with the Dillon Examiner in the book, “The Golden Elixir of the West: Whiskey and the Shaping of America.” by Monahan and Perkins. I was able to find other information about Sam from a variety of sources, but sadly no picture of him. The photo below shows Bannack as it looks today, a ghost town registered as a National Historic Landmark and preserved by the State of Montana as a park and tourist attraction.

Beginning as a newspaper reporter, Hungarian immigrant Julius Kessler parlayed his experience into an astounding career as a leading American figure in the liquor trade and ultimately head of a Whiskey Trust, controlling three quarters of Kentucky’s bourbon production. Moreover, throughout his 85 years — sometimes twirling a fancy cane and wearing a monocle — Kessler, shown right, did it with verve.

When the first attempt at a “Whiskey Trust,” centered in Peoria, Illinois, fell apart in the mid-1890s, few shed tears. That effort at monopoly had been marked by intimidation and even violence. Nevertheless, the idea of cornering the market for whiskey and thereby raising prices continued to fascinate a number of New York City financiers. As the earlier trust faltered, the money men organized the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company as a holding company for Kentucky distilleries, choosing Kessler as their leader.

Kessler’s road to top dog of this iteration of the Whiskey Trust was a circuitous one. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1855, the son of Ignatious Kessler and Nina Oestereicher. Bright and restless, Julius emigrated to the United States in the early 1870s while still in his teens. He must have had some training in English because his early employment was as a journalist.

In a 1938 interview with a Montana newspaper, Kessler recounted being sent by his newspaper to a 1873 ceremony in Omaha, Nebraska, celebrating the “golden spike” that opened the first transcontinental railroad across the United States. There he got a taste of the West and a yen to get there: “Anybody who wanted to be an editor was just a little misinformed about the better things in life.”

Recognizing that he would have to make a living and disdaining to dig for gold, Kessler hit on the idea of selling Westerners a product he knew they would buy.

He was able to purchase gallon jugs of whiskey in Denver for $1.30 each, loaded them on forty donkeys and hit the trail for Leadville, Colorado, one hundred miles to the southwest. Leadville was the site of a large silver strike and was booming. Drinking establishments proliferated. Kessler went from saloon to saloon selling his whiskey for $6.00 a gallon, cash on the barrelhead. He would sell thirsty individuals three shots for $2.00.

This experience would shape the rest of Kessler’s life. He subsequently devoted himself almost entirely to carving out a profitable career peddling whiskey. Kessler never seems to have had an actual retail outlet. Rather, he was acting more as a distillers’ agent, selling whiskey in large quantities to wholesalers and retailers around the United States. Known for his winning personality, Julius was a tall man with a genial smile and an air of prosperity and sophistication. He claimed to have shaken the hand of as many as 40,000 liquor dealers throughout the U.S. About 1893, he opened a sales office in Chicago where he featured several brands of his own blending, “Andre Jackson Club” and “Rich Grain.” From Chicago he also had a front row seat to view the imploding of the earlier attempt at a Whiskey Trust.

With a nationwide knowledge base and a reputation as a super-salesman, Kessler was a natural when the New York financiers came looking for a true “whiskey man” to lead this second run at creating a Trust. It put managing the organization and a chunk of its stock in his hands. By 1899, the cartel had merged with the remains of the failed trust and consolidated with two smaller syndicates that controlled a number of affiliated distillers and whiskey brokers in Kentucky.

Capital stock issued by of the Kentucky Distillers and Warehouse Co. included $10.5 million in preferred stock, paying seven percent, $18.55 million in common stock, and $1.5 million in working capital. The New York Times in November 1899 reported the transfer by the Easterners of $3 million (equiv. $60 million today) in stored whiskey and future contracts to Kessler. The 85,000 barrels represented the bourbon, rye, and malt whiskey stocks from the Atherton, Mayfield, Clifton, Windsor, Brownfield, and Carter distilleries. It also included contracts for the future output of the Atherton, Sam Clay, W.H.McBrayer and J.G. Roach & Co. distilleries. Kessler later would advertise several on a deck of cards.

By 1899 the new Whiskey Trust boasted membership of 53 Kentucky distilleries manufacturing bourbon and rye. The company also controlled four rye whiskey distilleries in the East, including the Kessler-owned Maryland Pure Rye Distillery, producer of “Monumental Maryland Rye.” A map of the distillery is shown here. He also issued a whiskey under his own name with the motto “Smooth as Silk” from a distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.

The Trust’s concentration on Kentucky whiskey, however, held the key to the cartel’s success under Kessler’s leadership. Although many other distilleries could be found throughout the U.S., the popularity of Kentucky bourbon and rye meant that about 90 percent of standard American whiskey brands were in its possession. Many rectifiers, wholesalers, and brokers were now dependent on the Trust for their whiskey supplies and also were subject to Trust dictates.

By the early 1900s, the Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Company controlled virtually all of the state’s whiskey production, with a distilling capacity of sixteen million barrels annually. The Trust now was capitalized at $32 million and had one million barrels in bonded storage. It was shutting down smaller distilleries and concentrating production at larger, more efficient facilities.

