Author name: Jack Sullivan

 

                         

Foreword:  Several years ago I was contacted by a semi-retired employee of the Jim Beam-Suntory Co. asking me to do some research on the early years of the distillery with an emphasis on Jacob Beam, the founding father.  My efforts yielded some material but little new except for an article in German on Jacob’s origins.  Nonetheless, over time I have gather sufficient details to attempt to tell the story of the three early family members who set Beam bourbon on course to become America’s favorite.

Jacob Beam — The Founding Father.  The Beam story begins with  a family named Boehm, a reasonably common German name found in Europe and the United States.  This family had its roots in Protestantism, although the denominational identity is debated.  I belief the family were Mennonites, a religious body that was discriminated against in Germany. barred from Medieval craft guilds for their beliefs.  A significant number of adherents turned to the distilling and selling liquor.  In some places the terms “Mennonite” and “tavern” are said to have become synonymous.

Facing discrimination in their homeland, many Mennonites in the 1700s emigrated to the American colonies.  Known for their hard work and rigorous deportment, the Quaker leader, William Penn, welcomed these immigrants to Pennsylvania.  Extant data indicates that Jacob Böhm (ca. 1693-1781) was a Mennonite for his entire adult life. He was listed as an elder/deacon in the Mennonite church as early as 1755. 

One observer points out: “The migration of Mennonites from Europe to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s occurred for several reasons, including: increasing religious persecution in Europe, destruction of property and starvation due to the continual warfare among the dominant European powers of that day, the availability of land in Pennsylvania, and the sympathy of the English Quaker, William Penn.”   Among these Mennonites was Nicholas Boehm who arrived about 1752, about 20 years old.  He was accompanied by a wife, Margaretha Myers, and one or two children.  Early marriages were common among the Mennonites.

The family settled in Berks County.  There Nicholas is credited with changing the family name to “Beam” to “Americanize it.  Presumably a farmer, Nicholas also proved to be a prolific progenitor, fathering ten children. Jacob was the fifth in line, born in 1760.  Five years later his father, only age 29, died leaving his widow with a household full of minor children.  

Upon the invitation of Jost Myers, a close relative Margaretha moved to Frederick, Maryland, with her brood, living at Myer’s large plantation where her children grew up learning farming skills.  Says one source: It was in Frederick, Maryland, that Jacob Beam learned how to ferment grapes into wine, apples into hard cider and rye whiskey as a teenager.  Apparently too young for service in the Revolutionary War, Jacob stayed at farming.  In 1785 he married a local girl named Catherine (called “Mary”) Eagle.  Over the next 19 years, the couple would have ten children, four boys and six girls.

During the war, Jost Myers had provided important service to the American army.Because of his advanced age, my assumption is that Myers’ contribution was in the form of provisions for the troops.  In 1875 the new government under George Washington paid Myers back by giving him an 800 acre tract in the newly opened land of Kentucky.   When he died two years later, Jacob Beam laid claim to a slice of that land, subsequently divided into eight parcels of 100 acres each.  Jacob received one.

The thought of having his own land, even though unseen, fired Jacob Beam’s pioneer spirit.  Packing up his family,  in 1788 Jacob set out for Kentucky.  Covering most of the journey on foot, the young family navigated the Cumberland Pass through the Appalachian Mountains, traveling 550 miles to their destination in Kentucky.  It has been suggested that Jacob brought with them a pot still for making whiskey.  The Beans settled in Nelson County, whose seat was and is Bardstown.  

Jacob found much to like in his new setting, although clearing the land involved back-breaking work.  According to a Beam family account, the Mennonite farmer on his arrival found that a group of fifty Catholic families from Baltimore, led by Basil Hayden, many of them distillers, were his welcoming neighbors.  They were willing to share their knowledge.“The Beams…learned more about distilling whiskey.  After three years of bumper crops of corn and other grain products, Jacob began to distill his first whiskey in 1795.   After the whiskey he produced became popular in his home county (Nelson) and another next door (Washington), he started buying the other seven 100 acre tracts of land from his relatives. By 1810 Jacob owned all 800 acres and sent his first barrel of whiskey to New Orleans. They liked it so much that they started ordering more whiskey on a monthly basis.”  Thus the Beam family dynasty was born with whiskey labeled “Old Jake Beam Sour Mash.” 

Shown here in old age, Jacob died in October 1843 at the age of 83. He could hardly have imagined the nationally popular whiskey he had engendered. Jacob’s body was returned to Pennsylvania where he is buried in Honey Brook Cemetery, Chester County. His weathered tombstone is shown above.

David Beam — The Innovator.  As Jacob aged, three of his sons engaged in the whiskey making.  They were Jacob Beam Jr.,(1787-1844) who as an infant had made the arduous trip over the mountains, and two younger brothers, John Beam (1798-1834) and David Beam (1802-1854), born in Kentucky. They were among the first children born in the newly formed Commonwealth of Kentucky.  When Jacob retired at age 60 in 1820 he singled out 18-year old David as his successor.   

Said to be ‘as smart as a whip,” David Beam was highly conscious of the industrial advances going on around him. After Jacob named him the “distillery manager” in 1820.  David is said to have: “Expanded the distillery from a modest family business into a good sized factory, naming it the “Old Tub Distillery.”  David also had the distillery transition from pot stills to column stills, becoming one of the first companies to use column stills in 1820.”  A column still can sustain a constant process of distillation. This, along with the ability to produce a higher concentration of alcohol in the final distillate, is its main advantage over a pot still, only able to work in batches. 

During the 1830’s David began employing steamboats to transport Beam whiskey to major cities throughout the Mid-West including; Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and points south, including Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans. Throughout the 1840’s, David also used the newly emerging railroads to send his bourbon to many major and medium cities throughout the Midwest, Northeast and spreading out across the eastern half of the United States.

In 1824 David married Elizabeth Settle and they produced nine children.  After the death of Elizabeth, David married a woman named Elizabeth Cheatham and had two more children.  Three of David’s four sons went on to become master distillers. Joseph B. Beam, John H. “Jack” Beam, and David M.Beam all followed their father David and went into making bourbon as a career.  In contrast with his long-lived father, David died in 1854 at the age of 52.

Davd M. Beam — The Consolidator. David’s third son, David M. would continue the family business and become president with his father’s death.   At this point the name chosen for the operation was “The Old Tub Distillery” although, strictly speaking, the tubs had been retired in favor of the column still.  The name symbolized the bourbon tradition and that suited the Beams.  

According to a Beam website David M., “instilled hard work at the distillery.”  It fell to him to guide the family enterprise through the tumultuous years immediately leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War and through that wrenching conflict.  Kentucky was fractured with many of its young men fighting for the Confederacy and others for the Union.   Some Kentucky distilleries shut their doors during those years.  David M., by determined effort, was able to continue making whiskey during the conflict.

David M. “navigated the uncertainty of the times”  by moving the distillery closer to Bardstown and better access to railroad lines for more reliable shipping.  The move opened opportunities to reach many parts of the Nation after the cessation of the fighting.  The reputation of Beam bourbon whiskey was beginning to be recognized throughout America. David took the opportunity to add new brands to the distillery offerings.  They were “Pebble-Ford,”  “Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey,” “Belle of Kentucky, Blended Whiskey,” and “Clear Springs Bourbon.”

David M. was the father of James Beauregard “Jim” Beam, born in 1864 while the Civil War raged on.  His middle name, that of a Confederate general, indicates where his father’s sympathies lay in the conflict.  Jim was destined to take the distillery into the 20th Century and subsequently to have the whiskey named for him.  But that is another story for a later time.

Note:  This post draws from several websites maintained by the current ownership of the Jim Beam bourbon brand.  The post also makes use of my research done earlier for a Beam company historian.

With the world being on the cusp of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, gold medals are on many minds.   One  gold medal has been in my mind since I won it on an internet auction site.  Shown above, it actually is a bronze reproduction for use as a paperweight. The medallion has an interesting bas-relief design showing a woman wearing a crown, trailed by a small boy and a man carrying an ax who seem to be encountering three individuals dressed somewhat haphazardly in togas.  Not an easy message to decipher.

