Author name: Jack Sullivan

 Foreword:  In the past when I am researching a “whiskey man:” and come across a previously published article on a potential subject that is as complete and informative as anything I could do, I  often contact the author asking for permission to reprint it.  The article below was written and provided illustrations by Lee Reiherzer of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.   Lee graciously has given me permission to include it on this website.  It is presented here with minor editing.

Once upon a time, there was a whiskey distillery at the northern edge of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in an area called Keenville.   Keenville came about as a locale in the late 1800s. The name was a corruption of Kien, the surname of the family that had settled there in the early 1850s. John Kien had brought his family to Winnebago County after failing to strike it rich in the California Gold Rush of 1849. He bought 40 acres of land that stretched along the shore of Lake Winnebago south of Asylum Bay. The Kien family established a farm there. On that farm John Thielen, shown here, established a distillery.

John Thielen was born in Germany in 1849. He was 15 when he sailed across the Atlantic with his parents and siblings. They landed in New York and went straight to Oshkosh. Thielen’s father, Peter, opened a saloon on the east side of Main Street just north of Washington. John Thielen and his brothers Frank and Paul came of age working in that saloon. The Thielen boys would be a force in the Oshkosh business trade for the next 50 years.

At 25, Thielen went out on his own. Over the next two decades, he was involved in five separate Downton Oshkosh saloons. He also became a wholesaler. Thielen imported whiskey, brandy, gin, porter, and wine into Oshkosh and distributed it to saloons throughout the area. He made a small fortune. To the friends of Temperance, Thielen was evil incarnate. To the saloon keepers, he was the hub around which the booze scene spun.

The John Thielen family home built in 1889 still stands at what is now 319 E. Irving.

In 1891, Thielen moved his base of operations into a new building at the southwest corner of Washington and State. The construction had been initiated by August Uihlein, president of Schlitz Brewing Company. Local prohibitionists had been protesting it ever since discovering that Schlitz had purchased the land and had hired William Waters to design what would come to be known as the Uihlein Block.

Silver Spring Whiskey:  And then came the distillery. The plan for it was formalized in the winter and spring of 1892. Thielen had brought the idea to John Kien, the son of the namesake of Keenville. Thielen wanted to build a distillery on the Kien family farm. By the end of May, the deal was sealed. The Silver Spring Distillery was born.  It is seen here in a circa 1900 drawing:

At least that’s what it was called in the articles of incorporation. Thielen, president of the company, and Kien, vice-president, were casual about the name. Early on, it was referred to as the Silver Spring Distillery, the Oshkosh Distilling Company, and the Thielen and Kien Distillery. They later changed it to the John Thielen Distilling Company. No matter the moniker, by June of 1892 They were making whiskey in Keenville.

This was not a boutique distillery. It was a farm-based whiskey factory said to be able to pump out 700 gallons of hot liquor a day. The grain used to make that alcohol was grown by area farmers and malted at the Horn and Schwalm Brewery on Doty Street. The distillery’s production resulted in so much spent mash that 50 head of cattle were kept on-premise to devour it. When the calves grew fat enough, they were sold off for meat and replaced with a new herd.

Thielen and Kien had whiskey on the market in a matter of months (not uncommon for the period). The flagship brand was Silver Spring Pure Rye Malt Whisky. It sold well.  The first of several expansions to the distillery was initiated just a year after the operation had gotten underway. A malting facility was also added. At the close of 1892, Thielen told the Daily Northwestern that the distillery would begin running day and night to meet demand. As an adjunct to his whiskey sales Thielen also was selling a brand of stomach bitters.

The early success caught the attention of a predator.  For some weeks past, a New York Whisky Trust had been trying to buy up all the distilleries in this section, and a report had been current that the Oshkosh Distilling company would join the trust. John Thielen, one of the officers of the company, said the Trust had made a great attempt to gain control of the local distillery, but that the company would not sell under any circumstance.—Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; December 13, 1892.

Thielen said he had turned down “a large amount of money” for the distillery and that he planned to take the New Yorkers head on. There would be days to come when he must have regretted that set of decisions.

For all its apparent success, Thielen’s distillery was beset with problems almost from the start. In the late summer of 1893, the still collapsed halting production for a time. Thielen blamed the accident on the plant’s distiller, Herman Wraas. Thielen fired him. Wraas sued. Thielen was vindicated, but now he had neither a functioning still nor anyone capable of running his distillery.

A more serious issue followed. The Panic of 1893 triggered an economic depression that pummeled Oshkosh. Thielen, caught short in the midst of it, was unable to pay the federal taxes he owed on the liquor he was making. By year’s end, the US Government had placed a series of liens on the distillery that brought the battered business to its knees. It would take Thielen and Kien years to work through their tax issues. In the meantime, the distillery went dry.

There are conflicting reports as to when production at the distillery ceased. One source puts the date at 1896. Another indicates the distillery was producing at least some liquor as late as 1897. In any case, the distillery was completely idle for no less than two years.

Thielen’s notoriety continued to grow while the distillery lay in wait. He was the sole U.S. agent of a popular (and probably alcohol-based) tonic named Dr. Mampes Herb Stomach Bitters. Each bottle came with Thielen’s name embossed on the back. Bottle photo courtesy of Peachridge Glass:

The distillery’s tax issues were finally resolved in 1899. And in December that year, the business was formally reorganized under the name John Thielen Distilling Company. Thielen was still the president. John Kien stayed on as vice-president. And In January of 1900 they got back to making whiskey.

Thielen’s distillery seemed to have been forgotten. Upon its reopening the Daily Northwestern remarked that “Few persons are cognizant of the fact that a few miles north of Oshkosh is located the most extensive distillery outside of the two in Milwaukee.”

Those who did remember would have been surprised by the reincarnation. The entire plant had been made over. A new, continuous-run column still replaced the old pot still. A steel-roller mill took the place of the burr grinder that was used for crushing malt. Thielen hired an experienced distiller from Peoria, Illinois named William Miller to run the plant, which was now feeding two iron-clad, bonded warehouses. The Thielen distillery had grown into the third largest of the five then in Wisconsin. The larger facilities were in Milwaukee. The others were in Sheboygan and Waupaca counties.

Sanborn Map, 1903.

The reopening came with a new label. The Silver Spring brand was ditched. The new flagship whiskey was called Badger Club.  Badger Club was a rye whiskey. It was accompanied by another rye whiskey, a lower-shelf brand named “Bell of Wisconsin.” And then there was “Thielen’s Malt Whiskey.” This one was aimed at a different crowd. Thielen’s Malt Whiskey was advertised as if it were a medicine. It was sold in drug stores for $1 a bottle (or about $32 in today’s money). It cured nothing but the sobriety of those too genteel for social drinking.

It cost Thielen about 25 cents to produce a gallon of whiskey. The tax on that gallon was $1.10. That same gallon sold, on average, for more than $4. In addition, Thielen had his own distribution using the wholesale network he had built through his dealership on Washington Avenue. He was now selling alcohol well outside of the Oshkosh area. Everything was in place. But for some reason, it never panned out.

By mid-decade, Thielen’s distillery had fallen on hard times again. The issues that led to this decline were never aired publicly. But by 1905, Thielen was clearly pulling back from the operation. His withdrawal coincided with the building of a saloon on the distillery property. The saloon was run by Jess Gokey, an infamous Oshkosh bar keeper and cathouse curator. Gokey had recently moved to the outskirts after a couple of sordid episodes in Oshkosh had raised his profile in the city to a degree that was at odds with his appetite for debauchery.