Kessler opened sales offices, ostensibly for his own distilling interests but in effect for the Trust, in a number of major cities in addition to Chicago: Buffalo (1905-1906), Los Angeles (1912-1918), San Francisco (1913-1916), and Louisville (1902-?). Whiskey Trust II was never able completely to monopolize America's liquor industry, but as one observer put it: "...By sheer size forced the outside whiskey houses to act in accord with its wishes." As the head of the cartel Kessler frequently found himself the target of scorn from the press and elements of the public.

Of Julius’s personal life during this period, little is recorded. He was married for a time to a woman named Eva and later divorced. No children. A sports fan, Kessler’s saloon signs featured baseball, football and boxing events rather than the traditional lounging nude.

Kessler did not drink alcohol. He told the press that in a lifetime of selling liquor, he often was called upon to sample some but estimated that those tastes when added up amounted to no more than five gallons, his total consumption. Cigars were Kessler’s weakness. On business trips to Cuba he often bought 10,000 stogies at a time.

The Hungarian immigrant guided Whiskey Trust II to profitability for most of his tenure, increasingly finding that the onrush of Prohibition was depleting sales. When National Prohibition was declared in 1920, the Trust like the rest of the U.S. liquor trade went out of business. A year later Kessler, now 65 years old, retired to Vienna, Austria. With him went a fortune valued in the millions and 38,000 cigars.

Enjoying the reputation of having sold more whiskey in his lifetime than any other living man, Kessler returned from Europe only after Repeal in 1935. Now 80 years old and bearing white mustaches, he settled in Manhattan, bringing his bull terrier, Roxie, and his bullfinch, Dickie. One New York newspaper reported: “Still sleek and jolly, he was observed stuffing down pigs’ knuckles and sauerkraut, running down a street after a taxi, dancing until 5 a.m. on New Year’s Eve.”

Kessler lived the next five years in New York, venturing out frequently to cities and towns in the West that he had known as a youth. He also made use of his memberships in the Humanistic Club of New York and the Congressional Club and Army and Navy Clubs of Washington, D.C., the latter two emblematic of his lobbying efforts for the Trust. He also served as a director of the Hungarian Relief Society in New York.

Julius died on December 10, 1940, at his home at 480 Park Avenue. His funeral was held at the Universal Funeral Chapel on Lexington Avenue. He was cremated and his ashes entombed at the Ferncliff Mausoleum, in Greenburgh, New York, 25 miles north of Manhattan.

Julius lived to see the Kessler Whiskey brand revived by the Seagram Company in 1935. The labels and ads featured Julius. Seagram’s later dissolution resulted in the Kessler brand later being owned by what is now Beam Suntory. It has been claimed by Beam to be the #2 American blended whiskey in the world behind Seagram’s 7. Thus the legacy of Julius Kessler lives on.

Note: Although this post is gathered from a variety of sources about Kessler, none of them get to the heart of his success. While clearly serving as the leader of the Whiskey Trust, Kessler seemingly also was operating on his own behalf with offices and brands. This was a puzzle that Kentucky distillers outside the cartel were never able to solve. Unfortunately, neither does this vignette.

Foreword: In profiling some 750 stories of people involved in the U.S. liquor trade I have been struck by the traditional togetherness of whiskey families: sons working with fathers, brothers working with brothers, wives assisting husbands, in-laws collaborating. Upon occasion, however, situations arise in which family unity is shattered by situations involving internal bickering, jealousy, or apparent greed. Profiled here are three such cases involving internecine feuds.

On January 16, 1902, seven jurists of the Court of Appeals in Annapolis heard a case that pitted quarreling members of a wealthy family and their high powered attorneys disputing over the operation and future direction of a well known Maryland distillery. The Wight family internal feud had been the “talk” of Baltimore society for months.

John J. Wight about the time of the Civil War had co-founded a distillery in Cockeysville, Maryland, seventeen miles north of Baltimore. He called it the Sherwood Distillery Company. In time his brother in law, Edward Hyatt, and son, John Hyatt Wight, became part owners of the business. The family prospered greatly from making whiskey and ranked high in Maryland business and social circles.

Family solidarity began to unravel when John J. Wight died. His estate transferred most of his stock to his son, John Hyatt Wight, who became secretary and treasurer of Sherwood Distilling, with Hyatt as president. In 1894, Edward Hyatt died. John Hyatt Wight became president of the company. Hyatt’s widow Charlotte, who had remarried, in 1899 filed a lawsuit against her nephew, accusing him of fraud. Daily vs. Wightbecame a much-watched case in the Maryland courts.

Because considerable amounts of money were at stake, both sides hired high profile lawyers. As Maryland’s social set looked on with intense interest, the intrafamily battle raged fiercely before a Circuit Court judge in Baltimore. Aunt Charlotte made a range of scurrilous charges against Wight, accusing her nephew of “cooking the corporation books,” concealing distillery profits, and lining his own pockets at her expense. When the judge disagreed and threw out her petition, she appealed. In 1902 The Maryland Appeals Court totally dismissed Charlotte’s charges, commenting that “trifles as light as air” had become for her “confirmation as strong as proofs of holy writ.” John Hyatt Wight continued to run the distillery until the advent of National Prohibition.

Trademark disputes over liquor branding never failed to gain attention in the pre-Prohibition era. When the conflict involved brother against brother in the distilling hotbed of Louisville, Kentucky, interest could be intense. That is the situation that faced the Bonnie brothers when one of their siblings broke away, started a completing company, and merchandised whiskey with the Bonnie name and a familiar-looking label.

