Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men!

Terming the Mormon leader Bringham Young a “whiskey man” might strike some as an absurdity, given the injunction against strong drink that has been a traditional teaching of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. The facts seem otherwise. For example, in 1873 at Young’s request the territorial legislature granted him the exclusive right to manufacture and distribute whiskey and other spiritous liquors in Utah. “Valley Tan” was the name of his principal brand.

Young seems to have been of two minds on the subject of strong drink. Although indications are that he drank beer when polluted water was an issue, he is said never to have tasted whiskey. Brigham is recorded saying: “If I had the power, I would blow out the brains of every thief in the territory, and I despise the whiskey maker more than I do the thieves.” Strong words indeed from a religious leader

and sometime distiller.

Valley Tan predates Young’s monopoly over Utah whiskey. The name itself was associated with a range of goods produced by Mormons in Utah. One of the first industries they introduced into the Salt Lake Valley was leather tanning. Because their tanning process often was done crudely, the term became associated with any article of home manufacture done in a rough-hewn way, including distilling liquor. A quart whiskey bottle bearing Valley Tanning (V T) embossing is shown right.

Prominent witnesses to the character of Valley Tan have attested to the raw-boned nature of this liquor. Among them was Mark Twain. In 1871 he visited Utah and was given a swallow. No stranger to strong drink, Twain found it an unusually potent. His subsequent book, “Roughing It,” contained a story about a man named Bemis who came into Twain’s Salt Lake City hotel room about 11 P.M., “…Talking loosely, disjointedly and indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a ragged word that had more hiccups than syllables in it.” Twain then described how Bemis threw off his clothing and went to bed with his boots on.

At first, Twain wrote, his traveling companions thought it was something Bemis had eaten. “But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was the exclusively Mormon refresher, ‘Valley Tan.’” The author then explained: “Valley Tan is a kind of whisky, or first cousin to it; it is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in Utah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone.”

Other testimony to the potency of Valley Tan came from the famed explorer and adventurer, Sir Richard Burton, shown right, who in 1860 stopped to explore Salt Lake City and its environs. Among the people Burton was eager to meet was Orrin Porter Rockwell, a notorious figure with a reputation as a ”mountain man,” Mormon enforcer, and wanted criminal. At this point Rockwell had been appointed deputy marshall of Salt Lake City. His reputation had preceded him and Burton was anxious to meet him.

Their encounter occurred over dinner one night at the home of a mutual friend just outside town. The Orrin Rockwell the Englishman encountered was “…a man about fifty, tall and strong, with ample leather leggings overhanging his large spurs, and the saw handles of two revolvers peeping from his blouse.” Rockwell and Burton apparently hit it off from the beginning. According to Burton’s account, Rockwell pulled out a dollar and sent to “the neighboring distillery for a bottle of Valley Tan.”

“We were asked to join him in a ‘squar’ drink, which means spirits without water. Of these we had at least four, which, however, did not shake Mr. Rockwell’s nerving, and he sent out for more, meanwhile telling us of his last adventure.”

Burton apparently kept up with Rockwell, drink for drink, as the mountain man gave him advice about the Englishman’s plans to travel overland to California. Sir Richard later sent him a bottle of brandy as thanks, never remarking on the quality of Valley Tan.

Another link from Brigham Young to Valley Tan was its sale in the department-like store the leader had established to provide necessities to Mormons in Salt Lake City, ostensibly because non-Mormon local merchants were gouging his people. Called Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), the store, shown above, sold Valley Tan. That could never have occurred without the leader’s blessing.

Because Young died in 1877, his whiskey monopoly may have lasted only a short four years. His death did not, however, end his association with alcoholic drink. He is shown here pictured on a Pabst beer issued mug issued in 1897 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Mormons in Utah. Young’s association with Valley Tan was perpetuated by Fred Kiesel, a liquor dealer who operated out of Ogden, Utah, and financed a second outlet in Salt Lake City.[See my post on Kiesel, August 2014.]

Kiesel, left, was a “Gentile” who enjoyed tweaking the Mormon establishment. Certainly among his jabs was issuing his own Valley Tan whiskey and advertising it with a picture of the Brigham Young monument that stood in downtown Salt Lake City.

Shown right is a celluloid match safe with an ad touting Valley Tan as the “Pioneer of Whiskies.” The reverse side advertised “Brigham Young Tonic Bitters” with a picture of the Mormon leader. Kiesel’s bitters also was a beverage well-laced with alcohol.

Of Brigham Young, his son-in-law William Hooper wrote: “Brigham Young hates intemperance and its evils, and who, if he could have, would never have made a drop or permitted a drop to enter Utah. He wishes that all the whiskey that the Gentiles brought had been so filled with poison as to have killed all who drank it.”

Yet Brigham Young allowed Valley Tan whiskey to be sold in the ZCMI and later sought and received the monopoly franchise to manufacture and sell liquor in Utah. This whiskey man clearly was of two minds. As one writer has summed up the situation: “…Young generated a large amount of revenue for his new territory by taxing and controlling the very liquor he manufactured, yet despised.”

In recent years Valley Tan has made a re-appearance on the whiskey scene. In 2007 a Colorado native named David Perkins opened Utah’s first distillery since the 1870s in a village called Wanship, about 37 miles from Salt Lake City. Perkins claims it was from Sir Richard Burton’s writings that he found the recipe for Valley Tan. It is said to have been made originally from wheat and potatoes. Perkins uses just wheat for his whiskey and claims that his “Valley Tan is lighter and more delicate than other whiskeys — perfect for sipping.” Certainly this liquor is a far cry from Mark Twain’s “fire and brimstone” Valley Tan — Brigham Young’s Mormon whiskey.

Eichold Brothers & Weiss, Mobile wholesale liquor dealers and self-identified “rectifiers” featured as their flagship label “A Big Hit” whiskey and their business prospered for many years. Their “big out” occurred in 1908 when Alabama adopted a total ban on the manufacture and sales of alcoholic beverages. The company was forced out of business after prospering for more than a third of a century.

Like many successful liquor enterprises, this one was founded by immigrants, with the help of a Mobile local. The newcomers were brothers Leopold and Emanuel Eichold and Alabaman Jacob Weiss. The Eicholds were born in Germany in the mid-1840s, the sons of Jacob and Sarah Eichold. When Leopold was 20 years old and Emanuel 18, the pair left Germany, arriving in the U.S. in 1866, just after the Civil War, and settled in Mobile where they likely had relatives.

For the next ten years, the brothers worked for other merchants, learning the liquor business in the process. During this period they came to know the considerably younger Weiss, who may have been a relative. He was native born, the son of German immigrants. In 1876 the three men pooled their assets and talent to start their own business. Thus was born “Eichold Bros. & Weiss, Wholesale Dealers in and Importers of Liquors, Cigars, and Tobaccos and Rectifiers of Spirits.” They were located at 1-5 and later 1-7 Commerce Street in Mobile. Two illustrations capture the building facade at two points in time.

An 1884 publication on Mobile businesses extolled the partners as “men of sturdy honesty, untiring industry, indomitable energy and sleepless enterprise.” By that time they had built their business into one of Mobile’s largest whiskey houses and had extended sales over much of Alabama and adjoining states of Florida and Mississippi, using a sizable traveling sales force. “Their large brick store, of full depth from the ground floor to the third floor inclusive, is at all time filled with stock….” That included a full line of brandies, whiskies, wines and tobacco items, the 1884 report said, while boasting of the owners’ knowledge of and facilities for rectifying spirits.

Although the owners billed themselves as a liquor wholesalers, I have been unable to find any large containers of their whiskey. In contrast, a number of flasks meant largely for retail sales are known. Their flagship brand was “A Big Hit” whiskey, shown here in half-pint and pint sizes. (The pint may have been “purpled” later.)

Another major Eichold, Weiss label was “Golden Cream. It is represented here by a pint flask and a mini-jug. Other house “rectified” (blended) brands were “Belle of Mobile,” “Monroe Park.” “Rag Time,” and “Simon Suggs.” Those labels were trademarked in 1906 and 1907. Registrations for several are shown below.

Meanwhile, despite their purported “sleepless enterprise,” the partners were having personal lives. The 1900 census found Leopold Eichold head of a household that included his wife, Emma, maiden name, Eichold. Married at 18 in 1881, Emma was 16 years his junior and likely a relative. The couple had a daughter, Birdie, and also living with them was Leopold’s brother and partner Emanuel; a nephew, also named Emanuel J. Eichold, and one servant. In the same census Jacob Weiss was a 43-year-old bachelor, residing in a household headed by his mother, Rachel, and four siblings, all unmarried in their thirties and forties.

Not long after the census, the Eichold Bros. & Weiss firm underwent a significant change of management. It appears that Emanuel’s health was in a period of decline. He would die in February 1904 and was buried in Mobile’s Spring Hill Temple Cemetery. During the same period Leopold also appeared to have withdrawn from day to day management. Subsequently, the name of the firm became the Weiss Eichold Liquor Co., and was capitalized at $50,000 (equivalent to over $12 million today). Jacob Weiss, 44 years old, became president and Emanuel J. Eichold, the nephew, was vice president, according to Mobile business directories.

Slowly the noose of statewide prohibition was tightening. The Alabama legislature under pressure from the Anti-Saloon League followed Georgia’s 1907 full alcohol ban by passing a “local option law” that allowed counties and localities to go “dry.” The state the next year followed that law with a complete prohibition on the manufacture and sales of spirits. The Weiss Eichold partnership was forced to shut down. .

The 1910 census found Leopold, age 62 and apparently retired, living with Emma, daughter Birdie and her lawyer husband, and three servants. In ensuing years Emanuel J., now married with his own family, became a manager for Mobile’s City Coffee Company. Weiss, according to directories, went on to manage a local vegetable market. As the two remaining founders died, they also were buried in Spring Hill Temple Cemetery.

In 1884 when Eichold Bros. & Weiss were at their peak, they had been hailed in Mobile for their observance of “liberality and fairness in business matters.” Yet their reputation made little difference when the forces of prohibition prevailed. After prospering for years with “A Big Hit” brand whiskey, the liquor firm was doomed to a “Big Out” — permanently out of business twelve years before National Prohibition.

Remember the Clint Eastwood classic, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” much of which took place in a Western saloon? Daniel Conner Thorne’s Cabinet Saloon on Prescott, Arizona’s “Whiskey Row” had its own story, one best told with the movie title in reverse. But first, a word about Dan Thorne, the genial bald-headed gent shown here.

Born in New York about 1829, Thorne came West about 1850 with thousands of men joining the California Gold Rush. After the gold petered out, he tried placer mining along the Snake River in Idaho Territory. He apparently had married in New York at 18, but the name of his bride is lost to history. Legend has it that she died on the way West in a covered wagon. By the time he arrived in Prescott, Thorne was 40 years old, a widower, and thoroughly familiar with the mining industry.

He did not stay long in town, telling friends that he was returning East to “commit matrimony.” He found a bride in 19-year-old Mary Ann Wilson, a native of New Jersey. After they were married in February 1870, Dan returned to Prescott to build a house for Mary Ann, who soon followed. She would bear him three sons, Stephen Wilson, 1872; Daniel Conner Jr., 1874, and Harry Ashley, 1877, and a daughter, Mary Anna, 1880. Mary Ann died in bearing this last child, leaving Thorne a widower two times over, now with four small children to raise. In 1881, a year after his wife’s death, Dan married again. She was Ellen Josephine Bouyea, called Josephine, who ran a boarding house in Prescott. Their marriage lasted 31 years.

The Ugly - The Fire. Although Thorne was prospering through his mining enterprises throughout this period, he also saw the possibilities for riches in operating a saloon in Prescott on its notorious “Whiskey Row.” As early as 1869 he was associated with the Palace Bar and the Cabinet Saloon, two of Prescott’s most famous watering holes. With a partner he built a large frame building on Lot 19, Montazuma Street, and opened the Cabinet, described as a “new resort.” The owners displayed minerals and published ads inviting prospectors to bring in specimens for cash.

On the morning of July 5 a fire broke out in the kitchen of the Cabinet. According to the July 7 Arizona Gazette: “Volumes of smoke poured from the doors and windows and soon the flames were seen issuing not only from the roof of Thorne’s, but from the eaves of the neighboring buildings so rapid was their progress.” A saloon across Montezuma Street had to be dynamited to prevent the flames from jumping across the street. The explosion was a success and that block was saved. But the fire had roared down the other side of Whiskey Row destroying not only the Cabinet Saloon but the Palace Bar and other establishments.

Patrons of the Palace were undeterred. They carried the saloon’s ornate Brunswick bar across the street, saving it for posterity, shown here as it looks today. Much of the liquor also was saved and drinks were being served even as the blaze was being extinguished. Some 80 businesses and properties on Whiskey Row were destroyed, including an estimated 25 saloons and every bordello in town. A photograph taken after the conflagration shows the ruins. You can just make out the “Palace.” Saloonkeepers resumed business temporarily under tented sheds.

Almost immediately Thorne with others agreed to collaborate on rebuilding both the Cabinet and Palace Saloons. Damage to the Cabinet was estimated at $7,000 (equiv. $175,000 today) and a similar amount for the Palace. Instead of constructing again with combustible wood, the rebuilt saloons were made of brick, granite and iron. The new Palace was estimated to cost an unheard-of $50,000 and restoring the Cabinet likely involved a similar figure. Here is a photo of the exterior of the rebuilt Cabinet. Unfortunately a political sign obscures the front.

Included here are two photos of the interior of Thorne’s restored saloon. The top shot apparently is the earlier with none of the floral wallpaper and inlaid floor that show up on the photo below. On the second the tiles on the floor spell out “Cabinet.” This was entirely within Thorne’s practice of from time to time giving his establishments, as the press put it “a thorough overhauling” and “an improved style.”

The Bad - The Bandit: “Brazen Bill” Brazelton was well known as a Western outlaw. During a stage coach robbery Brazelton typically wore a mask over his face and carried a pistol and rifle in one hand while ordering the driver and passengers to hand over their valuables. Before being hunted down, he is alleged to have committed nine such robberies in Arizona and New Mexico. Brazen Bill, shown below, and Dan Thorne met up on September 27, 1877, when the latter was riding shotgun on a stage coach to California. The bandit forced the stage to stop and ordered Thorne to toss out the Well Fargo express box and break it open.

As Thorne did, a gust of wind blew the bandana from Brazelton’s face, as Dan was looking straight at him. The outlaw hastily pulled the cloth back on his face and told the saloonkeeper he would have to kill him, since Dan could recognize him. Then Bazelton changed his mind and rode away with the box. Not long after his return home, Thorne was standing at the end of the bar, facing the swinging doors when Brazen Bill entered his saloon. Dan recognized him at once as the holdup man; Bill recognized him as well and left in a hurry.

Telling the story later, Thorne said to listeners: “He did’t need to do that. He spared my life and didn’t even rob me; I would have showed him the time of his life.” That life had only a short time left. In August of 1878 the Sheriff of Pima County with a posse of five caught up with Brazen Bill two miles south of Tucson, Arizona, and gunned him down.

