Author name: Jack Sullivan

On page 207 of a 1902 volume entitled “Fetter’s Notable Men of Kentucky” are photographs of two men facing each other under the headline “Distillers.” They are Henry Thierman and William Ruedeman.  Unlike the members of such well known whiskey dynasties as the Beams, Stitzels and Browns, both men came from obscure beginnings in Germany.  After Immigrating to the United States as virtually penniless youths, Thierman and Ruedeman eventually joined in creating a distilling company hailed in 1895 as “an immense business, broadly distributed over the whole of the United States, the total of which average $750,000 each year.”  — today more than $37 million dollars annually.

Shown here, Henry Augustus Thierman was to first to arrive on these shores.  He was born in Germany in January 1836 and educated in the good local schools.  In May 1853 at the age of 17 he left Hanover for America.  Upon arrival he appears to have gone almost immediately to Louisville, Kentucky.  Burial records for that city indicate Henry likely had Thierman relatives there who initially took him in.

According to his obituary, Thierman’s first business venture was as a dairyman where “…He displayed the same shrewdness and business then that afterward made him successful in a broader field.”  That unnamed field was selling liquor.  About 1864, he ditched sour cream for sour mash, becoming a Louisville wholesale liquor dealer.  

With a local  named Prande (aka Prante), Thierman opened a store at 221 Market Street.  The partnership was short-lived.  After two years, he stuck out on his own with a firm he called “H.A. Thierman Company.”  Over the next few years, he would move several times as success brought a need for larger quarters.

While Thierman was growing his whiskey trade, he met and in May 1865 married a local woman, Louise Simm, the daughter of a well known Louisville furniture dealer.  At the time of their nuptials Henry was 29 years old, Louisa, 25.  The couple would have three children over the next 11 years, girls Ida and Lillie, and son Julius who died in early adulthood.  

Meanwhile in Hessen, Germany, William Ruedeman,was born in May 1854, the son of  Dorothy and Ernest Ruedeman.  Eighteen years younger than Thierman, William was 17 when he arrived in America in 1871 aboard the steamship Berlin from Bremen and settled in Louisville.  Whatever brought the two men together, the bond became close.  Ruedeman joined Thierman at his liquor house, initially as a porter.  Before long he had been promoted to vice president of the firm and had married Elizabeth Thierman, a relative of the boss.  The couple named their first son “Henry” after William’s benefactor.

With a third man, E. M. Babbitt, the H.A. Thierman Company now began a period of acquisition and growth.  At that time the firm was located on Louisville’s West Main Street. the so-called “Whiskey Row,” a prestigious address for a liquor company without its own Kentucky distillery.  Thierman remedied that omission in 1882 when he bought an existing faclity in Jefferson County that had been producing whiskey brands “Mayflower” and “Ashton.”  Thierman promptly changed the name to the Mayflower Distilling Company.

As recorded by insurance underwriters, the distillery, shown below, was of frame construction and had the capacity to mash 400 bushels of grain daily.  The plant included three warehouses:   Warehouse A  was brick with a metal or slate roof and located 46 feet east of the still.   Warehouse B was brick with a metal or slate roof, located 63 feet SW of the still.  Warehouse C was iron-clad with a metal or slate roof, located 6 feet beyond Warehouse A.  These warehouses were capable of holding 20,000 barrels. Cattle pens were 115 feet downwind of the still-house.

Responsibility for managing this distillery seemingly fell primarily to Ruedeman and Babbett until Thierman sold it in 1892.

In the meantime Thierman in 1864 had bought a second distillery, this one located in Louisville at 36th Street and Missouri Avenue.  This facility had been operated by John Roach and colleagues producing such brands as “Belle of Louisville.” (See my post on Roach Feb. 15, 2022.)  Initially called the American Distillery, it was renamed by Thierman as the Rugby Distillery Company, RD#360, 5th District in federal records.  He undertook to expand the facility in ensuing years.

Insurance underwriter inventories of 1892 indicate that the distillery was frame with a metal or slate roof. The property included four warehouses, all brick with metal or slate roofs:  Warehouse A  was located 62 feet south of the still; Warehouse B, 66 feet SE;  Warehouse C, 80 feet east of the still, and Warehouse D,  84 feet east. The warehouses were all heated “not over 80 degrees”. In total, the Rugby Distillery had a daily mashing capacity of 400 bushels of grain and storage capacity for 35,000 barrels of aging whiskey.   The property also contained a cattle barn.

Owning these two distilleries and having a significant financial interest in the John T. Barbee & Company distillery in Woodford County, Kentucky, had thrust Thierman from a whiskey dealer, buying his stock from others, almost overnight into a major force in the Louisville distilling community.  A report in the 1895 publication “Louisville of Today” enthused:  “With these exceptionally fine facilities for the production of high grade whiskies, the company transacts an immense business, broadly distributed over the whole of the United States, the total of which average $750,000 each year.”  Thierman had become a self-made millionaire.

His company claimed three names as its proprietary labels,  “Belle of Jefferson,”Mayflower,” and “Indian Hill.”  It would register their trademarks in 1902.  Shown here, the label for Indian Hill Whiskey showed the silhouette of a Native American watching from a hillside.  More interesting, as shown below, were the heads of two Indian chiefs and the “bas relief” lettering of “Indian Hill” bourbon whiskey” embossed on the bottles.

During the late 1800s, Thierman, using the substantial profits of the distilleries, bought Louisville’s Garvey Hotel as another investment.  Shown here as it looked initially, the hotel has survived through the years, renamed “The Normandy,” and is an attractive lodging currently.

 

Time, however, was running out for Henry Thierman.   Reputedly having contacted the flu, called “grip,” he first showed symptoms after Christmas 1900, when he was 65.  Never hospitalized, his condition, initially not thought serious, took a turn in early February.  According to Thierman’s newspaper obituary, doctors warned that his recovery would be unlikely.  He lingered several more days before dying at home on February 15, 1901.  

Thierman was buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery, the grounds where so many Kentucky “whiskey barons” are interred. He lies in Section P, Lot 25. Below is the monument and headstone memorializing this immigrant boy who rose to the pinnacle of Kentucky’s distilling hierarchy.

Ruedeman almost immediately stepped in as president of the H.A. Thierman Company, assisted by Babbit.  He was active in the Louisville business community as a member of the Board of Trade, Commercial Club and the Masons.  His caricature appeared along with other prominent figures, with a bowling ball and a pot belly.  The uncomplimentary likeness cannot have pleased his wife, Elizabeth.  She was living with their five children, Mary Louise, Dora, Henry, Ernest and William in a spacious home provided by her husband in an upscale neighborhood at 109 West Ormsby Avenue, shown below.

From the beginning Ruedeman demonstrated competent management of the H. A. Thierman Company. Throughout the early 1900s, however, he was facing increasingly strong prohibitionary forces that cut sharply into company profitability. Moreover, the Ohio River floods of 1913 were a disaster for the company’s Rugby Distillery.  A warehouse containing 3,460 barrels of prime bourbon collapsed and was inundated.  Although most of the whiskey was saved, many barrels were damaged and 200 barrels were a complete loss. In the aftermath of the flood, Ruedeman decided only partially to rebuild the distillery.

Ruedeman’s health began to falter as he enter his 60s and he died 1918 at the age of 64.  The coroner’s verdict was “softening of the brain,” i.e. dementia.  He was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery not far from Thierman’s grave.  Meanwhile, with National Prohibition looming, the distillery was shuttered.  After 1920 the site was vacated and its structures were allowed to fall into disrepair.

This sad ending does not, however, tarnish the reputations of two enterprising German youths who emigrated to the United States and over 32 years together built a Kentucky liquor house and distillery enterprise capable of generating the current annual equivalent of some $37 million dollars. Youthful immigrants Henry Thierman and William Ruedeman had become true Kentucky whiskey royalty.

Note:  This post has been compiled from a wide range of sources, of which the two most important were the 1895 publication “Louisville of Today,” and the Louisville Courier Journal obituary of Thierman, dated February 16, 1900.  

Afterword:  For years I have tried to post a new story on this website every four days.  As time goes by and having achieved 1,127 entries,  now approach 89 years, finding good new stories of pre-Prohibition whiskey becomes increasingly more difficult and time consuming.  As a result, in the future I will attempt to post every six days, beginning with the next entry.                       

  

  

                          

Wholesale Liquor dealer Van Pickerill played duel roles when statewide prohibition descended on Evansville, Indiana, first as a perpetrator of schemes to get around the law and second as the star witness against a bootlegging ring led by the city’s police chief.  For coming clean he was attacked in court by the attorney for the police chief with a torrent of ugly names and accusations.  Nonetheless Pickerill appears to have walked away from the criminal proceedings a free man and able to launch a new life.

Indiana, a state that had been reliably “wet,” in 1906 passed a local option prohibitionary law.  That act did not still the drumbeat for altogether banning the making and sales of alcohol. In 1918 the Indiana Legislature passed a statewide liquor ban and the governor signed.  The law took effect on April 12, 1919. 

