Author name: Jack Sullivan

David Colson

In January of 1900 the quiet of the Capitol Hotel in Frankfort, Kentucky, was broken by the sounds of gunfire.  Afterward three men were dead, three others seriously wounded and a fourth injured.  One newspaper pronounced:  “The tragedy Is one of the most sensational In the history of the ‘dark and bloody ground.” Arrested was David C. Colson, two-term Democratic congressman, a colonel in the Spanish-American War, and a Kentucky distiller.  

Colson subsequently was charged with three murders, his arrest sending shock waves through the state and much of America.  He was known to be the high achieving scion of a notable Kentucky family. His grandfather, James Madison Colson, was a decorated soldier in the War of 1812.  Shown here, James’ grave is marked with a large American flag.  David Colson’s father, Rev. John Calvin Colson, known as the “Patriarch of Yellow Creek Valley” was a preacher, teacher, lawyer, doctor, farmer, miller, merchant— “being gifted along these lines but not educated for such pursuits.”  

John Calvin built the home, some of it with slave labor, into which David Colson was born on April 1, 1861.  Shown here, still standing as the oldest dwelling in Bell County, Middlesboro, Kentucky, the house is adjacent to a bridge over a railroad line leading to Middlesboro.  The seventh of eleven children, David attended public school and later the academies at Tazewell and Mossy Point, Tennessee.  He studied law at the University of Kentucky at Lexington in 1879 and 1880. Admitted to the bar, he began a law practice in Bell County.

Colson’s interests soon turned to politics.  A Republican, he served in the Kentucky legislature in 1887-1888.  Seen as a political “comer,” he gave up his seat to run on the party candidate for State Treasurer, but lost.  He came back in 1893 to win a term as mayor of Middlesboro.  A popular figure, Colson in 1894 was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1894 and re-elected two years later.  He was named chairman of the Committee on Expenditures on Public Buildings, a “plum” assignment for a relatively junior congressman.

Colson also drew notice in the House of Representatives as a strong advocate for the “Free Cuba” campaign, taking the floor to denounce Spanish activities there.  When the Spanish-American War broke out he left his position, not resigning, but not running again.  A bachelor, he become one of four Representatives volunteering for wartime service and announced his intention on the Floor of the House.  Colson, an infant during the Civil War, may have seen his enlistment as means of advancing the honored military heritage of his grandfather.

Unfortunately, things did not work out that way.  Colson got nowhere near the fighting.  He joined the Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in July 1898 at Lexington.  Only days after the regiment was mustered in an armistice tentatively was reached between the United States and Spain.  The fighting ceased.  This was not the end of the 4th Kentucky, where Colson, likely because of his status, had been given the rank of colonel.  In mid-September the unit was ordered to Camp Shipp in Anniston, Alabama.  A photo below captures the Kentucky 4th in training.  Despite the end of the war, the regiment was not mustered out until late February 1899.  Although not subject to enemy fire, the Kentuckians lost 13 men to disease, 29 discharged for disabilities, 60 deserters, and one man murdered. 

 

It was an especially cold winter in the South.  Conditions at the camp were primitive. The Army and Navy Journal reported that in February 1898 the temperature at Camp Shipp reached 14 degrees below zero and “life in tents is not what one might call comfortable.”  The conditions were conducive to tension and hostilities among the troops.  There the seeds were sown that culminated in the Capitol Hotel shootout.  Colonel Colson had a run-in with a young lieutenant in the Kentucky 47th named Ethelbert Scott from Somerset, Kentucky, and sought to have him courtmartialed.

Scott was a young lawyer and a nephew of a former Kentucky governor, W.O. Bradley.  Angered by the move, Scott confronted Colson in a local cafe, they argued, and the young man shot Colson.  Although apparently not seriously wounded, the colonel subsequently suffered some paralysis from which he never fully recovered.   Colson declined to press any military charges against Scott who got off free.  The seeds of the Frankfort Shootout were planted.

Having left Congress, Colson turned distiller.  Returning to his home town he joined with two friends to create the Middlesboro Distilling Company, likely the first commercial whiskey-making facility in Bell County.  In early March 1901, the local newspaper reported:  “The Middlesboro Distilling Company has started up their plant and have made their first run of whiskey.  Judges of the article say the quality is good.”

In the meantime Colson had wreaked a bloody revenge, probably planned from the day Scott shot him.  The scene was Frankfort’s elegant Capitol Hotel on January 16, 1900.  The place was crowded with the political elite of Kentucky and onlookers excited by pending contests for the state legislature.  Colson was sitting in the hotel lobby with a friend, Luther Demarree, a local postmaster,  when Ethelbert Scott came up  the stairs from the hotel basement bar with Captain B. B. Golden, his friend and another veteran of the Kentucky 4th.   

Colson who was armed with two sequestered two pistols plainly was waiting.  When Scott and Golden appeared, Colson rose from his chair and began firing.

Scott instantly returned fire.  As the fight escalated and gunsmoke filled the air, Colson moved toward Scott, who, still shooting, retreated, According to a newspaper account: “Colson emptied the chambers of a 38-caliber revolver, and quickly brought a 44-callber into action. Scott by this time had been shot several times, and as he staggered back and fell down the stairway, Colson, who was within a few feet of him, continued the fire until the form of Scott rolled over and showed that life was extinct.”  Shown above is a newspaper artist’s drawing of the scene.

When the smoke cleared and a measure of calm restored, Scott and Demarree were dead. A bystander, Charles Julian, a wealthy farmer from a prominent local family died later from his wounds.  Captain Golden was badly wounded and a second man had been shot in the foot.  Another casualty was a Chicago man who sustain a broken leg when Scott’s lifeless body struck him on the stairway. Colson had been shot by Scott twice in the arm. The bullets splintered his left wrist to the elbow, tearing his cuffs and sleeves to shreds.

Disregarding his wounds, Colson ran out of the hotel and hurried to the home of Chief of Police Williams where he surrendered, saying:   “I am sorry, but he would not let me alone. There were three of them shooting at me.”  A doctor was summoned to dress Colson’s shattered arm and he subsequently was taken to jail, despite asking to allowed to post bail.  He declined to discuss the shootout with reporters and was said to be “…In a highly nervous state and appeared to have been weeping.”

The Grand Jury, meeting the next day, heard Captain Golden claim that Colson had been responsible for all three killings but chose to indict him only on the murders of Scott and Demarree. A number of prominent political figures immediately pledged their support for Colson, including several of his former colleagues in Congress, including the Attorney General of Tennessee.  The story received national attention, one newspaper reporting:  “Colson’s mail from all over the country, as well as from Washington city, Kentucky and Tennessee is very heavy. Many society women have written him words of sympathy. Some are strangers. Brought to trial Colson was acquitted of all charges.

Folllowing his acquittal Colson apparently returned to his investment at the Middlesboro Distilling Company.  The distillery was a success, winning a gold medal, as below, for its Mountain Dew Corn Whiskey at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.  The company issued a trade card to commemorate the award.  The opposite side, shown below, contained a “double entendre” message. The distillery also announced that it was opening a large wholesale liquor store in Frankfort’s Gorman Building.

