Author name: Jack Sullivan

Born in 1792 in a bucolic corner of Massachusetts, a young man with the unusual name of Orsamus Willard became America’s first celebrity bartender, earning a reputation that went far beyond Manhattan. The transformation of Willard, caricatured here, from farm boy to “The Napoleon of Bar-Keepers,” however, proved to be reversible.

Orsamus was the seventh of the eight sons of William and Patience Hazelton Willard of Harvard, Massachusetts, shown below.  It was a farming township 25 miles west-northwest of Boston.  The family lived in what was described as “an old house” on the edge of a settlement known as Shabikin.  Educated in local schools, the boy was too far down the line of inheritance ever to expect to share in his father’s farm land.  For a time Willard languished in a poor-paying local teaching job but wanted a better opportunity. At age 19, he left home to create a new life in New York City.

Young Willard was fortunate enough to find it at The City Hotel (1794-1849), called “the first functioning hotel in the United States.”  Located at 123 Broadway, now the Manhattan financial district, the building was five stories and had 137 rooms.  For decades City Hotel, shown here, was New York’s principal site for prestigious social functions and music events.  In addition to its plush accommodations tje hotel featured a ballroom, shops, coffee house and, importantly for Orsamus, a lobby barroom. 

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

An 1894 history of the Willard family was lavish in its description of Orsamus’ abilities:  “He acquired a wide reputation for…his never failing memory of names, persons, and events.  He was known even across the Atlantic as the [bartender] who never forgot the face or title of anyone who had ever been his guest.  He…possessed in a remarkable degree the power of giving politely prompt and satisfying answers to the multifarious questions of guests, without interrupting the bookkeeping or other business details upon which he might be engaged.”

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

One of many anecdotes about him indicated Willard’s sense of humor.  According to the New York Times, a visitor once walked up to his bar and ordered a brandy and water.  Willard, as was his custom, handed him the decanter and indicated the pitcher of water on the bar.  The gent thereupon filled the tumbler with brandy, added a couple drops of water, and tossed the drink down in one gulp as Willard looked on in amazement. After he put his payment on the bar, the customer was astonished when Willard returned most of it in change and said to him:  “You don’t pretend to say they only charge three cents for a glass of liquor at the City Hotel?”  “No,”  answered Willard. “We retail it at a shilling a glass but when we sell it wholesale we make a discount.”

For all his acclaim, Willard’s life must have been a lonely one. Usually working from dawn to late night at the lobby bar, he is said to have left the hotel only very infrequently. He lived in a single room at the hotel, serving people whose preferences he remembered but who in reality were not his friends.  One author has noted that: “His geniality was not professional only, but had it source in a kindly heart.”   He added that Willard “…was a great favorite of children and loved to have them about him.”   

Now in his early forties and still a bachelor, Willard apparently yearned for a wife and family.  Ignoring his fame, in 1836 he retired from bartending at the City Hotel, went home to Harvard, and returned to farming.  There Orsamus met Martha Stearns, the daughter of S.S. Houghton of Bolton, Massachusetts, a nearby community.  When Willard left home she had been a three year old toddler.  They married in Bolton in December 1837.  Their first child, a girl named Martha, was born three years later, followed the next year by a boy, Orsamus Jr. 

But the Big Apple was not finished with the Napoleon of Bar-Keepers.  In 1828 John Jacob Astor bought the City Hotel and gave it to his granddaughter, Sara Langdon, as her marriage dowry.  Neither she nor her husband appear to have been capable owners and after Willard and other management personnel left the hotel, it faltered financially.  In 1843 a frantic message and appealing salary offer brought Orsamus back to New York again to run the City Hotel lobby bar.  The event was newsworthy enough to persuade The New York Dramatic Mirror to send a reporter to the scene:

He wrote: “All was right with the world.  Willard was in his place behind the bar, a little fatter than of old and somewhat gray with cabbage growing, but his wonderful memory of names and faces seemed full of vigor, and what with the tone of voice, the dexterity of furnishing drinks, the off-hand welcome to two every comer-in, and the mechanical answering of questions and calling to servants, he seemed to have begun precisely where he left off, and his little episode of farming must have seemed to him scarcely better than a dream.”

All, however, was not “right with the world.”  Saving the City Hotel, now far fallen from its heyday, would take more than Willard could accomplish.  By 1848, Sara Langdon determined to tear down the venerable hostelry and replace it with a block of stores and offices she called the Boreel Building, named after her husband.  Likely with feeling of relief, Willard retired a second time and returned to Harvard and the farm.  A second son, Charles, would be born there in 1850.

As noted earlier, as the seventh in a line of eight sons, Orsamus could not have expected any inherited land from his father.  His three oldest siblings, however had died in infancy, ultimately giving the family inheritance to John Willard, the fourth in line. Ignoring other brothers, none of them married, when he died John bequeathed his property to Orsamus.  Now owning a substantial tract of land  Willard fulfilled his dream of raising and breeding cows. 

The erstwhile bartender also was able to build three homes on property in an area of Harvard township called  Still River.  This was an agricultural settlement located on a well-traveled thoroughfare that connected Harvard with Lancaster to the west and Bolton to the south.  Willard divided the parcel into three smaller farms, each with a modest house, barn and outbuildings.  With his wife Martha, Orsamus lived in one house and gave a second, immediately north, to Orsamus Junior for his residence.   Willard’s home, the story goes, had room numbers on every interior door, apparently as a reminder of his palmy City Hotel days.  

After living his life out as a farmer and small time cattle breeder, Willard died in 1876 at the advanced age of 84 and was buried in a hillside not far from his home.  In time, Martha and other family members would join him there.  The couple’s joint monument is shown below.

 

Orsamus Junior’s homestead would pass though several hands until 1992 when the owner sold the cottage, barn, and 4.5 acres of wooded land to the Harvard Historical Society to be converted into a museum reflecting the early history of the area.  Shown here, the present status of what is known as the Willard-Watt house is unclear.

An old saying advises: “You can take the boy out of the farm, but you cannot take the boy out of the farm.”  My own family experience validates the truth of that saying, as does Willard’s life story.  Here was a man who made it to the mountain top of recognition in “New York, New York,” and well beyond as a celebrity bartender but was willing to give it up for a quiet agricultural life with family in a rural corner of Massachusetts.  By ignoring fame Orsamus Willard truly demonstrated a special kind of genius.

Note:  This post owes a great deal to David Wondrich, who has made the early bartenders of America a special subject of attention of his writing.  His article on five early U.S. bartenders is available on the Internet and recommended reading, along with his 2007 book, “Imbibe.” Through other internet sources I have been able to fill out Willard’s personal and farming life in rural Massachusetts.  The image of Orsamus that opens this post is from a quilt portrait by Ken Ellis, an artist who specializes in this art form.  

 

 When the  Great Flood of 1889 roared into Jonestown, Pennsylvania, it swept away the liquor house that John L. Raab successfully had operated for almost two decades. Raab as able to rebuild higher and better.  He could not, however, bring back his brother and other family members who died in the watery disaster.

John Ludwig Raab was born in January 9, 1837, in Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany, the son of Conrad and Susanna Raab, and was educated in the excellent German school system of the time,  In 1853  his family  immigrated to the United States, settling in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.  His father found employment hauling iron ore.

When he reached employment age, John also went to work in a steel factory, employed as a “puddler,” a skilled workman engaged in the manufacture of high-grade iron.  During several years so employed, he apparently noted the propensity of his fellow workers for strong drink and decided that selling liquor was a less back-breaking and more lucrative way to make a living.  Moving to Johnstown in 1865, he opened a saloon at 184-186 Washington Street.  His younger brother, George, worked for him there as a bartender.  

Although Raab likely was oblivious of it, he and his family were living below a “ticking time bomb” in the shape of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River.  Completed in 1853, this gravel and earthen dam was 931 feet long, 72 feet high, 270 feet thick at the base and 10 feet wide at the top.  The dam diverted water from the river to supply the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, a series of waterways eventually connecting Philadelphia with Pittsburgh.  The water level behind the dam normally was maintained at 50 feet.