Political pushback against the “dry” law in Evansville led to the re-election of Mayor Benjamin Bosse, shown left.  Bosse, in turn, appointed as chief of police a previously demoted police officer and crony, Edgar Schmitt, right.  The newly minted Chief  announced purchase of a sleek speedboat, similar to the one shown below, ostensibly to halt smuggling of booze over the Ohio River from “wet” Henderson, Kentucky, a distance of just over eleven miles.

 

The sleek vessel, named the Fanola,  ran up and down the river, sparking press stories of thrilling chases.  Strangely, however, no arrests were made.  In reality the Fanola had a far different purpose.  With a green light from Mayor Bosse the craft was bootlegging illegal liquor from Kentucky and stashing it in the police station, shown here.

The new “dry” law dictated a short window of just one week for Evansville liquor dealers to get rid of their stocks or face their destruction and loss.  Pickerill, aware of this deadline, as early as November 1917 began purchasing on-hand whiskey from affected dealers who were shutting down.  Just ten days before the April 18, 1918, deadline, Van Pickerill sold his Evansville liquor store and moved his stocks and an enterprise he called the Mint Springs Distillery Company to Henderson.

Pickerill had been born in Custer, Breckinridge County, Kentucky, in 1879, the son of George W. and Julia Ray Pickerill. By 1910 he was recorded in Evansville directories living with a married older brother, Calvin D. Pickerill.  Although I do not have Van’s picture, a description of him exists in a WW II draft registration form.   At age 63 he was recorded as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, weighing 140 pounds with a ruddy complexion and “salt and pepper” hair.

In addition to running a wholesale and retail liquor business Pickerill claimed control of a distillery near Owensboro, Kentucky, known in federal parlance as RD#2, 2nd District.  That distillery, built in 1874 on the Ohio River, was owned and operated by long series of well known Kentucky whiskey men, including Millett, Callahan, Monarch, Medley, and Meschendorf.  Although the Pickerills likely purchased the whiskey there for their proprietary “Old Mint Springs” and “Father Time Pure Corn” whiskeys, I find no evidence of actual ownership. 

Despite having moved their liquor to Henderson, the Pickerill brothers continued to live in Evansville.  Both men became deeply involved in a major conspiracy by Evansville government officials and others to circumvent Indiana liquor laws.  After the legal deadline Van Pickerill agreed to buy remaining stocks from Evansville liquor dealer Jack Hampton.  Catching wind of the sale, Chief Schmitt got there first, confiscating the booze and adding it to the stash at police headquarters.

Apparently recognizing that acting alone was a losing proposition given involvement of city officials in the bootlegging, Pickerill became associated with the Schmitt-Bosse whiskey ring. Beginning in January 1919 he began paying Chief Schmitt $500 a week hush money to bring liquor into Evansville.  A month later Pickerill coughed up another $1,000 to help Schmitt ostensibly bribe individuals in the sheriff’s office and clear the highway from Henderson and Evansville from surveillance by law enforcement.  Later he would give the police chief $500 to vacation with his wife in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Vanderburgh County Sheriff Edgar Males and his deputies were not to be bribed.  On February 25, 1918, they went into hiding along the Evansville docks. As Schmitt’s bootlegging Fanola docked and tied up, Sheriff Males and his men stepped out of the shadows.  “Hello Sheriff,” greeted the boat’s mechanic. “What do you want down here?”  Males’ response was short and stunning: “You’re under arrest,” directed to the police boat’s four crewmen.  Search of the vessel revealed more than 100 cases of whiskey of whiskey aboard.  The Evansville conspiracy had begun to erode.

The Booze-toting Hearse

Meanwhile the Pickerills were having their own problems with honest lawmen.   Seven weeks after the Fanola raid, the brothers attempted to bring in a stash of bootleg whiskey to the Henderson dock in a hearse, shown below, where the liquor was to be picked up by boat and brought to them via the river,  They had calculated that the vehicle would not attract undue notice.  They had not considered that a hearse being unloaded on a dock might be considered unusual. “Hearses as a rule, when loaded, do not stop at wharfs,” one Henderson policeman told the press. The officers took photographs and noified Sheriff Males. The liquor shipment was tracked via a loaded taxicab to the home of Calvin Pickerill.  There deputies discovered 49 gallons of whiskey.  Calvin was arrested and later fined $100 and given a one month jail sentence. 

The Evansville conspirators had another major setback when the investigation was taken out of the Indiana courts and pursued at the Federal level.  Although National Prohibition was still months off, the Webb-Kenyon Act, passed by Congress in 1913, had survived multiple court challenges and was in full force.  The law made it a federal offense to export whiskey from a “wet” state into a “dry” one.  The lead investigator was Lemuel Ertus “Ert” Slack. shown right, a smooth but hard-nosed U.S. attorney.  (Slack later became mayor of Indianapolis.) A grand jury was empaneled under the watchful eye of Federal Judge A.B. Anderson. 

Judge Anderson, left, gave no doubt to his stance: “A person cannot sit here in court like I have for several years hearing these cases unless he is a prohibitionist,…I am one and I am here to tell you I am in favor of prohibition, as it is the only way to have decent government. The saloonkeepers, by their action in the corruption of city officials sworn to do their duty, have compelled the citizens to bring on prohibition. “The cure of the thing is to cut it off at the very root and that is what prohibition does.”

Meanwhile Pickerill was increasingly concerned about his own role in the bootlegging conspiracy.  He heard rumors that the judge was going to call a witness who would bring his name into the inquiry and asked a  police co-conspirator to try to stop the informant. The effort failed.  Knowing well his brother’s fate, Van made a feint to get out of liquor trafficking by buying an Evansville hardware store, shown below.  He renamed it the Van Pickerill Hardware Company.  The move considerably alarmed the bootlegging cabal.  Chief Schmitt and Mayor Bosse paid a visit to Pickerill and, according to a report, “tried some tactics” to insure his silence.

My guess is that by that time, Van had decided to “come clean.”  In 1912 at age 33 he had married Mary E. Walsh, a local Evansville woman.  The couple would have two sons, Van F., born in 1904 and  James Frederick “Jay” born in 1906.  The thought of a conviction and federal prison, away from family, must have been terrifying to Pickerill.  He began to meet quietly with U.S. Attorney Slack.

Pickerill became the prosecution’s “star witness” against the conspiracy.  It is not evident that he testified in open court, although he gave a detailed a formal deposition.  All traces of what Pickerill revealed to authorities and a grand jury somehow have disappeared.  It is clear, however, that he disclosed names, dates and illegal activities in considerable detail.

During the June 1920 trial the defendants attempted to make Pickerill the culprit. Police Chief  Schmitt’s attorney, Thomas Duncan of Evansville, charged that Pickerill had been the mastermind of the illegal liquor trafficking, referring to him as a “moral leper,” “serpent,” and “arch conspirator.  Evansville would never be decent as long as the Pickerills were free to walk about the city, Duncan admonished the grand jury. Those who had implicated the police chief, he said, were “the lower scum of society.”

Duncan’s bombast had no effect. The jurors found Edgar Schmitt guilty on all counts of importing liquor from Henderson into Indiana, a clear violation of the Webb-Kenyon Act.  Judge Anderson sentenced the police chief to two years in the federal prison in Atlanta and fined him $2,000 and court costs.  Of the 67 defendants, Schmitt’s punishment was the most severe. Of those charged and sentenced, 62 pled guilty and five others were found guilty.  Of an additional 11 accused of being implicated, two had fled arrest and not been found. Nine others were discharged by the judge.  Pickerill appears to have walked away a free man. Despite accusations that Mayor Bosse had received bootleg whiskey worth thousands, he was not indicted.  Two years later Bosse died in office at 47 years old, a victim of lobar pneumonia.

One of Pickerill’s first moves after the trial was to sell the hardware business and building he had purchased in his futile attempt to disguise himself as a legitimate businessman.  The structure, however, continued to be called the Pickerill Building.  Despite any animosity they might have encountered in Evansville from the friends and family of those convicted, the Pickerills continued to live there.  With his brother Calvin working as a salesman, Van opened an Evansville music store, replacing booze with Beethoven, Bach and Brahms.

Apparently tiring of Evansville and the music business, Pickerill in 1933 moved to Springfield, Illinois.  Under the name Van Pickerill & Sons, for a short time he became a gasoline wholesaler and distributor.  The liquor business, however,  continued to have a hold on him. With the end of National Prohibition in 1934, Pickerill went to work as a local sales representative for the legendary “Pappy” Van Winkle of the Stitzel-Weller Distillery in Louisville, below.  A decade later, with his sons, Van F. and James “Jay,”  Pickerill opened his own wholesale liquor house.  The business rapidly found success in Springfield and Pickerill gained a reputation as a leader in the liquor trade, becoming a co-founder of the National Wine and Spirits Association.