The Good - The Adoption. Perhaps the best story from Thorne’s Cabinet Saloon occurred on a snowy night in January of 1898 when a veiled woman dropped a baby girl on the bar and then disappeared out the swinging doors into the dark. The local Courier newspaper told it this way: "All other business was brought to a standstill while the crowd gathered around the bar where the little one had been deposited. As it was impossible for all to get near, one of the employees got up and explained the situation and read the note left with the baby."

The unsigned note said the father, a miner named William Bell, had abandoned the baby, and the child was now being returned to him by way of the Cabinet, a place he frequented. Bell wasn't present that night, but the miners, ranchers and railroad hands present, their emotions apparently loosened by whiskey, were so taken with the chubby, cooing infant that they cooed right back at her and some wanted to adopt her. “Not less than 40 men said they wanted to take the little one home,” reported the Courier. "Several babeless married men almost came to blows over the possession of the little one."

Although the newspaper indicated that the matter was settled by throwing dice, possession of the tot might have been determined by other means. The winner was not any of the boozy bar denizens, but a local probate judge named Charles Hicks. Hicks, shown here, is said to have cradled the infant in his arms and taken her home to his wife. They decided to called her Violet. This orphan girl became Violet Hicks, who learned to ride horses before she could walk, had a loving home staffed by two servants, and was the legally adopted daughter of Charles and Laura Hicks.

The Rest of the Story: By this time Dan Thorne, now in his 70s, had sold the Cabinet Saloon to other owners, perhaps because of the stress of managing too many properties and was devoting his time to his numerous mining claims, including the Tip Top Mine shown here. He had moved with Josephine out to Maricopa County to be closer to his investments. He may have kept a residence in Prescott, shown residing there in the 1900 census and recorded as a mining operator.

By 1902 the Thornes had moved back to New York City. There they took up residency in an apartment building at 248 Sherman Street in Manhattan. Thorne died there on March 21, 1913, and was buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery, Broome County, New York. Although his gravesite is shown here, his stone appears to be missing.

Called“one of early Prescott’s most colorful and innovative entrepreneurs” by the author of a book on “Whiskey Row,” Dan Thorne surely knew the truth of the “good, bad and ugly” of the Old West. He also knew the pride of having established and maintained for years a saloon of which it has been said: “The Cabinet would yield a history and legacy that is arguably unmatched in the American Southwest’s frontier saloon history.”

The Cabinet Saloon

Note: The story of Dan Conner Thorne and the Cabinet Saloon, only partially told here, comes from two principal sources: First, Bradley G. Courtney’s “Prescott’s Original Whiskey Row,” from which the quotes in the final paragraph are taken, and, second, “Dan Thorne: Whiskey Row Success Story” an article by Thomas P. Collins, first published in the Prescott Courier on Sept. 12, 1999. Many of the illustrations are courtesy of Prescott’s Sharlot Hall Museum. See also my post on F. G. McCoy, another Prescott saloonkeeper, April 4, 2016.

Throughout the years of the Potato Famine, nearly a million Irish arrived in the United States, often to face hostility. The roughest welcome of all was in Boston, Massachusetts, with a population of about 115,000. In 1847, the first big year of the Famine emigration, that city was inundated with 37,000 Irish Catholics immigrants — and they kept coming. The result was “No Irish Need Apply” signs posted in shop windows and plant gates. John H. Walsh likely saw such signs when he arrived on these shores as a youth but ignored them, applying himself in the whiskey trade and creating for himself and his family a flourishing business that lasted some 35 years.

Walsh was born in County Tipperary about 1841, just as the Potato Famine was beginning. Although we have no photo, a passport application indicates he had a light complexion, blue eyes and a red beard. Most notable, he stood over six feet, quite tall at time when the average height of a Harvard graduate was five feet, seven inches. He arrived in America in 1865 at the age of 24, possibly having waited until the Civil War had ended. Immigrant Irish frequently found themselves marshaled into military ranks.

Walsh’s early years in America are lost in the mists of time, but he appears to have apprenticed with a Boston wholesale liquor house, learning the trade, saving his money, and biding his time to strike out on his own. He first surfaced in Boston business directories about 1878 as a liquor dealer and the proprietor of a boarding residence called “Centennial House.” The 1880 Census disclosed the population of that establishment. In addition to Walsh himself, listed as a “liquor dealer,” were his wife, Nancy, running the household, and two sons, James J., age 13, and William, age 11, both in school. Nancy was aided by a staff of two, one of them John’s sister, Katie Walsh. Among occupations of the eight boarders were two other liquor dealers, Richard Barry and Michael Kelly, and a barkeeper, Dennis Brown. It would not have been unusual if these men were working for Walsh; boarding with one’s employer was common in the time.

By 1880 Walsh was firmly ensconced in selling liquor from his headquarters in Haymarket Square, an historic former mercantile center in Boston. Opened in 1845, the square, shown above, was a well-known location from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th, when the buildings around it were demolished to make way for government offices.

John H. Walsh & Company advertised widely in Boston newspapers, offering themselves as “importers and wholesalers.” Proof of the owner’s wholesale merchandising, likely to Boston area saloons and restaurants, is in the large ceramic jug shown here, holding a gallon of whiskey. For his retail trade and back of the bar, Walsh featured a long necked attractive green-hued glass container. It was embossed in bold letters with the company name and on the base “Boston.”

The Irish immigrant also marketed several proprietary brands of rye whiskey, including “Walsh’s,” trademarked by the owner in 1894, and “Sphinx,” “Owl,” “Kernwood,” and “Ashworth.” Evidence is that Walsh was rectifying this liquor, that is, blending raw whiskeys in a back room to achieve particular taste, smoothness and color.

Walsh's flagship brand appears to have been Sphinx Rye, its labels depicting a Egyptian background replete with pyramids and the limestone statue of the Sphinx of Egypt, a reclining creature with a lion’s body and a human head. Even Walsh’s bottle stoppers contained the Sphinx image.

Even as John Walsh was flourishing at the liquor trade, the condition of the Irish in Boston was improving as their numbers became a political force. As late as 1867, however, an anti-Irish, anti-Catholic candidate captured the Democratic nomination and was elected the city’s mayor. The first Irish mayor of Boston, with many others to come after, would not be elected until 1885. The “No Irish Need Apply” signs began to disappear. John Walsh lived long enough to see these changes in Boston, but died in the late 1880s. I have been unable to find the exact date of his death or his burial place.

By that time, Walsh’s eldest son, James was approaching 30 years old and had worked with his father in John H. Walsh & Co., for a decade. While keeping the name of the liquor house constant, James brought new vigor and ideas to the firm. As an example, he trademarked both Sphinx and Owl Ryes and appears to have opened a second outlet at 14 Cross Street in Boston. He also was advertising an alcoholic tonic called “Walsh’s Rock, Rye and Gentian.”

James Walsh also issued a number of shot glasses advertising his proprietary brands of whiskey. These items would have been given to special customers, including saloonkeepers and bartenders using Walsh’s liquor in their establishments. The detailed etching on these glasses, both the sphinx and the owl, render them of particular interest.

These glasses also would have been relatively more expensive to produce than the average shot. For his retail customers James provided a delightful pocket lucky piece. It incorporated a 1901 Indian head penny rampant on a four leaf clover and the motto “It is pure whiskey.”

In his personal life, James had known tragedy. The 1900 census found him living as a widower in Boston’s Ward 25, caring for a four year old son, John H., named for the grandfather. By the 1910 census, this Walsh had married again, a woman whose first name was Ellen. John H. was now 14 and no other children were recorded. James’ 1910 occupation was given as “Owner - Liquor Business.”

How much longer James would have run the liquor business founded by his father is unclear. I can find no Boston business directory entry for John H. Walsh & Co., after 1913. Even so, the firm the Irish immigrant had founded as early as 1878 had survived at least 35 years. With men like John Walsh applying their talents in Boston, the Irish had come a long way over that span — and would go further still. In 1913 the mayor of Boston was John F. (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald, the grandfather of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Note: This vignette unfortunately lacks details on John Walsh’s early life in Ireland, his occupational history from 1865 to 1878, the date of his death and his place of burial. The material on James Walsh also is sketchy. I am hope a relative who has done genealogical work on these Walshes will see the post and help me fill in the blanks and correct any wrong assumptions I may have made.

Foreword: Hiram Walker is one of the best known names in American whiskey history whose distillery was not located in Kentucky, but rather in Michigan and Ontario, Canada. Although I have done short bits on Walker in the past, when I decided to do a vignette my research took me to a website called “Robinson’s Library” that contained a succinct summary of Walker’s life. As in the past when a prior write-up of a whiskey man is appropriate to this site, rather than duplicate it, my policy is to get permission to use it. Scott Robinson, the intellectual force behind the library, has graciously consented. His article follows:

Hiram Walker was born in Douglas, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1816, the son of Willis and Ruth Buffum Walker. He grew up on the family farm, attended the local schools, and moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1838. He married Mary Abigail Williams on October 5, 1846, and the couple eventually had five sons and two daughters.

After moving to Detroit, Walker tried his hand at several business ventures before finally finding success with the Walker Wholesale and Retail Store, about 1850. The store's primary business was groceries, but Walker began expanding the enterprise almost from the start. He began by distilling and selling his own vinegar, and then expanded his distilling business to including whiskey. Then, knowing that the quality of his whiskey depended in large part on the quality of the grains used, he became involved in the grain-buying and -supplying business.

Move to Canada. In 1855, Michigan passed a law forbidding the sale of liquor by anyone other than a druggist, and only for medicinal purposes. Although the law was never effectively enforced, Walker was concerned enough that he decided to locate his distillery elsewhere. Already familiar with the area around Windsor, Ontario, Canada, because of his grain business, the decision to move across the Detroit River was an easy one, and, in 1856, he purchased 468 acres east of Windsor. By 1859 the property boasted a distillery, steam-driven flour mill, vinegar factory, grocery store, and livestock yards. The latter business grew because the resourceful Walker used the grain leftover from the distilling operation to fatten his and neighbors' livestock.

Walkerville Barrelhouse

Birth of a Brand. In Walker's day, distillers sold their products in unmarked barrels, but Walker set a precedent by putting his product in bottles that bore the brand name "Walker's Club Whisky." As his whiskey gained popularity, Walker's U.S. competitors became increasingly nervous and, in 1880, succeeded in getting legislation passed that made it mandatory for the country of origin to be stated on the label. Walker complied with the law by simply renaming his whiskey "Canadian Club." And, thanks to the popularity of Canadian Club, Canada enacted laws governing what can and cannot be legally called Canadian whiskey, with the majority of those laws being based on Walker's whiskey-making process.

Walkerville. In 1861, Hiram Walker moved his family across the Detroit River into a large frame-house, the Cottage, in order to be closer to his operations. In 1864, with all his projects doing well, he returned to Detroit, where he lived for the remainder of his life.
While building his business enterprises, Walker also built a community. Known interchangeably as Walkerville and Walkertown, by 1867 the settlement contained the distillery, a hotel, a store, and “several tenements built by Walker and Co. for the convenience of their employees, which number from eighty to one hundred.” On March 1, 1869, the Canadian government officially recognized Walkerville as a post-office village.

Walkerville Bottling Room

By the early 1880's Walkerville had a population of 600 people, who lived in homes built and owned by Hiram Walker. They worked in Walker-owned industries, drank water pumped through pipes laid by him, received police and fire protection at his expense, and could attend the church built by him (named St. Mary’s in memory of his wife, who had died in 1872). In the absence of a commercial bank, Walker’s employees could deposit their savings in the private Walker bank.

Distillery Headquarters

On January 29, 1890, a petition was forwarded to the Ontario legislature requesting Walkerville’s incorporation as a town and citing the significant contributions of the Walker family to the development of the settlement. The act of incorporation was passed on April 7, and Hiram Alexis Walker, a nephew of the founder, became the first mayor. After incorporation, Edward Chandler Walker, Hiram’s eldest son, made his home there in a large mansion, Willistead, and so the Walker influence continued in local matters. Walkerville was annexed into the City of Windsor in 1935.

Distillery Executive Dining Room

Other Enterprises: In 1880, Walker leased the ferry Essex from the Jenking Brothers shipyard just below Walkerville and built docking facilities on both sides of the river. Originally established for Walker's convenience, the enterprise became the Walkerville and Detroit Ferry Company in 1888, with Hiram and his sons as its executive officers, and remained in operation until 1942.

Walker also turned his entrepreneurial talents to the task of railway building. The Lake Erie, Essex and Detroit River Railway was incorporated in 1885. By the spring of 1889 the line had been completed as far as Leamington, and in 1901 the railway reached its eastern terminus, St Thomas. The Lake Erie and Detroit River Railway, as it was known then, had become an important line. Many rural people patronized the railway company’s excursions to Detroit and nearby Belle Isle, utilizing Walker’s ferry service in the process. The railway also gave impetus to a new industry -- the shipment of fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish from southern Essex to Detroit and Windsor.

The construction of the railway was followed by the establishment in Walkerville of a large number of industries, among them the Detroit drug firm of Parke, Davis and Company, the Globe Furniture Company, the Walkerville Malleable Iron Company, the Ontario Basket Company, and the Milner-Walker Wagon Works, the forerunner of the Ford Motor Company of Canada. Additional industries moved into the village before the turn of the century, creating an impressive industrial complex along Walker Road.

Walker’s interests in Walkerville failed to absorb all of his energy, and he remained equally active as an entrepreneur in Detroit after his return there in 1864. His name was associated with such enterprises as the Detroit Car Works, the Detroit Transit Railway, the National Bank of Detroit, the Michigan Land and Immigration Company, and the Hamtramck Iron Works. He also owned extensive real estate, including important parcels of land in the central business district, and was a prominent shareholder in the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, a Republican newspaper.

Later Life: Walker’s many businesses initially operated under the corporate umbrella of Hiram Walker and Sons, comprising Hiram and his sons, Edward Chandler, Franklin Hiram, and James Harrington. In 1890, however, it was decided to separate the interests and to that end the several individual companies were incorporated separately. Hiram Walker and Sons Limited continued to be associated with the manufacturing and marketing of distillery products, while most of Walker’s Canadian real-estate holdings were placed under the Walkerville Land and Building Company, and the utilities installed by the Walkers during the early years of the town’s development went under the Walkerville Gas and Water Company Limited.

In 1895, in declining health, Walker retired from his various business interests and transferred his holdings to his three sons. He died in Detroit on January 12, 1899. His sons and grandsons ran Hiram Walker and Sons until 1926, when Harry C. Hatch bought it for $14 million.

Afterword: Again thanks to Scott Robinson for the use of his material on Hiram Walker. For additional information on this giant of the whiskey industry, my post on Charles Klyman, April 2016, deals in part with Walker’s relentless legal pursuit of those who would dare to violate his trademarks.

While successfully operating a Cleveland, Ohio, liquor house for some 27 years, brothers Herman and Julius Guggenheim brought to their business a wry humor, calling one of their whiskey brands, B. W. O. E., initials almost certainly standing for “Best Whiskey on Earth.” This was a subtle send-up of the B.P.O.E, the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, always a popular fraternal organization in Cleveland and other cities and towns throughout the United States.

If there are any doubts about the Guggenheims’ intentions, they should be dispelled by a shot glass the brothers gifted to saloons and restaurants featuring their liquor. Shown here, the glass bears the initials B.W.O.E but has the etched head of an antlered elk on it, directly linking the initials to the Elks fraternal order. This elk has a smile on his face as if in on some great joke. The Guggenheims and their customers must have enjoyed the humorous inference.

