Author name: Jack Sullivan

 

Described as “a gentleman all ablaze with diamonds,” Jeremiah P. “Jerry” Thomas 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.

Thomas was born about 1830 in Sackets Harbor, New York, a town on Lake Ontario, not far from the Canadian border, the son of Jeremiah and Mary Morris Thomas.  Of his early life and education little is known.  At some point in the late 1830s or early 1840s, the family moved to New Haven, Connecticut.  By the age of 16, Thomas had quit school and, according to his obituary in the New York Herald “he began life as a New Haven barkeeper.”  As an apprentice in the craft, his duties would have included polishing the barware and sweeping the floor as he learn the craft of mixing cocktails.

Soon Thomas’ lifelong longed to see a wider world than New Haven.  He was hired on as an apprentice seaman on a ship to Cuba.  From there other maritime adventures beckoned including a wintry trip around Cape Horn to California.  There he jumped ship to join the throngs prospecting for gold.  His success as a miner has gone unrecorded but having been left some money by his father, he was briefly involved as an impresario of minstrel shows in San Francisco before resuming his career in bartending.

Now in his early 20s but still restless, Thomas moved back to the East Coast in 1851 and opened a saloon below P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, shown here. 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 began to display the showmanship as a bartender for which he became famous. He developed elaborate and 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. Thomas also has been credited with inventing the martini.

And he continued to travel.  After closing up his Big Apple establishment, during the next few years Thomas would preside as head bartender at posh hotels in Charleston S.C., Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, and San Francisco.  Those included The Planters House in St. Louis, below left, and the Occidental Hotel in Frisco, where he was paid $100 a week, at the time more than the salary of the U.S. Vice President.  

While in San Francisco, during the onset of the Civil War, Thomas finished his “Bar-Tender’s Guide,” alternatively called “How to Mix Drinks”  and “The Bon-Vivant’s Companion.” Shown here,  it was the first drinks book ever published in the United States.  In it Thomas put into print what heretofore had been an oral tradition of drink recipes as well as instructions on making cocktails of his own devising.  He recruited a good San Francisco artist to provide illustrations.

Thomas updated the guide twice to add drinks or refine existing ones, the last time 14 years later.  That edition included a recipe for the Tom and Jerry, a drink Thomas seemed to claim as his own:

“5 lbs sugar.”

“12 eggs”

“1/2 small glass of Jamaica rum”

“1/2 teaspoon cloves”

“1/2 teaspoon allspice”

 “Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and the yolks until they are thin as water, then mix together and add the spice and rum, thicken with sugar until the mixture attains the consistency of a light batter.”

“To deal out to customers:”

“Take a small bar glass, and to one tablespoonful of the above mixture, add one wine-glass of brandy, and fill the glass with boiling water, and grate a little nutmeg on top.”

“This drink is sometimes called Copenhagen and sometimes “Jerry Thomas.””

Since its publication, the book seemingly never has been out of print.  The covers of copies issued over ensuing years are on display throughout this post, including, shown here, the Guide as issued by Dover Publishing and currently available from Amazon Books.

The story might have ended in San Francisco with Thomas holding forth nightly to mesmerized fans while collecting his big weekly paycheck, but that would be underestimating Jerry.   Instead he was drawn to the boom town of Virginia City, Nevada, where the discovery of the  Comstock Load had spawned some 30,000 gold-hungry adventurers.  Perhaps drawn there by memories of his own early days “moiling for gold,” in 1863 Thomas went to work as bartender at the Delta Saloon.  Mark Twain, working for the local newspaper, commented that Thomas’ presence did much to elevate the tastes and drinking habits of the Comstock.

Before long, Thomas pulled up stakes once again and returned to New York City initially working as the head bartender at the Metropolitan Hotel, shown here.  In 1866 he opened his own drinking establishment in Manhattan, on Broadway between 21st and 22nd streets.  Showing signs of settling down, Thomas married, had two daughters, and aggressively began to collect art.   This did not dim his flashy persona as a bon vivant, wearing kid gloves and sporting a gold  watch.

Always the gambler, in his later years Thomas began playing the stock market but made a series of disastrous investments.  To avoid bankruptcy he was forced to sell his successful saloon and auction off his considerable art collection.  Later recouping financially, Thomas opened another Manhattan bar that failed to be as popular as his previous location.

While still its proprietor, Thomas died of a stroke at his home at 63th Street and 9th Avenue on December 15, 1885.  He was 55.  His death occasioned obituaries around the country, particularly in the many 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. His gravestone is shown here.  

In March 2003, a tribute was held for Jerry Thomas at the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, where bartenders gathered to make many of the cocktails published in his ground-breaking books.  In a lifetime of travel and adventure Thomas had set a standard for his occupation to which many have aspired, but few have approached.

Note:  Although this vignette was derived from multiple sources, much of what we know about Jerry Thomas is derived from the book by David Wonderich entitled,  “Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to Professor” Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar.”

 

Foreword:  Below are brief tales of three liquor dealers, each facing “dry” laws and regulations affecting the profitability of their enterprises.  Each “whiskey man” took drastic steps to avoid the pressures of prohibition with results none of them would have anticipated.  

Faced with a dismal financial future, Herman Eggers in 1912 from his Louisville Kentucky liquor house hatched a scheme to sell his whiskey to customers in Kentucky counties that had adopted local prohibition.  He composed and sent a form letter to doctors and druggists in “dry” localities asking their help.  In the letter Eggers pointed out that for medicinal purposes Kentucky law allowed licensed doctors and druggists to receive whiskey shipments in five gallons or less.  Eggers explained:  “There are a number of people in your neighborhood who would like to receive goods but cannot order within the state as the laws prevent shipments….If you will permit those who order to have goods shipped to you, without expense to you, it will be an accommodation to both of us.”

Eggers assured his potential collaborators that his proposal was within Kentucky law and urged them to write him with the names of friends who might be interested in shipments.  As a reward for their trouble in handling his liquor, cooperating doctors and druggists would be given one free gallon of whiskey for every ten gallons he shipped.  “I do not know if this would be legal,”  Eggers acknowledged.  (It wasn’t.)

Among the physicians who received Eggers’ letter was Dr. Thomas C. Holloway, an eminent gynecologist of Lexington, Kentucky, a town that intermittently had gone dry.   Dr. Holloway was caustic in his response to Eggers:  “As I have no intention of engaging in the whiskey business, I do not see what right you had to presume I would be interested in your bootlegging proposition.”  The outraged physician went further by sending the exchange of letters to the Kentucky Medical Journal, the state’s leading journal for doctors and druggists.  They published it under the headline “Forum” on September 1, 1912.

