Author name: Jack Sullivan

Foreword:   It is not surprising that a substantial number of liquor dealers owned hotels.  The identification of inns with taverns is embedded in American history.  Brought to the current day it is not unusual for an individual (like me) to check in, find the room, and then head down to the hotel bar to see what’s gong on.  Presented here are three men, all of whom became wealthy through whiskey sales, that owned and operated hostelries in pre-Prohibition times.

At five feet, nine inches tall, Frederick Rudolph Welz was not a big man, but he carried a lot of weight in St. Paul, Minnesota, as owner of the city’s largest and most prestigious hotel and a major liquor house and saloon.  An immigrant from Germany, Wells was worth the equivalent today of $25 million when he died. It was said of him: “…Every dollar which he possesses has been earned since he came to America….”

Welz launched his career in hotels in 1878 when he purchased the Circle Park House in Indianapolis, a leading hostelry and favorite of circus folks.  After three years, he sold it and headed north to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he initially was in the liquor trade.  In his new home city,  Welz eventually acquired the Clarendon Hotel.  Although that hostelry had proven unprofitable under three previous owners, Welz transformed it into a first class, money-making property.  “He brought to the business keen discernment, unflagging enterprise, and a knowledge of the demands of the traveling public….”   After three years, however, Welz tired of running the Clarendon, sold it, and took an extended holiday with his wife to Germany.

Upon his return, Welz brought or, some sources say, leased the Merchants Hotel, shown left. This was a premier property in St. Paul at the corner of Jackson and Third Streets, a popular place for social reunions and political gatherings.  Just before the convening of the Minnesota legislature and state conventions the hotel’s rotunda and halls were crowded with politicians and onlookers.

As was his usual pattern, after five years of operating the Merchants Hotel, Welz decided to get out of the hotel business and again set his sights on St. Paul’s lucrative liquor trade.  Welz took a local businessman, Robert Mangler, as a partner and established a wholesale and retail liquor business called “Welz-Mangler Co., Importers and Jobbers, Wines and Liquors.” 

While still involved in the liquor house, Welz’s interest took another turn.  A St. Paul family named Mehls had built and attempted to operate a large luxury hotel called the Ryan. It is shown right.  Apparently not experienced at managing such an establishment and facing a economic downturn during the Panic of 1893, the Mehls went bankrupt and a bank repossessed the hotel.  Welz bought it.

St. Paul newspapers were positive about the takeover, citing Welz’s past success in turning hotels profitable and noting that the new owner, despite other business interests like the liquor house, would be “giving his whole attention to the Ryan.” The economy rebounded.  The Ryan Hotel prospered. To quote a biographer:  “[Welz] made it the leading hotel of the city….Made the name of Ryan famous throughout the Northwest….”  This time Welz stayed the course, running the hotel until 1904 when he reached 71.

Unlike many of the impoverished immigrants to the U.S. who engaged in the liquor trade, William Sheppard Norman, born in 1859, was the scion of a wealthy family of Cheltenham, England that owned and operated two newspapers as well as a large printing and lithographing business.  Upon immigrating to the U.S. Norman’s business acuity led to his managing Spokane companies that provided telephone, telegraph, electric and street railway services. 

Hailed for his “ability, power of organization and initiative spirit,” Norman’s next foray was into hotels.  When the Spokane Hotel, shown right, went into bankruptcy in 1893, he saw an opportunity, bought and remodeled it into what was termed “the finest hotel in the ‘Island Empire.’”   From there Norman went on to purchase the posh Tacoma Hotel, below left, and the North Yakima Hotel, right.  Aided by his brother, Benjamin, before long William was operating a string of hotels in the West under the name of Norman Hotels, Ltd.  A biographer said of him in 1912:  “In a summary of his life, Mr. Norman can be accorded a prominent place among the empire builders of Eastern Washington.”