Van Pickerill died in Springfield in May 1956 at the age of 76 and was buried in Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery, Block 31.  His monument and gravestone are shown below.  He had been preceded in death by son Van F., killed in a 1952 auto accident.  Continuing under the name Van Pickerill & Sons, son Jay guided the fortunes of the liquor house with notable success until his death at 63 in 1983.  A former president of the National Wine & Spirits Assn., Jay in 1981 received Time Magazine’s “Distinguished Wholesaler Award.”  

Thinking about the story sketched here, I wonder when the Pickerill clan got together in later days if they ever talked at length about the moment Van Pickerill decided to “come clean” about Evansville’s dirty business and what that fateful decision had meant for him and his family.

Note:  A more complete recitation of the corruption that characterized Evansville in the early 20th Century is contained in a 2022 book by R. Erick Jones,called “Wide Open Evansville.”  A local boy, Author Jones also has put a considerable amount of relevant material on the Internet, including a timeline of the conspiracy, from which some of this post was created.  For more information on Pappy Van Winkle, see my post of November 22, 2014.

 

            

 

Foreword:  On April 1, 2015, this website told the story of Nathan Van Biel and his campaign to protect his “Rye and Rock” alcoholic patent medicine.   In his efforts Van Biel claimed that those words or any variation of them were a violation of his trademark and the work of “dealers in imitation or counterfeit goods.” He pledged to prosecute anyone who tried.  Briefly reviewed here, at least four other whiskey dealers paid scant attention to Van Biel’s threats.

First a word about Nathan Van Biel.  Born in Philadelphia in 1832 and by 1860 running a liquor store there, Van Biel moved to New York City in the late 1870s, opening a wine store.  Even then, however, Van Beil’s major interest was in a highly alcoholic patent medicine that in 1877 he trademarked as “Rye and Rock” with the Patent Office number of 7001. It was rock candy — large sugar crystals — dissolved in rye whiskey.  

Van Biel advertised it widely as:  “The great tonic sure cure for malarial diseases,”  — an easily made claim since at the time no one had a clue about what caused malaria.  He also touted this nostrum as a remedy for asthma, coughs, colds, bronchitis, consumption (TB) and even diphtheria.  His attractive ads and trade cards, however, also contained a dire wanting.  Considering himself the “father” of Rock and Rye, he declared: “I assumed a father’s responsibility for the article…Infringements will be prosecuted and consumers  and dealers will take notice.”

Van Beil meant his threat.  In 1880 he sued in the New York courts on the grounds that his trademarking of Rye and Rock gave him exclusive right to the words, in any combination, including “rock and rye.”  His target was an enterprise headed by Henry W. Prescott, who appeared in New York directories as a saloonkeeper and liquor dealer, located at 75 Chambers Street.

Prescott scoffed at Van Biel’s “fatherhood” claims.  He declared that he and his predecessors in business had been selling white rock candy dissolved in rye whiskey for at least 10 years and selling it as “Rye and Rock.”  In fact, Prescott contended, for decades bartenders all over America had been doling out rock candy in rye whiskey.  He advertised his “Golden Rye and Rock” vigorously, claiming it as a remedy for coughs and lung disorders.

True to his threats, Van Biel sued Prescott in a New York court — and lost. Unsatisfied,  he hired a well known Gotham lawyer and appealed to the Superior Court of New York.  Those judges also failed to be impressed and sustained the lower court decision.  They held that Van Beil had no exclusive right to “Rye and Rock” and other combinations of the words.  A New York legal journal in jest suggested that to influence the court verdict Prescott might have been “dispensing his compound not at the bar alone, but also at the bench” 

In making his case, Prescott stipulated that he had never claimed an exclusive right to the use of  “Rye and Rock” and that it was a “common name” in the liquor trade.  His subsequent ads for “Prescott’s Great Rye and Rock Remedy,” however, made the extravagant claim that: “By the decisions in our favor in the Superior Courts, Prescott’s Rye and Rock stands pre-eminent.”  

Recognizing that the court decision had no such effect on Prescott’s libation, other whiskey dealers ramped up their advertising for rock candy and rye concoctions.  The Fernberger brothers, Solomon and Henry, operated their Philadelphia liquor store at 1230 Market Street from 1871 to 1902.  They advertised their nostrum, as shown below, as benefiting “more people suffering from Colds and Lung Troubles than all the medicines combined.”  Indeed a bold claim.  Why they chose an angry woman with an umbrella and an empty glass to illustrate their “Rock Candy and Rye Whiskey” is something of a mystery.

A second Fernberger trade card was more subdued.  It shows a couple sitting check-to-cheek, reading a paper headlined “Pure Liquors for Medicinal Use.”

This trade card added throat diseases to the promised cures.  A third card, not shown here,  depicted a train conductor asleep on a train with his mouth open and his head in his left hand.  What this image had to do with the Fernberger’s elixir is not clear.

C. B. Barrett & Company was a Boston liquor dealership that  sought to cash in on the Rock and Rye decision.  Located at 46 North Market Street, it differed from the crowd by identifying the whiskey in its elixir as “Hermitage Rye.”  That was a well-respected and popular brand produced by the W. A. Gaines Company of Frankfort, Kentucky.  Heavily advertised on its own, Hermitage Rye likely resinated with many in the drinking public. By combining it with Barrett’s rock candy, the result was advertised as a “standard remedy for all diseases of the throat & lungs…The Only Original & Genuine Article.” 

That message was carried by a slightly naughty trade card for “Barrett’s Rock Candy and Hermitage Rye,” showing a male, likely the master of the household, making an advance on a serving girl.  Given the close proximity of their mouths,  one hopes neither has a disease of the throat or lungs.  Two other Barrett trade cards, below, had a milder flavor, one depicting bearded youths enjoying a snort. Note the chap on the card at right, apparently sleeping off Barrett’s elixir.

From Chicago the challenge came from  Lawrence & Martin.   Located at 111 Madison,  those liquor dealers added a medicinal plant, Tolu, to their recipe for Rock & Rye.  They herald it as “the Great Cure for Coughs, Colds and Consumption and all Diseases of the Throat and Lungs.” A trade card from about 1881 showed a buxom young woman, presumably a sufferer from one of the referenced maladies, dressed for a night on the town, drinking from a bottle of Tolu Rock and Rye.  A second card showed an angel bearing a bottle of the nostrum, carrying a sheaf of rye grain.

 

After the court decision, Lawrence & Martin grew bolder.  In 1882 they created a separate company, located at the same address, called the Tolu Rock and Rye Co.  They also launched an ad campaign in druggist magazines that plugged their product as a “sure cure.”  As proof they cited a letter from Gen. Green B. Baum, the Commissioner for Internal Revenue, stating:  “This compound…in the opinion of this office, would have sufficient quantity of the Balsam of Tolu to give it all the advantages ascribed to in this article in pectoral complaints, while the whiskey and syrup constitute an emulsion compound agreeable to the patient.”  Baum apparently later was moved from office.

The record indicates that by 1883, only three years after the court ruling C. B. Barrett had been declared bankrupt and Lawrence & Martin had gone their separate ways.  No amount of Rock and Rye advertising apparently could save either business.   That was the year that the drink was reclassified by federal authorities as a distilled spirit.  It no longer was taxed at a lower rate than liquor.

Note:  Some of the information contained here was obtained from the Whiskey Advocate website of April 29, 2019.

  

Coming from a prominent Pennsylvania distilling family, members of the Rohrer clan about 1837 migrated across state lines to settle in Germantown, Ohio. There two generations of Rohrers continued making liquor.  Their Mud Lick Distillery would become among the most famous in America, highly successful until the Great Flood of 1913 bankrupted the company and prohibitionary laws made it impossible to recover. The story is best told through three family members —  Christian, David, and John Rohrer — who together guided the family distilling destiny for 76 years.

Early Rohrer History:  The Rohrer clan were among the earlier settlers of Pennsylvania, deeded land in Lancaster County by an agent of William Penn.  There in December,1804, Christian Rohrer was born on the farm where his father and grandfather, also named Christian, had been born.  As Unitarians the Rohrers had no prejudice against alcohol and distilling was part of their agricultural production. (See post on Jeremiah Rohrer, Oct. 16, 2015.)

Christian Rohrer:  Shown here in later life, Christian is said to have received a good education and upon achieving his majority inherited from his father’s estate a farm and sawmill.  Restless nonetheless, in 1931 he ventured into Ohio to assess that territory and was impressed with prospects in German Township of Montgomery County.  Christian came home, sold his farm, and headed to Ohio.

Christian’s move there may have been motivated, at least in part, by a romantic attraction.  In Germantown he met Margaret Emerick, the locally born daughter of Christopher and Catherine Kern Emerick, a couple who had settled there in 1804.  Shown here in maturity, Margaret married Christian in November 1832. Over ensuing years the couple would have five children, three girls and two boys.

Christian’s first move was to buy an existing flour mill that he operated for several years.  He then purchased the mill of Col. John Stump, located on 75 acres of land. Still standing, the mill building, dated 1817, bears a plaque that credits the Rohrers with ownership from 1831 to 1900. The mill was located adjacent to Mudlick Creek that provided water for whiskey and power to mash grain.  The property contained an idle distillery, shown below, that Christian refurbished and expanded.