The clue to its identity lies in the writing below.  It represents a medal awarded at the “Exposition Internationale de Gand,”  that is, the World’s Fair in Ghent, Belgium, in 1913.  Such expositions tended to give out gold medals like lollipops in a kid’s barbershop to all kinds of products that bothered to participate and demonstrate their wares.  In this case, turning the medal over, shows — perhaps suprisingly — that this medal was awarded to the American whiskey maker,  Jack Daniel.

Depicted here on a paperweight,  in 1857 Daniel began his career as a teenage  apprentice to Dan Call, a man who was both a distiller and a Lutheran preacher in Tennessee.  After a visit from a female Prohibitionist the preacher gave up the distillery, located on interestingly-named Louse Creek, and Daniel took it over.  As early as age 14 he was making wagon trips as far as Huntsville, Alabama, to market his whiskey.  After service in the Civil War he was able to acquire distillery property near Lynchburg, Tennessee and about 1866 he registered with the state as Jack Daniel’s Distillery.  

Within a few years Daniel with his nephew Lem Motlow had build his whiskey business into one of the largest in the the United States.  Daniel believed in advertising and publicity.  When an international fair was held in Liege, Belgium, in 1905,  his whiskey was represented and won a gold medal.  By the time of the Ghent fair, however, Daniel, a bachelor, was dead, victim of a gangrenous injury in 1911.  Having no wife or children he left the distillery to Motlow.  The latter was of the same mind about publicity and took his whiskey wares to Ghent.

The Exposition was held on an area of 130 acres not far from the center of town, close to a recently completed railway station.  Renovations were made to a number of buildings in Ghent.  The construction is said to have been controversial and the fair ended on the eve of World War One when many Europeans were not in a fair-going mood   Despite having been sold to townsfolk as an economic boon,  the Ghent Expo ended seriously in debt.   By that time, however, Motlow was home in Tennessee savoring his gold medal.

The medal design was by Godefroid Devreese (sometimes given as “de Vreese”) Shown here, he was born at Courtrai, Belgium, in 1861. From the age of fifteen he practiced sculpture in the studio of his father, Constant Devreese, a well known Belgian artist.  At the time of the  Exposition,  the young Devreese was considered one of Europe’s outstanding sculptors in the mode of  “art nouveau.”  That style had been the rage during the latter part of the 19th Century but was slowly going out of fashion in the 20th.  Nonetheless, Devreese created his gold medal in the art nouveau mode.

It is worthwhile comparing the Devreese original with the Daniels reproduction.  A primary difference is in the backgrounds.   In the original the wall behind the figures is utterly plain.  It emphasizes the six figures shown.  The Devreese design indicates that the woman with a crown likely is greeting three Greek muses, probably those associated with music,  “Aoid”, song; “Melet,” practice, and “Mneme,” memory.  This may be why the boy behind the woman has is throwing flowers from a basket toward them.  Concertgoers know that performers are thrown flowers.  

None of this pageantry is evident in the Daniels paperweight.  There a pebbled background obscures the grace of Devreese’s design and makes it look clumsy and “heavy.”  Moreover, the molding of the figures on the reproduction is crude, particularly when compared with the elegant original.

Nevertheless, the Jack Daniel whiskey folks are proud of their medal, despite it having been awarded through a little known and apparently unsuccessful World’s Fair.  As further evidence the distillers included it on a shot glass of their issuance.  Shown here, it is rendered in gold and carries a reminder that it was bestowed on Jack Daniel at  “Ghent, Belgium, Gold Medal, 1913.”

The discovery of this glass opens a question:  Was the company bronze paperweight issued around the time of its award 111 years ago, dating that definitely would make it an antique? Or was it manufactured and distribute more recently?  I lean toward a later, possibly post-Prohibition date.  Although such signs sometimes can be misleading,  the item lacks the patina and evidence of wear that artifacts of that vintage might be expected to display.

Moreover, Jack Daniel’s is a whiskey producer that has outdone all of its U.S. rivals in the number and variety of paperweights it has issued since the end of National Prohibition.   I have collected no fewer than nine,  all of them circulated since 1935, and there are many more. Among those in my collection are an attractive etched black glass weight, decorated with ears of corn and sheaves of wheat, shown here. It carries a sticker on the back identifying it as a product of the Fenton Glass Works of Williamstown, West Virginia, one of America’s oldest and most successful.  Founded in 1905  Fenton glass appears to have weathered the onslaught of foreign competition and at least the last time I looked is still doing business under direction of the Fenton family.

The Jack Daniel’s crowd, however, do not always “buy American.”  Shown above is a weight that displays a variety of whiskey labels related to the Tennessee whiskey.  It bears a sticker on its felt-lined base that identifies it as from the “Waterfill Glass Collection.”   Research discloses that items so marked come from China.

Note:  Jack Daniel and his whiskey have been the subject of several posts on this website.  Others a reader may find of interest can be found Sept. 19, 2017, April 21, 2018, Nov. 26, 2019, Nov. 14, 2021, and Nov. 11, 2022.

To say that John McGlinn was a “multi-tasker” is something of an under estimation.  At his death in July 1926, this Irish immigrant was described in the press as president of the Philadelphia Brewing Co., president of the John McGlinn Distilling Company, president of the Baltimore Distilling Company, president of the Fairhill  Coal Company, president of the John McGlinn Building and Loan Company, vice-president of the Continental-Equitable Title and Trust Company, a director of the Integrity Title and Trust Company, and treasurer of the Catholic Standard & Times newspaper.  McGlinn’s career included being a principal in three successive Philadelphia liquor houses, where, according to an obituary, “the bulk of his estate was accumulated.”

Tracking the McGlinn story from the arrival of an immigrant youth on these shores to riches and recognition as a major Philadelphia businessman is complicated by the plethora of other McGlinns seemingly involved in the local liquor trade.  In 1845 this John McGlinn was born in Ireland, likely County Donegal, the son of Annie Kennedy and John McGlinn.  His birth coincided with the onset of Great Irish Potato famine that found many Irish departing for foreign shores.  McGlinn, however, was 24 years old when he left Ireland for America and residence in Philadelphia, arriving in 1869.

His early occupations in the City of Brotherly Love have gone unrecorded but I speculate that he found work among McGlinn kinfolk who were active in the whiskey trade.  He first comes to public notice in 1875 when he opened a small liquor store at 200 Brown Street, moving almost immediately to 736 North Second Street. There it was reported McGlinn “engaged in the retail liquor business in a small way.”  Within several years he recognized that creating and wholesaling  whiskey was a considerably more lucrative path to riches and directed his energies there.

About the same time he met a fellow Irish immigrant, William Boyle, a man with similar ideas.  Beginning in the early 1880s, they created a partnership called “Boyle & McGlinn, Sole Proprietors,”  located at 145-147 South Second Street.Then they went looking for a name for a flagship brand.  They found it close at hand in a social organization that had been created by Philadelphia newsmen who met at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, a landmark building in center city Philadelphia, shown here.  They called the group “The Clover Club.”  Perhaps the name reminded Irish proprietors of the shamrocks of the “Auld Sod.” They registered the name as their trademark whiskey.

Boyle and McGlinn soon became known as prolific advertisers, aiming for both wholesale and retail customers with larger than usual ads in a variety of motifs but all featuring Clover Club Whiskey. “It is the best” became a familiar mantra in the partners’ efforts to make their flagship brand among Philadelphia most popular liquors.  An 1889 ad, top right, featured three and four leaf clovers.  By 1897 the slogan for Clover Club, lower right, had become “It is liquid velvet.”  The advertising blitz vaulted Boyle & McGlinn into the front ranks of Philadelphia liquor dealers.

As McGlinn was building the business, he was also having a personal life.  Five years after he had arrived in Philadelphia, he married a local woman named Jennie McGlenn.  Given the varied spellings of the name it is possible Jennie, seven years younger than her husband, was a distant relative.  Over the next sixteen years the couple would have six children, sons, William, John Jr. and Joseph;  daughters, Marie, Regina, and Helen. In the 1900 census the household also contained Glinn’s mother-in-law and two Irish housemaids.

