Author name: Jack Sullivan

“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.

Foreword:  Buying certificates on whiskey stocks still aging in a warehouse for future use by a liquor dealer seeking an assured supply or by an investor seeking a large profit “at the end of the day” has been a tempting prospect since the mid-1800s. It also has provided ample opportunity for fraud.  Below is a discussion of pre-Prohibition warehouse receipt sales and brief accounts of three pre-Prohibition whiskey men who cheated, the first two relatively obscure figures but the third among America’s most celebrated “Bourbon Barons.”

Will Headley was from a respected Kentucky distilling family. His father, John, in collaboration with Robert Crigler, created a bourbon called “Woodland Straight Kentucky Whiskey.”  After John’s death, Will at the age of about 34 succeed to his father’s share in the company.  He was named treasurer, apparently a particularly good choice.  Will was trained as a bookkeeper and had a reputation for integrity.  He was also known as a good family man and people sympathized when his wife died in 1893 leaving him with a young family.

Then things began to unravel.  As treasurer, Headley was the only officer at the Woodland Distillery authorized to issue warehouse receipts and he was cheating.  In February 1894, a wind storm damaged roofs of the company’s bonded warehouses, leaving many barrels inside uncovered.  Apparently fearing discovery of his misdeeds, Headley shortly after told his family he was leaving on a business trip.  Before departing he visited a local bank and withdrew $900 in company funds.  Several days later his oldest daughter received a letter from her father indicating he had fled to Mexico and admitting having sold fraudulent warehouse receipts and kept the money.

The ensuing investigation discovered that Headley had issued receipts for 1,800 barrels of bourbon, allegedly produced in 1892 and stored in the warehouses.  Woodland Distillery, however, had produced only 600 barrels that year.  The losses from just one year of fraudulent receipts totaled more than $30,000, equivalent today to some $660,000.  In total, Headley ultimately was discovered to have stolen more than the equivalent today of $1.1 million.

What could have caused Will Headley to have executed such a massive theft?  He was not known as a gambler or heavy drinker, character flaws that might have made his behavior more understandable.  My judgment that it was love, likely an adulterous affair, that had led to Headley’s crime.  The fraud had begun more than a year before his wife’s death, to my mind an indication of Will’s earlier need for funds to bankroll a “back street” love affair.  When located in Mexico years later he was married to an American woman, likely his former paramour, and had a small child.  He died south of the border in 1913 at the age of 59.  No evidence exists that Headley ever returned to the U.S., initiated contact with the children he had abandoned, or made any restitution.

In October 1903 Fred Hipsh wrote the editor of the Wine & Spirits Bulletin announcing that he had bought the “Old York Distillery” in Louisville, Kentucky and “will conduct the business as heretofore under the same name and style.”  Shown here a label for “Elkridge Special Whiskey” which is purported to be a blend of old straight whiskies from the Old York Distillery.  My research, however, has failed to find any such distillery in Louisville or anywhere else in America.

The appearance of owning a Kentucky distillery had its benefits.  As was common in those days of loose security regulations, it allowed the sale of bond certificates for whiskey supposed to be stored in the Old York warehouse in Louisville.  In 1904 a Los Angeles saloonkeeper bought certificates for twenty barrels of that whiskey, paying $101 (more than $2,200 today) to a man who said he represented Hipsh.  When the certificates were found to be fraudulent, the salesman was arrested.  Living in New York, Hipsh somehow escaped being implicated.

Fast forward to 1908.  Despite the situation had that occurred on the West Coast, Hipsh continued to peddle certificates related to whiskey reputedly in his Kentucky warehouse.  He hired an agent named Alexander Ruberti to hawk them.  Ruberti sold some to a fellow Italian, Joseph Fiorello, who paid for them with promissory notes that Ruberti sent on to Hipsh.  It later was indicated that Fiorello was could neither read nor write English.  He was not, however,stupid. When he learned that the certificates apparently were fraudulent, he contacted Hipsh, canceling his contract and demanding his notes back.  

