Author name: Jack Sullivan

In 1935 when infamous Louisiana politician, Huey Long, decided to hint his candidacy for President against Franklin Roosevelt, he kicked off his campaign by throwing a cocktail party in Washington, D.C. for the press.  The only libation served, Long’s favorite, had been invented by a New Orleans saloon-keeper named Henry “Carl” Ramos.  He named it the “Ramos Gin Fizz.”  It became a cocktail of which legends are made.

Shown here,  Ramos was born in Vincennes, Indiana, in August 1856.  His father Charles was an immigrant from Prussia, his mother, Barbara, had originated in Bavaria.  When Henry “Carl” was just a child, the family moved to New Orleans to where his father had a job as a watchman at a United States Navy base.  Of Ramos early life and education there is scant information.

He appears early to have been drawn to the liquor trade, believed to have worked in saloons in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Birmingham, Alabama.  By 1887, he had returned to New Orleans and was employed at a beer saloon in Exchange Alley, shown here in an artist’s version..  That same year, age 21, Ramos with his brother Charles opened the Imperial Cabinet Saloon at Gravier and Carondelet Streets in downtown New Orleans.  The Imperial Cabinet was 3,500 square feet of classic New Orleans decor, with an ornate hardwood bar and views of Canal and Magazine Streets. 

 

There Ramos invented the cocktail that bore his name, the “Ramos Gin Fizz.”  A photo of the interior of the saloon above shows the large staff he employed for his drinking establishment.  This was necessary because as one writer expressed it: “In the city that literally invented the cocktail. Ramos moved things forward  with his invention of the Ramos Gin Fizz. Frothy, citrusy, smooth-as-silk.” His cocktail was an instant hit with the New Orleans drinking public.

Ramos’ libation also was highly labor intensive.  As many as 20 “shaker boys” would be employed behind the Cabinet Saloon bar providing the strenuous shaking the cocktail required to achieve the creamy texture required.  Some recipes suggest the motion go on for from two to ten minutes.  Others put the time even longer.  Evidence is that Ramos’s crew “nearly shook their arms off and still were unable to keep up with the demand.”  During Mardi Gras, the saloonkeeper is said to have employed as many as 35 behind his bar.  A whole lot of shaking was goin’ on as the good times rolled.

As unique as the gin fizz was the character of Ramos himself.  One local newspaper characterized him like this: “… his ruddy face and genial blue eyes sparkling behind silver rimmed, ear bowed spectacles, his snowy hair, his pure white shirt with the diamond in its bosom, his short, stout frame…”  Despite the diamond stickpin, virtually standard for successful publicans, Ramos was not a flamboyant character.  A teetotaler, he took seriously the responsibility of peddling booze. 

 Writer Theodora Sutcliffe records:  “He closed his saloon at 8 o’clock every evening, and opened for only two hours on Sundays. He kept a wary eye for signs of drunkenness in his bar, and would stop service at the slightest sign of rowdiness. Apparently, if Ramos heard that a customer was drinking too much outside his premises, he would take him to one side and endeavor to assist him — even, in some cases, helping him out financially.”

Ramos also was a dedicated family man.  In 1883 he had married Marianne Weicker, a widow with two children, Frank and Ida.  The couple would have two children of their own, Carl and Stella. The 1890 census found the combined family living at 728 North Ramparts Street.  Stella unfortunately died while still in her teens, said to be a source of considerable grief to her father.

Shown above is an 1907 ad for the Cabinet Saloon and its “world renowned” cocktail.  Note that Ramos also had become an agent for the Dr. Brown line of patent medicines, specifically Brown’s “Sarsaparilla for the Blood” — the bottle at right — and his “Celery for the Nerves.” This was not an unusual juxtaposition  of products since many such nostrums were heavily laced with alcohol. 

 

In 1907, Ramos added a second upscale drinking establishment when he purchased the Stag Saloon near Gravier and St. Charles Streets, shown above in a post card.  The caption on the back reads: “The Stag Saloon… Showing Oyster Counter and Famous Oil Painting ‘Life on the Metairie’ or the Old Metairie Race Course.”   This painting had been created in 1867 by American artist Theodore Moise and his British collaborator Victor Pierson.  It depicted 44 distinguished New Orleanians at the last meet of the Metairie Race Track.  The facility subsequently became the Metairie Cemetery where tombs were arranged around the race track oval.  When he died in September 1928, Ramos was buried there.

With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920, Ramos was forced to close both his drinking establishments and was reported to pledge never to sell another gin fizz.  Twenty years later, however, the Ramos Gin Fizz was again making news.  This time it was at the hands of “Kingfish” Huey Long, the most famous political figure in Louisiana history.   A populist and demagogue, Long was elected governor in 1924, serving one term before running for and winning a U.S. Senate seat in 1932.  With his colorful and outspoken ways, he soon was a national figure, a prominent Democratic antagonist to President Franklin Roosevelt and a likely opponent in the 1936 election. Long also was a devoted fan of the Ramos Gin Fizz.

During his senatorial career, Long spent much of his time in New York City staying at the posh Roosevelt Hotel, a far more exciting venue than sleepy Washington, D.C.  When National Prohibition ended and the hotel bar opened once again, the Louisiana politician balked at the kind of gin fizz being served there.  He got on the phone and ordered the best gin fizz maker in New Orleans to fly up and “teach these New York sophisticates how and what to drink.”  The next day Sam Guarino, head bartender at The Sazerac Bar, arrived and spent  three hours training his counterparts at the Roosevelt on the proper way to make Long’s treasured Ramos Gin Fizz.

When that gambit garnered considerable media attention in New York City and beyond, Long decided that a repeat performance in Washington with the local press corps would be a good way to vet his opposition to Roosevelt and hint at his forthcoming bid for the Presidency.  This time he brought the newly trained head bartender from New York to a Washington hotel to make his favorite cocktail.

Surrounded by journalists, ever eager for a free drink, and with newsreel cameras grinding, Long declared  “Now this here chap knows how to mix a Ramos Gin Fizz.”  He went on to extoll the cocktail, rating it superior to Roosevelt’s “New Deal”  calling the President “no good” and a “faker.” He left little doubt about his own Presidential ambitions.  The press obliged with stories. Via newsreels, Long’s gin fizz party was screened in movie theaters throughout America, a stunt seen by millions of Americans.  Below are two frames taken from the film:

Although Long’s publicity gambit had the desired effect, it proved in the end to be inconsequential when the Kingfish was gunned down by a constituent at the Louisiana Statehouse in September 1935.  The Ramos Gin Fizz, however, lived on.  Here is the recipe as said to have been revealed by Henry “Carl” Ramos himself:

Ingredients

    2 ounces gin

    1 ounce simple syrup

    1 ounce heavy cream

    1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

    1/2 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed

    3 dashes orange flower water

    1 fresh egg white

  Steps

 Add the gin, simple syrup, heavy cream, lemon and lime juices, orange flower water and egg white into a shaker and dry-shake (without ice) vigorously for about 10 seconds.  Add ice and shake for at least several minutes, until well-chilled and you can no longer hear the ice cubes.  Pour into a chilled glass and slowly top with club soda to rise the foamy top.