The Bonnies were four: Frank W., born 1840; William O., 1845; Robert T., 1848, and Ernest S., 1860. All of them settled in Kentucky where Frank founded a liquor wholesale house about 1872 in Louisville and brought in brothers William and Robert. In 1879 the firm reorganized and all four Bonnies, including youngest brother Ernest, were included in its operations. The resulting “Bonnie Bros. Co.” became prosperous, thrusting the brothers into the forefront of Kentucky whiskey men.

In 1895, Frank Bonnie, age 55, withdrew from the firm, selling his interest in the business, including the Bonnie brand names, to his remaining three brothers. Frank’s exit was followed in four years by Ernest Bonnie, still in his 30s, wanting out. Why he broke away has not been explained. The remaining two brothers bought him out for $70,000, more than a million in today’s dollars. For that compensation Ernest sold all interest in the business and in Bonnie labels.

Unlike his brother Frank, however, Ernest Bonnie had no intention of retiring from the whiskey trade. Taking two Bonnie Bros. employees with him, he shortly thereafter went into competition with his siblings using the name, E.S. Bonnie & Company. A trade card with that company name appears on an intriguing tradecard showing a boy urinating in the snow and tracing the words “Good Drink.” Was this a symbolic gesture by a younger “breakaway” who was trying to send a message to his older brothers? More important, Ernest Bonnie beganselling whiskey under the brand name, “Bonnie Club.” His older siblings quickly objected that the brand pirated labels of Bonnie Bros. After a rancorous exchange of correspondence in which court action was threatened Ernest abandoned the use of “Bonnie Club.” But family ties had been badly ruptured.

When Ernest died in 1907 on 47 years old, his employees, now the owners, attempted to market a “Bonnie & Co. Rye” with a label that was very similar in its features to the original firm. William and Robert Bonnie had had enough and in 1914 took their competitor to court for trademark infringement. Kentucky courts asserted that Bonnie & Co. Rye had been labeled in a way to confuse and deceive consumers, represented “unfair competition” under the trademark laws, and issued a “cease and desist order.” The Bonnies won.

Henry, Seligman, David, and Theodore — the Netter boys — founded a liquor store in Philadelphia about 1886 that almost immediately prospered. Within three years the brothers moved to larger quarters at 732 Third Street, near Brown Street. This address is memorialized on an amber flask shown below. The trade mark, in detail, is an enigmatic one: a woman standing next to a shield inside the Man in the Moon. The company used the brand name “Golden Gate All Rye.” Their Netter Bros. Company became one of the premier liquor houses of Philadelphia. After seven years of prosperity, however, family ties began to unravel.

The first brother to defect appears to have been Henry. In 1893 directories Henry H. Netter & Co. was noted as: “Producers of California and Ohio wines and brandies and Pennsylvania rye whiskies.” The next Netter to break away was David in 1898, opening a separate store on Market Street. He was listed in business directories as a wine & liquor dealer, importer, distiller and proprietor of “Telegram Rye.” Seligman, perhaps about 1900, opened his own liquor outlet under the name “S. Netter.” He located at several addresses on North Third Streetuntil 1911 when he moved to 736 Arch Street.

Although Theodore Netter was listed with Netter Bros. until 1900, at least one author, rightly or wrongly, has blamed him for the breakup, citing him for fueling intra-family tensions and causing his brothers to depart. Sometime in the late 1890’s Theodore, with his wife, Hilda, established their own liquor business. After initially locating at 54 North 13th Street, the firm moved to its permanent base on Market Street, next to Philadelphia’s Savoy Theater. Theodore's purple barrel bottle is a favorite of collectors.

Was Theodore the problem child who broke up the Netter Brothers? He had a penchant for running afoul of the Pure Food and Drug laws, being fined at least twice for adulterating his wines. Nevertheless, this Netter claimed that his was, “the largest and leading liquor store” in Philly. In his advertising Theodore also constantly emphasized that he had only one store -- indicating that he saw his brothers in definite competition. Because the Netters never took their differences into court and aired them publicly, however, the reason why the brothers all went their separate ways remains unanswered.

Note: More complete vignettes on each of these families can be found elsewhere on this blog: Sherwood Distilling and the Wights, July 17, 1911; Bonnie Brothers, April 29, 2014, and Netter Brothers, January 2, 2013.

When the author depicted on the cover of a book he is trying to sell shows himself with the body and feet of a rooster, he signals a flamboyant, perhaps unique, personality. That would be William T. Boothby, sometime politician, saloonkeeper, and famed San Francisco bartender whose “drink books” continue to be available.

Boothby was born in San Francisco in November 1862 to “Forty Niner” parents who had come from the East to California during the Gold Rush of the mid- 1800s. Although they did not find gold, his father from Maine earned a living as a baker and saloon keeper. Upon ending his education in his early teens, William tried several occupations and, as one author put it,“…proved himself at a young age to have a great deal of that useful quality, hustle.”

