Author name: Jack Sullivan

 

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.  

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. 

 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.

 

 

“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. 

 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.

 

“On February 25th, near the somber hour of midnight, the noble and generous spirit of J. W. James, the noblest man that ever lived in all the tide of Time, took its flight from his elegant home to a far more splendid mansion in the sky.”—The Stanford KY, Interior Journal , March 2, 1906.

Thus did a local newspaper open its long laudatory obituary of John William “Willie” James, shown here.   As will be seen, this eulogy spared no adjectives in praising James’ virtues.  Missing from the entire encomium, however, was even a single word about the key to the Kentuckian’s wealth and philanthropy:  James made his money distilling and selling whiskey.

From an old and distinguished Kentucky family, James was the great grandson of   John M. James, a soldier of the American Revolution, a Virginia pioneer into Kentucky, a minister of the Gospel and an early local judge.  His grandfather, Joseph M. James, was a Baptist preacher and pastor of several central Kentucky churches.  Shown here, Joseph was known for building the Flat Lick Stone Church and additionally was the grandfather of outlaws Frank & Jesse James.  

Our subject’s father was George W. James, a reasonably affluent farmer who at 37 had married Willie’s mother, “Lizzie” Bobbitt when she was 19.  Lizzie is shown here in maturity.

The boy Willie appears to have had more than the typical education offered to Kentucky youth of that era, attending Georgetown (KY), the first Baptist college west of the Appalachian Mountains.  There he became known, according to his obituary, as “a fluent talker, an excellent penman, and an accurate and rapid accountant.” This latter skill found him early employment in Stanford, Kentucky, at a bank owned by a retired physician, Dr. J. B. Owsley.  

Although accounted a success in banking and a confidant of Owsley, James had his attention fixed on a town thirteen miles to the south of Stanford called Crab Orchard, where its springs were known for the therapeutic value of their minerals. Crab Orchard salts were much ballyhooed:  “They are pronounced to have a specific action on the liver, joined with good tonic properties, being the only salts known in the world with these valuable qualities. They are specially recommended for patients suffering from Dyspepsia, Biliousness and Piles, and for persons who indulge in strong alcoholic drinks.”

As the result of active advertising beginning about midway in the 1800s and extending into the 20th Century, Crab Orchard, as the illustration above indicates, was “booming.”  Sited near the end of the Logan Trace of the Wilderness Road and a stop on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the town abounded in tourists.  Hotels and tavern flourished.  What better place, thought Willie James, than Crab Orchard for a distillery.

There already was one near the town, called the Crab Orchard Distillery (RD#81, 8th Dist.). Founded in the 1880s, It was for sale in 1892.  According to insurance records, the property included the still and two bonded warehouses of frame construction and shingle roofs standing about 10 feet apart.   North of them by 150 feet was a cattle shed where cows were fed on spent mash from the distilling process.  The structures all were of frame construction.  Likely having some experience in making whiskey, James bought the distillery.

James marketed his liquor as “Crab Orchard Whiskey,” selling it in ceramic jugs like the two shown below.  The first ceramic covered with Albany brown glaze has the label scratched in the surface, indicating it may be an early example.  A second jug indicates a more sophisticated look.  It is covered in Albany slip white glaze with black letters applied with a roller and baked on.  Lest there be any mistake on the origin of the contents, James has added the slogan “made in old Kentucky.”

Working hard to expand his sales, the distiller would find that selling whiskey as prohibitionary forces intensified would have its perils.  In an attempt to reach into “dry” Kentucky counties with his advertising in 1897 James printed up order blanks on post cards that he distributed widely in nearby Rockcastle County, one that by “local option” had banned alcohol.  A liquor sale resulting from that outreach brought his arrest and conviction before a county court.  James appealed and a higher court ruled that the transaction essentially had taken place in “wet” Frankfort County.  James’ conviction was overruled and he was free to continue to make his postcard sales.

Meanwhile Willie was having a home life.  He was twice married.  His first wife was Mattie B. Evans, a local woman.  Shown here, she was the daughter of George W. Evans and likely a relative of Dr. Owsley.  After Mattie’s early death he married Margaret Buchanan, her father George cited as a noble old Scotsman. “Both wives were most excellent women of the first families,”  commented his newspaper eulogy.  There were no children from either marriage.

