Author: Jack Sullivan

The ceramic jug that introduces this post carries a simple message:  “Jas. Gioga, Goldfield, Nev.”  Behind that liquor container is the story of an Italian immigrant who came to America’s shores seeking his fortune, found it in selling whiskey to gold miners, and fathered one of the jazz stars of the 20th Century.  Although details of his life are few, enough information can be cobbled together about Giacinto “James” Gioga to tell an American success story.

Gioga was born in San Guisto, Canavese,  Italy, in March 1877, the son of Pietro and Catherine Bertetti Gioga.  His parents had him christened under the given name of Giocinto. It translates to Hyacinth, the name of a male saint of the 16th century, known as the patron saint of weightlifters and anyone in danger of drowning.  The boy grew up in San Guisto, shown here,  a picturesque small town near Turin in Northern Italy.

When Gioga was 17, seeking his fortune outside of his native land, the youth emigrated to the United States.  In November 1899 he embarked on the immigrant ship, SS La Bretagne.  Shown here, the La Bretagne was launched in September 1885, a ship built to serve a France to New York ocean route. It provided accommodations for 390 first-class, 65 second-class, and 600 third-class passengers.  Gioga was among the 600 in third class.

 

Landing in New York, Gioga wasted little time before heading to the American West, in the process anglicizing his given name to “James.”  His first stop was in Canon City, Colorado.  Centrally located in the state and known as the “Crossroads of Colorado,” this small city of about 4,000 was not a typical Western boom town.  It sits on the Arkansas River and abuts the Royal Gorge, cut by the river.  Although both oil and gold had been found in the vicinity the discoveries had led to modest growth but not the explosive populations being experienced in other Colorado mining towns.

What drew Gioga to this location is unknown.  He may have had Italian friends or relatives living there.  As a newly arrived immigrant, speaking little if any English, he must have been given a “hand up” the economic ladder.   Given Gioga’s future in the liquor and grocery trade, it would appear that he went to work in a local Canon City store and found his calling.

 

Now in his early 20’s, Gioga liked what he found in America.  Determined to settle here the immigrant reached back to San Guisto to the sweetheart of his youth, Rosa Galetto, asking her to join him in America — and marry.  Rosa, five years younger than “James,” endured the ocean crossing and stage coach journey. The two were wed in a Colorado ceremony.  In rapid fashion two sons were born from their union, Peter in 1903 and Bob in 1905,  the latter destined to become a well-known American musician. 

After a few months in Canon City, Gioga packed up Rosa and their belongings and headed three states and 870 miles west to Goldfield, Nevada. Goldfield was a true Western boom town, named for deposits of gold discovered near the site in 1902.  By 1904, the Goldfield district was producing 800 tons of gold ore, valued at $2.3 million, 30% of Nevada’s production.  This remarkable strike caused Goldfield to grow rapidly, and it soon became Nevada’s largest city and the Esmerelda County seat with a population of some 20,000. 

Arriving circa 1903, Gioga found a city in the process of explosive change.  The rapid transformation can be seen in the two photographs below. On the left is Goldfield in 1904, two years after its founding.  The muddy street holds hotels, saloons, restaurants and merchantile establishments, all frame buildings thrown up rapidly with little thought for permanence.  By 1906, seen right, the  main drag has been paved. Ramshackle structures were being replaced by brick and mortar buildings.

Gioga initially may have worked in an already establish Goldfield business.  His name did not appear in local directories until 1907.  At that time he is identified as proprietor of a retail liquor establishment, a designation that apparently included both saloons and liquor stores.  Totaling some 57, there was one liquor establishment for every 350 man, woman and child in the county.   Each paid $30 for an annual license to do business.

Despite the competition, Gioga appears to have prospered.  By 1914 he had added a line of groceries to his liquor offerings.  His primary customers were the miners who were swelling the population of the area.  Shown left below are the gold fields with the town in the distance.  Each of the mines employed dozens of workers, right below.  Gioga’s saloon was at the east end of the town, said to be “perfectly suited for thirsty, hot miners and prospectors coming in from the south.”  The young Italian immigrant prospered.

Goldfield miners

Gioga went a step beyond his competition by selling whiskey wholesale to the proliferating saloons in Goldfield and vicinity.  He apparently was receiving supplies by the barrel from distant distilleries through the Tonopah and Goldfield (T&G) Railroad, a line created in 1905 that survived until 1947. He decanted the barrels into ceramic jugs of several gallon capacity that were sold to the saloons dotting the local landscape.  Shown below, Gioga jugs are considered rare by collectors, with only a handful known.  One recently sold at auction for $7,000.

Although Gioga was not an American citizen, his immigrant status was no bar to his voting in local elections or, indeed, running for office.  Only a few years after arriving in Goldfield, he was nominated for the post of trustee, a two year term, under the banner of the Socialist Municipal Party.  Non-Marxist, this political organization was concerned about creating and enhancing local public infrastructure.  (A similar local Socialist Party, for example, controlled Milwaukee’s city hall for three decades.)  I can find no indication how Gioga fared in his electoral bid.

Gioga’s civic interests apparently did not extend to funding of city celebrations. In 1915 Gioga was recorded among local businesses contributing to the annual Goldfields July Fourth festivities, including a fireworks display.  While many local saloons were cited in the press for contributing $25 or more, Gioga chipped in a paltry $5.  He clearly had other priorities.  Registration records from 1917 indicate he spent a considerable sum on a new automobile.

As the decade progressed, growth faltered in Goldfield.   In the 1910 federal census, the town population had declined to 4,838. Among problems at the mines was the increasing cost of pumping salt water out of the pits, making them increasingly uneconomic. By 1912, ore production had dropped sharply. The largest mining company left town in 1919. In 1923, a fire caused by a moonshine still explosion destroyed many of Goldfield’s frame buildings. 

Gioga watched this decline from his saloon and store, also aware of the growing prohibitionary fervor in America.  Having prospered significantly for roughly a  decade in Goldfield, about 1918 he decided to pull out and relocate his family further west in Los Angeles.  Subsequent directories found him living  there with wife Rosa and their two sons in a modern home in what appears to be a gated community, shown below.  Although still a relatively young man, Gioga does not appear to have opened a saloon in the City of Angels. 

 

Now the spotlight shifts to the Gioga’s younger son, Bob, whose musical talent would bring him to the pinnacle of the American music scene of the early 20th Century and subsequent recognition in a Wikipedia entry.  Growing up in Los Angeles, Bob began to make a name for himself on the West Coast during the 1930s working with a series of dance bands.  Best known as a tenor and baritone saxophone player, shown below right, Bob also mastered the clarinet and bassoon.

Bob first gained national attention for his musicianship when he teamed with Stan Kenton, a good friend.  When Kenton formed his first band in the late 1930s, Bob joined him, making his first recording with Kenton in 1940 playing the tenor sax. He stayed on to anchor Kenton’s saxophone section until 1953 and appeared on virtually every recording session of the 40s and early 50s playing popular and jazz music.  Shown below is Bob, left, with Kenton.  About 1953 this Gioga, now married, retired from music.  During ensuing years the couple bought and operated a citrus farm. 

Meanwhile James Gioga and wife Rose must have basked in the attention their son was achieving on the national music scene. Throughout  his 37 years in this country, Gioga had never bothered to become an American citizen.  That changed in 1944 when he applied in the U.S. District Court of Los Angeles for naturalization.  He was granted citizenship.

Forest Lawn

 

Gioga would live another 19 years, dying in August 1963 at the age of 66.  He was buried in the famous Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California. Rosa would join him there in 1972.  Living to be 94, Bob Gioga was buried near his parents in Forest Lawn after his death in 1999.

Note:  This post was composed from a wide range of sources.   Bob Gioga’s biography was drawn in part from an article in the publication “All Music.”

Foreword:  One way of approaching pre-Prohibition alcohol is to concentrate  on the cocktails of those times.  My one foray into that territory, to co-write a celebrity drinks recipe book, proved to be too complicated and the idea was dropped.  Now the Louisiana State University press has forged ahead with a series devoted to cocktails associated with New Orleans.  A just-published slim volume entitled “The French 75”  by John Maxwell Hamilton reveals how much history a cocktail can reveal.  It has spurred me to provide here brief vignettes of three notable American bartenders of the 19th and early 20th Centuries and the drinks associated with their names.

Orsamus Ward:  America’s First Celebrity Bartender.   Born in a bucolic corner of Massachusetts, a young man with the unusual name of Orsamus Willard (1792-1876) became America’s first celebrity bartender, earning a reputation that spread far beyond New York’s City Hotel. Caricatured here, Willard went from farm boy to a reputation as the “The Napoleon of Bar-Keepers.”