With Eggers’ scheme exposed, its utility was gone.  Even if tempted initially, the “weaker elements” of the medical fraternity, to use Holloway’s term, likely found themselves walking away from Egger’s proposition once it was widely known to other doctors and likely revealed to law enforcement officials.  Moreover, Eggers had been exposed as someone willing to conspire to evade the law.

It must have seemed like the perfect scheme. With accomplices, Ralph Parilla, a Youngstown, Ohio, a liquor dealer restricted by WWI prohibitionary laws in 1919 planned to remove barrels of whiskey that he owned from a government-guarded warehouse under the pretext of exporting them to Canada.  He first would extract the whiskey, substitute water, and truck the barrels over the border. The whiskey he could bottle and sell. Then things went terribly, terribly awry.  

 At first the scheme seemed to go well.  With the help of two accomplices, Parilla brought the barrels from the warehouse to a farm he owned on the outskirts of Youngstown.  There they syphoned off the whiskey into smaller containers through small holes in the barrels that could be covered and concealed once the water had been substituted.  Then things began to unravel.

The process of transporting the whiskey from the warehouse had raised suspicions and was communicated to Fred Counts, a federal agent for prohibition enforcement.  Counts spent 24 hours gathering evidence and the next day went looking for Parilla, fingered by others as the “mastermind.”  On the farm Counts found the empty barrels, caught up with Parilla, arrested him and took him to jail.  

The gambit proved costly to Parilla who immediately forfeited a $30,000 bond to the Feds. He also was required to post $10,000 personal bond to get out of jail, the sum total equivalent to $1 million today.  On trial in federal court, Parilla and his co-conspirators were found guilty but appealed the decision on technical grounds to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court proved equally unsympathetic and upheld their convictions and fines. 

In September 1920, Harry Sands, a federal agent in charge of enforcing National Prohibition laws, announced that a raid on a Perth Amboy, New Jersey, warehouse had yielded the largest stash of bootleg liquor ever seized by authorities anywhere in America.  Among those arrested was a 46-year-old local liquor dealer, accused of overseeing transport and sale of the illicit booze.  Shown left, he  was Sigmund “Sig” Spitzer.

With co-conspirator Frank Gold, Spitzer formed a warehousing firm owning a large storage facility in Perth Amboy.  Working by night with employees they filled it with cases and barrels of whiskey and other alcohol.  If anyone got too inquisitive they were told the stash was for “medicinal purposes,” since liquor could still be sold with a prescription in drug stores.  Connecting with bootleggers in Trenton, New Jersey, Spitzer and Gold hatched an elaborate scheme to bribe key Prohibition agents to overlook liquor supplies identified by a placard “of a certain type” that would be pasted on barrels and cases.  The Feds were on to the game, however, and watching the warehouse closely, one step ahead of the bootleggers.

On September 20, 1920, Spitzer, overseeing activities in Gold’s warehouse, supervised as 250 cases and 25 barrels of whiskey were loaded on a truck and dispatched to Trenton.  Confederates were waiting there to take the liquor to a shadowy purchaser in Philadelphia, a man known only as Mr. Bond.  Bond, as it was soon discovered, was Harry Sands, the top Prohibition enforcement agent on the East Coast.  In Philadelphia the Trenton bootleggers were promptly arrested.

At the same time federal agents swooped down on the Perth Amboy warehouse where they confiscated an additional 962 cases and 118 barrels, amounting to 10,756 gallons of whiskey worth an estimated $162,150, equivalent to more than$2 million today.  It was the biggest bust of a bootlegging scheme in the country, according to Sands.  Spitzer, identified as secretary-treasurer of the warehouse company, was arrested with Gold and others and held on $5,000 bond.  The record does not disclose the ultimate disposition but I assume Spitzer and his colleagues went to jail.

*****

Oldtimers will remember “The Shadow” radio drama and his intonation of the same mantra each episode: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.  Crime does not pay.”  That was a lesson Eggers, Parilla and Spitzer learned the hard way.

Note:  More complete posts on each of these “whiskey men” may be found elsewhere on this website:  Herman Eggers, October 20, 2018; Ralph Parilla, May 26, 2016; and Sig Spitzer, October 24, 2020.

 When I began this blog in April 2011, little did it occur to me that in just over a decade the number of entries would reach the 1,000 mark.  My research on whiskey had convinced me that the American liquor trade prior to National Prohibition in 1920 was virtually unexplored territory.  I decided that a blog devoted to the stories of the men (and a few pioneering women) working as distillers, whiskey dealers, saloonkeepers, bartenders, etc., were needed to shed light on almost forgotten segment of American history.

It is extremely gratifying that so many people have agreed.  Since its inception this website as has attracted more than 1,333,000 “hits” from all over the world.  Some 2,570 respondents have contributed comments.  Those messages include observations from descendants, inquiries about whiskey artifacts and values, and factual corrections.  I attempt to answer each communication and make changes as needed.  The blog also has attracted 376 “followers.”  Those are individuals who receive immediate notification when a new item is posted.  I am extremely grateful to them for their loyalty.

Five Posts of Uncommon Interest

In looking back at the 999 posts that have gone before, several stand out.  A highly important “whiskey man,” Judge W. H. McBrayer, was an early profile on October 2, 2011.  Over the years, this very early post has attracted 5,556 “hits.”  More important, McBrayer’s story led me to do posts on his son-in-law, his “master” distiller and his liquor broker — all stories worth telling.

The idea of Brigham Young, a leader of the Mormon people, as a “whiskey man” seemed farfetched until my research found that Young for at least three years was in charge of all liquor sales in Utah.  The story also involved commentaries from Mark Twain and Sir Richard Burton.  Since running on August 18, 2016, that post has attracted some 10,874 views.

The name Len Motlow is a familiar name to many whiskey aficionados because as a relative of Jack Daniels he inherited the distillery and help build it to the international brand it is today.  Few people, however, know that Motlow once was arrested for murdering a railroad conductor.  He escaped punishment by playing “a race card” at his trial because the only witness was a black porter.  That story, running on March 26, 2019, has attracted 3,981 hits.

Christopher Hilbert

It is unusual when an existing post attracts more than a dozen or so watchers in a single day.  Thus it was with astonishment this past August that an entry of January 17, 2022, recorded 2,444 views in one day.  The subject was the Hilbert Brothers, two liquor dealers in San Francisco.  They were beneficiaries of a criminal enterprise by local politicians to extort money from saloonkeepers and dealers, a scam that made national headlines when exposed.  The sheer number of viewings in a single day suggests that other websites were tapping into the post but I have yet to find them.