Being an hotelier took Norman into the whiskey trade.  Each of his hotels  contained a liquor store that Norman called “Silver Grill Cellars.” Norman claimed not to be a rectifier but said he was bottling and selling only straight goods in ceramic jugs of half-gallon (below left) and gallon size. Norman’s flagship whiskey label was “Viking,” a name he never bothered to trademark.  Eventually his efforts in alcohol would conflict with Washington State’s prohibition laws and he was arrested and fined.

Forced to shut off the alcohol in his hotels, Norman expanded his  investments to include mining and real estate.  The millionaire utilities executive, hotelier and whiskey man lived to see Prohibition repealed in 1934, remaining active into his nineties.  

Unlike Welz and Norman, Harris Franklin, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, came late to the hotel business.  Moreover, unlike the other two who bought struggling properties, he built an hotel himself from money he made selling whiskey in the South Dakota boom town of Deadwood.

With a partner, Franklin created the largest liquor wholesale house in the Upper Midwest region with an annual trade approaching $125,000, equivalent to more than $3 million today.  This wealth also took him into successful investments in banking, mining, and railroads, all benefiting his adopted city.  Despite its development, however, Deadwood lacked a first class hotel.  For years business leaders had been attempting to construct one without success.  One try resulted in an abandoned foundation used for a time as swimming pool for local children.

In 1902 Franklin stepped into the situation. It was only when the whiskey dealer offered in 1902 to match any contribution to a building dollar-for-dollar that construction began in earnest.  The hotel, finished a year later and considered a marvel of modernity, was named for him.   Shown here, half of its 80 rooms had private baths, a novelty at the time.  Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Buffalo Bill Cody, Babe Ruth and world heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan were among Franklin Hotel guests in its heyday.  The Franklin Hotel became Deadwood’s pride and its owner a hero.

Note:  More complete posts on each of these three whiskey men may be found elsewhere on this website:  Frederick Welz, February 16, 2017;  William Norman,  March 21, 2020; and Harris Franklin, May 30, 2017.

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Charles Gillig, proprietor of a prosperous Buffalo, New York, liquor house and saloon, on a steamy night in mid-August, 1890, closed up shop at his Washington Street location and with two of his employees rented a boat for a cooling night swim in Lake Erie.  What ensued was related by the sole survivor.  It was yet another tragedy in the lives of the Gillig family, three generations who had found success and community standing in America by selling whiskey. 

Charles’ Father was Lorenz Gillig, born in Baden, Germany, about 1819.  At the age of 20, he immigrated to the U.S., settling in Buffalo.  He soon returned to Germany, apparently drawn back by his love for Maria Anna Koehler.  They married and Charles, the eldest of their six children, was born in Germany.  In 1843, Lorenz with Maria and their two-year-old returned to Buffalo.  His early employment in that city has gone unrecorded but likely involved acquaintance with the whiskey trade.

In 1848 Lorenz founded his own liquor house in Buffalo, one that apparently met with early profitability.  When the Civil War broke out, despite being over 40 with a business and growing family, Lorenz volunteered with the 65th New York Infantry Regiment.  Indicating likely earlier Prussian army service, he was commissioned as a major and was third in command.  Charles, now of military age, enlisted in the same unit as a private.  In June 1863 the 65th was ordered to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, garrisoned as a guard against Confederate incursions.  Mustered out of federal service six months later, father and son apparently remained part of  the New York militia while returning to manage the liquor business.  An early Gillig whiskey jug is shown right.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Lorenz brought Charles into the business as a full partner.  The company became L. Gillig & Son. and moved to 273 Washington Street, the address it would maintain for the remainder of its 50 years in business.  The building was five stories including a storage basement and covered an area 27 by 132 feet.  The first floor was for retail sales;  the upper floors for wholesale.  When he arrived at his majority, John Gillig was taken into the firm that subsequently became L. Lorenz and Sons.