The brothers also gave favored customers an advertising serving tray carrying the B.W.O.E. brand name. As shown here, the tray featured the face of a pretty young blonde wearing a Japanese kimono. It also displays bottles of B.W.O.E. on the sides and identifies Guggenheim Bros., Cleveland, U.S.A. The relatively large size of the tray is evident in an online image of a little girl holding it for a photograph. She looks as if she would rather have been skipping rope. By the way, a tray like this one sold for $292 on eBay in July 2016.

The Guggenheim’s story began in Baden, Germany. Herman was the elder brother, born in 1851. Julius came along five years later. In 1874 when Herman was 23 and Julius 18, the brothers departed Europe on the S.S.Pomerania, heading for the United States, and eventually settled in Tiffin, Ohio. They apparently quickly became engaged in the liquor trade. The 1880 census found the brothers living together in Tiffin, their occupation given as “liquor store.”

By 1882, the Guggenheims had moved to Cleveland where their wholesale liquor establishment first showed up in business directories located at 66 Michigan Street. In addition to being “jobbers” of whiskey, they also were rectifiers, that is, mixing and blending their own proprietary brands.

In addition to B.W.O.E., those labels were “Gorman Rye,” that the brothers openly advertised as a blend, and “Adalyn.” Demonstrating the progressive merchandising acumen of the Guggenheims, they issued shot glasses for both brands.They did not bother, however, to trademark any of their labels.

During this period each of the brothers also was establishing a family. Herman, once established in business in 1884 married Ella Lowentritt, a native Clevelander. They would go on to have two sons, Joseph H., and Arthur L. Julius had married earlier, in 1876. His wife was was the former Tillie Kronthal, born in Sandusky, Ohio. They would have at least one child, Edna. Cleveland directories indicate that the brothers lived close to each other, Herman at 115 Beech Street, Julius at 102 Beech.

The Guggenheims appear rapidly to have met with considerable success in the liquor trade, requiring larger and larger quarters as their business expanded. By 1889 they had moved to 60 Michigan Street. After some six years at that location, they relocated to 183 Prospect until 1904 when the firm again moved, this time to 716-720 Bolivar Street SE. After 1909, Guggenheim Bros., without explanation, disappeared from Cleveland business directories. Their closing was seven years in advance of Ohio voting “dry.”

What the brothers did after shutting down their liquor business is not clear. They may simply have retired. In the 1920 census Julius is recorded as having no occupation. Herman died at home in May, 1919, at the age of 67. Julius followed in October, 1929, at 73. Both are buried in Cleveland’s Mayfield Cemetery, shown here.

The Guggenheims may never have written their names in the history books of Cleveland but they deserve to be remembered, if for nothing else, for their play on the Elks initials B.P.O.E. to name their liquor B.W.O.E — “Best Whiskey on Earth.”

Seated in the photo above, I believe, is Adolph Moll, the old gentleman with a cap, surrounded by the elegant St. Louis grocery store he had established years earlier and worked hard to make successful. Note the displays of potatoes, onions and other produce in the foreground and then the bottles of whiskey and wine that seem to climb every pillar in the store. Moll knew that although bushels of veggies made money, liquor made him a lot more.

Shown here in middle-age, Adolph Moll likely was born in Frankenstein, Prussia, in 1834, although the 1880 census gave his birthplace as Berlin. He emigrated with his family from Germany to New York City in May 1952 at the age of 18, living for a time in Brooklyn. About 1856 he moved to St. Louis, a city with a large German population. A passport application indicated Adolph was five feet, six inches tall, with blue eyes and a fair complexion. In 1958 at the age of 24 he became a American citizen, sworn in before a St. Louis commissioner.

Moll’s first employment in St. Louis was working for a company that sold safes. He proved to have a good business head and an entrepreneurial spirit that recommended him to the German community. As a result he was able to borrow sufficient funds and with a local partner named Heidsick open a small grocery store on Third Street between Market and Chestnut.

His obituary in the St. Louis Post Dispatch described Moll’s rise to grocery prominence: “He did it all by his own energy. He would work at everything about the place, from heavy boxes to the keeping of books.” He also had a flair for advertising, billing his establishment as “A. Moll Grocer Co., Importers and Wholesale Grocers” and emphasizing his trade in “wines, liquors & cigars.” Those were the money-makers.

But it was not all work and no personal life for Adolph. In 1861, he married Emma Friederike Hedwig Ballaseus, the daughter of Johann Wilhelm and Julianna Justina (Wagner) Ballaseus. Known simply as Hedwig, the bride had arrived from Prussia the previous year and was living in St. Louis with her mother. Married in the Evangelist Church of the Holy Ghost in St. Louis, the couple would go on to have eight children. Adolph had selected well. Not only was Hedwig an attentive mother, she proved to be, as one observer put it, “also a strong presence in the business concern.” She is shown here in maturity.

Before long the A. Moll Grocery Co. had outgrown its original quarters and by 1863 was located in a much larger building at 612-614 Franklin Avenue, as shown on a impressive trade card. Subsequently Moll opened a warehouse at 822 North Seventh Street, also shown on the card. The latter gave him space for mixing his own batches of whiskey, using raw product gathered from a variety of Missouri and Kentucky distilleries. For his wholesale customers, he provided his products in attractive “bee-hive” ceramics, with Albany slip tops and Bristol glaze bodies. Shown here right is a gallon jug, left is a half-gallon.

For his retail trade, Moll featured two brands, “Old Bob Pepper Whiskey,” and “Delmar Club Rye.” In a typical ad, shown here, he advertised Old Bob Pepper as aged four years and selling for $2.00 a gallon. He also advertised bottles of “Home-made Blackberry Brandy” for 43 cents and Missouri Concord Wine for a half dollar. For his Delmar Club label, Moll issued a shot glass that would have been given to saloons and restaurants carrying the brand. Moll never bothered to trademark his whiskeys.

Along the way, Moll found another profitable beverage well-laced with alcohol called Mexican Pulque Bitters. Pulque is a fermented drink made from the sap of the agave plant. The color of milk, pulque has a molasses-like consistency and a sour taste. Although some folks like the notorious Texas Judge Roy Bean favored it, pulque had been eclipsed by beer as a cheap high.

Marketing pulque as a bitters — and thus medicine — may have been a way of reviving its popularity. Claiming to be the sole agent for the United States, Moll advertised that Mexican Pulque Bitters relieved stomach distress and could be “used for diseases of the Liver, Kidneys, Stomach and Bowels.” He marketed it with trade cards depicting dogs on the hunt — nothing to do with Mexico — and sold the tonic for 60 cents a bottle.

In addition to understanding how to merchandise alcoholic beverages, Moll gained a reputation in St. Louis for his general business acumen. The well organized interior of his store in the photo above attests to his merchandising skills. He once drew customers to his store by displaying a 2,300 pound wheel of cheese and vigorously advertising its presence. In time Moll became known the “Grocery King” of Franklin Street. As his children matured, he engaged them in the business, particularly the eldest, Paul, and a younger brother, Adolph Arthur. They may be the two men to whom he is speaking in the photo above.

Moll is reputed to have assisted many of his relatives by providing jobs at the grocery. He also is credited with bring kinsfolk to St. Louis, including his widowed father; his brothers, Frederick and Robert; Hedwig’s brothers, Adolph and Arthur Ballaseus; a brother-in-law William Paust, and a widowed sister-in-law, Antonia Bormann. The photo below is said to picture his children and other relatives working at his Franklin Avenue store.

Moll was also taking an interest in St. Louis business, serving as a founder and officer of the Franklin Bank, and in national affairs as an active participant in the Single Tax League. At the turn of the last century, Henry George and the single tax philosophy he proposed were a hot topic. George’s 1879 book Progress and Poverty had captured the imagination of millions of Americans. Many endorsed his proposed economic system that would have the government tax only land, not the profits made on it, but distribute revenues equitably to the populace. As emphasized in his obituaries, Moll was a strong advocate for the cause.

On June 22, 1898, after an illness of three weeks, Adolph Moll died at his home on Berlin Avenue. He was 64 years old. His funeral was a major event. As the Post-Dispatch reported: “Bankers, business men, turners, workingmen — in fact people representing every walk of life — yesterday afternoon thronged the residence of the late Adolph Moll…and formed a part of the largest funeral held in that part of the city in years…Those who mourned were legion.”

After a memorial service, some of it conducted in German, Moll’s funeral cortege, with leading St. Louis citizens as pallbearers, traveled to Bellefontaine Cemetery. As family and friends looked on, the “Grocery King” was interred. His gravestone is shown here.

After the founder’s death, family members took over the management of “kingdom” he had founded. Paul Moll initially assume the leadership but died five years later. After Paul’s death Adolph Arthur Moll, who had entered the business as boy clerk and risen to acting general manager, became vice president and general manager. In 1907 he was named president of A. Moll Groceries.

“Grocery King” Adolph Moll has been credited by contemporaries as a hard working immigrant who had started with virtually nothing and built one of the most solid and advanced grocery businesses in America. “All who knew him say he earned every cent of his comfortable fortune and built up his business on business lines and not by speculation,” opined the Post-Dispatch. As indicated here, the most financially rewarding of those business lines were based on alcohol. With the coming of National Prohibition, however, the grocery was forced to cease liquor sales.

The sale of the Mexican Pulque Stomach Bitters likely had been affected earlier when the Federal government in 1912 branded them as “bracers,” beverages claiming to be medicines that were in truth “compound liquors” providing substantial alcohol but insufficient medical benefits. Merchants selling them were required to have a liquor license and pay a substantial federal tax on sales.

Note: Although I had been gathering material regarding A. Moll for some weeks, when I settled down to serious research on this St. Louis merchant, I found that Ferdinand Weber IV, the estimable president of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors, already had featured Moll in his “Peachridge Glass” blog, one that often features bitters bottles. Because my emphasis would be on Moll as a “whiskey man,” I determined to pursue the story but have used some of Ferd’s pictures and information. My thanks to him for this material.

That slogan was adopted in the latter part of the 19th Century by the Ripy distilling interests to emphasize the heritage of their bourbon. Although the validity of the date might be questioned, father and son, James Ripy and Thomas B. Ripy, combined to create what once was reputed to be the largest whiskey-making operation not only in Kentucky, but in the world.

The Rippey family were Hugenots, French Protestants who fled their homeland under persecution and settled in Northern Ireland where they found a welcome. James Rippey was born there in March 1811. While still in his teens, James, with a brother, John, and sister, Eliza, left Ireland and family members in 1830 to seek better opportunities in America. Entering through the port of Philadelphia, the trio eventually found their way to Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

Initially the Rippeys lived in a wooden cabin in a small community below what is now known as Wild Turkey Hill in Lawrenceburg, perhaps similar to the one above. James became a clerk in a dry goods store, proved to have a knack for business, and before long was operating his own mercantile establishment. He counted among his customers the many small distillery owners of Anderson County who may also have been supply him with whiskey to sell.

The year 1939 was a pivotal one for James: He went before a court in Bourbon County, Kentucky, renounced his British citizenship and became an American as “James Ripy.” Although his naturalization papers say he appeared to be about 24 years old, assuming his birth date was 1811, he was several years older than that. Family lore provides two different reasons for the change in spelling James’ name. One is that a sign painter hired to render a sign for his store ran out of room and so shortened the spelling. A second version is that the immigration official who processed his paper work in Philadelphia spelled it that way. In any case the spelling stuck.

That same year James married Artemesia Walker, a woman about his own age who had been born in Kentucky, the daughter of a prominent local family. The couple would have two sons who survived to adulthood. The eldest, James P., served in the Confederate cavalry, married into the family that produced Bond & Lilliard Whiskey, and became a distiller. The younger son, Thomas Beebe (T.B.) born in 1847, was given a good education, attending the Kentucky Military Institute in Louisville, the oldest private military school in the U.S. Later he would attend Sayre Institute in Frankfort.

The senior James Ripy, enriched by his mercantile business, had taken a increasing interest in distilling. As early as the 1850s a small distillery had been established on the banks of the Kentucky River four miles east of Lawrenceburg. About 1868 the operation was taken over by a group of local businessmen, among them the 53-year-old Ripy. Before long the distillery successfully was mashing more than 100 barrels of grain a day — significant capacity at those times.

This arrangement proved to be short-lived as within months the owners decided to sell. The buyers were Judge W. H. McBrayer [see my post of October 2011] and young Thomas “T.B” Ripy, the latter likely financed by his father. By the following year, McBrayer had departed and at the tender age of 21 Thomas became the sole owner. He would operate the plant under the names “T. B. Ripy Cliff Springs Distilling Co.” and “Anderson County Sour Mash Distilling Co #112.”

Thomas renamed the site of the distillery, earlier called “Steamville” because steamships on the Kentucky River landed there. Now the location became “Tyrone,” a tribute to the province in Ireland from whence the Ripys had come. Before long Tyrone became a bustling town of 1,000 residents with stores, a post office, and a port for excursion boats from Frankfort. A photo shows one approaching the town.

As T.B. Ripy was rising to the top of the Kentucky distillingThe Ripys of Kentucky: “From Father to Son Since 1831 hierarchy, his father was faltering. After moving the Ripy family into whiskey-making prominence, James Ripy had experienced some health setbacks. These must have been difficult times for Artemesia and their sons. In June 1872, James Ripy, only 61 years old, died and was buried in the Walker Family Cemetery near Lawrenceburg. The founding father had come a long way from his roots in County Tyrone, Ireland. His monument is shown here.

Two years after his father’s death, Thomas, now 26, married Sally Fidler, daughter of a prosperous local family with extensive land holdings. They had ten children who lived to adulthood and another who died in infancy. Sally became affectionately known as “Ma’am Ripy,” described as “a tiny lady, with a sharp mind and keen sense of propriety.” A relative described her in her elder years: “She sat in her chair to the right of the fireplace in the parlor, frequently cautioning her children and grandchildren to ‘Love One Another,” as the Ripy men engaged in their favorite pastime — argument.”

By 1873 Thomas Ripy had torn down some of the original Cliff Springs buildings and replaced them with sturdier structures, shown above. Insurance records indicate that the distillery was brick with a metal or slate roof. Of the three warehouses, one was brick, stone and ironclad, a second was iron-clad, and a third frame and iron clad. All had fire resistant roofs. A cattle barn and a shed also were on the property. As a result of the renovations, mashing capacity of the distillery was increased to 600 bushels daily.

Harking back to his immigrant father’s foray into distilling, Ripy coined the slogan for his products: “From father to son since 1831.” Although that year makes a clever verse, the date is a bit misleading. James Ripy had arrived in the U.S. by that time but was just getting established in Kentucky, likely selling whiskey but not making it. The turn to distilling occurred in 1868 when James and partners bought the small plant at what later became Tyrone. Perhaps Thomas could not find a suitable rhyme for the actual beginning of the Ripy whiskey dynasty.