He then began distilling liquor that soon achieved a reputation for quality far beyond its origins. What made Mud Lick Whiskey so good was the mineral rich waters of the springs that fed Mudlick Creek.  Throughout the 1900s those presumably healing waters had drawn believers from all over America.  Many now went home with a bottle of what has been called “the soothing whiskey” from the Rohrer distillery.  This small facility, however, had limitations, capable of producing less than ten barrels of liquor a day.

Christian became known as “one of the solid and successful businessmen” of the mid-Ohio region. In addition to expanding the distillery as shown below, he co-founded the First National Bank of Germantown, still in business today, and was an early investor in the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway, an electric inter-urban line.  A biographer said of Christian:  “(He) always took a deep interest in worthy public enterprises, as well as in the progress, growth and development of the valley.”

As he aged, Christian retired from management of the Mud Lick Distillery, turning over the work to his son, David.  The father, age 78, died in July 1883 and was buried in the Gemantown Cemetery.  A large monument was erected  by his family over Christian’s grave.

David Rohrer:  As Christian’s eldest son, David, shown here, was the heir apparent.  Born in November 1835, he was educated in the Germantown public schools and at age 22 entered his father’s distillery, quickly being made a partner.  The company became C.Rohrer & Son.  After succeeding to the company presidency in 1861, David embarked on an expansion program that increased distillery capacity considerably, as indicated in the painting below. 

The distillery proved to be a boon to Germantown.  At its height the Mud Lick plant employed 30 workmen who turned out 40 barrels of the bourbon daily.   That production fattened 400 head of cattle and 1200 hogs annually with the spent whiskey mash.   About 20,000 barrels were kept aging at one time at Mud Lick, representing a $1 million inventory.

In 1868 Charles Hofer, a liquor dealer of Cincinnati, was admitted as a partner. This partnership existed until 1883, when David purchased Hofer’s interest and took full control of the Mud Lick Distillery. He renamed it “D. Rohrer & Co.” During ensuing years he appeared to be a marked success at guiding one of the Nation’s largest distilleries.  David also became an extensive landowner, purchasing 800 acres of farmland in the vicinity of Germantown and 3,000 acres in newly opened Indian lands in North Dakota.  His fortune, calculated in todays dollar, would exceed $8 million. 

 

Buoyed by his wealth, David decided to build his family and himself a mansion home like none Germantown had seen before.  In  February 1865 David had married Ada V. Rohrer, shown here. Ada was a distant cousin whose parents Samuel and Elizabeth Schultz Rohrer, originally natives of Maryland, had joined the Rohrer clan in Germantown in 1926.  Over the next few years the couple would have five children, three girls and two boys.

Still standing at 1201 West Market Street’, the house is a three-story, 15-room brick mansion The six-course walls were built with bricks fired on the Rohrer Farm. The woodwork was cut directly from a stand of hardwood timber on the property.  While continuing to be a private residence, the Rohrer House currently also is available for tours.

The mansion seemed to cap a highly successful career for David. He was hailed in the 1897 Centennial Portrait and Biographical Record of the City of Dayton and of Montgomery County, Ohio. this way:   Mr. Rohrer is one of the progressive business men of Montgomery County, whose success has been achieved by upright dealing in all the affairs of life.”

The Fall of the House of Rohrer:  Things were not as they seemed for David and the Rohrers.  As the early years of the 20th Century passed, sales of Mud Lick Whiskey slumped as competitive brands appeared and prohibitionary forces increasingly closed off markets.  Additionally, David found himself over-extended financially with liabilities of $200,000 (1910 dollars)  while claiming assets of $300,000.

Taken to court by creditors said to be owed $30,000, David in a legal maneuver, in November 1909 signed a “deed of assignment” to the Mud Lick distillery and other properties to a former judge, Charles Dale, and his brother, John.  He told the press he had taken the action believing that “the creditors will not lose a dollar and that the action would result in conserving his property.”

John Rohrer, a younger brother, had a sterling reputation in Germantown as a businessman.  After a four year gambit in the West speculating in real estate and cattle, he had returned home to found a tobacco brokerage and later a grain, coal and lumber company.  His and Dale’s participation in this assignment of Rohrer assets was viewed sympathetically by the local press.  Noting David’s 50 years in local business, one story commented that the move was made “to prevent a sacrifice” of Rohrer property.

Edward Patterson

Behind the assignment, however, was a story that suggested criminality.  In subsequent bankruptcy proceedings, Edward Patterson, a distiller and whiskey broker from Cincinnati charged that David had committed fraud. (See post on Patterson, Jan.28, 2021.) Shown here, Patterson told a bankruptcy court in November 1909 that David had pledged 800 barrels of Mud Lick whiskey aging in Rohrer warehouses as security for large loans Patterson had made to him.  He testified that all but 210 of those barrels subsequently had been sold to other buyers without his knowledge or approval.  He laid claim to the remaining barrels as partial compensation.  Multiple commitment of the same warehoused whiskey was a frequent ploy in the distilling trade — and a crime.

In bankruptcy proceedings beginning in November 1909, the claims of multiple petitioners, including Patterson, apparently were settled without charges being brought against David, by now in his mid-seventies.  My surmise is that John Rohrer was responsible for surviving the bankruptcy, satisfying the creditors, and quashing any further legal action.

Able to retain the distillery, the Rohrers’ production of Mud Lick Whiskey limped along for the next several years.  That came to an end with the great Midwestern floods of March 1913 that claimed 640 victims, most of them in Ohio. Still considered the state’s largest weather disaster, the water sent the Miami River rampaging through the Germantown, destroying much of the distillery.  The remaining buildings went up in flames as ruptured gas lines ignited.

Given the circumstances, the Rohrers decided not to rebuild their distillery and are said to have taken the much coveted recipe for Mud Lick whiskey with them to the grave.  For David Rohrer that was in 1917, only four years after the flood.  He was buried in the Germantown Cemetery adjacent to Christian. His gravestone is shown here.  Ada would be buried beside him in 1920.

Notes:  This post has been gathered from a variety of Internet sources.  Key among them were “Centennial Portrait and Biographical Record of the City of Dayton and of Montgomery County, Ohio — 1897” and court documents.  The two photos here of David Rohrer came to light not long ago, found for sale in a Springfield Ohio flea market.

 

Foreword:  On July 6, 2012, this website featured Gustave Fleischmann of the famous yeast and liquor family, as a partner in a Buffalo, New York, distilling company.  It bore his partner’s name, until Gustave bought E. N. Cook out in 1913 and renamed the liquor house “The Buffalo Distilling Company.”  The single constant across names was their flagship whiskey, “Golden Grain.” Recently I came across several new (to me) pre-Prohibition Golden Grain artifacts, all but one with a sports connection, and decided they deserved resurrecting here. 

Whiskey and hunting were a common theme in pre-Prohibition liquor advertising, often depicted in saloon signs where the audience likely was all male. (See  post of July 12, 2023.)  Rather than a sign, Fleischmann and Cook issued a small booklet. Entitled “4 Golden Grain Sports (Warranted 18 KT) in 8 Smiles” it was the product of the F. Myers Company, a publishing outfit in New York City.

The linking of hunting and whiskey in the booklet clearly is meant to be humorous with each cartoon panel narrated by four lines of verse.  In the first picture the two hunters have met two fishermen, who advise them to bring along some Golden Grain whiskey just in case it rains and spoils the hunting.  As we will later discover, the one in the deerstalker hat is named Smith.

In the second panel, the hunters have taken the anglers’ advice.  They apparently are preparing to climb aboard a train with their shotguns — one assumes unloaded— for their hunting adventure.  In the background a baggage handler struggles with the case of Golden Grain that will be accompanying them. 

 

Note that the next panel does not mention the whiskey.  It might appear, however, that both hunters have consumed some.  In order to rhyme with “in it,” a hunter apparently has shot a “linnet.”  That is a small finch-like bird of no value as food.  Meanwhile “Old Smith,” is being felled by the kickback of his own gun, or alternatively, possibly shot in the backside by his companion.

The last panel shows the two nimrods in bed, being cared for by friends with doses of Golden Grain.  The injury to “Old Smith” has been explained.  The reason the second hunter similarly is bedridden is not.  Perhaps he would gladly lie two abed just for a drink of whiskey.

The nod of Golden Grain to sportsmen extended to golf.  Shown below is a bar tray depicting an elderly gent carrying a bag full of clubs.  He is gazing at it fondly and commenting “I see this everywhere.”

The two Golden Grain medallions below issued in 1917 by Cook and Fleischmann memorialized baseball.  The backside contained the Buffalo Bison’s 1917 schedule in the then International League.  The front bore the slogan, “Help the Herd Grab the Third.”  I take that to mean a third league championship. The Bisons failed.  The team ended the 1917 season with a record of 67 wins and 84 losses, finishing sixth in the league.