City Hotel

Starting as an office boy about 1811, Willard quickly impressed hotel management with his energetic and intelligent approach to his duties.  Able to write with either hand, his dexterity was noted as a skill that, accompanied by his outgoing personality and “urbane and courtly” manners, eventually fitted him to become the posh hotel’s principal bartender, a position he held for almost 27 years.  

An 1894 history of the Willard family was lavish in its description of Orsamus’ abilities:  “He acquired a wide reputation for…His never failing memory of names, persons, and events.  He…possessed in a remarkable degree the power of giving politely prompt and satisfying answers to the multifarious questions of guests, without interrupting the bookkeeping or other business details upon which he might be engaged.”

Just as important, Willard could whip up one helluva good cocktail. This from one patron: ‘Willard was one of the first in the city to concoct fancy drinks, and he introduced the mint-julep as a bar drink,’ frequently mixing them up three or four at a time.”  Among his other specialties were Whiskey Punch, Apple Toddy, and an Extra-Extra Peach Brandy.  An English traveler observed (with some exaggeration) that Willard’s name was “familiar to every American, and to every foreigner who has visited the States during the last thirty years [as] the first master of his art in the world.”   The result was his anointment as the “Napoleon of Bar-Keepers.”

Jerry Thomas was “King” of American Bartenders.  Described as “a gentleman all ablaze with diamonds,” Jeremiah P. “Jerry” Thomas (1830-1885) during his lifetime was a gold miner, (minor) Broadway impresario, art collector, inventor, gambler, reigning monarch of American bartenders, and the author of the nation’s first drinks recipe book.  Thomas’ “Bar-Tender’s Guide” published in 1862 during the Civil War, is still in print, available from multiple sources.  His signature cocktail was the “Blue Blazer.”

In his early 20s and restless, Thomas moved  to New York City in 1851 and opened a saloon below P.T. Barnum’s American Museum.  It was the first of four he would run in New York City during his peripatetic lifetime  He wore flashy jewelry and his solid silver bar tools and cups were embellished with gem stones.  Thomas became famous for the showmanship he brought to his bartending.

Thomas developed elaborate flashy techniques of mixing cocktails, sometimes while juggling bottles, cups and mixers..  His signature drink, depicted here, was the “Blue Blazer,” a fiery concoction thrown from glass to glass, as shown below.  Later he would claim the invention of the “Tom & Jerry.” Thomas also has been credited, probably erroneously, with the original martini.  His “Bartender’s Guide” was a first in the field.

In 1885 while running a Manhattan saloon, Thomas, 55,  died of a stroke.  His death occasioned obituaries around the country, particularly in the cities in which he had worked.  The New York Times opined that he was the Big Apple’s best known barkeep and “was very popular among all classes.”  Thomas was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

“The Ideal Bartender” Was Black Tom Bullock.  Born in Louisville, Kentucky, not long after the Civil War, Tom Bullock (1872-1964) was the son of former slaves who learned his bartending skills at the local Pendennis Club.  The use of African American bartenders was a Southern tradition, not replicated in northern states and Bullock made the most of it.  Honing his skills in a variety of venues, he finally became chief bartender at the exclusive St. Louis Country Club.  There he attracted influential patrons and a reputation that spread far beyond Missouri.  

A playful 1913 editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch contended:   “Who was ever known to drink just a part of Tom’s? Tom, than whom there is no greater mixologist of any race.”   With the help of men like George Herbert Walker Sr.,

pater familias of American presidents and August Busch of Budweiser fame, in 1917 Bullock was able to publish his drinks recipe book, entitled “The Ideal Bartender.”  Now well more than a century old, it has never been out of print.

Bullock became particularly famous for his Mint Juleps. “The Ideal Bartender”contains two recipes – Kentucky Style and St. Louis Style. The former is the familiar Mint Julep he probably mastered at the Pendennis Club. The other recipe includes gin, lemon, lime juice, and grenadine, a non-alcoholic bar syrup. In a nod to Busch, “The Ideal Bartender” also includes a drink called Golfer’s Delight that used Bevo, a non-alcoholic beer that Anheuser-Busch developed in anticipation of Prohibition.

During the “dry” years, Bullock was forced to giving up openly dispensing alcohol.He remained employed for several years at the St. Louis Country Club performing unspecified duties.  He disappears from the public record after 1927. It is generally believed that Bullock lived until 1964, but almost nothing is known about his later years.  His drinks manual remains  his legacy and a continuing reminder of this extraordinary, indeed, ideal,  bartender.  

Notes:  Longer articles on each of these bartenders may be found elsewhere on this website:  Willard, June 13, 2022;  Thomas, Oct 12, 2022, and Bullock, July 7, 2022 (The last a reprint of an article researched and written by Michael Jones for the Louisville Tourist Bureau.)  Finally a word about the new book that generated this post, “The French 75” by John Maxwell Hamilton.  I recommend it for a delightful romp through the history, lore and many manifestations of this iconic cocktail.  Just published, the book is available from the LSU Press and Amazon Books. The author is interviewed at https://www.marketplace.org/2024/04/10/the-enduring-legacy-of-the-french-75-cocktail/.

The Kobre brothers, Max, Sam and Henry, left their native Lithuania in the late 1800s as thousand of Jews fled for safety from ruthless Russian pogroms.  Finding their way to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, they opened a saloon and adjacent restaurant.  In 1906 the Kobres found themselves enmeshed in a nightmare in which one brother was accused of murdering another, a case that for weeks rocked Winston-Salem to its core.  A whiskey jug conjures up the story.

Max was the eldest brother by 15 years, born in 1870.  He was followed by Samuel “Sam” in 1885 and the youngest, Henry, in 1887.  Their first American landing point was Baltimore but by the early 20th Century the Kobre boys had moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  There Max had opened a saloon, one of dozens such establishments in the city.  Sam was tending bar there and Henry was managing an adjacent restaurant. The younger brothers were living together in a nearby rooming house.  Max was married to Sadie, another immigrant from Lithuania, and living with his family.

Although Winston-Salem, in this era, boasted a plethora of saloons and restaurants selling liquor, the city appears to have kept them under close scrutiny and a short leash.  It charged $1,000 annually ($25,000 in today’s dollar) for a saloon license and could rescind it for a variety of perceived offenses.  In March 1905 Max was hauled into court for keeping his saloon open after 8 PM and fined $22.10.  At the same time Henry was in the dock for a violation of the restaurant law, again for being open after 8 PM.  He was slapped with a similar fine.

While the Kobre brothers seem to have taken those infractions in stride, a year later their world would be torn apart by a horrendous series of events that made national headlines and dominated Winston-Salem for weeks.  On the evening of January 21, 1906, Sam Kobre returned to the room he shared with Henry.  There he said he found his brother, wearing his night clothes, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.  Assuming his brother was dead, Sam ran across the street to the Hotel Phoenix at 4th and Liberty Streets, shown below, where he phoned Max about the shooting.  He then went to the police station to report the crime. 

 

Two officers returned with Sam to the room where Henry was found apparently still clinging to life.  They placed the victim on the bed and called for an ambulance to transport him to the Twin Cities Hospital, shown left.  Shortly after arrival there, Henry was reported dead.  Sam told police he believed the motive for the murder was robbery.  Henry was known to keep substantial amounts of cash on hand, receipts from the restaurant, but his wallet was empty.

A coroner’s jury was convened on March 8, 1906. Considering the evidence from 9 a.m. until mid-afternoon,  it called several witnesses to testify, including Sam.

Following its deliberations the panel returned this verdict:  “Henry Kobre came to his death on the eighth of January by being unlawfully slain by someone unknown to the Jurors…The Jury examined several parties and their evidence was recorded.  Nothing was revealed, however, to give the officers, at present, a clue to the guilty party or parties.”

Meanwhile rumors and speculation abounded in Winston-Salem.  Much of the attention focussed on Sam himself.  After finding Henry bloody, why had he first gone to the hotel to call his brother, Max, and only then to alert the authorities? Why had Sam not realized Henry was still alive and immediately called for medical help? Other rumors circulated through the city, some of them publicized by the local newspapers.  The Winston-Salem Journal in particular reported a series of hearsay reports, quoting “thoroughly responsible persons” implicating the Kobre brother.  Congratulating himself for uncovering details previously unknown, a Journal reporter published an item about a local “Jewess” who suspiciously had gone to a fortuneteller in town for advice on two friends who were in deep trouble.  Sam and Max, of course were Jewish.  