Incredibly, Jess Gokey came to be in charge of the distillery that bore John Thielen’s name. Thielen was out. In early 1906, he even stopped selling the whiskey that still carried his name on the label. The distillery closed soon after. Perhaps there remained some hope for another revival. The business wasn’t officially dissolved until 1909.

John Thielen carried on much like he had before the establishment of his Keenville distillery.His liquor trade on Washington Avenue was still brisk. Thielen also busied himself with several other ventures around town. None of them had anything to do with alcohol. Those days were at an end.

On January 16, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors. The new law would take effect a year later. Thielen didn’t wait for it. In the summer of 1919, he closed his liquor store and quit the business.  The old distillery burned to the ground two months later.

With the start of Prohibition just weeks away, the report of the destruction read like a mournful allegory.

Fire completely destroyed the old distillery and the old warehouse of John Thielen on the lake shore near the Oshkosh-Neenah road late Thursday afternoon… The distillery was a mere skeleton, the lumber having been largely removed by petty thievery and only the towering skeleton remained. The old frame structure burned like so much tinder.

“In former years the distillery, operated by John Thielen, was a busy place and many thousands of gallons of whisky were made there, but for years past it has been abandoned and vacant. The locality is known as Keenville.” – Oshkosh Daily Northwestern; October 18, 1919.  A year after the fire, John Thielen left town. He moved with his family to Los Angeles. Thielen died there in 1934 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.

Notes:  Lee Reiherzer, shown here, is an Oshkosh journalist whose website is entitled “Oshkosh Beer:  A History of Beer, Breweries and Saloons in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.”  It is available on Facebook.  His most recent book is Winnebago County Beer:  A Heady History,” available from Amazon Books.  My sincere thanks to Lee for allowing me to reprint this story of a pre-Prohibition whiskey man beset by challenges from several sides.

Pictured here, James B. Kelly, a New York City liquor dealer, seemingly lived much of his life in the shadows, perhaps avoiding federal authorities.  By giving his name to an alcoholic  “medicinal” bitters called “Kelly’s Old Cabin” —  an empty bottle that sold for $45,360 not long ago — Kelly has drawn renewed interest.  Research into his life reveals a few details.

Apparently born and educated in New York City, Kelly in 1863 abruptly left The Big Apple for St. Louis, Missouri.  This move was contemporaneous with the implementation of Civil War conscription.  Kelly’s service record indicates that as an unmarried male of about 24 years old, he was in immediate danger of being drafted into the Union Army.   Conscription in New York sparked a massive riot.  In July 1863, a mob wrecked the main recruiting station. For three days angry men marched through the city, destroying buildings, factories, streetcar lines, and homes.  Dozens were killed before order was restored.  My surmise is that Kelly had headed out to Missouri where the draft was being indifferently enforced.

In St. Louis, Kelly teamed up with a liquor dealer and inventor named John Garnhart, 39.  Despite the age difference, the two men seem to have bonded and soon Garnhart changed the name of his liquor house to Garnhardt & Kelly.  Both men were recorded in St. Louis business directories as living in the posh Lindell House, at the time the largest hotel in America.

Opened in 1863, the Lindell House hotel, shown here, was seven stories and boasted 500 rooms.  The St. Louis Democrat wrote:  “If a boarder wishes to through the wide and lofty corridors before breakfast, he may travel one and a quarter miles without going over the same floor twice.”   When a fire broke out about 8 p.m. on March  30, 1867, records indicate that both men were living there, a sure sign of affluence. 

 

Guests initially ignored the flames, thinking that they were safe within the strong, elegant building surrounding them.  For a time eating, drinking and leisure activities went on.  As the fire progressed, shown above, all the inhabitants were evacuated into the cold Missouri night.  Not a single life was lost.  The next day the Lindell House was a smoking ruins with the loss equivalent to $25 million dollars.  Kelly and Garnhart subsequently moved to another St. Louis showplace, the equally luxurious Planter’s Hotel.

During this period the two men were working together to create an intoxicating beverage known as bitters.  Sold as a “medicinal” rather than as liquor the beverage was alcohol infused with botanicals and claimed to have curative properties. Liquor dealers like Garnhart and Kelly had moved to merchandising bitters because of the high war taxes levied by the Lincoln Administration on whiskey.  Bitters, sold as medicine, were not similarly taxed. 

Past accounts of this partnership often have assumed that it was Kelly who came up with the recipe for the bitters.  Although I have been unable to find proof of that claim, it is possible that the New Yorker had prior experience with such nostrums, perhaps through working in a pharmacy.  When they mutually had agreed on the ingredients, the partners spared no hyperbole in advertising the curative properties of their concoction.  Shown here, a label touts their bitters as “The Greatest Discovery of the Age” and a remedy for almost any ailment, large or small.

 

If the origin of the bitters recipe is uncertain, the log cabin bottle in which it was marketed is not.  In addition to selling whiskey, Garnhart was a designer and inventor.  His name is on the patent for the log cabin-shaped bottle in which the bitters were sold.  My surmise is that attractive decorations on the wooden cases in which it was sold also were the work of the talented Garnhardt.

 

Sold initially as “Old Cabin Bitters,” the nostrum after a month was renamed “Kelly’s Old Cabin Bitters.”  About the same time, Kelly’s name was removed from the St. Louis liquor house. Directories list him simply as a salesman for Garnhardt.  My assumption is that Kelly now was dividing his time between St. Louis and New York City, creating a market for the bitters in the East. Evidence suggests that the bottles were made at the Whitney Glass Works in Glassboro, New Jersey.  Reputedly bottled both in New York and St. Louis, Kelly bitters containers have been found throughout the United States including Colorado, Montana, and Texas.

As the Civil War dragged on, wartime high taxes on liquor began to be applied to bitters.  The law was ambiguous.  Those selling bitters and other alcoholic compounds put up and sold as medicine were not required to pay the special tax.  Persons selling bitters or other alcoholic compounds “put up and stamped as rectified spirits” were taxed.  Kelly’s Old Cabin Bitters were considered in the latter category and in 1864 Kelly began to affix his own government-approved stamp, one carrying a his portrait, shown here.   One writer has suggested that the stamps were fraudulent, but Federal records show tax receipts of $5,800 from Garnhart & Kelly.

But cheating was in the air.  Following the Civil War the notorious “Whiskey Ring” was taking shape in St. Louis in 1871 to defraud the U.S. Government.  The scam worked this way:  Crooked officials would attest that distillers and rectifiers had paid all their taxes when they actually had paid about 60% of what they owed the government, much of the money going as bribes.  The residual 40% stayed in the participants’ pockets.  

Garnhart apparently was one of the miscreants, having kept an interest in his St. Louis liquor house even after moving with his family to Madison, Wisconsin.  His liquor business now was being run by his co-owners.  The fraud in St. Louis got particular attention from Federal authorities. In 1873 a trap was set and sprung.  Garnhart’s company was among those where barrels of illicit whiskey and office ledgers were seized.  Criminal indictments followed.  Garnhart’s partners were among those sent to jail.  His death at 50 years old in 1874 likely prevented Garnhart from doing prison time.  Meanwhile in New York City John Kelly was left untouched, apparently having faded into the shadows.

Although Kelly did not face federal indictment, sales of Kelly’s Old Cabin Bitters was shut down in 1874.  Was it engendered by the breaking of the Whiskey Ring, Garnhart’s death, or yet another cause?  There is no clear answer.  As a result of the earlier name being attached to the Garnhart log cabin bottle for only about a month, a bottle of “Old Cabin Bitters,” (No “Kelly”) shown here, sold not long ago for $45,360 at American Bottle Auctions, based in Sacramento.  The buyer has not been disclosed.