Notes:  There are multiple Internet sources on Henry Ramos, the Ramos Gin Fizz, and Huey Long.  They differ in details  but I have tried to reconstruct the story in a single narrative, choosing the more likely versions.

 

 

“At the junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low and marshy, that at certain seasons of the year it is inundated to the house-tops, lies a breeding-place of fever, ague, and death…. A hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise: a place without one single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend it: such is this dismal Cairo” — Charles Dickens, American Notes, 1847.

Fast forward 60 years fro the city Dickens knew to Cairo (pronounced kay-ro) in the early 1900s.  Seventy-six saloons and other drinking establishments flourished.  In addition, local wholesale and mail order liquor houses did a rousing business.  Estimated by the Cairo Bulletin newspaper to ship 200,00 packages a week, the booze traffic was enough that railroads serving Cairo put on extra trains.  Awash in alcohol, prostitution and gambling, Cairo’s reputation for crime and violence made it notorious. According to Author John A. Beadles, the city was “stained with blood and tears.” John Ford, who operated a successful liquor house on the outskirts of Cairo, was well acquainted with both.

Born in Union City, Tennessee in October 1870, the son of William and Mary Valentine Ford, John Ford gravitated fifty miles north to Cairo as a young man recognizing the opportunities that the whiskey trade offered there.  As many saloonkeepers cum retailers did, Ford featured his own brand of liquor.  He called it “Monogram Whiskey,” advertising it as “a blend of straight whiskies” and guaranteed it under the “Food and Drugs Act, June 30, 1806.” As shown below, he even provided the label with a trademark, although there is no record of his having registered the brand with the government.

Ford was not a distiller but a “rectifier,” that is, blending whiskeys from several sources brought to Cairo via the Mobile & Ohio Railroad and other carriers.  His objective was to achieve a specific color, smoothness and flavor likely to draw a customer base.  Like many other dealers, he gave away advertising corkscrews to both wholesale and retail customers for his “Monogram Whiskey.”

This “whiskey man” had married at 25, his bride was Cora, a slightly younger woman of German heritage born “at sea” according to the 1920 Census.  They had no children but kept a lodger named Bam West, who worked as a bartender in Ford’s Ohio Street saloon, located near the riverfront. Ford called it “The Two Johns Saloon.”  Nothing in the proprietor’s past predicted the series of events that ensued.

On a day in late October 1907, Ford — possibly drunk, definitely on a rampage —was being sought by Cairo police for a fracas he had caused in a local billiard parlor by beating man named Brown over the head with a billiard cue during a quarrel.  Brown had sworn out a warrant for his arrest.  Meanwhile Ford was still on the street and entered Lee Beckworth’s Saloon at Fourth and Commercial Avenue where he called for drinks for the crowd.

For an unexplained reason, Ford’s presence triggered a dispute with another patron, John W. Lewis, a well known figure in town who ran a ferry between Cairo and East Cairo, Kentucky.  That ended when Lewis and a friend left Beckwirth’s  and headed to the nearby Riddle’s Saloon at Eighth Street  and Commercial Street.  They were sitting by the stove in a back room talking whenFord burst into the room.  According to press accounts, Ford said, “Aren’t you the fellow I had the quarrel with back at Beckwith’s?”  Lewis replied, “I think that I am.”

Armed with a 44 Colt pistol, Ford pulled the gun and struck at Lewis three times with the barrel, holding the handle in his hand.  Lewis got up and began to run out of the saloon.  As he did, Ford shot him.  Lewis continued for a few steps to the front of the saloon and fell to the floor.  Ford continued after him, cursing  witnesses said.   Finding that the man was dead, Ford is said to have given over his gun, called the coroner, and waited until a trio of local policemen took him into custody.

From the outset, Ford insisted he had acted in self defense, claiming that Lewis had threatened him with a knife.  Indeed, a pocket knife was found not far from where the dead man’s body lay.  Friends of Lewis insisted, however, they had never known him to carry a knife.  They intimated that Ford had planted it to excuse his shooting. Local opinion ran strongly against the assailant.  According to the local newspaper, Lewis:  “…had acquired a reputation that appeared to be entirely in his favor.  He was very accommodating and frequently delivered things in Cairo for the people across the river who could not take the time to come over.”  Moreover Lewis was a widower caring for a 12 year old son, who now was  orphaned.

For the moment at least, Ford evaded arrest and incarceration.  A sheriff’s deputy into whose custody he was given, allowed him to go home for the night.  The following day he returned  to the Cairo courthouse, shown here, to stand before by a coroner’s jury inquiring into Lewis’ homicide.  After a series of witnesses gave conflicting testimony about the circumstances of the shooting, the jury found:  “…The said John R. Ford was not justified in the act and we therefore recommend that he be held until discharged by due process of law.”

The Cairo Evening Citizen newspaper reported: “Ford was lodged in jail last night and put in the steel cage.  When seen by The Citizen representative this morning, he said that he had nothing to say about the tragedy.  In the cell with him were three negroes who were amusing him by dancing and singing.”   While awaiting trial, Ford was allowed to make bail and returned to running his liquor business.

For reasons not supplied in the record, Ford’s murder trial did not occur for almost two years.  In the meantime a key witness, the only one who had seen the earlier encounter of the two men, died.  Over time memories had fogged over and public anger subsided.  On May 24, 1909, probably to no great surprise, a jury of his peers acquitted Ford of killing James Lewis.

Ford long since had settled back into his lucrative liquor trade and had even expanded his Cairo business interests.  According to the 1915 city directory, he now owned and operated a wholesale liquor house at 703 Ohio Street, a saloon at 607 Ohio, a restaurant at 8-10 Sixth St., and a barbershop next door at 12 Sixth.  Apparently the lynchings and other violence during that period in Cairo’s history had overshadowed memories of that fatal day in October 1907 when John Lewis was murdered. 

John Ford lived another 27 years before dying of natural causes in September 1934 in Cairo.  He was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Fulton County, Kentucky, about 50 miles south of Cairo on the shores of the Mississippi River.