The cause of James’ early death at 45 years, so far as I can find, has gone unrecorded.  His obituary suggests that his last illness left him unable to eat, possibly a throat cancer.   He died on February 25, 1906 and was buried in Crab Orchard Cemetery in the shadow of King’s Mountain, where his great grandfather is said to have fought during the Revolution.  

The extravagant praise heaped on J.W. James can seem puzzling.  Here was a man who ignored his Baptist heritage and education by making and selling whiskey.  Moreover, he based his operation near a town where many “people who indulge in strong alcoholic drink”  retreated to free themselves of the effects of liquor, not to be tempted to consume it.  Finally, when finding a loophole in the law that forbade sales of alcohol in an adjoining county, James had taken full advantage of the opportunity to exploit it.  Should we take this editorial haliography with a dose of salts?

The answer lies in Willie James’ generosity.  According to his eulogist:  “His place here can never be supplied. His fortune was ample, his cash capital in the thousands, and his pockets always full to meet the demands of the borrower and the beggar…. He gave more to preachers, churches, Sunday schools, Christmas trees, and to feed and clothe the poor, than any other man in Lincoln County.”

One specific example was provided to illustrate James’ character.  “On one occasion, a poor destitute man, (William Kidd) with a withered arm, passing his place of business with an empty meal sack on his shoulder, and a coffee-sack in which he had three hens, the only property he had in the world, stopped in to warm. Willie said…How are times with you? [Kidd] Might hard. I have in my coffee-sack my only three hens. The only things I have in the world. I am taking them to the store to buy me some meal and coffee. [James] Look here at this paper and see what your hens are worth in the market – 68 cents a piece. Take them back home to lay you some eggs, and take this dollar to buy you some coffee and meat, and take your meal sack up to my miller and tell him to fill it as full of meal as he can tie it.

At James’ funeral the minister, Rev. O. M. Huey offered a a verse from his own pen to the large crowd that had gathered to pay respects to a man hailed as “…in many qualities the grandest man that ever moved in the track of time.”:

One by one our friends depart,

Who has not lost a friend?

There is no union here of hearts,

But that union has an end.

Farewell, dear Willie, we leave thee

With the new-fallen snow for a winding sheet,

And cold, bleak winter for a bier;

And every clod beneath the mourner’s feet

Moistened with a tear.

After James’ death the Crab Orchard distillery passed through several hands until shut by National Prohibition in 1920.  With Repeal, however, the earlier popularity of the label caused its revival.  Under the auspices of the American Medicinal Spirits Company the brand was heavily advertised with an “Old South” motif before finally disappearing.

Note:  As so often happens, it was the sight of a Crab Orchard whiskey jug that put me on the track of J.W. “Willie” James.  The extensive and vivid obituary that appeared in the Interior Journal newspaper of Stanford, Kentucky, on March 2, 1906, cemented the idea that James was a good subject for this blog.  The fact that nowhere in his obituary is it even hinted that the subject sold whiskey should be no surprise.  It was similar to the “silent” treatment of other whiskey men featured here. 

A corn liquor distilled in central Virginia about 1620 has been cited as the first whiskey ever made in North America and hailed as “a predecessor to modern-day bourbon.”  The distiller was George Thorpe, who came to the New World from England with the major objective of converting the indigenous population to Christianity.  It cost him his life. 

From a wealthy and landed family, George was born in 1576 at Wanswell Court, the family estate in Gloustershire, England, the eldest son of Nicholas and Mary Wilkes Thorpe.  He received university training in law and according to some accounts may also have been an ordained priest of the Anglican Church. Later Thorpe served as a justice of the peace and was chosen to represent Portsmouth in a short session of the British parliament, known as “The Addled Parliament.”  At the age of 24 in 1600 Thorpe married Margaret Porter, who died childless a decade later.  He soon remarried Margaret Harris who birthed five children, at least two of whom lived to maturity.