Meanwhile Lorenz was making a name for himself, said by one observer to have become “thoroughly identified with the interests of Buffalo, both with reference to its municipal and commercial affairs.”  For a number of years, as a Republican, he was elected as a Buffalo alderman.  In 1869 he ran for the office of City Assessor.  Lorenz was hailed by one publication as “not an office-seeker, but one of those citizens who are solicited to accept these important offices of municipal trust and responsibility as a matter of public duty.”   Elected to the position, a subsequent assessment of Lorenz noted that: “…He became widely known for his discernment and probity.”

By this time, two tragic events already had befallen the Gilligs.  In 1868, Charles married a local Buffalo woman of 19 named Maria Magdelena Zins.   Before long Maria was expecting twins.  As the first grandchildren, their impending births likely engendered great excitement in the Gillig family.  They were given names: a girl would be Mary Magdelena, after the mother; a boy, Charles after his father.  To great sorrow both twins were dead at birth.  Moreover, after lingering for about a week, wife Maria died, age 20.   The three were buried in adjacent graves.  The shock to Charles and his family must have been intense.

Those three deaths were followed two years later by the death of the second of Lorenz and Maria’s three sons, Henry, only 24 years old.  That was followed in 1878 by the death of Lorenz himself.  Because of an indeterminate birth date his age was estimated at about 61. Lorenz was buried in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery, his monument shown here.  Charles and John retained the company name.

Yet another time of sorrow was awaiting the Gilligs.  In 1872 John married Louisa Knickenberg of Bufffalo.  They would have two sons in quick succession, Henry James born in 1873 and Charles Edward in 1875.  Seven years later the young father died leaving behind a grieving widow and the two little boys.  Within the space of 13 years the Gilligs had experienced six family deaths.

Of Lorenz’ sons, only Charles remained.  After his first wife’s death he married again in 1871.  His bride was Mary Anna Knickenberg, likely the sister of John’s wife.  They would have one child during their marriage.   Charles promptly sought help in running the Gillig liquor house and found it in J. Christ Bernhardt, another Buffalo liquor wholesaler.  [See my post on Bernhardt, July 24, 2015].  Their partnership was ill-fated and within two years they went separate ways.  Charles remained at the Washington Street address, operating both a liquor house and a saloon to considerable success for the next five years.  

Then came that night in August 1895 when Charles and two of his employees opted for a swim in Lake Erie off Buffalo’s Government Pier. It was a moonless pitch black night. They rented a small boat, moved offshore and, without incident, took a dip in the cooling waters.  Deciding to move farther into the lake, the swimmers re-entered the boat. Charles held the rudder, his bartender Henry Sacht manned the oars.  At some point the two men agreed to change places.  In so doing, they upset the skiff, throwing all three occupants into the water.  Only the third man, Andrew Lehner, surfaced.   

A Buffalo newspaper recounted how Lehner swam back to the boat and looked for his companions:  “…Whom he did not see and believes never rose to the surface.  His survey of the vicinity occupied, as he thinks, three or four minutes, when he came to the conclusion that the two men were drowned, and realizing his own danger and approaching exhaustion, at once made a loud outcry for help.”  His cries were heard by a lifeguard on patrol duty and Lehner was saved.

Amid its grief the Gillig family offered a reward of $100 for anyone recovering the bodies of Charles or Henry Sacht.   Three days later two Buffalo men spotted Charles’ body floating near a dock, obtained a boat and brought it ashore.  He was buried in the United German and French Cemetery in Cheektowaga, Erie County, New York.

Despite the loss of its proprietor the Gillig liquor house moved on, now operated by John Gillig’s sons, Henry, 22, and Charles, 20,  doing business initially as “Gillig Brothers.”  Two ceramic jugs bearing that company name are shown below.  After only a year or so the young Gilligs changed the name of the liquor company for the sixth time.  It now became Gillig Wine Importing Co. (Successors to Gillig Bros.)  Emphasis was on the importation of Hungarian wines, said to be “for medicinal purposes.”  