Even though bottles of the subsequent “Kelly’s Old Cabin Bitters” were distributed for approximately a decade, they too command substantial prices.  The guru of American bitters bottles, Ferd Meyer, notes that while these containers are not considered extremely rare, they “aren’t too shabby either, regularly bringing $2,500 to $5,000 or more for extreme colors.”  Shown here are Kelly log cabin bottles in amber, light green, and dark green.   

Following his death in Garnhart’s body was returned from Madison to St. Louis where he was interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery in what is described as the Garnhart “family tomb.”  Following a long illness, his widow, Roberta, joined him there after her death in 1884.  Despite a lengthy search I have been unable to determine what happened to James Kelly after 1874 or his ultimate place of interment. He has faded into the mists of time.  I hope some sharp eyed Kelly relative will see this post and help fill in the gaps.

Note:  This post was gathered from a variety of sources.  Key among them were St. Louis directories.  Several of the images shown here are from “The Bertrand Bottles – A Study of 19th-Century Glass and Ceramic Containers” by Ronald R. Switzer, 1974, published by the National Park Service.  The Bertrand was a steamboat that sank on the Missouri River in 1865 with its cargo and was excavated in 1968.  My earlier post on John Garnhart may be found on this website at July 20, 2015.

 

Foreword:  The Prohibition crusade of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries had many manifestations in America.  Among its slogans the one that seems to have gained the most attention as well as farcical commentary is the subject of this post. 

  

 The Demon of Rum is about in the land,

His victims are falling on every hand,

The wise and the simple, the brave and the fair,

No station too high for his vengeance to spare.

O women, the sorrow and pain is with you,

And so be the joy and the victory, too;

With this for your motto, and succor divine,

The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.

The last line of the above anonymous poem from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) became a popular mantra in efforts by prohibitionists to stop all sales of alcoholic beverages in the United States. It seemingly was a threat by young women to their young men to stay away from booze or skip the smooching.

The origins of the verse are said to go back at least to March 1873 and perhaps as early as 1869.  This mantra of the “drys” was publicized in newspaper articles, magazines and books;  depicted on placards, signs, and needle point, and repeated in poems and songs.  “Lips that touch liquor…” reached iconic stature and as such attracted more than its share of parodies.  Featured here are a few of its manifestations.

Above is the most attractive of the examples.  It shows a very comely young woman with a “Gibson Girl” hair style, olive skin, and ruby “bee stung” lips.  This lady is eminently kissable.   With this lass the WCTU went straight to the heart of potential swains. The second manifestation of an abstemious young woman below, while still attractive, lacks the same impact.  Origin unknown, it appeared frequently in the 1800s on placards and signs of varying sizes and colors.   A third young woman carrying a “lips” sign makes no attempt to be seductive.  She seems aggressively angry about menfolk and their imbibing.

Songwriters Sam Booth and George T. Evans dedicated a “temperance” ditty to the “Woman’s Crusade Against Liquor Throughout the World”  and fittingly gave it the “Lips” title.  Among the lyrics were the following:  

Let war be your watchword from shore unto shore,

Rum and his legions shall reign no more,

And write on your bonnets in letters that shine,

The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.

Write on your bonnets?  Booth and Evans must have been taking a snort or two to have thought up that idea.   The prohibitionist sentiments naturally raised the “wet” opposition to parody the idea.  As shown here, the most enduring images involved unattractive and sour looking women endorsing the idea.  A photograph  timeless in its appeal depicts a group of ten chastely dressed matrons beneath the sign.  They clearly are making themselves look as “un-kissable” as possible.  My attention is drawn to the woman in the center with a large hat and what appears to be serape around her shoulders.  Her eyes seem to indicate that her lips might have been on a bottle not long before.

The Mississippi Riverboat Owners Assn. obviously thought a “Lips” sign would be found hilarious among their patrons.   Rightly so since it would have been a rare riverboat that did not sell or serve alcohol aboard the craft, along with other pleasures like gambling and prostitution, neither of which the WCTU would have approved.

The “Lips” notion continues to be interpreted and reinterpreted up to the present day.  Note the greeting card that includes the enigmatic message, “Lips that touch liquor shall never touch my liquor,” and a puzzling drawing of a woman pouring drops of fluid out of her boot while standing over a supine male figure.  I still am puzzling over this offering. It was issued by “Someecards,” an outfit that carried a line of greeting cards featuring drinking.

Just when we thought the world was safe from the prohibitionists, images like the one here appear.  This young woman with a clenched fist and snarlingly face appears to be representing a new generation that harks back to the heyday of the WCTU.  Marching in a parade somewhere, she has adopted their mantra and made it her own.

  

In closing to this examination of the prohibition theme, a third verse seems fitting.  This one came from the pen of poet George W. Young.  Appropriately, he entitled it “Lips That Touch Liquor.”  Young’s ditty reads as follows:

You are coming to woo me, but not as of yore,

When I hastened to welcome your ring at the door;

For I trusted that he who stood waiting me then,

Was the brightest, the truest, the noblest of men,

Your lips, on my own, when they printed “Farewell,”

Had never been soiled by the “beverage of hell;”

But they come to me now with the bacchanal sign,

And the lips that touch liquor must never touch mine.”

Today Aspen, Colorado, is world renowned as the playground of millionaires and intellectuals with a population exceeding 7,000.  A Swedish immigrant who arrived there in 1892 to run a local liquor business, Henry Beck would be delighted.  The town, located in a remote area of the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains, had blossomed in the 1880s as a mining camp during the Colorado Silver Boom but in the 1890s entered a steep decline.  Beck, hailed as one of the “progressive men of Western Colorado” was a stabilizing presence who helped rescue Aspen from becoming just another Colorado ghost town.

The son of Henry and Mary (Olson) Beck, Henry was born in 1861 in Filipstad, Sweden, a small lakeshore municipality in central Sweden.  When he was only seven or eight years old, his father, a miner, uprooted Mary and their four children and emigrated to the United States.  After a sojourn in Pennsylvania, the family in 1871 settled on the border of Lake Superior where the elder Beck found employment in the iron mines.

Terminating his formal education when he was only ten years old, Henry was obliged by family financial circumstances also to become a mine worker.  At the age of eighteen, seeking better opportunities, he traveled west to Leadville, Colorado, to work in the silver mines.  Apparently nagged by his lack of formal education, in 1885 the youth earned enough to pay his way back to Sweden and attend secondary school.  He returned to Leadville in 1887 determined to stay out of the mines, instead becoming a shipping clerk for a wholesale liquor firm, owned by the Baer Brothers, Isaac and Adolph. Their store window is shown here. [See my post on the Baers, Oct. 22, 2017.]

After spending five years learning the business Beck was entrusted by the Baers with managing a liquor outlet they owned in the mountain town of Aspen, Colorado, shown above.  When he moved there Beck immediately must have recognized the logistical problems the remote town presented.  Aspen was miles from the nearest railroad hub — and still is.  The distance from Leadville was only 44 miles but required traveling a road that led over Independence Pass, crossing the Continental divide at 12,095 feet above sea level. The pass is 32 miles long and so steep in places, as shown here, that even today by car it can take more than an hour to traverse.  In Beck’s day, I surmise, supplies from Leadville had to come by mule caravan.

Moreover, in Aspen Beck found a mining town that had seen its peak days and was headed downward. The turn came when the panic of 1893 caused a collapse of the silver market.  Moreover, the United States ceased to value its currency in silver and adopted the gold standard.  For the next half-century, known locally as “the quiet period,” Aspen’s population steadily declined until it was under 1,000.