Their success as a liquor house suggested to Boyle and McGlinn that they should expand into making beer and the Philadelphia Brewing Company was born.  Boyle was president and McGlinn secretary-treasurer.  As shown in the two ads above the two Irishmen gave their beers distinctly German names.  Shown here is of a squat ale bottle bearing the embossed names of the partners.

The beginning of the 20th Century would bring important changes — and sorrows — to the life of John McGlinn.  In August 1901, Boyle, died suddenly while vacationing at his summer home in Spring Lake, New Jersey.  His body was brought back to Philadelphia where his funeral Mass was celebrated by the Catholic bishop of the diocese.  Boyle’s death was followed a few months later when McGlinn’s wife Jennie also passed away. 

The Irishman proved resilient.  In 1905 at the age of 58, he remarried.  His bride was a local woman named Mary E. Morgan, 52.  He also renamed the business  that he and Boyle had fostered, calling it the John McGlinn Distilling Company.  Despite the new name, the liquor house had not suddenly gone into making its own whiskey.  Rather, he was buying supplies from Pennsylvania and other distilleries for “rectifying” (blending) into his house brands.  Shown here is a certificate of purchase by McGlinn of 25 barrels of whiskey from the Alexander Young Company of Philadelphia. (See post on Young, January 7, 2015.)

Over the next five years McGlinn blossomed into a man of many occupations.  While continuing to look over his liquor house and brewery he became engaged in the financial sector, becoming heavily involved in several of Philadelphia’s building and loan organizations as an investor and member of their corporate boards.  At home, McGlinn’s household continued large.  According to the 1910 census, in addition to second wife, Mary, his son, John Jr., was living there and working for the liquor business.  Also in residence were two adult daughters and a teenaged son.  Rounding out the residents were two Irish servant women and a Maryland-born butler.  McGlinn clearly was prospering.

The Philadelphia Brewery

Over ensuing years, the Irish immigrant, now a fully credentialed American capitalist, continued to direct the commercial affairs of the John McGlinn Distilling Company and the Philadelphia Brewery.  As he entered his 70s, however, McGlinn’s health began to fail.  The diagnosis was “fatty degeneration of the heart.”  He died on June 11, 1916, in Philadelphia, a city he had called home for almost a half century, and was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery next to Jennie.  McGlinn’s obituary headline in the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger read:  “Well-Known Financier and  Liquor Dealer Dies.”

By this time two of his sons were prepared to take over the management of the family conglomerate.  William McGlinn became president of the McGlinn liquor interests and John Jr. was vice president.  With the coming of National Prohibition, the McGlinns shifted away from alcohol.  In 1925, John Jr. was listed in local directories as president of Continental-Equitable Title & Trust Company, Fairhill Ice Company and the Philadelphia Brewery, now producing soft drinks.  The liquor house that John McGlinn had created and nurtured was not revived by his sons with the repeal of Prohibition.  

Note:  This post was created from a wide range of Internet sources, with ancestry.com as the most important. 

A prior post (August 13, 2023) dwelt upon the use of children’s images to merchandise liquor, a pre-Prohibition practice that would certainly never be countenanced in contemporary America.  The examples of kids selling whisky continue to come to attention on ephemera such as trade cards, postcards, calendars and advertisements.   Shown here are another ten such items, along with commentary about their origins.

Louis Sommer was a Chicago druggist who featured an “in your face” depiction of a child hawking liquor.  Of all the ads shown here, Sommer’s is the only one showing a youngster holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a half-full glass in the other, suggesting that the tyke might have had a nip or two.  Sommer, who also used the brand name “Jim Dandy Whiskey,”  is listed in business selling drugs and whiskey from 1904 until 1918 when likely closed down by prohibitionary pressures.  

The second child shown here, obviously is gifted in being able compose in English. She is advertising two brands from Applegate & Sons, a firm founded by a Kentucky colonel named C. L. Applegate.  The Colonel first forges onto the scene in 1876 when he and a brother, Edward, purchased land in the small town of Yelvington in Daviess County.  There about 1878 they constructed a distillery.  Information from insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the Applegate property included a two frame warehouses, both with metal or slate roofs. Warehouse “A” was 115 ft north of the still house, warehouse “B” was 107 ft south. The distillery itself was constructed similarly. The property also included cattle and a barn.

The golden haired terminally cute child shown next appears on a oval metal serving tray advertising The Jacob Pfeffer Co., Cincinnati OH. Brands on the tray include Zeno, Tippecanoe and Lenox.  Pfeffer who was in business from 1876 to 1918.  He advertised as a “rectifier and wholesale liquor dealer and dealer of imported and domestic brandies and wines.  Admitting that he was a “rectifier,”  that is, a blender and compounder of whiskies, set him apart from other  dealers who disliked admitting that they truly were not distillers.

The hooded child that follows is shown in a trade card by the seashore where despite the cold, she has been digging in the sand.  This item  is from Andrew M. Smith who was was born in Denmark, came to the U.S. as a merchant sailor, served in three different outfits in the Civil War, and moved West.  He opened the first California Wine Depot in Salt Lake City, Utah, then moved to Philadelphia where his enterprise failed.  He then set up in Minneapolis in 1886 and found success. Smith died in 1915 but his son, Arthur Mason Smith took over the business.  Smith’s company used the brand names, “Amsco,” “Fine Old U.S. Cabinet Rye,” “Flour City Rye,” “Golden Buck,”  “Harvester,” and “Pennant.”

A greeting card showing a small boy urinating in the snow to spell “Good Luck”  may have had a secondary message.  The Bonnie brothers, whiskey dealers of Louisville, Kentucky, initially were four.  After the eldest retired, Ernest Bonnie, the youngest and still in his 30s, wanted out.   The remaining two Bonnies bought him out for $70, 000, more than a million in today’s dollars.  For that compensation Ernest sold all interest in the business and in the brand names. Unlike his brother, however, Ernest had no intention of retiring from the whiskey trade. Taking two Bonnie Bros. employees with him, he shortly thereafter went into competition with his siblings using the name, E.S. Bonnie  Company and continued use of the Bonnie name.  I surmise this card was Ernest’s subtle way of “sticking it” to his brothers.

The next image of a tyke is that of a lad who apparently has had a successful effort at spear fishing or, alternatively, has stolen a barrel of dead fish.  It appeared on a trade card issued byL. R. Cain who advertised himself as a wholesale and retail dealer in wines, liquors and cigars in Decatur, Illinois.  His featured brand was Old Gum Springs Hand-Made Whisky.  Cain’s card indicates that he also was proprietor of a saloon.  He advertised “a good, substantial lunch every day.”

The three child images to follow feature two children, in each case a boy and girl, but in distinctly different modes.  The first, a 1906 calendar advertising Export Pony Whiskey, uses a design by Ellen Clapsaddle, a noted illustrator of children.  She is credited with more than 3,000 greeting cards and her images of children continue to be popular.  (See my post on her, March 2, 2012). Here she has given us two youngsters having a tete-a-tete across a stone fence.  This calendar was issued by the U.S. Bar, located in Los Angeles.

Old Maryland Dutch Whiskies issued a series of trade cards, often depicting children.  The company itself is something of a mystery, claiming to be located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore but failing to show up in any directories.  It is possible that the brand name came from a Baltimore rectifier who chose to remain anonymous.  Some of the assertions made on the card are novel.  They include: “When not taken immoderately, there will be an entire absence of Nervous Prostration.”   And “Emphatically ‘The Whiskey of our Daddies.’”

What are we to think of a card that shows two kids dress as adult, of whom the boy is throwing coins into a hat with no crown being held by a frog in a suit.  The trade card includes a poem that fails to help with an interpretation:  “Children cry, Papa’s dry, And wants some Sour Mash Rye.”   The flip side of the card advertised Schwartz & Malmbach’s “famous” whiskey as sold by J.E. Hughes, the proprietor of the Central Hotel in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.  Hughes obviously ran a saloon along with the hotel and also asserted “Good Livery attached.”  Your horse was well cared for while you were drinking.

