Author name: Jack Sullivan

Thomas Handy, the Rebel Who Founded a Liquor Giant

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The Sazerac Company is one of the two largest spirits companies in the United States with annual revenues of more than $1 billion, running some nine distilleries, employing an estimated 2,000 people and operating in at least 12 countries.  The business owes its origins to a returned Confederate soldier who purchased a 19-year old New Orleans bar in 1869 and thereby founded a beverage behemoth.  His name was Thomas Hughes Handy, shown here.

Handy was born in 1839 in Somerset County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, from a family founded by ancestor Samuel Handy, who had arrived in Maryland  from England as an indentured servant in colonial times, married Mary Sewell in 1679, and had 14 children.  Among Samuel’s descendants was John Scarborough Handy who with wife Elizabeth moved his family to New Orleans in 1847, shown below, and died shortly thereafter, leaving Thomas, two brothers and a sister.  The loss caused all the Handy sons to truncate their educations and go to work by their mid-teens.  The 1860 census found the three boys working as clerks.  Later Thomas was quoted saying that the happiest day of his life was when he had given his mother his first earnings.



By the early 1860s, Handy was working for a liquor importer named Sewell Taylor  and learning the trade.  When the Civil War erupted, however, he was quick to enlist in a Confederate unit known as the Crescent Light Artillery, commissioned a second lieutenant, and deployed to defend Fort St. Philip, a masonry redoubt located on the east bank of the Mississippi River and meant to protect New Orleans eighty miles upstream.   Deemed critical to the Union cause, the Federal navy was deployed to take the fort, control the river and capture the city.


Standing against their bombardment of the fort was Captain T. H. Hutton, Lt. Handy and a company of raw troops that suffered from a lack of water, food, blankets, shelter, and medical attention while withstanding twelve days of relentless Union shelling, shown here in a magazine illustration.  The siege of Fort St. Philip ended in a mutiny by the Confederate troops and an abject surrender.  New Orleans quickly fell to the Yankees.


Captain Hutton, Handy and the others were captured.  As an officer, Handy was sent east to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor.  He was lucky.  Shown here, it was a relatively benign prison for Confederate officers, Southern sympathizing civil officials from Maryland, and Northern political prisoners.  The commandant was known for his humane treatment of prisoners and the mortality rate was low.  In any case, Handy was there for only a few weeks before being sent to back to the Confederacy in a prisoner exchange, common in the early stages of the war.  


Freedom still eluded him, however, as Confederate military officials, rankled over the debacle at Fort St. Philip, arrested him for insubordination and mutiny.  Put on trial in a court-martial, Handy appears to have used his characteristic eloquence to exonerate himself and rejoin the Crescent Artillery.  There he found an opportunity to redeem his reputation.


His unit was deployed south of Vicksburg protecting Confederate supply lines on the Red River.  When Union commanders sent the gunship, SS Indianola, to disrupt river traffic, Handy, aboard an armed Confederate steamship, was given command of the troops.  As author John C. Tramazzo says:  “The valiant and perhaps reckless, Lt. Thomas Handy attacked with vigor.”  The result was total victory with the Indianola disabled, its cargo plundered, and its crew captured.


Handy went on from there for other victories against Union ships on the Red River.  Captured a second time and released to a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, for treatment of his wounds and a broken leg, Handy resigned his commission,  When the Confederates surrendered he returned to New Orleans. 


Now afflicted with a permanent limp, Handy returned home a hero, hailed as one who “had done his full duty.”  Drawing on his earlier experience in the whiskey trade he secured employment as the bookkeeper at a high class New Orleans saloon in the French Quarter called the Sazerac House.  The setting is shown below. Saving his money, when the owner in bad health decided to sell out in 1871, Handy bought the business and kept the name. 


 

This suggests a brief discussion of “Sazerac.”  It is a cocktail initially made with a French brandy called “Sazerac de Forge et Fils.”  The name tracks back to

France and the 1630s when the Sazerac family established vineyards and a distillery in the Cognac region.  The current company is thoroughly American, with headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, and owes its origins to Handy.  Shown here is an 1875 ad he placed in which he claimed to be the New Orleans agent for Sazerac’s “justly celebrated” brandies.


During this period Handy also had a personal life.  The 1870 census found him at 32 years old the head of an unusual household.  A newlywed, his bride was Josephine “Josie” Campbell, a Mississippi-born young woman 11 years his junior.  Living with them was Handy’s mother, Elizabeth; his younger brother, Frederick; Sally Mack, a relative,and her two minor children. Also in residence was James Quirk, a black servant, and Quirk’s aged mother.  By the 1880 census, Thomas and Josie had three children, ages nine, four and four months.  Handy’s mother and brother were still living with them but no other relatives or servants.  His postwar years also found Handy taking responsibilities in New Orleans civic life.  He served on the school board and as a livestock inspector.  When a new Ninth Ward was created in 1876 he was elected to the post of “civic sheriff.”  In that role he is credited with securing employment for as many as 5,000 confederate veterans.


By that time Handy’s roller coaster financial ride had begun in New Orleans. The same aggressive risk-taking that had characterized his storied military service was exhibited in his business dealings.  With his saloon and liquor business generating considerable wealth, Handy launched himself as a local entrepreneur, creating Handy’s Canal Street, City Park & Lakeshore Railroad Company.  This glorified streetcar linked Basin Street to the Spanish Fort Amusement Park on Lake Ponchartrain, shown below.  



In 1878 the cost of construction and maintenance forced him into bankruptcy.  The Sazerac website describes what happened next:  “After Handy loses his money in bad railroad investments, he is forced to dissolve Thos. H. Handy Co….Shortly after Vincent Micas buys out Thomas Handy becoming the owner of the Sazerac House….”  Micas also became the agent for Sazerac brandy, and involved himself in a bitter dispute with Handy.


Four years later the tables turned.  In March 1882 Micas suffered financial problems, lost his lease on the Sazerac House, and saw his building demolished.  His fortunes revived, Handy —  now known as “Colonel Handy”  — rebuilt and reopened the Sazarac House at its original location.  The Times-Picayune reported:  “The structure has been put up by Col. Handy who has planned it for a grand resort, to be unsurpassed for comfort, elegance and convenience.”  The article enthused over the carved walnut bar, the carved paneling and fancy fixtures, ending:  “Good fare and good liquors will be the watchword of the “new Sazarac.”  The building as it looks today is shown below.


With his new saloon becoming a fashionable gathering place for New Orleans elites and the Sazarac franchise now firmly back in hand, Handy again was on a firm track.  Tradition has it that he subsequently substituted rye whiskey for the original brandy in the Sazarac cocktail without his patrons objecting  His prosperity restored, Handy was able to buy a summer home on Mississippi’s Long Beach resort area.  At the relatively young age of 54, Handy died there in 1893.


Handy’s funeral was a major event, with delegations present from the American Legion of Honor, Knights of Honor and the Army of Tennessee.  Among the tributes that poured in he was called: “A true man — true to himself and to mankind.  He had been a friend to those in want….and his willing hand always assisted the good cause when needed.”    Handy was buried in New Orleans’ Metairie Cemetery, his crypt shown here.  Josie would join him there 30 years later.


The company Handy founded was perpetuated and later formally chartered as the Sazerac Company.  Since then under the ownership of William Goldring, the company has come to operate Buffalo Trace, Barton, A. Smith Bowman, Medley, Fleischmann, Mr. Boston, Glenmore and other distilleries.  The organization continues to hail Thomas Handy for his hard work and tenacity as the source of its success.  Shown here is a Sazerac whiskey that commemorates the founder.  


Notes:  Among the important sources for this post were John Tremazzo’s interesting book, “Bourbon and Bullets:  True Stories of Whiskey, War, and Military Service” (2018), the Sazerac Company website history, and genealogical sites. 



Whiskey Men: The San Francisco Quake and Fire

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Foreword:  At 5:12 A.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, an estimated 7.9 earthquake hit San Francisco.  Within 30 hours of the quake’s first jolt, an ensuing firestorm had consumed much of San Francisco. In the inferno that swept through the city for three days, more than 3,000 people died. Twenty-eight thousand buildings were destroyed over 500 blocks of the city.  Property damage has been estimated at $235–500 million in 1906 dollars — equivalent to the entire 1906 Federal budget.  Today the amount would be between $4.8 and $10 billion.  Among those affected were many San Francisco liquor dealers.  Here are the brief stories of four.