The Middlesboro distillery, however, could not escape controversy.  In mid-December 1905 the plant and 14,000 gallons of whiskey was seized by U.S. Revenue officers.  An investigation had indicated that the company was disposing  of whiskey without paying taxes.  By this time Colson had died, the cause unrevealed but likely related to his serious woundings.  Death came on September 27, 1904.  He was only 43 years old.

David Colson was buried in the family graveyard in Middlesburo, his large grave marker shown here.  The stone memorializes his service in the 54th and 55th U.S. Congress and as colonel in the 4th Kentucky Voluntary Infantry.  Obviously it does not reference his participation in “The Tragedy of Frankfort” but the people of that city remembered and the story lingered on for decades.

Note:  The account of David Colson recounted on this post is primarily from historical sources and newspaper articles at the time.  I stumbled on the story much by accident while researching the trade card shown here and decided Colonel Colson might be an interesting subject.  Little did I imagine the tragic story that would unfold.

 

 

                            

The man known to Americans as Dr. Charles W. Robeck made a lifelong career out of chicanery.  Forced to flee his native Sweden for his misdeeds, he found a home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  From there he sold liquor and phony nostrums to Americans nationwide.  The drawing left is Roback, as he desired to be seen, a Medieval scholar and savant.

The Roback Imposture Comes to America:  In 1854 Roback self-published in Boston what has been called a “fantastical autobiography,” shown right, in which he fabricated his origins and ability as a seer/scientist to provide “valuable directions and suggestions relative to the casting of nativities, and predictions by geomancy, chiromancy, physiognomy.” The volume purported to tell the story of his life and accomplishments, beginning with his invented origins.

There Roback described his mythical birthplace:  “The building was the ancient castle of Falsters, in Sweden, my ancestral home.  Within its walls, the family of Robak, or as it is spelled in the old Norse records, Robach, had dwelt from time immemorial….I have no recollection of my parents, both of whom died in my infancy….”   By the age of ten. Roback claimed, he had certain prophetic gifts and a special talent for magic, astrology and other occult lore as the “seventh son of a seventh son.”  The purported autobiography spins along extolling the charlatan’s remarkable talents.

The facts tell a somewhat different story.  Roback was born in Sweden in May 1811 and baptised Carl Johan Nilsson.  Later for reasons unclear, he adopted the surname Fallenius, becoming known in some circles as Fabello Gok.  In June 1833 at age 22 he married Greta Nilsdotter, 20, and they had two sons, Nils Johan and Karl Wilhelm.  Roback/Fallenius became a dry goods merchant in the city of Oskarshamn, shown here, and when the business went bankrupt turned to confidence scams involving stock and commodity markets.  Arrested in 1843, he was sentenced to five years in a Swedish prison.

Abandoning his wife and children, he fled to America landing in Baltimore, at first calling himself William Williamson aka Billy the Swede.  About 1847 he moved to Philadelphia where he was transformed into Dr. Charles W. Roback, astrologer.  Ever restless, in 1851 he moved to New York City and two years later on to Boston.  Apparently finding neither city satisfactory, after a brief sojourn in Montreal, he settled in Cincinnati about 1855.

Along the way, now divorced from Greta, Roback married Mary H. Sinnickson, a New Jersey native.  Mary’s mother was from a French Quaker family, her father, Seneca Sinnickson, an American born Swede.  Seneca had a somewhat rocky past, condemned by the Quakers in 1819 “for marrying contrary to discipline” and subsequently dismissed from the congregation “for disunity.”   Mary may have known about Roback’s past and thought him not unlike her father.  In fact, Roback was old enough to be her father.

Chicanery in Cincinnati:  Rok’s occupation in the Eastern cities as astrologer apparently was less lucrative than he might have imagined.  Few Americans had ever heard of a Swedish savant or cared to hire one.  Now married and moved to Cincinnati, he entered the liquor trade as shown in the letterhead above, calling himself a “distiller, rectifier, manufacturer” of domestic wines and liquors.  Roback assuredly was not a distiller, a phony claim made by many dealers.  He possibly was a recifier, mixing up his own brands from whiskey bought from others.  He most assuredly, however, was a manufacturer of alcohol-charged medicinals.

About 1855 in addition to selling whiskey Roback introduced a group of proprietary medicines, calling them “Scandinavian” Remedies.  These included his Scandinavian Blood Purifier,  Blood Pills, and Roback’s Vegetale Dyspepsia Complaint tonic.   Subsequently he issued Roback’s Stomach Bitters featuring a likeness of the faux doctor on the label. 

The highly alcoholic bitters were vigorously advertised nationwide. In one ad he began by asserting that this potion would not remedy all human ailments, but had broad application:  “In the Bilious districts of the West and South there has, for a long time, has been much needed an article of Stomach Bitters which, if taken in proper quantities, and at the proper time, are a sure preventative of Bilious Fever,  Fever and fatigue, Liver Complaints, Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Jaundice, Kidney Complaints and all diseases of a similar nature.”  The nostrum was sold in distinctive ribbed bottles in varying shades of amber, as shown below.

At some point Roback apparently decided that his proprietary medicines, now selling briskly nationwide, were eclipsing his liquor sales.  He created a new corporate name for his nostrums.   Shown here,  the company became the U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company, occupying part of the same building shown on Roback’s letterhead, at 56-62 East Third Street in Cincinnati.  Some writers have assumed this was a different ownership but I can find no evidence  of that. 

Roback’s Enablers and Inheritors:  It appears that virtually from the beginning, Roback outsourced the distribution of his medicinal products.  That fell initially to Demas Barnes, a major figure in his own right as an adventurer, author, one term U.S congressman and subsequently a New York City drug merchant.  Shown left, the young Barnes had left his birthplace in Gorham County, New York, to cross the continent driving a horse and wagon, studying mineral resources in Western states and writing about his experience upon his return.  His publications brought him to the attention of the public and he won a term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

In 1853, Barnes began a wholesale drug business in New York City.   He rapidly became a prosperous patent medicine manufacturer, developing a national market for his nostrums.  How he and Roback connected is unclear but the Swedish liquor dealer agreed to give control of the national marketing of his pills, potions and bitters to Barnes.  When the law permitted, Barnes early on ordered private die tax stamps for the nostrums. Shown below are stamps for Roback’s bitters in four and six cents, bearing a likeness of the “Doctor’s” Cincinnati headquarters.  

Barnes was just the first of the merchants to see the value in Roback’s medicinals.  The Swedish con man, perhaps in ill health, about 1866 sold out his ownership of the Roback line and was listed in the Cincinnati directory as a manufacturer of “Fine Cut and Smoking Tobacco.” When the Swede died the following year, Cincinnati merchants lined up to claim Roback’s brands.   

From there the story becomes somewhat tangled and hard to reconstruct. It would appear that Prince, Walton & Company was the first to announce ownership of Roback’s Stomach Bitters.  It advertised the potion with an image of a striking nude woman, carrying a bottle and a glass, wrapped in the wings of a large black bird. the company also claimed to occupy the same East Third Street building in Cincinnati that had been Roback’s headquarters.  I can find little about Prince, Walton & Co. In an 1870 Cincinnati directory the company is listed as a liquor dealer located at the northeast corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets.  