A “gentleman of the king’s privy chamber,” success in England seemingly meant little to Thorpe.  Instead he had his mind and heart fixed on events across the Atlantic.  Says one biographer:  “He was related both in blood and marriage with some of the distinguished men of the Jamestown colony….He was a man of strong religious feeling  and became greatly interested in the problem of the savages with which his countrymen were newly coming into contact in the new world.”  Selling his English lands and investing in a Virginia settlement, Thorpe arrived in The New World in March 1620. 

Upon Thorpe’s coming his contacts and reputation earned him immediate recognition at the Berkeley Hundred, a settlement on the north bank of the James River founded in 1619 on land allotted by the king.  He was made a co-leader of the Berkeley Plantation and named to the Governor’s Council of Virginia.  Thorpe also was given another post that would prove problematic.  Enthusiasm ran high in England for bringing advanced learning to the colonies through a “college” and for providing “Christianizing” education for American Indians.  King James had authorized English bishops and clergy to raise significant amounts of money to be used for that purpose.  Given Thorpe’s passion for converting the native population, he was put in charge of the project.

More immediately, however, the newly arrived Englishman put his efforts toward making Berkeley function agriculturally.  Thorpe threw his energies into farming, at one point planting a large vineyard that failed to prosper.  The colonists having been introduced to corn by the Indians, he looked to make that crop potable.  Because safe drinking water was at a premium, the colonists, both adults and children, drank beer, cider and a form of strong drink known as “aqua vitae.”   Fifteen gallons of such spirits that had accompanied Thorpe from England soon was exhausted,  but colonists providently also had brought a copper still.  The Englishman set about to turn corn into alcohol.  In December 1620 Thorpe wrote a friend:  “Wee have found a waie to make soe good drink of Indian corn I have divers times refused to drink good stronge English beare and chose to drinke that.”   Those spirits would have been clear in color and more akin to “moonshine” or “white lightening”  than contemporary whiskey. 

Providing strong drink to his fellow colonists probably was secondary to Thorpe.  He had been charged with creating the educational campus, including an Indian school, adjacent to the settlement.  Highly motivated to befriend Native Americans and convert them to Christianity, Thorpe gave this objective his utmost attention.  In letters he regretted that his fellow colonists had treated the Indians so shabbily “they beinge (espetiallye the better sort of them) of a peaceful and vertuous disposition.”

Thorpe seemed to score an early success when one of the leaders of the Powhatan tribe named Opechancanough (meaning “Soul of White”) agreed to meet with him.  The Indian chief seemed welcoming and open to being converted to Christianity.  Encouraged, Thorpe with his own money arranged to have the colonists build him “a faire house after the English fashion.”  Opechanacough accepted the gift and Thorpe left believing that significant progress had been made in establishing a cooperative relationship.  The chief is shown below as he was depicted then and again more recently.

Opechancanough, far from conversion, was the a rabid tribal leader for expelling white men from Indian territory. He is shown above as imagined by artists in both the 17th and 21st Centuries.  Thorpe may have further exacerbated the situation by explaining his intention to remove Indian children for education and conversion at the proposed school, a plan that may have inflamed the chief’s personal animosity toward the Englishman.  Even as they spoke, Opechancanough was planning to wipe out the colonists at the Berkeley Hundred and elsewhere in Virginia.

On the night of March 22, 1622, the Indians struck in a coordinated attack against English settlements along the James River.  As shown above, they breached stockade fences surrounding the settlements, setting the buildings on fire, or arrived by water in war canoes to surprise a completely unprepared populace.  As the inhabitants ran for safety they were cut down by tribesmen bearing axes and other weapons.  The attacks killed some 347 men, women, and children, including 27 at the Berkeley Hundred.  Among them was George Thorpe, apparently the object of particular fury, his mutilated body parts found strewn widely over the bloody ground.

When word of the massacre was received back in England, it generated a flurry of imagined depictions, as above, stirring hatred against the indigenous population.  In a report to the king, Thorpe’s good intentions toward the Indians were emphasized:   “He thought nothing too deare for them…All was little regarded after by this Viperous brood.”  Thorpe emerged a Christian hero betrayed by a treacherous people.  Unsuccessful in his efforts to drive the English out, Opechancanough was captured in 1846 and shot in the back by a soldier as he was being paraded as a prisoner through Jamestown.