For 36 years the South Fork Dam served its purpose admirably.  During that period John Raab’s saloon proved to be highly  successful and he eventually extended his expanded his enterprise to include a wholesale business, supplying liquor to Johnstown’s saloons, restaurants and hotels.  He came to own the building on Washington Street, Johnstown’s main avenue.  One assumes Raab gave little thought to the South Fork  Dam some 14 miles distant.  

The spring of 1889, however, was abnormally wet.  Late in May the skies opened up with days of extremely heavy rains.  The South Fork Dam could not withstand the pressure of the water and on May 31, 1889, burst in one of the greatest disasters recorded in U.S. history.  At 3:10 p.m., the dam collapsed, sending up a a roar that could be heard for miles. A wall of water from Lake Conemaugh rushed forward at 40 miles per hour, sweeping away everything in its path.  No one in downstream Johnstown had any warning.

People in the path of the rushing flood waters often were crushed as their homes and other structures were swept away. Some in Johnstown were able to make it to the top floors of the few tall buildings in town.  Whirlpools brought down some of those taller buildings.  Among them was the Hulbert House, Johnstown’s leading hotel. Of 57 people inside only ten made it out alive.  The picture that opens this post captures a particularly horrendous event when a bridge downstream from the town caught much of the debris and then proceeded to catch fire.  Individuals who had survived by floating on top of the wreckage were burned to death.

Officially 2,209 people are recorded as having died in the catastrophe.  Among them was Raab’s brother, George, whose daughter Norma and son John also were swept away by the wall of water.  Another victim was an Elizabeth Raab, whose body was recovered at nearby Millville.  She also may have been a relative. Some have contended that many remains were never found, believing that the Johnstown flood claimed as many as 5,000 lives.  The pain of loss for John and other Raab family members must have been intense.

The disaster, that brought assistance from all over America and many foreign  countries, left a giant rebuilding effort.  Raab’s Washington Street headquarters had been swept away in the torrent.  A newspaper illustration, shown here may have caught some of the liquor dealer’s loss.  Note the whiskey barrel at left bottom.  Was the man shown stopped by armed guards there to loot it?

Clearing the debris from the site on Washington Street, Raab rebuilt at the same location.  Shown here, the building’s address subsequently was changed to 434 Washington Street.  The liquor house name became John Raab & Sons.  In 1860 Raab had married Elizabeth “Annie” Vomhoff, daughter of George Vomhoff.  The ceremony took place in the Vomhoff home officiated by the pastor of the local Lutheran Church. The couple is recorded as having 13 children over the next 20 years, although genealogical accounts differ sharply on details.  As they matured, two of Raab’s sons were employed in the liquor house, Henry J., born in 1863, and Charles V. in 1872.  

Shown here is a photograph of the interior of the Raabs’ new establishment.  Note the multiple barrels, each apparently labeled regarding the content.  The room was decorated by the large chandelier at the center.  My guess is that the individuals posing for the camera are employees, several likely are family  members.  Unable to find a photo of John Raab, I speculate that the gent in a vest is he.

 

Also difficult to find are artifacts that advertise the liquor house.  The exceptions are a shot glass and a cork screw.  Both would have been given to the saloons, restaurants and hotels carrying the liquor brands featured by the Raabs.  Neither were particularly expensive giveaway items.  Their shot glass, rather than being incised or enameled, is an over-print.  The label understandably has eroded over time. 

After the death of his wife, Elizabeth earlier that year, in December 1896 John Raab’s own health began to fail.  He continued as usual at the liquor house.  While working there late in one evening he was overcome with severe stomach pains.  Taken home, he declined overnight despite medical attention and died the following morning.  His funeral was held in the family home, officiated by the pastor of the German Lutheran Church.  Raab was buried in Johnstown’s Grand View Cemetery next to Elizabeth.

The liquor house that John Raab had built — and rebuilt — continued for 22 years under the leadership of Henry and Charles Raab, later employing other family members.   By that time the Great Flood of 1889 was only a memory.   Now a new catastrophe called National Prohibition had inundated an entire Nation.   After more than a half century the liquor house John Raab created and nurtured was forced to shut its doors.

Note:  The story of John Raab recommended itself to me because he sustained both personal and business losses in the Johnstown Flood of 1889, yet rebounded to rebuild his business and provide a future for his family.  Raab’s newspaper obituaries contributed personal information.  I am hopeful a descendent will have a picture of John Raab to add to this post.

 Apparently operating both outside and inside the monopolistic efforts in the distilling, blending and marketing of whiskey referred to as “The Whiskey Trust,” the Block brothers survived for more than three decades in Cincinnati bearing the innocuous title of the Standard Distilling Company.  Although the efforts at a whiskey cartel have never been systematically documented, the Blocks’ story offers insights into this late Nineteenth Century American phenomenon.

Standard Distilling was founded about 1886 by brothers Jacob and Simon Block.  The elder by some eight years, Jacob was the president; Simon was secretary-treasurer.  Their parents were German immigrants who settled at first in New York City where Jacob was born in 1850.  For reasons unknown, their father, Joseph Block, during the following decade moved the family to Macon, Georgia where Simon was born in 1858.  From there the brothers found their way north to Cincinnati where about 1885 they opened a liquor house at 13 West Pearl Street.  It was the first of five addresses their company would have over the next 33 years in that city.

The Blocks’ liquor house featured a healthy list of brands, including:  “Ben My Chree,” “Bluefield Rye,” “Day and Night,” “Delicacy,” “Gladiator,” “Hanover Rye,” “Lick Run,” “McBride’s,” “Metropolis,” “Royal Reserve,” “Sweet Caporal,” “Weldon,” and “Yea Yea.”  The brothers’ trademarking of these labels was irregular.  They registered Lick Run with the government in 1897 and then waited until 1905 to register Weldon.  In 1906, after Congress strengthened trademark laws, they trademarked Day and Night, Delicacy, Gladiator, McBrides, Metropolis, and Sweet Caporal.

The Blocks’ favorite way of advertising appears to have been though shot glasses.  These would have been presented to wholesale customer such as saloons, restaurants and hotels as standard practice and to retail customers at special holidays.  Examples are found throughout this post.

Two court cases indicate the Block’s interactions with the forces of the Whiskey Trust.  In 1899, the Blocks filed suit in federal court against another liquor house that called itself the “Standard Distilling and Distributing Company,” a name almost identical to their own firm.  This organization is widely believed to be a remnant of an earlier Peoria-based effort at a whiskey monopoly that was known for its strong-armed tactics, including use of dynamite to coerce participation.

  

After collapsing from financial and legal problems in 1885, the cartel morphed into three organizations, of which Standard Distilling and Distributing (aka S.D. Co.) was one.  Two original Trust leaders, Joseph Greenhut and Julius Kessler, have been identified as involved. [See posts,Sep. 23, 2019 and Dec. 17, 2019.]  Registered in New Jersey and headquartered in Chicago, this outfit also had offices in Cincinnati, in direct competition with the Blocks.  The brothers brought suit over the similarity of names.

A Federal district judge, dismissing objections by Trust officials found for the Block brothers, in effect agreeing that: “The incorporators of the defendant corporation, before its organization, knew of the existence and character of the complainants’ business, and the trade-name under which it was being carried on; and, notwithstanding its attention has since been called to the injury which it has done to the complainants’ business, it refuses to desist from the use of the name so wrongfully used.”  Although the Blocks were upheld, subsequent legal action failed to achieve a name change.

Apparently deciding “if you can’t lick ‘em, join ’em,” the Blocks in 1898 agreed that they would continue to distill whiskey at a distillery they controlled but that all plain spirits or alcohol for their rectifying (blending) activities would be purchased from S.D. Co. The Trust strategy was to tie a liquor house to the cartel and limit its production in an effort to create shortages. Shortages in turn would inflate whiskey prices to the consumer.  In exchange S.D. Co. contracted to pay the Blocks $1,000 a month for the ensuing five years.  In today’s dollar that deal would be worth $1.9 million.  