By the end of 1871, according to one source, F. E. Suire & Company stepped in to claim ownership of U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company.  A Cincinnati business directory of1867 carried an ad, shown here, that identified this firm as “Importers, Manufacturers and Wholesale Druggists, located at the northwest corner of Cincinnati’s Fourth and Vine Streets.  As the ad shown here indicates, F. E. Suire offered a wide range of products, ranging from glass and glassware, paints and varnishes, snuff and cigars, perfume and druggist sundries, as well as medicine, wines and liquors.

What proprietary medicines F. E. Suire gained from Roback by buying the “medicine company” is not clear.  A clue may lie in the person of Edward S. Wayne, a highly respected druggist and chemist, who had arrived in Cincinnati about 1846.  During the 1850s Wayne had been associated with the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy as a staff member and the Medical College of Ohio as a lecturer in practical pharmacy.  In 1866, he became a partner in the Suire firm and, I believe, instrumental in claiming Roback’s medicine company.

When Suire died in 1874 and his company ceased operations, Wayne joined the wholesale druggist firm of James S. Burdsal & Company.  With Burdsal he created “Wayne’s Diuretic Elixir” and, I believe brought with him the rights to Roback’s products that had come to him through F.E. Suire.  The Burdsal outfit was another pharmacy offering a wide range of products, featuring “medicines, chemicals and liquors” as visible below on its building. Also shown below is a trade card forJ.E. Burdsal that advertises its Dr. Roback’s Scandinavian Blood Pills.  The card also cites association with the U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company.   Finally, the figure at the center of the piece may be that of the self-imagined “legendary” figure, C. W. Roback.

The Passing of the “Fabled” Dr. Roback:   The man who called himself Dr. Charles E. Roback and over time by several other names, died on May 9, 1867, just short of his 56th year.  His body was carried to Mt. Holly, New Jersey, where he was buried in the Sinnickson family plot in Mount Holly Cemetery.   He had been preceded one year by his wife, Mary, who died at 32.  His tombstone is shown below,

The couple, in effect, left no heirs.  They had no children of their own.  Roback’s son, Carl Wilhelm Fallenius is reported to have visited his father in America, seeking money to buy a farm in Sweden.  The “doctor” apparently obliged and also remembered the young man in his will.  After Roback’s death, Carl is said to have declined any inheritance from his run-away father.  

Note:  This post draws heavily, but not exclusively, on a biography of Roback/Fallenius in Wikipedia.  Several of the images shown here are courtesy of Ferdinand Myers V who has devoted two posts on his “Peachridge” website to Roback’s bitters bottles.

Foreword:   On August 24  of this year, this website featured a post entitled “Ed Brinkman:  From Bookkeeper to Boss and Beyond.”  The item, recounting the   history of Union Distilling of Cincinnati, unfortunately had no photos of Brinkman or other key figures. Fortunately Mike Ashwell, a Cincinnati resident married to a descendant of one of the principals, saw the article and has supplied photos and information that help complete story.  Rather than being added to the earlier post,  I believe Mike’s contribution deserves its own “stand alone” attention,” as shown below.

Edward H. Brinkman spent most of his working life employed by the Union Distilling Company, rising from bookkeeper’s assistant to president of the Cincinnati distillery and liquor house. Demonstrating unique staying power, Brinkman’s imprimatur continued to appear on whiskey even during the years of National Prohibition.  Shown here is his picture as a young “up and comer.”

Mike also has included a photo of the June 18, 1910, laying of the cornerstone for the Union Distilling Company in Cincinnati.  Seen there, the man with the generous mustache to the right of the figure with a mallet is the then President of the United States, William Howard Taft, a Cincinnati native and friend to the distilling industry.  Standing to his immediate left, face obscured, is believed to be Brinkman, then bookkeeper of the distillery.  The bald man to Brinkman’s right is George Dieterle,  secretary-treasurer of the company and Brinkman’s brother-in-law,  The individual holding a trowel to the immediate right of the man with a mallet is believed to be George Gerke, president of Union Distilling.   

The man holding the mallet also deserves notice.  He is Dominic McGowan, the head of a distinguished distilling family and the inventor of a “continuous” whiskey making process.  An immigrant from Northern Ireland, McGowan was famous in the whiskey trade for his innovations and the many distilleries he helped establish in the United States and abroad, among them the Union Distilling plant.  [See a post on the McGowans, May 5, 2021.]

The next image is a letterhead for Union Distilling that includes a representation of the plant as it appeared when fully operating.  Note that the letterhead lists the company as “distillers, compounders, and blenders.”  Although many liquor companies were happy to describe themselves as “distillers” most were actually “compounders and blenders.”  Union Distilling and its management were being unusually honest about its products.

Mike also included the photo of George  Dieterle, below, the ancestor of his wife and Brinkman’s brother-in-law.  Dieterle had a distinguished career in Cincinnati.  Beginning as an officer of Union Distilling, he went on to become president of the Federal Products Company, a manufacturer of industrial alcohol, as well as chairman of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. During World War One, Dieterle served as a member of the War Coal Economy Commission and the War Commission on Municipal Expenditures.  Of him it was written:  “Few men have given longer service or more active aid to community advancement than George Dieterle….”

A closing to this extraordinary set of images features Ed Brinkman about 1898 with his comely wife, Augusta Dieterle Brinkman, and daughter, Hilde, in a family photo of great tenderness and charm.  Hilde
later married (Victor “Holt” Tatum). They had no children, and
thus no direct descendants exist.“

Note:  My great thanks to Mike Ashwell for sending the above material that help complete the earlier post on Ed Brinkman and Union Distilling.  As an addendum to this website, it deserves special attention for enriching the original story.

Sarah Bowman became a legendary figure for her size, strength, and exploits as a participant in affirming American military control in the Great Southwest.  Reputed to be the first woman commissioned as a U.S. Army officer and buried with military honors, Sarah brought liquor, food, water, “comfort” and, upon occasion, a gun to the task, as shown here in an artist’s view.

Sarah often was called “The Great Western,” a reference to her height, estimated at over six feet tall, at the time taller than most men, and her weight, well over 200 pounds.  The reference was to a famous steamship known as The  S.S.Great Western, shown right, the largest steamship afloat at the time.  One of the soldiers for whom she was cooking, seeing her for the first time is reputed to have exclaimed: “Lordee.   Look at the size of her!  She’s purt’ near as big as The Great Western.”  Others agreed and the name stuck.

Her birth date and origins  are unclear.  One source claims to have seen a birth certificate dated 1813 and the place Clay County, Missouri.  Sarah, however told the census taker in 1850 that she had been born in Tennessee.  The year of her birth varies from 1812 to 1817.  Thus, she likely would have been in her early 30s when, married to a soldier, the first of many men in her life, she became attached to the U.S. Army in the Mexican War as a cook and fan of its commander, future President Gen. Zachary Taylor, shown right.