Thomas continued to seek new opportunities. In 1881 with partners J. M. Waterfill & John Dowling he built the Clover Bottom Distillery #418 at Tyrone. Insurance reports indicate that this distillery was a four-story brick building with two frame warehouses with metal roofs, one located 101 feet east of the still and another 112 feel west. A frame barn, where the spent mash was fed to cattle, was 750 feet northwest of the distillery. In 1885 Ripy bought out his partners and expanded mashing capacity of Clover Bottom to 1,500 bushels daily.

Before his career ended, this Ripy had a hand in several different Kentucky distilleries. In addition to the two located in Tyrone, at various times he owned the Belle of Anderson Distillery that he sold almost immediately and the Old Joe Distillery at McBrayer, Kentucky. He sold that plant to Wiley Searcy, whose name it took. [See my post on Searcy, June 2013.] Employing hundreds of local folks, as shown above, Ripy’s Tyrone facilities alone made him the largest distiller in the state and, according to claims, at the time the largest distiller in the world.

Along with quantity, Ripy was providing quality in his whiskey. When the State of Kentucky had to select one distillery to feature at its exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, his was chosen among 400 potential claimants. The front windows of a Salt Lake City 1900s liquor store in which the entire display is “Old Ripy” whiskey, give an idea of the national scope of the company sales. Although it is difficult to date any specific “Old Ripy” bottles or giveaways, the several scattered though this post give an idea of the many products over time that carried the Ripy name.

As their family grew to ten children, Thomas and Sally determined to build a house in Lawrenceburg able to accommodate them all. The result was an imposing mansion, shown above, completed in 1888, sitting on 100 acres near the center of town. Five years in the building, the new home and grounds contained many features rare at the time including a carbide lighting system, indoor plumbing, a tennis court and a swimming pool. The T. B. Ripy house has been called “…A work of art that is also a definitive piece of American history, representing the people who lived and defined the American Dream.” In 1980 the house was placed on the National Register of Historical Places. The Ripy family sold it in 1965 but descendants in 2010 have repurchased and repaired it. Today the mansion is a Kentucky tourist attraction.

In the spring of 1899, perhaps in declining health, Ripy sold his Tyrone distilleries to the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., better known as the notorious “Whiskey Trust.” He died two years later at the age of 55 and was buried in the Lawrenceburg Cemetery. His gravestone is shown here. The sale of the distilleries may have met with opposition from Ripy’s older sons who were working for their father in various capacities and might otherwise have inherited the business. Sons Ezra, Ernest, Forest and Robert subsequently opened their own distillery near Tyrone and operated it under the name “Ripy Brothers.” until Prohibition.

After Repeal Ripy’s sons and grandsons continued to be active in the U.S. whiskey industry. Several sons operated the Hoffman Distillery near Lawrenceburg and bottled “Old Hoffman,” “Rip Van Winkle” and “Ezra Brooks” whiskeys. Another son, E.W. Ripy rebuilt the Ripy Brothers Distillery near Tyrone. Two of his sons, T.B. Ripy III and E.W. Ripy Jr., were engaged in that enterprise. Subsequently the distillery was sold to Austin Nichols whose Wild Turkey distillery at Lawrenceburg would become world famous.

Schenley owned the Ripy trademark for a number of years, marketing whiskey under that name after Repeal. More recently, Wild Turkey, operating in the vicinity of the original Ripy distilleries has registered labels, among them one that features silhouettes of James and Artemesia Ripy, the progenitors of this famous American whiskey clan. The distillery to date has not yet marketed a whiskey under the name. It should.

Note: During the researching and writing of this post, through the good offices of a friend, I was put in touch with Mr. Beebe Ripy, a descendant of James and Thomas and a man knowledgeable about family history. He was gracious enough to read my initial draft and give suggestions for corrections and additions. I am most grateful for his prompt and valuable help.

Foreword: Trying to cram the multifaceted life of Hugh McCrum into the confines of a single post has been a daunting task. Although well-known in his own time and deserving book-length treatment, the multi-millionaire McCrum largely has been forgotten as a pioneer entrepreneur in the Old West. A kinsman in Northern Ireland has done prodigious research on him, however, that made writing this article possible.

The McCrums were Presbyterians from Scotland who moved to Northern Ireland where they were numbered the Orangemen. They settled in the town of Carnmoney, County Antrim, an area on the outskirts of Belfast. The Irish potato failure was no respecter of religion, however, and both parts of the Emerald Isle were victims of famine. Hugh was born circa 1836 in County Antrim of parents, James and Agnes McCrum. When he was in his early teens, he, his mother and other siblings boarded the S.S. Aberdeen, known as a famine (or sometimes “coffin”) ship,” at Liverpool, England, early in 1850, arriving in the U.S. after several miserable weeks at sea.

James McCrum was not with his wife and children on the voyage. My guess is that he was already in the United States getting established and had called for his family to follow. Via the 1850 census, I have found a James McCrum, no wife listed and of the right age, living in Clark County, Kentucky, with his occupation given as “saloon.” Kentucky was just opening up to settlers and many from Ireland found their way there. If this was his father, it may help explain Hugh’s penchant for running saloons.

The first ten years of Hugh’s life in the U.S. are shrouded in history. He later claimed because his father had been naturalized during that period, American citizenship automatically had been transferred to him as a minor child. McCrum first showed up in a public record in the 1860 Federal census at the age of 22, living in Pine Grove, California, the mining camp shown left. He was boarding with other miners in a hotel run by an Englishman named Thomas Hardy. Like tens of thousands of other youths the California Gold Rush seemingly had brought McCrum West.

Although he never got mining out of his blood, by 1863 Hugh was living in Virginia City, Nevada, and running the Delta Saloon there. It is shown standing today restored as a tourist attraction. His stay in Virginia City was marked by a strange occurrence. According to a newspaper story in December 1868:“Mr. McCrum, proprietor of the Delta Saloon, became suddenly deranged, and seizing a pistol, drove everyone from the saloon, when he closed the doors, shutting himself in. During the commotion, his pistol was accidentally fired off, but luckily neither himself nor anyone about was hurt.” After being subdued by the sheriff, he was taken to the jail and shut up in a cell for his own safety. McCrum was not known to be a heavy drinker and local opinion was that his delirium was caused by contracting smallpox from a partner who subsequently had died. Whatever the cause, no further such incidents were reported.

During this period Hugh got married. His wife was Emma J., a woman born in Maine and just a year younger than he. The 1870 census found them at home in Virginia City with a baby named William, born in California. Because McCrum was reputed to have no direct survivors, there is a possibility that he was Emma’s child by an earlier marriage or that the boy died in infancy. Listed as a “liquor dealer” in the census, McCrum befriended and possibly supplied a firefighting company in Virginia City. Shown here, a certificate dated November, 1870, gave him an “exempt” membership in the unit.

After moving to San Francisco post-1870, McCrum became enamored with the Arizona Territory and began to travel there, some 800 miles from his home. Although some of the distance could be covered by rail, most required overland transport by stage coach or on horseback. McCrum was quoted in the press saying that Arizona is “the richest country outdoors,” an somewhat ambiguous statement that might have been alluding to the natural beauty of the territory or its potential mineral wealth. Hugh seems rapidly to have gained friends during his travels, particularly among members of the press who helped spin him into legend. One newspaper called him an “Old 49er,” ignoring the fact that McCrum was 11 years old and in Ireland that year. Another cited him as an “old frontiersman, freighter and Indian fighter,” although there is no independent evidence of those occupations.

McCrum also was regaling attentive newsmen about his reputed scrapes with hostile Indians. Citing him as a man who “carries on his face the strong impression of truthfulness and reliability,” the Arizona Daily Star published a extensive interview with him on the subject: “Mr. McCrum represents that traveling in the Territory, except with a strong and well armed escort, is extremely hazardous, and he was compelled to do most of his traveling under cover of night to prevent being waylaid by Apaches.” The Prescott (AZ) Courier, however, was not as impressed: “Mr. McCrum evidently likes to hear himself talk…As to Arizona being a unsafe country to travel in, and the ‘hairbreath escapes’ of Mr. McCrum — well, as we said before, he likes to hear himself talk.”

At this time McCrum’s frequent trips to Arizona were part of his work as a traveling salesman for the J. M. Goeway & Co. This was a wholesale and retail liquor house that had been founded in 1869 at 409 Front Street in San Francisco, It featured a proprietary brand of whiskey called “Blue Grass Bourbon.” Hugh’s success in the liquor trade was indicated in a 1872 notice by Goeway indicating that McCrum had been made a partner in the firm.

By 1876, Goeway had departed the scene and the Front Street business belonged to McCrum and a new partner, John Sroufe. Born in Ohio, Sroufe was a decade older than Hugh, married with a family of three girls. Listed in the 1870 census as a “produce dealer,” he brought to the liquor house San Francisco business savvy and a willingness to “watch the store” while the restless and peripatetic McCrum roamed the West. A Nevada newspaper described the Scotch-Irish entrepreneur being “…as well known in Nevada as sagebrush and as popular as the product he sells. Yesterday the firm of Manning & Berry, our townsmen, ordered from Hugh ten cases of the famous Blue Grass Bourbon.”

Despite the purported threat from Apaches, McCrum increasingly was being drawn to Arizona, particularly the area around Prescott. There were two attractions, mining and saloons. From early on McCrum was checking out area mines, telling newsmen that he believed the mineral resources of Arizona to be almost inexhaustible and would prove equal if not superior to the mines of California. While selling whiskey to their owners, he also was calculating the profitability of the numerous saloons on Prescott’s infamous “Whiskey Row,” shown here, eventually buying at least two and a barbershop. Later they would be destroyed by fire.

About 1886 McCrum and Sroufe also became partners in a saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, called the “Bird Cage,” an establishment notorious for rowdy behavior and a bordello on the second floor. Hugh, apparently ever on the move, probably instigated the purchase. Two years later they sold the Bird Cage to Joe Bignon. [See my post on the Bird Cage and Bignon, January 2014.] McCrum also is recorded having bought a stock farm near Point of Rocks, a highly scenic area not far from Prescott, shown below.

With their liquor trade burgeoning, by 1881 the partners had moved to larger quarters at 208-210 Market Street. They also were looking closer at home for opportunities. The Cliff House Restaurant, perched on rock above the Pacific Ocean was a longstanding San Francisco icon, a eatery favored by the city’s wealthy residents and famous figures that included three American presidents. When a new owner found himself unable to manage the property, he leased it in 1883 to McCrum and Sroufe. They apparently brought a different kind of clientele to Cliff House, raising local eyebrows and offending the owner who terminated their lease within two years, instructing their successor to “clear out the riffraff.”

The early 1990s were an particularly eventful period in McCrum’s always active life. In March 1981 he met with a serious accident while driving a horse and wagon in Golden Gate Park. Described in press accounts as “driving at a top rate of speed,” he struck a projection on the side of the road and was thrown headfirst out of the wagon onto the road, sustaining a head cut and a bruised shoulder. Assisted by the police, McCrum received medical treatment at his San Francisco home. The horse, one he had purchased only a short time before, was severely injured and had to be shot.

By now 53 years old, this incident may have dampened Hugh’s ardor for being on the road constantly for McCrum & Sroufe. He left the firm in 1893, one that John Sroufe would carry on under his own name until about 1915. Although out of wholesaling liquor, drinking establishments still had an attraction for McCrum and looking south to Los Angeles, he found an attractive property. Called the Exchange Saloon it had been closed for several weeks because of a fire. McCrum bought it, expanded the drinking space, upgraded the bar, re-painted and papered, and installed new lights. According to the press, he also insured that there was a “fine new stock of liquids,”

Finally, after at least 35 years of marriage to Emma J. McCrum, years during which Hugh seldom was at home, their union came to an end. On the grounds of “willful desertion” she sued for and was granted a divorce with a substantial financial award. With weeks, Hugh wed again. This time his wife was Harriet M. Lakeman, a native of Massachusetts recorded as living in Mill Valley, a community north of San Francisco. He was 58 and she was 42. The couple were married on May 13, 1935, in a Los Angeles Congregational Church with the pastor presiding. Calling Ms. Lakeman “a most excellent lady” the Prescott Journal-Miner joined McCrum’s reputed “army of friends in Arizona,” in extending congratulations.

By this time McCrum had changed his official residence to Prescott, keeping an office in San Francisco where directories referred to him as a “capitalist.” In those days the term was synonymous with “investor,” a wealthy individual whose occupation was putting money behind business developments. For McCrum that meant saloons and, more important, mining endeavors. Federal minings laws had greatly benefited him. They allowed beneficiaries to buy land and the mineral rights below for no more than $5 an acre. Between the years of 1893 and 1896, McCrum is recorded making three purchases in Arizona, amounting to 150 acres. His was a particularly large holding.

The Phoenix Gazette called him “…One of the oldest mining men on the coast and his judgement is taken above all. He has traveled through the mining regions on the coast for thirty years and none are better known.” McCrum had reported to the paper on his mining efforts twenty miles south of Prescott, claiming his works were “running night and day on good gold ore.”

McCrum also became the majority owner of the Silver Cave mine, one he described as the biggest gold mine on the West Coast. It was located in the Florida Mountains, a small range in southern Luna County, New Mexico, not far from the Mexican border. He also was an investor the McCabe mine, at one time holding a half ownership. Shown below, it was located not far from Prescott and produced both gold and silver.

A friend of Hugh’s later recalled a dialogue between him and a prim New England lady during a stagecoach ride to Prescott. While McCrum was in mid-sentence the woman interrupted him with a question: “‘Mr., what constitutes capital in this country?’ Quick as a flash, he answered: ‘Eight dollars and six bits, Madam,’ and finished his sentence.”

Although McCrum listed his residence for voting purposes as Prescott, he continued to keep strong ties in San Francisco, continuing to own considerable property in the area. He was there when he died at the age of 66. In Hugh’s obituary The Sausalito (CA) News opined: “The life of the deceased was thrilling in the extreme, and the account of his experiences in Arizona would make reading as rich as the experiences found in the yellow colored novels.” The Prescott newspaper highlighted the amount of overland travel Hugh had endured over 25 years through California, Nevada, Oregon, and Arizona, “…that would have worn out an ordinary man years ago.”

With his widow Helen and friends looking on, McCrum was interred in Cypress Lawn Cemetery outside San Francisco at Colma, where many of the city’s dead are buried. In keeping with his wealth, Hugh lies in a freestanding mausoleum with his name carved in large letters over the door. The figure sitting atop the structure even today provokes curiosity. It is a seated angel with a hand to chin as if puzzling over what kind of man lies below.

There are few written assessments to tell us more about McCrum’s personality. One obituary described him as a “large-hearted, generous and genial man,” with a host of friends all over the Pacific region, but said little else to describe him. It occurs to me that the many miles Hugh McCrum had traveled in the West were of less importance than the distance he had covered from being an indigent boy arriving on a Irish famine ship to becoming a West Coast multi-millionaire.

Note: This vignette would not have been possible without the help of Roy Lyle, a resident of Northern Ireland and a direct descendant of Hugh’s niece. He had seen an earlier post of mine and wrote to tell me about his relative. Roy found Hugh McCrum’s “rags to riches” story of considerable interest, as did I, and he had gathered a wealth of material on him. Unfortunately, neither of us can find a photo of the man. Instead, Roy’s photo is inserted here as a sign of my gratitude for his help. Finally, two of my recent posts, in March and August 2016, also deal with Prescott’s Whiskey Row.