For the first few months, S.D.Co. payments flowed into the Blocks, but stopped totally in July 1899.  Breech of contract by a cartel was a regular practice when market conditions changed and no longer advantaged the organization.  The Blocks sued in a Cincinnati court for damages of $10,000 plus interest. S.D.Co.’s rebuttal was astounding.  The  defense claimed that the contract was in violation of state law in Kentucky and thus was void.  The judge pointed out, however, that the contact had been made in Ohio between two Ohio companies and Ohio had no such laws.  He awarded the Blocks their requested damages.  Appealed to the Cincinnati Superior Court, the judgment was affirmed and additional court costs levied on S.D. Co.

Jacob continued as the president of Standard Distilling until about 1900 when at the age of 50 he retired and Simon became its chief executive.  The Federal census that year found both living in a still-standing spacious home at 2351 Park Avenue in Cincinnati.  Jacob had never married but Simon had a wife, Jessie, and three youngsters, Ralph, 10, Helen, 9;  and Margaret, 4.  There were two household servants.  Simon’s leadership of Standard Distilling proved as successful as his brother and by 1912 son Ralph had been added to the staff as a clerk.

Throughout the early 20th Century, the attempts at a Whiskey Trust began to wane and exertions by existing “wannabe” cartels gradually became less aggressive.  For the Blocks monopolies no longer were a major concern.  Now Prohibition was.   When Ohio adopted statewide prohibition in January 1919, Simon was forced to shut the doors on their liquor house after more than three decades.

Jacob died in 1829 at the age of 79.  Simon lived to be 75, dying in 1933 — just in time to see National Prohibition coming to an end.  The brothers are buried in adjacent graves in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery.  Although their  jousting with elements of the Whiskey Trust was not unique, their story illuminates a small part of the murky and largely untold history of the attempt to monopolize whiskey making and sales in America.

Note:  This post largely is derived from the two court cases cited here as well as from genealogy sites.  Shot glasses are largely from Robin Preston’s “pre-pro” site. 

 

 

Foreword:  Pre-Prohibition distilleries were dangerous places.  Machinery often lacked safety guards, heavy barrels rolled about, buildings were ramshackle withdangerous upper floors, fires were a constant threat, and explosions all too frequent.  This website has recorded many distillery worker deaths.  But even the owners were not immune from danger.  This post chronicles four “whiskey men” who perished within their own premises.

Kentuckian Henry E. Pogue had a talent for making whiskey.  About 1865 he went to work at the Old Time Distillery in Maysville. Pogue later became chief distiller and in 1876 purchased the facility.   Shown here, the distillery had a mashing capacity of 300 bushels per day, and there were three bonded warehouses with capacity for storing more than 10,000 barrels.  By 1900 the H.E. Pogue Distillery, below, was producing fifty barrels of whiskey daily and as one newspaper account put it:  “It is said by those who know that there is no better distillery in Kentucky.”  

Then tragedy struck.  On a Friday morning in November 1900, Henry Pogue I was making his rounds in the distillery when he became immeshed in machinery.  A biographer vividly told the rest of the story:  “…In the twinkling of eye, death struck him, the immortal soul had fled, and what had been a stalwart, hopeful and successful man, had become a quivering mass of crushed bones and mangled, bleeding flesh.”   Pogue’s death sent shockwaves through the community and devastated his family.  

He already had turned over many management responsibilities to his son, Henry Pogue II, shown right,  an heir who was well equipped to carry on the work his father had begun.  Eventually this Pogue enhanced production to 2,000 gallons of whiskey daily and carried a normal inventory of 15,000 barrels being aged. Employment during peak periods reached 100 workers.   Then, improbably, tragedy struck again.  Henry II was working at the distillery in 1918 when he too was killed in an industrial accident.  He was only 60 years of age. 

His son, Henry Pogue III, who had worked in the distillery, was then in military uniform. When World War One broke out, he enlisted and was in Europe when news came of his father’s unfortunate death.  Released from service, Henry III returned home at the age of 24 to take the reins of distillery management — but only for a year until shut down by National Prohibition.  He later sold out.

Worthy of a novel, the Hungarian-born five Woolner Brothers — Jacob, Ignatius, Adolph, Samuel and Morris — held sway among Peoria, Illinois, distillers for almost 45 years. Their history, however, was not without trauma.  In the spring of 1881, the Woolners’ main distillery burned.  Most of the buildings were destroyed; as shown below, only the still house stood after the blaze.  The brothers immediately began to rebuild.  

Amid the rubble the Woolners found that two tubs of fermented mash had been left virtually untouched.  After slight repairs to the tubs it was decided to run the contents through a repaired still: “…The boilers were cleaned and refitted, the pumps rigged, and the distillation commenced.”  It was a terrible mistake.

As the Chicago Tribune told the story: “Without a moment’s warning, a loud explosion was heard, the gigantic tub swayed and careened over, and a rush of steam escaped from the lower chamber, carrying everything before it.  Men were picked up and hurled, scalded and parboiled, from twenty to forty feet away, and ruthlessly bruised with falling bricks and timbers.”  Of eighteen men injured in the blast thirteen died, many painfully. 

Ignatius Woolner, 41, the brother who likely was supervising the operation, was badly burned and died that night.  In addition to his grieving brothers, Ignatius left his widow, Rosalie and three children, Adolph, 20; Sopha, 14, and Hanna 9.  He was interred in Peoria’s Springdale Cemetery in a plot where other Woolner brothers also now are buried.  

One of the first  children to be born of Jewish parents in Oregon,  Solomon “Sol” Blumauer rose to prominence in Portland as a whiskey dealer,  businessman, pillar of Judaism,  community leader and automotive pioneer,  only to suffer a tragic and somewhat mysterious death at the age of 66. He is shown here at the wheel of an early automobile.

In 1899 Blumauer bought into the whiskey trade, becoming a partner in a company subsequently called Blumauer & Hoch, destined to become the largest wholesale liquor house in Oregon.  With the coming of National Prohibition, the canny Blumauer successfully switched to popular soft drinks.  Even as he got older he continued to be at the head of the company, directing its activities with what contemporaries termed “decisiveness, initiative and keen sagacity.” 

On February 23, 1928, a tragic event occurred.  Blumauer’s demise was described in one Portland newspaper: “At about eleven o’clock he had gone up to the second floor of the firm’s warehouse and office building at Nos. 428-430 Flanders street, and his disappearance was not noted until the arrival of a man shortly before one o’clock to keep an appointment with him.  Search was then begun and carried forward on all three floors before suggestion was made that he might have fainted and slipped into the shaft. Falling forward, Mr. Blumauer is believed to have slipped through the narrow opening and plunged to the bottom of the shaft.”   

Thus ended the extraordinary career of Sol Blumauer at the age of 66.   How and why he might have fallen into the elevator shaft was never thoroughly explored.  It was accepted as an accident and nothing more.  He was buried in the family plot in Portland’s Beth Israel Cemetery.  His passing was mourned by many in the Portland community who had known him as a benefactor and leader.  Regrettably, Sol never lived to see the end of National Prohibition that might have launched him once again into the whiskey trade at which he had been so successful.

Note:  Longer posts on each of these whiskey men may be found on this website:  The Pogues, November 1, 2015;  the Woolners, July 8, 2021, and Sol Blumauer,  June 12, 2012.

In profiling more than 950 “whiskey men” — distillers, dealers, and saloonkeepers — I cannot recall dealing previously with a Swedish family involved in the liquor trade, nor one in which a father worked for his children.  That made the discovery of the Sandells of St. Paul, Minnesota, all the more fascinating.  