 

For the next two decades, Beck was a stabilizing force in the community.  Symbolic of his faith in Aspen, in January 1896, he bought out the Baers’ stock and totally owned the business.  With liquor brought over the mountains to him in barrels, he was repackaging it in ceramic jugs in quart to gallon sizes, as seen here.  Eventually, finding it difficult to transport whiskey safely in jugs over the rugged mountains, Beck opened his own bottling plant, creating an opportunity for local employment.  He also invested his money in area mining enterprises. 

Quoting the “Progressive Men” on Beck:  “He is a prominent and influential citizen, taking a deep and continuing interest in local public affairs, and standing well in the good will and regard of his fellow men.”  The Aspen Democrat-Times put it more simply:  “…With every man who knows Henry, his word is as good as his bond and both are good as gold.” 

Beck was an influential figure in the social and political life of Aspen as a member of three fraternal organizations in town, the Elks, Odd Fellows, and Eagles, the last elected to a term as president.  A Republican in a heavily Democratic county, Beck was rewarded for his civic contributions by becoming the only member of his party to be elected county commissioner.  There he was said to have “served the people of Pitkin County, wisely and faithfully.”  He also spent a term in the Colorado state legislature, again furthering the interests of Aspen.

In the midst of his business and civic activities, Beck also found time for romance, marriage and family.  In January, 1890, he married Ida M. Echberg, like him an immigrant from Sweden.  She was the daughter of a successful area farmer and with Beck, an active member of the Lutheran Church.  The couple would have four children over the course of their marriage, daughters Edith and Ellen, and sons Verner and Carl.

While prohibitionary forces apparently were not a major issue, problems came from several directions.  Although Beck provided many Aspen area saloons with whiskey, he faced competition from out-of-town distributors and moonshine distillers for which Leadville was notorious.  While he seems to have surmounted those difficulties, certain unspecified health problems associated with the altitude were plaguing the family.  The remedy seemingly was to move to a lower altitude.

 About 1907, Beck thought he had closed a sale of his liquor house to a local named Kline only to have the deal fall through at the last moment.  It took four more years to find a buyer.  Aspen residents  E.M. Hawkins and Eugene Bascom stepped in and bought Beck’s business.  Taking note of the sale one local newspaper wrote: “Henry Beck has been in Aspen nineteen years, during which time he has done no man wrong.”

With the sale completed, the Beck family moved almost immediately 105 miles to Denver where they purchased a large home at 1111 Steele Street, shown here.  According to the 1910 census Henry initially worked in Denver as a liquor dealer.  With the coming of National Prohibition he was forced to find other employment.  The 1920 census found Beck, now 57, working as a shipping clerk for a farm implement company.  With him in the home was wife Ida and three adult children all in their twenties.  Edith, 27, was a piano teacher.  The sons Verner, 26, and Carl, 22, were not employed.  A short time later the boys moved to California.

About 1925, Beck began to experience troublesome health problems and retired.He died at his Denver home in February 1929.  After a Lutheran Church ceremony he was buried in Fairmount Cemetery, Block 81.  Ida would join him there in 1942.  Beck’s death brought an extensive obituary in the Aspen Daily Times that remembered him even after some 18 years gone as “one of the leading citizens of this state.”  It was a fitting tribute to a whiskey man who contributed so much to Aspen during dark days.

Note:  This post was researched using a number of sources, the most important being the “The Progressive Men of Colorado,” A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905 and Beck’s obituary in the Aspen Daily Times of February 8, 1929.

    

As regular readers of this blog know, a striking number of liquor dealers  graduated into the world of banking both before and after National Prohibition.  Thinking about it, the shift makes sense.  Successful “whiskey men” often have had the financial resources to fund banks and the management skills to run them.  Fred C. Driehorst of Wheeling, West Virginia, is a good example of someone who made the successful transition.  Shown here, Driehorst has a  story of achievement that deserves to be told.

Driehorst was born in Wheeling in October 1855,  the son of Sophia Bahre and Charles H. Driehorst, an “express delivery” man driving a horse and wagon.  It must have been a lucrative enough business to allow young Fred to be educated in private schools and at the Wheeling Business College.  His first recorded employment was in 1880 when he went to work for a successful local merchant named John Reid Jr., who advertised himself as a “family grocer” but prominently featured wines and liquor. 

Reid jug

Recorded as the bookkeeper, Driehorst stayed with Reid for approximately nine years.  During that time he came to understand that the business of selling alcohol, although it had its risks, was far more lucrative than canned anchovies. 

About 1899, Driehorst left Reid and with a partner named Schaefer, opened a liquor house at 1428 Main Street in Wheeling.  Tearing down an existing structure the partners built an imposing five story building topped with a cupola, shown here.  The space allowed the partners to advertise that they carried all leading brands of whiskey — and to list 25 of America’s best brands in their ads.

The company’s two proprietary labels were “Old Fort Henry Rye” and “Green Band Rye.”   There is no evidence that Driehorst registered the trademark of either brand.  He likely was buying the whiskey for his recipes for these two brands from nearby Pennsylvania and Ohio distilleries and “rectifying” (blending) them to achieve a desired color, smoothness and taste.  

As the business was growing, Driehorst had a personal life. In 1885 he married Julia Gardner of  Ohio County, West Virginia.  Over the next 17 years they would have five children.  To house them he bought a spacious home at 923 Main Street, not far from his liquor business. The couple’s eldest son, Harry, born in 1886, sadly would die in infancy.  Another son, George, would die in adolescence, again a source of grieving to his parents.

Although his name remained on the company, shown above on company jugs, Schaefer early left active management to be replaced by Clark Hamilton, Jr.  Listed as the secretary and treasurer of the liquor house, Hamilton had been the federal deputy collector of revenue for the State of West Virginia, responsible in part for collecting the liquor taxes.  Born in Preston County, West Virginia, he brought his knowledge of the whiskey trade and political connections to the business.

Perhaps as early as 1911 Driehorst apparently decided that the growing prohibitionary forces in West Virginia would prevail.  He saw his markets shrink because of county and town “local option” restrictions on making and selling whiskey.  By the time the state adopted a blanket ban on alcohol in 1914, he had shut down his liquor house, taken his profits and was looking around for other opportunities.

In 1916 Driehorst became president of Wheeling’s Germania Half Dollar Savings Bank and immediately brought change.  Founded in 1897, this financial institution received a new look by tearing down its original building and constructing a new one designed by architect Fred Paris.  At its grand opening, the Wheeling Intelligencer newspaper on July 3, 1917,  featured a front page drawing of the entrance and a tag line “Just as Strong as it Looks.”  Driehorst reciprocated by advertising lavishly.  When the onset of World War One in 1918 made things “German” controversial, he quickly changed the name of the bank.

  

Wheeling Fire Ins. Co.

About the same time Driehorst was helping grow the Wheeling Fire Insurance Company, serving as director and treasurer.  Two major local fires in 1917 and 1918 had reenforced the need for effective insurance.  The first destroyed following a winter storm was Hermann’s Department Store.  The following year Wheeling’s premier hotel, the Stratford Springs, went up in flames.  The Wheeling News-Register headlined:  “Only Gaunt Chimneys Mark Stratford Springs Hotel Site.”  Originally the German Fire Insurance Company of Wheeling, the only such insurer in all of West Virginia, it too changed its name in 1919 becoming simply the Wheeling Fire Insurance Co.   Driehorst remained an officer until his retirement. 