No author in America was more famous in the late 19th Century than Lew Wallace, best known as the author of “Ben Hur.” Wallace forever enshrined James R. Ross as the “Ideal Indiana Soldier” by penning a biography that extolled his military record in the Civil War and after. Ross’ career as a successful liquor dealer in Indianapolis, by contrast, has been kept almost totally secret. It is time to balance the narrative.

James Ross was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in August 1841 of Scotch-Irish parentage. His father, Thomas, was a cabinetmaker; his mother, Hannah, kept house. When he was six years old his family moved to Indiana, settling in Crawfordsville, a modest sized town not far from the Ohio line. There he grew up, was educated, and took a job clerking in a dry goods store. With the outbreak of the Civil War when he was twenty, Ross traveled about 50 miles to Indianapolis and enlisted in the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.

This was a unit organized and commanded by Lew Wallace, shown above. As a youth Wallace, a lawyer, had lived in Crawfordsville for time and his wife was from there. He and Ross probably had known each other there. Having previously served in the Mexican War, Wallace was now a colonel and commander of the 11th. Ross joined him as a private. The 11th initially was sent to what was to become West Virginia, seeing minimal activity before its three-month enlistments ran out and the troops went home.

Undaunted, the flamboyant Wallace reorganized the 11th in Indianapolis as “Zouaves,” modeled after French light infantrymen, trained them in zouave tactics, and designed colorful uniforms consisting of a grey jacket with red trimming, soft gray cap with red braiding, dark blue vest, and sky blue pantaloons. In our day when “camo” is required, those bright colored uniforms seem an invitation to getting shot.

With Ross among them, the fancy-dressed 11th Indiana was sent to join Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s expedition into Tennessee and saw hot combat at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson and Shiloh. During this period Wallace was raised to brigadier general and Ross promoted to captain of Company C. Ross subsequently transferred to Wallace’s staff which seems to have cemented the bond between the two men. An 1862 magazine illustration of Wallace in battle shows him among aides. One of them likely was Ross.

When Wallace in 1864 was named commander of VIII Corps, headquartered in Baltimore, he called for Ross, who by then was a commissioned aide on the general staff of the army. Those troops saw significant action at Monocacy Junction, Maryland, when Confederate General Jubal Early crossed the Potomac River and made a feint toward Washington, D.C. Wallace’s outmatched forces ultimately were defeated but delayed Rebel troops long enough to stymie any attack on the Nation’s Capitol. When the war ended Ross was mustered out in Baltimore.

James wasted no time in getting married. In 1866, he wed Thesta Alice, born in Indiana. Both were about 24 years old. With a wife to support, Ross found work as a clerk. Without disclosing what Ross was doing in either city, a biographer stated he “engaged in business in Chicago and Cincinnati for a number of years…” My surmise is that James was working in the liquor business. Both cities were noted for a proliferation of saloons and dealers to provide such establishments with strong drink. By 1873 Ross had moved to Indianapolis and was working for John B. Stumph & Co., a liquor wholesaler.

The Stumph firm appears to have gone out of business about 1877, replaced by a company formed by Ross and two partners called James R. Ross & Co., located at 184-188 South Meridian Street, the primary north-south street in the city. This major thoroughfare was a prime central location for doing business and throughout the firm’s 39 year history, while moving from time to time, it maintained a Meridian Street address.

Ross’ liquor business not only was selling whiskey at wholesale but was marketing its own proprietary brands, likely “rectifying” —blending and mixing them for taste and color — in a back room. Among labels were “Coonskin,” “Glendale,” "Marion Club,” "Race King,” “Signet,” and "Special Bottling.” During his lifetime Ross failed to trademark any of these whiskeys, but several were registered after his death.

Like many of his competitors, Ross was providing attractive giveaway items to favored clients, chiefly saloons and restaurants featuring his whiskeys. He gifted an attractive glass carafe advertising Marion Club, Marion being the name of the Indiana county in which Indianapolis is located. He also provided shot glasses, some elaborately etched with his monogram with gold around the rim.

As the years wore on, apparently recognizing that his Victorian style letterhead was beginning to look antique, The company adopted the “art deco” style that was becoming the stylistic rage. This new letterhead had a sleek, streamlined design, signaling a “modern” establishment. Although one of his partners, Henry C. Knode left to start his own liquor store, the other partner, Henry Thomson remained with the firm throughout.

Meanwhile, Ross was extending his military career in a fashion and achieving even higher ranks. Upon returning to Indianapolis he had taken a hand in organizing the Indianapolis Light Infantry in 1877. This was a part of the state militia, the Second Regiment of the Indiana National Guard. Ross was elected second lieutenant, then first lieutenant, and by 1885 was its captain. Eventually he would be promoted to colonel.

At the same time he was active in the Knights of Pythias, the membership certificate shown here. Formed after the Civil War, largely of veterans, this fraternal organization strove to promote male bonding around a martial code that harked back to the Roman era. An element of the organization was known as the “Uniformed Ranks,” a quasi-military unit. There Ross rose to become commanding general of the Indiana U.R. Brigade.

Meanwhile Ross’s business success and considerable wealth was being noted. That he was selling liquor was not mentioned, just that “for honesty and integrity there are none who stand higher in Indianapolis, or who more fully enjoy the confidence and respect of the people….Bro. Ross has reflected credit upon every position he has ever filled; as a soldier, he was brave, as a citizen exemplary.”

Ultimately known widely as Colonel Ross, James died at his home in Indianapolis in October, 1900. He was 59 years old. As his widow, Thesta, and their only child, Frederick, together with other friends and kinfolk mourned by his grave, he was buried in Section 36, Lot 174, of the Indianapolis Crown Hill Cemetery, shown below. Thesta would join him there a year later. In an obituary from far off New Orleans the Times-Picayune hailed Ross: “He had a fine record as a soldier and was widely known in military circles.” Nothing about whiskey.

I surmise that among those attending Ross’s rites was Lew Wallace, whose book Ben-Hur had eclipsed Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the most popular novel of the 19th Century. At the time he was living in Crawfordsville, where he had first come to know Ross. Wallace’s tribute to his former aide, “An Ideal Indiana Soldier,” may well have been from a memorial address at Ross’ funeral that later wa expanded. Published years later, the biography currently is not available on the Internet, making it impossible to quote Wallace’s words about James Ross — or to know if the popular author revealed in any way that his Indiana hero had gotten wealthy by selling booze.

“In your country, like the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey, a land of brooks of water, of fountains, spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, and all kinds of fruit, you shall eat bread without scarceness, and not lack anything in it.” John Filson, in “The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke.”

This kind of hyper-Biblical rhetoric found a ready audience in late 18th Century Maryland where years of bad agricultural practices had virtually exhausted the soil. Among listeners were Irish Catholic farmers in the only state that initially had welcomed them. In the Spring of 1875 twenty-five Catholic families left St. Mary’s County for Kentucky, seen as “America’s Holy Lands.” One of their leaders was John Medley, a farmer-distiller.

John with his wife, Elizabeth, their children, and neighbors traveled by land to Pittsburgh and then on a flatboat down the Ohio River to Maysville, Kentucky. From there it was another overland trek to Cartwright’s Creek, a small settlement on a fork of the Salt River. The site, shown above, is near the town of Springfield, Washington County.

John Medley saw that the land was particularly fertile and settled there with his family, along with other Irish farmers who had made the journey from Maryland. After establishing his farm, Medley added a distillery to the property, making small amounts of whiskey largely for local sale and consumption. When he died about 1817, John was buried at St. Rose Church in Springfield, built in 1806. Today it is the oldest standing structure west of the Alleghenies and still used as a church.

In his will, John Medley left two stills and forty mashing tubs. Here the record gets murky. This Medley had two sons, one from his first marriage, Thomas, born in 1785, and another from his second wife, John Philip, born about 1802. Which of these sons inherited the distilling equipment is unclear. We skip a generation down to William Medley who in the 1840s is known to have made whiskey at Cartwright’s Creek near St. Rose’s. By this time the Catholic population of the area had grown significantly. Orders of nuns and priests had been encouraged to come to Washington and adjacent countries to establish priories and convents where they faced no fears of harassment. Bardstown became the first Catholic diocese west of the Appalachians. Rapidly the region became known as the “Kentucky Holy Lands.” Even today, as one author has noted: “It probably has more religious establishments per square inch than any rural place in the country.”

The nature of William Medley’s whiskey-making operation seems lost in the mists of time. He died in 1853 leaving a young wife and minor children, including George E. Medley, who had been born in 1850. William’s death left the family to be raised by their mother, Elizabeth, living with a farm family named Osbourne, likely close relatives. Both the 1860 and 1870 censuses found the Medleys there. The latter census when George was 17 recorded him “at home” without an occupation.

As he matured, George, left, sought employment in town, working in a Springfield grocery story. He also found a bride there. She was Anna Isabelle Simms, called “Belle,” the daughter of Thomas Simms and Margaret Ellen Montgomery. The Simms family appears to have been involved in Kentucky distilling. A John Simms was president for a time at the Mattingly & Moore Distillery at Bardstown. George and Belle wed in November 1875 and would go on to have ten children. Their firstborn was baptized Thomas Aquinas Medley.

By 1898 George had gone to work for Mattingly & Moore in Bardstown. Possibly this reflected his marrying a Simms. Meanwhile, about 120 miles west, near Owensboro in Daviess County, a distillery had been founded two decades earlier. Over the years it had passed through the hands of several managers until it had come into the major ownership of Richard Monarch. After Monarch died, Medley with two partners in 1901 bought the Davies Distilling Company. One partner was Dick Meschendorf, a well-known and respected Kentucky bourbon maker. [See my post on Meschendorf, February 2013.] Two years later George bought out both partners. After a hiatus, the Medleys were back in the distilling business.

Enter Thomas A. Medley. As George had grown more affluent, he could afford to send his eldest son to advanced education, including law school. The investment paid off when Thomas moved to Owensboro to help his father manage his enterprise, becoming the secretary & treasurer of the Daviess Company Distilling. The plant as it looked at that time was featured in a 1905 ad shown here.

As noted in the ad: “This distillery makes only one brand, one grade, a strictly old fashioned sour mash whiskey.” The Medleys called it “Kentucky Club.” They sold it in glass containers with gold paper labels and apparently minimal embossing. The company also issued etched shot glasses advertising “Kentucky Club” to favored customers, including saloons and bars featuring the brand.

As the years progressed, Medley whiskey gained a national reputation and burgeoning sales. It allowed George to bring all six sons into the business. Ben J. became a distiller and vice president; Parker J., a manager; and William, George E. II, and F. J. Medley all worked at the distillery in some capacity. In 1910, the father’s health faltered and he died, age 60. As his widow and large family gathered by his interment site, George Medley was buried in Mater Dolorosa Cemetery as a Catholic priest intoned the burial ritual.

Now the leadership passed to Thomas who meantime had been having a personal life. In 1902, he married Florence Ellen Wathen, the daughter of Nick Wathen of the well-known distilling family. The Wathens, like the Medleys, were descendants of Irish Catholics from Maryland who had migrated to the “Holy Lands.” Thomas and Florence Ellen would go on to have a family of thirteen children.

Within a year this Medley faced his first major crisis. A fire roared through the Daviess County distillery, destroying the bottling house and one warehouse with its aging whiskey. Within a few months, the facility was re-built and expanded. Now the Medley plant had the capacity to mash from 500 to 750 bushels of grain daily. Three warehouses held 32,000 barrels.

The company continued to flourish under Thomas’ leadership until the imposition of Prohibition. For some years after 1920 the Medleys were able to warehouse and bottle whiskey for medicinal purposes. In 1927 the family sold their distillery and trade name to the American Medicinal Spirits Company (AMS) and later the complex housed a meat packing company.

Thomas continued to be active on behalf of family interests, dying in Louisville in August 1940. He was buried near his father in the Mater Delarosa Cemetery. His widow, Florence Ellen, would join him there three years later.

After Prohibition the sons of Thomas, operating as the Medley Brothers, bought a property near their original Daviess County location, one vacated by the Green River Distillery owned by J. W. McCulloch [see my post on McCulloch, April 2014] and established the Medley Distilling Company. A chart below sets the genealogy for succeeding generations of Medleys. As the family continued to be active in the whiskey trade they were responsible for a number of brands, including “Old Medley" and "Medley's Private Stock."

Ben and Thomas Medley Jr. later would leave the partnership to start their own distillery. Edwin died in 1953. Wathen and John stayed with the Medley Distillery until 1959 when it was sold. Later Charles Medley repurchased the property and with his son, Sam W., ran the operation. As late as last year Sam was involved in the liquor business as head of Charles Medley Distilllng, a non-manufacturing bottler/distributor on the West Coast that contracts for whiskey in Kentucky.

When John Medley set up his still about 1875, he was harkening to claims about the glories of Kentucky that opened this vignette. Medley found the state as advertised offered ample grain and pure waters — perfect for making quality whiskey. In pursuing distilling he founded a whiskey dynasty down through the eighth generation. For the Medleys, the Kentucky Holy Lands had become the Promised Land.

Note: The chart of the Medley family is from "The Evolution of the Bourbon Whiskey Industry in Kentucky," by Sam K. Cecil (1999).

Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”- John Donne

For years a carillon in Chicago’s Lincoln Park chimed the hours as a memorial to Jacob A. Wolford, a liquor dealer who was an important player in the Windy City’s effort to rebuild after the disastrous fire of 1871 and who, as a 40 year official of the Board of Trade, fostered Chicago’s rise to world recognition as a commercial power. In addition to the ivy-covered clock tower, right, Wolford left behind an iconic whiskey bottle as his legacy.

The son of Joseph Wolford, Jacob was born in Baden, Germany, in 1845 and brought to the United States as an infant. The family ultimately settled in Chicago where Wolford first appeared in the public record when he was 25 years old, living in Chicago’s First Ward, his occupation given as “saloon keeper.” Indicative of either an inheritance or early business success, his net worth was set at the equivalent today of over $700,000.

The 1870 census form that contained that information also presents a puzzle. Living with him was a Mary Wolford, her age given as 28, who had been born in New York, She presumably was Jacob’s wife. Also resident was Joseph M. Wolford, 15, too old to be Jacob’s son and possibly a brother. The household also included a Baden-born bartender named Krieg. He likely worked in Wolford’s saloon, located at 123 Clark Street, a Chicago avenue known for its saloons and bars.

The following October saw the Great Chicago Fire, a conflagration that killed up to 300 persons, destroyed some 3.3 square miles of downtown Chicago, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. Wolford’s Clark Street saloon was among the businesses consumed. Opening a liquor store temporarily on Washington Street, Wolford moved quickly to rebuild, as did many of his fellow citizens. To quote one observer: "To a spectator it would seem, from the energy and the multitude employed, that nothing less than the eternal salvation of mankind depended upon having the entire district covered with six-story brick, or stone, or iron buildings before the anniversary of the fire….”

Within a year Wolford was back in business. His establishment was included on a map published in 1872 that identified those structures that already had been restored. Shown here, it is #25, a large building bounded by Clark and Dearborn Streets, running the length of Madison. It is here that Wolford issued his proprietary brand, “Z-Whiskey” and sold it in a bottle with a stopper that had been invented by Hyman Frank of Pittsburgh and patented in August 1872.