Shown here, Nels Sandell was born in January 1845 in Fryksande, Varmland, Sweden, a bucolic area boasting large three lakes, shown below. His father, Nils Sandhall, was a farmer who also kept an inn on his land.  Under government regulation regarding service and prices, the inn was a traveler’s “public utility” in a region that had no railroad.  It provided lodging, board, and transportation to the next hostelry in the network.  Working in the inn from childhood, Nels received a typical education for a Swedish youth, served the required two years in the Swedish army and for a short time ran a general store.

In 1866 he married his childhood sweetheart, Carolina Jonsdotter Westburg, in Fryksande.   Nels was 21; Carolina was 17.   His marriage apparently provided the incentive for the newlyweds to leave their native land for America, arriving in 1868 while Carolina was pregnant with their first child.  They headed for Minnesota, a state that was known for its large Scandinavian population.  

Their initial destination was Jordan, a small town south of Minneapolis, a town with a proliferation of breweries.  There Nels, having “Americanized” his name to Sandell, opened a general store.  Among his stock was liquor.  After operating the store for more than a decade during which Jordan’s population grew only slightly, Nels “looked up the road” 44 miles to St. Paul and with Carolina, their four sons and three daughters, moved there.

Nels initial activity, according to business directories,  was operating a saloon at 373 East Seventh Street.  His family lived above the establishment.  As time elapsed, the father began to take his sons into the liquor trade and gradually retreated into the background.  By 1897 the family drinking establishment had become the George Sandell Saloon, named for his oldest son.  Nels was listed as “manager.”  By 1900, two other Sandell sons had joined George, shown left.  Oscar was listed as a salesman, indicating that the saloon had a retail trade;  Albert, right, was the bookkeeper.

By 1905, the saloon was gone and the Sandells were doing business as “Sandell Brothers, Importers and Wholesale Dealers in Wines and Liquors.”  The letterhead above indicates that the CEO was George, then 34, aided by Oscar, 32, and Albert, 27.  Nels was listed as traveling salesman for the company.  A photo of their establishment shows a well-stocked front window as well as signs advertising Hamm’s and Schlitz beer.  It is impossible to identify the standing figures but they may be two of the Sandells.

The brothers’ proprietary whiskey brands included “Milton”, “Nordey Club”, “Norden Club Rye”, “Sidney Private Stock”, “Snelling Rye”, “Woodbridge,” and “Old Monogahela.”   The only brand they trademarked was “Nordey Club”(1906).  The Sandells also featured a “Norden Bitters” along with their whiskeys.  The Norden Club was a athletic and social organization for Swedes and other Scandinavians, to which Nels and other family members belonged.

Sandell Bros. was a blender of whiskeys that were sold in gallon or more quantities to saloons, restaurants and hotels. Those wholesale customers would then decant them into smaller containers for use by their bartenders. The jugs then might have been returned to the Sandell’s liquor house for cleaning and refilling.

Those jugs can be identified as products of potteries in Red Wing, Minnesota, a town on the Mississippi River less than fifty miles from St. Paul.  Made to order for distillers and liquor houses throughout the Midwest these containers are noted for their clean lines and tasteful labels.  Like the one shown right, the labels were applied using a inked rubber stamp, fired, and a clear overglaze  applied, a process requiring considerable precision.  Because of their quality, Red Wing-made whiskey jugs today can fetch into the thousands of dollars from collectors. 

Two of the Sandell brothers became family men. George was married in June 1903 to Margaretta Aurillia Baier, a childhood friend from his years in Jordan.  The newlyweds are shown here.   By the 1910 census they would have two children, Urana Alice, 5, and George Albert, 2.  Oscar also married, his bride was Anna S. Grote of St. Paul.  By 1910 this couple was recorded as having two children, Ethel born in 1904 and Paul in 1905. The census year found Nels, 64, still working as a traveling salesman for his sons, living the spacious home shown below. The household included his wife, Caroline, and four unmarried adult children, including Albert and Anna, who was working for Sandell Bros. as a bookkeeper.  The first decade of the 20th Century was good to the Sandell clan.

The year 1910, however, brought sorrow as George died in August at the age of 39. He left behind his widow, Margaretta, and their two young children.  Under the watchful eyes of Nels, Oscar ascended to the presidency of Sandell Brothers.   Albert became secretary-treasurer.  Walter, the youngest Sandell, joined the company, listed as a clerk. Shown here, by 1915 he would be raised to the position of vice president.

With the coming of National Prohibition, the Sandells were forced to shut down their liquor house.  According to business directories, Oscar became a salesman for a cider company and Albert moved  to Forest Lake, Minnesota.  Walter took over the East Seventh Street space and turned the liquor house into a restaurant and bottler of soft drinks.  

At 75 years old Nels retired.  He lived another nine years, dying on January 7, 1929.  Following services at St. Sigfrid’s Swedish Episcopal Church, he was buried in St. Paul’s Oakland Cemetery beside Carolina who had died nine years earlier.  Oscar and Walter are interred nearby.  A monument marks the family plot.   

Of Nels an observer wrote:  “He is an energetic and keen businessman and conducts his affairs with integrity and honest dealing.”  To that praise I would add — “And a father whose mind and heart was dedicated to the advancement of his children.”

Note:  A key reference for this post was “A History of the Swedish-Americans of Minnesota,” by Algot E. Strand, published in 1910.  Other information was furnished by St. Paul directories and genealogical sites.

 

                    

Had he ever ventured his troops the 2,700 miles to Sacramento, California, from his Virginia base, General Robert E. Lee would have found liquor dealer Francis “Frank” X. Ebner waiting for him.  A battle-tested veteran of the Prussian army, Ebner, shown right, was captain of the Sacramento Hussars and presumably ready to take on anything the Confederates might throw at him. 

Born in Waldshut-dei-Freiburg, Baden, Germany in 1829, Ebner was the son of Charles Ebner, a merchant, lumber dealer and butcher of some wealth who could afford to send the boy to a business institute after his graduation from government schools.  At the time Baden was in a state of disorder fomented by republican agitators.  A full scale uprising known as the Revolution of 1848 ensued that resulted in young Ebner being conscripted into the Prussian army.  A member of an artillery regiment, he helped put down the pro-democracy insurrection.

Following his discharge Ebner satisfied a youthful wanderlust by traveling first to Switzerland and then to America, shipping from Le Havre to New York City. From there he proceeded to Chicago, then to St. Louis and a year later to New Orleans.  In 1853 he traveled by steamer via Panama to California, landing at San Francisco.  From there Ebner headed to Sacramento, arriving on April 1, 1853.  That city would be his home for the rest of his life.

Ebner’s reason for settling in Sacramento likely was the presence there of his older brother, Charles, who was residing with his wife, Louise, and three children.  By this time Frank also was married.  His bride was Katerina “Kate” Albietz, a woman he likely had known in Baden.  The 1860 census found the young couple staying with Charles’ family in a household that included six German and two Peruvian boarders, and a servant woman.

The brothers opened a hotel called the Sierra Nevada at Ninth and J Streets and were proprietors of the Philadelphia Beer Saloon.  In 1857 they had sufficient resources to construct a new hotel, known as the Ebner House. Shown here, it was located near the waterfront at 116-118 K Street.  The brothers would operate the hotel for six years before selling it.  

During this period Frank Ebner also was playing a soldier as an 1859 organizer and officer of the Sacramento Hussars.  Even before California became a state, citizens had formed volunteer military units. With admission to the Union this process was formalized in the State’s Constitution.  The Sacramento Hussars, patterning themselves after the light-horsed units in the European armies of the era, were unusual in being composed almost exclusively of native-born and immigrant Germans.  The Hussars boasted uniforms and equipment that followed the European pattern.  Their fancy dress, sabers, belts and boots were expensive, costing as much as $100 in 1860 dollars, thus limiting membership to individuals of some wealth.  As shown here, their coats were red with gold braid and their trousers were dark grey worn tucked into boots. Each Hussar provided his own horse and equipment.