John Lutgen and his whiskey company had gone from success to success in  San Francisco,  moving each time to larger quarters and in 1906 occupied a spacious building at 29-31 Battery Street. A local writer had opined : “Their trade has been prosperous from the start, and has since extended not only throughout the State, but also throughout the coast, their establishment being one of the representative liquor houses of the Golden Gate City.”  


In 1904, Lutgen’s firm had incorporated with a value of $250,00, several million dollars by today’s reckoning.  He and a partner each received 3,998 shares, valued at $25 each.  About the same time, once again needing more space, the company moved to the Battery Street address. Increasingly John Lutgen was being recognized as a major figure in the community. He was a member of the Board of Library Trustees in Alameda and active in several German benevolent societies and Masonic orders.



Then came that fateful morning in 1906.  Among buildings destroyed was the Battery Street building housing the Wichman, Lutgen Company.  Going up in flames were thousands of barrels and cases of whiskey, the firm’s records and all its equipment.  If Lutgen was tempted to quit, he gave no indication.  Almost immediately he made plans to relocate the company into temporary quarters at 431-439 Clay Street  to carry on the whiskey trade.  Meanwhile he planned, designed, and supervised the construction of a new building at 134 Sacramento Street.  The company moved there in 1911, its final home.  The following year Lutgen reported very good sales.



Among others burned out of their business quarters were Louis H. Barner and Henry Kehlenbeck, thriving wholesale liquor dealers at 324 Clay Street. The earthquake triggered a fire at the California Fireworks Company on Front Street, burning north to Clay Street and creeping up that thoroughfare slowly but steadily.  Shown right are a group of onlookers on Clay Street, including anxious shop owners that may have included Barner and Kehlenbeck, watching as the flames drew nearer.  Along Clay some buildings were blown up as a preventive measure but the progress of the fire was not halted. 


Burned out of their business, Barner & Kehlenbeck disappeared from directories and the telephone book briefly, displaced along with tens of thousand of other San Franciscans.  Fearing future quakes some business owners simply moved away.  Not  Barner or Kehlenbeck.  By early 1907, just a few weeks after the earthquake, they were back in business at Devisidaro Street, an area of town that had not been ravaged by fire.  By the end of that same year they had rebuilt permanent quarters at 714 Kearney Street and moved in to resume operations.


The sign left is brim full of confidence.  Goldberg, Bowen & Company  in 1915 were proclaiming the specialty grocery and liquor firm  a “Master Grocer” with a “The World Our Field.”  The claim was backed up by illustrations of goods delivered by ship and rail from all over the globe.  Many San Franciscans, however, could remember when Jacob Goldberg, and the Bowens, Charles and Henry, posted a quite different sign on the burned-out shell of their headquarters. 


The sign made clear that despite the blow the disaster had leveled on them, the partners were determined to press on.  It read: “Goldberg, Bowen and Co. Grocers Will Open a Grand New Store, Van Ness & Sutter.” True to their pledge by 1909 Goldberg, Bowen was back in business at the old address, with a building, bigger and better than the one before.  Shown here, it still stands at 242 Sutter.  The company eventually would have four stores, including one in Oakland. Despite calamities Goldberg, Bowen Co. was on its way to “World Reach.”


 


The earthquake and subsequently burning of San Francisco in 1906 was greeted by a good many clergymen as divine retribution for the city’s wicked, wicked ways. The fact that houses of worship were incinerated right along with everything else — while a huge whiskey warehouse was spared — inspired this immediate verse by Frisco poet and wit Charles Kellogg Field:


‘If, as they say, God spanked the town

For being over frisky,

Why did He burn the churches down

And save Hotaling’s whiskey?’”


Anson P. Hotaling was the largest liquor wholesaler in San Francisco  with a sales volume of 1,750 barrels annually.  Hotaling’s salvation may have been by the grace of God, but there also were more earthbound causes.   According to accounts, the warehouse was threatened and saved three times:  First by a fireman who hacked off smoldering roof cornices.  Second by a single length of hose from a Navy fireboat in San Francisco Bay that firefighters dragged over the ridge of Telegraph Hill for over a mile and eleven blocks to the Jackson street site. There they sprayed water on the building.



The final salvation was a bucket brigade, many of the participants Hotaling’s workers, who slopped a compote of sewage and sea water on the structure from an adjacent site.   The mixture steamed and stunk as it hit the hot exterior but as one writer reported, “the muck did the trick.”  Moreover, while other liquor dealers in the city suffered from looting, authorities allowed the Hotalings to hire a hundred men to stand guard. The firm lost nothing.


The Hotaling Company continued to prosper at its Jackson Street address until shut down by National Prohibition in 1919.  Subsequently a bronze tablet with Field’s verse on it was attached to the Hotaling warehouse where it still can  be found.  In addition, nearby Jones Alley was renamed Hotaling Way. 



In 1909 San Francisco threw a three-day party called the Portola Festival to celebrate the rebuilding of the city in so short a time.  San Francisco virtually had been made anew — 20,000 buildings erected in three years.   As one observer at the festival told the press:  “Who would have imagined that just a few days after, that people would step up and seek to rebuild…in the miraculous way that we see it here today?”  Among those responsible for the San Francisco “miracle,” its liquor dealers must surely be granted a role.


Note:  Considerably longer posts on each of the whiskey men profiled briefly here may be found elsewhere on this website:  John Lutgen,  July 23, 2012;  Barner & Kehlenbeck, December 8, 2015;  Goldberg, Bowen, July 20, 2021; and Anson Hotaling, March 29, 2013.






A Slab Seal Bottle Opens the Book on J. C. Marks

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Shown right is a ruby red whiskey slab seal label that identifies the contents as “Old Monongahela Rye” from the J. C. Marks Co. of Birmingham, Alabama.  Behind the bottle is the story of Joseph C. Marks, a liquor dealer whose sharp-witted jousts with prohibitionary forces in Birmingham, Alabama, and Louisville, Kentucky, were successful for years but unable to stem a national movement.


Marks’ shrewd approach toward “dry” forces was first manifested in the late 19th Century when Shelby County, some 30 miles down the road from Birmingham, required a license to sell liquor within its boundaries.  Marks dispatched a traveling salesman named Newman into the jurisdiction.  There Newman took an order for a gallon of whiskey costing $2.50 from B.L. Moore, who turned out to be shill for the prohibitionists.   The authorities pounced on Newman, who protested that he was only an agent.  The sale, he contended, had taken place in Birmingham when J. C. Marks, who had a license there, filled the order and sent the whiskey to Moore.  The Supreme Court of Alabama agreed.  Newman (and Marks) prevailed, continuing to sell liquor in Shelby County.


With a former local schoolmaster Adolph S. Loventhal, Marks in 1887 had open a liquor, wine and cigar business with offices, warehouse and workspace in a four story  building at 2117 Second Avenue in Birmingham.  These quarters allowed Marks to market his own brand of whiskey, blending it from barrels received by rail from Kentucky and elsewhere to achieve a desired taste, color and smoothness.  His flagship label was “Three Red Barrels,” a name he trademarked in 1906.  


Shown here is a pint bottle that proclaims the barrels as “Our Sign”  Below are quart bottles bearing Mark’s embossed label design.  It involved three stacked barrels with a bird perched on top below the word “purity.” The bottom barrel is split with a disembodied hand stretching out with a glass.  The rear of the bottle is embossed:  “J. C. Marks Liquors…Wholesale Liquors…Guaranteed Full Measure” and the address at the base.  Filled with whiskey, the barrels would show as red, a truly interesting package.




The slab seal bottle that opens this post presents more of a mystery.  According to an article by David Jackson Jr., for Bottles and Extras, this amber bottle was uncovered by a heavy equipment operator while excavating a coal mine near Birmingham.  Only one other apparently is known and it is damaged.  The seal indicates that the contents were “Monongahela Rye,” indicating Marks was also getting whiskey supplies from Pennsylvania.  Single specimens of bottles are rare, particularly when they entail elements such as a slab seal.  My hunch is that others do exist, waiting to be discovered. 


Like other whiskey wholesalers, Marks featured giveaway items to favored customers, both wholesale and retail.  Below are two examples that have come to light.  Below left is a crude mini jug with Marks’ name scratched in the Albany slip glaze.  It is flanked by a much more elaborate mini.  Note that this one advertises “3-Red-Barrels.”