That mystery brings me to the unfathomable question of the apparent popularity of my post on Otto Wagner’s liquor business in Tiffin, Ohio, that ran on December 6, 2013. It was devoted to the extraordinary variety of designs for the whiskey jugs issued by Wagner, shown here.  To date the post has garnered 21,688 look-ins, far and away the highest response of the other 998.  Even if every man, woman and child in Tiffin tapped into the story, the number would be 5,000 fewer than the “hits” actually recorded.  My efforts to unravel this mystery have been unavailing. 

Some Reflections at 1,000

Looking back on the many stories that have been told on this website about “whiskey men” of the pre-National Prohibition era, a few conclusions  become evident:

1. The prevalence of immigrants.  Although I have not made a count, my instinct is that more than half of the people featured on this blog were either immigrants to the United States or the children of immigrants.  The liquor trade, unlike other occupations, was not exclusionary about those within its ranks.

2.  Religion was important.  Roman Catholics and Jews dominated the numbers making and selling alcohol, along with some Episcopalians and Lutherans.None of those religious groups officially banned alcohol use.  Many in the liquor trade were generous to their church or synagogue.

3.  Contributions to their communities. In instance after instance, the contributions both in money and time made by whiskey men to civic betterment, public welfare, and general education were hugely important to the developmentof their cities, towns, counties and states.  Often their obituaries omitted that their financial resources had come from liquor profits.

4.  The role of women.  Virtually all the women profiled on this blog inherited their whiskey businesses from husbands who often pre-deceased them by many years.  Some widows ignored strong pressure to sell out.  Many women guided their enterprises to levels of success beyond the legacy of their late spouses.

5.  Legal strategies to avoid prohibition.  The pre-1920 liquor trade proved to be creative in finding ways to avoid the prohibitionary laws and regulations that  were being enacted almost daily somewhere in America through “local option” or statewide auspices.  Strategies like mail order sales, “whiskey trains,” and relocation from “dry” areas to “wet” kept many a distillery and liquor dealer afloat for years.

6.  Illegal strategies after National Prohibition.  With passage of the Volstead Act virtually all the remaining distilleries and liquor firms simply shut down.  A few, however, decided to cheat.  Almost all those “amateur” attempts failed as alert Federal authorities swooped down.  Successful bootlegging subsequently was the province of organized crime.

7.  Post-prohibition occupations.  After the liquor trade was closed to them many practitioners were still young enough to want second careers and had the assets to make it happen. Because the automotive age was just beginning many gravitated there, selling cars, car parts, or garage services.  Others went into real estate and banking.   A few chose farming.

Going Forward

At 87 years old I recognize that my ability to take this website through another decade is an unlikely prospect.  I am also faced with the reality that finding new good stories is becoming more and more difficult.  For every whiskey man I choose to write about, my research effort rejects six or seven that do not meet my criteria for reader interest.  That said, I will continue as long as possible to post every four days.  Should a paucity of subjects occur, I will lengthen the time between posts and move on.

 

Whiskey historian Michael Veach recounts a story reported first in the Wine & Spirits Bulletin of August 1, 1901, that described an alleged incident from a Lincoln-Douglas debate:  “Douglas said that he had met Mr. Lincoln before at his tavern. Lincoln replies that he does indeed remember the incident and that “It is true that the first time I saw Judge Douglas I was selling whiskey by the drink. I was on the inside of the bar and the Judge was on the outside. I was busy selling, he was busy buying.”   

Although I am skeptical about the authenticity of the exchange, certain facts seem clear.  Lincoln with a friend named William Berry opened a store in the New Salem village, a community long abandoned that has been recreated as a historical site commemorating Lincoln.  Among the recreated buildings is the Lincoln-Berry store, described as selling “dry goods.”

An account reporting that the store also was selling liquor surfaced in an 1899 biography, “Abraham Lincoln:  The Man of the People” by Norman Hapgood.  An unfounded claim by an alleged former employer, it reads:  “I [Daniel Green Burner] clerked in the [Barry-Lincoln] store through the winter of 1833-34 up to the 1st of March. While I was there they had nothing for sale but liquors. They may have had some groceries before that, but I am certain they had none then. I used to sell whiskey over their counter at 6¢ a glass—and charged it too.”   Despite Burner’s claim being unsupported, it frequently has been reprinted.

Burner’s account also appears on a widely distributed “broadside.” shown here, that contains a reproduction of “Abraham Lincoln’s Liquor License and Bond.” That document describes the issuance on 6 March 1833 to Lincoln and Berry of a one year license to keep a tavern in the Town of New Salem, attested to by Charles E. Oppel, clerk of Sangamon County, Illinois, and dated April 25, 1908. 

In an atmosphere of using any weapon at hand to combat the rising tide of prohibitionary sentiments in America, the purported “Lincoln license” was given wide distribution.  Clarke Distilling of Peoria took a full page ad in newspapers nationwide to publicize the document.  It added a picture of Lincoln and purported to show the interior of the “tavern,” below, despite the actual building having disappeared

Experts do not believe the document is authentic.  Writing for the Digital Records Library of Illinois History, Dr. Neil Gale, after consulting with other Lincoln historians and weighing the evidence concludes:  “…We are inclined to look upon this whole tavern license transaction as it is now so widely publicized as a forgery.”

Dr. Gale quotes extensively from Lincoln’s remarks in the first debate with Douglas:   “When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him—at least, I find it so with myself; but when the misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him….The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a ‘grocery keeper.’ I don’t know as it would be a great sin, if I had been, but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.”

Lincoln followed up this remark in his speech at Charleston, Illinois, during the debate on September 18, 1858, by giving the definition of a forgery:  “What is a forgery? It is the bringing forward something in writing or in print purporting to be of certain effect when it is altogether untrue.”

Nothing of this controversy deterred the Nation’s pre-Prohibition liquor dealers from selling whiskey by using Lincoln face and name.  Baltimore’s Dumbarton Liquor Company featured its “Old Honest Abe” brands of rye and bourbon.  Herman Toser whose Milwaukee liquor dealership lasted 47 years featured a label entitled “Old Abe.”  In more recent times, McCormick whiskey created a figural flask of a young Lincoln.  Up to the moment is a line of Lincoln bourbon, rye, and amber whiskeys being issued by the Boundary Oak Distillery of Hardin County, Kentucky.   Shown here is a special memorial whiskey that recently sold to a Lincoln descendant at a charity auction for $25,550.