On March 3, 1860, because of their colorful appearance the Hussars were called upon to form a mounted escort for the first Pony Express rider to reach Sacramento.  The unit’s original strength was 26 men but that was soon raised to a maximum of 62.  During the Civil War the unit was incorporated into the California state militia as an “unattached company” of the Fourth Brigade.  With that status came a monthly stipend from the state of $100.  Captain Ebner and the Sacramento Hussars stood fully ready to resist any attack from the Confederacy that might come over the Rocky Mountains.

Possibly to the relief of Ebner and his companions, California was never attacked nor was there any serious pro-Rebel unrest in the Sacramento area. The Hussars retreated into becoming a social and philanthropic organization, said to care for the sick and bury the dead. With Captain Ebner in the forefront, the Hussars continued to be given a place of honor when the company went on parade as it did on national holidays and state and city celebrations.

Meanwhile, brothers Frank and Charles in 1866 had expanded their business operations by opening a liquor house.  Called “Ebner & Bro.” the store, shown above, was Initially located in the St. George Hotel on Fourth Street between J and K.  The two men in the photo are not believed to be either brother.

The Ebners featured such whiskey brands as “Blue Cross,”  “Old Colonial,”  “Sunnyvale,” “Mellwood,” “Runnymede,” and “.”Old Jordan.”  The brothers were not distillers but buying whiskey from a variety of distilleries nationwide, shipping it by rail to Sacramento in barrels, and then blending it to achieve a desired color, taste, and smoothness.  This process was led by a skilled “rectifier,” likely one of the Ebners.  The results then were decanted into embossed glass bottles ranging from half pints, pints and quarts and into larger containers for wholesale customers.

Like other liquor houses in the highly competitive Sacramento market, Ebner Bros. Company gifted good customers such as saloons, restaurants and hotels with advertising items.  Shown below are four back-of-the-bar bottles, a way for a liquor dealer to get exposure for his brands where people were drinking.  With engraved or enameled labels they were intended to catch the eye.  Essentially banned by law since 1920, all bar bottles qualify today as antiques.

My favorite Ebner Bros. giveaway is a portrait of a comely young woman bearing the caption, “Compliments of Ebner Bros. Co., Wholesale Wines & Liquors, Sacramento, Cal.”  Although it has a calendar and thus is dated, this image has been put into a frame and intend for a saloon wall.

Although Ebner Bros. liquor house proved to be highly profitable, two events marred whatever elation Frank might have felt with its success.  In 1868, Charles died in an influenza epidemic at the age of 36, leaving behind his widow and minor children.  Two years later, Frank’s wife, Kate, died leaving her husband to raise their three children.  Three years later he married Josephine Hug, a woman younger by 24 years.  They would have five children of their own. 

Throughout this period, Ebner continued to be a leading figure in the Sacramento Hussars.   His reward came in April 1872 when the unit presented him with a special saber and belt.  Shown here, the sword featured a finely tempered and ornamented blade, a hilt of silver and gold, and a fancy gold-plated scabbard.  Costing a then hefty $150, Ebner’s sword in 2009 went up for auction at $28,750.

A reporter for The Sacramento Union caught the spirit of Ebner’s award: “The presentation speech was made by Lieutenant Heilbron, who did justice to the occasion in expressing the high regards in which the Captain was held by his company. Captain Ebner made a feeling response, returning thanks in a manner, which his comrades plainly saw was heartfelt. The company subsequently visited Chas. Sillinger’s saloon, on fifth Street, between J and K, where a collation had been spread, and there passed a pleasant hour or more in proposing, drinking and responding to toasts….”

Ebner continued to operate his liquor establishment until his death on May 7, 1901, at age 71.  His death certificate indicated that he had succumbed to cardiac arrest as the result of a chronic heart condition.  His newspaper obituary identified Ebner as “one of Northern California’s oldest wholesale liquor merchants.”  Buried in the Sacramento City Cemetery,  his monument and a closeup of his gravestone is shown here.  Frank willed half of his estate to his widow, Josephine, and the other half in equal shares to his children from the two marriages.  Perhaps surprisingly, he left nothing to the Sacramento Hussars.  

Notes:  This post owes a great deal to Steve Abbott, an expert on Western whiskeys and collector of Sacramento whiskey artifacts.  In researching a possible story on Frank Ebner, I came across his excellent article on the brothers in the Sept-Oct 2018 issue of Bottles & Extras.  Steve graciously has allowed me to use material and photographs from that piece. Of the Hussars, Steve says: “The Sacramento German militia was mostly bull—, more of a club than a military unit.”

 

 

 

A Pre-Prohibition bartender in two Southern cities, African-American Jeremiah “Jerry” Ragland has received only minimal attention as the great grandfather of England’s Duchess of Sussex, better known as Meghan Markle.Overcoming a series of obstacles to arrive at a measure of success in Jim Crow America, Ragland may not make headlines like that of his descendent, but his story deserves to be told. 

Ragland was born into a family of Henry County, Georgia, sharecroppers.The date of his birth is uncertain.His WWI draft registration and Social Security registration give it as 1881, but his death certificate give it as 1883.His parentage also is uncertain. His father was Charles Ragland but his mother’s name is variably given as “Texas” or “Ellen Ann.”        

As a youth, he likely worked as a field hand, living in a ramshackle house like one shown here own by a Ragland cousin.  It would have been backbreaking work planting, tending and harvesting crops.  His education likely was short lived and provided in one room schools and extending no more than a few grades.  When he was about 21, the youth tired the drudgery of life on the land and by 1902 he had moved to Atlanta, Georgia.  

There Ragland apparently found work initially laboring as a porter in saloon.  He had selected his employers well.  They were Edward Lichtenstein and Jacob Hirsowitz, two Jewish saloonkeepers whose drinking establishment at 110 Decatur Street catered to Atlanta’s growing Jewish community.  The proprietors sensed that Ragland was capable of something more that loading boxes and sweeping up and encouraged his obvious interest in working over the bar.

In that effort the proprietors were not breaking “Jim Crow” rules meant to keep blacks in subservient roles only.  For reasons not easily explained, many Southerners were delighted to have blacks mixing their drinks.  As one writer has expressed it:  “Respect was also often extended to them from people in the white community, who were won over ‘one gin cocktail at a time.’”  A few became prominent figures in their communities, accruing wealth and owning their own businesses.  Shown below is a saloon interior with the kind of eclectic clientele that might have frequented the Lichtenstein & Hirsowitz drinking establishment.  Note the figure at the far right — a man of color in a bartenders’s outfit. 

Ragland apparently gained a good reputation as an Atlanta barkeep.  It gave him the financial ability to marry in 1904.  His bride was Claudie (aka “Laudie”) Richie of Atlanta.  Both were about 26.  The 1910 Census found the couple living in Atlanta with three children, Dora, 4; Steve, 3, and Jerry, 1.  Things were about to change drastically.  Georgia had recently imposed statewide prohibition and Ragland’s job was gone.

The reputation of the black bartender had caught the attention of Herman W. Steiner, the owner-manager of the Julian Distilling Company, producers of “Feldwood Kentucky Whiskey.” This was a well known liquor house and saloon, noted for its vigorous advertising and fancy whiskey jugs.  Rather than closing the doors on his liquor house and saloon business, Steiner had moved 120 miles north to still-wet Chattanooga, Tennessee.  From there he could service his former customers by railroad express, still a legal practice under the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution.  His motto was “What we  say we do, we do do.”

Remembering Ragland’s prowess as a bartender, Steiner reached out to him to come to work for him in Chattanooga.  Family lore is that Jerry was offered a salary well above what he had been paid earlier.  Delighted with the opportunity and envisioning a bright future, he moved his family — now five children — to Tennessee, taking a mortgage on a small house at 620 West 10th Street.  From indications, Ragland was able to build a reputation as an excellent bartender in Chattanooga just as he had in Atlanta.  Ragland may well have used a knife like the one shown below as he prepared his cocktails.

Ragland could not, however, hold back the forces of Prohibition.  When Tennessee went “dry” in 1916, Herman Steiner was forced to shut down Julian Distilling and Ragland again was out of a job.  Not only that, demand for bartenders elsewhere in America virtually had evaporated.  Unemployed and unable to make mortgage payments, he lost the house to foreclosure.