In 1892 Adolph Loventhal, only 46, died, leaving behind his widow, Rebecca, (nee Sobel), and a sixteen year old son, Allison.  Eleven years later Marks, a 43-year old bachelor, married Rebecca, who was five years older than he.  Their union lasted 17 years until Marks’s death.  No children are recorded from their union.


Although Marks could circumvent county license laws there was no way, or so it seemed, to get around the absolute statewide ban against the making and sales of alcoholic beverages imposed in Alabama in 1908.  The whiskey wholesaler promptly moved his operation to a center of the whiskey industry, Louisville, Kentucky.  This time, protected by the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution with perfect legality he could ship his whiskey into any “dry” state or locality in America.


Within a few weeks of his move there, as reported in the Wine & Spirits Bulletin he had relocated to the heart of Louisville’s “Whiskey Row,” Main Street between Fourth and Fifth.  In this new location, Marks tailored his products to the large mail order audience now opened up to him.  While continuing to blend his whiskeys as before, he now marketed multiple labels, some produced elsewhere and some of his own making.  They included “Cameo Rye,” “Continental Gin,” “Diamond Star,” “Exclusive Club,” “Fred Mason Bourbon,” “J. C. M. Monogram,” “Kewanee,” “Marks Private Stock,” ”Old Plantation Corn,” “Purity A A A,” “Ranger Gin,” “Royal Bond,” “Royal Club,” “Royal Malt,” “Silver Cloud,” and “Waverly.” Marks failed to trademarked any of them.


Marks also was selling brandies, absinthe, wines and cordials.  Shown here is the only labeled example of a Marks bottle I have been able to find.  It is for a “Banana Flavor Cordial” and bears his Louisville address.  For five prosperous years, Marks was able to sell his whiskies in “dry” areas.  A popular size for his whiskies was a half gallon bottle, many with a bail handle.  Shown below are two example.  The jug at left is embossed only with Louisville; at right the company lists Louisville and — amazingly “dry” Birmingham.





As he had found a way around the strictures of Shelby County, Marks had found a way legally to stay in Birmingham.  Marks’ strategy was revealed in a 1917 advertisement that appeared in Birmingham newspapers.  Its headline reads:  “Buy for Christmas Before the Christmas Rush where Purity, Quality,  Reliability for 25 Years has builded The Largest Wholesale Liquor Business in the South.”  Reading down to the bottom, the J.C. Marks Liquor Company claimed to be operating from its “Same Old Stand” in Birmingham. 



Now operating from “wet” Kentucky this whiskey man had determined that so long as the money transaction and shipping took place from Louisville, he could use his original Birmingham location to take and transmit orders. The payment went directly from customers to Marks in Louisville and the liquor was express mailed back to Birmingham. All this was perfectly legal. The state’s prohibitionists must have been furious.


Marks was not alone in such strategies, leading the Congress in 1913 to pass the Webb-Kenyon Act that removed the Constitutional protection for interstate sales.  Because of court challenges, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, enforcement did not occur until several years later.  By that time Marks now in his late 50s had closed out his liquor house and moved with Rebecca to Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to live among relatives.  He died there at the age of 60, having seen the imposition of National Prohibition.  Rebeca followed him to the grave a year later.  Both lie in the Temple Cemetery of Nashville, Tennessee, in Section A, Lot 38, graves 1 and 2.



For 30 years via several strategies, Joseph Marks was able to circumvent the efforts of the prohibitionist to shut off the making and sale of liquor.  In the end, however, those forces proved too strong to be overcome by any single individual and, indeed, for an entire industry.


Note:  Seeing the J.C. Mark slab seal bottle on the Internet, brought me to the David Jackson article, a record of the Shelby County case, and other sources of information on J.C. Marks.  The picture of Mark’s “scratch” jug is through the courtesy of Bill Garland, the guru of Alabama whiskey ceramics.











 













Elijah Craig Served the Lord — and Liquor

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Although some authors credit Elijah Craig as the “Father of Bourbon,” others have challenged that designation declaring that while Craig was an early Kentucky distiller it is unlikely that he was making bourbon whiskey.  For me, Craig’s place in history is not about whiskey but about his championing of religious freedom. 

Elijah was born about 1738 in Orange County, Virginia, the fifth child of Polly Hawkins and Toliver Craig.  From his boyhood he displayed unusual intellectual gifts, with a strong streak of religiosity.  Virginia was state where all residents were required by law to tithe to the Anglican Church and attend Anglican worship at least once a month.  The official faith was deemed by elite Virginians as essential element of the commonwealth’s social structure.  Other theological ideas were in the air, however, with Baptists considered by many to be particularly dangerous.


Early Baptists faced opposition.  By law they were required to obtain licenses in order to preach, documents that often specified the place of worship and, in effect, outlawed itinerant circuit riders and tent meetings.  When ministers balked at those restrictions, they often were jailed.  Baptists also were subject to verbal and physical abuse.  David Thomas, a Baptist missionary to Virginia, was attacked while conducting a home service in Fauquier County and brutally beaten.  Later he would survive an assassination attempt.


Nevertheless,  Craig was drawn to Baptist beliefs by Thomas and in the mid-1860s began to hold meetings in his tobacco barn.  In 1866, along with other family members, he was formally baptized.  Full of fervor, he began to preach even though still a layman, resulting in his being jailed in Fredericksburg for several weeks for preaching without a license.  Ordained in 1771 Craig became the pastor of a small Virginia church.  Unwilling to submit to obtaining a license, he was jailed several more times.



A contemporary wrote of his oratory:  “His preaching was of the most solemn style; his appearance as of a man who had just come from the dead; of a delicate habit, a thin visage, large eyes and mouth; the sweet melody of his voice, both in preaching and singing, bore all down before it.”


Following the American Revolution Craig was politically active as the Baptist representative to the Virginia legislature, said to have worked with Patrick Henry and James Madison to protect religious freedom in Virginia and at the federal level.  The Church of England was “disestablished,” i.e., lost government financial support.  Baptist ideals of “separation of church and state” took hold.

Throughout this period while preaching and pastoring, Craig was engaged in agricultural activities, likely including distilling some of his corn crop into the “white lightning” early Americans called whiskey. Craig pulled up stakes in Orange County and led his congregation west to the newly formed “Kentucky County” in western Virginia.   There he purchased 1,000 acres of land where he planned and laid out a town, below, that came to be named “Georgetown,” honoring George Washington.  Kentucky County would achieve statehood in 1788.


As he entered middle age, Craig’s ability and apparent limitless energy came into full flower.  While continuing to serve as pastor to a Baptist congregation in 1787 he established the first classical school in Kentucky and later donated the land for what became Georgetown College, the first Baptist college west of the Alleghenies, shown left. Craig was an early industrialist, in Georgetown building the state’s first textile plant, first rope manufactory, first lumber mill, first paper mill, and a gristmill.  Aware of the dangers posed by conflagrations and with a lot to lose, Craig also formed the town’s first fire department and became its chief.


About 1789, Craig took his place in whiskey history by building a distillery, making use of the cold stream of pure water coming from Georgetown’s Royal Spring, giving rise to the idea that he “invented” bourbon.  At the time, dozens of small farmer-distillers west of the Alleghenies were making whiskey from corn that some called “bourbon” to distinguish it from the rye whiskies coming from Pennsylvania and Maryland.  True bourbon, however, must be aged in charred barrels that impart color and flavor.


Several theories have been offered about how Craig created bourbon. One is that a barn fire charred the inside of some of the barrels he used for his whiskey. When aged in those charred oak barrels, the whiskey took on some of the color and flavor, giving it a more mellow, sweeter flavor.  Another is that, as a frugal pastor, Craig wanted to be able to reuse barrels that had previously stored fish and salt. In that story, he intentionally charred the inside of the oak barrels to remove the fish flavor before aging his whiskey within.  There is no proof for either theory.


Nonetheless the legend stands, repeated over and over.  Whiskey guru Michael Veach has a plausible suggestion of how the Elijah Craig story got started: “He was an early Kentucky preacher and he was a distiller, and that is why in the 1870s when the distilling industry was fighting the temperance movement, they decided to proclaim him the father of bourbon. They thought, well, let’s make a Baptist preacher the father of bourbon, and let the temperance people deal with that.”