After toiling at tailoring, clerking, and attendant for a streetcar company, Boothby’s skills at singing and dancing landed him a job with Dr. McConkey’s Vigor of Life Minstrel Company. Traveling throughout the West, this troupe peddled a patent remedy later identified as a useless “alcoholic bracer” by medical authorities. A natural show-off, William, now in his early 20s, shown here, thrived in the medicine show, billing himself as “The Great Boothby — King of Terpsichore.” His signature stunt was dancing a jig on stage with a glass of water on his head.

Apparently tiring of the traveling life by the late 1880s, Boothby turned to the profession that would mark the rest of his life. He became a bartender, serving out drinks at a variety of establishments in the San Francisco area. An early job was at Byron Springs Hotel, a fancy resort about fifteen miles east of downtown. The prestigious hotel and spa shown above, the Byron was popular place for Frisco residents to take the waters, including the fiery waters Boothby dished out. In time he moved on to the Silver Palace saloon in the heart of San Francisco.

By 1891 Boothby was tending bar at the swanky San Rafael Hotel in the nearby town of the same name. Self-described as the “Presiding Diety” of the Rafael barroom, he decided, wisely as it turned out, to publish a drink recipe book, aiming it at “all students of mixology.” Calling himself “Cocktail Boothby” and the “Standard Authority,” he advertised with the line: “Bar-Keepers – You're Not In It If You Don't Read Cocktail Boothby's 'American Bartender’”. An early edition is shown below.

In truth, at this time Boothby did not have a significant amount of bartending experience or know many drink recipes so he included other material. It included his “Ten Commandments” for bartenders, that included: III. Always appear pleasant and obliging under all circumstances. “IV. Avoid conversation of a religious or political nature. VI. Sell all the liquor you can, but use as little as possible yourself.” He also tossed in several pieces of his own verse, including:

Just say to all smart booze clerk who question your sense,

And hold all your wisdom at naught:

You’ve been forced to turn knowledge away every night,

And you’ve standing room only for thought.

Boothby’s first edition also contained advice on how to rescue punky beer and tricks for artificially aging beer, using, believe it or not, pickled cucumbers and Seville oranges. His drink recipes ranged from an Absinthe Bracer using the green liqueur and a raw egg, to the Zsa Zsa Cocktail, concocted of Dubonnet sweet wine, dry sherry and orange bitters.

His drinks book brought Boothby the kind of recognition he craved. When offered a larger salary at the San Francisco’s Parker House, he jumped there. The management gave him star billing, painting a life-size picture of him in his “cock’s tail” mode painted on the outside wall of the bar. As his celebrity rose Boothby opened his own saloon and restaurant on Powell Street.

Riding on his personal popularity and as an authoritative author of a mixed drink book, Boothby decided to run for the California legislature. Mark Twain might have understood what was at work: “The cheapest way to become an influential man and be looked on by the community at large was to stand behind a bar, wear a diamond cluster pin and sell whiskey. I am not sure but that the saloonkeeper had a shade higher rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight.”

In that era Frisco’s saloon owners had been organized into a distinct political block. With their backing, William stood unopposed as the Republican candidate for the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, the 43rd Assembly District. In a later edition of his book he recognized this help with the dedication: "To the liquor dealers of San Francisco who unanimously assisted in my election to the Legislature by an unprecedented majority.” Serving only one term, he was recognized particularly for championing legislation that might positively affect San Francisco saloons and drinking public. Thereafter he liked to be referred to as “The Honorable Willliam Boothby,”

The San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, devastating much of the city, destroyed the printing plates for Boothby’s book. That meant that the 1908 third edition had to be written largely anew, and could incorporate all that Boothby had learned in the meantime. It was chockfull of new cocktails and for the first time he gave named credit to other bartenders for many of the recipes. Under the name “Cocktail” Boothby, he touted himself as “Premier Mixologist.”

Moving once again, William began working at the Pied Piper Bar of the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco, shown above. It was there that he is said by some (opinions differ) to have invented the “Boothby Cocktail,” to my mind a glorified Manhattan. Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

•2 oz Rye whiskey

•1 oz Sweet vermouth

•2 dashes Orange bitters

•2 drops Angostura Bitters

•1 oz Brut Champagne, chilled

•Garnish: Maraschino cherry

PREPARATION:

Add all the ingredients except the champagne to a mixing glass and fill with cracked ice. Stir well and strain into a chilled flat bowl champagne glass. Float some champagne on the top and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Of Boothby’s personal life, little has been recorded. The 1880 and 1900 Federal censuses showed him living with his mother, Sarah. There is no record of his ever having married. He was a member of the Olympic Club of San Francisco, the oldest athletic club in the U.S. and a gathering place for the elite of the city. As he aged, he donned a mustache, as shown here on a trade card.

Boothby continued as Frisco’s premier bartender until National Prohibition shut down all production and sales of alcohol. Even then he found it hard to stop, continuing to serve drinks “under the counter” at the Orpheum Theatre Annex to his old customers. He was arrested there in 1922 for violating the Volstead Act and paid a fine. Members of his loyal following stepped in to find him jobs, including one as a steward at the St. Francis Hotel. In his mid-60s Boothby was diagnosed with cancer and died of the disease in August 1930, at the age of 68. His funeral was thronged with mourners, including an estimated 100 bartenders from across America, many of them grateful for mentions in Boothby’s books. I have been unable to trace the bartender’s place of burial.