Using his remaining slim savings, Ragland then opened a tailor shop at 215 East Ninth Street in Chattanooga.  A neophyte as a tailor, Jerry lacked the skills to keep the business afloat.  After it failed, he went to work for a competing shop, soon learned the trade, and by 1921 had the money and ability to open his own dry cleaning and tailor shop.  He called it the “Liberty Dry Cleaning Company,”  perhaps an oblique reference to being his own boss.   Claudie helped financially by going to work as a cleaning woman for the Miller Brothers Department Store. 

Although the prospect of home ownership was gone and the family was forced lived in rental housing thereafter, the will to succeed so evident in Jerry and Claudie was transmitted to their children, who proved to be achievers in a repressive system.  Daughter Dora, for example, was graduated from Tennessee A & I College and taught in Chattanooga’s segregated school system.   

After Claudie’s death in 1939, Ragland lived with two of his daughters in a rented house at 1141 West Terrace until his last days.   He died at Chattanooga’s  Walden’s Hospital in October 1944 after a bout of pneumonia.  If his 1881 birth date is correct, he was 63.  Ragland lies in an unmarked grave in Greenhill Cemetery, a Chattanooga African-American burial ground that has been allowed to go untended. 

Above is a chart where Jeremiah Ragland’s name appears near the top.  It is the heritage of Jerry’s great grand-daughter.  The chart exists in the elaborate format seen here only because “Mum” is the mother of Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex through her marriage to Britain’s Prince Harry.  Did Jerry Ragland put in motion this “rags to royalty story” when he abandoned sharecropping for pouring drinks over the bar? 

Note:  This story emerged while I was researching a story about Julian Distilling and discovered that bartender Jeremiah Ragland’s name had some Internet attention. Soon it became apparent that interest in Ragland was related to Meghan Markle becoming a member of British royalty. The most important Internet source was “The Ragland Family of Meghan Markle” by John B. Wells III.   

 

 

Foreword:   This is the second post featuring “whiskey men”  who made major contributions to their cities, all of them major urban centers — Dallas, Texas;  Cincinnati, Ohio, and Patterson, New Jersey.  The money these individuals made from the liquor trade, coupled with their community dedication, provided the fuel for their investments and philanthropy that impacted their cities in major positive ways.

When Charles A. Mangold, shown left, died in 1934, the Dallas Morning News devoted part of its front page to his passing.  Among tributes, he was hailed as “one of the leaders in developing Dallas from a small village to a major city” subsequent to his arrival in town 47 years earlier.  Mangold’s contributions to Dallas included land development, promotion of the arts, an amusement park, two hotels, horse racing, quality livestock and assorted other enterprises.  

After being employed in a Lexington, Kentucky distillery, in 1887 Mangold joined a boyhood friend, Joseph Swope in Dallas, then a town of about 35,000. Together they formed the firm of Swope & Mangold, dealers in fine wines, liquors and cigars. Shown here, their headquarters were in a three-story building on Main Street, marked by a large sign.  From the beginning, the liquor house was successful.   Married and with his business on solid ground, Mangold began exerting seemingly endless energy into making his presence felt in Dallas. 

His accomplishments included land development.   When Mangold died, one newspaper proclaimed him as the “Man Who Visioned Oak Cliff.”  Mangold was one of the first men to dream of “a city west of the river” when Dallas was only a straggling village and Oak Cliff was a wilderness of rocks and trees.  Along with other pioneers he helped lay out the first streets and constructing the first homes in Oak Cliff, now a section of Dallas.

 A pioneer of the Dallas park system, Mangold was appointed to the first city park board created in 1904.  He also was the founder and manager of Lake Cliff Park, a well known summer amusement park on the outskirts of Dallas.  Shown here, the park was clustered around a large lagoon offering bathing, boating, carnival rides, 10,000 lights, fireworks displays nightly and other attractions that made Lake Cliff for a time the most prestigious amusement venue in the American Southwest.

Many in Dallas remember Mangold for building hotels.  Opened in October 1917, the  Hotel Jefferson stood across from the newly opened Dallas Union Station.

State of the art for its time, the hotel featured one floor for “the exclusive use of women unattended, no men were quartered on that floor.”  Nine years later Mangold would erect a second major hotel, the Cliff Towers Hotel, overlooking the Trinity River.  To these contributions can be added his support of the Dallas Opera, co-founding a German language newspaper, and bringing national conventions to Dallas.

When Mangold died in 1934 one newspaper obituary opined:  The city of Dallas owes a great deal of its present greatness to the dreams, the work and the money of Mr. Mangold.” Another account acknowledged that his financial means had been generated by years of hard work and intelligent management in the liquor trade.

Born in Piqua, Ohio, in 1849 Jacob Schmidlapp moved to Cincinnati in 1874 and opened a liquor store that proved highly successful.  About 1890, with his profits from his liquor business, Jacob organized a group of local business men to found the Union Savings Bank and Trust Company, serving as its chairman and guiding light.  The bank met with almost immediate success, with its $500,000 in assets growing to $5 million and paying liberal dividends for most of its existence. Union Trust was accounted as one of the foremost financial institutions of the Midwest. Under Jacob’s leadership, in 1900 the bank erected Cincinnati’s first tall building.

Describing his occupation as”capitalist” to the census taker, Jacob could point to a dozen or more enterprises in which he was a director or trustee.  They included the American Surety Company, Equitable Life Insurance Society, The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Degnon Contracting Company, Degnon Realty and Improvement Company, Queens Place Realty Company, Electric Securities Corporation, Montana Power Company, Champion Fibre Company, Monitor Stove and Range Company, and the Export Storage Company.  He also sought to improve transit in Cincinnati by offering a plan for a tunnel to facilitate railroad and interurban rail access to downtown.

Jacob is best remembers in Cincinnati today, not as a liquor dealer or banker or wealthy business man, but as an outstanding philanthropist.  Following the deaths of his wife and two daughter, Jacob began giving away large portions of his millions.  He financed a “magnificent annex” to the Cincinnati Art Museum, built a dormitory for the Cincinnati College of Music, and created an institution for women’s education in the name of daughter Charlotte.  He also gave a library and memorial monument to Piqua, his home town. Jacob is said to have been particularly proud of Washington Terrace, Walnut Hills, below, a development of more than 400 homes he built to house working class African-Americans, “in whose welfare he was deeply interested.”  Said an observer: “His model homes form the most outstanding effort along this line in the country.”  Jacob also was a trustee and contributor to Cincinnati’s McCall Colored Industrial School.

Jacob’s philanthropic works did not end with his death in December 1919. Having given most of his money away during his lifetime, he willed his residual estate, then amounting to about $1 million to create a charitable trust.  Known as the Schmidlapp Fund the assets have grown to almost $30 million.  The fund has financed scholarships for women, helped reduce preterm births in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by poor pregnancy results and infant mortality,  strengthened health education systems for pregnant women, and assisted children vulnerable to “toxic stress” from unfavorable home environments.

No man has been more important to his community than Irish immigrant James Bell. In 1860 Bell relocated from Boston 330 miles southwest to Paterson, New Jersey, and opened a wholesale and retail wine and liquor business he called the “The James Bell Company, Importers of Wines and Liquors.”  By 1870, his net worth according to census records was $90,000, equivalent to almost $2 million today.

Bell’s liquor-fueled wealth also allowed him to become active in the development of Paterson’s neighborhoods and industries, as well as modernizing transportation and other public services.  In 1866 Bell organized a land improvement company in the Riverside district of Paterson with the purpose of developing that section of the city.  The syndicate under his leadership induced the New Jersey Midlands Railroad — later the New York, Susquehanna & Western — to lay its tracks through Patterson by buying a $15,500 stake in the line and donating land for the tracks.