Craig eventually owned more than 4,000 acres and enough slaves to cultivate it, and operated a retail store in Frankfort, Kentucky.  His whiskey does not seem to have had more than a local reputation and his other enterprises not always were successful.  When he died in Georgetown in 1808, The Kentucky Gazette eulogized Craig as follows: “He possessed a mind extremely active and, as his whole property was expended in attempts to carry his plans to execution, he consequently died poor. If virtue consists in being useful to our fellow citizens, perhaps there were few more virtuous men than Mr. Craig.”



Today Heaven Hill Distilleries in Bardstown, Kentucky, is happy to perpetuate the bourbon legend.  Elijah Craig bourbon whiskey is made in both 12-year-old “Small Batch” and 18-year-old “Single Barrel” bottlings. The latter is touted by the distillery as “The oldest Single Barrel Bourbon in the world at 18 years ….”  said to be aged in hand selected oak barrels that lose nearly 2⁄3 of their contents in the evaporation, known as the “Angel’s share.”  Needless to say the whiskey is pricey.



Notes:  A considerable number of sources were consulted for this post. Most important for details on Craig’s stance on religious freedom was an article in Wikipedia.  The drawing of Craig that opens this post is the only likeness of the preacher/distiller to be found.  It may or may not bear any resemblance to the original.  Finally, in my only visit to the Heaven Hill Distillery some years ago, the brand coming off the bottling and labeling line was “Elijah Craig.”  No one offered me a sample.



The Kreielsheimers’ “Northwest Passage” to Prosperity

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Immigrants from Germany, the Kreielsheimer brothers — Simon, Jacob and Max — early saw the American Northwest as fertile grounds for selling whiskey and cultivated a customer base that encompassed the State of Washington, Idaho and even north to Alaska.  Cited as equal to any found in the largest cities in America, through their pioneering liquor house the brothers achieved a remarkable run of 27 prosperous years.


Born into a Lutheran family in Offenburg, Baden-Wurtemberg, Germany, the brothers were the only offspring of Hannah and Lazarus Kreielsheimer.  The eldest was Simon, shown here, born in 1859, followed by Jacob in 1863 and Max in 1869.  In 1875, Simon, at 16 nearing draft age for the Prussian army, left his home for the United States, bringing with him his 12 year old brother, Jacob.  My assumption is that initially the pair lodged with relatives living in the vicinity of New York City.


By 1880, Simon, possibly drawn to California by gold strikes, was living in San Francisco and employed as a clerk for the E. Goslinsky Company, a tobacco importer and cigar manufacturer.  Meanwhile Jacob, having learned the upholstery trade, was working in and around New York.  Sometime in the mid decade, Goslinsky sent Simon to Seattle, then still part of the Territory of Washington — not yet admitted to the Union.


In Seattle the oldest Kreielsheimer saw an excellent opportunity for a quality liquor and wine wholesaler serving the Northeast and beyond.  Simon summoned his brothers to join him.  Chucking his  upholstery work, Jacob answered the call.  Just 18 and still in Germany, Max boarded the SS Imperator and headed for America.   Both arrived in 1887, the same year that the liquor house of Kreielsheimer Bros. was born.  At the outset Simon and Jacob were the executives.  Shown here in maturity,  Max initially was listed as a “clerk.”



Their first address was 323 Commercial Street but found their business growing so rapidly that within two years they had moved to larger quarters at 309-311 Commercial.  By 1895 those accommodations had proven too small and the brothers moved a final time to the newly constructed Hotaling Block at 209 First Avenue, occupying a four story building, 30 by 111 feet in size.  A photograph of their venue from around 1900 shows the highly decorated structure with a delivery wagon parked out front and a crowd of well-dressed men.  My assumption is that the Kreielsheimers are among them. 


Those quarters provided ample room for the Kreielsheimers to store an extensive stock of liquor, including nationally known brands.  They also engaged in a “rectifying” operation blending two proprietary whiskeys on site,  “Old Line Whiskey” and their flagship “Crown Diamonds Malt Whiskey.”  For their wholesale customers they were selling whiskey by the barrel as well as in embossed glass bottles, in clear and amber, bearing a company monogram.




The brothers also expanded their operations throughout the State of Washington and beyond to other parts of the Northwest, including Idaho and Alaska.  Below is a photograph of a band lined up in front of the Kreielsheimer Bros. headquarters in Juneau.  Additionally, the company maintained quarters in Room 507 of Spokane’s Fraternal Building,  48-50 First Street in San Francisco, and 912-916 Sycamore Street in Cincinnati.  This last office likely was devoted to purchasing and sending supplies of whiskey to Seattle from the many distillers and brokers in the Ohio city.  “The arrangement of the offices and the whole establishment is fully equal to any found in the largest cities in America,” boasted one Seattle publication.”



Another claim to whiskey fame derives from the unique, and relatively expensive, advertising items with which the brothers gifted their wholesale customers.  Worth attention is a metal tray with individual plates shaped like clam shells.  In the center is a barrel-like object with the inscription “Compliments of the Kreielsheimer Bros…Seattle U.S…1907.”  I believe this tray was meant to carry small bites of free food for the bar crowd.  The barrel held toothpicks used for spearing the delicacies.  The underside of the tray reveals round emblems advertising the brothers’ brands.  Note that one has been lost over time.



Still another Kreielsheimer giveaway item was a ladle dated 1906.  Like the tray this  item would have been given to upscale saloons, restaurants and hotels using the brothers’ brands.  The handle bears images of grapes, wheat and corn, indicating that the punch bowl for which it was intended might hold wine, rum or whiskey.  A monogram of the firm initials is the largest feature as well as the company name spelled vertically down the shaft.  This ladle also would have been a relatively expensive gift to customers.



For most of their company life the batchelor brothers not only worked together but lived together.  They also seemed to move frequently.  The 1890 Seattle  directory lists them rooming one year at Eureka House Hotel.  One author lists that residence among Seattle’s hotels that harbored brothels accommodating as many as twenty Japanese women.  After one year the Kreielsheimers had moved to other, possibly less lively, quarters.  The three found a permanent home in 1908 when the Arctic Club opened in Seattle’s posh Morrison Hotel.  This was a fraternal men’s club for businessmen with Klondike Gold Rush or other Alaska experience.  With their pioneering work to sell liquor in Juneau the Kreielsheimers were welcomed as members. They reciprocated by selling liquor in specially designed bottles for the club.


The year 1915 proved pivotal for the brothers.  In March 1915, Jacob died at the age of 51.   He was buried at the Hills of Eternity section of Seattle’s Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.  When Washington voters passed statewide prohibition, the majority of voters in Seattle had voted against it. The law went into effect in 1915;  Seattle was obliged to comply.  After 27 years of successful operation the two remaining Kreielsheimers were forced to shut down their wholesale liquor house. 


While continuing to maintain the name of their company as an investment firm, Simon and Max branched out into new enterprises.  Simon became president of the Kodiak Fisheries Co. and the Northeast Leather Company.  Max was secretary-treasurer of the latter.  In 1926 they both still lived at the Arctic Club.  In a surprise move, at the age of 57 Max got married.  His bride was Olivia Agnes Thornton, 45, a Seattle milliner, shown here.  She apparently had a previous marriage and a young son.  They exchanged vows in Nanaimo, British Columbia, just over the border from Washington State.


In December 1926, Simon, still a bachelor at 67, died and was interred next to Jacob. Max followed eleven years later and was buried adjacent to his brothers A monument marks the spot where the trio lay.  As they had bonded together in life they are join in their final resting place.  



Note:  This post was drawn from a number of sources.  Key among them were John Thomas’s 1998 “Whiskey Bottles and Liquor Containers from The State of Washington,”  Alfred D. Bowen’s 1900 “Seattle and the Orient” souvenir pamphlet, and genealogy sites.



  













Whiskey Men Targeted by Prohibitionists II

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Foreword:  For most whiskey purveyors, Prohibition was a disembodied force attempting to wrest their livelihood from them.  A few, however, were made specific targets of “dry” adherents.  On November 14, 2017 this blog contained the story of four such whiskey men.  This post adds another three to the list of those for whom prohibitionist zealotry became “up close and personal.”


Henry Wheeler Gillett is recorded as a Kansas man of “firsts” in several accounts.  According to the Leavenworth Daily Commercial of Dec. 31, 1871:  “Mr. Gillett rectified the first barrel of whiskey ever taken through that process in Kansas….”  Later he was reported to be the very first liquor merchant in the state to be hauled into court in 1875 as a result of Prohibition pressures.