By that time, however, Hipsh had passed the promissory notes on to a third party who sued — not Hipsh or Ruberti — but Fiorello.  Hipsh was summoned into a New York Circuit Court before a judge and jury, not as a defendant, but to testify to whether Ruberti, indeed, was his agent.  The jury declared that Fiorello “had the undoubted right to rescind the contract for fraud.”  Yet the same panel found Hipsh “innocent in the transaction.” Ruberti was blamed but somehow not found liable.  The State Supreme Court later confirmed the verdict.  The individual holding Fiorello’s notes was left out in the cold. 

Although Headley and Hipish apparently got away with their frauds, Col. Edmund L. Taylor, later considered the leading spokesman for the Kentucky bourbon industry, a confidant of Presidents and cabinet secretaries, was not so fortunate.  In 1873 a severe financial downturn in Europe and America cast many previously successful distillers into serious financial trouble, Taylor among them.  In June 1877 The Louisville Courier-Journal reported in June 1877 that he owed $150,000 (equivalent to $3.75 million today) to a liquor dealer named George Stagg and his partner.  “Examination of the books shows that receipts have been given for 7,014 barrels of whiskey, whereas his actual stock does not exceed 4,722 barrels.” the newspaper reported.  With more than a hint of fraud involved, Taylor’s total debt approached  $11 million in current dollars.

Shown here, Stagg saw Taylor’s financial plight as an opportunity.  Up to this time Stagg had been considered a gifted salesman, a pitchman for Kentucky whiskey but not a real player in the industry.  He and a partner forgave Taylor’s debt and paid off the other creditors.  As a result they gained ownership of the colonel’s two distilleries, located adjacent to each other on the Kentucky River at Leestown.  One, shown here, was known as the OFC (Old Fire Copper) Distillery and the other the Carlisle Distillery.

Stagg recognized that keeping Taylor and especially his name associated with the enterprises was important.   He established the E. H. Taylor, Jr. Company in 1879, with himself as president and Taylor as vice president.   Stagg had 3,448 of 5,000 shares in the company;  he gave Taylor, who was overseeing the distilling, just one.  Out of the financial panic that had brought down the icon of Kentucky bourbon,  Stagg had vaulted himself into the forefront of the state’s whiskey industry.  In time Colonel Taylor would recoup his reputation and wealth but no one involved in Kentucky whiskey ever forgot his earlier indiscretion.

Although the U.S. has adopted laws that largely ban the kind of chicanery around liquor futures and warehouse receipts, the practice of such frauds is alive and well in the sale of Scotch whisky “futures.”  Those are being hustled by telephone scammers promising large profits on liquor being held by someone somewhere in Scotland — and finding unwary investors. 

Note:  Longer vignettes on each of the whiskey men treated here may be found elsewhere on this website:  Will Headley, February 18, 2020; Fred Hipsh, April 3, 2019; Col. Edmund Taylor, January 10, 2015; and George Stagg, April 30, 2016.

September 8, 1898, was a typical autumn day in New York City.  In downtown Manhattan, Vesey Street, shown here, bustled with carriage and foot traffic.  In the wine and liquor establishment of Max Stiner & Company at 36 Vesey, the staff was working at their usual tasks. The owner was absent, leaving his 19-year-old son Milton Stiner to watch over the activities.  At 5:20 p.m. an explosion, heard for blocks, shook the five story building.  A disaster quickly unfolded at Stiner’s liquor house.

In the cellar where the blast occurred three men and one young woman were working: William Witt, the foreman; Ralph Scheondorff;  a third man known as “Paul Latour,” and 19-year-old Lydia St. Clair. The shock was followed by a burst of fire.  All four were imperiled.  Although the first floor almost immediately was filled with smoke and fire, the rest of Stiner’s employees, choking, were able to make it outside.   Witt managed to reach the top of the front stair before he was overcome and engulfed in flames.  Scheondorff and “Latour” (real name Carl Herlowitski) later were found dead lying side by side in the front section of the cellar, both badly burned.  Both Witt and Scheondorff had families.

