The label for “Davy Crockett Pure Old Bourbon” shows a hatted gentleman handing a bottle of whiskey to a man with a rifle and coonskin cap that we may assume is Davy. My fantasy is that the other figure is that of Peter Edwin “Ed” Payne, a distillery employee of the M.V. Monarch Company in Owensboro, Kentucky, who was given the unique privilege of marketing his own brand of bourbon through a liquor house in San Francisco.
So unusual was this arrangement that almost all commentators have assumed that Payne had married into the Monarch family, brothers whose liquor empire was one of Kentucky’s most formidable. Not so says Aileen Blomgren, Payne’s great-great granddaughter. Rather, Payne’s wife, Mary Ellen “Mollie” O’Bryan had two sisters and a brother who married Monarchs. Payne’s rise to prominence was not the result of direct family connections.
He was born in February 1848 in Meade County, Kentucky, the son of Jane Frances and William Meredith “Meady” Payne, a reasonably prosperous farmer. Both parents were born in Kentucky of Irish parentage. Payne’s boyhood was marked by the deaths of three brothers: Robert, 16, when Edwin was 8; Stephen, 1, when he was 9; and Lawrence, 7, when he was 11. His father died in 1864 when Edwin was 16 and his mother passed two years later. Following the death of both parents, Payne was sent to work on a farm near Owensboro. That occupation ended after one season when he was called to the city to tend bar for an uncle, Robert O’Bryan.
In the Spring of 1869, having learned something of the liquor business, Payne entered the employ of M.V. Monarch. According to the 1880 census, he began his career as bookkeeper, a highly important post in any distillery since faulty accounting could bring the wrath of federal officials and stiff fines. Later in that decade he would be raised to vice president of the company, second only to M.V. Monarch in the management structure. By 1893, the Monarch Distillery, shown above, was considered one of the largest producers of sour mash whiskey in America.
Payne’s activities appear to have extended beyond management and sales to the art of making whiskey itself, an individual designated as a “master distiller.” In a highly unusual arrangement, Monarch allowed his employee to create his own brand of whiskey, solely to own it, and to sell it apart from Monarch whiskeys. Payne called it “Davy Crockett Bourbon,” named for the American frontiersman, soldier, and politician — a folk hero celebrated in song and story as “King of the Wild Frontier.”
The brand was sold exclusively by the San Francisco liquor house of Hey, Grauerholz & Company. Known as one of the best salesmen in the trade, Payne is said to have traveled by train frequently to the West Coast despite a distance of more than 2,000 miles. As a result he was able to open this “window on the West” for his brand. The relationship was central to Hey, Grauerholz ads and indicated in the embossing on company bottles.
John Hey, who had started in the liquor trade as a porter for a San Francisco wholesale wine and liquor company, moved out on his own in 1883 and with partners Henry J. Grauerholz and Henry Faust opened a liquor house. Faust departed in 1887 and the remaining partners reorganized as Hey, Grauerholz & Company. After locating successively at two San Francisco addresses during a period of rapid business growth, in 1897 they moved to 224 Front Street. Shown here are their bottles for Payne’s Kentucky whiskey.
For the next seven plus years, the liquor house thrived at that address. As was customary in the trade, Hey, Grauerholz issued shot glasses. Although they marketed other brands, including “New Century Bourbon,” their shots emphasized the connection to Payne’s Owensboro-distilled Davy Crockett Bourbon. After the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed the company quarters in 1906, Hey departed the firm, leaving Grauerholz to rebuild and continue in the wholesale liquor trade until 1913.
Meanwhile in Owensboro, Ed Payne was living a life that reputedly “…rendered him a universal favorite….Yet the home and the family circle and the company of his children were his chief delight…” During their marriage, he and Mary Ellen had nine children, three of whom died prematurely. In 1890 Payne built a spacious house for his family amid homes of the Monarch clan in an area known as “Distiller’s Row.” Sitting on a hill overlooking the Ohio River, the house has been described as “…One of the finest and most comfortable residences of Daviess County.” Shown below, the Payne house, still standing, is considered an excellent example of Queen Anne architecture.
A devout Catholic, Payne took a lead role in the founding of St. Paul Catholic Church in 1887. Chief contributors to the church included the Monarch, Field and Payne families, all prominent and wealthy bourbon distillers, known to critics as the “Irish Whiskey People.” Payne was on the building committee. His gift of a decorative and costly sanctuary lamp to the church was inscribed: “From P. E. Payne to St. Paul’s Church.”
Unfortunately Payne was not destined to live an old age as a wealthy man in a fine home surrounded by a loving wife and children. In September 1895 at the age of 47 he died. His youngest child was only three years old. The distiller’s Requiem Mass at St. Paul’s was described as drawing “a vast congregation” and his funeral procession to the Catholic cemetery stretched for several blocks. Payne’s gravestone is shown here.
P. Edwin Payne’s passing drew commentaries emphasizing his affable manners, gentlemanly bearing and high sense of honor. Perhaps the most effusive obituary appeared in “The Record,” a newspaper of the Louisville Catholic Diocese: Mr. P. E. Payne, one of Owensboro’s very best citizens, is one on whose tomb can be justly chiseled: “Here lie the remains of an honest man, who was just and up right in all his ways, whose heart was without guile; and who was ever ready, with kind words and generous deeds, to relieve the sufferings of his fellow man.”
Notes: I was drawn to the story to P. Edwin Payne because of his being permitted to market his own brand of whiskey independently while working for the Monarch distillery. I know of only one other incidence in pre-Prohibition whiskey history in which that occurred: Dr. James Crow working for the Pepper family was accorded that privilege. Among numerous sources for this post was Aileen Blomgren, Payne’s descendant, who earlier provided an article on Richard Monarch for this website. [See post for Jan 4, 2017]. Bottle images are from the FOHBC Virtual Museum.