Note:  Internet sites record local newspaper reports on the rampant violence that characterized Cairo during the early 1900s. John Beadles’ book on the city’s lawlessness and decline is called “Stained with Blood and Tears:  Lynchings, Murder and Mob Violence in Cairo , Illinois, 1909-1910.”  Although the author treats the Ford-Lewis murder only in passing, the book sets the backdrop of anarchy for the homicide narrated here.

 

When Louis Jaffe established his Seattle saloon and liquor house in August 1889, he initially operated from a tent because a fire had destroyed much of the central city.  With the help of two sons, only a few years elapsed before Jaffe & Company Inc. was advertising as “The Finest Exclusive Liquor Store in the United States.” and the family controlled multiple outlets.

Louis was born in Gniezno, Poland, in September 1835, a city 31 miles from the border of 19th Century Prussia, an area that changed hands between Poland and Germany with some regularity.  As a result Louis sometimes listed his birthplace as Poland, sometimes Germany.  At the age of 21, he emigrated to the United States in 1857 and headed to the West Coast, settling initially in San Francisco. 

Limited information exists on Louis’ activities over the next three decades although it appears that he was able to prosper as a coal dealer in Oakland, California.  When he died, Louis was extolled in the local press as a “well known resident of Oakland, being the proprietor of  a large coal business in this city.” In 1863 he married, possibly a childhood sweetheart.  She was Johannah Oppenheim (also given as“Koppenheim”), also born in Gniezno.  The couple would have eight children, five girls and three boys.

In 1886, now 58 years old, Louis changed direction radically.  He moved to Healdsburg, California, 70 miles north of Oakland, shown above, and purchased the Pridham Vineyards, 264 acres of wine and brandy grapes.  Assisted by two grown sons, Joseph and Herbert  (both of whom had “Louis” as a middle name),  the family plunged full tilt into the wine and liquor trade.

The Seattle Fire of 1889

In  August 1889, the Jaffes moved further north to Seattle, opening just months after a fire had gutted most of the downtown.  Although the conflagration lasted less than a day, it destroyed 25 city blocks, including the entire business district, four of the city’s wharves, and its railroad terminals.  Undeterred, the Jaffes set up a 15×70 foot tent at a location on what was then known as Old Mill Street just above Third Avenue South.  They quickly built a three story brick building at 115-117 Second Avenue South and opened a retail and wholesale liquor and wine house called Jaffe & Co. 

The Jaffes featured just a few whiskey brands, all of which mimicked other labels. None were trademarked.  They included “Old Oaken Bucket,” “Louis Hunter 1870,” and “Golden Wedding.”  The family presented them in amber bottles, as shown below.  The Oaken Bucket back-of-the-bar bottle, right, can be identified as a Jaffe product by the script “J” at the top.  The bottle would have been given to saloons, hotels and restaurants doing business with Jaffe & Co.

As he aged, Louis’ health faltered.  On February 1, 1905, he died, age 69.  After a funeral service at the Hotel Van Nuys, he was buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland.  Johanna would join him there thirteen years later.  Their joint monument is shown here.  Jaffe &Co. also remained, as a memorial to Louis and his business savvy .  The year after the patriarch’s death, the Seattle directory listed Joseph as  vice president and Herbert, shown above in a passport photo, as secretary-treasurer.  The position of president was left open, likely as a silent tribute to their father, the coal dealer turned wine and whiskey tycoon.  

For the next five years in Seattle, the Jaffe sons battled growing prohibitionary pressures and shrinking markets.  One tactic was issuing advertising shot glasses to be given to the saloons carrying the company brands.  As seen here, the brothers’ shot designs were generally a notch above other merchants as they advertised “Old Oaken Bucket,” “Golden Wedding,” and “Louis Hunter 1870 Rye.”

Recognizing that the days of selling liquor in the State of Washington were growing short, the Jaffes began to move their emphasis from the “Finest Exclusive Liquor House” to becoming less dependent on a Seattle customer base.  The decision resulted in their issuing a new series of shots, one that noted a company shift toward mail order trade.  

The ax fell in 1915 when Washington, following the trend in other states, voted to become “dry.”  Forthwith neither whiskey or wine or beer could be manufactured or sold in the state. Overnight the door closed on the alcohol conglomerate Louis Jaffe had founded 29 years earlier.  Joseph’s Imperial Liquor Co. marked the occasion by a sign that proclaimed:  “This is the end of our sinning:  ice cream and candy for us.”  The public was implored to: “Help us move this high grade stock of wines and liquors.  Price no object.”  In fact, it was not the end of Jaffe “sinning.”  The brothers wasted no time in moving Jaffe & Co. out of Seattle to the more friendly environment of reliably “wet” San Francisco.  The business survived as a retail and mail order house until 1920 when National Prohibition went into effect.  It was not revived with Repeal.

Note:  This post was created from a variety of Internet sources, census data and city directories of Seattle and San Francisco.

When I was a  reporter on a weekly newspaper in the Wisconsin North Woods in 1958, my boss Dan, a jokester, loved to regale visiting hunters in local bars just as deer season began.  He would tell the outsiders, “I never go out in the field hunting without a few belts of whiskey in me to keep warm.”  Then he would watch with amusement at the looks of alarm on the faces of those in town expecting to hunt on opening day.

Although I think Dan was only kidding, the juxtaposition of whiskey with hunting was a familiar theme in liquor ads before National Prohibition.   Whiskey advertising frequently extolled the value of strong drink for hunters or found other ways of identifying their product with the shooters’ sport.   In the saloon sign above, advertising Kinsey Pure Rye Whiskey, we see a story unfolding.  The hunter and his dog have intruded on posted “No Trespassing” land, only to confront an angry farmer with rod in his hand.  The hunter is offering a flask — obviously of Kinsey Rye — and the farmer seems about to take it.  Moral:  Whiskey is handy to have on a hunt.

The pre-Prohibition Angelo Myers Co. of Philadelphia was not the only liquor wholesaler to make use of this “Field and Stream” fantasy.  Old Overholt, a long-produced Pennsylvania Rye Whiskey, founded as early as 1810, used a similar theme on one of its advertising signs given to saloons. The “No Trespassing” sign is absent here, but the farmer carries a stick.  He seems pleased, however, at being offered a swig from a flask of Old Overholt.  In the distance a bearded yokel is climbing a fence to get his share.   Given the angled posture of the hunter, he may have been imbibing earlier.