At the beginning of the conflict with Mexico, Sarah first came to notice when she is reputed to have rushed up to Taylor to say that if he would give her a pair of pants she would wade over the Colorado River “and whip every scoundel that dared show himself.”  At the initiation of hostilities, however, Taylor ordered Sarah and other women cooks to what became known as Fort Brown.  When Mexican forces mounted a siege of the fort, The Great Western came to the fore for her bravery in providing food, drink, and other assistance to the soldiers.

By the time Taylor’s troops relieved the garrison, Sarah’s legend was made. Not long after the battle, Lt. (later General) Braxton Bragg singled her out as the Heroine of Fort Brown attesting:  “…Though the shot and shell were flying on every side, she distained to seek shelter in the bomb-proofs, but labored the whole time cooking  and taking care of the soldiers without the least regard for her own safety.  Her bravery was the admiration of all and were in the fort….”Journalists in the room recorded Bragg’s remarks.  They consequently were reported in newspapers across America.  The legend of Sarah Bowman, “The Great Western,”  was now etched in American history.

As Taylor’s army moved as the Mexican War progressed, Sarah kept in close contact,  in September 1848, a young trooper described her in his diary:  “The Heroine of Fort Brown  or “The Great Western” is in the crowd.  She drives two Mexican Ponies in a light wagon and carries the apparatus and necessaries for her mess which now numbers about a dozen young officers.”  After the occupation of Monterrey by Taylor’s army, she opened a saloon and brothel that provided food, drink and “comfort” for the soldiers.

When the war ended in 1848, one detachment of soldiers was ordered to California.  Sarah wanted badly to accompany them. She was told, however, that only wives were allowed to go.  As shown here in an artist’s depiction, she mounted her mule and rode along the line of soldiers reputedly bellowing:  “Who wants a wife with $15,000 and the biggest leg in Mexico! Come, my beauties, don’t all speak at once — who is the lucky man?”  Most of the troops were dumfounded but at last one, a soldier named David Davis, perhaps intrigued by the cash, agreed to marry her and she was enlisted as a laundress.  Did her $15,000, equivalent to $300,000 in current dollars, come from Sarah’s other “personal services”?

Subsequently she met a newly discharged soldier named Paddy Graydon, an Irish immigrant, who was running a hotel and bar on the banks of the Sonora River. [See my post on Graydon, August 9, 2024.] Calling it the United States Boundary Hotel, he located it in a small settlement close to Fort Buchanan with its drinking population of soldiers.  His establishment was a success, particularly after forging a business relationship with Sarah, by now most famous woman on the desert frontier.  She brought a reputation for her attention to the needs of dragoons.  Wrote one trooper:  “They called her old Great Western. She packed two six-shooters, and they all said she shore could use ’em, that she had killed a couple of men in her time. She was a hell of a good woman.”   

“The Great Western” particularly caught rhe eye of Sam Chamberlain, an officer, writer and artist assigned to Taylor’s army.  Shown left, Chamberlain described Sarah throwing Davis “out of her affections” in favor of a soldier of remarkable size and strength the writer called “Samson.”  She professed her love for him, the giant capitulated and they moved in together.  Fascinated by this Western “Delilah,” Chamberlain made the only known full portrait of Sarah.  Shown below, it depicts her in front of the bar, drawing a pistol from her belt, and preparing to order a hostile Mexican out of her saloon.

By 1850 Sarah was in Sorocco, New Mexico, sharing a household with five orphaned children, ages two to sixteen, acting as a mother figure and showing a more nurturing side to her personality.  In Sorocco she met a 24-year-old Danish-born soldier named Albert Bowman.  Although there may have been no marriage ceremony, Sarah took his last name and was known as his wife.  For the next 16 years they shared life together in the harsh environment of the now American Southwest.

When Albert Bowman was discharged from the army in December 1852, the couple headed west to join the gold rush to California.  The couple’s southern road west led to the historic Yuma Crossing, shown right.  A place where the Gila and Colorado Rivers come together, this had been a Native American fording place and for centuries an opening to the Far West.  Now there was a ferry to take pioneers and gold seekers across.  In the year before Sarah and her consort arrived, 40,000 Westward-bound men, women and children had been ferried across bringing with them thousand of horses, cattle, sheep and other livestock.

The crossing had achieved such high importance for American expansion that a military base, called Fort Yuma, above, had been established there.  Sarah, with her accustomed love for the military created a boarding house and a officers’ “mess” as she had in the past.  Meanwhile, she and Albert drifted apart as he moved off to California to engage in prospecting.  Sarah was increasingly engaged with her adopted family and in running her restaurant, bar, and hotel, said to be the first in Yuma.  

Sarah died in Yuma in December 1866 at the age of 53, reputedly from the bite of a poisonous spider.  A Catholic priest, Fr. Paul Figueroa, in his memoirs of Yuma wrote this eulogy about Sarah: “Mrs. S. Bowman was a good hearted woman, good souled old lady of great experience, spoke the Spanish language fluently…opened the first restaurant and kept it until she died…The military from the Post [honored] her remains with a splendid funeral, with the bands and all the military observances.  The vicar general was visiting the new town for the first time and according to the Catholic rite conducted the remains to the military cemetery across the river by the Fort.”

Sarah’s burial at Yuma was not to be the end of the story.  When the fort was abandoned and the military cemetery became overgrown, the decision was made by the Army in 1890 to remove the graves and rebury the remains at the Presidio in San Francisco. Sarah was the only female among them. Shown here is her Presidio gravestone.

When Sarah’s body was exhumed a religious medallion of unusually large size was found around her neck.  One writer was occasioned to observe:  “So, even after twenty-four years after her death, Sarah’s size was still worthy of notice.”  That observation suggested to me that a final tribute is due this extraordinary woman.  Accordingly, I have added below a figure of a large female figure seemingly guiding the nation’s movement across the continent.  She is the epitome of “The Great Western.” 

Note:   A number of references to Sarah Bowman and related photos may be found on the Internet.  This post relies on them and most particularly on a 78-page book by Brian Sandwich called “The Great Western: Legendary Lady of the Southwest, “ Texas Western Press, 1991.  Mr. Sandwich has written the definitive biography of Sarah Bowman.  A fictional treatment of “The Great Western’s” life is also notable, called “Fearless: a Novel of Sarah Bowman,” by Lucia St. Claire Robson, 1998, no publisher cited.

 

 

Just recently I have been reading a book called “Watering Holes of Yore: The Saloonsthat Made Texas Famous,”  by multiple authors.  Over the years for my own edification, I have collected a number of photographs of old time saloons.   Now it occurs to me to share them on this blog.   They include two saloons that I personally have visited and one, at the end, that is an all-time favorite.

The first establishment shown here is a Texas saloon, but not one covered in the book I have referenced.  My fascination is with the imaginative way that the proprietors have rendered the word “whiskey.”  Obviously with tongue firmly in cheek,  they have proclaimed it “The Road to Ruin.”  Yet the front door is open wide and the gents on the porch obviously have left the bar to have their pictures taken.   This photo identified the state but not the town.  It reputedly was taken in the 1880s.