Anointing Thorpe as America’s first distiller seems reasonable, since he apparently was the first to write about it.  Whether his product is to be considered the forerunner of modern day whiskey requires examination.  Author Patrick Evans-Hylton makes the case that Thorpe’s “corn beer” was a predecessor of bourbon.  He cites an 1634 inventory of Thorpe’s estate in which a copper still with three small barrels of liquor were found, opened and drunk.  At that point the contents had aged at least 12 years and likely had achieved some color from the wood.  No longer just “moonshine,” Thorpe’s spirits might have resembled bourbon even if the taste did not.

Notes:  This post was occasioned by an interesting new book by Evans-Hylton, entitled “Virginia Distilled:  Four Hundred Years of Drinking in the Old Dominion,” The History Press, Charleston S.C., 2021.  It spurred me to research a number of Internet and printed sources on Thorpe’s life and death, a story previously unknown to me, despite my being a resident of Virginia since 1964.

 

“When you give to the needy do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”  — Mathew 6:3.

Although today Thomas H. Sherley, shown here, lacks the attention paid to other 19th Century Kentucky “bourbon barons.” his record of public service and most particularly his charitable endeavors eclipsed most if not all of them.  At his death, the Louisville Courier Journal of November 30, 1898, in an extensive obituary related some of the philanthropy Sherley had performed during his lifetime.

The newspaper recounted how Sherley had raised a fund to assist the victims of the Louisville Great Cyclone of 1890 that killed 76 people, injured some 200, and devastated much of the city’s downtown, inflicting the equivalent today of more than $86 million in damages.   Sherley organized a fund for the victims of the calamity that aided hundreds.  The Courier Journal recounted that after the money had been exhausted, a young woman victim repeatedly approached Sherley for help.  He could not turn her away.  She never learned that the amounts he gave her came from his own pocket and not from the fund.

Serving six terms on the Louisville school board, at least one term as president, Sherley was passionate about providing education to those at the low end of the economic scale, including leading in the formation of night schools for workers.  He was credited by the newspaper with fostering Black school students and spearheading building schools for them.  He was credited with helping many Louisville young men and women enroll in business college, often paying their tuition, and helping them secure employment upon graduation.

A business associate told the reporter of an incident that draws on the Biblical quote that opens this post.  Without Sherley’s knowledge the associate had begun to keep an account of the distiller’s charitable giving.  When Sherley finally saw it, he inquired and was told, “That’s the charity account.”  He threw it aside, quoted saying, “I don’t want to know what is given away.  We don’t need the account.”

This successful Kentucky whiskey man was born in Louisville on New Year’s Day 1843, the son of Zachary and Susan Sherley.  His father, shown here, was a riverboat pilot who had prospered to the point of owning a fleet of steamships.  Zachary, originally from Virginia, was firmly on the side of the Union when the Civil War broke out in a state sharply divided over the conflict.  In April 1862 he is credited with moving 25,000 troops and supplies from Louisville to Tennessee for the battle of Shiloh in support of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.  Later Zachary assisted Grant with ships during the battle for Fort Donelson. Although of eligible age as the war raged on, there is no evidence that Thomas Sherley ever served.

The young Sherley attended local schools, able because of his father’s wealth to graduate with a post-secondary degree in 1863.  Shortly after, at the age of 21 he married Ella Swager, 20, the daughter of Capt. Joseph Swager, a steamboat captain and friend of his father.  The 1870 federal census found the couple living in Louisville with three children, Eva Belle, Zach, Clara, and Ella’s 77-year old father.  Sherley’s occupation given as “wholesale liquor,”  He clearly was prospering.  His household included three female servants — nurse, cook, and maid.  By the 1880 census, the couple had added two more children, Swager and Minnie.  Sherley was now listed as “distiller.”