The last image is an 1897 ad from Green River Whiskey and shows the five children of a proud distilling father,  John McCulloch.  McCulloch, a former U.S. revenue agent, shucked his federal career when the opportunity arose for him to buy an Owensboro, Kentucky, distillery.  He built the whiskey into a well-recognized national brand.  Among his strategies was vigorous advertising.  These children are not from an artist’s imagination but portraits of real people. At left, the boy hugging the baby is his McCulloch’s eldest son, Wendall.  The baby is his brother, Charles.  Below them are two other brothers, on left is John Wellington, Jr. and on right, Hugh.  Standing at right is his daughter and the oldest child, Martine.  Several of his sons as adults followed him into the whiskey trade.

There they are, ten more examples of selling whiskey by using the images of children.  As unthinkable as it is in our age, the practice was common in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and apparently a successful merchandising strategy since it was so frequently used.

Notes:   More complete treatment of several of the “whiskey men” cited here may be found elsewhere on this website:   Applegate & Sons, July 21, 2012;  Jacob J. Pfeffer, December 15, 2015; A.M. Smith, May 19, 2013; E. S. Bonnie, April 29, 2014;  John McCulloch, April 1, 2014.

 Foreword:  For years Steve Abbott has been an excellent historian of antique bottles whose many informative articles have graced the pages of collector magazines.  Although I have featured a number of guest authors on this website, I have never had a contribution from Steve.  Recently I was researching a story about Michael Cronan, a liquor dealer of Sacramento, California, when I encountered an article on Cronan that Steve published in the December 2018 issue of “Bottles & Extras” magazine.  His story offered an opportunity to recognize the many contributions Steve has made to whiskey history.   He graciously has allowed me to abridge and adapt his text for presentation here.

Michael Cronan

Michael Cronan, Sacramento whiskey and soda dealer, was too ill in the early fall of 1908 to attend the funeral of one of his best friends in San Francisco, so he sent his son Joseph in his stead.  San Francisco cemeteries are mostly at the edge of town in Colma, San Mateo County.  The horse drawn funeral proceeded through a drizzle along the dirt road, stopping at taverns, not necessarily saloons, every so often to water the horses and warm the mourners.

At the last stop, Malloy’s, the bereaved went inside for a final toast to the deceased friend.  Then, one of the sentimental Irishmen thought how unkind it was for the living to be having a drink inside a warm tavern while the deceased lay in a hearse out in the rain.  So the boys brought their friend in from the cold.  Not only did they bring him in, but they took him out of his coffin, stood him by the fireplace, and toasted him for the last time, hopefully with a glass of Irish dew.

This story was passed down by Joseph Cronin whose son “Bud,” passed it on to this writer.  It is a great story from an Irish family whose American origiins began with Mike’s birth in Caven County, Ireland, December 12, 1846.  Family history says that he probably came from a farm family and immigrated in the late 1860’s.  Mike worked in mills of some sort in the East, then worked his way to California, where he was employed on a railroad route headed to the Bay Area.  Somehow, and it seems to be true of other early immigrants, he came up with a substantial amount of cash., which the family says was about $10,000.  With this money in 1872 Mike bought his way into the Brooklyn Hotel at 85 Front Street (address pre-1880) Sacramento.

Within three years, he went into business with Hugh Casey, the son-in-law of Owen Casey, the proprietor of Eagle Soda works, and together Hugh and Mike morphed that business into Casey-Cronan at 50 Front Street (218 Front Street post 1880).  They were not only business partners, but best friends, Hugh being Mike’s best man at his wedding to Julia O’Brien in 1875.  At some point Hugh decided to go back to Ireland for a few years and Mike began his liquor dealership in 1887 at 230 K Street, a building earlier occupied by whiskey distributors Hall, Luhrs and Mazzini Bros., then Cronan, Cronan-Wissemann, and later George Wissemann.  The earliest ephemera for this budding  company is a forwarding card which would be sent to retailers when Mike would be in their vicinity for sales.  

By 1887 Mike had gone into business under his own name, M. Cronan.  Circa 1898 Mike decided to take an up-and-coming German businessman, George Wissemann, as a partner.  The merger of Irish and German immigrants did not last past 1900 when Wissemann stayed at the 230 K Street location and Mike, incorporated as Cronan & Company, moved to 323 K Street.  Upon splitting with Wissemann the company incorporated with Mike owning 365 shares, his wife Julia with 5 shares, his sister Anna Blanche with 5 shares and two investors, Thomas Kennedy and Thomas O’Neil with 12.5 shares each.  According to information passed through the family, Mike knew that national prohibition was coming and had already become law in some states. 

 

Sharing his risk and welcoming the investments of two other Irishmen (Kennedy and O’Brien) seemed prudent.  Plus Mike wanted day-to-day help running the business.  Apparently Mike did not keep an agreement with Kennedy who was paid a salary, but whose dividends in the company were not paid off in cash but used to pay off his investment in the company.  When Mike died and the estate was settled, Kennedy sued the estate for what he considered to be his share and won.

Michael Cronan’s part of the whiskey business came to an end on November 10, 1908, when, as the Sacramento Bee so delicately put it, Mike “dropped dead.” He was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery.  The company was worth between $50,000-$75,000, had a good credit rating, and paid good wages according to the Dunn credit rating reports.  The company continued until 1911 when Mike’s widow closed shop, moved to San Francisco, and tended to her business interests in Sacramento and elsewhere.

Michael Cronin’s life spanned his youth on an Irish farm, then in America as a mill and railroad worker, hotel owner, liquor dealer, property owner, and Sacramento businessman.  He was a true “Lad of the Old Sod,” who applied an immigrant’s ambition, risk, hard work, and left part of his legacy to those of us who collect bottle related objects and who try to preserve some of the history related to them.

Notes:  My thanks to Steve Abbott for allowing me to bring his narrative about Michael Cronin back to attention. Steve provides an informative story about a successful immigrant “whiskey man” that fits well with the purpose of this website. Most of the images shown here are from the original article.  Two other liquor dealers mention in Steve’s text have been featured in past posts on this website:  Hall, Luhrs, May 1, 2015, and George Wissemann, July 18, 2016.

John Daum

John Daum, immigrant, Civil War veteran, father of seven, and prosperous businessman of Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1881 faced a stark dilemma. Swayed by prohibitionist zealots like the hatchet-swinging Carrie “Carry” Nation, Kansas voters by 92,302 to 84,304 had prohibited all manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.  As a liquor dealer, Daum, shown here, was facing the devastating loss of his livelihood. What he did next took him into uncharted territory — and the Supreme Court of Kansas.

Daum’s story began in April 1840 with his birth in Hesse-Darmstadt.  His father was a blacksmith who taught him the trade.  In 1858 at age 19 the youth opted to emigrate to the United States and chose Saint Louis, a city with a large German population, as his destination.  There he found work as a hand in the engine rooms of steamboats that plied the rivers of mid-America.  In 1860, his ship docked for the winter on the Mississippi at Leavenworth, giving Daum considerable time to explore the city.

Founded in 1854 as the first community incorporated in the Kansas Territory,  Leavenworth, shown above, and its adjunct military installation, Fort Leavenworth, became animportant stop for thousands of pioneer wagons heading west to the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.  The city bustled with activity providing supplies to the travelers.  Baum liked the place and vowed to come back.

With the onset of the Civil War, however, Baum returned to St. Louis where he joined  Union Army as a member of the First Missouri Light Artillery.   Each company served as an individual battery, often separated from the other batteries in the regiment, making it difficult to know exactly in which battles Baum was engaged.  He is said to have fought at  the Battle of Shiloh, shown here, and at sites in Kentucky and Tennessee.  Because the First Missouri was located behind the front lines, casualties were light — only one enlisted man and no officers killed at Shiloh.  Baum apparently emerged from the war unscathed. Honorably discharged in 1864 he headed to Leavenworth.

Baum’s first recorded employment there was with Carney & Fenlon, grocers who were specialists in stocking pioneer wagons, including supplying them with whiskey.  Thomas Carney was a former governor of Kansas and several times elected mayor of Leavenworth.  With partner Edward Fenlon, he had built one of the largest wholesale grocery houses in the Midlands, operating a four story building and cellar crammed with goods in downtown Leavenworth and a large warehouse adjacent to both the Mississippi River and the railroad.  Company sales extended to Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Montana and New Mexico.  The partners saw something special in Union veteran Baum and raised him to stock manager.