Fred Driehorst died in May 1939 at the advanced age of 83. The cause listed on his death certificate was bladder cancer. He was buried in Wheeling’s Greenwood Cemetery, next to his wife, Julia, who had passed in 1928, and adjacent to their two deceased sons.  The couple’s joint gravestone is found below.   Driehorst had spent his entire life in Wheeling.  His liquor house is gone, a victim of National Prohibition but the Wheeling bank and insurance company he served continues to this day, providing a more lasting memorial.

Notes:  This post was assembled from a variety of sources.  Standouts among them are “History of Wheeling City and Ohio County, West Virginia, and Representative Citizens” by Hon. Gibson Lamb Cranmer, Biographical Printing Co., Chicago, 1907; and “Progressive West Virginians” compiled by Robert E, Murphy, The Wheeling News, 1905.  For other “whiskey men” involved in banking  see my post on this site describing five of them on October 16, 2018.  

George Gerdes and his brother Ben for years had wanted to own outright a Kentucky distillery to provide a steady flow of whiskey for their Cincinnati wholesale liquor house.  Over almost three decades they had invested in distilleries but sought total ownership.  Only about 1903 were the brothers able to buy outright the Old Lexington Club distillery in Jessamine County, a plant with its own considerable history.  Unexpectedly, the purchase would embroil the Gerdes in a lengthy, expensive, and eventually losing legal battle with the Whiskey Trust.

The Gerdes brothers first appeared in Cincinnati directories in 1874 as G. & B. Gerdes Wines, located at Eight West Second St., apparently also their living quarters.  George, 29, was president;  Bernard, 35, was secretary-treasurer. This was the first of what would be four Cincinnati addresses.

The Gerdes soon moved from wine to becoming wholesale liquor dealers.  Like many in that trade, they were “rectifying,” that is, blending whiskeys from Kentucky distillers to create their own proprietary brands of liquor.  Among those were:”Elkhorn Club”, “Fort Deer Rye,” “G. & G. B. Manhattan,” “King of Nelson,” “Melrose,” “Mignonette,” “Mountain Lily,” “Old Gold Rye,  “Queen of Anderson,” “Rising Sun,” “Sunshine,” and “Tube Rose.”  The brothers do not appear to have trademarked any of those names.

During the first two plus decades of the Gerdes company the brothers had financial interests in at least three Kentucky distilleries.  They ere drawing liquor from RD#112, 8th District, in Anderson County, owned by Thomas B. Ripy of the famous distilling family;  RD#2, Fifth District, in Louisville, owned by the Mattingly brothers, and RD#405, Fifth District, in Gethsemane, owned by Francis M. Head and M.C. Beam.  As shown here, the brothers issued their whiskey in ceramic jugs of up to four gallons.

In the meantime, a distillery had been built on Hickman Creek just outside Nicholasville, below, a town of about 2,000 in Jessamine County not far from Louisville. Designated RD#86, 8th District, the owner was J. H. Reed, a man with a series of partners. Reed called it The Old Lexington Club Distillery and about 1874 began using the name “Old Lexington Club Whiskey.”  Principally advertising the brand locally, Reed proved to be a bad at business and became mired in debt.  Taken over by creditors, the distillery was sold to the Amann Brothers, whiskey rectifiers from Cincinnati.  [See post on the Amanns, May 6, 2017].

Insurance underwriter  records in 1892, indicate that the distillery, shown here, was built of stone with a metal or slate roof. The property included a frame cattle shed 75 ft SW of the still, and a corn crib. There were three bonded warehouses:  Warehouse A — iron-clad with a shingle roof, located 125 feet NW of the still. Warehouse B — frame with a shingle roof, 180 feet NW of the still. Warehouse C — frame with a shingle roof, 250 feet NW of the still.  The Amanns’ reportedly paid $10,000 for the distllery, a relative bargain price related to the site being located on low ground and prone to periodic flooding. 

Before the Amann’s bought the facility it had the mashing capacity of 200 bushels a day and able to store about 7,700 barrels for aging.  The brothers promptly increased the mashing to 300 bushel per day and over time increased warehouse capacity to 13,500 barrels.  Most of this production was shipped to the Amanns for rectifying and bottling; the rest was sold to other wholesalers and rectifiers.

In October 1887, Daniel Amann died at age 65.  his brother Edmund succeeded to top management and carried on the business.  In 1903, for unknown reasons  he sold the Old Lexington Club Distillery. G & B Gerdes were the eager purchasers, delighted at last to have a distillery of their own.  The arrival of the Whiskey Trust on the Kentucky whiskey scene had jacked up the prices asked of rectifiers for raw product.  Owning their own distillery, they understood would free them from monopolistic prices.  The Gerdes ad below exudes optimism.

A key decision by the brothers was to make “Old Lexington Club” their flagship brand, a name that neither Reed or the Amanns had bothered to trademark.  Meanwhile back in Cincinnati another whiskey wholesaler, Freiberg & Workham, in 1878 began using the name “Lexington Club” for its own whiskey.  In his book, Bourbon Law, Atty. Brian Haara relates from court documents that this brand proved very popular and had been sold all over America while “Old Lexington Club” was marketed largely in central Kentucky with some sales in New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

In 1899, Freiberg & Workam sold out to the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company, better known as the Whiskey Trust.  Trust executives recognized the strong customer base for “Lexington Club” and continued to sell it vigorously.  Meanwhile the Gerdes Brothers, who heretofore had not trademarked any of their labels, decided in 1905 to register “Old Lexington Club.”  Catching wind of this move, the Whiskey Trust, always well lawyered, objected and the registration was denied by the Patent and Trademark Office.  Early in 1906 the Gerdes Bros. sued the Trust. 

The litigation would stretch on for almost a decade.  The Gerdes brothers won the initial court battle.  The Trust appealed but lost again.  The third time proved the charm for the monopolists as they won on their second appeal.  Atty. Haara: The court ruled that “Old Lexington Club” was a descriptive name not entitled to trademark protection and that “Old Lexington Club” hadn’t done anything about “Lexington Club” despite knowing about it for at least 15 years.  This decision ignored the fact that the Gerdes had owned the distillery only since 1903. Inaction earlier by Reed and the Amanns seemingly had doomed the brothers’ trademark efforts.

The case dragged on for years with the final judgment coming only in October 1916.  In a Federal District Court of New Jersey the judge made a decision even King Solomon might have endorsed.  He overruled the earlier court decision to decree that “Old Lexington Club” was a distinctive enough name that the Gerdes could register it as a trademark.  On the other hand he let stand the earlier ruling that the Trust could continue to use “Lexington Club,” regardless of the confusion it might cause. He contended that Freiberg & Workman and then the Trust had built the label to a larger customer base than the Gerdes.  After all their efforts it would be unfair, he ruled, to let the name recognition and business reputation of the whiskey go to “Old Lexington Club.”  In other words, let both flowers bloom.  The Gerdes did not appeal.

In 1909 Bernard died at age 70, never to see the final decision on the trademark conflict.  His place was taken by his son Edwin, 30, who had been working for G. and B. Gerdes since maturity, including acting as the company bookkeeper.  With the death of George in 1918,  Edwin became the president of the Nicholasville distillery and the Cincinnati wholesale liquor house.  The history of the “Old Lexington Club” makes it difficult to establish a timeline for some of the artifacts identified with the brand, including back of the bar bottles and shot glasses.  The assumption is that they were issued during the years of Gerdes ownership, but both Reed and the Amanns had used the name earlier.