Kansas Temperance Meeting

 

A highly successful Leavenworth liquor dealer, Gillett was riding high in the wake of the Civil War, reputedly with annual sales in excess of $6 million in today’s dollar.  Even then the storm clouds of Prohibition were gathering over Kansas.  Shown here is one of dozens of “dry” town meetings, in a state that rapidly became a national center of attention for the Temperance Movement.  Angered by his prosperity, prohibitionist made Gillett their first target.


In 1875 after a Topeka resident named Haug placed an order for whiskey with him in Leavenworth, Henry was arrested under a law that forbid anyone from selling liquor “without taking out and having a license as grocer, dram shopkeeper, or tavern keeper.”  Gillett had no license in Topeka.  The Kansas Supreme Court reasoned, however, that the sale had taken place in Leavenworth and Gillett had a license there and ruled in his favor.  It was said to be the first instance of “drys” intruding into Kansas liquor affairs through the courts. 



Although Gillett won his case, the experience may have suggested to him the wisdom of an occupational change.  By 1877, he had taken on two partners. The following year his name was erased from the firm entirely, as he sold out to the pair. The company would prove to have a short remaining life span.  By 1880 Kansas voters had approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting all manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors.” The liquor house Gillett founded was forced to shut down.



When Dr. Wesley Peacock, Sr., left, looked out the front widow of his Peacock Military Academy, above, he could see his male students creeping off campus to destinations in downtown San Antonio, Texas.  The schoolmaster knew that some were headed to saloons like the popular one run by German immigrant August Limburger.   In Dr. Peacock’s mind a plot was forming.


Oblivious of the schoolmaster’s ruminations, Limburger, right, meanwhile was operating one of San Antonio’s more upscale drinking establishments.   His success in the liquor trade was indicated by a move he made in the late 1890s to a higher visibility location just off the city’s Main Plaza. This address also brought him closer to Dr. Peacock’s Academy and put his Metropolitan saloon in the “cross hairs” of the pedagog’s conspiratorial mind.  


The headmaster had noted a Texas law that required liquor dealers selling liquor to post a bond that carried penalties for selling to individuals under 21, habitual drunks, or “students of an institution of learning.”  The penalty for serving a student was a fine of $500, paid to the educational entity filing a complaint.  The $1,000 from two offenses was equal at that time to about $25,000 today.  Dr. Peacock must have cackled and clapped his hands thinking of the largesse.  He dispatched two of his students with cash to Limburger’s Metropolitan Bar.  They had doffed their cadet hats and uniforms and were in civilian clothes. Limburger himself was not on the premises to see his obliging bartenders serve each of the young men a beer.


The cadets returned to Dr. Peacock as expected and related their experience.  Then in modern parlance, the schoolmaster “dropped the dime,” hauling Limburger into Civil Court and demanding that he pay the $1,000 penalty.  The saloonkeeper’s attorneys countered that there was no way the bartender could identify the young men, dressed as they were, as belonging to Dr. Peacock’s institution.  The judge was sympathetic to the defense and instructed the jury to decide liability on the basis of whether Limburger or his employees reasonably could have known that the two young men were cadets.  The jury said “no” and Dr. Peacock went away empty handed. 



Located in York County, Pennsylvania, tiny Delta and its Auditorium Hotel had attracted the attention of the Anti-Saloon League — regrettably for Abe Trattner, liquor dealer and a co-owner of the hotel.  In the Spring of 1914, prohibitionists staged a large rally in Delta and submitted  a petition of 345 names, mostly from women, demanding that the Auditorium Hotel be denied a liquor license.  Subsequently three hundred protesters, abetted by the Anti-Saloon League, chartered a special train and filed into a York City courtroom to hammer home their point.


According to bystanders, Trattner was overheard talking to his attorney about how much the hotel would be worth if the court refused the liquor license.  His response was quoted as a curt, “Not a damn.”  Trattner’s expletive seemingly defined the stakes as the crowded courtroom was called to order in February 1915.


After several days of testimony, the judges rendered their decision, noting:  “If this were a mere question of majorities, we would, of course, be obliged to refuse this license, but the law does not permit the case to be decided on that ground alone.”  On the other side, they ruled, was the need to accommodate travelers by rail who regularly stopped overnight in Delta.  The only other hotel in town was dry, the court noted, and evidence existed that “…a large majority of the strangers and travelers stopping there prefer a licensed hotel, where liquors can be procured, to the temperance house.”  With that justification, the judges awarded the Ambassador Hotel an extension of its liquor license.


The Anti-Saloon League was outraged.  Its national American Issue magazine trashed the Ambassador Hotel as “an old frame shell” without any substantial value if it was denied alcohol sales and suggested that financial interests and political influence had leveraged the decision.  No matter, its effect was relatively short-lived.  Although the Anti-Saloon League had been bested in Delta, five years later it triumphed when National Prohibition was enacted.  Trattner’s Ambassador Hotel went dry. 


Note:  More complete vignettes on each of these targeted whiskey men may be found elsewhere on this blog.  Henry W. Gillett, October 20, 2016;  August Limburger, December 27, 2020; and Abe Trattner, November 13, 2018.  




















Baltimore’s Carrolls Knew the Value of a Name

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Related or not to the famous Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, Thomas Carroll, shown here, and his sons recognized how important was their family name and the brand names of their whiskeys to achieving almost half a century of success as liquor dealers in Baltimore.  That understanding drove the family’s two decade campaign to protect a trademark, an effort that ultimately failed.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton is known to every Maryland school child as a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the only Catholic to do so.  Less well known is that Charles, shown here, was one of the richest men in the Colonies and among its largest slaveholders, owning perhaps as many as 1,000.  The relationship of the Baltimore “whiskey” Carrolls to this historical figure has been a subject of speculation without any firm answer.   The name “Carroll” is among the 25 most common Irish names in America and people with that name originate from all over the Emerald Isle.  Nonetheless, just the Carroll name carried a strong element of prestige in Maryland.


The “founding father” of these Carrolls was Thomas, shown above, born in August 1830 in Maryland of American-born Irish parents.  Thomas first shows up in the public record in 1860 when he married Lizzette Josephine Fusting, right.  Lizzette was the daughter of Joseph P. Fusting, a well-known founder and business leader in Catonsville, Maryland.   At the time of the 1880 federal census, the couple was living in Baltimore with their six children,  Charles, 19;  Harry, 16; Bessie, 15; Howard, 9; Thomas Jr., 5, and May, 3.  Thomas Sr.’s occupation was listed as “liquor dealer.” 


With his early career lost in the mists of history, Thomas Sr. in 1871 founded a Baltimore wholesale liquor house located at 370 West Baltimore Avenue.  At the time, the city was a center for rye whiskey distilling and sales, with the name “Baltimore” connoting quality not found elsewhere.  Carroll named his signature brand “Baltimore Club Rye” and watched as it gain regional and to some extent national popularity.  He trademarked the brand in 1874 and again in 1881.



The Carrolls were also aware of the importance of their own name in selling liquor in Maryland.  Shown below is an amber flask of “Carroll  Rye.”  Later the liquor house would feature a label directly invoking the historic Charles Carroll, calling it  “Carroll’s Carrolton Rye.”  A back-of-the-bar bottle bears that name.  Thomas Sr. was not a distiller but a rectifier, someone who bought whiskeys distilled elsewhere that he blended to achieve a particular taste, smoothness and color.  The 1880 census indicated that the two oldest Carroll sons., Charles and Harry, were working for their father in the liquor house.  Several years later as Charles reached maturity, his father made him a partner, renaming the firm Thomas G. Carroll & Son.  Harry was recorded as working there as clerk. 



The liquor house continued to thrive.  Shown above are  a trio of clear flasks in several sizes and shades that carry the new name.  Embossed, they would have carried paper labels with the Carroll brand names, “Baltimore Club Rye,” “Carroll’s Carrolton” or “Return Rye.”  Named after a famed steeplechase horse of the time, Return Rye was marketed as a blend “for family use.”  The label pictured a horse and jockey clearing a jump.  The image also was reproduced on shot glasses that were gifted to saloons, restaurants and hotels featuring the whiskey.