Baum seemingly was drawn to the whiskey trade, however, and by 1866 had moved to employment as a clerk with A. McDonald & Company, a Leavenworth liquor store.  From that position,  about 1872 he moved to a partnership with a local named John Hannon to open a wholesale liquor house located at 113 North Fifth Street.  The partners called it Hannon & Baum. 

During this post-war period Baum was living the bachelor life, residing at Leavenworth’s Pennsylvania House hotel.  That was to change drastically about 1867 when he suddenly decamped to New York City to wed a woman named Mary German.  My guess is that their marriage occurred shortly after Mary arrived by ship in the U.S. from Germany.  Both about 27 years old, the couple may well have been childhood sweethearts.  

Returning to Leavenworth, Baum and Mary would have two children, William born in 1868 and Otto, 1871.  In fragile health Mary died in 1875, only 35 years old, leaving John to care for youngsters seven and four years old.  The following year, likely seeking a mother for his children, Baum married a second time.  She was 26, a local Leavenworth woman named Sophia Marie Endebrock, shown here.  Over the next nine years the couple would add four more sons and a daughter to the Baum household. 

Meanwhile, like a dark cloud on the horizon, Carrie Amelia Nation, aka “Cyclone Carry,” who became internationally famous as an American prohibitionist, moved to Kansas.  Although the state constitution prohibited alcohol sales, in many Kansas towns the law was ignored.  Saloons and liquor stores operated openly.  “Mrs. Nation launched a one-woman campaign against alcoholic spirits carrying a hatchet and a Bible. She prayed for fallen souls and left hatchet marks on bars.”

After demolishing a hotel bar in Wichita and destroying its liquor, Carrie roved Kansas smashing saloons and frequently being arrested.  Her visit to Leavenworth in 1901 was reasonably benign.  Leaving her hatchet behind, Carrie was given a police escort that kept close watch as she visited several sites, staying at the National Hotel.   As related by a city guidebook:  “…After being shown to her room.  , the saloon on the first floor was opened and did a brisk business, largely because of the many people who had turned out to see Cyclone Carry, as she was called by the newspapers.”  A postcard, showing the hotel, commemorated her visit to Leavenworth.

Although Carrie Nation’s trip to Leavenworth was uneventful, her prohibitionist activities were spurring state and local officials to enforce laws banning alcohol.  Baum faced an immediate deadline for shutting down his liquor business.  He did not hesitate to act.  The answer lay in a bridge over the Mississippi River to a location in Missouri called “Stillings.”  Not really a town, Stillings was a largely unpopulated geographical expression with a post office.  With several other Leavenworth liquor dealers, Baum moved his operation and supplies a few miles east to Stillings.

While continuing to live in Leavenworth and advertise in its newspapers, Baum was able to conduct his liquor business unimpeded in reliably “wet” Missouri.  Kansas residents had only to pick up the phone, dial 410, place an order, and within hours bottles or jugs of liquor would be delivered across state lines to their door.  U.S. courts generally had established that the Interstate Commerce Act (ICA) required unimpeded state-to-state trade, in effect undermining local and even state “dry” laws. Shown above and below are Baum jugs in several sizes marked with a Stillings logo.

Soon the forces of “dry” attempted to end the flow of alcohol from Stillings.  State authorities took Baum and four other liquor dealers to court, claiming violations of law.  After a lower Kansas court found for the defendants, the state’s attorney general and the Leavenworth county attorney appealed to the Supreme Court of Kansas.  The case was heard during July 1911.  The prosecution argued that the Stillings origin of liquor was a “subterfuge”  and that “certain wagons…with horses or mules hitched thereto and drivers thereon” were bringing liquor illicitly into Leavenworth.   This was not interstate commerce, the state contended, but “…Purely and simply…devices, shifts and subterfuges to avoid and violate the said prohibitory laws of said state of Kansas.”  

The Kansas Supreme Court disagreed.  The “whiskey express” over the Mississippi River was protected by the ICA.  The liquor traffic from Stillings continued. Two years later, however,  the Webb-Kenyon Act adopted by Congress exempted liquor from its provisions.  During the next four years, as the legislation was challenged in the courts, Baum could continue serving his customers.  Upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1917,  Webb-Kenyon, still on the books today, effectively ended the Stillings safe haven for Baum and the others.

Baum’s gambit apparently had minimal effect on his standing in Leavenworth where he was hailed as an early resident who “figured prominently in the expansion and growth of the city.”   Among his achievements was as a founding member and officer of the local GAR, an organization of Union Civil War veterans; an organizer and trustee of the Leavenworth Turnverein, a German athletic club, and a principle donor to building Turner Hall, below.  Baum also was reported to have “amassed considerable wealth and property.”

Baum took a particular interest in Leavenworth’s Greenwood Cemetery where he was buried following his death in 1935.  In his later years he kept the wooden gate to the cemetery locked as he reportedly “lovingly” cared for the burying grounds where rested his first wife, Mary, and other kinfolk.  Said to have feared that when he died “the property would spiral into ruin,” Baum proved to be prescient. Greenwood, among the first cemeteries in Kansas, was allowed to languish until 2022 when it was named to the roster of National Historical Places. Currently steps are being taken to restore the burying ground as a Leavenworth landmark.

A final word about Carrie Nation who returned to Leavenworth for a second time only in 1911.  Her saloon smashing days were over.  She was brought to a hospital in the city by a nephew and, very ill, died there five months later.  Ironically, Carrie, the prohibition zealot, subsequently was buried in reliably “wet” Missouri, while Baum, the liquor dealer, is buried in Kansas where “dry” restrictions today continue to be among the most stringent in America.

Note:  A number of resources were used in telling John Baum’s story.  The two most significant were his biographies in the March 1886 Leavenworth Times newspaper and a National Park Service document on Greenwood Cemetery.  

 As an Irish immigrant boy of ten, John E. Cassidy found in America a promised land, rising from “butcher’s boy” to become a Massachusetts millionaire through his prosperous Boston liquor house.  Cassidy’s journey to success and wealth, however, was plagued with tribulations and personal sorrows beyond any which he, or anyone else, might have anticipated.

Born in Fermanagh, Ireland, in May 1836, John was the son of Mary McGovern and Peter Cassidy.  When he was about eight years old,  Ireland suffered a period of starvation, disease and emigration that became known as the Great Famine. The potato crop, upon which a third of Ireland’s population was dependent for food, was infected by a disease destroying the crop.  Irish by the thousands left their homeland for the United States, many choosing to live in Massachusetts.

The Cassidys fetched up in Lowell, shown below about 1850.  It was a city thriving as a major industrial center during the mid-19th century, attracting immigrant workers, including many Irish to its mills and factories.  Peter Cassidy went to work as a laborer but died two years after arriving in America.   Mary Cassidy, identified in the 1850 federal census — perhaps whimsically — only as “Mama,” was head of a household that included her six children and five boarders.

As the eldest son, John Cassidy likely went to work as early as possible but likely received some elementary education in the Massachusetts public school system,  then accounted America’s best.  His first recorded job was in a butcher shop, cleaning up and doing odd jobs.  That occupation reputedly was followed by working as a stone cutter and then opening a grocery store in Lowell at No. 6 Lowell Street.

By that time Cassidy was married.  In April 1859, in a Catholic ceremony, at the age of 23 he wed Mary Ann Haviland, 20.  The couple would go on to have a family of four children, two daughters and two sons.  The arrival of their first child, Mary Tracy, may have spurred Cassidy to leave Lowell and move 30 miles south to the Boston area where he was recorded as a “tradesman” and eventually opened a liquor business. The family resided in Watertown, a suburb ten miles from downtown Boston.

This period in Cassidy’s life encompassed the Civil War and there are some  references to his having served in the Northern Army during the conflict.  Helped by the researchers at the Watertown Historical Society (see below), I have been unable to confirm that service.  By the time a draft was initiated, Cassidy was 27 years old, married with one child, and gainfully employed.  No evidence so far has been found of his having enlisted or been drafted.  One possibility is that, like my own (yes) grandfather, he participated in a “home guard” during the conflict. 