The last Golden Grain artifact here may not quite fit the sports motif but ogling attrractive women has been a male pastime for millennia.  This trade card  memorializes that activity and in the process manages to give offense to African-Americans, the sight impaired, feminists, and for good measure the Prohibitionist crowd.  But that was another day and a different sensitivity.

Afterword:  The story of the Buffalo Distilling Company continues in the building shown right at 860 Seneca Street in “Snow City.”  A combination liquor store and drinking establishment, the revived Buffalo Distilling has on display what it claims to be the last two extant bottles of the original whiskey. The company also markets its own Golden Grain whiskey using a Cook and Fleischmann originated nude image on the label.  What was old is new again.

In 1880, as the story is told, four Kentucky businessmen joined resources to begin a new distillery in Marion County, Kentucky, buying a tract of land on which to construct it five miles south of the city of Lebanon.  The site was located where Arbuckle Creek joins the Rolling Fork River and adjacent to the L&N Railroad.  Two of the prospective owners and were seasoned “whiskey men,”  The others were not, among them George D. Boldrick, a Lebanon local who owned and operated a pharmacy when he join the investors.  Shown here, Boldrick a decade later was the “last man standing” at the helm of the Belle of Marion Distillery.  His place in Kentucky whiskey history, however, remains a conundrum.

Born in October 1842 in Danville, Kentucky, Boldrick had a strong Irish heritage.  His father, James P. Boldrick, was born and raised in Ireland, coming to the United States in his early manhood after a brief sojourn in Canada.  A “merchant tailor” he settled in Danville.  There James met and married Mary Freelove Doneghy, also of Irish immigrant ancestry.  The couple would have four children, three girls and George, the youngest.  The boy was educated in Danville schools where he showed considerable aptitude.

Boldrick’s fortunes took their first turn when he was 18 with the onset of the Civil War.  His ability caught the eye of General George H. Thomas, shown here, who chose him as a commissary clerk for his army.  My research indicates that such a post normally would carry an officer’s commission but I cannot find any rank for Boldrick.  A list of Army commissary clerks shows the young man being allocated $900 for unspecified purposes — a substantial amount for the time.  As depicted below, the commissary officer was a highly important position for maintaining a military force.  To cite a familiar adage: “An army marches on its stomach.”

Following the war Boldrick seems to have minimized his service.  He had fought for the Union while many of his Kentucky friends and perhaps even some of his relatives had cast their lot with the Confederates.  There is no evidence that Boldrick joined any veteran groups, his gravestone makes no reference to his service, and he seems to have sequestered all mention of his role in the war. It might not have been good for business to be identified with the Union cause.

Three years after the war, Boldrick opened his pharmacy, one of three in Lebanon.  This move into the mercantile world may have been a natural progression from his occupation in the commissary.  It also coincided with his marriage to Carrie Spaulding in July 1869.  Carrie may have been a distant cousin. Boldrick’s maternal grandmother was a Spaulding, the daughter of Samuel Spaulding, whose family origins were among Catholic immigrants to Maryland from England.  

Over the next six years George and Carrie would have three sons, Samuel James, Ralph Lancaster, ansd Charles Carter.  Then Carrie died in 1875, leaving her husband to care for and father three minor children.  Three years later Boldrick remarried.  His new wife was Kate Tobin, from Frankfort, Kentucky, also from an Irish immigrant family.  They would add four more Boldricks to the household over the next 17 years:  John Tobin, George Doneghy, Columbus Camron, and Lucy.

By contemporary accounts, Boldrick was a quick success in the druggist trade,attracting a local customer base.  His prosperity apparently allowed him at some point to buy into one of his competing pharmacies.   After a dozen years, however, Boldrick made a decision to get out of selling medicinals and move into the liquor trade.  My surmise is that he already was selling “medicinal” whiskey over the counter and he recognized the profitability of distilling and merchandising it.  

After selling his drug store interests, Boldrick joined — and actually may have initiated — a group of four Kentuckians to build and own a distillery.   The partners included two well-known figures in Kentucky whiskey-making, Richard Wathen and R.B. Lancaster. The participation of both was short-lived. Even before breaking ground for the facility, Richard Wathen died. (See post on the Wathens, August 1, 2020.)  Moreover, before completion of construction, R. B. Lancaster, newly burdened with issues at a family distillery in Bardstown, sold his interest to John Callahan. (See post on Lancasters, Nov. 5, 2023.)

Luckily Callahan was an experienced distiller, having been associated with the Chrystal Springs Distillery in Louisville, a major supplier to Kentucky wholesalers.The third investor was Ralph L. Spaulding, likely Boldrick’s cousin and related to his first wife.  Once the distillery had been completed, Spaulding assumed the presidency of the distillery known as the “Belle of Marion.”  Ralph Spaulding not long after was killed in a machinery accident at the distillery and his brother C. C. Spaulding replaced him.  After several years, C. C. Spaulding retired.  Of the original investors, now only Boldrick and Callahan remained.

Insurance underwriter records suggest that the distillery was brick with a metal or slate roof. The property included four warehouses, all iron-clad with metal or slate roofs. By 1890 Belle of Marion Distillery was mashing 300 bushels of grain a day, producing 30 barrels of whiskey.  The latter were stored in three bonded warehouses with a storage capacity approaching 14,000 barrels.  Within several years the partners had added a fourth warehouse bringing aging capacity to 25,000 barrels.  A shed where cattle were kept and being fed the spent mash was situated 400 feet west of the still.

The distillery employed local Lebanon workers.  A number of them are shown above, lined up in front of the distillery, some of them displaying the tools of their trade.  Two men at the right in the photo, the only ones wearing dress coats and ties, are identified as Boldrick,left, and Callahan.  Enlarged, their pictures also appear right..

Although Involved only tangentially, the partners became embroiled in a trademark dispute.  In return for a large order of whiskey, the Casey & Swasey wholesale liquor house in Fort Worth. Texas, asked permission from them to use “Kentucky Comfort” as a brand name and in their advertising.  With a large sale possibly at stake, the two men readily agreed. Barrels of whiskey with “Kentucky Comfort” burned into them began rolling into Fort Worth, 845 miles distant.  A photo of the Boldrick-Callahan operation shows the workers posing after loading whiskey barrels on a horse-drawn wagon likely headed to the nearby L&N railhead.

The Casey & Swasey purchase in Kentucky seemed to mean little to the Appeals Court of Kentucky when Rosenfield Bros. of Chicago and Louisville claimed an equal right to use “Kentucky Comfort” on their labels.  The Rosenfields alleged that they had widely advertised the brand and its value “has come in large part from the moneys expended in such advertisements.”  They also claimed to sell from three to five thousand barrels a year of “Kentucky Comfort.”   In 1898 the court found for the Rosenfields.  Both companies, however, it  strangely ruled, could use  the brand name.

The Texas whiskey men were not prepared to settle.  They took their appeal to the Federal Commissioner of Patents.  In 1906, he reviewed the record and, in effect, dismissed utterly the decision of the Kentucky judges,  saying that the   “judgment of the court was neither pleaded nor proved.” The Commissioner thereupon denied the claim by the Rosenfields that they had as good a right to the trademark as Casey and Swasey.  He ruled it remained solely the property of the Fort Worth firm.  I assume that throughout this lengthy legal process the Belle of Marion Distillery was providing the whiskey.

In 1899 John Callahan died and was buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery leaving only George Boldrick of the original investors still active in the firm: “The Last Man Standing.”  As Boldrick reviewed the past, he could be justly proud of the record of success the distillery had achieved.  Both the brands “Belle of Marion” and “Callahan” had achieved recognition for quality beyond Lebanon, beyond Kentucky, and, indeed, throughout the United States.  When Boldrick looked ahead, however, he saw prohibitionary laws across the country steadily shrinking whiskey sales as states and counties one by one “went dry.”  With all his original partners now retired or dead, the future had turned bleak. 

 A year after Callahan’s death, Boldrick sold out to the Whiskey Trust.  That monopolistic organization operated and expanded the distillery, making rye as well as bourbon whiskey until shut down in 1919 by National Prohibition.  At the time of the sale the Trust was paying big dollars to own distilleries with distinguished names.  My guess is that Boldrick’s motivation for selling was the large offer made by the Trust.  He apparently used his profits to buy the Hugh Murray Drug Company and became its president.  He also was appointed president of the Lebanon Water Works. 

Early in the 1890s, Boldrick’s health began to fail  and he died in July 1904 at the age of 61.  He was buried in Lebanon’s Saint Augustine Catholic Cemetery in the shadow of a tall monument erected by his family.   In death, however, he received none of the long flowery obituaries accorded many of his fellow Kentucky distillers by the Louisville press,  Has Boldrick unjustly been overlooked in Kentucky whiskey lore.  A case can be made.

In contrast, George Boldrick attracted considerable attention during his lifetime.  A substantial biography appeared in the 1887 book, Kentucky:  A History of the State;  his portrait — the one that opens this post — was included in Notable Men of Kentucky at the Beginning of the 20th Century (1902), and he is referenced in the 1912 History of Kentucky and Kentuckians:  The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities.  While today largely forgotten in Kentucky whiskey history, Boldrick,  the “last man standing” at the Belle of Marion Distillery, deserves recognition, including this post documenting his life and accomplishments as a whiskey man.