Described in his patent application, Frank’s stopper, shown here, had a threaded end, a cylindrical part, a gasket and an overhanging top. This was an era before the crown cap and other modern closures when better ways to seal a glass bottle tightly were being conjured up by a multitude of American inventors.

Frank not only invented a stopper, he had to have a bottle with a neck that was suitably threaded to accept it. Thus, on the same day he patented the stopper he also patented a tool for forming the mouths of bottles.

Once inventors of closures had won their patents, they looked around for a glass house to put their ideas into commerce. Most were disappointed as companies opted to stay with existing methods. Frank was more successful when the A. & D. H. Chambers Co. of Pittsburgh, whose mark is shown here, decided to use his invention for Wolford’s Z-Whiskey. Thus an iconic bottle was born.

Applying for a passport in March of 1882, at the age of 35, Wolford was described as five feet, seven inches, in height, with a fair complexion, dark brown eyes, brown hair and a broad face. On the application in his own handwriting he describes his wife, Mary, as being 21. This seems hardly possible since in 1870 the census gave her age as 28. To add to the mystery, she either died or otherwise had departed sometime before 1886. In that year Wolford married again.

This time his wife was part of Chicago’s elite. She was Anna Mead Dennehy, the daughter of Charles Dennehy, a well-known successful liquor dealer and a political figure in the Windy City, elected at one point as city assessor.[See my post on the Dennehys, June 2014.] Anna, born in Illinois in 1860, was fifteen years younger than her husband.

Whether it was her influence or the perceived difficulty of competing in the liquor trade with his father-in-law and brothers-in-law, about this time Wolford gave up his business and went to work in as a commercial merchant. Possibly through the influence of Charles Dennehy, he also won a position on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Shown here in its 1885 quarters, the Board was among the world’s first futures and options exchanges. Much of the city’s commerce depended on forward contracts to sell and buy commodities. CBOT provided a centralized location where buyers and sellers could meet to negotiate and formalize contracts. It has been credited with fostering Chicago’s dramatic rise as a major commercial and financial center. Wolford was a mainstay there for 40 years.

Wolford’s business success and growing wealth eventually allowed the childless couple to move from more modest quarters to Chicago’s “Gold Coast,” where mansions lined Lake Shore Drive. As Jacob aged, his eyesight began to fail, limiting the activities the couple could participate in together. On their frequent vacations in New England, they found enjoyment in daily carillon concerts in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Wolford’s sight problems did not affect his pleasure in the music of the chimes. Jacob died in Chicago in 1917, age 72, and Anna died nine years later. In her will she left $50,000 to erect a bell tower like the one in Stockbridge as a memorial to her husband.

The gift — and perhaps Wolford’s standing in the community — spurred the Chicago Park Commission to add money and a seven-story tower was constructed in 1931 in Lincoln Park. Built of brown and off-white brick, it featured working clocks on all four sides and a carillon. For years 25 chimes pealed every fifteen minutes, attached to a keyboard that could be played manually or by a paper roll similar to those used in player pianos.

Sadly, over the years malfunctions and thefts stopped the clocks and rendered the carillon silent. In 1987, group of citizens working with city officials restored the tower to activity for a time. It is now again “defunct,” the bells still intact but without any workable playing mechanism. Apparently still possible of another restoration, those bells may again toll in memory of Jacob Wolford, a whiskey man who played a significant role in Chicago’s commercial ascendancy.

One of the true legendary characters of the Old West was Judge Roy Bean, often called the “only justice west of the Pecos,” shown here. Much has been written about Bean and he has been the subject of motion pictures and television programs — most of the depictions fanciful. What is not exaggerated was his lifelong occupation running saloons, including the one in Langtry, Texas, where he held court.

Bean was born in the Kentucky hills of Shelby County and christened Fauntelroy or Phantly Roy, names he early jettisoned in favor of just plain Roy sometime before 1835. About the age of 15 he left home with his brother, Sam, to drive a team of oxen in a wagon train wending from Missouri to New Mexico. In 1851 Roy showed up in California where his oldest brother, Joshua Bean, lived. Josh, a political figure in Southern California, ran The Headquarters Saloon in San Gabriel and he put Roy to work there as a barkeep.

In November 1852 Josh was murdered while riding to his saloon and Roy, still in his teens, took over its management. After getting in trouble with local authorities in San Gabriel, he later left for Mesilla, New Mexico, where brother Sam had parlayed his wagon train earnings into owning a combination store, restaurant, saloon, hotel and gambling parlor. He put Roy to work in the establishment. In 1861, Sam and Roy were described as “dealers in merchandise and liquors and had a fine billiard table.”

When Bean found out that 3,000 workers were building the Southern Pacific railroad through a region where the Pecos River meets the Rio Grande, he left California for Texas. By now an experienced saloon operator, Roy knew that those workers would be making good wages and spending much of it on booze, so he bought a stock of liquor and headed for the camp. In 1882 he opened a tent saloon three miles west of the Pecos. A postcard indicates the rugged nature of the country.

Bean’s establishment did a brisk business as did other saloons in the camp, giving rise to unrest and lawlessness. The railroad requested that the Texas Rangers bring order to the site and a ranger detachment was sent. Their commander reported: “There is the worst lot of toughs, gamblers, robbers and pickpockets collected here I ever saw.” Compounding the problem was a lack of any court of justice within 200 miles. The Rangers put out a call for the appointment of a justice of the peace for the area. Roy Bean answered and was appointed.

He was, to say the least, an unusual choice, known as a gambler and a drunk, but he had the confidence of the Texas Rangers and that was enough. As the railroad work ended, business at the worker camp dried up, but a depot had been established 15 miles west and a town was growing up around it called Langtry. Railroad executives let Bean built a saloon on railroad property just behind the station.

As shown above, it was from the front porch of the saloon that Bean dispensed justice. Note that he is sitting on a barrel, wearing a sombrero, under signs that proclaim him “Judge Roy Bean Notary Public - Justice of the Peace - Law West of the Pecos.” The men on horseback at left are said to include a prisoner on trial and his captors.

Another sign, “The Jersey Lilly,” represented Bean’s obsession with Lillie Langtry, a British actress who had been the mistress of Prince Edward, later the King of England. Born on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands, she was known worldwide by that name. Bean always bragged that he would bring her to town to perform. Married with children, he built a home for his family across the street from the saloon, calling it the “Opera House” and contending it was a concert hall for Langtry’s appearance.

In 1896 Judge Bean’s original saloon, one with living quarters in the rear, burned. A replica of the interior shows the rough-hewn nature of the interior that would be subject to fire. Bean immediately saw to the construction of a smaller replacement. A replica of the bar area on display at the Whitehead Memorial Museum in Del Rio, Texas, purports to show a grizzled Bean serving drinks to a cowboy and a miner. Above his head is a book, likely a replica of the outmoded compendium of Texas laws on which he reputedly based his legal decisions. The two bottles on the bar bear little resemblance to what might have been there. For example, the handed jug is a miniature that no respecting barkeep let alone Roy Bean would display.

As the judge’s business flourished, sometimes by intimidating the accused into buying drinks for the house, he opened a second saloon in a town about seventy miles from Langtry in a Texas town called Sanderson. The San Antonio Daily Express opined: “Roy Bean has opened a fine saloon in Sanderson…where he has the finest of liquor and cigars…Passengers by rail will do well to call ahead for themselves, at either place, Langtry or Sanderson.” Bean’s saloon at the latter location did not endure. A rival saloonkeeper had an employee pour kerosene into Bean’s whiskey barrel. Knowing he could not control the situation there as he could in Langtry, Bean shut up his place and left.

As a result of his colorful career, many stories have grown up around Judge Bean. Some have called him a “hanging judge.” Others aver that over his career in office he never hanged anyone, arranging for the condemned to escape. Some dismiss him only as foul-mouth bully, drunk and gambler, as in the photo of him (center, white beard) playing cards. Others counter that he was a generous benefactor, using the fines he levied and even some of the profits of his saloon to buy medicine for the sick and poor of Langtry.

Roy Bean died in March, 1903, after a heavy drinking spree in Del Rio, returning to Langtry in the morning and passing away that night. Some say he feared that developments in Texas meant that the Old West of his ascendancy was disappearing and the times were passing him by. Today Judge Bean lies buried on the grounds of the Whitehead Museum. Buried next to him is a son, Sam Bean. A kind of memorial was provided by Lionstone Distilleries Ltd. in 1973 when it issued a figural whiskey ceramic of Judge Bean.

Shown below is the way Bean’s saloon, restored as a tourist attraction, looked in 2005. About a year after Roy’s death, Lillie Langtry, traveling by rail, did indeed stop in Langtry, Texas, while making appearances in America. She had heard of the judge’s devotion and asked for him. Instead, she had to be satisfied with seeing his saloon, one that still bore her “Jersey Lilly” name.

Jacob and Joseph Dudenhoefer, relatives separated in age by at least 20 years, both fetched up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the pre-Prohibition era to sell liquor, beer and wine. When Jacob faltered and died, Joseph emerged to keep the Dudenhoefer name fresh before the public. Each of them left behind ample artifacts by which to be remembered.

Jacob was the eldest, born in 1842 in Alsheim, a village in Hesse Darmstadt, Germany, the son of Conrad and Clara (Matern) Dudenhoefer. Joseph was born two decades later in 1862. Jacob’s father was a wealthy farmer who owned a large estate with an extensive vineyard where his sons regularly were employed as field hands. Possibly wearying of farming life, Jacob left home in his teen years and went to Berlin where he was engaged in the dry goods trade for three years before entering the wholesale wine business there until he was about 27 years old.

Seeking a better life in America, Jacob emigrated in 1869 and settled in Milwaukee, a city with a large German-speaking population. He initially found work as a traveling salesman for the L. Fuldner Company, liquor and wines. Founded in 1862 this firm was a major wholesale house located in the 100 block of Reed Street on Milwaukee’s South Side.

Meanwhile Jacob was having a personal life. In 1873 at the age of 31 he married Catherine Lohagen, a woman eight years his junior. She was the daughter of a prosperous German distiller and brewer who had come to the Wisconsin in 1847 and owned a large farm south of Milwaukee. The couple would have five children, four daughters and a son who died in childhood.

Jacob stayed with Fuldner for about a dozen years before striking out on his own in 1880. Incorporated under the name the Jacob Dudenhoefer Company, this wholesale liquor establishment also was located on the South Side, specifically Grove Street (later South Fifth St.). He was “rectifying” whiskey, that is, buying raw product, mixing and blending it, and bottling it under his own labels.

Among Dudenhoefer’s proprietary brands — none of them trademarked during his lifetime — were “Bonfield,” “Elmbrook Sour Mash,” “Elmbrook Rye,” "Hunting & Fishing Club Rye,” "Night Hawk,” and “Yellow Springs,” He also featured a line of medicinal bitters called “G. V. G. Germania.” He was up front that the tonic contained 30 percent alcohol — 60 proof.

According to a contemporary observer of Dudenhoefer’s trade: “…From the beginning it grew very rapidly until at the present time it is one of the largest places of business in the city.” An illustration of his capacious wine cellar bears out that claim. He also likely was running a saloon in conjunction with his sales, a clue provided by a bar token good for five cents on a beer.

Part of Jacob’s popularity stemmed from his generosity with advertising items given to favored customers among saloons and restaurants. These principally were shot glasses advertising Dudenhoefer brands like Hunting and Fishing Club and Bonfield Rye. Jacob also was active in the community as a member of the Old Settlers Club, the Milwaukee Music Club, the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and the Deutscher Club. In politics he was an ardent Democrat but never sought office for himself.

Enter Joseph Dudenhoefer, Jacob’s younger (by two decades) kinsman, possibly a younger brother. When Joseph turned 16, perhaps with financial help from Jacob, he emigrated and found his way to Milwaukee. During approximately the next 15 years Joseph was learning the liquor business, working for Jacob or another German liquor wholesaler.

Joseph also had time for a personal life. In 1893 he married Barbara Thelen, who also had been born in Germany and emigrated to the U.S. with her family. The 1900 census found the young couple living in Milwaukee’s Eighth Ward with two children, Joseph, 3, and Elsa, 1. Living with them was Barbara’s mother and two teenagers named Thelen, likely Barbara’s siblings. Joseph’s occupation was given as “wholesale liquor dealer.”

Then the picture becomes less clear. In March 1901 Jacob Dudenhoefer died, his burial place not identified. His firm under his name, however, would be maintained for the next 17 years. But no evidence exists that it was Joseph who was leading it. By 1901 he had started his own liquor house, locating it initially at 367-369 Eleventh Street on the South Side and calling it Joseph Dudenhoefer Company.

Joseph had his own proprietary labels, including ”Blue River,” "Pater Oschwald,” "Tara's Hall,” “Rolling Fork,” and “Sunny Castle Rye,” the last being his flagship brand. He also featured a medicinal called “Sunny Castle Stomach Bitters.” It sold for $1.00 a bottle and a small wine glassful was to be taken four times a day. One observer has commented on name of the tonic: “Of the many bitters names, this has to be one of the ‘warmest’ and more positive names that is meant to remind us of our home, family and roots.”Joseph Dudenhoefer’s bottles and advertising artifacts are seen throughout this post.

Joseph would know a tragedy of home and family in 1904 when his wife, Barbara, died at only 31 years of age, leaving him with three small children. She was buried in Block 19, Section B, Row 94 of Milwaukee’s Calvary Cemetery while her husband and friends mourned her passing. After waiting an appropriate length of time and likely wanting a mother for his children, Joseph remarried. Her name was Magdaline, known as “Lena.”

With the coming of National Prohibition, Jacob’s former firm shut down, but Joseph, according to business directories, attempted to continue by selling “sacramental wine.” When that proved to be less than profitable, he switched to real estate. With the coming of Repeal in 1933, Joseph wasted little time in returning to liquor and wines. One of his post-Prohibition ads touted “Dudenhoefer American May Wine,” saying: “Few wines have as old or as distinguished history as May Wine. The recipe we use in making this wine has been in the family for four generations.”

Joseph’s story ended when he died in April 1959 in Cudahy, a Milwaukee suburb. He had been retired for some years. His second wife, Lena, had preceded him in death in 1930. Both are buried at Calvary Cemetery adjacent to Joseph’s first wife, Barbara. Joseph’s passing ended an era when Dudenhoefer was a prominent name in Milwaukee’s liquor trade. The artifacts issued by both Jacob and Joseph insure that name is continuing to be remembered.

Note: The relationship between Jacob and Joseph has not been firmly established. Some writers speculate brother, others nephew, still others, a son. None are definitive. I am hopeful that a Dudenhoefer relative will be in touch with me to clear up the relationship.

Sometimes a pre-Prohibition whiskey man is remembered by future generations, not for what he contributed to society, but by collectors for the unusual bottles or jugs in which he packaged his liquor. So it is with Thomas J. Oates, an Irish immigrant who issued several distinctive whiskey jugs from his 104th Street headquarters in Manhattan.

The artifact that principally has captured collectors is an elaborate transfer-printed jug that describes a scene in a mountain setting, presumably in Ireland since the picture is surrounded in shamrocks. A stream rushes by on the right side, flowing under a bridge on which a horse-drawn wagon has passed on its trek to a building of stone and wood that houses a distillery. The name of Oates’ whiskey, “Old Mountain Dew” stands on top.