When Riverside Land Improvement Co. dissolved in 1872, Bell claimed one-fourth of the property it owned, amounting to some 1,000 lots.  Of them Bell donated an estimated 90 to bring new industries to Paterson, sometimes erecting the manufacturing facilities.  His investments included silk mills and a plant that wove tapestries.   According to a biographer:  “He had large interests in the Passaic and Orange oil companies and in the Excelsior and Empire oil companies, the latter being the first companies of their kind organized in the country.”

Bell obtained the charter and organized People’s Gas Light Co. of Paterson, credited with reducing the price of gas to consumers from $3.80 to $1.50 per thousand units.  He also helped form the Paterson & Little Falls horse trolley company, improving transit to and from that nearby New Jersey town.  Wrote a another biographer:  “He takes a leading position among the foremost in the advancement of every enterprise that has for its object the general benefit of all classes of the citizens….”  After Bell’s death at 59 in 1894, the fruits of his enterprise continued to be enjoyed for decades as Paterson tripled in size from his day to ours. 

Note:  Longer biographies of each of these individuals can be found elsewhere on this website:  Charles Mangold, January 25, 2019;  Jacob Schmidlapp, June 18, 2020;  and James Bell, September 1, 2020.  Three other whiskey men  featured for their contributions to building their cities may be found on this site at August 13, 2018.

Forward:  In doing research on a “pre-Prohibition whiskey man” for this website, I sometimes come across an existing biography that tells the story as well or better than I could.  Such it is with Isador Bush.  Ferdinand Meyer V in his Peachridge blog of February 27, 2019 provided an excellent portrait of this St. Louis wine and liquor dealer, a “Renaissance man,” as Ferd described him.  Ferd graciously has given me permission to reprint the article here.

Isidor Bush was born in the Prague, Bohemia on January 15, 1822. He was the great-grandson of Israel Honig Edler von Honigsberg, who was the first Jew raised to nobility in Austria. As a child, Isidor was favored by his father Jacob as his mother, Fredericka had died when he was only three years old. Isidor Bush was privileged and was able to surround and associate himself with many Jewish intellectuals while growing up.

Bush was somewhat of a Renaissance man in that he was, among other things, an author, publisher, journalist, grocer, banker, railroad freight agent, politician, abolitionist, insurance agent, civic leader, philanthropist, capitalist, patriot, wine and liquor merchant,  and a viticulturalist, one of the first grape growers and wine producers in Missouri.

When Isidor was fifteen years old, he moved to Vienna and worked at Schmid’s Oriental Printing Establishment, which his father had acquired. At this young age, Bush became engrossed in the printing business and turned to the study of languages. Soon he could read and write in Greek, Latin and Hebrew along with his native German. For six years (1842–47), Bush edited and published the Kalendar und Jahrbuch für Israeliten among many other important works. Eventually, Bush became a partner and a leading book pioneer and publisher in Vienna and the firm was renamed Schmid and Busch.

With the Austrian Empire Revolution in 1848, Bush had to flee to America and settled in New York City along with many other liberal Jewish intellectuals. He arrived on January 8, 1849 with his wife Theresa Taussig who he married in 1844 and their son Raphael. There Bush opened a store that sold newspapers and stationery. On March 30, 1849, Bush founded and published the first issues of Israel’s Herald, the first Jewish weekly in the United States which was patterned after the journal he had published in Vienna. Unfortunately, the effort failed financially, so Bush had to stop operations after only three months.

With little available funds, Bush moved to St. Louis, Missouri in the summer of 1849 where his wife’s family, the Taussig’s had settled. There Bush entered into partnership with his wife’s father Charles Taussig, in the firm of Bush & Taussig. They were one of the leading merchants in the city specializing in groceries and hardware located at Carondelet and Park Avenue. Bush and Taussig would run the general store successfully on the south end of St. Louis for many years.

Isidor Bush became a naturalized citizen in 1854 and ardently opposed slavery and championed the Union cause. In 1857, Bush helped incorporate and was made president of the Peoples’ Savings Bank in St. Louis. In the late 1860s he was also president of the Mechanics Savings Bank, and later served as actuary for the German Mutual Life Insurance Company.

When the Missouri Convention was called to determine whether the state should join in the secession movement, Bush was chosen a member on the Unconditional Union ticket, and was made a member of the Committee of Nine, to which most important matters were referred such as abolishing slavery and forming a new constitution. He was also elected a member of the Missouri state board of immigration to repair losses in population resulting from the war, which post he retained for twelve years.

Despite many successful endeavors, Bush never really became a wealthy person in the traditional sense. He certainly suffered his share of financial setbacks but typically was able to rebound, take care of his debts and move on. He was always on the forefront of thought and innovation and prospered sufficiently to position him as a leader in the Jewish Community and the city of St. Louis. One of those associations that Bush was prominent in was the B’nai B’rith, the famous national Jewish fraternal and philanthropic organization. His achievements within the organization were substantial. Bush also served on the City Council and Board of Education in St. Louis as he held public education in high regard.

Bush apparently suffered physical disabilities in a fire when he was a child that prohibited full military service, so he assisted the Union cause in other ways. When Gen. John C. Fremont (the Pathfinder) took command in 1861, with headquarters in St. Louis, Bush was made his secretary and aide-de-camp, with the rank of Captain. He submitted to Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase a plan for a government loan of one hundred million dollars, similar to the famous Rothschild premium loans of Austria. Chase feared its rejection by Congress, but was impressed with Bush’s financial genius, and offered him a Treasury clerkship.

Bush refocused after the Civil War back to St. Louis, and became for six years the auditor and general freight and passenger agent for the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad Company. He later would become director of the railroad, serving until 1865 when the line was taken over from New York by financier Jay Gould and the State foreclosed its liens on the railroad.

Next, Bush partnered in the real estate firm of Barlow, Valle & Bush. Interesting enough, Bush was able to purchase many tracts of land south of the city in Jefferson County that were next to the railroad tracks and Mississippi River. The first tract was purchased in February and March 1865 and included 241 acres near the present-day town of Pevely. He had become familiar with this land during his years with the Iron Mountain Railroad. This land was ideal as his research assured him that the land was adaptable for growing grapes and fruits while having an excellent steamboat landing.

Owning this land would play out as Bush became interested in wine-making and created the Isidor Bush Wine Company. He called all his land “Bushberg,” which of course he named after himself. The image above shows the town of Bushberg facing the river in 1880. It was at one time a thriving community complete with steamboat landing, railroad station, post office, wood yard, hotel and a saloon. The image below shows the Bushberg hotel. Both images courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society.

Bush even had the foresight to send his son Raphael to apprentice with viticulturalists in Hermann, Missouri and Cincinnati, Ohio to learn the trade. Their grocery business had suffered during the Civil War and the senior Bush wanted to spare his son from the whims of commercial life. He also felt that agriculture was a more noble Jewish pursuit.

By 1868, the vineyard had nine acres with 20 varieties of grapes. That year the vineyard purchased the post office to handle its growing mail-order business as the company was extremely successful in raising grapes and became known for its products. Before long, Bush was considered a leading expert in viticulture. He even sent large quantities of cuttings from his vineyards to France to replace the ravages there by phylloxera as his wild American vines had a greater resistance to the root louse. In 1871, Bush hired Gustavus E. Meissener who was operating a nursery in Waterloo, Iowa to become his foreman at Bushberg. He would eventually become a partner in the wine growing and vineyard business.

Bush, after years of preparation, published his first catalogue of grapes in 1869-70 called the Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue of Grape Vines, Small Fruit and Seed Potatoes. The vineyards’ reputation had spread in the 1870s so The Bushberg Catalogue evolved and only focused on grapes. This catalogue went through a number of generations and was translated into several languages with international acclaim.

In 1870, Bush and his son Raphael organized the firm of Isidor Bush & Son to run the wholesale and retail trade which grew into one of the most successful wine and liquor enterprises in St. Louis. Their primary address was 314 Elm Street. It was during this period that the Missouri IXL Bitters was produced. I have only seen one example. I believe it was dug in Pekin, Illinois before it came to its present owner.