The next photo replicates the theme.  From the designation as the “Lone Star Saloon” and the symbol provided, it might be assumed that it was located in Texas,  the Lone Star State.   Wrong.  This establishment was located in Corona, New Mexico.   The date given for it was 1919.  By that time Texas was fully into the Temperance Movement and increasingly legal restrictions were being put on saloons and drinking.  By contrast New Mexico was still wide open. 

The next image is from South Dakota and although it has no sign,  the passengers on the stage coach stopping there would know that strong drink was to be had inside.  This photo is from an earlier article I wrote on a Western character known as “Devil Dan” Roberts.   As cowboy, he rode up to a stage stop saloon very much like this one in 1886.  Roberts was employed by the VVV Ranch on the Belle Fourche River and was heading for Deadwood for the Christmas holidays when he dropped into the saloon to warm up from the frigid Dakota weather.

A holiday dance was in progress and the saloon owner, who had been nipping at his own booze all day,  was heading to bed to sleep it off.   He asked Devil Dan, who did not drink,  to look after the business. The well-likkered cowboy crowd got rowdy and began to break up the furniture and knock out windows.  Dan let them have their way but as the men sobered up he made them pay for the damages.  The next morning the owner sold the place to Roberts for $125 and departed.  Dan repaired the damage and appears to have taken to the role as saloonkeeper.  After running the  establishment for a few months, he apparently sold it and leased the Cliff House, a larger stage coach station and saloon, in nearby Deadwood.

The next picture is from Creede, Colorado.  Two men standing in the open doorway of the “Holy Moses Saloon,”  which is next to the narrow, rocky canyon walls that surround the town,  located in Mineral County.   Note that the building is rather ramshackle with a broken cornice and a barrel lying out front.  A note on the photo says that the man standing in the white shirt and vests was the owner and the sheriff of Creede whose name was William Orthen.   His saloon was the first liquor den in town.

A much better known lawman cum saloon keeper was Judge Roy Bean, who billed himself as the “Law West of the Pecos.”  For about 16 years, Bean lived a prosperous and relatively legitimate life as a San Antonio businessman. In 1882, he moved to southwest Texas, where he built his famous saloon, the Jersey Lilly, and founded the hamlet of Langtry. Saloon and town alike were named for the famous English actress, Lillie Langtry. Bean had never met Langtry, but he had developed an abiding affection for her after seeing a drawing of her in an illustrated magazine. For the rest of his life, he avidly followed Langtry’s career in theater magazines.

Before founding Langtry, Bean had also secured an appointment as a justice of the peace and notary public. He knew little about the law or proper court procedures, but residents appreciated and largely accepted his common sense verdicts in the sparsely populated country of West Texas.  By the 1890s, reports of Bean’s curmudgeonly rulings, including an occasional hanging,  had made him nationally and internationally famous.  After his death Lillie Langtry made a belated visit.

The following photo of the gents standing in front the El Paso Saloon has intrigued me for the wide variety of headgear they sport, as well as the varied positions of their hands.  Several look as if they might be preparing to draw and shoot.  Despite the name it is not possible from the picture to identify the town.  El Paso Hotels with saloons were located not only in El Paso itself but also in Fort Worth and San Antonio.   I assess the date as about 1910 or after. The advertising sign over the door for Fredericksburg Beer on tap has a definite  20th Century look.

The photo following caught my eye for the 20 mule team in the foreground and the row of saloons in back. Thirsty customers had a choice of the “The Yellowstone Bar,”  “The Butler Saloon,” or the “High Grade Bar” and so on down the line of watering holes in the town of Rawhide, Nevada,  at the 1908 height of the Gold Rush. In the short span of two years the town went from its peak population of 7,000 to fewer than 500 residents by the latter part of 1910. Helping push the decline of Rawhide even further along was a fire that swept through town in September 1908, along with a flood the following September, from which many residents did not recover or rebuild. 

When the original mines worked out the remaining gold and silver from the veins, more people left Rawhide. There remained only a few  who eked out a livelihood working in the mines, or processing the ore, or just working their own claims and prospecting.  Most of the saloons had closed and the town became a hollow shell of what it once was.  By 1941 only a few hardy souls were left in Rawhide, and the post office was closed.  Today it is a “ghost town” with only photos to remember its heyday.

The only watering hole in color and one I have actually visited is “Big Nose Kate’s Saloon.”  This place got its start as the Grand Hotel in Tombstone, Arizona.  Opening in September, 1880, it was consider one of the state’s premier hotel, boasting thick carpeting and costly oil paintings.  The lobby was equipped with three elegant chandeliers and more luxurious furnishings, while the kitchen featured both hot and cold running water and facilities to serve as many as 500 people efficiently.

It is said that Ike Clanton and the two McIaury brothers stayed at the Grand the night before the famous gunfight at the O. K. Corral.  Now the place is named for the erstwhile girl friend of another participant in the famous showdown, Doc Holliday.  I was in Tombstone a few years ago and stopped into Big Nose Kate’s to look around and have a beer. Sadly, it was no different than the other touristy bars and restaurants along the main drag, but the history is still there.

The final photo is not in the Far West but from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  But, you may say, it looks more like a church than a saloon.  Yes, it does.  The building was constructed as a Methodist house of worship in the late 1800s only to find itself smack dab next to Milwaukee’s ever-expanding Pabst brewery.  The perfumes of beer production wafted over the structure frequently.  After Prohibition the church was sold to the brewery which made the first floor into a restaurant and bar and used the upstairs for a training center.  They called it the “Forstkeller” and supplied it with fresh beer daily.  For years it was my favorite watering hole. Even after leaving Milwaukee, I always walked in the door at least once on every visit to town.  Unfortunately the Forstkeller has been shut for many years.

There they are,  nine of my favorite saloon scenes.  Just looking at them makes me thirsty.  Think I will head out for a tall cold one. 

Note:  Two saloon owners noted here are treated at more length elsewhere on this website:  “Devil Dan” Roberts, April 18, 2012, and Judge Roy Bean, October 4, 2016.

In Mississippi the first major success of the Prohibition movement occurred when the legislature passed a local-option law allowing counties to prohibit the sale of alcohol. By the early twentieth century the sale was illegal or seriously limited in a large majority of the state’s counties.  In Aberdeen, Monroe County, Allen T. Akin, a wholesale liquor dealer had a dilemma:  Go into another line of work — or move from his native state.  He chose the road.  It proved to be a rocky one.

Akin was born in Tishomingo, a tiny town in an extreme northeastern corner of Mississippi, shown here as it looks today, population 339.  The date was April 20, 1849.  Originally from Virginia, his father, William Edwin “Will” Akin was a farmer.  The 1850 Census found Will, 27, and his wife, Louisa, 23, living in Tishomingo County with daughter Elizabeth, 3, and Allen, 1.  The 1860 census sighted the family still in Tishomingo, with indications the father was prospering as a farmer.