The Gillig brothers advertising harkened back to the family patriarch, Lorenz, and his 1849 founding of the liquor house.  By 1900, however, the company had ceased appearing in Buffalo city directories, thus ending a half century of family ownership — and times of tragedy.

Note:  The 80 year saga of the Gillig family was reconstructed from a host of sources.  Most important of these were the biography of Lorenz Gillig in the 1880 publication, “Commerce, Manufacturers & Resources of Buffalo & environs:  Historical and Statistical Review;”  Buffalo newspaper accounts of the drownings, and genealogical websites.  Unfortunately I could find no photos of either Lorenz or Charles Gillig and hope some descendant can help me fill that gap. 

 Considered by some to be among Kentucky “Whiskey Barons”  and honored recently with a legacy bourbon named for him, William Butler Saffell largely has escaped the attention given to other historic Kentucky distillers.  Shown here, Saffell of Lawrenceburg spent twenty years working as the yeast-maker for another distilling giant before setting his own course to making what he called “my own small product.”

Saffell, born in August, 1843, was part of a pioneer family that settled  in Anderson County in the late 1700s, roughly halfway between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky.  His grandfather, Joshua, is said to have owned and farmed, likely with enslaved help, 1,000 acres.  His father, Samuel Saffell, was a farmer, and his mother, Sarah Belle Woods, Pennsylvania born.

Educated in the one-room school houses of rural Kentucky, William is reputed as early as the age of sixteen to have been involved in distilling on his father’s farm.Although of sufficient age to have been seen military service during the Civil War, he seems to have avoided it.   Although Kentucky did not secede, Lawrenceburg in general had Southern sympathies.  The Staffells may have harbored other views.  Only three years after the end of hostilities, at the age of 25, William received federal employment as “United States revenue storekeeper” for  Anderson County.  Also known as “gaugers” such agents were responsible for assessing liquor taxes owed by local distillers.  A political appointment, Saffell would not have been selected with suspect loyalties. 

This occupation brought the young man in regular contact with distillers.  During his six years on the job Saffell made close inspections of the equipment and processes of each of the distilleries in his district and came to know well their proprietors.  Likely aware of growing corruption in the federal revenue service, Saffell resigned his commission in 1874, just months in advance of the major “Whiskey Ring” scandal in which many of his colleagues went to jail.

Almost immediately Saffell went to work for W. H. McBrayer.  William Harrison McBrayer, called Judge McBrayer for much of his life, is credited with being among the handful of Kentucky distillers who raised the quality and image of the state’s whiskey to international renown. One contemporary account says of his Cedar Creek brand: “It was the whiskey that made the crowned heads of Europe turn from Scotch to bourbon.”  [See post on McBrayer, Oct. 2, 2011.]

Saffell played a major role in that success.  He became McBrayer’s yeast-maker.  As whiskey guru Michael Veach has pointed out:  “Yeast is a very important flavor component to whiskey. There are people who say it only makes up about 5% of the flavor of the whiskey. I personally think this is a low figure and yeast makes a larger contribution than most people think. However even if this 5% figure is correct it is a vital component to the whiskey. Think of it this way – adding salt to a dish is a small part of the overall flavor, but if there is too little or too much it is noticed in the taste. The same can be said for yeast in whiskey — the wrong yeast will be noticed.”