Although the Carrolls were taking full use of their name in their marketing, they were looking around for other opportunities.  Another name that loomed large in Baltimore whiskey circles was “Monticello Rye.”  This brand was originated by Malcolm Crichton and was perhaps the most popular whiskey in the city.  Unfortunately, Crichton had little time to enjoy the success and prosperity his Monticello Rye had engendered, dying in 1890 at the age of 50.  It appears that none of his sons were interested in carrying on and sold the distillery to Baltimore brothers, Bernard and Jacob B. Cahn.  


Some early confusion seems to have existed regarding the ownership of the brand name.  The Cahns believed they had purchased the rights to market Monticello Rye but found themselves competing with the Carrolls who had quickly come to the market with their own version of the brand.  Although the matter apparently was resolved amicably with Thomas G. and his sons backing off, in self-defense the Cahns in 1906 re-registered the brand with the Patent and Trademark Office.  Nevertheless, the incident indicates the Carrolls’ aggressiveness in marketing.


After twice trademarking Baltimore Club Rye, the Carrolls were in for a surprise.  A New York City liquor house for years had been selling whiskey of the same name.  From court documents:  “…Down to about 1882 or 1883 the Carroll firm sold Baltimore Club whisky in Baltimore and the McIlvaine & Baldwin firm sold whiskey under the same trademark in New York, and neither knew of the other’s existence nor interfered with each others customers.”  The end of this blissful ignorance would trigger a long struggle.



It began with Thomas Carroll gathering up sons Charles and Harry and the trio descending on McIlwaine & Baldwin in New York to claim sole rights to the name Baltimore Club.  “We have had the rights to the name since we began making the brand in 1870,”  Thomas reputedly told the partners.  The New Yorkers responded that their claim extended back to 1875.  Furthermore, they had sold more whiskey under that name than the Carrolls ever had.  “Whatever threats or demands were made by the Carrolls at this time they certainly bore no fruit;  for each party continued to transact business as before….”


During the ensuing decades, while the dispute remained unsettled, Thomas Carroll died as did Charles.  Harry, the remaining member of the firm, was now the president of Thomas G. Carroll & Son Co.  For years the trademark issue had rankled him and in 1907 he decided to act.  First, he registered the company trademark for Baltimore Club for a third time.  Second, he began to merchandise  his Baltimore Club vigorously in and around New York City.  In so doing, Harry over-reached.  From the trial record:  Carroll sold the brand there under “…an imitation of the label used for many years [by McIlwaine & Baldwin], an imitation evidently calculated to deceive any but the most discriminating purchasers.”   Moreover, the New York label bore no resemblance to the one Harry earlier had trademarked.



Ever brash, Harry in correspondence with the New York liquor house declared that the words “Baltimore Club” were his firm’s exclusive property allowing it the “right and liberty” of printing its labels in any style or color that it preferred.  To back up those claims, the Carroll scion brought suit in the Circuit Court of New York against McIlwaine & Baldwin.  The results were mixed.  The court was sympathetic to the defendant, declaring that by long prior use it held a “common law” title to use the name.  The privilege was restricted to its New York sales area only, however, and not beyond.  The court ruled that Harry’s sales intrusion into New York should to end.  Elsewhere in America, however, the Carroll claim was recognized.


 


Although Harry did not succeed in killing the New York “Baltimore Club,” he successfully managed the firm his father had founded for the next decade until closed in 1919 by National Prohibition.  Shown above are two “give away” artifacts I believe likely are from Harry’s tenure. Note that labels display the  Carroll name prominently.


 


A final word on the sagacity of Thomas Carroll.  Although he clearly understood the value of a name and made sure that his was prominent on all his whiskeys, he apparently decided after his foray into New York on behalf of his Baltimore Club brand to low key pressing his trademark, possibly recognizing the legal expenses and uncertain outcome it might entail.  Unfortunately his son Harry was not so wise and pushed the issue at considerable cost, only to achieve a less than satisfactory judgment.   


Notes:  This post was derived from a wide range of sources, the most important of which were Internet genealogical-related websites.  The post also marks a new milestone for this website, having just passed the 1.2 million mark for “hits” since its inception in 2011. 



Dan Call: The Preacher Who Launched a Whiskey Legend

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 A Civil War soldier, farmer, store keeper, and lay preacher of the conservative Union Lutheran Church in Lois, Tennessee, Daniel Houston Call, shown here,  might have fallen into the obscurity that history accords most of us, except for one decision.  Faced with the question of hiring and harboring a 16-year-old orphan boy of uncommonly small stature, Dan Call said yes and the rest is history.  The boy was Jack Daniel.

Dan Call himself was an orphan, adopted by relatives as a young boy.  The 1850 U.S. Census found him at age 14 living in Lincoln City, Tennessee, with siblings William, 16; Sarah, 9; and Joseph, 6.  The household was headed by Rebecca Call, 53, likely an aunt.  By the 1860 census, Call had reached maturity, was married with children, farming and running a general store.


Those obligations were not enough to keep Call from hearing the clarion call to arms when the Civil War began.  Tennessee was a divided state, with the Eastern counties harboring pro-Union sentiment throughout the conflict and was the last state officially to secede from the Union.  Although Tennessee provided a large a number of troops for the Confederacy, it also provided more soldiers for the Union Army than any other Southern state.  Call, who owned slaves, chose the Confederate side.


Described as a “sinewy, long-legged fellow with a scarecrow figure who walked with a hint of a strut,”  Call was adept on horseback and knew how to shoot.  That made him eligible to join an elite marauder unit of the rebel army called Forrest’s Escorts, numbering about 100 men over the course of the war.  Their leader was the charismatic and bold Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.  Prof. Michael R.Bradley has commented:  “The Escort…was made up mostly of yeomen [farmers], led by wealthier and better educated men.”  And devoted to Gen. Forrest.


Although Call was not among the original members of Forrest’s Escort, most of them recruited in Tennessee, he joined early in the conflict.  He bid good-bye to his wife, Mary Jane (nee Nelson), whom he had married when she was 16 years old, and rode off to the fighting.  Like his companions in Gen. Forrest’s special cohort, Call would have provided his own horse and arms, likely a shotgun that had proved valuable in close quarter fighting.



The Escort would see considerable hot combat throughout the war.  Coll’s first engagement was in December 1862 at Lexington, Tennessee, followed a few days later by a skirmish at Parker’s Crossroads against Union forces led by General Grant. Among the most costly battles was at Chicamauga, Georgia, in September 1863.  Although it was a Confederate victory, the cost in men killed, wounded and captured was devastating. It may be at this battle that Call was among the 1,400 Confederates captured.  His service record indicates he either escaped or was exchanged, returned to the Escort, and is recorded serving with the unit at the time of Forrest’s surrender in Gainesville, Alabama, at the end of the war. 


Arriving back in Tennessee, Call found that Mary, shown here, had added a new face to the dinner table.  His name was Jasper but he preferred to be called “Jack” Daniel.  The five foot, two inch, local boy had been recommended to Mary as someone to help her in Call’s absence with the general store and other chores.  Although small, Jack was of sturdy build and energetic.  With three youngsters to look after, Mary jumped at the chance for help and brought the boy into the Call home.  But what would her husband say when he returned? 


Mary and Jack need not have worried.  Although conservative in his views, Dan Call was a strong Christian and believed in helping his neighbor.  Moreover, he was cognizant of having been an orphan himself.  He accepted Jack into their home and became his mentor.  The fighting across Tennessee that devastated numerous farmsteads luckily had left Call’s property relatively unscathed.   Located off the main road and tucked among the hills it had escaped the notice of pillagers.  So too, apparently had the general store under the watchful eyes of Mary and Jack.


Moreover, as a result of Call’s prior good treatment of his several slaves, they agreed to stay as hired hands.  With their future income assured, Dan and Mary set about enlarging their family, eventually producing 18 children, most of whom lived to maturity.  No longer would the simple frame farm house suffice that Call had built for Mary.  Over time Call would expand the structure into a multi-roomed Greek Revival structure.  It can be seen in the photo here.


To feed and clothe the many offspring Call also could rely on profits from a distillery he had built behind his general store before riding off to war.  It had apparently had been left idle during the conflict but the machinery was still intact.  The distillery was conveniently located on Louse (aka Stillwater) Creek, an odd name for a pristine stream that gushed from springs in a nearby glade.  It kept an ideal temperature and flowed in a stream a few yards from the Call homestead. With the abundance of corn grown on the family farm and some expertise at distilling, the prospects for a “cash cow” were evident.