Notes:  This post was derived from a range of sources, of which the principal ones were the aforementioned article by Dr. Neil Gale and an online article by Amy Williams entitled “What Would Abe Lincoln Drink?”

 

When Thomas M. Morrissey died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1943, the local press provided him with a laudatory obituary that cited his contributions to civic advancement as well as his important local business interests, Mississippi River boats, and prize-winning cattle ranch.  Nowhere was it mentioned that Morrissey got his start by selling liquor. 

Shown here in maturity, Tom Morrissey was born in September 1874 in Killmacomma, Waterford County , Ireland, the son of Timothy and Mary Fitzgerald Morrissey.  According to family members, when his mother died and his father was unable to raise the children, Tom was sent to the United States to live with an uncle in Vicksburg, apparently a saloonkeeper.  Tom was given an elementary education at Saint Aloysius School run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.  Relations with his uncle were not easy, however, and the youngster quit school, leaving Vicksburg to do farm labor in Kansas.  

Indicating his entrepreneurial bent,  Morrissey returned to Vicksburg in 1895 and at the age of 21 went into business for himself.  Although his obituary failed anywhere to mention his beginnings in the liquor trade, indications are that he opened a drinking establishment at 355 Levee Street, overlooking the Mississippi.  The photo below shows the Vicksburg waterfront as it looked in the early 1900s. The T.M. Morrissey Saloon can be seen just above the steamboat at right.

Despite his youth, Morrissey apparently was an early success as a saloonkeeper.  Like his competition, he was generous with his bar tokens.  At right is a metal disc worth five cents toward a drink.  Below are highly unusual tokens made of wood.  Also worth five cents, Morrissey may have been playing a riff on taking “wooden nickels.”

By 1906, Morrissey’s success was such that he opened a second location at 124 Levee Street, one he listed as a restaurant.  He was advertising heavily in the Vicksburg city directory, featuring multiple vertical page ads that that advertised “T.M. Morrissey:  Dealer in Wines, Liquors, Cigars & Tobacco.”  He also was an agent for F.W. Cook, a brewing company in Evansville, Indiana.

As many saloonkeepers of his time, Morrissey soon recognized that selling whiskey in two gallon jugs was less labor intensive and more lucrative than hustling liquor drink by drink over the bar.  There is no evidence that he was a “rectifier,” that is, blending and labeling his own brands of liquor.  My guess is that Morrissey was buying whiskey by the barrel from Midwest distillers, shipping them to Vicksburg via the Mississippi River, decanting them directly into jugs with his name on them, and selling them to the public and other local saloons.  Shown here are examples of his containers.

As he was building his business, Tom also was having a personal life. in November, 1899, at the age of 25 he married Josephine “Josie” Romano, born in Salerno Italy, the daughter of Andrea and Angelina Romano.  The  beautiful woman shown right, Josie was only 15 at the time of their nuptials, ten years younger than Tom.  Perhaps as a present to her family, Morrissey built a third saloon on Levee Street, in the 1200 block.  Called the Steamboat Exchange Saloon, in 1907 its operation was given to Josie’s brother, Sam Romano.

Neither Romano or Morrissey would be in the Vicksburg saloon trade much longer.  For years prohibitionary forces had been growing stronger in Mississippi and in 1908 culminated in a statewide ban on making or selling alcohol.  This ban was 12 years before National Prohibition.  Unlike his fellow publicans, Morrissey is not on record commenting on the situation.  He was busy calculating a new strategy, one that would launch him onto the Mississippi River.

Morrissey rented docking space on the Louisiana side of the Yazoo Canal, a channel that served as a border between states.  He opened a floating bar and, as per the ad shown here, would go to the Mississippi side to pick up and return customers.  So successful was this enterprise that Morrissey soon expanded by introducing gambling, a restaurant and entertainment.  As his grandson, Jesse F. Jones III noted in 1943:  “He literally had a monopoly on the sale of whiskey to the thirst citizens of Vicksburg and surrounding towns. He prospered, purchased the Louisiana property known as Desoto Island…and when a bridge was built across the Mississippi at Vicksburg he bought all of the land on the Louisiana side of the bridge thereby assuring himself of a continued monopoly on whiskey sales to Mississippi.”  

Vickburg local artisan Victor Bobb observed:  “One time Old Man Morrissey, he put him a boat (The Charles J. Miller, shown here) down there….He was right on the line between the two states.   The Louisiana people would get after him, and he’d just move the width of the boat over to the Mississippi side of the line.  And the Mississippi people would get after him then and he would move over just the width of the boat again!  They claim they spent half a million dollars trying to figure out if he was in Louisiana or Mississippi.”

Morrissey’s vessels became part of a fleet of steamboats plying the Big River from New Orleans to Memphis.  Among them were The Ben Hur, The J. H. Menge, The S.B. Duncan, The Falls City, and The Rosalie M.   Morrissey’s flagship was the Belle of the Bend.  Shown below, that steamer once brought President Theodore Roosevelt to Vicksburg for the hunt that gave the world the Teddy Bear.  During the flood of 1913 Morrissey’s boats did rescue work bringing many families and their possessions out of the high water areas.  Up and down the river he bore the honorary title of Commodore but he was better known by the populace as “Captain Tom.”

As his shipping enterprise grew, Morrissey, perhaps also reflecting his youth in Kansas, invested in farm land.  His Eagle Lake plantation was 6,700 acres of good bottom land located beside an 18 mile lake that had been a bend in the Mississippi River until it changed its course.  There he raised prize cattle, said to be “one of his prides.”  Four other plantations were devoted solely to cotton.  He took personal control of those farms, often leaving for them at dawn and returning at nightfall.  It is said that he always carried a pistol with him in the car.  

Morrissey’s obituary emphasized his attention to family:  “He was a devoted husband and a loving father and enjoyed home life.” Shown here, the Morrissey home was a large rambling structure built by slaves in 1831 as one story and gradually expanded over several owners to the house shown here.  Originally designed in a Greek Revival Style, the house later was remodeled with Italianate features. For all of Morrisey’s success, his and Josephine’s personal lives had been marked by all too frequent sorrow.  Their marriage produced ten children over a period of 26 years, one son, Michael, and nine daughters.   Of those, three girls died in infancy: Mary at two in 1905;  Alice, within a year, in 1922;  and Antoinette, within a year, in 1926.