Another source, at first anonymous in letters to authorities, fingered a man named William Plean, a salesman at a local clothing store.  Plean was single, an acquaintance of Sam Kobre, and living in the same boarding house as the informant.  Discussion of the murder made Plean nervous, said the source, later identified as a man named Shouse.  The stories triggered a 16-year-old woman named Sallie Stewart, a known local “soiled dove,” to come forward to confirm Kobre’s and Plean’s involvement in the murder.  She identified Sam as the shooter.  Sallie also implicated a third man she called “Finger,” who she said had masterminded Henry’s killing. 

 

That was all it took for local authorities, under strong pressure from the mayor, to arrest Sam and Plean for murder and later to identify “Finger” as a traveling salesman named J.E. Whitbeck.  He too was arrested and jailed with the other two while awaiting trial.  Virtually unsaid went a likely motive for Sallie to lie.  Sam Kobre, apparently unaware of her reputation, in March 1905 had married Sallie.  When Sam found out more about his bride the union was short-lived.  Sallie obviously had since nursed a grudge.  To keep the pressure on their star witness, the mayor had her arrested and imprisoned on charges of prostitution.  

Courthouse

The stage was set for the trial, May 31, 1906, at the Winston-Salem courthouse. The three men stood in peril of being hanged.  Earlier the Journal had suggested that the evidence looked strong against the defendants and took a semi-victory lap, declaring:  “If the Journal has aided in bringing to justice the murderers of Henry Kobre, it has done a distinct service of great value to this city.”  The outcome would be disappointing to the newspaper.  Witness after witness came forward to established that none of the accused men were present at the times and places of Sallie’s allegations.  It became clear that Sam’s ex-wife had concocted the story, likely to get revenge for his having divorced her.  Her motivation for implicating Plean and Whitbeck were less clear but she may also have harbored grudges against them.

After all the evidence had been submitted, Judge Peebles instructed the sheriff to usher the jury of 12 men out of the courtroom. He then addressed the prosecution lawyer, asking him to show him where any evidence existed against the three men other than Sallie Stewart’s story:  “I would not let a yellow dog be hanged on the testimony of Sallie,” said the judge.  “If a verdict should be returned against these men I should set it aside.  The jurors apparently saw things the same way as Judge Peebles.  It took them only five minutes of deliberation to reach an unanimous decision of acquittal.  Sam Kobre and the other two men were released immediately.  The judge also ordered the release of Sallie Stewart.

I can find no evidence that the murder of Henry Kobre was ever solved.  Most likely it was a case of robbery as Sam Kobre had first theorized.  Henry, known for keeping large amounts of cash on his person, likely had been killed for his money.  Smarting from the acquittal, however, the mayor of Winston-Salem revoked Max’s saloon permit.  Although the elder brother had kept a low profile during investigation, refusing to talk to the press, Max almost certainly had paid for Sam’s successful defense.  In the process he apparently angered local authorities bent on convictions.

In the midst of the tumult caused by Henry’s death and Sam’s arrest Max also was dealing with a crisis at home. In September 1906, his wife, Sadie, sustained serious injuries after being thrown from her buggy and dragged for some distance.  Her horse, usually reliable, had bolted and she was thrown out. Her clothing caught in the rigging and she was dragged a considerable distance on the pavement, resulting in serious cuts and bruises.  The newspaper commented: “Mrs. Kobre, while suffering considerable pain, is doing as well as could be expected.”  Her ultimate recovery is indicated by her living to age 83.

For the Kobres, the events effectively ended of their lives in Winston-Salem.  Sam, now married a second time, moved to Danville, Virginia, not far from the North Carolina line.  As the president of a shoe company, he and his wife, Ida, raised a family of three there.  Sam died in 1933, age 48, and is buried in Danville’s Aetz Chayim Cemetery.  Max moved to Baltimore where he headed a clothing manufacturing plant, assisted by his adult son, Ellis.  When Max died in 1952 at age 82, he was buried in Baltimore County’s Shaarei Tfiloh Cemetery.  Sadie joined him there 14 years later.  Their headstones are shown below.

I can find no indication that the person or persons who murdered Henry Kobre was ever caught and convicted.  Sallie Stewart, the young woman who had fingered Sam Kobre and the others, thereafter faded into the mists of history.  Immigrants Sam and Max Kobre had discovered that while the wheels of justice in their adopted country may grind imperfectly, they grind extremely fine.

Note:  This post relies principally on the newspaper stories that provided frequent, extensive reports about Henry Kobre’s murder and the search for the culprit(s).  While every whiskey container may not have a major story behind it, the jug that opens this post most surely supplies one.

 

Adair F. Bonney was a belle of Scituate, Massachusetts, a direct descendant of John Alden of the Mayflower, and by heritage a Daughter of the American Revolution.  Her name had graced a schooner owned by her wealthy merchant father.   When she met and married George Yenetschi, a first generation Greek American who ran a Boston liquor business, eyebrows must have lifted. Nevertheless, the marital bond held until Yenetchi’s death at age 75.

Shown here, George Varcelia Yenetchi was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1844, the son of Sophia Hutchinson and Constantine Yenetchi, a seaman in the U.S. Navy.  George was a young man of considerable ambition.  After graduating from the good local schools, he attended the Boston Commercial College (actually a secondary school) preparing for a career in business. Although his early occupations have gone unrecorded, by his mid-20s George had entered the liquor trade.

As a young bachelor working in Boston, George lodged in Young’s Hotel located on Court Street in the Financial District.  One of the first buildings in Boston to have electric lights, the hotel, shown here,  not only attracted celebrities like Mark Twain and Rutherford B. Hayes but as well the college sporting crowd, drawn by the smartly decorated billiards room. According to one observer: “Here one may see in the afternoon or evening the swellest students from Harvard in patent leather shoes exhibiting the very latest fashions in dress and toting canes like small trees knobbed with silver.” The young Greek looked and learned.

Meanwhile in Scituate, above, Adair Bonney was born in 1862, the daughter of Louisa Francis and Edward Hyde Bonney.  Through her mother Adair was a ninth descendant of John Alden, a member of the Mayflower crew who stayed in the colony and married Priscilla Mullins.  Their romance has been celebrated in American folklore and poetry. Adair also was the great granddaughter of Ruben Bates (1735-1835) who served with distinction in the Revolutionary War.  As a result she also was eligible for that exclusive auxiliary.

Her father, a leading merchant of Massachusetts, was a dealer in a wide variety of merchandise, including fresh fish, lobsters, wood, coal, hay and naval goods.  Shown here is an ad for his many commodities, claiming that Bonney maintained his own wharf.  He also had a fleet of fishing vessels.  Delighted with his only daughter, when she was ten years old Bonney named a newly commissioned 200 ton schooner after her.  Three years later, however, the ship met with disaster in a storm and the Adair F. Bonney went to the bottom of the Atlantic, never to be seen again.

The Bonney wealth allowed her family to give Adair a college education at the Massachusetts State Normal School in Bridgewater where she trained to be a teacher, graduating in 1878.  Records indicate that she taught for eleven years in local schools and likely was teaching when she met and married George Yenetchi..

How the couple met is unclear.  At age 46 George was firmly into bachelorhood when they married in March 1891, a ceremony conducted by a Unitarian minister.   Adair was 29, at that time a late age to marry for a woman as rich and prominent as she.  It suggests that having been well educated she had been careful in her choice of a mate.  The couple would have two sons, George V. Junior, and Ivan. 

 

With their marriage, George moved to Scituate into a household that included two servant girls, sisters from Ireland.  The dwelling was an easy walking distance to the train station, shown here.  It facilitated George’s daily commute to his Boston headquarters at 142 Blackstone Street to manage what had now become a prosperous and expanding liquor house.  

After two short stints working with partners, George struck out on his own. He was advertising as the successor to an earlier Boston liquor business dating from 1830.  Shown here from an 1882 Boston newspaper is his notice as a dealer in foreign and domestic wines and liquors at wholesale and retail.  In the small print, in a reference to his Greek heritage, George offered for one dollar a bottle of “Marou Cordial” as “a beverage used by the ladies of Greece at afternoon parties.”   The photo below shows George, left of the doorway with stick in hand, posing with employees in front of his establishment.

Yenetchi was selling his liquor in a variety of modes, including large stoneware jugs for wholesaling to customers operating Boston’s many saloons, hotels and restaurants.  He was receiving shipments of whiskey by the barrel, rectifying

(blending) them on the premises and marketing the results.  For retail customers George was providing mini jugs each with a swallow or two of whiskey to be given away to the favored.  He gave his flagship whiskey his middle name, “Varcelia.”