I have isolated the distillery in order better to read the signs. The taller building at left reads: “Old Mountain Dew Distillery, Established 1865, Thomas Oates & Co.” The the roof of the lower structure reads “Thomas Oates & Co, Sales Room, No. 224 East 224th St., New York.” Oates may have had to redesign this label over time.

A second almost identical jug differs in minor design changes. The one shown left, for example, has quite different looking trees surrounding the distillery. Both jugs on the back have the same message: “Thos. Oates & Co., Established 1865, New York.”

A third version is a ceramic that is tapered at the sides and is slightly smaller than the first two shown here. It has a transferred label multi-color label that has been adapted to this shape and thus has slightly different proportions.

A side view shows the cluster of clovers and a shamrock that Oates claimed as a trademark. It was a useless gesture, however, since he failed to register the symbol and name with the Federal Patent and Trademark Office. Two other Mountain Dew whiskeys were on the market at the time, one from the Mountain Distilling Company of Cincinnati and “Mountain Dew Corn” from the Wolff Distilling Company of Louisville, Kentucky.

Oates jugs have no pottery marks on the base and might have been manufactured for the New Yorker in Scotland or England where potteries had developed the art of elaborate transfer printing on pottery, including in multi-colors. Two or three American ceramics companies had mastered those techniques but my assessment is that the jugs above probably were made in the Old World.

That is where Oates himself hailed from. He was born in Ireland in September 1864, although records differ slightly, and came to the United States in 1874, according to census data. At that point he would have been 10 years old so almost certainly arrived with other family members. Upon being processed at Ellis Island, he never after strayed far from New York, New York.

My surmise is that after receiving some education in this country, he early went to work in one of the many liquor emporiums dotting the Manhattan landscape. Oates’ jugs claim the establishment date for his firm as 1865, just one year after his birth and nine years before his arrival on these shores. It was not unusual, however, for a whiskey dealer to claim such if he had bought an existing firm with an earlier date of origin. Assuming this was the path taken by Oates, establishing exact dates for Thomas Oates & Co. is difficult.

Moreover, despite the bucolic country scene suggested by his jugs, Oates was creating his whiskey in a five story building in Manhattan. He was a “rectifier,” that is buying raw product from distillers, then blending it and adding other ingredients in order to achieve a certain taste and color. Located at 224 104th Street, the building is shown here as it looks today. A Mexican market now operates when once Oates sold Mountain Dew and other liquors. He and his family lived next door at No. 225.

Thomas married about 1894, when he was 30 years old. His wife was Mary Broderick, the daughter of Irish immigrants who was born in New York City. At the time of their marriage, Mary appears to have been only 17. The 1900 Census found the couple living in Manhattan with two children, Evelyn age 4 and Thomas age 2. Living with them was an Edmund Oates, age 14, recorded by the census taker as Oates’ son. Since Edmund was too old to be Mary’s son, his origins are not clear. By the time of the 1905 New York State census, the Oates family had added two more children, Marion and James.

In the 1900 and later census records, Oates’ occupation was listed as “liquor dealer.” New York City directories first listed his firm in 1902. In 1903 the fire department was called to his wine and liquor store to put out a fire, damage undisclosed. By 1911, Oates had moved his residence to 172 104th Street, still not far way from his business. At that time it was common for liquor dealers to live in the vicinity of their stores, the better to keep an eye on things.

As shown above, Oates also designed a second jug for his Mountain Dew brand whiskey. This one featured a centrally located Shamrock and the errant claim that it had been trademarked. Given the quality of the transfer printing and a limit of two colors, this ceramic likely was made in the U.S.A. He also put his whiskey into glass bottles. A “coffin” flask is shown here bearing his name and other information in the embossing. Originally this bottle would have had a paper label.

When Oates finally shut down his enterprise is unclear. He died in 1914 at the age of 70 and with him, apparently, his liquor house and Mountain Dew as a whiskey brand. The coming of National Prohibition in 1919 would have terminated the business in any case. What is left to us today and for the future is a series of extraordinary Oates-created whiskey containers.

The pattern is a fairly familiar one. An individual emigrates to the United States looking for a better life, finding initial employment laboring in mines or on the railroad or in the lumber industry. Then, seeing his fellow workers spending heavily for whiskey, he decides that his true future lies with selling liquor. That is the story of Isaac Obey of Bay City, Michigan.

Isaac was born in Montreal, Canada, about 1851 into a French-speaking family. As soon as he reached sixteen, an age when many boys struck out to find their fortune, he headed the United States, settling in Bay City, Michigan, about 1868. Incorporated in 1865, Bay City had grown up adjacent to Lake Huron because of its strategic location on a deep water port adjacent to relatively untapped forest lands. Rapid economic growth was taking place during this period, with lumbering, milling and shipbuilding thriving. Arriving when he did, Obey found ready employment in a lumber mill. A early map of the city above shows the many sawmills along the Saginaw River.

Obey labored in the timber trade four years, saving his money and biding his time. Early on he recognized the buying power represented by his fellow workers. A photograph from a single Bay City mill suggests the numbers involved. Although the workers were not getting as rich as the Michigan lumber barons, a significant portion of their wages was going for strong drink.

In 1872, Obey made his move, opening a saloon and liquor store at the corner of Water and Twenty-third Street. His enterprise appears quickly to have been a success and in 1878 he moved to larger quarters at the corner of Washington and Third Streets, dealing both in liquor and cigars. He also was reported running a livery business. About the same time he also had married Emma, a woman who had been born in Michigan of Canadian immigrant parents. The 1880 census found them living in Bay City with three daughters, Adelia (aka “Delia”) age 3; Blanch, 2; and Agnes, four months. Later two sons would follow.

Obey’s liquor house continued to flourish at its Third Street address. A photograph apparently taken in the 1890s, shows a display of barrels in front of the store. According to a sign someone (Isaac himself?) is holding, the total amount of whiskey on display is a whopping 5,056 gallons. Obey’s saloon and liquor store also appears to have held a bowling alley.

The 1890s were a period of entrepreneurial expansion for Obey. The 1891 Bay City directory lists him as operating a second “wholesale and retail liquors” store at 408 Fifth Avenue with a partner named Almedee M. Shilaire (also given as Amedec M. Shillaire). The partners also were engaged in a bottling facility at 1112 Washington Avenue. By 1895, Obey had left his Third Street address for a new location on Saginaw Street, the avenue shown here. The 1897 Bay City directory recorded Isaac operating both the saloon at 408 Fifth Avenue and a second drinking establishment with Shilaire at 104 Third Street.

In 1898, Isaac’s wife of 22 years, Emma, died. With her husband and children gathered around her gravesite, she was interred in Bay City’s St. Patrick’s Cemetery. The family seems to have been highly cohesive. The 1910 census found the widower Obey living at 813 Saginaw Street with his daughters, Delia, now married to Napoleon Cassauer, and Blanch, and his 21-year-old son, Athanasius. Both the young man and Cassauer were working for Obey in his liquor business.

In time Obey took his eldest boy into management and changed the company name to Obey & Son. In addition to selling his whiskey by the barrel, Obey was retailing it in ceramic jugs. As shown here, these were containers with Albany slip tops and Bristol glaze bodies with at least two varieties of underglaze labels.

Obey continued his ventures into the realm of spirits. A 1904 directory listed him as the co-proprietor of the California Wine House, located at 406-408 Fifth Avenue in partnership with John B. Duchaine, a firm known as Obey & Duchaine. Meanwhile he remained at 813 Saginaw as the principal of Obey & Sons. The new name reflected that both of his boys, Athanasius and Victor, now were involved in the business.

Isaac Obey died at the age of 61 in 1914 and was buried next to his wife at St. Patrick’s Cemetery. Their gravestones are shown here. Although his sons continued to guide the enterprises he had created, the forces of Prohibition, led by Detroit automaker Henry Ford, were pressing Michigan to become the first Northern industrial state to go “dry.” In 1917 they succeeded and Obey family businesses associated with alcohol were shut down.

During Isaac’s lifetime a History of Bay County (1883) said of him: “Mr. Obey does a good business and stands well as a citizen.” It might have added that this French-Canadian immigrant with a strong entrepreneurial spirit had helped Bay City grow from a sawdust-blown village into a thriving city approaching 32,000 residents, albeit one with lots of whiskey flowing.

Henry Wheeler Gillett is recorded as a Kansas man of “firsts” in several accounts. According to the LeavenworthDaily Commercial of Dec. 31, 1871: “Mr. Gillett rectified the first barrel of whiskey ever taken through that process in Kansas….” Later he was reported to be the first liquor merchant in the state to be hauled into court in 1875 as a result of Prohibition pressures. Finally, in 1891 Gillett may have been the first man sent to jail in what theTopeka Weekly Capital termed a “crusade against liquor dealers.”

Henry began life more than 1,000 miles from Kansas. The youngest of five children, he was born in 1832 in Clarksville, New York, the son of Anson W. and Olive Brown Gillett. By the age of 19, he had left New York for Ohio, settling in Lucas County not far from Toledo. There in 1851 he found a bride in Rebecca Rose Peters, an 18-year-old who had been born in Pennsylvania. When they wed, she was living with a farm family near Waterville, Ohio, likely likely looking after a two-year-old. Henry and Rebecca’s first child, Helen, would be born in Waterville in 1855. Although I have been unable to find a record of his Ohio employment, my guess is that Gillett was engaged in mercantile pursuits, likely involving whiskey.

By 1859 Gillett and his family were recorded living in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he had opened a small wholesale liquor house. After the passage by Congress of the Kansas-Nebraska Act people began to stream into the newly-formed territory looking for farmland and other venues of opportunity. Many of them were from Ohio and other Midwest states. The territory soon would be known as “bleeding Kansas” because of clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces that roiled the population before and during the Civil War. Leavenworth, just few miles north of Kansas City, Missouri, was a particular hotbed of confrontation.

Despite the tumult, Gillett apparently found a ready market for whiskey. Shown here is an 1865 ad for H. W. Gillett & Co., located at 54 Main Street, between Delware and Shawnee Streets in Leavenworth. He billed his company as “Wholesale Dealers in Native and Imported Wines, Liquors, Cigars, etc, of the Very Best Quality.” The illustration advertised fancy 1800 French brandy. The Civil War proved to be a boon to Gillett’s sales. According to a newspaper account: “At some time during the war his annual sales amounted to considerable more than a quarter of a million dollars.” That would be equivalent to more than $6 million today.

Initially Gillett took a local partner, A. C. Wilder, a Union Army veteran who later represented Kansas in the U.S. Congress. When Wilder departed from the firm, Gillett carried on successfully as a single proprietor and needing more space for his expanding operations moved in 1868 to 209 Delaware Avenue. Shown here as it looks today, the building was said to be in one of the finest blocks in the city. The structure offered plenty of room for Gillett to engage in the “recifying” his own whiskey, that is, buying it in barrels, mixing and blending it for taste and color, and bottling it as his own proprietary labels. Reputed to be the first ever in Kansas to undertake the process, Gillett remained a rectifier throughout his career in the liquor trade. Said the Leavenworth newspaper: “He has been very prosperous, deservedly so…”

This prosperity found itself demonstrated in the mansion Henry built at 519 North Broadway for his wife and family in 1867. Known as the Gillett House, now on the National Register of Historic Places, the two story Italianate style home was the first of several in Leavenworth to feature cast iron decoration. Those features included ornate bracketed cornices with elaborate cast iron lintels. The windows were embellished by fleur-de-lis crests. Henry lived there with wife Rebecca Rose, their one daughter, and servants.

Even then the storm clouds of Prohibition were gathering over the Kansas. Shown here is one of hundreds of “dry” town meetings, in a territory that rapidly became a national center of activity for the Temperance Movement. Gillett was an early target of “dry” forces. In 1875 after a Topeka resident named Haug placed an order for whiskey with him in Leavenworth, Henry was arrested under a law that forbid anyone from selling liquor “without taking out and having a license as grocer, dram shopkeeper, or tavern keeper.” Gillett had no license in Topeka. The Kansas Supreme Court reasoned, however, that the sale had taken place in Leavenworth and Gillett had a license there, ruling in his favor. It was said to be the first instance of the Court intruding into Kansas liquor affairs. Many such intrusions would follow.

Although Gillett won his case, the experience may have suggested to him the wisdom of an occupational change. By 1877, he had taken on two new partners, Robert Armstrong and E. F. Kellogg. They changed the company name to “Gillett, Armstrong & Kellogg.” By the following year his name was erased from the firm entirely, as he sold out to the pair. Two letterheads shown here reflect this transition. By that time Henry was involved in a range of other pursuits. Among them he was an investor and director of the Kansas Central Railroad Co. Its objective was to build a railroad and telegraph line to the Kansas-Colorado border, more than 400 miles west. He also was a director of the State Penitentiary in Leavenworth and had an interest in a corporation known as the Kansas Manufacturing Company.

Meanwhile the firm Gillett had founded and sold would prove to have a short remaining life span. By 1880 Kansas voters had approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting all manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors” throughout the state. The liquor house was forced to shut down. Whiskey continued to flow in Kansas, however, as the courts made it virtually impossible to punish offenders. Called “jointists,” saloonkeepers and liquor dealers operated openly. To be convicted a specific defendant had to be named, with proof of at least two sales documented with the time, place and witnesses. But evidence was inadmissible from anyone, called a ”spotter,” who engaged in a sale just to obtain an arrest.

Here the record on Henry Gillett becomes hazy. Some accounts suggest that he might have lost much of his wealth during the 1880s. The Kansas Central Railroad stumbled financially and went bankrupt. Gillett sold his mansion home in 1890. Was he obliged to by economic necessity? Did he then re-engage in the liquor trade? Some evidence exists that he did. Annual cash sales for the average Kansas jointist were estimated at $885,600 (equiv. to $21 million today). Proceeds like that would have been tempting. Moreover, liquor supplies were easily accessible from neighboring “wet” Missouri.

In July 1891 the Topeka Weekly Capital ran an article datelined Atchison, Kansas, headlined “Harrassing the Jointists.” It described a crusade by local officials against liquor dealers. One jointist had eluded the sheriff and headed for Nebraska. Another had stolen all the papers involved in the case and fled to parts unknown. Not so fortunate was a liquor dealer named Henry Gillett who had been fined $200 and sent to jail for two months. Was this our Henry Gillett? I can find no other in Kansas who fits the name and profile. Was he the first to be jailed for selling booze? Given the loose application of the “dry” laws, another “first” for Henry seems possible.

A year later, in April 1892, Gillett died. He was 60 years old. The cause given at the time was “dropsy,” the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water, often a sign of congestive heart failure. He was interred at Mount Muncie Cemetery in Leavenworth County, shown here, a burial grounds for which he once had served as a director.

During his lifetime, Gillett was credited with at least two whiskey “firsts” in Kansas — rectifying and court appearance.

Was he also the first to go to jail because of liquor? I would rather remember Gillett as he was characterized in a Leavenworth newspaper article: “…He is one of our most popular and estimable citizens.”