Below are two pint flasks of “Old Lexington Club” bearing slightly different labels.  Examination of the a back panel indicates that while the whiskey inside had been made before the imposition of National Prohibition, the bottles are certified as having been produced prior to January 17, 1920 by Edwin Gerdes at the Nicholasville distillery.  Bottling, however, had occurred at a federally secured distillery near Columbia, Adair County, Kentucky, and was being sold “For Medicinal Purposes Only.” This designation marked the final days of “Old Lexington Club” whiskey and the Gerdes family enterprise.

Meanwhile Ben and George lie together in Cincinnati’s Calvary Catholic Cemetery,under the watchful eye of an angel statue who carries a wreath in its hand.  I am particularly fascinated by the broken pillar at right entwined in ivy and the name “Gerdes” superimposed.  The grieving angel casts a particular dignity upon the men buried below, brothers who took on the Whiskey Trust — but lost.

Note:  This post was drawn from a range of sources.  My particular thanks go to Brian Haara for allowing me to quote from his Internet post of February 25, 2019 and providing me with the actual text of the 1908 and 1916 court decision.  For those interested in the often fascinating legal tangles of pre-Prohibition liquor, I highly recommend Atty. Haara’s book: “Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America,” 2018, University of Nebraska Press. 

 

As collectors of American whiskey bottles and jugs know well,  American whiskey history falls conveniently into four periods:  1) “pre-Pro”, up to 1920,  2) the Prohibition vacuum (1920-1934) ,  3) the “Nasty Words” era (1935-1964), and 4) ever since.   While “pre-Pro”items obviously hold the greatest collector and historical interest, many bottles and jugs from the “Nasty Words” era are only 20 or so years from attaining status as “antiques.”

Bottle guru Cecil Munsey speculated that items that contain the “nasty words” over the years would increase significantly in interest and value since their place in time would be appreciated by collectors.  His observations confirm my own interest in liquor containers produced during the period, even though currently they fetch only modest prices at auction or at bottle shows, 

First a comment about the “nasty words”:  The term was coined by collector/author John Tibbetts years ago. After National Prohibition was repealed in late 1933, Congress followed up by passing laws controlling various aspects of liquor sales.  Tibbetts was referring to a statement that lawmakers in 1934 dictated be imprinted on liquor containers.  It read:  “Federal law forbids sale or reuse of this bottle.” 

As a result,  after  January 1, 1935,  all hard liquor sold in the United States came in containers that had the federal warning permanently fixed in the glass or ceramic. The location of the warning could be on the body of the bottle or jug or on the base.  The statement was not required on wine or beer bottles. The intention of Congress was to prevent bootleggers, moonshiners,  and unscrupulous saloonkeepers from putting new booze into old bottles. 

 

By the early 1960s it had become clear to political leaders that the nasty words were no longer necessary,  if they ever had been.   The infamous bootleggers largely were a thing of the past.   The vast majority of American liquor purchases occurred in stores either run by the states or closely controlled by them.   This understanding led Congress in 1964  to amend Federal law and eliminate the reuse provision.  As glass and ceramic molds were replaced,  the nasty words became history after being required for 31 years. 

 

Dating up to the early 1970s, however, some bottles still had this warning embossed on them.  Since hundreds of bottle molds were in active use in 1964 when the requirement was ended, it was too expensive, time-consuming and for some distillers pointless to retool molds to eliminate the phrase.  As a result it is possible to find bottles that continued to carry the words for a number of years after repeal.

Whiskey containers of the 1934-1965 era generally have flown under the collecting radar.   They come up so commonly on eBay and other auction sites that we really don’t  take a second look at them. In his book “Looking at the Overlooked,”  art historian Norman Bryson points out: “…Things which, belonging to the numerous spaces of daily life, are taken entirely for granted, that familiarity itself pushes them far below the threshold of visual distinction.”  The two-handled jugs shown here, and others of that style,  fit Bryson’s  description. 

I believe they deserve better.   They  represent the production of notable American potteries.   The Glenmore jug shown here has been identified as a product of the widely collected Red Wing potteries by Ray Reiss in his book “Red Wing Art Pottery.”    Jim Martin and Bette Cooper in their book,” Monmouth-Western Stoneware,”  depict the same jug as have been made by Western Stoneware.    It is possible that Glenmore ordered from both firms.  Without a pottery mark,  it is impossible to tell.  Some jugs are marked with a USA on the base.  Again, that is not definitive.   My hunch is that most of those jugs were made by Western Stoneware.

Probably the most recognized bottle that contained the nasty word was one shown regularly on the TV sitcom “I Dream of Jeanne” that originally ran for five years (1965-1970) and 139 episodes on NBC and is still around on reruns. An astronaut (Larry Hagman) blows into the bottle and the genie (Barbara Eden) pops out in the first episode. The bottle was made by Wheaton Glass of Millville, New Jersey, for Jim Beam bourbon,  Shown here, a number of identical bottles were used in the TV production over the years, some modified when the show went to color.  They carried the federal warning on the base.

A second reason for collecting these ceramics is their quality.  In addition to being tastefully designed,  virtually all have underglazed transfers,  meaning that the labels cannot rub off over time,  unlike some pre-Pro whiskey jugs.   Their lettering will remain crisp and legible for as long as the jug is intact.  Finally,  as Cecil Munsey has suggested,  the ability to place these containers in a definite time frame adds interest. That is another way of saying that future generations may decide  those words were not so nasty after all.

Note:  Although this blog is dedicated to pre-Prohibition whiskey, I have received enough inquiries about “the words” to believe there is sufficient interest to make an exception.  The most important sources for this post  were  “Dictionary of the History of the American Brewing and Distilling Industries” by William L. Downard (1980) and “Bluegrass, Belles and Bourbon”  by Harry Harrison Kroll (1967). 

William Seel

This website is replete with pictures of the multi-story buildings constructed or purchased by pre-Prohibition “whiskey men” to house the manifold activities required to wholesale and retail their alcoholic products.  Most such buildings long since have been torn down.  One exception stands out.  Liquor dealer William E. Seel in 1912 razed a single-story home he owned on Market Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  In its place Seel, shown here, erected a four story brick and brownstone structure that has been hailed as “a wonderful example early 20th Century commercial architecture.”  Shown below as it looks today and still bearing Seel’s name, the building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building facade facing Market Street displays artful brownstone arches and large windows each with a transom, as shown close up in the photograph at left below.  The brownstone was mined from the nearby Hummelstown Brownstone Quarries, below right.  The quality of the brownstone is well recognized. Seel capped his building with an overhanging cornice supported by corbels and ornamental brackets at the corners.  The remaining three sides of the building are made of red brick.  As the application for historic designation states: “The building has largely maintained its integrity while its neighbors have suffered from the pressures of urban renewal.”

With his partner, John Waller,  Seel occupied the building in 1913. It would be home to “Waller and Seel Wholesale Liquor Dealers” until shut down by the advent of National Prohibition.  The partners found Harrisburg’s Market Street a bustling commercial avenue with ample foot and automobile traffic.  The  business prospered.

Seel’s story began in the small community of Beechwood, Pennsylvania,  where he was born in July 1873 to Catherine and Frank J. Seel.  The public record hold scant information about his education or early occupations but it appears the family moved 210 miles south to Harrisburg sometime during his youth.  Seel first shows up in local business directories in 1893 as a 20-year-old bookkeeper working on Market Street.

When and under what circumstances he met John Waller are not clear.  As early as 1887 Waller, who had been a Union infantryman during the Civil War, was listed in local directories running a liquor store. The first listing of Waller & Seal together in the liquor business was in 1900, located at 319 Market.  As wholesalers they were “rectifying,” i.e. blending, whiskeys on the premises to achieve the desired color, taste and smoothness and selling them under proprietary labels. 