Saffell’s yeast was an important ingredient in the success of McBrayer’s bourbon.  The two men grew very close.  Saffell’s first son bore the middle name of McBrayer.  The Judge in time made the young Kentuckian master distiller and manager of his distillery.  A year after the older man died, Saffell left the company and struck out on his own.  In 1889 he constructed a distillery on Fox Creek near Alton, Kentucky,  a hamlet northwest of Lawrenceburg. His plant was capable of producing 385 barrels of bourbon annually. According to a 1903 account, its two ironclad bonded warehouses had the capacity to hold 21,000 barrels,

Saffell gave his whiskey his own name and bottled it ceramic jugs and in clear quart glass containers.  The bottles carried an elaborate label that depicted a warehouse full of aging liquor barrels.  From a revenue stamp it appears that his “W. B. Saffell Kentucky Bourbon was 100 proof (50% alcohol) that had been aged four years in federal bond.  Saffell’s whiskey appears to have been very popular, acquiring a customer base for a bourbon of which the distiller boasted:  “My own small product is not excelled by any.”  About Saffell the Wine & Spirits Bulletin commented:  “By his carefulness and knowledge of the business he has built up a high reputation and a successful business.”

Throughout this period William was conducting a personal life.  In October 1883, at the age of 40, he married Frances E. “Frankie” Bond, the daughter of a local political figure.  She was 12 years younger than he.  Over the next 17 years the couple would have seven children, six daughters and one son.  The latter, Franklin McBrayer Saffell, died in infancy, a great family sorrow.

At the time other Anderson County distillers were building mansions in Lawrenceburg, the most imposing being one constructed by the Ripy family [See my post on the Ripys, Sept. 15, 2016.]  Purchasing a lot not far from the Ripy home, Saffell built an imposing two and one-half story house for wife Frankie and his growing brood of children.  Shown here, it was done in “Richardsonian Romanesque,” employing such elements of the style as towers, an asymmetrical facade, masonry walls, a projecting central entrance bay, and other expensive elements of the style.  While not as large as the Ripy residence, it provided plenty of room for the Saffells.  Today it is a funeral home.

With the wealth from his distilling, Saffell also was extending his business interests. For many years he was a vice president and director of the Lawrenceburg National Bank.  Shown here is ten dollar bill issued by that institution.  Saffell also was farming 500 acres in Anderson County.  My guess is that this land was part of the 1,000 acres that his grandfather had claimed.  He likely was growing some wheat for use in mashing for his bourbon.

Saffell continued to meet with distilling success into the 20th Century as the word spread about the quality of his whiskey.  It was considered a worthy rival of premium Kentucky whiskeys, including Cedar Brook, the bourbon he had helped make famous for Judge McBrayer.  At the same time, however, Saffell’s health was declining.  He died in August 1910, at the age of 67.  His youngest daughter was just nine years old.

Honored by the population as one of the city’s most prominent citizens, Saffell was buried in the Lawrenceburg Cemetery at the base of a large granite plinth.  Soon after, the city named a street for him.  When a school was built on that thoroughfare, it became Saffell Street School.   Despite the loss of its founder, Saffell’s distillery, under other management, continued to produce a high quality product until shut down by National Prohibition.  The brand was not revived after Repeal. The distillery itself was left abandoned and in time disappeared.

William Saffell’s contribution to bourbon history, however, has been revived. The folks who make “Wild Turkey” have created a “Whiskey Baron Collection” that honors major distillers of yore.  Among them is Saffell.  Shown here is are the bottle and the label of “W.B. Saffell Bourbon.”  Pictured on the label is the bearded distiller in front of his mansion.  The yeast man has risen again.

Note:  This post was constructed from a number of sources.  Among them the most important was the Saffell family biography in “Kentucky: A History of the State,” by Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 5th ed., 1887.

In Kansas City, Missouri, a youthful German immigrant named Arthur Fels, shown here in maturity,  beginning about 1911 ran a mail order liquor house by spinning an elaborate tall tale about its age, its capacity and its whiskey.  Whether Fels’ myth-making paid off is open to question. After leaving the liquor trade, however, Fel found a future that elevated him into the business and political elites of Missouri for the remainder of his 97 years.