George continued to operate his liquor house successfully throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and well into the 20th Century, retiring after approximately 50 years in the Boston liquor trade.  A well-known local figure as he strolled around Scituate, even at 75 he seemed in good health.  In October 1919, however, George was suddenly stricken and died only a few hours later.  The cause was not revealed in his obituary. At his death he and Adair had been married some 30 years.

My efforts to find the burial places for this couple so far has been fruitless.  I have found the monument for George’s father, Constantine. Shown here, it stands in Woodlawn Cemetery, Everett, Massachusetts where George’s mother, Sophia, is also interred.  I am hopeful that a descendant will see this story and supply the information and, I hope, a photo of the graves of the debutante and the whiskey dealer, a husband and wife who seemingly made a success of their “odd couple” marriage.

Note:  This post was suggested by a mention on Robin Preston’s “pre-pro” website. Robin in turn credits the great-grandson of George Yenetchi for information and for providing the photo above of the liquor dealer outside his establishment.  

In the early 1900s, liquor dealers Samuel Harper and Cyrus Reynolds in the military town of Fort Smith, Arkansas, faced a financial dilemma.  What was to be done about the cutthroat competition from the proliferating saloons and cheap whiskey being shipped in from the East?  Deciding that cheating was their best option, they issued their own brand under completely false credentials and thereby triggered a landmark trademark suit.

Both born about 1863, the two men were experienced in the liquor trade, both pouring whiskey in a saloon and selling packaged goods.  Cyrus Reynolds had gotten his start as an employee of M.C. Wallace, a Fort Smith  liquor dealer who carried a number of national brands.  In time, Reynolds and a partner had bought out Wallace and continued operations.  When that partnership dissolved, Reynolds joined the existing saloon and liquor house of Sam Harper and his brother. He eventually was made a full partner of Harper-Reynolds Co., located at 503 Garrison Street, shown below.

The new company soon found itself in deep financial waters.  Although the owners could boast of being local agents for Miller Beer, they found themselves surrounded by dozens of other liquor outlets, some like Tom Taylor’s only steps away.  Noting the popularity of Mellwood whiskey on their shelves, a scheme began to form in the minds of the partners.  Why not provide an imitation that could sell for less and call it “Mill Wood”?

Meanwhile 670 miles northeast of Fort Smith in Louisville, Kentucky, George Washington Swearingen was basking in the success of his distillery, below,  and particularly the nationwide sales of his Mellwood brand.  As one observer said:  “Beginning on a small scale it became one of the largest and most successful institutions in the state.” Shown here, insurance documents record a distillery  built of brick and equipped with a fire-proof roof.  The property contained seven warehouse, one a “free (no federal regulation) that stood 70 feet southwest of the still and six “bottled in bond” warehouses, all within 300 feet of the still.

Although Swearingen offered a wide variety of brands, his flagship label and best seller was Mellwood.  A subject of vigorous marketing, the brand was promoted by frequent advertising in a wide range of national publications.  Sold at retail in quart bottles and pint flasks, the Mellwood label became a familiar sight on liquor shelves all over America.  Or as one publication stated: “…Being known far and wide as the equal of any in the market.”   Faced with an impostor whiskey being sold in Fort Smith, Swearingen vowed retribution and filed suit in Federal District Court in the Arkansas city.

He did so at a propitious time.  In the past trademarks has been loosely protected under state common law beginning in colonial times. Congress first attempted to establish a federal trademark regime in 1870, only to have the law struck down by the Supreme Court.  In 1881 Congress retaliated by passing a new act.  It was not, however, until 1905 when Congress revised and strengthened the Trademark Act that the laws had real “teeth.” 

The suit was heard in December 1908 in the federal courthouse in Fort Smith, shown here.  Testifying for the Fort Smith proprietors was Reynolds. He contended that the “Mill Wood” name was not chosen to mimic Mellwood but was named after his old home place in Indiana, a somewhat dubious claim.  Reynolds chose, however, not to rebut any of the other charges involved in falsifying his company’s liquor.  

The acusations included…:

 The word “WHISKEY” in block letters was similar to those used for Mellwood, followed by red script letters spelling “Mill Wood,” also similar to red lettering on the Mellwood bottle.   The word “Kentucky” was prominent and untrue.

The Mill Wood label featured a  picture of a large distillery, containing captions “Mill Wood Distilling Co.” “Malt House,” “Warehouse,”  “Cattle Pens.” In fact, Harper, Reynolds had no such facilities.  Their whiskey was being concocted in their Fort Smith quarters from supplies distilled elsewhere and brought in by rail.  The distillery picture was purely an artist’s invention.

The faux distillery view was followed by the designation “hand made,”  “sour mash, and the following text:  “The celebrated whiskey is made exclusively by the sour mash copper process, employed only in the distillation of the finest whiskeys, from carefully selected grains, and bottled only after  being matured in barrels for  years.”  None of this was true.

Reynolds made no effort to refute any of Swearingen’s allegations.  Instead, while admitting he and Harper had approved the label, he seemed to cast the blame on the lithographic company for having designed and printed it.  Reynolds said the company had been sent 5,500 labels, that it had used 3,400 of them on quart, pint and half-pint bottles, and that the remaining 2,100 labels had been destroyed when Mellwood Distilling brought the lawsuit. 

The Federal District Court asked:  “What are the facts?” and proceeded to provide the answer in a single sentence:  “There was no such distillery;  the whiskey was put up and owned by defendants at Ft. Smith Ark., and was a blend and certainly a cheap whiskey; it was not put up by any fire copper process; it was not made in Kentucky; it was not celebrated; it was not made of selected grain; it was not matured eight years in barrels before being bottled; it was not [just] distributed by the Harper-Reynolds Liquor Company; it was both owned and sold by that company; it was not sour mash; it was not hand made; the picture on the label of the distillery was not the picture of any distillery; the descriptions on the picture were untrue.”

The Court then granted an injunction to the Mellwood plaintiffs, restraining Harper and Reynolds from use of the label, and referring the case to a master to determine the ill-gotten profits, assess damages and set court costs.  Although the decision was reached early in December 1908, the verdict was delayed on a technicality by the defendants’ lawyers until late January, 1909.

My presumption is that back in Fort Smith, although Harper and Reynolds continued to sell Mellwood whiskey for $1.25 a quart, their erstwhile Mill Wood brand, at 75 cents a quart, was a thing of the past.  The partners did not have long to continue in the liquor business.  Things were changing rapidly in Fort Smith as the population was shifting away from the original boisterous military base town to a more sedate environment.  In August 1914, Fort Smith was voted “dry” and all saloons and liquor houses ordered to shut down. That order was followed on January 1, 1916, when the entire state of Arkansas embraced prohibition.  

After being shut down by the “dry” sentiments sweeping the country, Harper and Reynolds went their separate ways.  Harper became the vice president of a Fort Smith clothing manufacturer, Flyer Garment Company.  Also as a vice president, Reynolds joined a wholesale grocery firm, owned by a relative, called Reynolds-Davis.

Sam Harper was the first to die at the age of 69, in 1932 committing suicide by carbon monoxide while sitting in a running automobile in his garage. Cyrus Reynolds died in 1946, age 82, of natural causes and was buried in Forth Smith’s Oak Cemetery.  The grave markers of both men are shown below.

Addendum:  A 1920 study from Columbia University called “A Psychological Study of Trade-Mark Infringement” highlighted the inconsistency among approximately forty trademark legal decisions the researchers examined. They found that among control groups the likelihood of consumers mistaking “Mill Wood” for “Mellwood” was at the low end of probability.

Note:  The Mellwood/Mill Wood trademark case in many ways was a landmark decision.  Earlier whiskey cases tried in the home city of a defendant usually were followed by acquittals.  In this case the federal judges in the Arkansas city came down hard on locals Harper and Reynolds. For those interested in such legal issues, I highly recommend the book “Bourbon Justice:  How Whiskey Law Shaped America” by Brian Haara.  Although this post was written from original court documents, Atty. Haara’s informative book initially alerted me to the Fort Smith story.

 

 

My post of January 17, 2023  featured examples of American whiskey distillers and dealers using the 1897 “Bottled-in-Bond” Act as an excuse to claim that the U.S. Government was behind the quality of their liquor.  Frequently they resorted to images of Uncle Sam pitching their product to get the message across.  In subsequent days I have been able to collect additional images of the gallant old gentleman selling whiskey. 

The Act required that the whiskey was (and still is) produced according to a set of Federal guidelines. The distiller sealed his whiskey in bonded warehouses and marketed the aged product under proprietary names that came with a guarantee of integrity (not quality) from the United States Government.  The federal OK is symbolized by sealing the whiskey with a green strip stamp on each bottle. In exchange for meeting requirements, distillers do not pay taxes on their whiskey until it is bottled and removed from the warehouse for sale.  Treasury agents are assigned to monitor the warehouses to insure requirements are met.  When the law was new, canny whiskey men saw great advantage in using Uncle Sam in their advertising.