Although William did not live to see Repeal in 1934, his drinks books would survive and provide the foundation for the thousands that have followed. Shown here is a post-Prohibition copy of his“World Drinks and How to to Mix Them.” Although this flamboyant “mixologist,” a man so careful of his image, likely would blanche at being referred to as “Cocktail Bill” he would be proud that his bartending legacy has traveled down the years.

Note: Although this post has been gathered from a variety of sources, two proved to be most important in telling Boothby’s story: A Difford Guide online biography by Theodora Sutcliffe, no date, and a story in The Daily Beast by David Wondrich, entitled “San Francisco’s Deep Cocktail Roots,” dated April 9, 2018.

Shown here standing behind the bar of his saloon, Solomon “Sol” Weinberger was a diminutive five feet, three inches, tall. His height had little to do with his reputation in Idaho Springs, Colorado, as a genial proprietor and civic-minded citizen of his adopted country.

The diminutive Sol was born in July 1864 in a part of Europe then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Abraham and Henche Weinberger. At the age of 17 he emigrated to the United States, arriving in June 1881 aboard the steamer Normannia, shown here. In that move Sol apparently had been preceded by an elder brother, Simon, and two half-brothers, Herman and Nathan, all of whom had settled in Colorado, Simon in boom town Cripple Creek where he was running a saloon.

Records indicate that Sol, a bachelor, may have been working in Simon’s saloon and living with Simon’s family that included his wife, Bettie, and son Bernard. In Cripple Creek Weinburger met his future wife, Anna Glauber, a woman who had immigrated to Colorado from Hungary. When they married in April 1892 he was 28 and she was 27. They would have a family of two sons and a daughter: Maurice “Morrie” born in 1893, Wilhemina “Minnie” a year later, and Alvin in 1905.

By 1900 indications are that Sol had left Simon’s employ and struck out on his own, opening a liquor business. The 1900 census found him in Cripple Creek and recorded his occupation as “wholesale liquor.” For reasons undisclosed, not long after Sol pull up stakes there and moved his family 105 miles north to Idaho Springs, in Clear Creek County, Colorado, about 30 miles west of Denver.

Idaho Springs, shown here as it looks today, had been the site of the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, the state’s first gold strike. Findings of gold in stream beds were soon followed by discoveries of rich veins in the rocks of the canyon walls on both sides of Clear Creek.

Underground mining for valuable metals and minerals became the mainstay of the town long after the gold-bearing gravels were exhausted. As a result, Idaho Springs continued into the 20th Century with a healthy economy. An early photo captures dozens of wagon hauling ore and other goods down the town’s main drag, Miner Street.

In Idaho Springs, Weinberger opened his saloon and liquor store. A photo of the interior shows him with four customers, none of whom seem to be drinking. He has installed or inherited a fancy carved bar with an unusual elaborate tower that held bottles of liquor. The usual foot rail and spitoons are in evidence and an array of glasses reflected in the large mirror. From his facial expression and body language, Sol looks somewhat discomfited by having his picture taken.

Called the Weinberger Liquor Company, the saloon and store stood at 1630 Miner Street. The building reportedly was owned by Simon. Nathan and Jacob also may have had saloons in town.

Sol appears rapidly to have gained popularity in Idaho Springs as a saloonkeeper, providing strong drink to thirsty miners. He gave a healthy five cent token to regular customers, always a way to gain acclaim among the populace. As this mining camp evolved into a town whose main street is now on the National Register of Historical Places, Weinberger became known for his civic contributions.

His wholesale and retail whiskey sales proved lucrative. A railroad financed by Jay Gould, head Union Pacific, had reached Idaho Springs in 1877, opening access to freight. As a result, Weinberger could obtain shipments of whisky in barrels through Denver. Sol would decant them into one and two gallon ceramic jugs and sell them to the many other saloons that inhabited the town. As shown here, those containers varied from very rough pottery with crudely stenciled labels to more crafted stoneware jugs with lettering under an Albany slip glaze.

Sol’s containers are avidly collected today: The jug above left recently fetched $332 at auction. Weinberger also was selling whiskey at retail, using glass flasks holding a pint of liquor. The bottle shown here with embossing of his name and location are indicative of his healthy trade. Embossed bottles cost more than plain glass with a paper label.

Although Idaho Springs continued to exhibit a buoyant economy into the 20th Century, prohibition was making a statement in Colorado, first through local option laws and then a state law establishing a total ban on making or selling alcoholic beverages. On January 1, 1916 — four years before National Prohibition — Colorado went “dry.” Sol had no choice but to shut down his saloon and liquor business. But he wasted no time in making another move.

Taking his profits from his Idahol Springs saloon, Weinberger said goodbye to Colorado for “wet” California, settling in San Francisco. The 1920 Census found him there, living on Hyde Street with Anna and their two sons. Sol gave his occupation as “oyster salesman.” Not long after, however, with Theodore Glauber, a relative of his wife, Weinberger opened a restaurant at 1510 Fillmore Street. This was soon followed by a second eatery in which he appears to have been sole proprietor, located at 1106 Market Street.

The San Francisco restaurant business must have been profitable for Weinberger. By 1933 he had moved with his wife to this elegant large townhouse cum condo and at 69 years old, retired. In 1937, Anna died at age 72 and was buried in Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, outside San Francisco.