If you believed Fels’ advertising, his was among the oldest, largest, most established wholesale and mail order liquor houses in America.  One Fels advertising piece claimed:   “For nearly 50 years (ever since 1869) we have catered to the wants of the discriminating buyer, both dealer and consumer, being not only the oldest house in our line, but the largest west of New York City —  in fact, one of the largest in America.…We own and control three distilleries, two in Kentucky and one in Missouri.”  The piece went on to claim a customer base of 5,000 wholesalers and dealers, and 350,000 individual mail order customers.

Ads like this were published widely.  Printers Ink, the journal of the advertising trade early in 1910 reported:  “The Fels Distilling Company, Kansas City, will shortly begin an extensive mail order whiskey campaign in a big list of daily newspapers, weeklies, and mail-order publications in the Middle West and South.  One hundred and fifty line display copy will be used.”  Ad managers in the target areas must have been salivating at the thought of landing a Fels account.

Tall tales and outright chicanery were endemic in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade.  Arthur Fels, however, was carrying deception to new heights — or low point.  He was almost without peer in creating a monumental myth about Fels Distilling Company.  The truth lay somewhere else.  Finding it sends us back across the Atlantic to Kaiserslautern, Bayern, Germany.

There in 1876,  Arthur was born, the son of Bertha Hirsch and Joseph Fels.  When the  boy was only three years old, his father died.  Bertha, apparently seeing no prospects for herself and her only son in Germany, left their homeland and came to the United States.  She had relatives here, likely first cousins,  Adolph and Simon Hirsch, who had settled in Leadville, a Colorado mining town, and were running a saloon and wholesale liquor business. [See my post on Simon Hirsch, Dec. 10, 2011.] The Hirsch brothers would loom large in Fels’ life.As he grew to maturity, Fels went to work for his cousins.

Leadville was a classic boom and bust mining town. Gold was discovered nearby during the Pikes Peak gold rush of 1859, followed by discovery of rich silver ore in the early 1870s. In July 1893 the price of silver crashed from $1.60 per troy ounce to less than sixty cents. Mines went bankrupt and Leadville fell into an economic depression. Its 1893 population of over 40,000 dwindled to less than 15,000 by 1895. The Hirsch brothers’ liquor trade virtually disappeared.

Simon was the first brother to decamp from Leadville, arriving in Kansas City about 1885.  He bought into a liquor dealership that had been established in 1879.  Under Simon’s leadership the company flourished. Trade reached outside Kansas City to other parts of Missouri and into nearby Kansas and Colorado.  At some point Fels joined him and, it appears, initially became one of four Hirsch traveling salesmen.  According to business directories, within several years Fels had been moved into the front office as cashier.

With Fels showing a distinct talent for the whiskey business, about 1912 a scheme was hatched, likely fostered by Fels himself, to create a new company that would operate side-by-side with the successful Hirsch liquor house. The new entity would concentrate on the mail order whiskey trade that for the moment was thriving because federal laws allowed shipments of alcohol into “dry” locales and states.  As the “Heart of America” Kansas City was well positioned.  Likely funded by Hirsch money, the Fels Distilling Company was born.

From the outset the new business sold more than 25 brands of whiskey, divided between nationally known labels like “Clarke’s Pure Rye,” “Guckenheimer Rye,” “Old Crow,” and “Old Sherwood Rye,” and proprietary brands like “Arabian Club,” “Cedar Brook” (from Hirsch), and “Fels 3 Star,” “Fels 4 Star Reserve,” “Fels A-1,” “Fels Monogram,” “Fels Old 100 Proof,” “Fels Pure Rye Malt,” “Fels White Rye.”

To his customers, both wholesale and mail order, Fels gifted shot glasses, virtually all of them with his name brands advertised.  His ads continually hammered at the alleged longevity of the Fels brand name.  Said one:  “Forty years ago and over upon this brand of whiskey we laid the foundation of our business which today extends from Ocean to Ocean, from Lakes to Gulf….” In a subsequent advertisement the time frame was extended to “nearly 50 years—a half century” during which the name Fels had become “a household word.”  Fels actually had been in business only a few years.