Miraculously, Ms. St. Clair, who was pasting labels on bottles, escaped unhurt up a back stairway.  Joseph Fitzgerald, chief bookkeeper, unable himself to reach the front door, rescued the woman. He headed to a rear window, jumped down and fetched a ladder for her exit.  Fitzgerald told authorities:  “She was nearly frightened to death, and I don’t blame her, for she had a pretty close shave.  If she had been a minute later she probably wouldn’t have been alive now.”

The New York Fire Department quickly arrived on the scene, pouring water on the conflagration.  Major damage was contained to the cellar of the five story building.  Despite the toll in human lives, the structure was not greatly damaged. Stiner’s wine and liquor stored underground was a total loss, estimated at $40,000. Possibly afraid of the wrath of his absent father, Milton was uncooperative with fire officials, claiming not to know how many people were at work that day, or even their names.  Said the New York Journal story:  “It was not without a good deal of difficulty that the firemen could induce young Mr. Stiner to give them any information.”  Where was Max Stiner?  “Somewhere uptown” was Milton’s vague reply. The father did not appear on the scene until hours later.

Like a man accustomed to setbacks, Stiner (sometimes given as “Steiner”) immediately directed the cleanup of the wreckage left by the explosion.  Before long the his wine and liquor enterprise was back in business.  He had not come this far in carving out a career in the “Big Apple” wine and liquor trade to let this setback deter him.

Stiner had begun life 47 years earlier in Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Jacob and Anna Hoffman Steiner.  At 19, an age that made him vulnerable to mandatory service in the Austrian army, he determined to emigrate to America.  He embarked from Bremerhaven, Germany, aboard the SS Deutschland, shown below, a ship regularly carrying immigrants from  Europe to these shores.  Disembarking New York Harbor, Stiner apparently immediately fell in love with “the city that never sleeps” — and never left.

In a 1900 passport application, Stiner was described as five feet, seven inches tall, dark blonde hair, gray eyes and a round face.  Unfortunately I have been unable to locate a photograph.  Nor have I been able to determine his occupation for his first decade in New York but assume he was working in the mercantile trades.  He was recorded in the 1880 federal census as a “retail tea merchant,” and in 1881 city directory as the manager of Steiner & Co. “teas,” located at 226 Columbia Street, not far from the port area.

By 1894, Stiner apparently had decided that his “cup of tea” more likely was a shot of whiskey and had opened the liquor store on Vesey Street.  He was dealing in both retail and wholesale goods, the latter sold to the many saloons, hotels and restaurants that dotted the Manhattan landscape.  He was receiving wines and liquors by the barrel and decanting them into smaller vessels.  Stiner’s jugs were of a quality to draw attention to his establishment.  In sizes up to five gallons, he provided his wares in salt-glazed stoneware containers with his name written in large cobalt script.  Shown throughout this post for their variety, these jugs would have been emptied by his customers into smaller vessels for pouring over the bar.

Max had married several years after his arrival in America.  His bride was Carolyn, called “Carrie.” Munch, a 22-year old woman who had been born in New York of immigrant parents from Bohemia, Cecelia (Lederer) and Benjamin Munch.  Her father ran a Manhattan cigar store.  Max and Carolyn over the next 14 years would have seven children, five sons and two daughters.  As the size of their family grew, the Stiners moved frequently.  In 1894 they were recorded living at 248 East 78th Street.  Three years later they resided at 150 West 130th Street.  By 1899, Max had sufficient wealth to move the Stiners into  fashionable quarters at 149 West 120th Street, shown below.

Max did not have long to enjoy home and family.  Suffering from heart disease he died at home in early June 1904 at the age of 53.  An obituary hailed him as “well known in this vicinity, where he had a large trade.”  He was buried at the Linden Hill Jewish Cemetery in the Ridgewood District of Queens.  His grave is not identified.