“A Stag Party” is a saloon sign meant to be humorous, issued by the George Stagg Company of Frankfort, Kentucky.  Here two hunters are resting from their labors, toasting each other with whiskey from a bottle of Stagg’s trademarked “O.F.C. Straight Bourbon.”  Both are unaware that a large male deer with a huge antler rack has appeared out of the forest behind them.  That buck was the emblem of the O.F.C. distillery that Stagg operated.  The younger hunter also seems unaware that his rifle, resting as it is on his arm, might go off and damage more than his snazzy jacket.

A scene of gunners resting and enjoying a drink, guns close by, also decorated the labels of “Kamp’s Rye Whiskey.”  In this scene the two hunters apparently have spent the day in the field and shot something tough and stringy — perhaps a wild boar — since they seem to be making dinner by boiling what they bagged over a blazing wood fire.  The only camper who seems to be paying attention is their dog.  The source of this whiskey, Kamp Distilling of St. Louis, was not a distiller, but a wholesaler who “rectified” whiskey purchased elsewhere, mixing and blending it, sometimes with other ingredients, to achieve taste and color, then bottling it under a proprietary label.

This theme of two hunters relaxing in camp with their dog and guns was replicated in a saloon sign issued by the company.  Calling this brand of whiskey “The Sportman’s Choice,”  Kamp indicated by this illustration that the hunters were well supplied with whiskey, a full case of quart bottles being evident in the foreground.  It is a wonder these gents could find time between snorts to do any hunting at all.

“Rod and Gun Club Rye,” ads and labels, unlike those above, do not show any overt drinking.  Here the man and his dogs seemingly have flush a pair of snipes and a covey of quail.  The hunter seems in a quandary, as do his dogs, about which birds to shoot.  With the first shot, all will be in flight.  Miller & Mooney began business about 1884 in Philadelphia as liquor wholesalers.  They likely experienced frustration in getting adequate whiskey supplies and so bought their own distillery in nearby Berks County, Pennsylvania.  It was the Wheatland Distillery, operating under the “bottled in bonding” legislation and known in Federal annals as Registered Distillery #75 in the 1st District of Pennsylvania.

John Ellwanger, a German immigrant who began his career as a delivery boy in a Dubuque, Iowa, dry goods store, and went on to become a wealthy whiskey wholesaler, featured a hunter in his sign for “Old Knapsack Rye.”  Given the startled look on the face of nimrod, my guess is that he has a flask in his own knapsack and has been reminded to take a swig.   Ellwanger used his resources from selling whiskey to become a leading business and political figure in Dubuque during the late 19th Century and into the 20th.

  

Theobold & Son of Columbus, Ohio, left little to the imagination by their saloon sign for their flagship brand, “Old Coon Sour Mash.  Above is the image of two hunters in the twilight with coon dogs who have treed a small raccoon that is looking at them intently, obviously with some apprehension.   The hunters, however, seem transfixed on a bottle of whiskey that one of the men is offering the other.  The dogs seem disinterested in the quarry.  It may be that Old Coon has saved the hide of the treed version.  The Theobolds were in business from 1860 to 1916 when Ohio voted to go “dry.”

The label of the “Off & On” whiskey appears to show a hunter who is in no quandary about what to aim at.  Crouched on the forest floor, he is intently banging away at his unseen quarry.  This was one of many brands from the Herman Myer Company of New York City.   Like other wholesalers Myer was rectifying and bottling whiskey under his own labels.  One of my favorite Myer brand names is “Naked Mermaid.”   Herman apparently was getting supplies from a relative with a distillery in Covington, Kentucky.

These nine pre-Prohibition whiskey ads provide ample testimony to the links that have existed from 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:  More complete narratives about several of the “whiskey men” referenced here may be found elsewhere on this website:  Theobold, April 2, 2011; Ellwanger, Feb. 26, 2012;  Overholt, July 2, 2012, and Stagg, April 30, 2016.

Forced to shut his Chicago saloon by National Prohibition, Emil Wanatke, shown here, relocated with his family in 1929 to the tiny town of Manitowish Waters, Vilas County, in Northwoods Wisconsin. There he built a lodge he called “Little Bohemia.”  Five years later Little Bohemia would become nationally famous, some would say infamous, as the site of a gun battle between gangsters headed by the notorious John Dillinger and an inept FBI squad out to capture them. 

Wanatke’s Chicago attorney also was Dillinger’s lawyer and it was he who is believed to have arranged for Dillinger and his associates to spend a few days in a relaxed hideout at Little Bohemia, known for its good food and drink.  Prohibition had just ended.  Wanatke had opened a bar and hired bartenders.  We can presume that the gang also brought along their own bootleg booze.

It was the middle of the Great Depression, business had been slow, and Wanatke was struggling to pay his mortgage.  Dillinger, pledging that his men would cause no trouble, paid him $500 for the gang’s three day weekend stay, the equivalent today of almost $6,000.   Although this money was welcome in hard times.  Warantke also appears to have had other things in mind.  The gangsters, who included the ruthless killer “Pretty Boy” Floyd, were themselves worth a great deal of money.  The reward for Dillinger alone was $10,000 (equiv. $178,000 today).  Moreover, Wanatke knew he could be charged with harboring criminals.  “Dropping the dime” on them, i.e. alerting authorities, would help absolve him of blame. 

Moreover, as time wore on and the guests grew more and more aggressive,  Wanatke’s wife, Nan, became apprehensive about family safety.  Wanatke wrote a letter to the police in Milwaukee about the situation but did not know how to get it out of the lodge and mailed.  He knew the letter would not be delivered before Monday, when the gang was leaving, but he wanted officials to know details of the weekend in case something violent happened.

Nan, shown here with the family dogs, provided an answer.  She asked for and got permission from Dillinger to attend a birthday party for a family member at the home of her brother, George La Porte, who lived a few miles away.  While driving there with their son she became aware of being followed.  It was the ever suspicious “Baby Face” who eventually turned back.  When Nan told her family of the situation, a plan was hatched to contact the FBI in Chicago.

 

Leaving her son behind in safety, she returned home and told Wanatke of the scheme.  He agreed and when La Porte arrived the next day was able to slip him a note in a cigarette pack with the names of the gang and the license plate numbers of their cars.  La Porte left without attracting notice and notified the FBI.  After confirming with Washington headquarters the legitimacy of the lead, on April 23, 1934, the FBI flew in agents from Chicago and St. Paul to the nearby Rhinelander Airport.

Purvis

The agents, led by Special Agent Melvin Purvis, had little time to plan the raid and little experience at executing one.  They had only a single automobile for the agents.  As they approached the lodge a car exiting containing three people mistakenly was identified and shot up.  Not only was an innocent passenger killed, the noise alerted the gang lounging in the Little Bohemia’s bar, shown below.  Immediately Dillinger and two henchmen gathered up their money and guns.  After a brief firefight with agents, the three on foot ran to a neighboring resort, commandeered an automobile, and escaped.