By the 1870 census, the family had grown to seven children, including three sons, Allen, Johnson, and William, old enough to be recorded as working for their father on the farm.  Shortly after, Allen Akin is cited moving to Simpson County, Kentucky, to work on a farm.  From there his progress is a blank slate until, during the 1880s he fetched up as a saloonkeeper in Aberdeen, Mississippi, a town 87 miles southwest of Tishomingo. 

 By this time Akin had married.  His bride was Amanda Bunch, called “Mandy,” the daughter of Erasmus H. and Mary Ann Cowen Bunch. Unusual for those times, Amanda appears to have been four years older than her husband.  The couple would have two children, Ernestine, born in 1885, and Collins, in 1889. 

The county seat of Monroe County and located on the banks of the Tombigbee River.  Aberdeen, population 3,500, was one of the busiest Mississippi ports of the 19th century. Cotton brokerages flourished in town and for a time Aberdeen was Mississippi’s second largest city.  The wealth of the city expressed itself in the many mansions that dotted the landscape and in lively patronage for the city’s saloons.  Akin’s establishment also sold whiskey, advertising the availability of Tennessee and Kentucky liquor, including “Old Cutter” from Louisville.

For years as a whiskey dealer, Akin had to deal with a state legislature where the forces of “dry” constantly were making inroads.  An earlier law made it illegal to  purchase less than a gallon at once, aimed at local saloons and taverns.  Violators could face fines of between $200 and $500 — ruinous amounts when a shot of whiskey fetched five cents.  Repealed three years later, this statute was followed by others seeking to cripple the liquor trade, including an 1873 law that if any state legislator was found drunk the individual could be charged with a crime and removed from office.  About 1900, as Monroe County contemplated a “local option” ban on alcohol, Akin felt forced to leave his native state and a municipality he considered his home town.  He packed up his small family and his liquor supplies and moved to Jackson, Tennessee.   In 1908, Mississippi would become the first state to ban all alcohol sales.

Tennessee looked to many liquor dealers in states like Mississippi as an oasis that might never vote “dry.”  For Akin it was  a 180 mile journey almost straight north to a Jackson, a rapidly growing city of about 15,000 people, almost five times the size of Aberdeen.  After the Civil War Jackson became a hub of railroad systems ultimately connecting to major markets to the north and south, as well as east and west. This was key to its development, attracting trade and many railroad workers in the late 19th century.  Akin opened a saloon and liquor business at 209-211 N. Market Street in Jackson’s busy downtown, shown above.

Indications are that Akins was taking advantage of the excellent train connection to ship whiskey from sources within Tennessee and reaching up into Kentucky where transit was easy.  He may have had difficulty initially in finding potteries to make his jugs as indicated by the two containers shown above.  Both are crudely stenciled.

As shown above and below here, Akin eventually was able to find a potter to provide him with an attractive design using an “underglaze transfer” of applying a distinctive label.  The size of his containers varied from quart (top left) to gallon (top right), two gallon (below left) and five gallon (below right).  The larger jugs would be for his wholesale customers, the whiskey to be poured into smaller containers before being served across a bar.

Although exact dates are hazy, Akin was established in Jackson by at least 1904.  That year he incorporated as A.T. Akin Company, with capital of $7,700.  He headed the incorporators joined by a W.T. Akin, relationship unclear, and two others in Jackson.  As the newly-come Tennessee whiskey man was to find out, that state was not immune to “dry” laws.  At the county level prohibitionist were whittling away at liquor sales. Jackson was not immune.  

By 1908 Akin had moved to still “wet” Memphis.  There he operated the A. T. Akin Company, Wholesale and Retail Whiskies at 150 South Main Street.  His son, Collins Akin, now an adult was the establishment’s manager.  By 1915 Akins’ liquor house had moved to 325 South Main, below, and Akin had taken a partner named Bates.  He also had put the management of the liquor house into other hands, including son Collins and retired with wife Amanda back to Aberdeen.  The same year a Tennessee law forbidding all alcohol sales passed court tests of its validity and began to be enforced.

From Aberdeen, Akin could watch the end of his peripatetic liquor house after a run of almost a third of a century.  Now 67 years old, his health was failing.  On March 14, 1916, Akin died.  He was buried in Aberdeen in the Old Fellows Rest Cemetery above.  His tombstone contains this tribute:  “None knew thee but to love thee.”  Amanda would join him there in 1923.  Her memorial reads:  “Thy memory will ever be a guiding star to Heaven.”

Note:  There are notable “holes” in this narrative about A. T. Akin, including how he was able to move from farm work to keeping a saloon.  I am hopeful some alert descendant will see this post and help me fill in the gaps.

Albert Ernest Beitzell, a prominent merchant in the Nation’s Capitol, sold whiskey, soft drinks, seafood and theater seats in a career that contained a lifetime of unpredictable events, including witnessing a suicide.  Nevertheless, Beitzell maintained his sense of humor, including advertising his whiskey with a red raven, a mythical bird of his own devising.

Albert was born in June 1869 in Wicomico, a community in the Northern Neck of Virginia, the northernmost of three peninsulas (traditionally called “necks” in Virginia) on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  His father Josiah Beitzell was 35 at his birth, his mother Mary Agnes (Weser) Beitzell was 33.  Albert was their third child.  Four more would follow. The 1870 census found the family in Wicomico where Josiah was working as a sailor, almost certainly on an oyster boat.  Three oystermen in their early 20s boarded with the family.

As a youth Albert would soon become aware of the uncertainties of harvesting oysters from the Chesapeake Bay.  Weather and water related developments can affect the oyster catch, often leaving the watermen “high and dry.”  The 1880 census recorded the family having moved to Abell in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, still located on Chesapeake Bay.  Josiah apparently had given up the waterman’s life and listed his occupation as “farmer.”  Four years later he died at 50 years old, leaving behind five minor children.  As a likely consequence Albert was forced to end his formal education after the 8th grade.

Mother Mary Agnes apparently was able to weather the loss of her spouse as her older children took employment.   The family continued to live in Abell.  Five years later, however, she died.  Albert Beitzell was now an adult and on his own. Seeing more opportunities in the big city he moved to Washington D.C.  There, likely with the help of friends in the seafood trade, he went to work as an oyster wholesaler.  The 1900 census found him engaged in that occupation at 30 years old.  Bietzell also had been married for one year to Mary Margaret Cumberland, 26, the daughter of a boathouse keeper on the Potomac River.  The couple later would have two children, Louise and Albert Jr.

Beitzell’s rise as a D.C. merchant requires some speculation.  At some point in the early 1900s he appears to have left wholesaling seafood, perhaps discouraged by the the variability of the oyster harvest.  Instead he entered the liquor trade, a solid money-making occupation in Washington, D.C. as congressmen, government appointees, lobbyists, and political hangers-on provided a ready customer base for liquor stores and saloons throughout the Nation’s Capital.  Beitzell’s signature label was “Red Raven,” featuring a mythical avian not seen in nature.  He sometimes compounded the enigma with the puzzling slogan:  “Ask the Man.”  The brand proved to be popular. 