 

Among their brands were “Cabin John”, “Conewago”, “Drumore”, “Kahweam Club Gin”, “Mount Vernon,” “Ridgeside”, and “Welland.  They featured two flagship brands, “Conestoga Pure Rye,” and “Waller Rye.”  Of these the partners registered only “Waller” with the Patent & Trademark Office.  As an indication that the partners were also selling at retail are flask and quart sized bottles with their labels.

Like other wholesalers, Waller and Seel provided their customers at saloons, hotels and restaurants with advertising giveaway items.  Shown here are two corkscrews, one advertising Conestoga Rye and the other Waller Rye.  The partners also gifted customers with shot glasses.

While growing the company, William also found time for a personal life.  In July 1906, at age 33 he married a local woman, Jennie Marks Fauble,  the daughter of Martin and Zina Fauble.  Quite unusual for the time, Jennie, shown here on a passport photo, was a year older than her husband and apparently previously had not been married.  There is no record of their having children. 

With the coming of National Prohibition, in 1919 Waller and Seel shut the doors of their liquor house and Seel leased the building to a shoe company that occupied the premises until the 1970s.  Newly freed from business cares William, with Jennie, quickly left on an extended vacation to the Caribbean and Latin America.

Seel owned the building until his death in July of 1964. At the age of 90 after falling and fracturing a hip he died of a blood clot in his lungs.  He was preceded in death by Jennie who passed in 1953 at 71.  For unknown reasons they are buried separately.  William is interred in Harrisburg’s Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery where he shares a gravestone with two sisters.  Jennie lies in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Colonial Park, Pennsylvania.  Their grave sites are shown below.

During ensuing years Seel’s iconic building has known many occupants.  With the whiskey man’s death the building became a home and school for orphan girls.  That use was followed by becoming the Harrisburg quarters of the AFL-CIO.  Subsequently turned into apartments, the building has been leased to Harrisburg University for Science and Technology and provides housing for some fifty students. Still known as the William Seel Building, it is shown below, dwarfed by a sprawling university structure.

Notes:  This post was gathered from several internet sites.  Most importantwere “National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form.”  United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service,1980, by Janet Bassett, and ancestry.com.

Because I cannot find a photo of Bruno S. Flersheim, a snippet from his pre-Prohibition saloon sign will do as a surrogate. If alive today the Kansas City liquor dealer would be astounded to know that the picture, one the Flersheims gave away,  in 2019 fetched $37,500 at auction plus buyer’s premium.   Remember that this is not an oil painting, but a color image lithographed on tin.  It is not one of a kind although only a handful may exist today in pristine form.

Look carefully at this saloon sign.  It is not complicated.  A mustached young gentleman is lounging in his lavish study with a small glass in his hand and a bottle of “Seal of Kentucky” bourbon at hand.  His thoughts — let’s call them fancies — have strayed to three stark naked women floating in the air above him.  Each of them has a glass of whiskey at hand and seem to be beckoning to him.  Thus the title of the saloon sign:  “It’s Tempting.”  The message is unambiguous, 

But is it worth $37,500?

We don’t know what Bruno Flersheim would think.  He was born in Norden Germany in May 1848, the son of Samuel and Caroline Frankel Flersheim.  Norden is a town in the district of Aurich, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the North Sea, with a small harbor and port, as shown here. Bruno had three younger siblings, a sister, Pauline, and two brothers, Adolph and Oscar.  Adolph and Oscar would follow him to America.

Facts about Bruno’s early life are scant, including his date of entry into the United States and initial employment.   From a passport application it appears he achieved citizenship in January, 1876, in Kansas City.  At that time Bruno would have been 28 years old.  The passport contains a brief physical description. He was very short, only five feet, two inches.  He had a receding hairline, a prominent nose and his oval face sported a dark brown beard. 

Bruno was captured in the 1870 census at 22 years old living in a boardinghouse and working as a traveling salesman for an unnamed liquor dealer, suggesting that he must have been fairly fluent in English.  In Kansas City he met Laura Ellinger, born in Maryland of German immigrant parents.  They married in 1877 and over the nrxt nine years would have four children, three girls and a boy. One daughter died in infancy.

 

Like many wholesale dealers, Flersheim apparently was busy as a rectifier, that is blending raw whiskeys to achieve a particular color, taste and smoothness.  In addition to Seal of Kentucky, Flersheim’s proprietary brands were “Old Bondage” and “Old Kingdom.”  While giving away shot glasses under those names.he bothered to trademark  only the latter.

According to Kansas City directories,  by 1882 Bruno had been joined in his business by his brother Adolph, listed as a “commercial traveler.”  Adolph learned the business and eventually joined Bruno as a partner.  This proved fortuitous for the future of the company.  In September 1892, Bruno succumbed to a heart condition and died.  He was buried in Kansas City’s Elmwood Cemetery at the memorial and gravestone shown here.

Adolph took over operation of the Flersheim liquor house.  More than that, a year and a half later he married Bruno’s widow, Laura, thus consolidating ownership of the company.  She was three years older than he. The Kansas City newspapers took notice of this private marriage headlining:  “Adolph S. Flersheim and his Brother’s Widow United by Justice Shannon.  It reported that “Immediately after the marriage Mr. and Mrs. Flersheim departed for a bridal trip through the East.”  They would return by May 5.

Adolph made only one small change in the company name.  After 1893, it became B. S. Flersheim Mercantile.  Thus giveaway artifacts after that time can be credited to Adolph, as in the bartender knives shown above and below.  That would include the saloon sign.  By that time the third Flersheim brother, Oscar, had joined the company, working as the bookkeeper.

With Oscar’s help, Adolph successfully guided the liquor house for the next 26 years, taking B.S. Flersheim Mercantile into the 20th Century.  The brothers closed the doors for good in 1918 as National Prohibition loomed and their regional markets were severely constricted.  Adolph retired, living until 1924 when he passed at age 63.  Laura followed three years later at age 74.  All three Flersheims are buried in Elwood Cemetery.  A $37,500 slightly naughty saloon sign remains to remind us of the Flersheim legacy.

Note:  This post was assembled from a host of sources the most important of which was ancestry.com.

When Kentucky distiller Robert B. Lancaster died in May 1904, his local Lebanon newspaper said:  “He was a strong, substantial, God-fearing citizen, who sought the right course in every affair of life and shaped his action accordingly.”  By contrast, when his distiller brother Samuel P. Lancaster died two years earlier near Bardstown, he was remembered for his often chaotic financial past and his highly controversial will.

Samuel born in 1830 and Robert in 1835 were sons of Anne P. and Benjamin Lancaster, a farmer, working the land in Marion County near Loretto, Kentucky.  Their mother, shown here, was of a distinguished lineage, the daughter of Ignatius Aloysius Spaulding, who was elected to two terms each in the Kentucky House and Senate, served as state railroad commissioner, and was a member of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1890.  

When the boys were stlll youngsters, the family moved near Bardstown in Nelson County.  There Samuel and Robert were educated at St. Joseph’s School, grew to maturity, and worked on the Lancaster family farm.  After their father died in 1840, as the eldest son, Samuel inherited the farm and with the next eldest brother, James, built a distillery on the land.  When that location proved unsatisfactory, in 1881 the brothers moved the plant to a site on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad northwest of Bardstown.

St. Joseph School

Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the new distillery was of frame construction with a metal or slate roof. The property included a cattle shed and two warehouses.  One was iron-clad and located 150 feet northeast of the still.  The second also was iron-clad located 100 feet east of the still.  Each building had a “free” section not under the requirements of the Bottled in Bond Act.  It was known as S. P. Landcaster & Company, federally designated RD#415, 5th District.