Nelson

‘Baby Face’ Nelson was also able to avoid capture, albeit with a bloodier trail. He killed one FBI agent, critically injured another, and stole the FBI vehicle for his getaway.  The entire gang had eluded capture in the botched raid. An FBI agent and an innocent bystander had been killed, two other FBI men had been serious wounded.    Although a Hollywood movie starring Ward Bond as Purvis later attempted to put a positive spin on the shootout, at the time it was seen as a black eye for the FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover.  

A new book by Beverly Gage on Hoover called “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century” relates: “Hoover recognized the bloodbath at Little Bohemia as a crisis of major proportions….At best, Little Bohemia might be seen as a nightmarish series of mistakes.  At worst it could be interpreted as an indictment of Hoover’s entire system….”  Demands were raised in Congress and the press for dissolution of the FBI.  Popular Humorist Will Rogers commented:   “Well they had John Dillinger surrounded and was all ready to shoot him when he come out.  But another bunch of folks came out ahead, so they just shot them instead.”

But Hoover’s headaches meant nothing to Wanatke.  In the depths of the Great Depression, he had hit a bonanza.  The shootout at Little Bohemia had made headlines all across the Nation.  With gangster-mania at its peak, thousands of Americans were keen on seeing the the place where it all played out.  Wanatke’s business boomed.

 

In response, the lodge owner kept the bullet-ridden wall panels in place and created a mini museum of the event in Little Bohemia.  He displayed news clippings and items left behind by gang members as they fled the scene.  Wanatke also produced for tourists a bulletproof vest and .38 caliber handgun he claimed had belonged to the slain FBI agent, Carter Baum.  Grilled by the FBI, he confessed that he had made up the story.   Wanatke also sold an autographed photo showing him standing with his arm around Dillinger.  He later admitted that the picture, reproduced below, was a fake and that he had superimposed Dillinger’s photo on his own. 

Eventually law enforcement agents caught up with the gang members.  Some like Dillinger and Nelson died in a hail of bullets.  Others were captured and sent to prison.  Melvin Purvis later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, some said an accident, others suicide.  J. Edgar Hoover went on to become a feared power figure for decades in Washington, D.C. 

Meanwhile Little Bohemia has continued in business down to the present day, until recently operated by Wanatke’s son, who would relate to visitors his experience as a boy playing catch with two of the most dangerous men in America, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson.  

Note:  This post is the result of my 60-year fascination with the events of 1934 at Little Bohemia. It began in 1959 when I was a reporter on the Vilas County News Review and several times drove past the lodge — but regretfully never went in.  In lieu of a personal encounter, I have found multiple accounts of the shootout online that are distilled in the account here.

  

Recently the Louisiana State University Press announced it would be publishing  a new series of short books on famous cocktails.  Because LSU is not likely to treat a libation that primarily sold in a bottle, it occurred to me that a post on an drink marketed nationally before Prohibition by Boston liquor dealer Chester H. “Chet” Graves also deserves to have its history revealed.  The libation was known as “Hub Punch.

”Hub Punch did not originate in Boston, however, but on Hub Island, a small bit of land in the St. Lawrence River, located between Grenell Island and Thousand Island Park,  shown on the map above.  The dominant feature of the island was the Hub House, right.  That hotel has been described as a “debaucherous” lodging, dance hall and bar.  A short boat ride from the mainland, it was notorious for its dance parties at which young people could waltz until dawn, sleep in one of the rooms, and dance the next night through, all the while imbibing their favorite cocktails.

The most popular of those alcoholic concoctions was known as Hub Punch.  It was the brain child of an Oswego, New York, bartender named Bart Keether, who was in charge of the Hub House bar and the first to mix Hub Punch. The drink was an instant hit, according to one author.  Although Keether served it during the 1870s and into the 1880’s, he never divulged his recipe.  Some have speculated that among its ingredients were rum and brandy.   The end of Keether’s punch came in 1883 when Hub House burned to the ground.

Chet Graves was not about to let the popularity of Hub Punch fade away.  In 1858, Oliver Wendell Holmes had identified Boston as “The Hub of the Solar System,” which developed into “The Hub of the Universe” or just “The Hub City.” Hub Punch fit well with Boston.  Graves added it to the flurry of proprietary brands of liquor he offered.  

Those whiskeys included:  “Beech Grove,” “Boat Club,” “Cumberland Club,” “Graves’ Maryland Malt,” “Kentucky Union,” “Mackinaw Rye,”Old Heritage Rye,” “Superba,” “The Judges Favorite,” “Union League Club,” and “Walnut Hill Pure Rye.”  He trademarked Walnut Hill Rye, likely his flagship whiskey, in 1892. After Congress strengthened trademark protections in 1905, Graves registered many of his other brands.

On May 1, 1879,C. Graves & Sons advertised:  “At the earnest solicitation of a number of our hotel patrons and personal friends we have decided to offer our Rum and Brandy Punch in bottles, an article that has a most excellent reputation, having been originally prepared by our senior member.”   Graves appeared to be taking credit for the origins of Hub Punch.  Observers generally agree that his recipe, also never divulged, differed from Keether’s but do not know how.  Grave’s ads give slim clues to its contents, claiming to contain “only the best of liquors, choice fruit juices and granulated sugar.”  Ads also suggested “drinking clear or mix with lemonade, soda or ice water.”   Because it was sold before National Prohibition, Hub Punch was not required to disclose its alcoholic content. 

Marketed through vigorous advertising in local newspapers and national magazines, Hub Punch proved to be a hit with the American drinking public. Increasingly people were moving from straight liquor to cocktails and mixed drinks.  Hub Punch suited the trend well.  As shown below, Graves packaged his beverage in both clear and amber quart bottles, bearing blue or green labels that depicted the skyline of Hub City.

Graves’ rise to success in the liquor trade was a long one. He was born in Sunderland, Massachusetts, in January 1818, the son of Eliza Hatch and Elijah Graves, a New England family whose Yankee ancestry stretched back into colonial days.  He arrived in Boston in 1844 at age 24 and went to work for Seth W. Fowle, a manufacturer and dealer in patent medicines, known for his inventive advertising for his lung remedies, including the highly alcoholic “Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry.”

After four years of working for Fowle and learning his merchandising techniques, Graves moved on to the Boston house of John T. Hearn where he spent the next 12 years engaged in the liquor trade.  In November 1846 he married Charlotte A. “Lottie” Fuller of Newton, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb.  Although sources differ on numbers, the couple had at least three sons and a daughter over the next 14 years. 