Notes:  This post was written from a number of sources, including the references in the paragraph above.  A key source was Robin Preston’s pre-pro.com website.In it he cites “Ftboldrick,” a descendant of George, for providing information.

Last year on June 28 this website featured a post celebrating the pre-Prohibition saloon signs issued by distillers and liquor dealers that employed reverse glass, a technique known and used from medieval times.  Although these signs were relatively expensive to design and make, they were more durable than lithographs and sent a direct  “buy me” whiskey message to the saloonpatron.  Subsequently I have collected the images of eleven other such signs and am happy to bring them to the attention of my blog viewers.

A word about the reverse glass technique:   These illustrations are painted on the opposite side of the glass (the one not presented to the audience), following an opposite succession of layers of paint, applying the front most layer first and the background layer last.  In those signs, the final result must be well thought out before starting the piece and must be taken into account with each layer applied.  In reverse glass paintings, details and shadows usually are painted first, while backgrounds are painted last. Different colors can be applied one after the other after each layer has dried.  As will be seen below, often black backgrounds of paper or wood were necessary since reverse glass paintings are viewed using reflected light.

The first two signs displayed here were from a liquor house founded in Buffalo, New York, by German immigrant August Baetzhold.  Coming to the United States as a carpenter, Baetzhold in 1862 opened a small liquor store on Main Street in Buffalo.  Proving to be extraordinarily able in the whiskey trade, he grew his business  rapidly and by 1872 he was forced to find a larger venue and purchased the Odd Fellows Hall, remodeling it from the ground up. As the “Old Diamond Wedding Rye,” sign below indicates he was the distributor of a Buffalo-made whiskey.

Baetzhold was devoted to his family.  As his sons matured, one by one he introduced them into the business.  A Buffalo directory for 1893 showed three of them working in his wholesale wine and liquor house — August Jr., Theodore and George.  In 1908, recognizing the family affair his company had become, the father changed its name to “August Baetzold & Sons.”  Under the new organization name, the Baetzolds continued providing attractive give away items, such as the reverse glass saloon sign below that advertises three Baetzold proprietary brands.

The Bernheim brothers, Isaac and Bernard,  were among the first distillers to see the advertising advantages of winning medals at World’s Fairs and other international expositions.  In many such event just showing up with a display was enough to insure a medal.  Their first medal for I. W. Harper came in 1885 at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Exposition in New Orleans.  They subsequently won a gold medal at the famed Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893.  The Louisville-based distillers gained worldwide recognition for their whiskey and issued the reverse glass sign below to commemorate their awards.

By placing ads for their whiskeys in national publications and using other advertising devices, the Bernheims captured a nationwide clientele for I. W. Harper.  To a degree virtually unheard of in the liquor trade, the Bernheims also emphasized the use of giveaway items.  They included wall signs, including a number on reverse glass.  The I.W. Harper saloon sign below is virtually unique for showing a painterly scene on the glass instead of an outright ad.  This one sold at auction not long ago for $4,300.

Max Selliger with a partner, George Moore, built two thriving Louisville distilleries.  When Moore unexpectedly died in 1896, Selliger ran both distilleries as the sole proprietor and changed the name to the Max Selliger Company.  In a climb of 26 years at last he had reached the pinnacle of success, recognized as a true Kentucky “whiskey baron.”  For the next 24 years Selliger continued to manage both distilleries, establishing three of his whiskeys as national brands.  After trademark reforms by Congress in 1904, within two years he had registered his Astor, Belmont, and Nutwood brands a second time.

Once in full charge of the whiskey-making Selliger stepped up his merchandising, providing attractive reverse glass sign to saloons and restaurants using his liquor.   As a result of this intense marketing he developed a nationwide market for his whiskey.  Shut down by the advent of National Prohibition in 1920,  Max continued to be listed as a distiller in the federal census of that year.

When Bourbon County Distiller James A. Miller died in 1860 he left several thousand dollars to George G. White, a man who had been a clerk at the distillery.  With partners, White bought the facility, operating it as the Chicken Cock Distillery.  Soon the facility had a mashing capacity of 400 bushels and was turning out some 9,000 barrels annually. About 1880 the name was changed to G.G. White Distillery and the whiskey became “J.A. Miller Chicken Cock.”  By dint of vigorous advertising, Chicken Cock Whiskey was sold nationwide through a wide network of distributors.  These would have been provided with reverse glass signs featuring the image of the cocky rooster.

A German immigrant, Simon Hirsch, after a sojourn in Leadville, Colorado, as a saloonkeeper, arrived in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1885.  There he established a highly successful wholesale liquor house.  Much of his success could be attributed to his gifts to saloonkeepers and other favored customers. They included a label-under-glass saloon sign for his signature brand, “Quaker Made” whiskey.  At the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, Quaker Maid won a gold medal, that Hirsch put to extensive use in his advertising. His whiskey also won medals at expositions in Paris, and Portland, Oregon, both in 1905.

William Harrison McBrayer, called Judge McBrayer for much of his life, is credited with being among the handful of Kentucky distillers who raised the quality and image of the state’s whiskey to international renown. One contemporary account says of his “Cedar Creek” brand: “It was the whiskey that made the crowned heads of Europe turn from Scotch to bourbon.”  Whiskey promoter Harry Levy was able to persuade McBrayer to give him exclusive rights to merchandise Cedar Brook nationwide.  Levy was responsible for commissioning the reverse glass sign below.

The next sign below was from a Hudson, New York, wholesale grocer, Col. Charles S. Rogers.  Rogers was a major merchant in the town, with a large liquor emporium and a mansion home, indicating his affluence.  As did many other wholesale grocers Rogers had a proprietary whiskey, “1875 Private Stock.” It was unusual, however for a grocer to advertise through a reverse glass sign. 

M. T. Clarke. a Boston liquor dealer, advertised his “Suffolk Club Whiskey” with a reverse glass sign that indicates one of the drawbacks of the medium.  In time the paint could flake off in multiple areas, leaving a less attractive image.  Clarke made the Boston newspapers by his strong criticism of the city’s Catholic Prohibition advocacy groups.  Clarke said:  “I don’t think it is the province of the church to meddle in this way with a man’s business.  Whenever the church charitable societies want any money the liquor dealers are the very first people they come to see.  And it is a fact we give more to charity and toward church work than any other one class of men in business.”

Notes:  Longer articles on seven of these “whiskey men” may be found elsewhere on this website.  They are:  Baetzhold, March 4, 2015; Bernheim, Dec. 10. 2014;  Selliger, May 18, 2017;  Chicken Cock, April 8, 2015; Hirsch, Dec. 10, 2011; McBrayer, Oct. 2, 2011, and Harry Levy,  Sept. 30, 2021.

 

 Against a backdrop of anti-Semitic violence in Russia, some fifty Jewish men, women and children, taking advantage of the opening of previously Indian lands, arrived in the United States beginning in the 1900s to homestead the area around Lead, South Dakota.  Among them was a young adventurer named Jacob Kozberg, shown here, who rejected farming in favor of striking gold, only to find it — not in the ground — but by selling whiskey.

The Jewish refugees included members from the same Russian shtetl (village), many related.  They were headed by a strong but erratic leader named Harry Sinykins, who had suffered brutal beatings during the pogroms.  After gold strikes in South Dakota, the U.S. government had broken Indian treaties to open up reserved lands for sale to white settlers.  After a brief sojourn in Iowa, the Russian Jews, mostly farm families, responded by moving there.

Jacob Kozberg, then in his early 20s, was part of the migration.  I believe the photo above shows him as he prospected for gold, looking like a true Western man, with horse and saddle, wide brimmed hat, cowboy boots, and smoking a cigar.  When the search for gold proved unsatisfactory, Kozberg migrated to Lead, shown below as it looked in 1912.  This city by reason of large gold strikes in the vicinity had grown from 1,400 in 1880 to more than 8,200 by the time the young man arrived. 

The failed prospector quickly befriended a local Irish saloonkeeper and liquor dealer named Chris Crosby, the proprietor of a successful Lead retail establishment called the “Family Liquor Store. “ Crosby advertised his business in a 1914 ad as “Refitted and Restocked with the Finest Lines of Wines, Liquors and Cigars.”  As partners, Crosby and Kozberg opened a combination saloon and liquor store they called “The Lobby Liquor House.”  Below is a photo of the Lobby’s interior with Kozberg standing behind the bar.

The partners packaged their Lobby Liquor House whiskey in gallon jugs for their wholesale trade.  Those containers would have been decanted into smaller ones by customers in Lead’s many saloons and restaurants.   Shown below, the jugs came in white and brown glazes with elaborate labels advertising Crosby & Kozberg as “Wholesale and Retail Dealers in Assorted Liquors and Cigars,” located at 7 North Mill St. in Lead.  The jugs are prized by collectors today as examples of Redwing antique pottery.