Sol lived on another 15 years, dying at the age of 87 in June 1952. His small stature and labors in the hardscrabble America West clearly had not proved an impediment to longevity. His grave lies adjacent to Anna’s.

Note: The photo above of Sol Weinberger in his saloon has fascinated me for its depiction of the distinctly slight immigrant proprietor holding his own among the rough and tumble residents of a sometimes rowdy Western mining town. It was displayed on the web in 2014 by a great-grandson, Mark Weinberger, who was operating a local history museum outside San Francisco. He in turn credited Marjorie Bell of the Idaho Springs Historical Society for finding the photo, dated circa 1915.

Foreword: In May 2012, on a post here I profiled J.T.S. Brown and his family as one of the pioneering Kentucky distilling clans. In the vignette, I also introduced briefly George Brown, a half-brother, who had joined J.T.S. in a Louisville liquor business only to break away on his own about a decade later. That business is still extant as the famous Brown-Foreman Company. George definitely has deserved a post of his own, if for nothing else, his book on the Bible and Prohibition.

George Garvin Brown, shown here, was born in Munfordville, Kentucky, in September 1846, part of three generations of Browns in the Bluegrass State. His grandfather, William, had emigrated with a young wife from Virginia, settling down as a planter and merchant. William’s son, John, was a merchant, postmaster, and officer in the Confederate Army who married twice. George was a product of the second marriage; his mother was Mary Jane Garvin.

“I was raised on a farm, a son of Scotch and Irish parents from whom I inherited the highest reverence for religion and the Bible,” he later wrote. At the age of sixteen in 1862 Brown moved 74 miles north to Louisville, Kentucky, to attend the Male High School. Founded in 1856, this institution was the first secondary school west of the Allegheny Mountains and highly prestigious. How long Brown stayed is unknown but he pursued an early career as a wholesale drug salesman, working for a man named Henry Chambers. Asked by J.T.S. Brown to join his liquor firm as a partner in 1870, George agreed. Likely a result of George’s experience, the company initially concentrated on medicinal sales.

Introduced in 1873, the company flagship whiskey was Old Forester, reputedly named after a physician, Dr. William Forrester, who had endorsed its use, but eliminating one “r” on the label to avoid direct reference to the well-known physician. Old Forester was bottled and sealed at the distillery as a way to guard against adulteration and substitution of the contents. The sealed bottle was popular with doctors and pharmacists who sold the product. Their endorsements spurred the Browns to seek a wider customer base among the drinking public.

In 1874, for reasons still unclear, Georges’ partnership with J.T.S. Brown ended. Some accounts say that the half-brothers could not agree on the quality of whiskey to be sold, with George favoring a higher priced quality liquor, while J.T.S. was more interested in generating a wider customer base with cheaper whiskey. George moved on to form his own company. With him went George Foreman, originally of Paris, Kentucky. Hired initially as a salesman, Foreman eventually moved up to the post of bookkeeper. The new firm also included Brown’s old boss, Henry Chambers, who was bought in as major stockholder. The company became Brown, Chambers & Co.

Meanwhile George was having a personal life. In Louisville he had met Amelia Bryan Owsley, born in Danville, Kentucky, the daughter of Erasmus and Catherine Owsley. They married on February 1, 1876, in Louisville. George was 30; Amelia, 28. The couple would have nine children over a nineteen year period, five daughters and four sons. Two of the boys would die in infancy, obviously a source of great household sorrow.

In 1876, Brown’s cousin from Ireland, James Thompson, was hired in a management role. As the reputation of Brown, Chambers for bottling and selling quality bourbon grew, Brown determined to create a separate sales agency to serve as the merchandising arm of the liquor house. He enlisted Foreman and Thompson for the work. Two years later Chambers retired and sold his shares to Mssrs. Brown, Thompson and Foreman. The reorganized company became Brown, Thompson & Co. with Foreman as a junior partner.

This management team was intact for the next decade of expansion. In 1890, however, Thompson sold out to Brown and Foreman in order to strike out on his own, using his profits to buy the Glenmore Distillery in Louisville from the Monarch estate. The company name was changed once again, now it was Brown, Foreman & Co. Brown owned 90% of the stock, Foreman 10%.

This arrangement held for another decade until 1901 when Foreman died and his widow sold his share to Brown while permitting the continued use of Foreman’s name. Now a sole proprietor, George lost no time in incorporating the firm, capitalizing it at $100,000. Up to this time, Brown did not own a distillery. He was operating as a wholesaler, obtaining product from a range of Kentucky producers,including the Mellwood distillery in Louisville, J.B.Mattingly at St. Marys in Marion County and Pleasure Ridge Park in Jefferson County.

Now in full charge, in 1902 Brown moved quickly to acquire the Ben Mattingly Distillery, #14, District 5. Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 indicate that that the distillery was located 1-1/2 miles southwest of St Marys. The plant was of frame construction with a shingle roof. The property included a cattle shed and three warehouses, one still unfinished. Both of the bonded warehouses were of frame construction with shingle roofs, one located 160 feet east of the still, the second located 170 feet east of the still. In 1907 Brown expanded the facility, expending $70,000 (equivalent today to $1.5 million) to build additional warehouses and a bottling house.