In later years, Morrissey stayed closer to Vicksburg with his enterprises.  The 1935 Vicksburg city directory provided insights into his multi-faceted activities.  At 60 years old “Captain Tom” was listed as the president of a wholesale beverages company;  president of the Morrissey Line, a river freight service;  general manager of Morrissey Storage Garage, Inc., and vice president of Morrissey Construction Co., headed by his son, Michael.  To this litany, his obituary added “real estate and banking interests.”

Widely recognized as an economic and, according to family members, political force in Vicksburg, Morrissey continued to direct the fortunes of his business empire until his death at 68.  After what was described as “a short illness,”  he died at home on Sunday, March 28, 1943.   He was extolled in the local press:  “He was a loyal friend and his word was his bond. He was most happy when aiding and assisting others along life’s roadway.Through his kindness and generosity many have benefited.”

While giving the family time to assemble for his funeral, Morrissey’s wake at the family home lasted three days.  Jesse Jones described the scene: “What was particularly noteworthy was the day the Blacks attended his wake. This was the segregated South and they all came on one day. I remember looking out the window upstairs in the Big House and seeing them in their best dress coming to say good bye to Captain Tom. My sister Nina has the registry that they signed. Since many were illiterate there are lots of X’s in the book. There are also lots of nicknames that he had given them over the years, Son Ab, Dusty, Shortstuff, Little Bit, Peter Rabbit, etc.”

The funeral for Captain Tom is said to have been one of the largest in Vicksburg’s history.  There were 46 honorary pallbearers, a number that included U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo and Vicksburg Mayor J.C. Hamillton.  Following a solemn procession from the Morrissey home to St. Paul’s Catholic Church, a Requiem Mass was offered.  Interment was at Cedar Hill Cemetery.  Josephine would join him there 23 years later.  The Morrissey monument and graves are shown below.

A cast-off pre-teen Irish boy, sent to live with an unwelcoming relative in a strange Southern city in the aftermath of the Civil War, Tom Morrissey blossomed in that environment and died a self-made millionaire.  Although ignored in his obituaries, for a quarter century until National Prohibition arrived in 1920, Captain Tom ran saloons and sold liquor; his business empire was built on alcohol.

Addendum:  Not long after this vignette was posted the article that follows became available.  Dated July 29, 1803,  it makes clear some of the reasons Morrissey was so popular in the black community.  It describes how he traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to provide an alibi and free a black man scheduled to be hanged the next day for a murder he did not commit.

Note:  This post would not have been possible without the instigation and assistance of Kelly Stevens, the great granddaughter of Tom Morrissey.  She provided information and the majority of the images.  Other prime sources were the Morrissey obituary in the Vicksburg newspaper of March 29, 1943 and a memorial article by grandson Jesse Jones III in the Waterways Journal of April 10, 1943.  The extended comment on Captain Tom’s floating saloon is from the book, “Local Color:  A Sense of Place in Folk Art” by William Ferris, Anchor Books, 1982.  

 

 Foreword:  During the Nineteenth Century, the “old log cabin” became an icon of the genuine in America. Candidates for political office were quick to claim that they were born and raised in one.  Log cabins engendered great nostalgia for the simple virtues of the Nation’s rustic pioneer past, including neighborliness and fair dealing. The liquor trade seized upon the dwelling in its advertising.  After a quick look I have counted at least 16 different pre-Prohibition whiskey brands that referenced a log cabin.  Here are examples of five.

In a real sense, the desire of American politicians to be associated with a log cabin began with the Presidential campaign of 1840 when Gen. William Henry Harrison advertised his successful candidacy (but short-lived presidency) by the use of a log cabin as his symbol.  Actually born in a Virginia plantation mansion, Harrison later lived in a log cabin in Indiana during a failed effort as a farmer. 

The log cabin shape was derived from a supposed quote by Harrison he would “rather sit on his front porch sipping whiskey than run for President.”  His opponents used the comment to slur him. As the story goes, Harrison turned the tables and offered free bottles of whiskey in the shape of a log cabin to the electorate.  Shown below the bottles, now very rare, were made in two styles by the Mount Vernon Glass Works of New York.  

The bottle at left is blown in the shape of a cabin with a four-sided “hip roof.”  The front has the legend “Tippecanoe,” an allusion to Gen. Harrison’s success at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe against a Native American confederacy, a victory that in effect open much of the Midwest to settlers. The other side of the bottle reads “North Bend,” Harrison’s southern Ohio home not far from Cincinnati.  Later Edmund Booz, a Philadelphia distiller,  would issue a series of log cabin shaped bottles, shown below.  They often are mistaken for the originals.

After working for others in the liquor industry, Dan Russell, shown here, had the foresight to see that the Old Times Distillery, located on Louisville’s West Broadway would be an excellent vehicle to advance his desire to be among the Kentucky “bourbon barons.”  Founded in 1869, that distillery had been brought into national prominence during the 1890s. Russell was able to buy a controlling interest and become president of the distillery.

Seeing the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago as an excellent opportunity for publicity the distillery owners built a small working log cabin distillery in the heart of the fairground “between the cliff dwellers exhibit and the educational buildings.”  Shown below in a replica die-cut trade card the structure closely identified the whiskey with the rustic log structures of the rapidly expanding Nation.  The exhibit was a great success, the whiskey won a gold medal, and “Old Times” whiskey was launched as a national brand.

Billy Winter in Portland, Oregon, took the theme one step further.  He emerged about the turn of the century as the founder and genial proprietor of a watering hole known as “Billy Winter’s Log Cabin.”  a saloon and liquor house located on Third Street near Morrison in downtown Portland, a building crafted inside and out to resemble a log cabin.  

The trade card here appears to show the sales room portion of the saloon.  It has a definite rustic frontier look.  Two gentlemen appear to be filling containers from an array of about ten large barrels lining one wall.   Each barrel has a number of whiskey bottles around it for a ready sale.  Hanging from one wall is the stuffed head of a deer. Guns and other artifacts are scattered about. 

A similarly cluttered look identifies Billy’s bar on a second trade card where the owner is shown standing.  Whiskey bottles, American flags and trophy heads dominate the wooden walls, reenforcing the log cabin theme.  His flagship brand of whiskey was “The Log Cabin.”  Shown below is a clear glass pumpkinseed flask embossed with his name and the outline of a log cabin.  Given the expense of creating this container for his whiskey, Winter clearly anticipated significant sales.