Cassidy quite clearly had a excellent business mind and rapidly built the reputation of his liquor house, initally located at Boston’s No. 11 Central Wharf, on the waterfront, shown above.  The proprietor was advertising as an importer of “brandy, wine, and gin” and “receiver of “Kentucky bourbon & rye whiskey.”   Before long the need for more space occasioned a move to 50-52 Broad Street at the corner of Milk Street.  It would become Cassidy’s permanent location.

As a merchant, Cassidy featured a blizzard of liquor brands, including “Atwoods Pure Alcohol,” “Beech Grove,” “Boat Club,” “Charles River,” “Chestnut Hill,” “Cumberland Club,”, “G.O. Taylor,” “Grave’s,” “Grave’s Maryland Malt,” “Hub Punch,” “Judges Favorite,” “Kentucky Union,” “Old Heritage,” “Old Neptune,” “Pine Hill,” “Pure Old Neptune,” “Salt Mash Bourbon,” “Ye Old Pilgrim Rum,” and  “Old Kentucky Club House Whiskey.”  Those labels included liquors obtained from other Boston dealers, like Chester Graves (see post of February 15, 2023).  Cassidy’s flagship brands were “Machinaw Whiskey” and Machinaw Rye,” advertised on shot glasses given to wholesale and retail customers.

In addition, Cassidy was marketing other proprietary brands, trademarking “Old Neptune” and “Salt Marsh Bourbon” in 1875.  He must not have felt the official stamp was worth the money and effort, however, and waited until 1906 when the trademark laws were strengthen by Congress to register “Mackinaw Rye,” “Pine Hill Whiskey” and “Old Pilgrim Rye.”  These liquors likely would have been “rectified” at his Boston headquarters from barrels purchased from distillers and blended to achieved desired color, taste and smoothness. 

Cassidy proved to be an excellent businessman, growing in wealth and prestige in the Boston area.  Although it was not a showy mansion, he ensconced Mary Ann and his children in a comfortable three story house in Watertown.  Shown above, it still stands at 227 North Beacon Street.  The whiskey man’s primary investments were in land.  A portion of an 1898 map of Watertown designates a number of parcels he owned.  Among them was a pine-covered parcel along the Charles River where Cassidy established a saw mill and rapidly harvested the timber.  Commented the Watertown Enterprise:  “To those who see this property since the trees have been cut it is a great surprise as the entire landscape has been changed.”

Cassidy had an plan for the timbers.  They would be part of a steamboat he would build on property he owned adjacent to the river.  As townsfolk watched in awe, the outlines of the first — and only — steamship ever constructed in Watertown began to take shape along a tributary leading to the Charles River.  In In a bow to his resident city Cassidy named it the S.S. Watertown.  Shown below in an artist’s painting of the scene, the steamship was launched on July 30, 1890, as  the thousands of locals looked on to applaud the achievement.

The S.S. Watertown, was 134 feet long, about 21 feet at its greatest width, and built to haul as  much as 400 tons.  During its short lifespan, the ship principally was used for excursion trips from Boston to nearby ports during the summertime and hauled goods from Boston to Lynn, Massachusetts, the rest of the year.  Barely two years after its launching, in September 1892 as the ship was headed to Lynn loaded with groceries, furniture and other merchandise, a fire broke out — ushering in the first of Cassidy’s travails.

As the fire spread, the captain wisely beached the ship to allow the passengers and crew to wade or swim to shore.  Unfortunately, one woman, afraid to jump, was thrown overboard by her husband to save her from the flames, dashed her head on the ship’s propellor and was killed.  The fire consumed the entire cargo and left the vessel a smoking hull.  Towed to Cassidy’s shipyard in April 1893 the S.S. Watertown was bought by a coal dealer planning to restore it.  The shipyard never built another.

The year 1893 also ushered in a series of legal problems for Cassidy as the Boston-centered Metropolitan Sewerage Commission, exercising “eminent domain,” seized a strip of Cassidy’s land twenty feet wide and totaling 50,000 square feet to construct an underground sewer.  Claiming damages for the value of the strip, as well as compensation for the effects of the seizure on his adjoining land, the liquor dealer was forced to launch expensive litigation that dragged on without resolution for almost a decade.

The resulting drain on his resources, estimated at millions of dollars,  eventually resulted in Cassidy being threatened with bankruptcy, a story important enough to make New York Times headlines.  His financial troubles sent a shock through Watertown and environs.  Strongly supporting the liquor dealer, the Watertown Enterprise told the story behind Cassidy’s plight.  While he had large debts and 115 creditors, only two were pressing him into bankruptcy.  The most notorious was the American Distributing Company, known an arm of the “Whiskey Trust,”  a liquor combine with a penchant for using dynamite and other underhanded means for forcing its competition to sell out to it.   The other claimant was a whiskey brokerage allied with the Trust, holding only a small fraction of the debt.  

With no other creditors willing to join their effort, the two ended their campaign to bring Cassidy down.  The Enterprise concluded its defense of Cassidy with this commendation:  “His many personal and business friends will rejoice that this trying time for him is over and that he is now in condition to reach again that ultimate success in business which his character and ability so deeply merit.”  

In an 1898 Watertown city directory amid the loom fixers, tanners and cabinet makers, Cassidy was listed simply as “gentleman.”  A 1904 ad shows Cassidy fully back in stride.  Still operating from his Broad Street-Milk Street headquarters, he was advertising “Old Pilgrim Rum,’  “Crown Gin” and “Fine Kentucky Whiskies.”  His son, William, was working with him and the company name had been adjusted to John E. Cassidy & Son.

Cassidy’s most enduring sorrows, however, seemed endless.  Within the space of 17 years, 1890-1907, he would experience the deaths of his wife and three of his four children.   Mary Tracy, the couple’s first child, born in 1860 a year after the couple was married, died in 1890, only 30 years old.   In March 1889, Cassidy’s eldest son, John Junior, died.  He was only 27.  In April of the same year, Cassidy’s wife, Mary Haviland, also passed away.  She was 67.  Nine years later, son and partner William J. followed in death.  He also was only 27.  Shown here, at the Watertown cemetery of the family’s Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church, Cassidy erected a memorial dedicated to his three children, shown here, — each taken away in the bloom of their young adulthood.

At the time of the 1910 census, Cassidy, now 73, was living with his daughter, Katherine, her husband Peter Palmer, their five children, and a servant girl.  He was recorded in the census as a liquor merchant, indicating continued management of his Broad Street business.  He died on December 8, 1911 at the age of 75.  His funeral was held at the Church of Our Lady in nearby Newton, Massachusetts, reported to have drawn a large attendance.  Cassidy’s obituary in the Watertown Enterprise hailed him “for more than 50 years as one of Boston’s most respected merchants.”

Notes:   This post was made possible by the assistance of two specialists of the Watertown, Massachusetts, Historical Society, Joyce Kelly and David Russo. Ms Kelly was responsible for researching the newspaper files on John Cassidy held by the Society and providing them to me quickly after my initial inquiry to their organization.  Mr. Russo is the author of a detailed article on Cassidy’s steam ship that was published in the April 2012 Historical Society newsletter, “The Town Crier.”  Available online, the article provides a detailed account of the ship’s history.  My gratitude to both for their help.  They demonstrate once again the value of local history organizations.

 

 

On July 12, 2023, I posted an article entitled, “Booze and Bullets:  Mixing Whiskey and Hunting”  It focussed on the frequency with which pre-Prohibition liquor advertisements featured their products within a hunting motif.  As expressed by the bumper sticker above, drinking and hunting have a definite intimacy.  In the time since I have been able to gather other ads that make a similar point.

The first image leaves little to the imagination.  In this ad we see a hunter, shotgun at the ready, who has taken out a flask and is pouring himself a “snort” in the midst of his quest for game.  The text tells the story:  “A good time coming.”  Bagging his quarry is the only thing a sportsman enjoys more than the anticipation of “Cream of Kentucky Whiskey.”  This libation was a proprietary brand of the I. Trager Company of Cincinnati.  The company was being supplied by the Old Darling Distillery of Prestonville, Kentucky, and was in business from 1887 to 1918.