In the wake of the founder’s passing Max Stiner & Company was carried on — but with changes.  In 1904 the business was incorporated.  Among the incorporators were the widowed Carrie Stiner, vice president, and son Milton, president.   Benjamin Stiner was treasurer and secretary.  The company appears to have put more emphasis on retail sales and issued at least two proprietary brands, “Old Dante Private Stock” sold as “The Connoisseurs Favorite,” and “Old Dinah,” a blended whiskey, trademarked in 1911.  Milton also seems to have scrapped the decorative jugs favored by his father for more utilitarian but cheaper containers.

The last record for the company is a 1916 listing in a New York business directory.  With National Prohibition becoming ever more likely the Stiners may have decided simply to shut the doors on their Vesey Street establishment.  As for the tragic events recounted earlier, I am unable to find any answer to the question of what triggered the fatal explosion and fire.  Several causes were suggested — alcohol from the liquor, an open gas jet, sewer gas — but none, to my knowledge, has ever been ever confirmed. 

Imagine if you will that you are born late and the shortest in a family of eight sons. Your father was a well known and respected physician and Civil War veteran and your older brothers have achieved notable careers.  How do does such an individual make his mark in such accomplished company?  For James Scott Price of Chattanooga the answer was simple:  Sell whiskey with your name all over it.

His father, Samuel Vance Price, born in Georgia, at age 21 joined the state’s Sixth Infantry Regiment at the time of the Civil War.  Captured at Vicksburg with his unit, he was exchanged and later fought with the Army of Tennessee from Chattanooga to Nashville.  Earlier he had married Sarah Jane Bonds and over time sired a dozen children, including eight sons. He also received a medical degree. Suggesting some lingering effects from his wartime experience, Dr. Price died at  only 45 when Scott, as he was called, was only six.

With brothers almost two decades older, Scott early on was thrust into the world to make his way.  Like his father he married early.  At 22 in June 1901, he wed Roberta Bryan in Walker, Georgia,  She was 16.  There would be no children.  Before long Scott and Roberta moved to Tennessee where his brother Samuel Price was already established in a liquor business he called “The Chattanooga Distillery.”  Shown below is a photo of six Price brothers standing with their mother.  Scott is at far left; Samuel at far right.

Scott initially may have gone to work for Samuel to learning liquor trade.  He first appeared in Chattanooga business directories in 1903 running his own saloon at 829 Market Street.  By 1906 he had moved his establishment to 254 East Montgomery.  A Price bar token exists from that location. The year 1910 was pivotal for Scott.  He moved from selling liquor over the bar to adding retail liquor sales, the Main Street store front shown far left below. The youngest Price son, Paul, came to work with him.  As Price Bros. they added soft drinks to their sales repertoire, likely a response to the growing prohibitionary forces in Tennessee.

In 1912 picture gets cloudy.  A Chattanooga firm called the Lookout Distilling Company, dating from the late 1880s, appears to have been acquired by Scott, leading him to change the name of his establishment to “Scott Price Distillery.”

Some have seen the 1880 date on the certificate  to indicate the year Scott got started in Chattanooga.  Impossible.  He was one year old in 1880.  More likely that was the year Lookout Distilling originated.

A Chattanooga website may have the answer in a vintage letter published there:  “Morg [a nickname for Samuel] & Scott Price had a small distillery on Main St. in Chattanooga. They did not bottle whiskey but sold it to barrel houses [a bar with no bottles]. They paid Uncle some $250,000.00 for barrels that never went dry; filled in the day time, drained from underneath at night.“  This suggests that the so-called distillery was, in fact, a “rectifying” or blending operation.  Confusing the picture, however, the Lookout Company was a registered distiller with the federal government from 1898 to 1904.

Scott also was selling bottled goods under his own name.  Shown above are two embossed bottles of his whiskey, a cobalt half pint mini-flask and a clear bottle of similar size.  Both bear the name Scott Price Distillery and a monogram of the liquor dealer’s initials.  Below is a labeled pint flask advertising “Old Scott Corn Whiskey.”  Other house brands were “Scott’s Pure Malt,” “Old Lookout Club” and “Lookout.”  None were ever trademarked.