Distilling was in Arthur Philip Stitzel’s blood. His father, Philip Stitzel, immigrated in 1857 to the United States with his father and two brothers Frederick and Jacob. The Stitzel family eventually settled in Louisville where the three brothers produced bourbon.

The Stitzel brothers experimented with using wheat in place of rye in a typical bourbon recipe. Typically bourbons are made with corn, rye and barley. The change in grains was not widely done at this time, so the distillery never released a commercial version of this recipe. Instead the knowledge was passed on to Arthur when he eventually opened his distillery.

This Stitzel’s flagship whiskey was “Old Cabin Still” whiskey.  As shown here, brand featured a log cabin cabin prominently in the label, the box, and advertising.  A. Philip later would join with members of the notable Weller Kentucky distilling family to create the famous Stitzel-Weller distillery, shown above,  that survived National Prohibition and brought Julius “Pappy” Van Winkle to the fore.

After five years of operating his Louisville liquor house, a restless John Roach sold the business and began to build and operate distilleries.  Roach’s second plant was the Old Log Cabin Distillery, named for the proprietary brand of whiskey produced there.  Located on Louisville’s  waterfront, this facility included a three story still house with the capacity of mashing 600 bushels a day, two bonded warehouse that held 20,000 barrels, offices and a residence for the manager.

   The warehouses drew particular praise from an observer:  “Here are to be seen two of the finest and bonded warehouses  to be found in the state…supplied with all modern improvements in construction, patent ricks…forming a well-ventilated pyramid of barrels….It is one of the dryest and best ventilated warehouses in the district.”

Briefly profiling just five examples of American distillers and liquor dealers using the log cabin image to sell whiskey just scratches the surface of the phenomenon.  As noted earlier, just a random look identified 16.  More remain to be catalogued .  What began as a campaign device in a 1840 Presidential campaign became a symbol of American authenticity that for 80 years marvelously served to sell whiskey.

Notes:  Thanks to Ferd Myers for the images of the original “Tippecanoe” whiskey bottles that, in a sense, set off an entire phenomenon.  Longer vignettes on the whiskey men mentioned here may be  found elsewhere on this website:   Edmund Booz, July 27, 2015;  Dan Russell, August 14, 2016;  Billy Winter, June 15, 2015; The Stitzels, September 22, 2021, and John Roach,  February 18, 2022.

Alexander Fries’ story is marked by incongruities.  Respected worldwide as an eminent Bavarian scientist, Fries, shown here, in 1883 was hailed into a  New York court for violating a liquor trademark and later subject of a Congressional investigation into fraudulent whiskey.  Declared a Knight of the Grand Cross, a Spanish order that carried benefits bestowed by the Roman Catholic Pope, Fries was Jewish.   A lifelong bachelor deeply devoted to his siblings and their offspring, Fries could not prevent family conflict over his legacy.

Fries was born in 1821 in Furth, Bavaria, into a family of

 scholars.   His father, Moritz Fries, shown here, was a celebrated mathematician and professor who saw that Alexander, who showed early signs of unusual intelligence, received a good education.  The youth attended lectures at the University of Erlangen and earned a reputation for his genius in chemistry, as well as his ability as a linguist.

After an early career working and studying in France, Fries’ ability caught the notice of Spanish authorities who offered him the opportunity to bring his intellect to bear on an agricultural development a large area of the country adjacent to the Sierra Morenas mountains.  His assignment there encompassed 12 years and was widely hailed as “a crowning work.”

As a result, King Carlos III of Spain bestowed on the German scientist an award he had created in gratitude to the Virgin Mary for giving him a male heir.  Called the Order of the Knighthood  of the Grand Cross, recipients were limited to sixty.  Pope Clement XIV recognized the order in a papal proclamation and bestowed religious benefices on its recipients.   The sectarian nature of the award, seen here, completely ignored the fact that Fries was Jewish.

During this period other members of the Fries family had emigrated to the United State settling in Cincinnati, a city with a large German population.  Alexander joined them there in 1855, working with Lemuel Springer, the husband of his sister, Antoine, on an ill-fated effort to make a cheap oil for lamps from bituminous slate and mineral wax.  When that failed, Fries turned his genius to the creation of supplying flavorings to the food and whiskey industries, both important in Cincinnati.

Employing two brothers, Gustave and Charles, Fries started a small factory on Avery Alley between Mill and Stone Streets.  As business volume swelled he quickly outgrew those quarters and built a multi-story building at East Second Street.  He called the company Alex. Fries & Brothers.   The demand for flavoring oils, a relatively new product, proved to be huge.  In time the business Fries founded would become three separate flavor companies, two of which are still extant, part of a $6 billion dollar American industry.  

Perhaps the most problematic area of flavorings for Fries were those aimed at the whiskey and the allied bitters markets.  The U.S. boasted thousands of federally licensed “rectifiers,” allowed to blend whiskeys to achieve desired color, aroma, smoothness and taste.  Rectifiers, often liquor wholesalers, also were allowed to add “neutral spirits,” that is, plain grain alcohol to the mix.  Considerably less expensive to create than distilled and aged whiskey, it made for cheaper booze.  With the proper flavorings, in fact, no distilling at all was required.  

The Fries organization was ready to oblige. For example by 1893 its catalogue listed seven varieties of flavors for bourbon: Essence No. E, Essence No. 2, Cynthiana, Harrison County, Kentucky, Paris, and Sour Mash. The same catalogue similarly listed rye flavorings including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Monongahela, and Robertson County.  Fries vigorously advertised his “award winning” liquor flavors.

Bitters, the highly alcoholic herbal beverage often sold as a tonic or remedy, also could be flavor fabricated.  As shown by the bottles above, Fries marketed his own brand of stomach bitters.  The company also was selling essences, oils and extracts that combined to produce, it was claimed,  “a good imitation of various well-known brands of bitters.”  Perhaps the best known national brand was Hofstetters Stomach Bitters, made in Pittsburgh.  Well aware of the effect such products might have on company profits, the Hofstetters hauled Fries into Federal District Court for Southern New York.

Hofstetter’s motion for a preliminary injunction described potential injury:  “They sell…to compounders and jobbers with instructions…of compounding the bitters and selling them as the genuine article.”  The compounders, the brief contended, sold the bitters to retail dealers who bought second-hand bottles with Hofstetter labels, filled them with Fries essences and “palm them off upon the public as genuine bitters….”  The judge disagreed with issuing an injunction noting that Fries not only had the right to make and sell the extract but also had “the legal right to make and sell a preparation which they call Hostetter’s Bitters” so long as they were not using that company’s bottles or labels. 