The success of his liquor house at 210 Tenth Street SW  brought Bietzell to the attention of the city’s business elites.  Among them was Harry Crandell, a local businessman who owned a chain of 18 theaters including the Apollo and others in Washington D.C.  His venues also could be found in Baltimore,  Martinsburg WV, and elsewhere.  Shown here, Crandall struck a friendship with Beitzell that blossomed into a business relationship.  The liquor dealer became vice president of Crandell’s theatrical corporation.

One result of Bietzell’s theater involvement was membership in the Washington Garrick Club, named for a famous British men’s club geared toward actors and others with ties to the stage.  Located on the second floor of a building at 1347 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Garrick Club had a similarly theatrical membership.  Bietzell unexpectedly would find himself in the center of a drama that played out at the Garrick Club on the morning of July 1, 1907.

As reported at length in the Washington Evening Star of that date, Bietzell was visiting the club that morning with Raleigh F. Luckett, the 27-year-old brother of a well-known local theater manager.  Although seemingly in good spirits, Luckett was involved in a two month separation from his wife, Gertrude, who had left him and taken their two children.  They greeted the club manager, E.S. Doughty, shown left, and chatted. Then Luckett excused himself. He said he intended  to read a newspaper in the club’s front room.

The Star reported ensuing events: Those in the back room about five minutes later heard the report of a pistol….Mr. Beitzell, stepping into the front room, discovered young Luckett collapsed in his chair with a bloody wound in his breast and a smoking revolver in his hand.  ‘It is all over. it is all over’…the wounded man gasped.  ‘What did you do this for?  asked Mr. Beitzell; but the only reply was, ‘It is all over.’

Beitzell and others summoned an ambulance.  Luckett was rushed to a hospital where doctors thought there was a chance of saving him.  The young man, however, was too badly injured and died shortly after.  The liquor dealer never forgot the shock of seeing his young acquaintance so unexpectedly mortally wounded.

As the 20 Century moved forward Beitzell experienced another devasting event.  Enacted by Congress, prohibition came to D.C. in 1917, three years before it was enacted into law nationwide. All legal bars in the District were ordered to be shut down. In a single day wholesale liquor dealers like Beitzell saw their customer base wiped out.   But Prohibition didn’t succeed in eradicating alcohol from the nation’s capital. Instead, some 267 licensed saloons morphed into nearly 3,000 speakeasies, disguised in a variety of forms. Ostensibly Beitzell moved into selling soft drinks, near-beer, and fountain supplies.  A  favorite brand was “Checonia Evans.”  When asked his occupation by a census taker in 1920, Beitzell told him “Temperance Manager.”

Shown here is a Beitzell truck from that era, advertising “beverages and fountain supplies.”  The owner’s great grand-niece who supplied the photo hinted that it also might have been used to carry illicit alcoholic beverages.  She also suggests that the photo shows Albert Beitzell himself behind the wheel.  While that might be questioned, the modernity of the truck for the time is indisputable.  Instead of hard rubber wheels, this vehicle featured pneumatic tires on the front wheels. The tread pattern of the pneumatics lessened the amount of direct contact with the road and made steering considerably easier.  

Was this truck used to haul bootleg liquor?  Family lore tends to raise that suspicion without actual proof.  Clearly Beitzell never lost his interest in “the hard stuff.”  When it became clear that National Prohibition had been a gigantic mistake, expanding the drinking public and forcing the trade underground into criminal hands, he sensed Repeal coming and in the early 1930s began negotiations overseas to represent Johnny Walker Scotch and Bols Liquors from Holland in anticipation of the “dry” laws being terminated.

At this time Beitzell was living in a spacious home at 7316 Alaska Avenue, shown here.  Still standing,  the house and grounds are valued today at $1.2 million. His great grand niece, Christina, suggests that he suffered business reverses during Prohibition, had returned to the oyster trade afterward and was recovering his fortunes in the late 1930s.  

About 1938 Beitzell suffered setbacks in his health and retired.  He died in May 1942 at 72 years old, survived by his widow, Mary Margaret, and both children.  Following a funeral Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Washington, he was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, honored as a 50-year resident of the District of Columbia, a member of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Elk’s Lodge 15, and active in the Washington Aerie of Eagles.  Mary Margaret would join him at Mount Olivet in 1952.  Their grave stones are below.

Note:  This story of Albert Beitzell was largely revealed on an internet site provided by his descendant, Christina, whose last name was not given.  She also included the Evening Star report of the suicide.  A variety of other sources provide other details of this Washington D.C. whiskey man.

 

The whiskey “empire” founded by Matthew Hessberg and his son Benjamin encompassed four major Virginia cities, at the time the state’s largest liquor chain.  The Hessbergs’ success in business, however, was plagued by the frequent early deaths of family members.  The Hessbergs named their flagship brand “Satisfaction Rye” but found that satisfaction did not include longevity.

Matthew Isaac Hessburg was born in Danville, Virginia in January 1821, the son of Isaac Hessberg, an immigrant from Bavaria.  Isaac, according to the 1860 census, worked as a leather tanner and currier (expert in preparing hides).  His mother, Rachel Gunst Hessberg, was native born from Orange, Virginia.  Both Isaac and Rachel died when Matthew was just a youngster, nine when his father died at age 31, eleven at his mother’s passing two years later, also 31.

The ensuing years while Matthew and a sister were orphaned are a blank slate. My guess is that members of the Gunst family may have taken them in.  Henry Gunst, likely a relative of Rachel, was a highly successful and wealthy liquor dealer in Richmond, Virginia. [See post on Gunst, August 3, 2011.]  Too young to have been a Rebel soldier, Matthew apparently grew up in the capital of the Confederacy, apparently witnessing its surrender, reconstruction, and the city’s post-war rebirth.  

Details are hard to come by about the timeline during which the Hessberg liquor interests came to encompassed four major Virginia cities.  Richmond, Danville, Roanoke and Bristol created a chain of liquor stores stretching from Tidewater to the Appalachians and beyond, a spread of some 325 miles.  Matthew’s initial liquor establishment appears to have been in postwar Richmond called Hessberg Bottling Company.  Matthew and Charles Gunst, likely a cousin, were proprietors. This was followed by the purchase of the Cousins Supply Company, a Richmond mail order liquor house, by Matthew, who now was working with his son, Benjamin, a traveling salesman and later a partner. 

  

Shown above are two whiskey jugs that display the company label, one and three gallons in size.  They identify their establishment as Cousins Supply and the address at 1100-1102 East Cary Street in downtown Richmond.   The Hessburgs, like other liquor dealers, were generous in gifting saloons and bars carrying their liquor with corkscrews and shot glasses. 

From Richmond the Hessbergs branched out into Danville, where Michael had been born, almost 150 miles southwest of Richmond.  Danville directories record Matthew as a partner in a liquor store and bottling company at 158 Main Street as early as 1888, but I have found no artifacts with that address.  The Roanoke liquor outlet was even farther from Richmond, an estimated at 184 miles.  Given the difficulty with ground transportation in that era, my assumption is that the Hessburgs hired local managers.  Again, I have found no Hessburg Roanoke marked bottles, jugs or other items.