Among them was Asher Guckenheimer.  He founded his Pittsburgh distillery in 1857.  His liquor became a leading national brand after winning top prize at the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago.  Following his death family members carried on the business for several years.  Guckenheimer, possibly more than any of his competitors, used Uncle Sam in a wide variety of ads, many in black and white for newspaper use.  Here, however, he is represented by a color ad that depicts Sam “standing behind” a large bottle of “Good Old Guckenheimer.”

Old Beechwood was a brand from the Vogt-Applegate Co. of Louisville.  Col. C. L. Applegate first forges onto the scene in 1876 when he and a brother, Edward, purchased land in the small town of Yelvington, Daviess County, Kentucky.  The brothers planned a new facility for blending, bottling and wholesaling whiskey.   With financing from Henry Vogt of the Vogt Machine Company in Louisville, the Vogt-Applegate Co. was founded and began operation.  The Colonel was a vice president and the company pitchman.  The Louisville offices were located at 236 Fourth Street but eventually moved onto Whiskey Row at 102-104 E. Main Street.   As Vogt-Applegate met with success, the company opened branches in Kansas City and Chattanooga.  “Old Beechwood” was the company’s  flagship label, advertised widely both regionally and nationally.  In this ad, Uncle Sam is pointing out the green stamp that identifies the whiskey as bottled in bond.

Applegate’s fellow Louisville whiskey man,  Jesse Moore, appropriated Uncle Sam for a poster advertising a whiskey that bore Jesse’s name.  He shows the old gentleman flying over the earth on a whiskey barrel, trailed by an American.  flag. The ad claimed that Jesse Moore’s whiskey was the purest and best on the market.  This company was founded immediately after the Civil War in 1866 by Moore and continued by his son, George H. Moore.  The latter formed a partnership with a Pennsylvania man,  Henry Browne Hunt.   The brand became popular throughout the West and eventually claimed outlets in twelve major American cities. The whiskey was being supplied by the Fern Cliff Distillery of Louisville.

The American flag frequently figures prominently in these ads.  For example, Samuel Worman began a wholesale liquor business in Philadelphia with a partner named Fluck about 1872.  Two years later Fluck was gone and Worman’s name alone was on the company letterhead.  The firm was located sequentially at two addresses on the city’s North Second Street. “Golden Drop” was the firm’s flagship brand. The Worman Co. disappeared from Philadelphia business directories after 1912.

Part of a prominent West Coast whiskey family,  John F. Cutter founded a whiskey company in San Francisco about 1870, as claimed in the ad.  He later sold the brand to Edward M. Martin, an Irish immigrant.  After Cutter’s death in 1880, the company appears to have continued to market J.F. Cutter Rye as well as other brands.   This ad shows a tiny Uncle Sam, apparently standing on a table, recommending Cutter products.  A glass and a burning cigar suggest a second party is in the room.

One whiskey outfit not only appropriated him as its pitchman, but actually named its products as “Uncle Sam Brand Whiskey and Brandy.”  The image below is a letterhead showing Sam sitting with a jug of whiskey from the U.S. Distilling Company of Crouse a tiny village in North Carolina.  My research yielded minimal information about this company.

In 1893  George Gambrill of Baltimore registered Roxbury Rye as a brand with the government, with a distillery in Roxbury, Maryland,  a village in Washington County  about twenty-three miles from Baltimore.  Despite being located in Maryland, he incorporated the company in West Virginia, probably to avoid taxes.  An energetic salesman, Gambrill built Roxbury Rye into a nationally recognized brand in relatively few years.  The distiller, however, had problems keeping on the right  side of the law.  Speculating on wheat futures, he sustained financial losses that authorities thought added up to out and out fraud.  As a result Gambrill was hauled into court in 1910, accused of putting up the same whiskey as collateral for separate, forfeited loans totaling a half million dollars. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to four years in prison.  His Roxbury distillery was shut down and George exited the liquor business but wiggled out of serving any time in prison.  Viewed in context Gambrill’s reference to Uncle Sam seems particularly brazened.

I.W. Harper, a brand that is still available on shelves today, was from the Bernheim brothers, Bernard and Isaac.  They arrived in the United States from Germany with pennies in their pockets and found a friendly welcome with the Uri whiskey family of Paducah, Kentucky.  Finding Paducah too constraining, the pair decamped to Louisville in 1888 and ultimately became the most successful and prosperous distillers in Kentucky.  The Bernheim’s Uncle Sam is clearly in a party mood, holding aloft a cocktail glass full of booze while a comely lady friend joins in the toast.

This coupling of the old gentleman with a female ushers in an ad that make use of national symbols, in effect doubling the dose of patriotism being implied.  The lady is the “Spirit of Freedom,” known by her floppy hat and flowing gown.  Her statue stands atop the dome of the U.S. Capitol building.  Here she is assisting Sam hold up a banner for two Fleischmann brands against a back drop of American flags. The Fleischmann Company, headquartered in Cincinnati, was an offshoot of the famous yeast manufacturers.  Another name that survived Prohibition, Fleischmann today is known chiefly for its gin.

Our last Uncle Sam is of contemporary origins.  It is an imaginative takeoff of the famous World Two poster which showed the same pointing figure and bore the motto “Uncle Sam Wants You.”  The original was meant to spur enlistment’s during the Second World War. This sign, by contrast, urges us to head for a cocktail lounge.   Wild Turkey is a premium brand of bourbon made in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

Note:  Longer posts on six of the “whiskey men” featured here may be found elsewhere on this website:  Guckenheimer, April 15, 2012; Vogt-Applegate, June 21, 2012; Jesse Moore, February 6, 2018;  Gambrill, January 6, 2011; Bernheim, December 10, 2014, and Fleischmann, March 29, 2012.

A German immigrant who ultimately settled in Salida, Colorado, John B. Demphy was a man of multiple talents, as cabinetmaker, bartender,  saloonkeeper, whiskey blender, policeman, poultry farmer, truck driver, and justice of the peace.  None of Demphy’s skills, however, could save the life of his highly promising only son.

Demphy was born Johan Dampfle in Baden Germany in 1868. When he was but nine months old he was brought to the United States by his parents, Johan and Elizabeth,  aboard the steamship Schmidt embarking from Bremen.  The family early on settled in Buffalo, New York,  where his father was employed as a carpenter and cabinetmaker.  The youth received an education in the the Buffalo school system, and following in his father’s footsteps began work as a carpenter.

After achieving adulthood, he anglicized his name to John Demphy and changed his occupation to tending bar.  In that role the young immigrant caught the notice of a Buffalo newspaper in 1896 as the chief bartender at Buffalo’s Genesee Hotel, shown here.  Demphy, 28,  was in charge of a squad of barkeeps hired on to serve a New York convention of Tammany Hall politicians “and keep their thirst slaked…Johnnie worked so hard that he said last night he was sure the thousand or more Tammany men came up ‘Just to let the Irish see…Dutchmen work themselves to death.”

In 1894 Demphy had married Ruth M. Hudson, a local woman 11 years younger than he.  The next year their first child, Mildred, would be born, followed by Marshall Albert in April 1898.  The family was living at 2411 Michigan Street in Buffalo.  Demphy was restless, apparently seeking wider opportunities than offered by tending bar in Buffalo.  About 1902, when his children were still young Demphy bundled up his family and headed West.  

After a brief stop in Omaha, Nebraska, which apparently proved unproductive, Demphy headed 680 miles further west to Salida in Chaffee County, Colorado. Shown below,  Salida, “exit” in Spanish, was named for its location near the place where the Arkansas River flows out of an agricultural valley and into Bighorn Sheep Canyon. Downtown Salida had burned twice, once in 1886 and again in 1888. Both times local businessmen rebuilt using local brick, as shown below in an 1890s postcard of the main avenue, F Street.

Despite the solid look of Salida, it was not a “get rich quick” opportunity for the newly arrived Demphy.  It was not a Western boom town because of gold, oil or other underground wealth.   But neither was Salida overflowing with saloons serving thirsty miners.  Instead Demphey found regular employment working for James Collins at his popular downtown saloon at 104 F Street.  The Irish owner and German barkeep apparently proved highly compatible.  About 1910 Collins decided to retire and leave town.  He sold the F Street saloon and his residence to Demphy.   Shown below, the house, built about 1888, still stands, known as the Collins/Demphy House and on the Salida roster of historic buildings.