Others, however, were not convinced that a concoction made with pure alcohol and flavorings was genuine bitters or whiskey.  When the House Committee on the Judiciary conducted an 1893 Congressional investigation into the Whiskey Trust, the issue of non-distillery-made liquor was raised. The Fries Company flavorings came under particular scrutiny.  Although some congressmen and witnesses expressed skepticism about their legitimacy, no action was taken. 

Although Alexander Fries never married, he was very close to his family.  The 1870 census found him at 45 years old living in Cincinnati as the head of a household that included his father, Moritz, 79; brother Gustave; a sister, Ada Springer, keeping house;  Ada’s three sons and a daughter, and two female domestic servants from Germany.  Albert’s profession was given as “chemist” as were three other family members, indicating that they all were working at the Fries manufactory.

So long as Alex lived, Fries family cohesion was maintained and the Cincinnati flavors  business flourished.   With his death in 1907, unity fractured.  Alex. Fries & Brother Chemical Works came under the management of Gustave Fries, shown below left,  and Alex’s nephew,  Dr. Alfred Springer, right.

Although Alex’s brother Charles had been responsible for opening New York offices for the company, his sons, Harold and Albert Fries, broke from their uncle’s company to create their own flavoring firm, one they called Fries & Fries.  A series of court battles ensued between the two entities over patent rights.

Moreover, In 1900, after the death of  Gustave, his children, Robert, George, and Eugene, sold their father’s interest in Alex Fries and Brothers, and opened their own business in January of 1915. This company sold flavors to the cigarette industry, including a licorice essence,  Today two Cincinnati companies operate flavoring businesses that can be traced back to Alexander Fries’ original venture.

Note:  Brought to the story of Alex Fries by an article in the Ohio Swirl based on an earlier piece by Dan Woeller, my further research revealed a immigrant Bavarian genius deserving of being called  a “whiskey man.”  This post is the result.

 

 

  

In 1852 Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry was assigned a mission by President Millard Fillmore to force the opening of Japanese ports to American trade, through the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary.  Perry, shown here as he was depicted by Japanese artists, led a squadron of ships to the Far East shores but early had decided that gifts, not gunfire, was a better approach.  What better “ice-breaker” than whiskey?  Fast forward to 2022 when Japan and American rye would ignite a controversy involving American whiskey historians and spreading as far as Australia.

Perry’s flotilla apparently carried ample supplies of booze. It was still the era when each of his sailors was issued a pint of spirits a day. (Non-drinkers were compensated with pennies.)  His first stop was Ryukuy (Okinawa), still a separate kingdom but claimed by Japan.  Welcomed there, Perry and his officers were treated to a feast complete with sake, the rice wine.  Reciprocating, the Commodore broke out a keg of American rye. Thus it was noted in Perry’s expedition record:  “The first person to drink whiskey in Japan” is a high official of the Ryukyu Kingdom.”

Pressing on to the Japanese isles Perry landed near the capital at Edo in 1854.  He had brought gifts for the Emperor, meant to emphasize American technical skills.   Among them was a barrel of rye whiskey likely holding 32-40 gallons There seems to be no record of where or how it was presented.  Note the print below.  In the lower left hand of the picture is a barrel that may have held whiskey.  The caption reads “Delivering of American presents at Yokuhama.” In addition, Perry is recorded giving an additional 100 gallons to members of the Japanese High Commission led by Prince Hayashi.  The Commodore’s diplomatic visit ended with an agreement called the Convention of Kanagawa that opened two Japanese ports to American trade.

Fast forward to current times.  In his 2013 book “Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage”  author Michael Veach made this claim:  “The first legal challenge to the rectifiers came not from American distillers but from the government of Japan, which in 1869 objected to the practice of imported rectified whiskey being advertised as straight whiskey. This case ultimately came before the Ohio Circuit Court, the presiding judge, Alphonso Taft (the father of William Howard Taft), ruling that a product containing neutral spirits could not be called whiskey. While the decision did nothing to change the U.S. law—the rectifiers continued to do business as usual—it did set a legal precedent that would influence the regulation of whiskey under the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.”   A similar account can be found in Fred Minnick’s 2016 book: “Bourbon The Rise, Fall, And Rebirth Of An American Whiskey.”   Neither author provided documentation for the account.

The story of the alleged Japanese legal challenge might have ended there if Greg Miller, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, had not become interested in the matter and sought information on the decision Veach and Minnick claimed had been rendered by Cincinnati Judge Taft, later to become U.S. Attorney General.  Miller was in touch with Jason Alexander, a division manager for the the Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Clerk of Courts where the Japanese suit presumably was filed.  Meanwhile in Australia, Chris Middleton, an Australian liquor specialist, sought information for his column entitled “Whiskey Wash.” 

Alexander, clearly fascinated with the case, reached out to others from whom he thought assistance might come.  When he contacted me, I was flattered and while having no notion of the “Japanese suit” knew of a Cincinnati liquor dealer of that period who had created an international incident involving the U.S. Secretary of State by being accused, probably correctly, of adulterating whiskey he shipped to Bermuda.  His name was Andrew Pfirrmann and he was in the liquor trade by 1866 so the timing was right for pointing a finger his way.  But there was no real evidence.

Other elements of the story, however, puzzled me.  The supposed suit had been launched only 15 years after Perry’s visit to Japan.  Because Japan was still largely closed to Western trade at that time it was difficult to believe that any substantial quantity of American whiskey had been imported during that period.  Furthermore, testing whiskey to determine if it has been adulterated, including addition of water, requires an alcoholmeter, used to determine the volume of alcohol known as “proof.”  Shown below, the instrument is calibrated to the density of pure ethanol and is used on distilled spirits.  Although invented by a Frenchman in the mid-1800s, it is unlikely that the device would have been in use in Japan as early as 1869.

In a three and one-half page memorandum written for the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts,  Jason Alexander cites similar skeptical views he received from other parties.  His conclusion:  “Thus, we believe, unless new evidence comes to light, that this case never existed.”   The memorandum cites the fact that outside of the authors mentioned above, nothing else has been located to corroborate anything that pertains to a Japanese lawsuit over whiskey.  “We believe that it is entirely within the realm of possibility that this alleged case was confused with Attorney General Taft’s opinion issued in 1876 since it was connected to the definition of whiskey or alcohol.”  My conclusion:  A case — one that never really existed —  has been closed.