The northern California wine business was rapidly growing by the end of the 1800s and impacted the Bush wine business. There seemed to be less demand for his vines and his research. The vineyard would close in 1895. The town of Bushberg would cease to exist.

Isidor Bush died in St. Louis on August 5, 1898 and is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery. His wife Theresa had previously died in 1893. Isidor Bush was a admired person and was considered one of St. Louis’s finest citizens. He also had his name on a bitters bottle.

Note:  Ferd amply has referenced his sources for this post on his Peachridge site, https://www.peachridgeglass.com.  His interests primarily are bitters, mine is whiskey.  Because many pre-Prohibition distillers and liquor dealers carried a line of bitters, our research often coincides. Ferd’s article on P. J. Murray and his Boston saloon can be seen on this site at September 7, 2017.

 

During the 53 years from 1812 until 1865, the United States was embroiled in three wars, one against a colonial power, one against a neighbor, and one internecine.  Members of an extended distilling family are counted as having participated in all three, a distinguishing element in the story of Bond & Lilliard, distillers of Anderson County, Kentucky.  William F. Bond, shown here, anchored the family.

William’s father was John Bond born in Anderson County, Kentucky, in August 1791,  the son of pioneers William and Sarah Cranston Bond.  Some writers erroneously have called him a veteran of the Revolutionary War, an impossibility since John was born eight years after that war ended.  John would have been 21 at the time of the War of 1812, however, and a large contingent of Kentucky riflemen fought along side Kentuckian Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.  Although no direct evidence exists, John Bond may have been among them.

William Bond’s participation in the Mexican War is indisputable.   He was a member of Company C of the Second Kentucky Volunteers, a regiment known as “The Salt River Tigers.”  The name came from the 150 mile long river that flows through Kentucky.  The Tigers are reported to have averaged about six feet with 42  men above that height.  Henry Clay was a colonel with the regiment.

Some accounts have credited the Salt River Tigers with having turned the fate of battle at Buena Vista.  The Mexican and American forces for some time had been facing each other behind the breastworks with only a few yards separating them.  One senior officer suggested to another that a charge would be in order.  “Instantly the tallest and fiercest of the Tigers, seeming to think a charge had been agreed upon, gave their particular yell for advance, and the enemy was repulsed.”  The Tigers lost an estimated six men in the assault, shown above.  William Bond emerged unscathed.

William returned to Anderson County.  John had built his first distillery in 1820 on a site that was not far from the McBrayer plant on Cedar Brook. [See McBrayer post of Oct. 2, 2011.]   In 1836, needing more space, the distillery was move to a site closer to Lawrenceburg.  Six years later the “Founding Father” died and was buried in a cemetery located on a family-owned farm.  

John and his wife, the former Sarah Utterback, had several children, among them William born in 1826.  When Sarah died, he remarried a woman named Mary Johnson and began a second family.  This may explain why the distillery was left to the youngest child, David, who was still only an infant.  Among Kentucky distillers this sometimes done to insure an income for the widow as custodian.  By 1849 William, returned from the war, officially took over the operation.  He was 23.  The following year William married Sarah Mary Hanks.  The couple would go on to have 12 children over the next 19 years.

Meanwhile, William’s younger sister, Margaret had married Christopher C. Lilliard. Born in 1833, Lilliard, shown here in maturity, enlisted in the Confederate Army in July 1861. He was mustered in as a first Lieutenant in Company I of the Kentucky Second infantry, the same outfit as William Bond’s that had acquitted itself so valiantly in the Mexican War.

 An early engagement of the regiment was at Fort Donelson, the battle shown above.   This time the 2nd Kentucky did not fare so well.  After a stunning victory for Northern forces led by General Grant, the entire regiment of more than eight hundred men was captured.   Among them was Lieutenant Lilliard.  After spending some time in Yankee prison camps, the Kentucky soldiers were exchanged and returned to fought on at Shiloh and other battles, taking many casualties.  Sometime after his release Lilliard resigned his commission and went home.

William Bond quickly realizes that his brother-in-law, also from a whiskey-making family, would make an excellent junior partner.  Thus was born the distilling house of Bond & Lilliard.  Their distillery was described as “located off Bond’s Mill Road about two miles from Sweet Mash.”  The partners rapidly earned a reputation for making a high quality bourbon.  Their whiskey would go on to win the Grand Prize at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.   The award gave the Bond & Lilliard brand tremendous credibility.  Both partners became prosperous as a result.  Bond was able to lodge his large family and attending servants in the mansion home shown below.

In June 1892, the distillery was destroyed by fire, a loss set at $10,000, but uninsured.  The partners quickly built back.  According to insurance underwriter records, the revived distillery, shown here, was of iron-clad construction with three warehouses of which two were ironclad with a metal or slate roof.  The third warehouse was frame but had a fire resistant roof.  Two of the warehouse were fully under “Bottled in Bond Act” government supervision, one was partially “free.”

Things began to change in the 1890s.  In 1894 Lilliard had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.  He gradually weakened over the next two years until June 1896 and died on the 24th at age 68.  The Lexington Morning Herald obituary saluted him as “one of Lawrenceburg’s most prominent citizens and his death will cause sorrow in many other parts of the state.”  He was buried in Lawrenceburg Cemetery adjacent to the monument shown here.

Lilliard’s death may have resulted in a change of name.  Shown there is a J. Bond & Co.trademark drawing that may relate to the Bond family distilling interests.  I am fascinated by the Nancy Hank’s name — Lincoln’s mother. William Bond’s wife was a “Hanks.”  In this case, however, the name seems to relate to a sulky race horse that in 1892 broke the world record for the mile.

 

After Lilliard’s death William Bond seemed to have lost interest in running the distillery.  By now in his seventies he may have been feeling the effects of age.  In 1899, he sold the distillery and the brand name to the Whiskey Trust, an aggressive attempt by New York financiers at a whiskey monopoly.  Bond lived another eleven years, dying in July 1910 from what was described as “a complication of diseases” at the age of 83.

William’s obituary in  the Lawrenceburg daily accounted him one of Anderson County’s oldest and richest citizens.  It recounted his war record, his 1871-1872 service in the Kentucky legislature representing Anderson County, and his success as a distiller.  The article concluded:  “His benevolence of character made him one of the most popular citizens of this county, and his loss  will be deplored by all who appreciate eminent worth and excellence of character.”  After funeral services in his home William Bond was buried in Lawrenceburg Cemetery.  His monument is seen here.  

Given the stellar reputation of Bond & Lilliard whiskey,  Trust officials retained the name, turning over distillery operations to Stoll & Company, a Lexington-based  firm that worked closely with the cartel . The Stolls on their letterheads and advertising claimed to be “sole proprietors of Bond & Lilliard.”  [See post on the Stolls, April 23, 2017.] The bottle shown here likely dates from that era.

The coming of National Prohibition caused the disappearance of the brand for a number of years but was revived by the owners of Wild Turkey who continue to distill and bottle it at their facility in Lawrenceburg.  While the original Bond & Lilliard recipe may be lost, at Wild Turkey an attempt apparently has been made to mimic what impressed the judges at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition by putting the 100 proof whiskey through a charcoal filtration to give it a lighter color and taste.  The Bond & Lilliard bottle has been given a very distinctive label.  It touts the whiskey as being “linked to the hearts of these two sturdy men.”

In a 1906 supplement to Lawenceburg’s newspaper, the Anderson News, the unidentified author waxes poetic about the still thriving Bond & Lilliard distillery located in a lush natural environment:  “As the traveler winds his way around [the lake stocked with fish and minnows] that leads to this plant, he is greeted by nature’s own sweet breath, spiked with mint, and the pungent and invigorating aroma of Bond & Lilliard grown ripe and mellow.”  A contemporary photo of the site shows the surroundings still lush but of the distillery William Bond and Christopher Lilliard created, only a single wall remains.

Notes:  This post, including photos, has been gathered from a number of sources available on the Internet.  Of particular help were obituaries of the principals from Lawrenceburg newspapers.