When Georgia and other Southern states went dry in 1908-1909, it was a bonanza for the Chattanooga liquor houses.  As a major American railroad center, trains rolled daily out of the city bound for the “dry” South.  They were known popularly as “jug trains” because of the liquor they carried.  Scott Price was quick to seize the opportunity.   Like many whiskey men, he issued advertising shot glasses clearly aimed at the mail order customer.  Four quarts of Old Scott Corn could be had for $3.00 and the express cost was prepaid.   Scott’s Pure Malt prepaid sold for $3.90 for four quarts.  Old Lookout was $4.00.

Even after Tennessee put strictures on the sale of alcohol, the jug trains, protected by the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, continued to bring their liquid in plain packages into nearby states. Although Congress in 1913 passed a law forbidding the practice, court challenges impeded its implementation for several years.  In the meantime liquor houses like Scott Price’s took advantage.

It was not until 1915, therefore, that Scott Price was forced to shut down his liquor business.  In the meantime he had become wealthy enough to purchase the mansion home shown below for himself, Roberta, and a corps of servants.  Today it stands as Kappa Epsilon sorority house for women studying to become pharmacists.  After a time without an occupation, Scott emerged in the 1820s as the president and CEO of the Chattanooga Paper & Woodenware Company.  Of it one observer said:  “There were always trucks loading and unloading there indicating a brisk business.”   The shortest of the sons of George Price and one disadvantaged by never really having a father, Scott Price had ridden the liquor trade, his name and the “jug train” into wealth and a mansion home.

Scott Price lived to see the repeal of National Prohibition and relaxation of Tennessee liquor laws but did not restart his whiskey business.  He died in Chattanooga in March 1955 and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery.  Roberta would join him there in 1962.

Note:  Gathered from a variety of sources, this post owes the most to Tom Carson (tcarson@ewkm.net) for an Internet article on the Scott Price Distillery. Modestly he says: “This article is not a scholarly article with all the footnotes, but is an attempt to add a little information to the history of liquor in Chattanooga.”  Additional information and photos of Price’s shot glasses are from Robin Preston’s pre-Pro site.

How does an individual earns the title of  “Dean of the American Liquor Industry”?   It helps to begin working in a distillery when you are 15 years old.  It also is advantageous to have been an active whiskey man right up to your death at age 92.  It also is important that during the intervening 75 years, amid tribulations and rapid change, you have maintained a quality presence in the industry.  Based on those criteria, the Cincinnati Enquirer headline of April 22, 1960, above, is an accurate description of Edward “Ed” Wertheimer.

Shown here in his youth, Ed was born in Rodney, Mississippi, in 1870, the son of Jacob and Emily  Ehrman Wertheimer.  Both parents were immigrants from Germany, Jacob from Baden-Wurttemberg and Emily from Bavaria.  The father was recorded as a “merchant” in Rodney, a town approximately 32 miles northeast of Natchez.  Once considered as a possible capital of Mississippi, Rodney began a swift decline to a virtual ghost town after the Mississippi River changed course in April 1876 leaving the town “high and dry.”

Apparently anticipating the downturn, Jacob in the early 1880s moved his wife and family 215 miles north to Pine Bluff, Arkansas.   There he founded a retail liquor establishment under the name Greenbrier Distilling Company.  As his sons Lee and Ed entered their mid-teens, he brought them into the business.  Both youth showed an aptitude for the trade.  When Jacob retired, Lee became president and Ed vice president of a liquor house they called “The Old Spring Distilling Company.”  It proved to be a successful venture and they followed with a second company called “L. & E. Wertheimer, Inc., an outfit that apparently was a liquor brokerage, acting as “middle men” between distilleries and wholesalers.

Meanwhile, Ed was having a personal life.  In June 1901, he married Sarah Kuhn, shown right.  The daughter of Abe Kuhn, a prominent Ogden, Utah, businessman Sarah was born in the Junction City Hotel, probably owned by her father.  How the couple met is something of a mystery since Ogden is 1,500 miles northwest of Pine Bluff.  Likely there were family  connections.  The marriage of the handsome Ed, 31, and the comely Sarah, 21, on June 12, 1901, made headlines in several newspapers.  A Salt Lake City paper provided portraits of the couple, including the one that opens this post.  Over the next four years their union would produce two sons, Jean and Edward Jr.