Now Demphy had a saloon in his sole possession to manage and a large comfortable home in which to house Ruth and their two children.  Seemingly having found the future he had been looking for, the saloonkeeper expanded his efforts.  As shown below, he became the regional agent of  Anheuser-Busch Company, a brewery then making a concerted marketing effort in the West.  He also was offering customers at the bar drink tokens, a common tradition in Western saloons.

The transplanted New Yorker also expanded his efforts beyond simply dispensing booze over the bar into becoming a liquor wholesaler, supplying whiskey to the other saloons in Salida and vicinity.  He was bringing supplies into town from distillers all over the region via the railroad —the station shown here, Demphy was “rectifying” (blending) whiskeys to achieve desired smoothness, color and taste, and selling them at wholesale in ceramic jugs, shown below and the image that opens this post.

Demphy appears to have been a man of immense energy.  By 1913, along side his liquor business he was breeding and selling chickens at a facility at West Seventh Street and the railroad.  Perhaps briefly, he also was a member of Salida’s small police force.  The Salida Daily Mail of December 17, 2013, reported that the city council had convened an emergency meeting to investigate an incident between Patrolman John B. Demphy and a superior officer named Bailey:  “In the course of an argument over police duties Demphy accused Bailey of lying.  Bailey retorted with three blows to the face ands neck causing a discolored eye, cut lip and scratches on the neck.  Demphy was given first aid at a barber shop.”  Both men subsequently resigned from the force, apparently leaving the city with virtually no police.

Demphy’s biggest blow, however, was to come three years later.  His son Marshall, shown here, had gained considerable attention in Salida as an outstanding youth.  The Daily Mail wrote:  “Marshall was gifted with a wonderful intellect and a special talent for drawing…attested by the many pen sketches which adorn his home and the Salida high school. In mechanical drawing he had achieved a degree of perfection rarely attained by anyone….Throughout his school life [he] secured numerous trophies at various track meets and athletic events.”

At the age of 18 Marshall was struck by spiral meningitis, treatable by antibiotics today but not available in that era. The malady was known to strike young people and often be fatal.  The boy lingered for ten days in the grip of the disease while his anxious parents looked on at his bedside, and died on October 23, 1916.   After a Catholic funeral service in the Demphy home, he was buried in Salidia’s Fairview Cemetery, Sec. G, Blk 23, Lot 12.  His gravestone is shown here.

Less than a month later Demphy sustained another blow when on November 3, the voters of Colorado passed by a majority of 52% a referendum mandating the statewide prohibition on the making and sales of alcohol.  He may have seen this coming.  In 1907 the anti-liquor forces had forced through the Colorado legislature a local option law.  Because Salida and Chaffee County were strongly “wet,” the law had little effect on Demphy’s business but may have suggested to him to diversify into poultry.  After his liquor interests were ended permanently, for  a time he also drove a truck for a local lime quarry.

In the years that followed, Demphy, despite no formal legal training,  also became a justice of the peace in Salida, gaining a reputation for his human touch in the course of his duties and with some frequency making the newspapers.  After pleading guilty for starting a forest fire in the nearby Cochetopa National Forest, a defendant received a minimal fine and, according to the Daily Mail, was: “Warned by Justice Demphy to be more careful in the future and to warn others with whom he came in contact.”  On another occasion when an out-of-state couple came to the Salida courthouse asking him to marry them, Demphy invited them to his home because it provided better scenery .  “Using the two spruce trees in his front yard as a setting for the occasion, he pronounced them man and wife, while their friends took snapshots of the ceremony.”

Demphy died in October 1945, age 77  He had lived long enough to see the end of National Prohibition, but did not reentered the liquor trade.  He was buried in the family plot with son Marshall and both were joined in 1952 by Ruth Demphy. 

Notes:  This post has been dependent on a variety of sources, with the Salida Daily Mail as a principal one.  Although I have a photo of Marshall Demphy from his obituary, I am lacking one of John Demphy and hoping that an alert descendant will be able to supply one.

Foreword:  This is the second installment in the eight generation story of the Samuels family involvement in the making of Kentucky bourbon.  It begins following the deaths in 1898 of Taylor W. Samuels who had guided the fortunes of the family distillery for almost a half century, and his son, William I. Samuels, the heir apparent .  This episode begins with William’s son, Leslie, taking charge of the Deatsville distillery.

Shown here in maturity, Leslie B. Samuels was born in Bardstown, Kentucky, in January 1872, to William  and Emma Dorcas Samuels.  As part of a successful distilling family, the parents were able to afford a college education for their son. Reputation to have a high IQ, Leslie repaid their faith by graduating at the top of his class from Richmond College (now University) in the Virginia capitol.  

After completing his education Leslie returned to Bardstown and under the tutelage of his grandfather and father, learned the craft and trade of making and selling whiskey.  With their deaths at the age of 26 he became the General Manager and Plant Superintendent of what was known as the Deatsville “T. W. Samuels & Son Distillery.”

Leslie was a faithful conservator of the family heritage.  The brand continued to be T. W. Samuels Whiskey, a name that the company registered with the Federal Patent and Trademark Office in 1905.  The label was anchored by the picture of the Kentucky colonel, shown with a shot glass of whiskey in his outstretched hand. Shown here on a pint flask, the label advertises this bourbon as “rich and mellow, aged in wood.”

Conscious of the marketing efforts of the competition, Leslie was issuing advertising items to be gifted to the dealers and distributors handling the distillery products.  The glasses contained themes like “hand made” and “old style,” emphasizing the longevity of the original recipe. It was a message commonly used throughout the distilling industry.

Leslie’s tenure at the head of the Samuels distillery was not destined to be an easy one.  In 1909 a fire, the bane of distillers., broke out at the Deatsville facility. The distillery and and six warehouses containing the entire stock of more than 9,000 barrels were destroyed.  The result was ruinous for the Samuels.  Leslie lacked the funds to rebuild the distillery and sought financial help in returning to making whiskey.  The Star Distilling Company of Cincinnati stepped into the breach.

   

Founded about 1887, that company was listed by the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce as operated by Max and Simon Hirsch.  While they claimed to be “controllers of Old Oscar Pepper” distillery and blenders of “1863 Chesterfield Rye,” the Hirsches apparently did not own any distillery outright.  Stepping into the Samuels story, they purchased the controlling interest and financed the rebuilding of the distillery.  Leslie remained as a minority stockholder and was retained as General Manager, charged with the rebuilding project.  Back in operation by 1911, the distillery, still under the Samuels name, continued to serve a slowly shrinking market for spirits until completely shut down by National Prohibition in 1920.

During the 14 “dry” years, Leslie Samuels, like other former whiskey men, bought an automobile dealership in Bardstown and was elected the town mayor.  When his mayoralty term ended he was named by the governor of Kentucky as State Highway Commissioner.  In that role as one observer commented:  “It was Samuels who was directly responsible for creating a local road network that flowed in and out of  [Bardstown] to the rest of the state like a spider’s web.”   The presumption is that Leslie was thinking forward to the demise of Prohibition and transporting whiskey.

Not waiting for actual Repeal, Leslie in 1933 wisely began to plan for reorganizing the company in concert with the owners and for rebuilding the distillery.  The  Block Corporation of Cincinnati now became the majority owner with Robert L. Block as president.  Still general manager, Leslie was raised to vice president.  Shown below, he located the new distillery immediately on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad line.  The facility boasted six new warehouses each with the space to hold 19,000 barrels of whiskey, an astounding capacity.  Leslie even assisted in build a new depot on the L&N Railroad where distillery supplies easily could be received and whiskey dispatched.

Unfortunately, Leslie had little time to enjoy managing this state of the art distillery.  In February, 1936, he died at the age of 64 and was buried in Bardstown City Cemetery where many of his relatives already were interred. Now it was the turn of Taylor William “Bill” Samuels Senior to step out from behind of his father’s large shadow and to carry on the family distilling heritage.

Although working at the distillery as he was growing up, Bill Senior trained as an engineer at the Speed Engineering School in Louisville.  While having no formal training as a distiller or businessman, he knew his way around the plant and his name was Samuels.  With Robert Block’s assent Bill took over as General Manager.  He also had inherited his father’s minority share in the business.

Under Bill Seniior’s leadership the distillery featured thee brands: T. W. Samuels Bottled in Bond with a black label,  T. W. Samuels Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky at 90 proof with a red label and Old Deatsville Whiskey.  The whiskeys proved highly popular with strong markets in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana and as far afield as Dallas and Houston, Texas, and the West Coast.  The Deatsville Distillery prospered until business was disrupted by the onset of World War II.  