Sherley proved to be an energetic entrepreneur.  With business partner E.L. Miles he ran two distilleries at New Hope, Kentucky, 55 miles south of Louisville.  Built side by side, the first was called The New Hope Distilling Company (RD#101, 5th District) and founded by Miles’ father.  It had a small mashing capacity of 20 bushels a day.  As both a distiller and commission merchant, Sherley handled the output of the plant and about 1875 teamed with Miles to build the E. Miles Distillery (RD#146, 5th District) next door. This was a much larger plant, one originally processing 200 bushels daily.  By 1885 the partners had expanded the capacity to 1,000 bushels.  Sherley was also involved with the Crystal Springs Distillery (RD #3, 5th District) in Jefferson County with partner T. J. Batman. [See post on Batman,  July 24, 2021.]  A photo of that facility apparently shows Sherley (long black beard) among the workers.

Among other enterprises, Sherley was a founding investor in Louisville’s Kentucky Public Elevator Co., shown left.  He also co-owned the Southern Glass Works, a factory that manufactured a wide variety of medicinal glassware, fruit jars and flasks.  Below is an example of a bottle with the glassworks signature mark.  

In addition to his enterprises and philanthropic work, Sherley also left his mark in the civic and political life of Louisville.  Among his accomplishments Sherley was the first president of the Board of Parks Commissioners, serving for eight years.  He served six terms as a member and president of the Louisville School Board, and twice was elected as a director of the Board of Trade.  He was chairman of the citizens’ committee for Louisville’s hosting of a Grand Army of the Republic national convention. 

 

In politics Sherley served from 1892 to 1896 as a representative to the Democratic National Committee from Kentucky, frequently called East to confer with Democratic leaders.  He chaired the Kentucky delegation to the 1896 Democratic Convention in Chicago that nominated William Jennings Bryan and was considered the same year as a Democratic congressional candidate, but declined.  Shown here, his son, Swager, later would be elected to a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

Perhaps the pinnacle of Sherley’s career as Kentucky distiller came in March 1891 when most of Kentucky’s leading distillers, the largest gathering ever of the state’s “bourbon barons,” gathered at Louisville’s Galt House hotel, shown left.  Their purpose was to consider whether to organize a Kentucky Distillers’ Association with the purpose of promoting legislation helpful to the industry and, with an eye on the prohibitionary forces, “guarding the common interest against unjust legislations, state or national.”  The man called upon to chair this august group was Thomas Sherley.  Subsequently elected its president, he proved his value by being a skillful advocate for the Bottled-in-Bond bill, traveling frequently to Washington to testify before Congress and confer with political leaders.

The many responsibilities Sherley carried on his shoulders might have crushed a lesser man years earlier.  At age 55, he would not prove immune.  In November 1898, according to the Courier Journal, the distiller began to feel ill.  His doctor diagnosed him as suffering from indigestion and lung congestion but said the conditions were not serious.  Sherley resumed his heavy schedule, dictating letters, meeting with associates in his business activities, and planning a national meeting of his Masonic order.  On the morning of November 28, 1898, he arose from his bed to sit in a chair.  He later was found there unconscious and died shortly thereafter.  The verdict:  Heart failure.  His funeral, held at Louisville’s Episcopal Cathedral, and burial was a major event with large attendance and considerable ceremony.  As many of Louisville’s distilling gentry, Sherley was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery, Section  P, Lot 235, Grave 5.  The inscription on his headstone reads: “He did his work and held his peace and had no fear to die.”  Ella would join him in the grave 25 years later.

Of the many qualities that Thomas Sherley exhibited in his truly extraordinary life,    I most admire his gift for giving, said to have practiced his philanthropy without distinction of “creed or color” and disdaining to keep track of his charity.  This great hearted whiskey man had heeded the Biblical injunction.  His right hand unconditionally was held out to the needy.

Notes:   Although I had mentioned Thomas Sherley in my earlier post on Thomas Batman of Louisville, the distiller was brought fully to my attention by a recently published book by Bryan S. Bush entitled “Bluegrass Bourbon Barons,” American Palate, a Division of The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2021.  Author Bush covers the history of Kentucky and particularly Louisville-based whiskey-making through short biographies of the distillers.  The obituary of Sherley in the Louisville Courier Journal provided a wealth of information, supplemented by other sources.