Early in the 20th Century, the ambitions of Lee and Ed began out outgrow the prospects of Pine Bluff.  Northeast by 630 miles, Cincinnati, the leading liquor distribution city in America, beckoned.  In 1903 the brothers moved the Old Spring Distilling Company, Ed’s family, and themselves to “The Queen City” on the Ohio River.  The L. & E. Westheimer firm remained for a time in Pine Bluff with local management.

The Wertheimer liquor house in Cincinnati initially was located at 121 Produce Alley.  When the volume of business at that site required more space the brothers moved to 333 Sycamore Street in 1906.  Two years later a final move took the Old Spring Distilling Co. to 129 West Third Road.  The company was selling its brands, “Old Spring,” “Hump-Back,” and “Old Time Gin” to the public in quart and flask sizes.  These were issued in clear and cobalt blue bottles, with “Cincinnati” embossed on them.

As was customary with the liquor houses of the time, the Wertheimers were generous in bestowing gifts on the saloons, hotels and restaurants featuring their whiskeys.  Among them was glassware.  Along with the usual advertising shot glasses, the brothers provided customers with highball glasses, a signal that some of their liquor offerings were intended for mixed drinks.  These items seem to have concentrated on advertising the Wertheimer flagship label, Old Spring.  The brothers, however, never bothered to trademark name and other U.S. liquor dealers also used it.

Displaying a sense of humor, the Wertheimers also issued a whimsical trade card showing a quart bottle of Old Spring with the motto, “Belongs on Every Sideboard.”  Known in the trade as a “mechanical, on the flip side is a illustration of a worried man and the caption, “Don’t look so dam serious.”  When turned over the man is smiling and the caption reads, “It may not be so serious.”

For a number of years, Ed and his brother had no serious challenges.  A longtime bachelor, Lee eventually married and had two children.  By now wealthy, Ed was able to move his family into a spacious home at 4075 Beechwood Avenue in a fashionable section of Cincinnati.  Still standing, the house is shown below.  At the same time, however, the onrush of the prohibitionist tide was diminishing business.  In 1916 Ohio voted to go “dry” and the result was the Old Spring Distilling Company closed its doors in 1818.

As a fallback, the Wertheimers moved their Pine Bluff outfit, L. and E. Company to Cincinnati.  Whatever its principal business had been in Pine Bluff, now it became a brokerage firm with Edward and his brother in charge.  Throughout the 14 years of National Prohibition they bought and sold “medicinal” whiskey under the watchful eye of the federal authorities. This period also saw considerable activity in the buying and selling of idle distilleries that may have presented the brothers as brokers another avenue of revenue.  As Prohibition stretched on, Ed brought Edward Junior into the company.  Lee eventually left the firm and moved to Los Angeles where he died in 1943.

When Repeal came in 1934,  Ed, now age 67, was ready.  Unlike the majority of “whiskey men” who abandoned the trade permanently, this Wertheimer immediately revived the Old Spring Distilling Company and its flagship brand.  Once again the business thrived.  As Edward aged, however, he began to reduce his management responsibilities.  In 1948 he sold the Old Spring Company and brand to Schenley Industries to concentrate on L. and E. brokerage.  After two years heading that organization he ceded it to Edward Junior and became board chairman.

Meanwhile Edward was achieving a reputation for philanthropy, known for large donations made to the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Jewish causes, including the Rockvale Avenue Temple.  He also knew sorrow.  While he and Selma, his wife of 53 years, were on a Mediterranean cruise in 1953, she suffered a heart attack aboard ship and her body removed at Alexandria, Egypt.  Under the supervision of her grieving husband her body was flown back to Cincinnati for burial at the United Jewish Cemetery on Montgomery Road.  Several years later Ed established a UC scholarship in her name.  