In a riff on the British children’s verse “The House that Jack Built,” that he called “The House that Fels Built,” Arthur embellished the tall tale of his enterprise by claiming to have built a distillery, pictured at left with the caption “This is the House that Fels built.”  Other illustrations purport to show the “…The Worm where in was distilled with skill the Liquor rare”  and “…The Oak Cask, so huge and stout, that aged so well the Liquor rare….”

In fact, Fels was distilling none of his own whiskey but with the help of the Hirsch brothers blending his distillery products in a back room of their liquor house.  The idea that Fels owned and controlled three distilleries also was a fantasy.  For a brief period (1889-1892) Simon Hirsch was recorded as a co-owner of a distillery in Daviess County, Kentucky (RD#18, 2nd District).  This was well before the Fels operation began.

The myth about his company that Fels attempted to project seeming failed miserably.  Perhaps his “rectified” whiskey was substandard.  Certainly the expense of the aggressive ad campaign must have been drain on the coffers of the Hirsch company.  Then too, Prohibition lurked in the foreseeable future.  After at most seven years in business, someone pulled the plug on The Fels Distilling Company.  It ceased operations.  The culprit likely was Simon Hirsch.

Despite the demise of his liquor enterprise, however, Arthur Fels flourished.  He became an investment banker and realtor.  As president of the Arthur Fels Company, he was credited with being instrumental in the financing of early high-rise buildings in Kansas City and St. Louis.  He also had a political career, elected to the city council in 1924 and 1925. During World War II he was selected as a member of the Selective Service Board.  Married and with one son,  Fels died at 97 years old and was cremated.

As noted earlier, tall tales were an accepted part of the environment in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade, a flaw that likely helped bring on National Prohibition.  Although Fels’ fabrications were among the most egregious, his failure may indicate that the drinking public was more knowledgable than he gave them credit for.  Or maybe it was just that he was peddling lousy whiskey.

Note:  This post was researched from a number of online and other sources.

Forward:  The nature of running a liquor-associated business often involved pre-Prohibition whiskey men intimately in the political processes of their times.  Here are brief stories of three who had  achieved sufficient stature in the Democratic or Republican party to be named as a national convention delegates charged with  nominating a Presidential candidate.

Whatever the enterprise,  Christian Hanlen of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, throughout his life exhibited an uncanny ability to be on the side of success.   As a soldier in the Yankee Army during the Civil War, as a whisky dealer, and as a delegate to the 1892 Democratic National Convention,  Christian was could pick a winner.

Beginning about 1882, Hanlen emerged as owner/manager of a wholesale liquor business called Hanlen Bros., located a 330 Market St. in Harrisburg.  As Hanlen’s business flourished, so did his stature in the community.  Like many of the whiskey dealers and saloonkeepers of the time who saw Prohibitionist forces heading to the Republican banner,  Christian was a strong Democrat. 

His involvement in party activities came during a particularly crucial period.  Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to be elected President since before the Civil War, had been defeated for reelection in 1888 by the Republican Benjamin Harrison despite Cleveland having garnered a majority in the popular vote.   When Cleveland ran again in 1892, serious opposition to him erupted within the Democratic Party.  Hanlen, however, was cited by the New York Times as a particularly ardent Cleveland supporter.

Elected as a delegate to the Democratic Convention in Chicago,  Hanlen headed across the country by train and emerged upon a convention center nicknamed “The Wigwam.”  Shown here it was a temporary building that had been thrown up in 30 days, located on Michigan Avenue between Washington and Madison.  Whatever excitement Christian experienced as a delegate, the Wigwam provided much of it.   The first day of the convention was marred by a rainstorm when the building sprung a massive leak.  Delegates were opening  umbrellas inside.  The following day as nominations were made, the roof broke again during a rain, showering the delegates.