Bill Senior ran the distillery until 1943 when President Roosevelt ordered all distilleries not capable of making industrial alcohol for the war effort be closed to save grain reserves.  Block wanted to sell the distillery and brands rather than shut down.  Bill Sr. disageed but his efforts at obtaining financing failed.  He was forced to sell the generations-old family business to the Foster Trading Corporation of New York, which changed the distillery name to Country Distillers  As a result, the Samuels name disappear from the facility and the product.

Bill Senior promptly joined the war effort, serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy for the next three years and returning to Bardstown intending to run a farm.  But bourbon was in his blood.  Before long he began talking about creating a new whiskey recipe more suited to contemporary taste that had gravitated toward Canadian whiskey.  He had proposed this to his father but Leslie was adamant about sticking with the original recipe.

In his quest for a recipe Bill Senior turned to friends he had made in the liquor trade, asking them for yeast samples, all of which, ingeniously, his wife Margie, shown here, baked into seven loafs of bread wwith a variety of grains.  The Samuel family blind-tested the loafs, made comments and the “pater familias” made the final selection.  He chose a corn base with soft winter wheat replacing rye.  At that point he is said to have made a ceremony of setting fire to the Samuels’ 170-year old recipe. 

Now Bill Senior needed a distillery to make it.  Looking beyond Bardstown and avoiding the crowded field in Louisville, in 1953 he bought a 200-acre property near the the village of Loretto, Kentucky, in Marion County.  It held a small rundown facility known as the Burks Spring Distillery.  Founded in the the 1880s, shut down during Prohibition, and revived at Repeal, this distillery had operated under a long series of owners until Bill Senior bought it in 1953.  Initially called the Star Hill Distillery Company and with the Samuels label sold away, the family searched for a new name. Thus was Maker’s Mark Distillery born, a brand that would take the whiskey trade by storm and spawn further generations of Samuels distillers.

In February 1954 Bill Senior distilled his first 19 barrel batch of this “new recipe” whiskey, then waiting five years while the barrels were aging.  Meanwhile Margie Samuel was playing an essential role.  In addition to baking the “test” loafs, she had considerable skills in the design field.  The shape of the bottle, look of the label, the signature red wax topper and even the name, Maker’s Mark, were her doing.  She also was the mother and grandmother of the next two generations of Samuels.

With Bill Senior’s retirement, his son Bill Samuels Junior took over.  The father is said to have admonished the son:  Don’t Screw up the whiskey.  Shown below left, Bill Junior did not, establishing a reputation in the industry for his showmanship and taking Maker’s Mark to the pinnacle of Kentucky bourbon. Just Just prior to his retirement, Bill Junior, age 70, made his mark on the family legacy in 2010 with the introduction of Maker’s 46, the company’s first new brand in over 50 years.  He was succeeded by his son, Rob Samuels, below right, as general manager.

For the past 43 years, however, the Samuels family have not owned the distillery or the brand.  As the global whiskey industry has contracted, ownership has passed several times.  In 1981, while continuing to manage the properties, the Samuels sold to Hiram Walker & Sons.  That company was acquired by the British distillery giant Allied Domecq in 1987. When Allied-Domecq was bought by Pernod Ricard of France in 2005, the Maker’s Mark brand was sold to the Deerfield, Illinois–based Fortune Brands. Fortune Brands split in 2011, with its alcoholic beverage business becoming Beam Inc.  

Here — for the time being— ends the eight generation Samuels distilling saga. Stay tuned.  If history is any predictor, the story is not finished as the family continues to figure as a force in the Nation’s distilling history.  

Notes:  This post and the one preceding have been taken from a rich trove of available Internet and other materials about the Samuels dynasty. The ancestral home, shown here, has been maintained as a hotel with displays that pay homage to their whiskey legacy.  I suppose it also a place where from time to time one can sip a Maker’s Mark and remember this remarkable distilling family. 

Addendum:  This post marks a milestone for this website a result of having exceeded 1,700,000 total views since its inception in 2011.  It is now averaging well more than 1,000 “hits” per day worldwide.  My thanks to those viewers who find, as I do, the pre-1920 American liquor industry a rich source of stories, some heartening, others not so.  In total, it is a segment of history that enhances our understanding of the Nation’s past.

 Foreword:  The importance of alcohol to American literature has been the subject of numerous books and articles down through the years.  This post is devoted to three famous authors who have saloons associated with their names. I am struck by the fact that the three saloonkeepers were all immigrants of German heritage.  There may be a hint in the welcoming environments that  commonly have characterized German-owned drinking establishments.

While living summers in Elmira, New York, Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens), already a world famous author, frequently found occasion to visit a local saloon run by an immigrant German named August Klapproth, and his son, Charles.  Years later the National Distillers Product Co.,, the source of “Old Crow” bourbon, as part of a series of “history re-imagined” magazine ads featured Twain at Klapproth’s.  Most were fanciful.

From the little to be gleaned from the historical record, the Klapproths were stolid German publicans content with running a decent tavern.  August Klapproth had been born in Darmstadt, Germany, and immigrated to America as a youth.  His son Charles, born in America, never married and lived much of his later life with his widowed mother and an unmarried sister.  Fame came when Twain chose the Klapproth saloon as his favorite Elmira watering hole.

It was not until the early 1980s that Old Crow’s representations of Twain finally approached reality.  The ad shown below recreates the tavern interior as it actually looked, including the wood paneling, the fireplace and the metal bas relief sculpture above it.  This ad has Twain telling his rapt audience:  “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightening that does the work.”

When he died in 1910, Twain was buried in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery, the same burial ground where both August and Charles Klapproth are interred.  The story does not end there.  When the saloon was being torn down, the paneled wall, fireplace and decorative metal casting were saved and now are the centerpiece of the Mark Twain Archive at the Gannett-Tripp Library of Elmira College.  Shown below, note the similarity to the ad above.

                                                           ***

American author Jack London as a boy found a second home and a source of inspiration in an Oakland, California, saloon run by a friendly German immigrant named Johnny Heinhold.   Memorialized by London in his novels and autobiography, Heinhold’s still stands as a tribute to London, shown here, who never forgot the proprietor nor the drinking establishment where his writer’s imagination first was ignited.

London is said to have found a “second home” in Heinhold’s Oakland, California saloon when he was as young as ten. Shown here, the saloonkeeper was known for his kind heart.  He must have seen something special in the boy and made a place for him.  Shown below is an extraordinary photo of the young London sitting in Heinhold’s, engrossed in a dictionary .  At the same time the boy was listening to the stories of “the hard mixed crowd” that frequented the saloon, including crews of whaling vessels, sealing ships, and windjammers.

 

In his autobiographical book, “John Barleycorn,” London dwelled on his relationship with the saloonkeeper:  “More than once in the brief days of my struggles for an education, I went to Johnny Heinhold to borrow money.  When I entered the university I borrowed forty dollars from him, without interest, without security, without buying a drink.  And yet…in the days of my prosperity, after the lapse of years, I have gone out of my way by many a long block to spend across Johnny Heinhold’s bar deferred interest on the various loans.  Not that Johnny Heinhold asked me to do it, or expected me to do it.”

London’s association with the saloon has more than been repaid. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, Johnny Heinhold’s saloon has been altered on the outside.  As shown here, the front has been updated to accommodate a large neon sign announcing the saloon as “Jack London’s Rendevous.”  The north side of the building is hidden behind a billboard-like appendage decorated with a late 1990’s mural honoring London, commissioned by the Port of Oakland.

                                                                ***

Virtually any anthology of American poetry will have a verse or two from Eugene Field, an author, poet, and editor of newspapers ranging from Denver to Chicago.  Known for him dislike of prohibition, when in his home town of St. Louis, Field regularly found his way to a saloon run by a German immigrant named John Henry Bloeser.

In 1876 while Field in St. Louis writing editorials for the St. Louis Journal, he met John Henry Bloeser, a German immigrant who had arrived in the United States in the mid-1860s, living first in Chicago and after his marriage in 1872, moving to St. Louis.  There he opened a saloon at Pine and Eighth Streets, shown below.  His drinking establishment soon became a regular hangout for the newspaper and literati crowd.  Field was among Bloeser’s regulars. 

 

Bloeser sold both wholesale and retail liquor, calling his company the Bloeser Distilling Company.  He was not making whiskey but buying it from distillers and blending it in his facilities to achieve a desired color, taste and smoothness.  He used the brand names “Empire Rye” and “Harlem Club” for his blends.  Although Bloeser failed to trademark either label, he advertised his whiskey widely though shot glasses and corkscrews.