Now having an assured supply of whiskey, Brown added new proprietary brands to his Old Forester flagship. They included “Old Tucker Whiskey, “Old Forman,” “Beech Fork,” “Fox Mountain,” “Cloverdale,” “Gilded Age,” “Major Paul,” and “Old Polk.” He registered many, but not all, these labels in 1905 after Congress had strengthened the laws. He also advertised several widely through saloon signs, serving trays, pocket mirrors and back-of-the-bar bottles, examples seen throughout this post.

In insisting on bottling his whiskey at the distillery, Brown was significantly ahead of his time. He had already been using glass for years before the Bottled-in-Bond Act was passed by Congress in 1897, mandating that whiskey distilled under the Act (bestowing tax benefits) had to be bottled at the source. When the Owens bottling machine was invented in the early 1900s, Brown was in a position quickly to avail himself of the savings.

After Forman’s death, George also brought in a new management team. Of them the most important was his son Owsley Brown, shown here, designated as the manager of the sales department. These executives were able to free up the founder for his national role fighting prohibition. From his position as the first president of the National Liquor Dealer’s Assn., George became a leading spokesman and writer against the movement to ban liquor and beer production and sales throughout the U.S. A caricature of him in the book “Kentuckians as We See Them,” depicted him sitting on a barrel of Old Forester penning a diatribe.

The propensity of “dry” proponents to cite religion and the Bible encouraged Brown to write his famous book on the subject, entitled“The Holy Bible Repudiates ‘Prohibition.’” The subtitle describes the contents as a compilation of all Bible verses that mention wine or strong drink, His objective was to prove that the Scriptures “commend and command” the temperate use of alcoholic beverages — not a total ban. Copyrighted in 1910, Brown sold it for $1.00 in cloth cover, 25 cents in paper.

In the introduction, Brown openly admitted his bias: “I have been a whiskey merchant and manufacturer for forty years and believe now, as I have always believed, that there is no more moral turpitude in selling an intoxicating liquor than there is in manufacturing and selling any other product.” His purpose for writing, he said, was “to expose the most dangerous propaganda against civil and religious liberty that has ever confronted the American people — ‘prohibition.’”

What followed was Brown’s line by line parsing of Old and New Testament Biblical passages where wine or strong drink is mentioned and, where needed, he said, to add his own “honest explanation” of each passage. He found many opportunities for comments, with a particularly long exposition over the Wedding Feast at Cana, concluding: “If it had been wrong to make or use wine and given it to one’s neighbors, Jesus would not have set this example.”

Brown ended his book with a brief chapter he called “Reflections.” In it he provided a harsh critique of prohibitionists. Among them: “This sort of fanaticism when practiced in the name of religion, is on the principle, ‘it is not our duty now to burn heretics but we will make the laws and Caesar will do the rest.’” The book found a ready audience among the distillers, liquor dealers, saloonkeepers, and drinking public of America; Brown was widely hailed for his scholarship but, as might be expected, pilloried by the “Drys.”

George Brown did not live to see his worst fears realized, dying in January 1917 at the age of 71, three years before the imposition of National Prohibition. He was buried in Louisville’s Cave Cemetery where the graves many of Kentucky’s distilling giants can be found. Appropriately, Brown’s above ground granite tomb bears a large cross. His widow Amelia would join him in the family plot seven years later.

The Brown-Forman Company continued to thrive even after George Brown's death. Owsley Brown took over for his father. When Prohibition arrived Owsley secured one of only ten federal permits allowing Brown-Forman to store whiskey and distribute it to druggists for sale by doctor-written prescription — a trade that boomed during the ensuing fourteen years. After Repeal Owsley resumed to normal distilling and sales of whiskey. With family members down to five generations involved in its management since 1890, Brown-Foreman has grown steadily to become one of the largest wine and spirits companies in the world with sales in excess of $2 billion annually.

George Garvin Brown has remained a hallowed figure in the whiskey dynasty he set in motion. In his honor, a 68-foot tall Old Forester bottle was erected on the company’s Garneau Building. Moreover, Brown’s book seemingly has never been out of print. During the 21st Century it has been reprinted often and currently is readily available for purchase. One publisher has commented: “This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.” George would be proud to know that.

Foreword: Among those whom I have profiled as “whiskey men” are a number of individuals whose interest in making and selling liquor resided in the potential for profit. They were capitalist “money men” and sometimes said so to the census taker. Of them I have selected three who represent a range of “financiers.”

Shown here at 70, Edson Bradley growing up probably could not tell sour mash from sweet corn, but in maturity he turned whiskey-making into abounding wealth. Bradley was born into money, well educated and eventually trained for a career in finance. While still in his twenties he became associated with Paris, Allen & Company, a leading New York and London financial and importing firm.

Although the whiskey industry has always emphasized the backwoods, rustic nature of distilling, the truth is more complicated. New York Wall Street investors frequently were directly involved in the liquor trade. Almost immediately upon joining Paris, Allen the youthful Bradley was anointed the principal spokesman on Wall Street and before Congress for the new Whiskey Trust the company financed in Kentucky during the 1880s, including the "Old Crow" distillery below.