Presidential balloting did not begun until 3 a.m. that morning.  Cleveland received enough votes to be nominated on the first ballot.  When the convention broke up at almost 5 a.m. Hanlen presumably was tired but  jubilant.   He would celebrate again on the night of the general election when Cleveland went on to victory and a return to the Presidency.

Jere M. Blowe, an African-American, ran a saloon and liquor business in Vicksburg, Mississippi, during a period of history when the local newspaper opined:  “Don’t mess with with white supremacy;  it is loaded with determination, gunpowder and dynamite.” Yet Blowe managed to provide leadership in his community, including being a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

Briefly during the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), blacks in Mississippi were given a measure of freedom roughly equal to whites.  But as the Federal Government relented in its effort to seek equality,  a series of white-passed laws increasingly discriminated against the Negro population.  Growing up during Reconstruction, it is possible that Blowe was able to get a good public education, but he experienced the gradual erosion of rights for himself and his people.

For a time Blowe served as a Vicksburg alderman, a position that seems to have had little power.   He also was selected an alternate delegate to the GOP Convention of 1908, along with a fellow black Vicksburg saloonkeeper named Wesley Crayton.  It is likely that they shared a “Jim Crow” train car to travel to Chicago where the Coliseum awaited, patriotically decorated for the convention.  Historian Neil McMillan has written: “Although impotent in the state and local context, Mississippi’s blacks, like Republican functionaries in other parts of the South, took an important part in the nomination of Presidential candidates.

The 1908 convention nominated Secretary of War William Howard Taft of Ohio, who would go on the win the general election.   McMillan goes on to say that black delegates had a disproportionate influence on convention outcomes and “performed their function in a corruption atmosphere.”  Whatever his experience, Blowe could return to Mississippi, where he was largely powerless to affect local affairs,  knowing that the GOP platform that year vowed to “uphold the rights of African-Americans.”  It turned out to be an empty promise.

In 1893, swayed by a powerful preacher, Tom Doores of Bowling Green, Kentucky,  took a solemn pledge never again to touch alcohol.  By 1900 he seemingly had forgotten, abandoned carpentry, and was in business as “J. T. Doores & Co., Distillers and Wholesale Liquor Dealers,” on Main Street.  After ten years of making money from alcohol, Doores sold out and turned his attention to real estate and politics.

Doores already had taken steps toward political prominence.  In 1904 he was elected as a Kentucky delegate to the 1904 Republican convention held in Chicago, one that nominated Teddy Roosevelt.  In 1908 he was an alternate to the convention that selected William Howard Taft.  He was seen by the Taft people as an effective loyalist.

By 1812, however, the Grand Old Party had been riven by a split between Roosevelt and Taft. By now Doores not only was the Warren County Republican chairman, he also had been appointed by the Taft Administration as the postmaster of Bowling Green, a highly sought, well paid political appointment. After the 1912 GOP nominating convention in Chicago, the “muckrakers” of Colliers Magazine charged that a group of 23 Kentucky postmasters and assistant postmasters who also were county chairmen, Doores among them, had stolen the state’s nominating votes from Roosevelt.  The periodical named them and quoted their salaries.  At $2,700 a year, Doores was the highest paid.

Ultimately the split cost the GOP the White House as Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected.  Doores lost his postal job.  He made a bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1916 but inexplicably pulled out just before the election.  A year later he tried bootlegging, was caught and tried.  The Cincinnati Enquirer opined:  “Doores probably is the most prominent man who yet has been arrested in Kentucky on a charge of peddling liquor into a dry burg.”  What happened then is undisclosed.  He probably received a fine and no jail time.  Five years later, Doores — still a relatively young 52 years — died and was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Bowling Green. 

Note:   More complete vignettes on each of these whiskey men can be found elsewhere on this website:   Christian Hanlen, August 9, 2012;  Jere Blowe, April 6, 2013; and Tom Doores, January 26, 2015.