At left is a flask  and label of “Huntsman Straight Bourbon,” the product of the Wisconsin Liquor Company of Milwaukee.  Two hunters are about to join their dog by crossing a fence, a shotgun seemingly dangerously placed.  It suggests that the two have been nipping at their “Huntsman” already.  I have not been able to find much about the origins of this whiskey.  The Despres Company of Chicago sold a whiskey called “Old Huntsman.”

While the letterhead from R. B. Grainger Distilling Company does not overtly feature hunting, the Kansas City, Missouri, pre-Prohibition liquor house flyer that follows leaves nothing to the imagination.  It offers the public the a “handsome TRAVELERS FLASK with ALUMINUM DRINKING CUP with some extra fine OLD  R.B. GRAINGER Straight Kentucky Whiskey….This beautiful FLASK always comes in handy and they are especially convenient for your hip pocket when fishing and hunting….”   This company appeared in business directories from 1912 to 1917.

The Bernheim Brothers and their “I. W. Harper Whiskey” brought us the most subtle whiskey cum hunting image with the saloon sign shown here.  It has all the   familiar accessories of the well-decorated hunter’s cabin, replete with pelts, guns,  boots and a dog.  The I.W. Harper sign is hung discretely from trophy antlers and a wicker covered I. W. Harper jug sits awaiting on a table.  The colorful lithograph on tin is entitled “Here’s Happy Days.”

“Old Joe Perkins” was a whiskey from the Perkins & Manning liquor house of Owensboro, Kentucky.  They were “rectifiers,” mixing up whiskey received from a variety of Kentucky distilleries to create the desired taste, smoothness and perhaps even color.  The partners may have been doing their blending right at the providing distilleries, advertising that their whiskey was available by the barrel or in glass bottles by the case.  This image on a serving tray is a visual joke.  The hunter has killed a duck and instead of bringing him the bird, his dog has fetched a bottle of “Old Joe Perkins” to present him.

When Ohioans look around for the state’s most desirable whiskey bottles, the “Old Nimrod Rye,” shown here, should rank high on the list.  It was the brainchild of Leopold Adler who operated a wholesale and retail liquor house for almost three decades in Cleveland.  The liquor dealer registered this name and bottle image with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on May 12, 1905.  The description on Adler’s application  reads: “A representation of the head of a barrel having thereon the picture of  a man aiming a gun at a bear which stands erect beside a tree with a log in front of him, associated with the words “Old Nimrod Rye Whiskey, Rich, Pure.”

Old Scenter was far and away Henry L. Griesedieck’s flagship brand.  The large sign here was given to saloons carrying his whiskey and indicates what the name meant.  The picture shows a stage coach passing a group of riders returning from the hunt.  With them are their hounds, some of them sniffing.  They clearly are the “scenters.”  A ghost-like billboard declaring “Drink Old “Scenter” Rye” appears on a stone wall behind the tableau.  At age 33 Henry had opened his wholesale liquor establishment located at 713-715 North Sixth Street in St. Louis — the address for its entire business life.  The success of this enterprise may be judged by the fact that within three years Griesedieck had opened a second liquor store at 19 South Six Street.

In 1884 Paul Jones, a forner Confederate officer, relocated from Atlanta to Louisville as a whiskey wholesaler.  Five years later when a local distillery came up for sale at a bankruptcy auction, he bought it for $125,000 and never looked back. With an assured supply of whiskey the Paul Jones Company became one of America’s largest distilling organizations.  Jones provided his client saloons with plenty of decorative signs for their walls, including this picture of dead fowl.

 This addition of another eight hunting motif whiskey ads, labels, and artifacts to those already posted provide ample testimony to the strong links that have existed for time immemorial  between alcohol and hunting — a relationship as fresh as the present.  The moral is:  If you don’t have a gun, stay out of the woods during hunting season and maybe even if you do.

Note:  A several of the “whiskey men” featured here have merited longer biographical treatment on this website in the past.  More detailed biographies may be found at:  Trager, July 10, 2019; Bernheim, Dec. 10, 2014; Griesedieck, Nov. 29, 2014, and Paul Jones, September 4, 2014.

Of the liquor dealers featured on this website, more than a few were important for advancing their ciies economically, socially or culturally.   Born in Elmira, Chemung County, New York, in 1850 John M. Connelly, who lived there throughout his life, was a force in his home town on all three fronts.  At  his death in 1929, the local newspaper hailed Connelly this way:  “…His vision was broad and he found his greatest pleasure in doing for his fellows.  He loved Elmira and its people, and in his time and efficient way, did much to make it the fine city it is today.”

Connelly was the son of  Margaret O’Brien and Cornelius Connelly, immigrants from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine.  The couple settled initially in Syracuse, New York, moving to Elmira prior to 1850.  Cornelius was a skilled stone mason, said to have been the foreman on the construction of major Elmira buildings.   The family was far from wealthy, however; the father was idled through the five month frigid winters of northern New York.

The parents seem to have recognized the unusual intelligence and drive of their son and made it possible for him to progress beyond his elementary education and graduate to the Elmira Academy, shown here.  This was a secondary school where Connelly concentrated on business-oriented courses.  Barely a year after leaving school, the youth had entered on his lifelong career in the liquor trade.

Connelly’s first employment was working for C. W. Skinner, who advertised himself as “Wholesale Wine and Liquor Merchant.”  With partners Skinner had established his liquor house in 1868, located at Nos. 2 and 3 Opera House Block on Elmira’s Carroll Street, shown here.  Eventually Skinner became the sole proprietor and hired Connelly who worked for him for the ensuing nine years.  One observer commented that during that period, the youth “thoroughly mastered the business in every department and enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence and trust of his employer.”

When Skinner died in 1890, Connelly was chosen one of that whiskey man’s executors and asked to manage the business during probate.  The following May he was allowed to buy the company, operating from the same address but changing the name of the enterprise to his own.  Connolly also stepped up sales efforts, hiring traveling salesmen to expand the liquor house markets beyond Elmira and Chemung County to other parts of New York and into Pennsylvania.Commented one biographer:  “Under his capable management the business has increased and annually renders him a good income.”

Not a distiller but a “rectifier,” Connelly was blending whiskeys received from regional distilleries by rail and marketing the results under his own name.  He packaged those liquors in distinctive ceramic jugs.  As shown above, some containers simply had his name slanted along the front.  They were the creation of the Farrington ceramic works, a local Elmira pottery.  As shown below, Connelly also made use of other jugs to market his whiskey to wholesale customers in saloons, hotels and restaurants within his marketing area.

The same year Connelly acquired the liquor house, he also married.  His bride was Catherine Sheehan, a woman 13 years younger and only 18 at the time of their nuptials.  She was the daughter of Peter and Catherine Sheehan, both immigrants from Ireland.  Her father was listed in the 1870 census as a laborer.  The mother of their four children, Catherine, Gerald, Harold and Helen, Catherine proved to be an able helpmate and achieved her own reputation in Elmira for her civic work.

As the 1890s progressed, Connelly grew in his reputation as canny  businessman in the estimation of his peers in Elmira.  As a result when a Chamber of Commerce was created in the city he was chosen as its founding chairman.  Working out of the building shown here, he would hold the office for a decade or more, during which he was credited with bringing new industry and employment to Elmira, helping to swell its population.  

Kennedy hydrant

Among the industries attributed to Connolly’s leadership was the Kennedy Valve Corp. that located in Elmira in 1905 and is still in business there today, having provided employment for thousands of workers for more than 119 years. The company  is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of products for waterworks distribution, potable and wastewater treatment and fire protection.  Kennedy Corp. is most famous for its fire hydrants found worldwide.  

Hilliard factory

Also established in Elmira in 1905 with Connolly’s leadership and still operating there is the Hilliard Corporation, a manufacturer of filters, brakes, clutches and starters for industrial and commercial uses and for consumer equipment.  Its work requires an employee force of skilled machinists, as shown here.  Connolly’s obituary noted:  “The impetus given Elmira’s industrial and commercial life at that time is felt to this day.”   The sentiment is equally valid in 2024.