As a driving force behind the Trust, Bradley soon became a national figure. In the process he also was becoming wealthy. Soon the nation’s newspapers were referring to Bradley as a liquor millionaire and kingpin of the American distilling industry. About this time he moved his family from New York City to Washington, D.C. He bought a large Victorian home on fashionable DuPont Circle and tore it down to build the grandest mansion the Nation’s Capitol had ever seen.

Retired at 70 and enormously rich from whiskey profits, Bradley left Washington, moving to fashionable Newport, Rhode Island. Incredibly, he took his castle with him. Brick by brick, tile by tile, the mansion was dismantled and transported to Rhode Island while the fascinated populace of Washington looked on.Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” highlighted the event for a national audience. In Newport Bradley purchased a large existing home and joined the two structures to become one of the largest mansions in America, shown here.

Beginning as a grocer and drug salesman, by 1900 George Carragan of Bayonne, New Jersey, early built a reputation as New York financier. He was the “financial head” of August Kress & Co., importer of grocer specialties; directed the wholesale commission house of R. B. Poucher & Co; and co-owned Carragan & Tilson, a New York company that manufactured badges, rubber stamps, stencils, and seals. Back in Bayonne he was a founder and director of the Mechanics Trust Company and later the First National Bank. Said his biographer: “These various business associations indicate in a small measure Mr. Carragan’s ability and success as a financier.

When Carragan engaged with Cook & Bernheimer, a New York whiskey wholesaler, is not clear. Founded in 1863, the company had been in business for some years before he became involved, investing in it and ultimately becoming its president. Carragan's leadership was evident in the late 1890s when the liquor firm had a burst of energy, operating from a large building at 144-150 Franklin St. in Manhattan, shown right, and opening offices around the country: In Chicago on Wabash Avenue in 1897, a year later in Cincinnati, San Francisco and Terre Haute, Indiana. Cook & Bernheimer took a gold medal for the company’s flagship “Old Valley Whiskey” at the Paris Exposition of 1900.

Under Carragan’s direction Cook & Bernheimer also obtained an exclusive contract to bottle and distribute “Mt. Vernon Whiskey,” distilled by the Hannis Company of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Featuring a blizzard of brands, including "Old Valley," the company commanded all or part of the output of numerous distillers in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland. In 1905 Cook & Bernheimer took control of the Dalwhinnie Distillery in the Scottish Highlands, marking the very first U.S. investment in the Scotch whiskey industry.

The Scottish adventure ended in 1920 with the imposition of National Prohibition when all legal sales of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. were forced to cease. After more than a half century of successful operation this juggernaut among liquor houses closed its doors for good. George Carragan lived on another five years, dying at the age of 81 at his Bayonne residence.

Led by Warren Buffett, Omaha, Nebraska, boasts that it has more millionaires per capita than any other city in America. Peter E. Iler, an Omaha whiskey man, was an exemplar for the local money men to follow, a multimillionaire who built the Nation’s third largest pre-Prohibition distillery as well as financing other major business enterprises. Shown left, Iler had, people said, “the restless mind of a capitalist.”

Every capitalist needs capital and Iler had achieved a bundle, apparently some of it through a fluke. He and his brother had bought and prepaid for a shipment of bourbon from Kentucky. Through an unexplained stroke of luck, the federal tax on alcohol changed while the bourbon was in transit, increasing the value of the shipment by a whopping $36,000, instantly making the Ohio storekeeper a wealthy man. Evincing his restless mind, about 1883 Iler decided that his fortune lay by going west.

About the same time, the Willow Springs Distillery on the Council Bluffs, Iowa, side of the Missouri River was closed by the Federal Government for nonpayment of taxes. Sensing an opportunity, Iler bought the distillery and moved it across the river to Omaha, becoming the first (legal) distillery in Nebraska.Iler subsequently set up local sales offices at the building shown here, He also began a steady expansion of the relocated Willow Springs Distillery.

By 1882, when the steel engraving shown above was done, Willow Springs had expanded to roughly 10 acres with multiple buildings. Sales of Iler’s whiskey steadily increased, reaching nearly $3,000,000 annually. The cost of material used in the distillery during 1886 was $250,000, representing 510,000 bushels of grain. Over 10,000 tons of coal were consumed. Employment was given to 125 men, with an annual payroll of over $80,000 (roughly equiv. $2 milllion today.)

Eventually Willow Springs became the third largest distillery in the United States and paid government taxes of more than $2,000,000 annually, including providing 90 percent of Nebraska’s tax revenues. When labor riots of broke out in Omaha in 1882, the Governor dispatched the National Guard to protect Iler’s “cash cow” facility.

After years making whiskey in Omaha Iler about 1990 obtained options on 3,500 acres fronting on San Francisco Bay at San Bruno Point and incorporated the South San Francisco Land and Improvement Company, taking personal charge of the development. This foray seemingly indicated Peter’s declining interest in distilling or perhaps a premonition of Prohibition. Whatever the cause, he sold the Willow Springs Distillery. Continuing to be active in business until about 1912 when he retired, Peter Iler had proved himself a worthy predecessor of Warren Buffet and other Omaha millionaires.

Notes: More complete biographies of each of these three men may be found elsewhere on this site: Edson Bradley, September 19, 2011; George Carragan, November 7, 2016; and Peter Iler, May 10, 2012.

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