As a postscript it is worth noting that today Japanese whiskey is sold worldwide and Suntory now owns Jim Beam.  May we credit Commodore Perry and his gift of whiskey for generating this $6 billion dollar Japanese industry as the Huffington Post did several years ago?  Probably not.  Although given a taste of American rye by Perry, the Japanese from the beginning have preferred Scotch as a model for their whiskey.

Note:  Thanks to Jason Alexander for including me among those consulted.  The case opened up a fascinating area of exploration, one that allows me to include Commodore Perry among my identified “whiskey men.”  For further information on Andrew Pfirrmann and a seemingly valid international case of whiskey adulteration, see my post of December 7, 2011.

  

 

 

The label for “Davy Crockett Pure Old Bourbon” shows a hatted gentleman handing a bottle of whiskey to a man with a rifle and coonskin cap that we may assume is Davy.  My fantasy is that the other figure is that of Peter Edwin “Ed” Payne, a distillery employee of the M.V. Monarch Company in Owensboro, Kentucky, who was given the unique privilege of marketing his own brand of bourbon through a liquor house in San Francisco.

So unusual was this arrangement that almost all commentators have assumed that Payne had married into the Monarch family, brothers whose liquor empire was one of Kentucky’s most formidable.  Not so says Aileen Blomgren, Payne’s great-great granddaughter.  Rather, Payne’s wife, Mary Ellen “Mollie” O’Bryan had two sisters and a brother who married Monarchs.  Payne’s rise to prominence was not the result of direct family connections.

He was born in February 1848 in Meade County, Kentucky, the son of Jane Frances and William Meredith “Meady” Payne, a reasonably prosperous farmer. Both parents were born in Kentucky of Irish parentage.  Payne’s boyhood was marked by the deaths of three brothers:  Robert, 16, when Edwin was 8;  Stephen, 1, when he was 9; and Lawrence, 7, when he was 11.  His father died in 1864 when Edwin was 16 and his mother passed two years later.  Following the death of both parents, Payne was sent to work on a farm near Owensboro.  That occupation ended after one season when he was called to the city to tend bar for an uncle, Robert O’Bryan.  

In the Spring of 1869, having learned something of the liquor business, Payne entered the employ of M.V. Monarch.   According to the 1880 census, he began his career as bookkeeper, a highly important post in any distillery since faulty accounting could bring the wrath of federal officials and stiff fines.  Later in that decade he would be raised to vice president of the company, second only to M.V. Monarch in the management structure.  By 1893, the Monarch Distillery, shown above, was considered one of the largest producers of sour mash whiskey in America.

Payne’s activities appear to have extended beyond management and sales to the art of making whiskey itself, an individual designated as a “master distiller.”  In a highly unusual arrangement, Monarch allowed his employee to create his own brand of whiskey, solely to own it, and to sell it apart from Monarch whiskeys.  Payne called it “Davy Crockett Bourbon,” named for the American frontiersman, soldier, and politician — a folk hero celebrated in song and story as “King of the Wild Frontier.”

The brand was sold exclusively by the San Francisco liquor house of Hey, Grauerholz & Company.   Known as one of the best salesmen in the trade, Payne is said to have traveled by train frequently to the West Coast despite a distance of more than 2,000 miles.  As a result he was able to open this “window on the West” for his brand.  The relationship was central to Hey, Grauerholz ads and indicated in the embossing on company bottles.

John Hey, who had started in the liquor trade as a porter for a San Francisco wholesale wine and liquor company, moved out on his own in 1883 and with partners Henry J. Grauerholz and Henry Faust opened a liquor house.  Faust departed in 1887 and the remaining partners reorganized as Hey, Grauerholz & Company.  After locating successively at two San Francisco addresses during a period of rapid business growth, in 1897 they moved to 224 Front Street.  Shown here are their bottles for Payne’s Kentucky whiskey.

For the next seven plus years, the liquor house thrived at that address.  As was customary in the trade, Hey, Grauerholz issued shot glasses.  Although they marketed other brands, including “New Century Bourbon,” their shots emphasized the connection to Payne’s Owensboro-distilled Davy Crockett Bourbon.  After the  San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed the company quarters in 1906, Hey departed the firm, leaving Grauerholz to rebuild and continue in the wholesale liquor trade until 1913.

Meanwhile in Owensboro, Ed Payne was living a life that reputedly “…rendered him a universal favorite….Yet the home and the family circle and the company of his children were his chief delight…”  During their marriage, he and Mary Ellen had nine children, three of whom died prematurely. In 1890 Payne built a spacious house for his family amid homes of the Monarch clan in an area known as “Distiller’s Row.”  Sitting on a hill overlooking the Ohio River, the house has been described as “…One of the finest and most comfortable residences of Daviess County.”   Shown below, the Payne house, still standing, is considered an excellent example of Queen Anne architecture. 

A devout Catholic, Payne took a lead role in the founding of St. Paul Catholic Church in 1887.  Chief contributors to the church included the Monarch, Field and Payne families, all prominent and wealthy bourbon distillers, known to critics as the “Irish Whiskey People.”  Payne was on the building committee.  His gift of a decorative and costly sanctuary lamp to the church was inscribed: “From P. E. Payne to St. Paul’s Church.”

Unfortunately Payne was not destined to live an old age as a wealthy man in a fine home surrounded by a loving wife and children.  In September 1895 at the age of 47 he died.  His youngest child was only three years old. The distiller’s Requiem Mass at St. Paul’s was described as drawing “a vast congregation” and his funeral procession to the Catholic cemetery stretched for several blocks.  Payne’s gravestone is shown here.  

 

P. Edwin Payne’s passing drew commentaries emphasizing his affable manners, gentlemanly  bearing and high sense of honor.  Perhaps the most effusive obituary appeared in “The Record,” a newspaper of the Louisville Catholic Diocese:  Mr. P. E. Payne, one of Owensboro’s very best citizens, is one on whose tomb can be justly chiseled: “Here lie the remains of an honest man, who was just and up right in all his ways, whose heart was without guile; and who was ever ready, with kind words and generous deeds, to relieve the sufferings of his fellow man.”

Notes:  I was drawn to the story to P. Edwin Payne because of his being permitted to market his own brand of whiskey independently while working for the Monarch distillery.  I know of only one other incidence in pre-Prohibition whiskey history in which that occurred:  Dr. James Crow working for the Pepper family was accorded that privilege.  Among numerous sources for this post was Aileen Blomgren, Payne’s descendant, who earlier provided an article on Richard Monarch for this website. [See post for Jan 4, 2017].  Bottle images are from the FOHBC Virtual Museum.