Majestic Theater

Connolly also played a role in the cultural life of his native city, fostering the opening of a state-of-the-art theater to present live performances.  Asked to speak at the opening of the Mozart Theater on East Market Street, Connelly, as Chamber president, told the assembly:  “The year 1908…the beginning of a new era in Elmira history.  The dream of a bigger, better and busier city is fast being realized.”  Later he was part of a 1922 committee that acted in an advisory capacity when St. Joseph’s Hospital began a building program to construct a new surgical center.

Meanwhile, the liquor dealer’s wife, Catherine, was active on behalf of a project known as “Federation Farm.”  This was a residential treatment center opened in Elmira in 1917 for children who were under-nourished, anemic, or exposed to tuberculosis.  Funded by private donations raised by Mrs. Connelly and a partner, the farm property, shown here, became a haven for youngsters whose wellbeing was imperiled.  They were removed temporarily from hazardous living conditions while building up their health. 

Forced to shut down his liquor house with the coming of National Prohibition, Connelly, now 70 years old, could occupy himself with his investment portfolio.  He was vice president of the Columbia Gold Milling and Mining Company of Colorado and also had substantial investments in the oil fields of New York and Pennsylvania.  Dying in late May, 1929, as Connelly approached 80 years old, the liquor dealer extraordinaire was buried in Elmira’s St. Peter and Paul Cemetery.  Catherine joined him there 20 years later, dying at the age of 87.

A fitting final word about this local boy who stayed at home to make his city a better place to live and work was provided by an unsigned editorial in the Elmira Star-Gazette:  John M. Connelly was a leader in business, civic and social affairs in Elmira during many active years.  His name is indissolubly connected with numerous enterprises, all of which throve under his leadership, and whether public or private, invariably achieved success.

Note:  This post was composed from a variety of sources available on the Internet.  Principal among them was Connelly’s biography in the 1902 publication “Biographical Record of Chemung County, New York,”  The S.J. Clark Publishing Co., New York & Chicago. and his obituary in the Elmira newspaper of June 1, 1929.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate photographs of Connolly or his wife and hope some alert descendant will see this article and provide them.

As a youthful immigrant from Germany, Adolph Hirschman took years and many miles to find his footing on the American business scene.  From New York he ventured to Savannah, Georgia, working for a grocery firm as a traveling salesman.  In 1882, saying farewell to the Sunny South, he headed 1,370 miles north to St. Paul, Minnesota, to open a saloon and liquor store.  Prospering there, Hirschman commissioned a saloon sign with himself as the central figure a picture that not long ago sold at auction for $35,000.

Shown below, the sign was created by a lithographic technique developed in Germany in which images were put on stone plates and subsequently transferred to metal sheets.   The technology swiftly was brought to  America and the Tuscarora Advertising Company.   By 1895 advertisers from all over the United States were sending in orders for metal signs to the Coshocton, Ohio, factory. Among them was one from Hirschman in St. Paul, who knew what he wanted.

Hirschman’s order for a sign likely included a preliminary design.  Entitled “East Meets West,” the 36 by 27 inch picture contained an ad for Hirschman’s flagship brand,  “Henry Hunter Fine Old Rye,” illustrated with a whiskey barrel.  Perhaps more important, two-thirds of the image depicted a cowboy addressing an elegantly outfitted man. Look closely at the latter. Then look at the photo of Hirschman, right.  The proprietor had placed himself on his saloon sign.  As if to leave no doubt, the suitcase at the feet of the figure is marked “A. H. & Co.”

When the sign, virtually pristine in a well-made oak frame, went up for auction several years ago, speculation arose that is was one of a kind.  While possible, I lean to the idea that Hirschman, while not making many copies, funded a few to give his very best customers.  He also made use of the image as his trademark, and featured it on his letterhead.

The man behind this iconic sign was born in March 1852 in Brandenberg, Germany, the son of Phillip and Mary (Caspari) Hirschman.  He was educated in its elementary and secondary schools.  While still in his adolescence, his mother died. When Adolph was 17, his father emigrated with the family to the United States, residing in Troy, New York, and working as a cigar manufacturer.  The youth’s early employment has gone unrecorded, but most likely he was engaged in the mercantile trades.

In 1876 Adolph married Rose Cohen, a New York City resident four years younger than he.  Their only child, Benjamin M., was born the following year.  This growing family may have encouraged Hirschman to look outside New York for employment. In the early 1880s, he moved wife and child to Savannah, Georgia, joining the wholesale grocery firm of Solomon Brothers as a traveling salesman.  

The company dated from 1873, owned by Henry Solomon and his brother, N.E. Solomon, immigrants from England.  Not long after Hirschman’s arrival, the brothers split.  In July 1882 Henry Solomon created a new company with his son, Alexander, as a partner.  Left “high and dry,” N. E. Solomon reached out to Hirschman with a proposition to co-own a wholesale and retail liquor house and saloon.  One catch:  The property was in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1370 miles north of Sunny Savannah in the frigid “North Star State.”  

Nonetheless, Hirschman jumped at the chance to run his own business.  Bundling up Rose and Benjamin, he quickly relocated to St. Paul, where he would live the rest of his life.  Although the details of their financial arrangements remain undisclosed, N.E. Solomon quickly exited the partnership, likely bought out by Hirschman. He now was in sole charge of a liquor house and saloon.  According to one account:  “He proved successful from the first and from small beginnings he has continually enlarged the scope of his operations until he now owns a very extensive business.” 

 

Among Hirschman’s gifts was an artistic eye, manifest in the well designed labels he gave his whiskeys, illustrated here on his “Red Wing Whiskey” label featuring an accurately drawn red wing blackbird.  Hirschman’s flagship brand was “Minnesota Club Whiskey,” available in quart and flask-sized bottles, as shown below.  He does not appear to have trademarked any of his house brands.

Hirschman advertised Minnesota Club widely, citing it as “A particular brand for particular people, to be had at all clubs and first-class buffets.  A trial will convince.”  He also provided the saloons, hotels and restaurants carrying his liquor with several different varieties of back of the bar bottles advertising Minneapolis Club.

 

His largesse to his wholesale customers extended to providing shot glasses and serving trays advertising his brands   At right is a tray that advertises Minnesota Club.  The hunting motif was a common one for Midwest whiskeys.  The tray likely was a products of the Tuscarora Company, noted for manufacturing those items as well as saloon signs.  

Having chosen Minnesota as his home, as he prospered Hirschman became  a major investor in its Mesabi Range Iron mines.  One of four major iron deposits in northern Minnesota, the Mesabi stretches 100 miles.  There the soft ore lay close to the surface to be scooped up from open pit mines.  The whiskey man’s  investments were concentrated at the Mesabi’s Canisteo mines in Itasca County.  They proved to be productive from their discovery in 1907 through the 1980s.

The Mesabi iron mines

Hirschman also was active in St. Paul’s civic and social life as a member of the local Masons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Sons of Hermann (a mutual aid society for German immigrants), Elks, St. Paul Auto Club, Association of Commerce, and the St. Paul Commercial Club.  He also served as vice president of Mount Zion Temple, a prominent local synagogue.

As his son Benjamin came of age, his father took him into the liquor house, first as a traveling salesman and in 1904 as a full partner.  The duo operated their liquor establishment successfully until closed in 1920 by National Prohibition.  Hirschman lived just long enough to see the “dry” law rescinded, dying in 1935.  He was buried in the Mt. Zion Temple Cemetery under the monument shown right.  His widow, Rose, joined him there three years later.

Summing up Hirschman’s career as a “whiskey man,” a biographer wrote: “He has ever manifested…indomitable perseverence, high intelligence and business sagacity.”  Hirschman also has left future generations an image of himself as he apparently would like to be remembered:   in formal dress, debonair, standing in front of his bar — seemingly fulfilling the elegant dreams of an immigrant boy.

Notes:  This post principally was drawn from two biographies of Adolf Hirschman. The first is from “History of St. Paul and Vicinity:  A Chronicle of Progress,” by Henry Anson Castle, 1912.  The second was “Men of Minnesota,”  author unidentified, published by R. L. Polk & Co., St. Paul, 1915.