On his 90th birthday, Ed made his daily visit to his office at L. and E. Company. There, a surprise, he received a hand-lettered plaque extolling his accomplishments and listing his contributions to the business and community life of Cincinnati.  The plaque bore the names of 60 friends and business associates. When asked the secret of his longevity on that occasion, Ed replied:  “I have always avoided overindulgence in anything.”  Clearly this did not include business.

Still active in early April 1960, Ed suffered a stroke from which he never recovered, dying a week and a half later at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital.  He was 92.  Following a well-attended funeral, he was buried next to Selma.  The headline from the Cincinnati Enquirer  that opens this post was no “local hero” hyperbole.  Edward Westheimer by his unbroken 75 productive years in the whiskey trade richly had earned the right to be considered “The Dean.”

Note:  Using a number of sources, this post relies heavily on the extensive obituary on Edward Wertheimer from the Cincinnati Enquirer of April 22, 1960, and on genealogy references.

Foreword:  Dedicated to distillers, liquor dealers, saloonkeepers, bartenders and others associated with pre-Prohibition liquor, this website frequently has documented their many contributions to the cities and towns in which they lived.Among those was service on local volunteer fire departments.  This post tells in brief the stories of five firefighting “whiskey men,”  including a father and son, from, as the song goes, “California to the New York Island.”

Born about 1831 in Ireland, at the age of 17 or so John Keenan emigrated across the Atlantic, reputedly landing in Mexico about 1848 and working his way to Texas where for a time he was a Texas Ranger.  From there he moved to California, settling in Sacramento.  The energetic Keenan hit town like a tornado.  After a large fire destroyed many of Sacramento’s saloons, the Irishman sensed opportunity. He raced to a nearby settlement where he purchased a prefabricated wooden building on the Sacramento River and had it floated to town.  With the help of his wife, Keenan decorated it, calling it “The Fashion Saloon.”  He soon moved to a more substantial building shown here.

Well aware of the dangers posed to Sacramento by its frequent fires, Keenan decided to assembled a local firefighting force.  It was a canny decision for someone like Keenan who was seeking broad community recognition.  Volunteer fire brigades served several purposes in those times.  Not only did their members provide a level of trained “first responders” to battle conflagrations, but also served as fraternal organizations.  Fire halls not only contained the requisite fire fighting equipment but also large spaces for socializing.  Crew members could be found there at all hours playing cards, throwing darts or just chatting.  The commanders of such units were elected by the members and held in high regard by townsfolk.

Keenan’s efforts resulted with his being elected its chief.  A photograph exists of the saloonkeeper, dressed in his uniform, standing casually against a pillar on which sits his helmet, identifying J.C. Keenan as chief of the fire unit.  Between them is a large horn, used for alerting the firemen and directing them when fighting a fire.  A downside of this honor was that the chief and other ranking members were expected to pay for equipment.  With Keenan’s wealth gained from the Fashion Saloon such expenditures were easily borne.

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An 1894 directory of Houston, Texas, businesses, advised visitors to the city to pay a call at  the drinking establishment at 1105 Congress Avenue in order to view the bar at the rear, calling it “particularly striking and remarkable” for its decoration of  “sea shells and marine curiosities.”  The Seashell Bar was the creation of C. W. and Charles C. Ruger, father and son saloonkeepers also known to the community for their dedication to firefighting.

C. W. Rugers, shown right,  was one of Houston’s first volunteer firefighters, attached to Liberty Department No. 2.  He rose to be foreman (commander) of the company and later its representative to the central fireman’s body.  C.W. had sufficient wealth to fund these activities.  An immigrant from Netherlands, he started as a grocer but soon moved to the more lucrative liquor trade and became wealthy.

When his son, Charlie, shown left, grew to maturity, his father took him into the business.  C.W. apparently was a difficult taskmaster, expecting a great deal from his son.  A contemporary biography signaled that Charlie had not had an easy transition from a boy to a businessman:  “At a tender age he had duties thrust upon him that gave him experience that few young men encounter.  He has has had a ‘rough road’ to travel on the highway of life, but out of it he stands today strong and robust, ready to meet any future adversities that may be lying in wait for him.”