Despite his busy life tending to the Lobby Liquor House, Kozberg found time to find a bride.  She was Ruth Sinykin, eight years younger than he.  Shown here, Ruth was the daughter of Harry Sinykin who by then was living in St. Paul, Minnesota.  In a ceremony held in Lead and officiated by two rabbis, the couple enjoyed a “pretty wedding” as reported by the Lead Daily Call:  “The hall where the wedding took place was beautifully decorated in pink and white, while rainbow colored gowns of the attendants completed the picture.”   Three hundreds guests were served dinner indicating the affluence that quickly had accrued to the recent refugees.

The bride’s brother A. T. “Ted” Sinykin was Kozberg’s best man and soon to be partner in operating the Lobby Liquor House, above.  Shown here, Sinykin, in a 1917 sales agreement with Crosby, applied for a transfer of the alcohol license for the saloon and liquor establishment to himself.  As part of his application Sinykin presented a bond  from the American Surety Company of $2,000 (equivalent to $51,000 today).  The bond was accepted by the County Commission and the transfer granted.  The name on the Lobby’s jugs became Sinykin.

Perhaps sensing the immanence of statewide prohibition in South Dakota, Kozberg appears to have become a “silent partner” to his brother-in-law, turning over management to Sinykin while he looked to nearby Minnesota, a state that continued to be reliably “wet.”  There Kozberg came to own and operate a business he called the St. Paul Liquor House, located at 200 East 7th Street in the Minnesota city.

Shown above are two artifacts from that establishment.  The first is a two-inch high shot glass that advertises Kozberg’s enterprise as carrying a  “complete line of wines and liquors.”  A book of matches from the company recommends two two  brands, likely proprietary to the liquor house:  “Golden Age Whiskey,” advertised as “Smooth and Mellow Rich,” and “Kentucky Star Whiskey,” one we are admonished to “Try It – Be Convinced.”

Kozberg had only a few years to sell liquor in St. Paul before the 1920 imposition of National Prohibition.  His liquor house disappeared from city directories only to be replaced by a business called The LaSalle Wholesale Drug Company that Kozberg and another relative of his wife, J. L. Sinykin, established in St. Paul.  Sinykin was manager; Kozberg, secretary.   The principal objective of this enterprise was an elaborate illegal plot to circumvent Prohibition.  

The scheme worked this way:  Kozberg and Sinykin, operating as druggists were allowed to purchase large quantities of denatured alcohol.  This product is ethanol alcohol with additives to make the alcohol poisonous, bad-tasting, foul-smelling, or nauseating and as a result to discourage recreational consumption.  The partners then provided the unpalatable liquid to co-conspirators at the Minneapolis Bluing Company, an outfit that had the capacity to re-distill the alcohol to drinkable form.  The LaSalle outfit then marketed the alcohol, sharing the profits with two blueing company executives.

For a time those profits were enormous, estimated at $75,000 a month, the dollar equivalent today of $1,113,000, more than $13 million a year.  In time federal officials enforcing prohibitionary laws caught up with Kozberg and Sinykin.  They were arrested, tried and convicted.  In addition to paying hefty fines, the two men, by family lore, did some prison time.

Upon his release, Kozberg returned to St. Paul where he resumed his role as a local businessman.  The 1930 federal census found him living there with wife, Ruth, and two young daughters, Pauline 13 and Betty 6.  The family was attended by a young Irish maid.  The census recorded Kozberg as the proprietor of a St. Paul cosmetics factory.  

Apparently the consequences of his efforts to subvert Prohibition having been a life-changing experience,  Kozberg gave up his rowdy ways and settled into the role of a St. Paul businessman, owning and operating the Ideal Leather Manufacturing Company and becoming active in the local Masonic Lodge and Shrine.  When he died at age 74 in October, 1962, at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Paul, Kozberg was remembered in the press as a “prominent local businessman.”  Prohibition long since had been repealed and his troubles with the law apparently forgotten. His funeral services were held at St. Paul’s Temple of Aaron and burial at the graveyard of that Jewish synagogue.  On his gravestone Jacob Kozberg is remembered as “beloved husband and father.”

One Kosberg legacy has continued to stir controversy.  His riches allowed him to be a principal investor in the formation of a 6,000 acre ranch in South Dakota owned and operated by members of the Sinykin family.  This huge spread had once been  Indian country, part of a reservation snatched from Native Americans by white settlers with government approval.

Rebecca Clarren, a Portland-based journalist and descendant of the Sinykins, has sought out the descendants of the Lakota families displaced by the duplicitous federal policies that provided her ancestors with homesteads and ranches.  Clarren’s finding have been published in her 2023 book, “The Cost of Free Land.”  It documents how one persecuted and displaced group aided and abetted in the displacing of another.

Notes:   This post has been gathered from a variety of sources, including Sinykin family photos.  The narrative about these Jewish immigrants in which Jacob Kozberg is featured as a central figure may need amendment.  I hope some descendant will see this post, provide material as necessary and correct any errors.

Students of American spirits are well acquainted with Louisville’s “Whiskey Row,” where so many familiar names in whiskey history had their headquarters.  Less well recognized has been Milwaukee’s Whiskey Row along Water Street, overlooking the Milwaukee River, where more than two dozen distillers, liquor dealers, and saloons plied their trade.  Among them was Adam Dillmann, a German immigrant whose entire business career would be located there,

Dillmann was born in Niederbuchen, Nassau, Germany in October 1939 of unknown parentage and emigrated to the United States in 1855 when he was about 16 years old.  The youth came aboard an American owned ship called the Francis Cutting, named for a New York congressman.  The trip, only the ship’s third,  carried European immigrants from Antwerp to New York. The voyage proved to be controversial.  

First, with no explanation of the delay, the ship’s Atlantic crossing took seven weeks when a normal crossing was about four.  Second, some passengers claimed that The journey had been obstructed by whales butting the ship and that twenty passengers had died in transit, their bodies thrown overboard.  The official log showed no whale attacks and only one death.  While the passengers’ story subsequently was doubted, initially it raised a stir — and headlines — in New York.  

By that time Dallmann likely had headed to Milwaukee, a city with a heavily German community  where he may have had relatives.  Although I have been unable to find his photograph, his physical description on a passport application indicates that Dillmann was just under five feet, six inches tall, with “proportionate features” (except for a cleft chin), blue eyes and a “heathy complexion.”  He also appears to have been intelligent and clearly ambitious to succeed in his adopted country.

 

Shown above as it looked about the time of Dillmann’s arrival, the city on Lake Michigan had grown up around two rivers, the Menomonee and the Milwaukee.  Those waterways allowed sheltered areas for loading and unloading cargo and were a bustling economic zone.  Water Street, as it was then designated, was the center of this activity.  Adam Dillmann made it his business home.

The Milwaukee River

The immigrant youth’s first occupation recorded in Milwaukee directories was in 1863 working with Peter Enders, from a prominent local meat packing family.  Dillmann was listed as co-proprietor with Enders of a saloon located at 223  East Water Street.  Over the next decade, Dillmann struck out on his own, running a saloon at 417 East Water Street.   By 1882, the German immigrant had branched out, recorded with a partner named Ignatz Morqawetz in a beer bottling company at 510 13th Street.  

This may have been a short-lived enterprise because within five years  Dillmann was back on Water Street — 242 West Water — as the proprietor of a wholesale wine and liquor store.  Called Adam Dillmann Company, this enterprise would be his sole occupation until the coming of National Prohibition.  It was located successively at four addresses on West Water, each move indicating a need for more space.   One biography also records Dillmann in 1858 buying the Menominee Hotel on West Water Street, shown right.

As a wholesaler Dillmann featured his own proprietary brands of whiskey. They were “Atlas Pure Rye” and “Old Capital Sour Mash.”  As the bottle shown left indicates, Dillmann demonstrated particularly good artistic sense in the design of his labels.  This attention to detail in design carried over to the back-of-the-bar bottles he gifted to his wholesale customers in saloons, restaurants and hotels.  Because of abuses in their use, back bar bottles would be banned after Prohibition.  

Dillmann also was generous with giving away an array of shot glasses to both wholesale and retail customers. The example at left is a particularly attractive shot with an elaborate etched design that advertises Atlas Rye.  Dillmann always was careful to include his name along with the brand being advertised.

As Dillmann’s business flourished along Milwaukee’s Water Street “Whiskey Row,” the busy proprietor was having a personal life.  About 1861 he had married Louisa M. Wellauer, an immigrant from the German area of Switzerland.  In rapid succession the couple would have four children, William, born 1862, Albert 1863.

 

Edward, 1865, and Louise 1867.  Apparently his family status occasioned Dillman’s interest in becoming an American citizen.  Although he applied in November 1860, his certificate of naturalization was not issued until May of 1866 with no explanation of the long delay.  The certificate was  recently offered for public sale on the Internet for $89.95.

As his children matured, Dillmann brought them into his Water Street liquor house.  When Dillmann’s eldest son, William, came of age he was put to work as a clerk.  He would be followed several years later by a younger son, Edward.  As the young men learned the whiskey trade, their father advanced them into management.  William became vice president; Edward, secretary-treasurer.  