The problem was some diffidence on the part of Dan Call.  Whether he received his religious “calling” before or after his Civil War experience is not clear.  He had become a lay preacher in a rural Lutheran Church not far from his home, a rustic house of worship that likely resembled the picture here.  If he had done any preaching during his time with the Escort, it was informal.  Although prayers were offered in the unit, Forrest was not favorable to an officially appointed chaplain.  Back home, Call’s congregation would have been small.  With its roots in Germany and Scandinavia, Lutheranism had only a small foothold in Central Tennessee compared to Baptists and Methodists.


Lutherans were known to be ambivalent about alcohol.  The typical German was fond of his beer and, perhaps “schnapps” liquor.  Yet many fellow Protestants (unlike Catholics and Jews) were avid prohibitionists.  This same uncertainty seems to have infected Dan Call.  Although his distillery was making whiskey and he was selling it, he forbade drinking on his farm or in his general store.  As Lutherans increasingly went “dry” Call obviously knew that someday soon he would have to give up making whiskey or lose his ministry.


Shown here in maturity, Jasper/Jack Daniels, although raised a Baptist, had no such compunctions.  He was drawn to the distillery.  In his biography of Daniel, Author Peter Krass observes:  “As young Jack mulled over the contraption, he quickly grasped that whiskey was a means to escaping poverty.  He determined to learn the noble art of distilling.”   Faced with the importuning of the young Daniel, Call instructed his African-American former slave and master distiller, “Uncle” Nearis Green,  to teach the boy all he knew about making whiskey.  [See my post on Nearis Green, August 21, 2018.] 


Uncle Nearis only recently has been released from the obscurity imposed by racial bias to recognition of his training of Jack Daniel and the origin of famed Tennessee whiskey.   Although there are no known photographs of Green, a recent image depicts him, face turned away, inspecting the product of a still.  The rest is history as Jack Daniels took the recipe to heights previously unknown.


Meanwhile in the Call household, a new birth was occurring on the average of every other year.  Dan found his congregation dwindling as the highly conservative Union Synod of Lutherans to which he belonged splintered on issues of prohibition and the validity of the Southern cause.  To keep his flock he gave up distilling and selling liquor to Daniels but managed sufficient prosperity to increase his land holdings and see his children, four of whom died in infancy, find places in post-bellum Tennessee society.  The photo below shows the aging Dan and Mary seated in front of their home, surrounded by family members and family dogs.  Call’s ample beard has turned white.



The man responsible for launching Jack Daniel, Dan Call died at the age of 67 in August 1904.  He was buried in Mulberry Cemetery in Lincoln County, Tennessee, not far from where he had spent much of his life.  Mary would join him in an adjacent grave 18 years later.  Despite bearing 18 children in a locale where medical facilities were virtually non-existent, she lived to be 91.


Note:  This post is drawn from a variety of sources.  Important among them are“Blood & Whiskey:  The Life and Times of Jack Daniel,” by Peter Krass, Castle Books, 2004. Krass gives Call considerable attention.  Supplementing Krass’s treatment of Call’s Civil War experience was “Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Escort and Staff,” by Michael R. Bradley, Pelican Publishing, 2006.  Many have claimed credit for Jack Daniels learning how to make whiskey.  To Dan Call and Nearis Green go the laurels.



 


Herrmann Bros. Were Louisville’s “French Connection”

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“Though citizens of America and lovers of this country, we join with our adored France in all that makes her great and glorious and in all that might conduce to her benefit.  If she smiles in happiness, we smile with her; if she weeps with sorrow, we too weep.”


Those remarks, spoken on Bastille Day 1901 to a gathering of Kentucky Francophiles, were from Michel Herrmann, a man who knew weeping well as a surrendering soldier during the 1871 French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.  By the following year Michel was embarked across the Atlantic and new opportunities.  With help from his younger brother, F. Joseph, shown here, Herrmann Bros. Company would become a leading Louisville liquor house.  The pair, however, never forgot their roots in Alsace-Lorraine and France.


The sons of Francois and Marie Catherine (Hincker) Herrmann, Michel, born in 1850, was five years older than F. Joseph, who arrived in the U.S. not long after his brother.  The early years of the Herrmanns’ American careers have gone unrecorded but evidence from the 1880 census indicates that by then both brothers already were active in the Louisville whiskey trade.



Herrmann Bros. first appears in Louisville business directories in 1884, located at 531 Market Street.  Over the ensuing seven years, their enterprise apparently flourished to the point where they needed a larger space.  In 1901, the company moved to 234 Sixth Street.  As shown on the letterhead above, they called their enterprise, “Importers of Fine Wines and Liquors…Distillers & Wholesale Dealers in Fine Kentucky Whiskies.”  A photo their liquor house shows it to be a four story building of considerable size.  Piled high on the front sidewalk are cases of liquor as well as large and small barrels, indicating a busy trade.  Among the three men standing in the doorway likely are Michel and F. Joseph.


During the early years of their business, the Herrmanns were not distillers, but rather “rectifiers” who blended whiskeys from outside providers to achieve a particular taste, smoothness and color.  These they were selling at wholesale. They were bottling their blends in ceramic jugs of varying sizes, initially many of them covered with an Albany slip glaze and the label “scratched” into the surface.  This process, done by hand, could lead to botched displays, e.g. the “W” on the jug left. 




As they were building their reputation as a Louisville liquor house, the Herrmann’s were having personal lives that substantiated the axiom that Frenchmen are lovers.   Between the brothers they fathered 23 children.  The first to marry was F. Joseph in November 1876.   His bride was Theresa Meffert of Louisville, a woman of about the same age, who was the daughter of German immigrant, William (aka John) Meffert.  Together this couple would have 13 children over the next 22 years.  Michel was married in 1884 to Catherine “Carrie” Balmer, daughter of Swiss immigrants Wilhelm and Magdalena Balmer.  Carrie was a local girl seven years younger than Michel.  Over the next 20 years they would have ten children.



In addition to growing his liquor business and his family, Michel founded and led a local organization called “Cercle de Union Francaise” to foster French cultural and social events.  The annual highlight was the Bastille Day celebration where Michel traditionally was main speaker.  The menu for the 1909 event included as entrees sweetbreads, braised beef cutlets with mushrooms, roast chicken and fried black bass, accompanied by, no surprise, champagne almost certainly furnished by Herrmann Brothers.   Moreover, Paris had taken note of Michel’s efforts and named him French consul for Kentucky.   The result was a steady stream of overseas visitors and immigrants to his doors.


Meanwhile the Herrmanns were pressing ahead in liquor-centered Louisville to become a more “prominent factor in the trade,” as the Wine & Spirits Bulletin said of them.  As rectifiers they had become increasingly aware of the difficulty of obtaining sufficient whiskey stocks for their blending operations.  The emergence of trusts had pinched off sources and raised prices for “raw” whiskey.  Early on they had contracted with a small distillery in Nelson County, three miles south of Bardstown, Kentucky.  Built in 1780 with only a 20 bushel daily capacity, it was called the Pearl of Nelson Distilling Company.


Likely contracting for the annual output of the distillery, Herrmann Bros. by 1898 were advertising as distillers and had made “Pearl of Nelson” sour mash whiskey their flagship brand, as shown on the crate above.  They advertised it vigorously to their customer base in local newspapers.  In 1916 an even more attractive prospect opened near Bardstown when the Mattingly & Moore distillery went bankrupt.  The Herrmanns offered the creditors a bargain basement $18,000 to take over the operation of the distillery and an additional amount to pay for 1,500 barrels of 1911 and 2,400 barrels of 1912 whiskey held in the company warehouse.  “…Herrmann Bros. became sole controllers of distillery, the brand, and the whiskey,” noted the Bulletin. 


This facility had a production capacity far beyond the Pearl of Nelson Distillery. While the still itself was frame, the distillery boasted five bonded warehouses, according to insurance writers records, all of them of brick, stone or iron-clad with flame resistant roofs, and a sixth “free” warehouse, also fireproofed. The brothers pledged to keep the Mattingly & Moore name and aggressively distribute M&M whiskey, a popular brand before the bankruptcy.  After decades at toiling in the shadow of distillery-owning “whiskey barons,” the Herrmann’s  now could be counted among the royalty. The governor bestowed on F. Joseph the title of “Kentucky colonel.”