Families in the development of American whiskey were nowhere more important than in Kentucky — and in Kentucky no family name was more renowned than Dant. As one author accurately has said: “The Dant family permeated the Kentucky bourbon industry.” The Dant saga needs a book to do it justice. As a result, I will be featuring only three of its members, the founding father and two of his sons.

Joseph Washington Dant— The progenitor of the the Dant family was J. W. Dant, born in May 1920 in Loretto, Marion County, into a farm family with French roots. His father and mother, Jean Baptiste and Mary Jane Smith Dant, were both native Kentuckians. The little that is known of Joseph’s early life is that he received some elementary education and that his first occupation was as a blacksmith.

At the age of about sixteen in Joseph apparently decided that making whiskey held more promise than beating hot iron. In 1836 he founded his first distillery in Marion County on Walnut Ridge Farm, a site located ten miles west of Loretto. When the Louisville and Nashville (L & N) Railroad made it a stop, it became known as Dant Station. Joseph’s first still was hewn from a log, a primitive method used by pioneers in Kentucky when they did not have the money for a copper kettle. The process used logs of of about ten feet in length. The timber would be split, hollowed out, and a copper tube inserted; then the two halves would be joined. The hollowed areas would be filled with fermented mash and steam would be fed through the piping for the initial distillation. A second distillation would follow. The process was called “making it on a log” or “running it on a log.” Although crude, this method could result in good whiskey in the right hands — and Joseph had them.

In February 1849 he married Ann Catherine Ballard, a woman of 19 who was ten years his junior. The couple would have ten children, seven boys and three girls. The eldest, of whom we will hear more later, was J. Bernard Dant, born in 1850. The chart below shows the Dant family lineage involved with distilling in Kentucky.

The Dant family has related a story about Joseph early on producing more whiskey than local consumption could absorb so he determined to expand his territory. He would cart barrels of whiskey by wagon to the Beech Fork River, build a raft, and float it down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Dant himself is reputed to have accompanied three of those shipments, walking back to Kentucky from Louisiana, a distance of more than 600 miles By the third trip, it is said, he was able to afford a mule and rode back.

As the years progressed, the reputation of Dant's whiskey grew. Joseph produced much of his own grain for the distiller on his 196 acre farm and eventually established his own cooperage, building barrels onsite. By 1870 he had sufficient resources to build a state of the art distillery. A unique aspect of the operation was that it was built to take advantage of gravity. The mash tub was much higher than the fermenters and with the aid of a very large pipe, Joseph was able to fill his tubs without the need for pumping. The flow was said to be intense. Gravity also was employed in the bottling process as whiskey was filtered by gravity to a tank and then to the bottling line.

According to insurance underwriters records, Dant’s facility was of frame construction with with a shingle roof. It had a single warehouse, built of brick with a metal or slate roof, located 225 feet west of the still. After passage of the Bottled-in-Bonding Act, the warehouse became bonded. By that time it held 3,300 barrels of aging whiskey and the distillery was mashing about 200 bushels a day, equivalent to a twenty barrel output. Downwind about 100 feet were cattle pens where livestock was being fed the spent mash. A photo shows Dant Station as it looked in the late 1800s. With railroad tracks adjacent, a siding gave easy access to load barrels on freight cars for customers nationwide. As shown here on an advertising flyer, the whiskey was sold under the J. W. Dant name and the slogan, “The Kind I Have Always Used.”

Sometime during the 1880s, Joseph retired from directing the distillery, turning the management over to a son, Wallace, joined later by a younger brother, George. Under their leadership the company incorporated in 1897, with George as the largest shareholder. The founding father died in February 1902 and was buried in St. Francis Cemetery, Marion County. The Dant family monument is shown here. J. W. Dant company would survive and prosper until the coming of National Prohibition. Under the guidance of George Dant and other family members, the distillery was resurrected after Repeal, operating for seven years until being sold in 1941. The facility shut down for good in 1951.

Joseph Bernard Dant — The eldest child of Joseph and Anne Dant, Bernard Dant, as he was called throughout his life, began his career in distilling working for his father while still in his teen years. Although he continued to be associated with the J. W. Dant Co. for a number of years, about 1882 he moved from Dant Station to Gethsemane Station about 10 miles down the L & N. line and built his own distillery. Shown below, insurance records indicate that the facility was of frame construction. The property included two warehouses, both ironclad and located adjacent to each other.

Listed as Registered Distillery No. 240, District 5, Bernard called it “Cold Spring Distillery.” Its claim to fame was for creating “Yellowstone Whiskey”. Bernard is given credit for its popularity but the brand did not appear bear the Dant name, rather under the label of Taylor & William, Inc. This was a Louisville wholesale liquor house established in 1865. In 1871 a Taylor sales manager visited the newly opened Yellowstone National Park and noting the enthusiasm over its natural wonders, decided to name a brand of whiskey after it.

Later J. T. Williams joined the firm and it became Taylor & Williams. Because the company had no distillery of its own it was dependent on getting adequate supplies for the increasingly popular Yellowstone brand. As a result, Taylor & Williams in the 1880s contracted with Dant and his Cold Spring Distillery to produce and bottle it and other company proprietary labels.

Meanwhile, Bernard was having a personal life. About 1875 he married Nancy Ellen Ferriell, a Kentucky native. They would have a family of six sons, two of whom died in young adulthood, and two daughters. Meanwhile this Dant’s reputation as a master distiller was redounding through Kentucky and beyond. In 1900 he moved to Louisville and became president of Taylor & Williams. In 1903 the company incorporated with Bernard at the helm and his eldest son, Sam J. Dant, as the treasurer. Eventually each of his surviving sons would be involved in the distilling industry.

With National Prohibition, the Cold Spring Distillery shut down and Taylor & Williams closed. Bernard, known as “The Grand Old Man” of Kentucky whiskey, lived long enough to see Repeal, when the family dismantled the distillery at Gethsemane, created Yellowstone, Inc., as a distilling company, and built a new facility in Jefferson County. Bernard was listed as vice president of that firm.

Bernard Dant died several years later at 89 years, accounted by the Louisville Courier Journal as “the oldest active distiller in the country.” His wife Nancy Ellen had proceeded him in death two years earlier. With his brothers and sisters, children, thirteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren gathered at the graveside, he was interred next to Nancy in Louisville’s Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

John Procter Dant — John P. was the third of J. W. Gant’s sons, born in 1856. Like his brother, Bernard, John early on went to work for his father at the Dant Station distillery. As indicated by his letterhead below, in 1890 John struck out on his own, buying a distillery that may have been established as early as 1855. It was known as RD #174, District 5, and located in a town then called Chicago, now St. Francis, Kentucky. Dant called it the “Old Danton Distillery” after his flagship brand.

Insurance records compiled in 1892 indicate that the distillery was of frame construction and included two bonded warehouses. Both warehouses were frame and located adjacent to one another about 90 feet from the distillery. The illustration on the letterhead confirms those records. Note that a rail line is shown serving the plant. John employed a nephew, Thad Dant, as his distiller. After operating the facility for several years, he sold out and moved to Louisville where he started a wholesale liquor house.

Meanwhile John also was having a personal life. About 1884 he married Ann Josephine Smith, born in Marion County, the daughter of William Henry and Rosella Lancaster Smith, both native Kentuckians. The Dants would have a family of four, according to records. Their first son named after Joseph William Dant sadly died in infancy. Then came two daughters and in 1890 a second son, John Jr.

John Dant was very successful as a liquor wholesaler, operating from his address at 909 Broadway as the “Pioneer Bottling House” and featuring “Old Dant Sour Mash Whiskey.” His store featured a large jug bearing his name. As shown here, John also favored ceramic jugs for his products. Those came in a variety of formats including an Albany glaze with an underglaze transfer and a “scratch” jug.

He also featured a number of giveaways to special customers, including his “Old Ballard” brand on a shot glass and a decorative calendar advertising Old Danton Whiskey. From 1909 to 1913 he also maintained a liquor outlet in New Albany, Indiana.

John Dant’s Louisville operation came to a halt in 1919 with the imposition of National Prohibition. Perhaps sensing that the “dry” era would be relatively short, he bided his time. Soon after Repeal at the age of 68 he built a new distillery at Meadowlawn in South Jefferson County. He called it the John P. Dant Distillery (RD #39) and leased the Grosscurth Distillery (RD #26) located in Anchorage, Jefferson County. Both operations were incorporated as the Meadowlawn Distillery Company, with John P. Senior as president and John P. Junior as vice-president, treasurer and distiller. The total mashing capacity was a hefty 471 bushels a day and six warehouses had the capacity to hold 7,500 barrels of aging whiskey. Among his post-Prohibition brands were “Old Boone,” “Distiller’s Choice,” and “Old 1889.”

Described in his obituary as a “veteran Kentucky distiller and a member of a family long identified with the industry,” John P. Dant died at his Louisville home at the age of 89 in April 1944. His wife, Ann, had preceded him by 16 years. After a funeral service at Christ the King Catholic Church, John was interred next to Ann in Louisville’s Calvary Cemetery. Management of his distilleries was taken over by his son, who sold off the remaining family interest in 1950.

This post has profiled just three of the many Dants involved in Kentucky whiskey. As noted earlier, it would take a book to do full justice to all involved family members in the years since J. W. in 1836 began distilling, thus insuring that the Dant name became an integral part of American whiskey history.

The Muehleisen, William Sr. and William Jr., father and son, were proprietors of one of Washington, D.C., best known and most prosperous liquor businesses until Congress in a fit of political correctness voted the District “dry” and the son gravitated to running one of the more unusual banking institutions in the history of the Nation’s Capital.

William Muehleisen Sr. was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1840 or 1841, sources differ. The name means “mill iron.” At the age of 15, in 1855 he emigrated to the United States, settling in the District of Columbia. According to a biographer, he “engaged in the liquor business in early life,”

likely working for one of the local wholesale houses.

About 1867, in the wake of the Civil War, Muehleisen Sr. struck out on his own, establishing himself as an importer and dealer in foreign and domestic wines and liquors at 918 Fifth Street, NW. During the conflict the Nation’s Capitol had swelled with population as the war effort brought tens of thousands of newcomers to the area. Muehleisen’s business flourished under peacetime conditions. He also linked with Christian Xander to open a wine-oriented store on Massachusetts Avenue between Seventh and Eighth Streets N.W., a partnership that was dissolved after three years. [See my post on Xander, January 2014.]

During this period William Sr. was pursuing a personal life. About 1867 he married Louisa, who like himself was a immigrant. She had come to the United States from Germany with family members in 1860 as a 12-year-old girl and was under 20 when they married, seven years younger than her husband. Over the next 15 years they would have five children, two boys and three girls. The eldest they named William Jr., born in 1868 in the District.

Through ensuing years Muehleisen Sr. continued to prosper in the liquor trade, eventually outgrowing his first store and in 1897 building a new one next door at 916 Fifth Street N.W.. This was a three-story brick structure measuring 22 by 90 feet with a cellar extending its entire length, reported to feature the latest in lighting and ventilation equipment. The first floor held Muehleisen’s salesrooms and offices, the upper floors stored his stock of “bourbon and rye whiskies, foreign and domestic wines, and mineral waters, including the most popular brands of each.” By this time, his son, William Jr., had been brought into the business.

In addition to selling nationally known liquors, the Muehleisens were “rectifying” their own brands of rye and sour mash whiskey, that is, blending raw whiskeys to achieve particular taste and color. In contrast to others in the trade who hid their rectifying, the Muehleisens trumpeted the fact in their ads. Their flagship proprietary brand was “Oakmont,” a label trademarked in 1901. As shown here, they packaged some whiskey in “coffin” shaped amber bottles with the family monogram embossed on the front.

Just two years after moving into the new company quarters, William Sr. died and was buried in Washington’s Prospect Hill Cemetery. “Historical Sketches of the Capital City of Our Country” (1887) said of Muehleisen Sr: “His long experience and practical sense has placed him prominently among the successful business men of Washington.”

Willliam Jr. now was at the controls of Wm. Muehleisen Company. The 1900 Census found him, now 31 years old and still single, living with his widowed mother and a sister, Caroline. Also with them, age 20, was J. Alwin Muehleisen, a brother who was working for William Jr. as the liquor store bookkeeper.

It is worth taking a closer look at the the Oakmont bottles shown above. To a certain extend they can be dated by the message contained on the labels. One I consider likely to be the earliest indicates that the whiskey therein had been bottled under the personal supervision of the Muehleisens. They warn if the seal is broken, its “purity” may be in jeopardy. With the passage of the Food and Drug Act of 1906 the message was altered to add that the whiskey was guaranteed under the Act.

Many rectifiers were making that assertion, a claim being challenged by Kentucky bourbon distillers and, more importantly, by the federal officials who were responsible for enforcing the Act. The third bottle marks another change. Gone is the reference to the Food and Drug Act and in its place “Contents One Pint” another requirement being enforced on liquor bottlers. My guess is that selling whiskey in Washington, D.C. and co-existing in town with food and drug authorities, Muehleisen Jr. was reacting to official pressures.

On the personal side, William Jr. continued to live with his mother until she died in 1913. Louisa’s death notice indicated that she had been active in the D.C. community as a board director of the German Orphans Asylum and president of the Ladies Aid Society of the First Reformed Church, obviously a denomination not opposed to alcohol. William Jr. continued to be a bachelor until at the age of 53 in 1922 he married Adelaide, a woman born in Kentucky of native Kentuckians, who was eleven years his junior.

Muehleisen Jr. bought Adelaide a mansion in a row of mansions on North Sixteenth Street in Washington. By this time he had left the liquor trade, a wealthy man, forced out by the District-wide 1917 ban on alcohol. His transition from liquor to liquidity seems to have been an effortless one. He founded a bank. A 1921 D.C. business directory listed him as president of the Mount Vernon Savings Bank, located in the International Machinists Building at 9th St. and Mount Vernon Place, N.W. Shown below, the building later was demolished.

As related in an historical account of D.C. banks, Muehleisen’s financial institution was an unusual one, aimed at a special group of customers, in this case the working class. It is regarded as the first bank in the U.S. in which a labor union owned a large bloc of the stock, apparently purchased from Muehleisen Jr. Known as a “labor bank,” its original purpose was to secure a larger return on worker money than other banks were providing. Mount Vernon Saving Bank paid three percent on savings and four percent on certificates of deposit. Eventually the rationale of the institution was expanded to protecting the gains of organized labor and helping friendly employers during a strike. The bank also worked closely with credit unions, holding their deposits and extending them loans.

Even after relinquishing the presidency of Mount Vernon Savings, Muehleisen Jr. stayed on as a director, listed as late as 1828 as among their number. The coming of the Great Depression, however, had a negative effect on this unusual financial institution as many small borrowers were forced to default on loans. The bank went out of business in the early 1930s. William Muehleisen Jr. died in his mansion home on Sixteen Street in September 1942. He was buried with is father and other family members in Prospect Hill Cemetery. The Muehleisen monument is shown here.

While combining liquor sales and banking was not completely unknown in the pre-Prohibition era, Washington, D.C., was particularly fertile grounds for both occupations, with whiskey and money flowing freely. That environment allowed the two Muehleisens to make the most of their liquid assets for three quarters of a century.

Note: All the photographs of bottles included in this article are through the courtesy of Dr. Richard Lilienthal, a premier collector of Washington area bottles.

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