When Dillmann entered his seventh decade as a Water Street saloonkeeper and liquor dealer, he made one last move to 124 West Water Street, shown here. His health faltered and he died in 1914, age 75 , with wife Louisa and his sons by his bedside.  Dillmann was buried in a family plot in Forest Home Cemetery on Milwaukee’s South Side.  His monument and gravestone are shown below.

Following the patriarch’s death, William Dillmann became president of the company and Dillmann’s widow, Louisa, vice president.  As National Prohibition became an almost certain reality,  the family decided to shut the doors on their enterprise.  In 1919 “Adam Dillmann Co.” disappeared forever from Milwaukee city directories and Water Street.

With the imposition of the total alcohol ban the following January, the West Water Street “Whiskey Row” emptied out.  Gone were the distilleries, wholesale liquor houses and saloons that once had made the avenue a colorful and vibrant part of Milwaukee’s urban landscape.  Today its whiskey history is just a brief mention in historical tours of the city’s downtown.

Notes:  This post was assembled from a number of sources, including city directories and the U.S. census.  The strange story of the 1855 voyage of the Francis Cutting that brought Adam Dillmann to America is drawn from New York Times stories at the time.

 For decades the controversy over who first called Kentucky whiskey “bourbon” has persisted without a definitive answer.  Despite conflicting views one individual has emerged as the the most likely candidate.  He is Jacob Spears (1854-1825).  Pennsylvania born, Revolutionary War soldier, early settler in Bourbon County, and pioneer  American distiller, Spears increasingly is being credited as the first to name his distilled product “bourbon.”  Whether or not the attribution is valid, Spears’s history of itself is well worth recounting.

Shown here in maturity, Spears was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, in January 1954, the son of Henry Speers and Regina Froman Speers (family members spelled their surname in several ways).  After fathering ten or eleven of his fourteen children in Virginia,  Henry sold his land and moved the family north to a new homestead on the Monongahela River in Southwest Pennsylvania, near the future town of Belle Vernon.  There Jacob grew up.  He may have had early experience with liquor, recorded by Surveyors Mason and Dixon as having met the youth in the mid-1760s working in a Pennsylvania tavern.

Spears, age 28, next is found as a private in the Pennsylvania militia during the Revolutionary War.  With other militia soldiers, Spears was deployed to garrison duty in Harrodsburg and vicinity, one of three white settlements in what would become Kentucky (carved from Virginia).  This area was prime farming country, with the Licking River providing a water route to the wider America.  Some records indicate Spears had been advanced to sergeant, but his gravestone marks him as a private.  The memorial also cites him as having been present at the 1881 Battle of Yorktown, but I can find no corroboration.

Spears also is recorded involved in a disastrous late-war conflict known as the Sandusky Expedition.  In May 1782 Colonel William Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, most of them from Pennsylvania, including Spears, deep into what now is Northern Ohio to destroy Indian villages that had been harassing white settlements. Getting wind of the expedition, the Indians and their British allies stationed in Detroit gathered to oppose them.

As depicted above a battle occurred on June 4 in which the Americans were badly outnumbered, taking refuge in a grove of trees that came to be known as “Battle Island.”  Surrounded and facing defeat the militiamen attempted to escape after dark.  The retreat became a rout and Crawford was separated from most of his men.  Captured, he was tortured by the Indians and burned at the stake. An estimated 70 militiamen were killed or executed. Miraculously, most of the force found their way through the thick forest back to safety in Pennsylvania.  Spears was among the survivors. 

Living in Western Pennsylvania with the Revolutionary War won, Spears well remembered his days in Kentucky country and the fertile lands around what would become Bourbon County, named for the French Royal House of Bourbon.

Spears seems particularly drawn by the proximity of the Licking River, the watershed for a major area of Kentucky, flowing north through miles of Kentucky countryside touching 23 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and ending at the Ohio River.  There a one way water route opened up a  significant part of the new Nation via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and onto the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1786 Spears had married a Pennsylvania woman named Elizabeth Kellar. Jacob was 32, Elizabeth, 21.  Their first three children, Rachel, Rebecca, and Solomon were born in Pennsylvania.  Although the historical record is silent, my surmise is that during this period Spears was involved in the liquor trade, running a tavern and possibly experimenting with distilling on the side.  Perhaps with the “Whiskey Rebellion” (1891-1894) brewing in his corner of Pennsylvania, the pioneer lands of Kentucky beckoned to him. Accordingly, Spears moved from Pennsylvania to a homestead near a settlement  that became Paris, Kentucky.

The move to Kentucky enhanced Spears’ opportunity at making whiskey.  He had ample land on which to grow grain, a source for water, and space for a distilling infrastructure.  The couple would have three more children in Kentucky, again giving them Old Testament names:  Noah, Abram, and Sarah.  Spears housed this growing family in a house some dubbed “The Stone Castle.”  Shown above as it looks today, the original Federal style structure was built for Spears in 1790 by Thomas Metcalfe, a future governor of Kentucky.  It has been expanded and altered over time.

Outbuildings, shown above, apparently provided Spears with sufficient infrastructure to accomplish his distilling and ability to store the resulting barrels for aging.  How the distilling process was accomplished is not apparent but the organization of the warehouse was described in 1917 by Journalist Wayne Cottingham who grew up in Bourbon County:  “The racks for holding the barrels were gone but the large timbers which had held them were in place. A door elevated in the wall was used for unloading directly from wagons onto a floor built about four feet above the ground. The old rope windlass employed in raising the barrels to the wooden loft was usable. The age of the loft was shown by the rough timbers sixteen or eighteen inches in diameter, hewn only on two sides.”  The building is said to have held 2,500 barrels of aging whiskey.

Beginning sometime in the 1790s, Spears began a major distilling operation and developed a local reputation for the quality of his whiskey.  As the 19th Century dawned and his production exceeded local demand, he hatched the idea of sending it by water to sell in other parts of the new Nation.  The Licking River would be his highway to the outside world.  The map shown here documents the long and tortuous route via the Licking to the Ohio River.  A modern observer has noted:  “The 1810 Bourbon County Census relays that Bourbon County had 128 distilleries and produced over 146,000 gallons of whiskey and Jacob Spears was at the epicenter of the production…The Licking and Ohio Rivers played an integral part in Mr. Spears success as a businessman.”  Below: The confluence of the Licking and the Ohio.

Barrels of Spears’ whiskey were carried north by flatboat poled with the current, the ultimate destination being New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.  It was a oneway trip for the boats dependent as they were on the currents to propel them. Once in The Big Easy, the craft were unloaded and broken up for their wood.  The flatboat men would walk back to their homes.  That chore most often fell to Spear’s adult son, Noah, who is said to have made 13 trips to New Orleans and walked back to Bourbon County with a money bag strapped to his body. Noah used the Natchez Trace trail, below, traversing Indian country where robberies were common.  Spears allowed son Abram to go along when he reached 16.

Spears is believed to have demonstrated uncommon marketing savvy in selling his whiskey in New Orleans, apparently branding it in a way to make it distinct on the city market.  He recognized that New Orleans was a “hyper-French” city.  Bourbon County was named after the French Royal dynasty to which many residents would have had at least some measure of fealty.  Spears seemingly calculated that by marketing his whiskey there as “bourbon,” he could strike a note of recognition among the Cajun populace.  Noah’s 13 visits attests to his father’s success.

Spears later years were marked by relative affluence, surrounded by adult family members, and grandchildren.  Each of his three sons were involved in the distillery, allowing him time to be involved in the local and national politics of the day.  A measure of Spears’ standing is indicated by a February 1799 meeting to nominate representatives to the Constitutional Convention that was held in his home.

In February 1825 Jacob Spears died and was buried in a plot on a site behind his house.  He was 74 years old. His elaborate gravestone, below, told the story of his Revolutionary War service and names his six children.  The farm and distillery became the property of the eldest son, Solomon, who sold them before dying in 1830, only five years after his father.  

Below is a picture of the Spears house and distillery as they look today.  The site, although credited as holding the oldest distillery building extant in Kentucky, is privately owned and not on the Kentucky Bourbon trail.  A historical marker noting Spear’s distillery is located a mile from the site.

Meanwhile the debate on who first attached “bourbon “ to Kentucky whiskey raged on for years.  In his 2016 book “Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey,”  Author Fred Minnick painstakingly goes through a list of seven Kentucky distillers who have been suggested as the “father” of bourbon and anoints Jacob Spears.  I believe his assessment is accurate and generally accepted in Kentucky and elsewhere. 

Notes:  This post was researched from a wide number of sources.  Major ones are referenced in the text.  The Ancestry website was another with data on Spears and his family.  Additionally, Fred Minnick has written:  “As an author, you hope that one day your words can positively influence another person. The more I dug into Jacob Spears’ past, the more I realized how important he was to our beloved spirit.  And I’m honored that this research toil has led to a magnificent new chapter in whiskey.”  I think Spears would agree.