Bloeser must have missed Field’s steady patronage of when he left St. Louis in 1880 to become managing editor of the Kansas City Times. Field landed a similar position with the Denver Tribune and then moved to the Chicago Morning News as a reporter.  From his Chicago base, Field with some frequency returned to St. Louis, possibly to visit relatives, despite once having described it as an “ineffably uninteresting city.” According to newspaper reports, when in town he regularly visited Bloeser’s saloon where he presumably found companions who were not entirely “uninteresting.”  I fantasize that a Field’s drinking poem may have had this “watering hole” in mind.  An excerpt reads:

And you, oh, friends from west and east

And other foreign parts,

Come share the rapture of our feast,

The love of loyal hearts;

And in the wassail that suspends

All matter burdensome,

We’ll drink a health to good old friends,

And good friends yet to come.

Note:   Longer posts on each of these authors and their favorite saloons may be found elsewhere on this website:  Twain and Klapproth’s, March 10, 2023;  London and Heinhold’s, February 10, 2023, and Field and Bloeser’s, May 17, 2023.

                  

When 20-year-old Narciso Bianchi arrived in America in 1897, the young Italian immigrant headed straight to a northern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) shown here,  a rugged territory rich in underground copper.  Amid years of tumult and tragedy in the area’s mining region, Bianchi persevered in the liquor trade, living there the rest of his life, and lies buried there.  His story is one of survival as a world crumbled around him.

First, some details about the environment in which Bianchi found himself.  As shown on the map here, what is now the city of Calumet in the northern most peninsula of  Upper Michigan was first settled in 1864 and named originally for “Red Jacket,” a chief of the Seneca Indian tribe, shown here.  This is a puzzling choice since Red Jacket resided far from Michigan in upper New York State and was known for his antipathy toward white settlers and Christianity.

“Calumet” also had Native American origins, meaning a clay bowl at the end of a long “peace pipe.”  The name first appeared applied to a small community that had grown up near Red Jacket adjacent to a highly productive copper mine.  It subsequently was the name given to the township encompassing Red Jacket and nearby copper mining settlements. In 1929 Calumet officially became the name of the city itself.

Copper mining fueled the economic life of the region.  The Boston-based Calumet and Hecla Mining Company produced more than half of United States copper from 1871 through 1880.  It drew immigrant miners from all over Europe to this desolate outpost.  By 1900 Red Jacket had a population of 4,668 and Calumet Township counted 25,991.  It was hailed as one of the richest communities in America.  What had begun as an isolated settlement virtually touching Canada, was now, at least for the time being, a busy city, as shown below.

After his arrival in America, Bianchi seems to have made straight for the UP, as it commonly is known.  Born about 1878 and raised in the lush landscape of Tuscany, the son of Renaldo and Viola Bianchi, the youth must have been startled by the bleakness of the terrain. He likely had  relatives or friends among the many Italian-born men working in the mines.  Whether he joined them underground for a time is unclear, but about 1904, with a partner, Bianchi opened a saloon and a liquor store. 

He had entered a crowded field.  By 1910 the city directory indicated that Red Jacket/Calumet was home to 82 saloons, Bianchi’s among them.  But the immigrant youth had a better idea than simply providing drinks over the bar.At the time, Red Jacket could claim distinction as the railroad center of the UP. The heyday of the Mineral Range railroad, its station shown here, was in the early 1900’s,  employing 200 trainmen in addition to 250 men in the shops. Bianchi saw the opportunity to buy whiskey from the many distilleries in the Midwest and ship it to him by the barrel via railroad.  Rather than just selling to the public, Bianchi understood the considerable business that would come from peddling whiskey to the other 81 saloons.  He was now advertising himself as “N.R. Bianchi, Wholesale Liquor Dealer.” 

 

When shipments arrived Bianchi would open the barrels and empty the contents into smaller containers, usually ceramic jugs from one to three gallons in size.  When purchased by local saloon keepers they would be repackaged in smaller containers, often glass, to be poured out to their customers.  Shown here and below are examples of the several of the variety of ceramic jugs bearing Bianchi’s name that are still in existence today.  The jugs may have been the product of the famed Red Wing potteries in Minnesota.

In addition, Bianchi likely was doing some “rectifying,” that is, blending several whiskeys and perhaps other ingredients to create his own brand that would have been sold both to the public and wholesale.  He called it “Copper Queen” and featured a label that depicted a Native American woman in a headdress.   Bianci  advertised Copper Queen as a “high grade” whiskey and truthfully as “a blend.”  Although it was his proprietary brand, Bianchi, possibly because of cost, failed to register his trademark with the government.

As Bianchi was building his liquor business he was also gaining a family.  In February 1905, he married Edith Cheli, an italian immigrant woman who was 20 at the time of their nuptials.  Narciso was 27.  The couple would have a family of five. The 1920 census recorded Julius 13, Myra 11, Reynold 7 and Marie, under a year old.  A fifth child, Elizabeth, would come later. Bianchi’s occupation in the census was given as “owning store-liquor.”

 As the 1900s moved on, however, the economic bloom faded from Red Jacket/Calumet to be replaced by violence.  As copper prices fell, the mine owners began to cut the workforce and require more hours from those retained.

Labor unrest and strikes resulted.  The situation triggered what became know as the “Seeberville Affair” in August 1913.  After two strikers disobeyed an order from a mine boss, a group of mine “enforcers” surrounded a boarding house in which the men were living and opened fire.  Two boarders with no connection to the strikers were killed and two others wounded.  

Although four of the shooters later were convicted of manslaughter, the deaths increased the intensity of the strike.  The incident also was a prelude to a disaster at the Italian Hall, a building operated by an Italian mutual aid society, on Christmas Eve 1913.  Union wives gave a Christmas party for the strikers and their families.   I am assuming that Bianchi was among those donating gifts for the children and money for party supplies.  Hundreds of mining families attended, packed into the hall ballroom.

Here is newspaper account of what happened next:   “At some point during the evening, according to most witnesses, an unidentified man stepped into the ballroom and shouted “Fire!”, beginning a panic and stampede for the doors. The main exit from the ballroom was a steep stairway down to the front doors of the building. In the ensuing panic, 73 people were crushed to death in the stairwell, 60 of them were children.”

There was no fire but the perpetrator of the disaster, believed to a strike breaker, was never identified.   Shown below is a photo of a line of coffins in varying sizes waiting to be delivered to the families of victims. Folk singer Woody Guthrie’s 1945 song, “1913 Massacre,” memorialized this event.  Whether Bianchi was in Italian Hall that night is unknown but among the dead, injured and grieving must have been many friends and acquaintances.

Although World War One revived the need for copper and boosted the Calumet economy, the lift was temporarily.  Following the conflict the demand for copper declined sharply and prices dropped.  Thousands of workers and their families left Red Jacket/Calumet, many to find work in the fast-growing auto industry in Detroit.  By this time state and national prohibition had been enacted, forcing Bianchi to shut down his wholesale liquor trade and saloon. Without fanfare he turned the latter into a soft drink parlor.  While many such “parlors” were a front for liquor sales, Bianchi apparently was never cited for violations.  Selling “soda pop” he persevered in Calumet through the 14 years of National Prohibition.

With Repeal, Bianchi went back to running a saloon.  According to the 1940 census, his wife Edith, her children grown,  was helping as the cook.  Son Julius, now married and living next door with his wife, was assisting his father in running the establishment.  A witness of many years to the strife and decline that had afflicted Calumet, Bianchi continued to operate his tavern over the next decade.  The 1950 census found him still the proprietor.  By this time Julius had moved on.  A younger son, Reynold, was now working as the bartender and assisting the 70-year old Bianchi with running the tavern.

Five years later, in July 1952, Narciso Bianchi died, age 74.  Joining victims of the Italian Hall disaster, he was buried in  Calumet ’s Lake View Cemetery, right.  Below is Bianci’s headstone and that of wife Edith, who joined him in 1964.  Meanwhile Calumet, once considered among the richest areas in the America with a population approaching 30,000 also was dying.  In the 2020 census the population had dwindled to 621.

Addendum:  Narciso Bianchi’s “Copper Queen” brand of whiskey has been revived by the Iron Fish Distillery, located in Thompsonville, Michigan, a small town on Lake Huron in Lower Michigan.  As shown below, the new label largely has replicated the earlier one with a notable exception.  Gone is the Native American woman with an Indian headdress.  She has been replaced by a white woman rearing a Gay Nineties’ feathered hat.  Thus political correctness is served.  The distillery website states that Iron Fish can deliver Copper Queen whiskey to 39 states and DC.  Wherever he is, Narciso would be pleased.