Unfortunately these French immigrants had little time to savor their success.  Although Michel continued annually to give the keynote address on Bastille Dayand bear the title of French consul well into that decade, his health was faltering.  In June 1019, at 69 he died of “pernicious anemia” in the capacious home at 1335 Hepburn Avenue he had purchased for his large family.  His Louisville Courier Journal obituary called Michel “A prince among men, he was generous to all charities, never asking about race, creed or color…”  After funeral services at Hoy Trinity Catholic Church, he was buried in Louisville’s St. Louis Cemetery.


Although Michel must have known National Prohibition was coming, he did not live long enough to see the liquor house he had co-founded come to an end after 43 years in business.  Now Colonel F. Joseph, shown here as he aged, was left to shut down their enterprise.  Providentially years earlier he had branched out into other commercial activities.  At his death in March 1935 at age 86,  F. Joseph was vice chairman  of the Liberty National Bank & Trust Company and treasurer and a director of the Washington Mutual Fire Insurance Assn.  The brothers are buried in adjacent and matching graves in St. Louis Cemetery.  Their French connection has been left unbroken.



Note:  As so often occurs, I was brought to the story of the Herrmanns and their ascent into Louisville whiskey aristocracy by seeing for auction one of the “scratch” jugs shown here.  Because the brothers each have extensive material on Ancestry, coverage in Louisville newspapers and the Wine & Spirits Bulletin, it was possible to follow their careers.  While there are several photos of F. Joseph, unfortunately I have been unable to find any of Michel. 

Three on Prescott, Arizona’s, “Whiskey Row”

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 Foreword:  The main thoroughfare of Prescott, Arizona, Montezuma Street, is called “Whiskey Row” because of the large number of saloons that once lined it. Beginning in the mid-1800s the street, shown below, harbored a considerable number of drinking establishments.  After a disastrous fire wiped out much of Whiskey Row in July 1900 and was rebuilt, the numbers actually increased.  At one point the strip boasted at least 40 saloons.  Here is the story of three “whiskey men” who helped make Prescott’s Whiskey Row the legend it is today.

The Original Whiskey Row

Born in New York about 1829, Dan Thorne came West about 1850 with thousands of men joining the California Gold Rush and later migrated to Arizona.   Although Thorne seem to have prospered through his mining enterprises, he also saw the possibilities for riches in operating a saloon in Prescott.  As early as 1869 he was associated with the Palace Bar and the Cabinet Saloon, two of Prescott’s most famous watering holes.  With a partner he built a large frame building and opened the Cabinet, described as a “new resort.”  The owners displayed minerals and published ads inviting prospectors to bring in specimens for cash.


Although over the years it was the scene of a few violent encounters,  perhaps the best story from Thorne’s Cabinet Saloon occurred on a snowy night in January 1898 when a veiled woman dropped a baby girl on the bar and then disappeared out the swinging doors into the dark.  The local Courier newspaper told it this way:  “All other business was brought to a standstill while the crowd gathered around the bar where the little one had been deposited. As it was impossible for all to get near, one of the employees got up and explained the situation and read the note left with the baby.” 


The unsigned note said the father, a miner named William Bell, had abandoned the baby, and the child was now being returned to him by way of the Cabinet, a place he frequented.  Bell was not there that night, but the miners, ranchers and railroad hands present, their emotions apparently loosened by whiskey, were so taken with the chubby, cooing infant that they cooed right back at her and some wanted to adopt her.  A local probate judge named Charles Hicks cradled the infant in his arms and took her home to his wife. They decided to called her Violet.  This orphan girl, legally adopted, became Violet Hicks, learned to ride horses before she could walk and found a loving home with a previously childless couple.



On the morning of July 5 a fire broke out in the kitchen of Thorne’s saloon.  According to the July 7 Arizona Gazette: “Volumes of smoke poured from the doors and windows and soon the flames were seen issuing not only from the roof of Thorne’s, but from the eaves of the neighboring buildings so rapid was their progress.”   A saloon across the street had to be dynamited to prevent the flames from jumping across.  The explosion was a success and that block was saved.  But the fire had roared down the other side of Whiskey Row destroying not only the Cabinet Saloon but the Palace Bar and other establishments.  Thorne and other saloonkeepers set up shop in tents.


Almost immediately Thorne with others agreed to collaborate on rebuilding the block including both the Cabinet and Palace Saloons. Instead of constructing again with combustible wood, the new buildings were made of brick, granite and iron.  The new Palace was estimated to cost an unheard-of $50,000 and restoring the Cabinet likely involved a similar figure.  Over the next several years Thorne, now in his 70s, sold his Prescott saloons and moved back to New York City where he died in March 1913.


Whiskey Row Rebuilt


Unlike Thorne, Hugh McCrum was a rich man by the time he arrived in Prescott.  This immigrant from Northern Ireland was virtually penniless when he reached America in 1850 and went west to find his fortune.  Although his original stake came from mining, McCrum also had a penchant for running saloons, selling liquor in Western towns like Virginia City, Nevada;  Tombstone, Arizona,  San Francisco and Los Angeles.


McCrum increasingly was drawn to Arizona, particularly the area around Prescott.  There were two attractions, mining and saloons.  From early on McCrum was checking out area mines, telling newsmen that he believed the mineral resources of Arizona to be almost inexhaustible and would prove equal if not superior to the mines of California.   He also was calculating the profitability of the numerous saloons on “Whiskey Row,” shown here, eventually buying up several with his riches.



The Phoenix Gazette called him “…One of the oldest mining men on the coast and his judgment is taken above all.  He has traveled through the mining regions on the coast for thirty years and none are better known.”  McCrum had reported to the paper on his mining efforts twenty miles south of Prescott, claiming his works were “running night and day on good gold ore.”


Famous for his peripatetic ways, roaming the West, McCrum seems to have been popular in Prescott.  When he married for the second time in Los Angeles in  1885, the Prescott Journal Miner hailed his new bride as “a most excellent lady” and joined McCrum’s reputed “army of friends in Arizona,” in extending congratulations. Meanwhile he was not neglecting his mining interests


During this period McCrum changed his official residence to Prescott.  Although he continued to own drinking establishments on Whiskey Row, he kept strong ties in California where he owned considerable property.  I can find no report of how his saloons fared in the 1900 conflagration.  McCrum was in San Francisco when he died at the age of 66 in July 1902.  Shown here is his mausoleum.

 

When F. G. McCoy came to Prescott in 1902, the rebuilt Whiskey Row already was in full swing. With a relative, McCoy established the Wellington Saloon at 136 South Montezuma, between the Palace at 122 and the Owl Saloon at 138.  Unlike many of his fellow Whiskey Row neighbors, McCoy was not just selling liquor as received from wholesalers.  He also was decanting whiskey into flask-sized bottles for retail sales, shown here.



Each Whiskey Row saloon had its own regulars — cowboys, miners, soldiers or businessmen — and each had its own attractions.  McCoy’s Wellington Saloon encouraged gambling on premises.  A local artist caught the action of a game of chance there. From the dress of the gents in the Wellington picture, McCoy’s clientele were from the local business community.  They were shown playing faro.  That was a card game, more related to blackjack than poker, popular in the Old West for its fast action, simple rules, and better odds than other games.



McCoy’s tenure at the Wellington, however, proved to be relatively short.  By 1907, the saloon was no longer listed in directories.  The reason may have been Arizona’s off-and-on flirtation with prohibiting alcohol sales.  In 1901 a “local option” law was passed permitting individual counties and towns to decide on how to regulate alcohol.  Although no evidence exists that Prescott went “dry,” McCoy may have felt it affected his business in adjacent towns.  The law was repealed in 1909.


By 1912 McCoy surfaced again in the saloon business.  This time he was recorded as running a Prescott saloon with F. C. Whisman.  Frank Whisman had been a Prescott bartender, likely working at the Wellington Saloon.  The partners called their enterprise simply “McCoy & Whisman.”  It was a short-lived drinking establishment, forced to shut down when Arizona voters in 1913 approved a statewide ban on alcohol that went into effect on New Years Day, almost six years before National Prohibition. During the twenty superficially “dry” years in Prescott, F. G. McCoy faded into the mists of time. 


Note:  More extensive posts on each of these three men may be found elsewhere on this website:  Dan Thorne, August 26, 2016; Hugh McCrum, September 19, 2016; and F. G. McCoy, April 4, 2016.























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