His growing family may have induced Graves to strike out on his own.  In time he brought his two eldest boys, Edward and George, into the business, and it became Chester H. Graves and Sons.  Graves continued to guide the fortunes of his company until his death in April 1901 at the age of 82.  His sons took the reins of management and continued the success of Hub Punch until closed by the advent of National Prohibition in 1920.

Unlike the great majority of liquor houses in America that closed for good, the Graves boys waited out the “dry” 14 years and in 1933 as Repeal became certain trademarked the name and signature of their father.  The application reads “for gin and other potable liquors.”  A bottle of the company’s gin is shown right. I have not found evidence that the sons revived Hub Punch in the post-Prohibition era. 

In more recent times, however, a brother team in Boston has brought new life to Hub Punch. Will and Dave Willis in 2010 founded Bully Boy Distillers, Boston’s first craft distillery.  They specialize in making small batch spirits in accord with local tradition and recognized that historically no beverage was more closely identified with Boston than Hub Punch.  As for ingredients, the Bully Boy version is not  identical either to Keether’s or Graves’ recipe.  The bottle says only that it is “infused with orange, fruits and botanicals” and is 70 proof, that is, alcohol just over one-third of the volume.  As is said, things old thus are made new again.

Note:  This post and illustrations was gathered from a variety of Internet sources, among them a 2014 article from MISE magazine by Cassandra Landry.

 

Over the years for my own edification, I have collected Internet photographs and stories of old time saloons.   Now it occurs to me to share some on this website, including a western saloon I personally visited some years ago.

The first establishment shown here is a Haskell, Texas, saloon.  My fascination is with the imaginative way that the proprietors have rendered the word “whiskey.”  Obviously with tongue firmly in cheek,  they have proclaimed it “The Road to Ruin.”  Yet the front door is open wide and the gents on the porch obviously have left the bar to have their pictures taken.  In October 1887 this saloon lived up to its name as the scene of a gunfight in which “notorious outlaw” Andrew Williams was killed by Sheriff George Scarborough.

The next photo replicates the theme.  From the designation as the “Lone Star Saloon” and the symbol provided, it might be assumed that it was located in Texas,  the Lone Star State.   Wrong.  This establishment existed in Corona, New Mexico.   The date given for it is 1919.  By that time Texas was fully into the Temperance Movement and increasingly legal restrictions were being put on saloons and drinking.  By contrast New Mexico was still wide open. 

The next image is from South Dakota and although it has no sign,  the passengers on the stage coach stopping there would know that strong drink was to be had inside.  Cowboy “Devil Dan” Roberts rode up to a stage stop saloon very much like this one in 1886.  Roberts was employed by the VVV Ranch on the Belle Fourche River and was heading to Deadwood for the Christmas holidays when he dropped into the saloon to warm up from the frigid Dakota weather.

A holiday dance was in progress and the saloon owner, who had been nipping at his own booze all day,  was heading to bed to sleep it off.   He asked Devil Dan, who did not drink,  to look after the business. The well-likkered cowboy crowd got rowdy and began to break up the furniture and knock out windows.  Dan let them have their way but as the men sobered up he made them pay for the damages.  The next morning the owner sold the place to Roberts for $125 and departed.  Dan repaired the damage and became the saloonkeeper. 

The next picture is from Creede, Colorado.  Two men are standing in the open doorway of the “Holy Moses Saloon,”  which is next to the narrow, rocky canyon walls that surround the town,  located in Mineral County.   Note that the building is rather ramshackle with a broken cornice and a barrel lying out front.  A note on the photo says that the man standing in the white shirt and vests was the owner and the sheriff of Creede whose name was William Orthen.   His saloon was the first liquor den in town.

A much better known lawman cum saloon keeper was Judge Roy Bean, who billed himself as the “Law West of the Pecos.”  For about 16 years, Bean lived a prosperous and relatively legitimate life as a San Antonio businessman. In 1882, he moved to southwest Texas, where he built his famous saloon, the Jersey Lilly, and founded the hamlet of Langtry. Saloon and town alike were named for the famous English actress, Lillie Langtry. Bean had never met Langtry, but he had developed an abiding affection for her after seeing a drawing of her in an illustrated magazine. For the rest of his life, he avidly followed Langtry’s career in theater magazines.

Before founding the town Bean also had secured appointment as a justice of the peace and notary public. He knew little about the law or proper court procedures, but residents appreciated and largely accepted his common sense verdicts in the sparsely populated country of West Texas.  By the 1890s, reports of Bean’s curmudgeonly rulings, including an occasional hanging,  had made him nationally and internationally famous.  Before his death, even Lillie Langtry had dropped by.

The following photo of the gents standing in front the El Paso Saloon has intrigued me for the wide variety of headgear they sport, as well as the varied positions of their hands.  Several look as if they might be preparing to draw and shoot.  Despite the name it is not possible from the picture to identify the town.  El Paso Hotels with saloons were located not only in El Paso but also in Fort Worth and San Antonio.   I assess the date as about 1910 or after. The advertising sign over the door for Fredericksburg Beer on tap has a definite  20th Century look.

The photo following caught my eye for the 20 mule team in the foreground and the row of saloons in back. Thirsty customers had a choice of the “The Yellowstone Bar,”  “The Butler Saloon,” or the “High Grade Bar” and so on down the line of watering holes in the town of Rawhide, Nevada,  at the 1908 height of a gold rush.  In the span of just two years the town went from its peak population of 7,000 in 1908 to fewer than 500 by the latter part of 1910. Helping push the decline of the Rawhide even further was a fire that swept through town in September 1908, along with a flood the following September.  Many residents abandoned the town. 

When the original mines worked out the remaining gold and silver from the veins, more people left Rawhide.  Only a few remained, eking out a living working in the mines, processing the ore, or tending their own claims.  Most  saloons had closed and the town became a hollow shell of what it once was.  By 1941 only a few hardy souls were left in Rawhide, and the post office was closed.  Today it is a “ghost town” with only photos to remember its heyday.

The only watering hole in color and the one I visited is “Big Nose Kate’s Saloon.”  This place got its start as the Grand Hotel in Tombstone, Arizona.  Opening in September, 1880, it was consider one of the state’s premier hotels, boasting thick carpeting and fancy oil paintings.  The lobby was equipped with three elegant chandeliers and more luxurious furnishings, while the kitchen featured both hot and cold running water and could serve as many as 500 people efficiently.