Despite whatever his relationship with his father, Charlie followed his father’s example and was an enthusiastic volunteer firefighter.  He was a member of the Siebert No. 19 Company, formed in 1894.  It was the last volunteer group organized in the “Old Department,” before paid fire service in Houston.  The company featured a non-motorized hose wagon that had to be rolled by hand to the fires.  “Strong and robust” as Charlie was said to be, that activity still was a strain and he may not have been displeased when Siebert No. 19 was disbanded.

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John Stump was a native-born American, coming into life in Cumberland, Maryland, shown below, in 1874 to parents both of whom had been born in that state.  He appears to have entered the liquor trade at an early age, recorded as a 21-year-old saloonkeeper.    By 1900,  according to census data,  Stump had disposed of the saloon and was concentrating his energies as a wholesale liquor dealer. 

He soon embarked on an active political career, using his role as a volunteer fireman as a launching pad.  Because of the many frame buildings in Cumberland and the presence of a number of glass factories, fires were common.  Stump had risen to the position of acting chief of the Cumberland volunteers when a major fire threatened downtown nearby Frostburg, Maryland.  He sent his fire fighters to help extinguished the blaze, gaining praise from the local press.  Subsequently Stump was elected president of the Allegany-Garrett Counties Volunteer & Rescue Association. He also became a prominent member of the Firemen’s Association of Maryland, becoming its state president in 1898.  

Stump, a Republican, then parlayed that post into running and being elected to the Maryland House of Delegates from Allegany County, serving from 1904 to 1906. He also served terms as both the town’s finance commissioner and its street and sewer commissioner.  Despite his Republican connections, National Prohibition came down just as hard on him as on Democrats.  Stump was forced to close up his prosperous liquor business in 1919.  The 1920 Census found him with no occupation listed. 

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Perhaps the premier “whiskey man” first responder was Philip Engs, a New York City liquor millionaire.  Born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1789, as a youth he came to New York to work.   His passion, however, was fighting fires.  While still in his teens he joined Fulton Engine Co. No. 21,  a volunteer fire company organized in 1795 that originally met in Crooks Tavern until it acquired a fire house   Engs rose rapidly in the ranks of his fellow firefighters, after three years chosen secretary of the company and by 1815, age 26, elected foreman, a position he held until 1820.  Subsequently he became proprietor of a major liquor business.

Engs’ headquarters was at 131 Front Street in Manhattan.  From there he not only carried on a vigorous wholesale trade, he also was operating as a “rectifier,” that is, blending raw whiskeys to achieve a particular taste and color.  As he advanced in wealth Engs never forgot his first love — fighting fires.  At the time he had joined the Fulton firefighters, the scene of a blaze often was chaotic.  Volunteers companies often fought among themselves  for prominence while the flames raged on.  Engs soon recognized the need for professionalized fire services in New York.  Accordingly, he became a driving force behind a paid fire department, as one observer ironically put it, “sweeping away the romantic past.”  

In 1865 New York Legislature in 1865 created a professional New York Fire Department was born.  More than 3,800 volunteers were expunged from the rolls.   Among first five fire commissioners appointed by the governor was Philip W. Engs.  He amply had earned the post.  Earlier, with other investors he had incorporated “The Fireman’s Insurance Fund” to insure against loss or damage by fire and to afford charitable funds for firefighters and their families.  He also served a term as president of the Association of Exempt Firemen, a firemen’s social club. 

Those and other Engs’ initiatives figured prominently in an 1887 history of Big Apple firefighting called “Our Firemen.”  The book contained the  portrait of the 76-year-old Commissioner Engs shown above.  The liquor dealer also was a historian of New York’s fire service.  Although he never published it, an Engs’ manuscript has been cited as providing “most of the facts”  about the early days of New York City firefighting for subsequent accounts.

Note:  This website contains longer articles on each of the whiskey men described here:  John Keenan, December 6, 2020;  The Rugers, January 1, 2015;  John Stump, June 14, 1914, and Philip Engs, January 7, 2017.