At the outset Samuel and James, neither of whom apparently married, jointly managed the distillery.  They also became known in Nelson County for raising and owning racehorses as well as for the quality of their whiskey.  Meanwhile, younger brother Robert, with no prospects for an inheritance, at age 21 moved to Lebanon, Kentucky, about 25 miles from Bardstown, where he became a clerk in a local dry goods store.  A year later he met Mary Theresa Abell and the couple married in Lebanon’s Catholic Church. Robert soon moved with his bride to a farm in nearby Washington County. 

 

When the Civil War broke out youths of his age were highly sought in Kentucky by both sides as soldiers.  Robert reacted as did others of his Kentucky contemporaries and decamped to Brazil, returning to Mary in June 1864 as the conflict in Kentucky was ebbing. The couple would go on to have six children, three sons and three daughters.

In 1874, with the help of distiller R.N. Wathen, his brother-in-law, Robert had sufficient resources to build a distillery just outside the Lebanon city limits.  They called it the Maple Grove Distillery, designated RD#263, 5th District.  Wathen soon sold his interest to Lancaster.  Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the distillery property included a single iron-clad warehouse fitted with a metal or slate roof located 120 feet east of the still. A cattle shed sat 40 feet west of the still.

For a time Robert teamed with distiller W. Q. Emison, for a partnership at the Maple Grove Distillery. It ended in 1901 when he bought out Emison shortly before the latter’s death.  By that time Robert himself had known the grief of death when in January 1879, Mary Theresa died leaving him with children to raise.  She was buried in St. Augustine Church Cemetery in Lebanon. 

Eighteen months later he remarried.  His bride was Sarah Elizabeth “Sallie” Daugherty, born in Ireland and living in Louisville. They would have one child whom they christened Robert B. Lancaster Junior. The photo below shows the family on the front porch of their home.  Robert is seated with Junior on his lap as Sallie stands by and Lancaster children are scattered around the porch.

At some point Richard became the owner of a Nelson County distillery.  My assumption is that he bought out his brothers but that is not certain.  At its peak the plant was capable of mashing 400 bushels of grain a day.  Bonfort’s Newsletter would call it “one of the best houses in the state.”  That distillery later would be sold to the Whiskey Trust.

Citizens Nat’l Bank

Robert’s distilleries were highly profitable.  Robert produced “Maple Grove” and “Falcon” proprietary brands eventually adding “R.B. Landcaster” whiskey among his labels.  The assets generated by his distilling allowed him to branch out into other enterprises.  In March 1890 he became president of Lebanon’s Citizens’ National Bank and the following year was elected president of the Lebanon Roller Mills Company, a position he held for the next two decades before turning management over to his son Benjamin.  

Subsequently with another son, Joseph, Robert organized the Cleaver Horse Blanket Company, an enterprise called in the local press: “One of the most desirable business ventures of the town.” Robert was a promoter of and later director of the local telephone exchange.  He also served for twelve years as president of the Springfield and New Market Turnpike Company.  As the Lebanon Express newspaper notrd in Robert’s obituary: “Fortune smiled upon him in all his enterprises and soon he became one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of the town and county.”  

The same good fortune was not smiling on his brothers, Samuel and James.  In addition to running their distillery they were spending considerable time, energy and money on their Nelson County horse farm.  They were breeding, training and racing thoroughbred horses, a chancy economic proposition even for the most professional of horsemen. 

 

By 1879 the Lancaster brothers were in debt $150,000 — equivalent to $4.7 million today.  Unable to pay their debts, they declared bankruptcy and assigned their distillery and 840 acre farm to Steven E. Jones for the benefit of their creditors.  Watching these event unfold from his home in Lebanon, Robert decided to bail out his older brothers.  For $26,000 he bought the properties at public auction. He also took over direct management of the Nelson County distillery, 

Upon receiving the properties, Robert appointed Samuel and James as his agents with full authority to manage and control the properties practically as their own. Despite living only 25 miles away, Robert exercised virtually no supervision.  “…He had placed the properties in the hands of his brothers and required of them no accounting whatever,” according to court documents.

James subsequently died, leaving Samuel managing the properties alone as  Robert’s “agent.”  His creditors were not assuaged.  They claimed the arrangement was a sweetheart deal that attempted to shield Samuel’s estate and sued to take the Nelson County properties to pay off his debts.  The brothers denied allegations of a fraudulent secret agreement. They claimed that the property was Robert’s and that Samuel was his hired manager, having no beneficial interest in the distillery other than compensation in return for his labor. The case was decided in favor of the Lancasters in a local court, and on appeal affirmed in the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

After the U.S. Congress passed the National Bankruptcy Act of 1898, Samuel filed for bankruptcy, asking to be freed from his existing debts.  His creditors strenuously objected but in 1899, he was absolved of all debts.  Robert immediately moved to convey the Nelson County properties to Samuel along with all the racing stock and $26,000 on deposit in a bank, apparently profits from Samuel’s business dealings as Robert’s agent.  

The older brother promptly dropped “agent” from his vocabulary and about the same time began widely to express ill feelings toward Robert.  For several years before his death in March 1902 Samuel claimed that his brother, rather than being his benefactor, had robbed him of large sums of money and according to court documents “…Made statements to many witnesses which showed an aversion to his brother and a determination not to leave him anything in his will.”  When Samuel died in 1902 his animus took the form of leaving the ancestral farm and farmhouse, together with all the furniture and the poultry, to Celia Mudd, an African-American woman. For many years she had been Samuel’s live-in housekeeper and cook, who perhaps served other roles. The rest of his estate he left to St. Monica’s Catholic School for colored students in Bardstown. Samuel was buried in Bardstown’s St. Joseph Cemetery.

St. Monica’s School

This stunning rebuke from Samuel came at a difficult time in Robert’s life.  In April 1901, after 20 years of marriage, Sallie died.  By the following January at age 66 he had married his third wife, a Lebanon widow named Bettie Edmonds.  Samuel’s will caused Robert to seek its disqualification in Kentucky courts. His lawyers argued that he “…was his brother’s benefactor; that he had purchased the assigned estate at great inconvenience to himself by a large outlay of money, actuated alone by fraternal love for his brothers….”  The lawyers for the beneficiaries contended that Samuel’s animus toward Robert had substantial basis in fact.  That argument was accepted by a lower court but overturned in the Kentucky Court of Appeals.  The Lancaster properties were returned to Robert.

Robert had only two more years to live, dying in Lebanon in May 1904 at the age of 68.  Funeral services were conducted at St. Augustine’s Church, by the Very Reverend J. A. Hogarty, after which his remains were laid to rest in St. Augustine’s Cemetery next to his first wife, Mary Theresa.

Samuel’s Monument

Robert’s Monument

The Lebanon Enterprise expended considerable ink in writing Robert Lancaster’s obituary.  It included a lengthy editorial eulogy that included the following sentiments: “There are few men who ever lived in this community whose death made a deeper impression upon the citizens than the death of Robt. B. Lancaster….To the poor and deserving needy, he as ever the true friend, and the amount of charity he did, few will ever know for he was a man that made neither show nor parade of his generosity or the assistance he gave others.”  No mention was made of Samuel in the article.

Notes:  Three sources were important to charting the lives of Robert and Samuel Lancaster:   The Biographical Cyclopedia of Kentucky, dated 1896;  the case of Lancaster v. Lancaster, decision of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, June 17, 1905, and The Lebanon Enterprise obituary May 20 1904.