It is said that Ike Clanton and the two McLaury brothers stayed at the Grand the night before the famous gunfight at the O. K. Corral.  The saloon is named for the erstwhile girl friend of Doc Holliday, a participant in the famous showdown.  I was in Tombstone a few years ago and stopped into Big Nose Kate’s to look around and have a beer. Sadly, it appears no different from the other touristy bars and restaurants along the main drag, but the history lingers.

Note:   Two of the above saloon keepers receive fuller treatment on this site: “Devil Dan” Roberts on April 18, 2012, and  Judge Roy Bean, October 4, 2016.

 

Had he lived long enough, Isaac Wormser likely would have understood Tony Bennett’s singing “I left my heart in San Francisco.”  Shown here, the German immigrant liquor dealer led an unusually early peripatetic life until the “The City on the Bay” came to hold a special fascination for him.

Born in 1821 in the Aldingen, a small town in the then Kingdom of Wurttemberg, Germany, Isaac was the son of Abraham and Gedele Heyum Wormser.   He is said to have received a rigorous basic German education and later learned the trade of a cloth weaver.   Maturing during a period of warfare between Prussia and Austria in which his king unwisely sided with Austria, Isaac may have decided to emigrate to America as a way of avoiding military service. 

He arrived here in 1842, initially residing in New York City, his point of entry.  Displaying the restlessness that characterized much of his early his life, Isaac soon relocated to Harrodsberg, Kentucky.  Founded in 1774 as the first permanent settlement west of the Allegheny, this small city calls itself “The Birthplace of the West.” The youth’s employment is unknown but it was there he became a naturalized citizen.  Restless after four years in Harrodsberg, Isaac decamped to Chicago, occupation unknown, but my guess it was working in a mercantile establishment.

When California’s Gold Rush began, Isaac’s wanderlust struck again.  With his brother Lewis, newly arrived in New York, in 1850 Isaac headed west to Stockton, California.  The discovery of gold on the American River in January 1848, caused Stockton to transform from a small settlement to a thriving commercial center, supplying miners heading into the Sierra foothills. Issac opened a general store called Wormser & Brother.  It proved to be highly profitable.  Among its stock was liquor.

When the boom times ended in Stockton, Isaac decided that San Francisco was a more likely place for building on success. By this time a third brother, Simon, had joined them from Germany.  Together they established a wholesale liquor business called Wormser Brothers.  Their first location was at First and Battery Streets.  Again meeting with success, in 1866 the brothers listed among the richest residents of San Francisco.  in 1867 they built their own three story building with basement at the corner of California and Front Streets.  Wormser Brothers’ flagship whiskey, as shown below,  was “Golden Sheaf,” with a trademark showing a comely woman carrying a sheaf of grain.

Here the Wormser story gets complicated. One source claims that Isaac returned to Germany, married, stayed in Wurtemberg, and turned the business over to Simon.  That scenario seems in error.  Passport information indicates Isaac returned to Germany early in 1854.  About age 33 he married there, his bride Louise Leringer, a German woman 12 years his junior.  Isaac never gave up the presidency of the liquor house, however, and apparently returned with Louise to the U.S. a year later.  According to 1860 census data,  the couple’s first child, Amelia, was born in San Francisco in 1856.  That same census listed Isaac as a “wholesale dealer in wines and liquor” and indicated the family had two live-in servants.

Although the company was in business for only seven years, its bottles and flasks have attracted collector attention.  One writer commented:  “The Wormser Brothers produced some of the more desirable Western bottles while they were in business in San Francisco….The earliest glass container from the Wormser firm is the large whiskey flask horizontally embossed WORMSER BROS. SAN FRANCISCO…This Wormser  flask is considered very rare with possibly only 8 to 12 examples in private collections.” The bottle is shown above.  Two other company flasks are below:

Other notable bottles from Wormser Brothers are barrel shaped containers with an applied tapered top and a smooth base embossed WORMSER BROS. SAN FRANCISCO. They are believed to have been produced for a very short period, possibly only in 1869. This quart comes in various shades from light yellow to darker brown amber, as shown below.  It is believed that there are only between 25 to 30 Wormser Bros. barrels extant in collections. 

After only some seven years in business, Wormser Brothers Co. was sold to the firm of Braeg, Frank & Dallemand [See post on Albert Dallemand, Sept. 17, 2012.]  Later, Wormsers family members would re-enter the liquor trade in San Francisco as co-founders of the Golden Gate Distilling Company.  Listed in city directories from at least 1893 to 1904, this enterprise had two addresses, 207 Battery (1893-1901) and 160 New Montgomery (1902-1904).   Details about this business unfortunately are lacking. 

As Isaac grew in wealth, he and Louise increased the size of their family.  Genealogical sites suggest seven children, four boys and three girls.  In order to house this growing brood, in 1876 he commissioned the construction of a mansion home, located at 1834 California Street.  Of Italianate style the Isaac Wormser House is has been cited by the city as a “Designated Landmark” since 1973.   After Isaac’s death, the dwelling was sold but is still in use as a private residence.

After largely retiring from the liquor trade, Isaac turned to managing his investments and was listed in the 1880 federal census as a “capitalist.”  From a photo of him from that period, carrying a top hat and cane, he looks every inch the part.  He also was gaining a reputation in San Francisco as a philanthropist. 

Isaac and Louise were members of Congregation Emanuel whose Rabbi Cohn led a movement to establish the first organization in the Far Western U.S. to provide for Jewish orphans and indigent aged.  At a community meeting in July 1871, fifteen San Franciscans were elected to serve as a board of trustees for what became the Pacific Hebrew Orphan and Home Society.  Isaac was elected the first president and was instrumental through his leadership and money for the erection of the orphanage shown below.  Says one biographer:  “His later years were devoted almost entirely to charitable work.”  After his peripatetic youth, Isaac had given his heart to San Francisco.

While on a holiday at the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, California, shown below, Isaac died suddenly in October, 1894.  He was 73 years old.  Because burials in San Francisco are banned, Isaac was buried in nearby Colma, California, at the Home of Peace Cemetery.  Louise would join him there in 1931.  Their joint monument is shown here.

Note:  This post was composed from a variety of Internet sources after seeing the bottles and flasks from the Wormser Brothers Company on the virtual museum of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors.  They in turn led me to the personage of Isaac Wormser, an immigrant whose early wanderings brought him eventually to San Francisco, where he clearly “left his heart.”

 

 

 

 During her abbreviated life, Kitty Leroy (sometimes given as LeRoy) was by turns a dancer,  faro dealer, gambler, sharpshooter, and finally saloon owner.  Shown here, Kitty blazed a trail from Michigan to Texas to California to Deadwood, South Dakota, where she became proprietor of the Mint Gambling Saloon.  In her wake were five husbands, one of whom she shot and killed, another who shot and killed her. Women like Kitty Leroy make Western legends. 

With her drive and ambition, Kitty in another day, another time, might have been a nationally known American entertainer, perhaps with her shooting skills, another Annie Oakley.   Of her early life little is known.  She was born in 1850, but opinions differ on where.  My guess is Michigan where she first attracted attention as a 10-year-old performer in dance halls and saloons. There, as one writer has observed, “…She either picked up or augmented an innate ability to manipulate, along with gambling and weaponry skills that would serve her well for most of her life.”

Living in Bay City, Michigan, by 15 she was married and had a child,  Local lore says she wed because her husband was the only man in Bay City who would allow her to shoot apples off his head as she rode by on horseback.  Apparently finding family life too dull, Kitty soon abandoned her male target and infant son to head west to Dallas, Texas. 

Once again taking to the stage, she became a star attraction at Johnny Thompson’s Variety Theatre, a dancer know as “Kitty Leroy, Queen of the Hoofers.”  Easily bored, Kitty next tried her hand at gambling and became a faro dealer, said to have stepped to the tables well armed, sometimes dressed in cowboy attire, sometimes as a gypsy.

Always attractive to men, in Dallas she married a saloonkeeper. Soon bored in  Dallas, she was drawn to California and the two decamped for San Francisco hoping to make it big in there.  When that bubble burst, she was forced back to the gambling tables for money.  Kitty somehow shucked husband No. 2 and gained a Frisco reputation for promiscuous behavior.  When one panting suitor proved too ardent, she challenged him to a duel.  Unwilling to shoot a woman, the man refused to draw.  Kitty shot him anyway.  Then, apparently stricken with guilt, she called a minister and married him as he lay badly wounded.  He died shortly after.

“Wild Bill”

“Calamity Jane”

Now a widow and wanting to put San Francisco behind her, Kitty impetuously joined a wagon train traveling four states and 1,370 miles east to a new boom town, Deadwood, South Dakota.  In the caravan she met two of the West’s best known figures, “Wild Bill” Hickok and “Calamity Jane” Cannary.  All three had the same objective, shared by many in the wagon train:  Strike it rich as fast as possible.

Arriving in Deadwood in July 1876 after a long and arduous journey, Kitty was immediately entranced by a community bustling with energy and excitement.  Once Indian land, everything changed after Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and in 1874 announced the discovery of gold at French Creek. A gold rush ensued as miners and entrepreneurs swept into the area. They created a new and untamed town they called Deadwood.  It quickly reached more than 5,000 residents; by 1876 the population was estimated at 25,000.  Deadwood was Kitty’s kind of town.

She went to work at the Gem Theater where she was an instant success as a performer.  Her beauty was legendary.  One contemporary wrote that: “Her brow was low, her brown hair thick and curly…[Her] teeth were like pearls set in corals.”  Gem Owner Al Swearengen was notorious for luring young women to hire on as waitresses and then forcing them into prostitution.  While Kitty seemingly escaped that fate she may have been complicit in grooming the Gem’s young women in their roles.  Within a few months she had earned sufficient money to open her own “watering hole.”  She called it Leroy’s Mint Gambling Saloon.

The Mint Saloon proved to be successful.  In addition to the booze available, Kitty provided gambling, entertainment and women, a combination that the prospectors and other fortune seekers found highly attractive.  I have been unable to find a picture from the Mint, but the interior of another Deadwood saloon probably mirrors much of what went on there.  Note the drinking men, the gambling tables, and above them another kind of entertainment waiting.

Kitty married a fourth time.  This time her husband was a German prospector who had made a rich gold strike.  His money may have helped stoke the Mint’s prosperity. When the prospector’s cash ran out, Kitty acted quickly.  She is reputed to have hit him over the head with a bottle before throwing him out of the house.  Knowing firsthand that Kitty owned seven revolvers, multiple Bowie knives and seldom if ever went unarmed, the German, once warned, wisely disappeared.  Kitty went back to the gambling tables, said at times to have raked in $8,000 in a single turn of the cards.

Sam Bass

Husband No. 4’s retreat apparently allowed Kitty to wed a fifth time.  On June 11, 1877, she married 35-year-old Samuel R. Curley, a Deadwood gambler and card shark. This time she had picked a husband besotted with her and a very jealous man.  Curley learned that Kitty had never divorced one or more of her earlier spouses and heard rumors of her having affairs with Hickok and  the notorious gunman, Sam Bass.  After a stormy confrontation with Kitty, he stormed out of the Mint Saloon and hied 400 miles to Denver.

Later moving to Cheyenne where he dealt faro in a saloon, Curley learned that Kitty had taken a new lover. He swore revenge on the couple and returned in a rage to Deadwood.  Although the lover refused to see him, Kitty agreed to meet Curley in her rooms upstairs at the Lone Star Saloon.  Curley was waiting for her, drew his revolver, and fired once. The bullet killed Kitty instantly.   He then turned the gun on himself.

The Black Hills Daily Times  of December 7, 1877, reported the scene.  Kitty, 27, lay on her back, her eyes closed, looking as if she were asleep.  Curley lay face down, a bullet in his skull and his Smith & Wesson pistol still in his hand.  “Suspended upon the wall, a pretty picture of Kitty, taken when the bloom and vigor of youth gazed down upon the tenements of clay, as if to enable the visitor to contrast a happy past with a most wretched present,” the newspaper reported. “The pool of blood rested upon the floor; blood stains were upon the door and walls…”

After a perfunctory funeral, the pair were buried side by side, husband and wife,  slayer and slain, in the same grave in Deadwood’s Ingleside Cemetery.  Their bodies later were moved to the more upscale Mount Moriah burying ground, shown above. Apparently to discourage curiosity seekers, their graves were left unmarked.  Upon assessment, Kitty’s estate amounted to $650.  Some of it went to pay  expenses and the rest to a previously unmentioned daughter named 

Kitty Donally.  

The editor of the Black Hills Daily had an intense personal interest in the Leroy-Curley doomed marriage.  After an onsite review of the tragedy, he waxed lyrical:  “Whatever may have been the vices and virtues of the ill-starred and ill-mated couple, we trust their spirits may find a happier camping ground than the hills and gulches of the Black Hills, and that tho’ infelicity reigned with them here, happiness may blossom in a fairer climate.” 

Notes:  There is a plethora of information on the Internet about the tumultuous life and untimely death of Kitty Leroy.  This post draws from at least five individual accounts.  Similarly the photos are from multiple online sources.  I have tried to bring together what seem to be the most salient facts about the life and death of this extraordinary woman.