In October 1875, Matthew had married a local Richmond girl, Yetta Rose, 19.  She would bear him four children, Benjamin R., destined to be the heir apparent, and daughters Ray and Merle.  A fourth child, Isaac died in infancy.  Yetta Rose  would sicken and die three years later, only 30 years old.  Five years after her death Michael married Frances Rose “Fanny” Hirsch.  She was 38 at the time of their 1889 nuptials, Matthew was 36.  There would be no children. 

By 1900 the census taker recorded Matthew living in back in Danville in a crowded household.  With him was his wife Fanny; her father Henry Hirsch; children Ray, Merle, and Benjamin;  a live-in cook and her husband.  Three years later, Fanny died, only 41. Gravestones for both women are shown above in Richmond’s Hebrew Cemetery.  Matthew did not marry again, instead concentrating on the Virginia liquor “empire” he was building.   As the years progressed the Hessberg household shrank considerably in size.  By 1920, it contained only Matthew, Benjamin and a nephew.  The three men lived in Richmond at 1102 West Street, shown right.

The Bristol, Virginia, outlet appears to have been the last to be established by the Hessburgs in 1909.  A whopping 324 miles from Richmond, this liquor house, located at 516-518 Cumberland Street, had local managers, W.H. Everett, followed by Otto B. Heldreth.  The output of artifacts from the Bristol location was impressive, including the labels shown above for “Old Eureka Whiskey” and “Satisfaction Rye.”

The Bristol outlet featured whiskey jugs in four sizes, an unmarked gallon ceramic and two, three and five gallon containers.  All displayed the same under-glaze label, “M.I. Hessberg Son & Co., Inc, High Grade Liquors, Bristol Virginia.” A Hessburg shot glass bore the same label. 

 

As Matthew aged his health began to falter and he came to rely increasingly on Benjamin to manage the sprawling liquor business he had created.  He died in October 19, 1920, at age 72 just as National Prohibition was about to be imposed, shutting off all whisky sales for the next 14 years. Matthew is buried in the Hebrew Cemetery next to Fanny.  His gravestone shown below.

Matthew Hessberg deserves a final word:  Orphaned at an early age, with limited education, and the all too frequent deaths of loved ones, he responded to adversity by creating a series of prosperous liquor stores in cities that virtually encompass the map of Virginia.  Only the coming of America’s short-lived experiment with Prohibition could bring down his accomplishments.  

Note:  Although this post contains artifacts from Matthew Hessberg’s liquor business it lacks information on how he was able successfully to manage his chain of Virginia stores.  I am hopeful that some sharp eyed descendant will find the post and help fill in the blanks.

Foreword:  In the previous post, “Singing Along with Prohibition:  Part One,” the emphasis was on songs and sheet music that pre-dated National Prohibition, with the song writers asking or predicting what life would be like in a completely “dry” America.  This post examines the music and lyrics generated by the actual imposition of what came to be known as “The Great Experiment.”

The topic is ushered in by a 1919 song by Andrew Sterling and Harry Von Tilzer that  on the July passage of the Volstead Act that implemented the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that had many Americans thinking that alcohol sales had been immediately banned.  The legislation, however, simply set the date for the following January first, 1920.  In this song the gent is moaning “Whoa January, oh January, I hate to see you come around, July was mighty tough but we could get enough…” Von Tilzer was a prolific songwriter who wrote “Shine on Silvery Moon” and “Wait Til the Sun Shines, Nellie.”

When January and National Prohibition did occur, the liquor firms going out of business did brisk sales of their barrels, jugs and bottles of liquor.  Long lines of people stood outside the stores to buy as much as their budgets would let them.  The wealthy established liquor cellars in their homes in which they stock wines and whiskeys.  Author H. L. Mencken created his behind a locked medal door with dire imprecations against anyone trying to enter.  When he died in 1956, long after Repeal, he still had a liquor stash.  

American songwriters were not long in noting these events. Grant Clarke and Milton Ager in 1920 teamed up to give America “Its a Smart Little Feller Who Stocked up his Cellar That’s Getting the Beautiful Girls.”  The lyrics suggested a new era in wooing and winning a “girlie full of charm:”

Oh, they won’t call you honey, because you’ve got money,

It isn’t for money they sigh,

You could once grab a queen with your big limousine

But now times are changing, you know what I mean,

Oh, they won’t know you’re livin’ if all you can give’em

Is just pretty diamonds and pearls;

It’s the smart little feller who stocked up his cellar,

That’s getting the beautiful girls.

Clark and Ager were not the only songwriters to see possibilities in the burgeoning liquor caches of America.  A trio of writers gave the country the song, “Everybody Wants a Key to My Cellar,”  with the sheet music featuring six hands grabbing toward the key.  In the opening verse the owner confesses to having changed things around in his cellar, stockpiled liquor, tried to keep it a secret but told his wife.  She blabbed:

Now ev’rbody wants a key to my cellar, my cellar, my cellar,

People who before wouldn’t give me a tumble,

Even perfect strangers beginning to grumble,

‘Cause I won’t let them have a key to my cellar,

They’ll never get in just let them try.

They can have my money,

They can have my car,

They can have my wife

If they want to go that far,

But they can’t have the key that opens my cellar,

If the whole darn world goes dry.

The “I write the songs,” crew also picked up on another phenomenon of the Dry Era — the sudden popularity of doctors.   During America’s dry age, the federal alcohol ban carved out an exemption for medicinal use, and doctors nationwide suddenly discovered they could bolster their incomes by writing liquor prescriptions. They typically charged $3.00 for such and prescribed it for a wide range of supposed ills.  Pharmacies filled those prescriptions and were one of the few places whiskey could be bought legally.  They raked in the dollars. Through the 1920s, fueled by whiskey prescriptions, the number of Walgreen stores soared from 20 to nearly 400.

On this sheet music, entitled “Oh Doctor,” a gent is whispering his needs to a doctor who is in the process of writing a prescription for whiskey.  Meanwhile behind him a line of well dressed men are calling for similar assistance.  According to the song, the petitioner is pleading, “Write the prescription and please make it say, ‘Take with your meals,’ I eat ten times a day.”  The authors, Billy Joyce and Rubey Cowan, were New York songwriters who also worked as publishers.

Even the famed American songwriter, Irvin Berlin, took a turn at writing a Prohibition ditty, both music and lyrics.  Remembered far and wide for “White Christmas,” his song, “I’ll See You in C-U-B-A,” falls far short of that classic.  Written in 1920, Irvng B. is going to Cuba “where wine is flowing,” and “dark eyed Stellas light their fellers pan-a-gel-as.”  That apparently is Stella on the cover of the sheet music, looking saucy and sexy.  Berlin ends the verse by asking everyone to join him in C-U-B-A.  In that island country, as might be fathomed from the song, alcoholic beverages flowed freely.  

The cover of the sheet music for “I’m the Ghost of that Good Man John Barleycorn” may be be the most interesting part of that song.  It depicts a ghost-like figure in a mist looking over a broken whiskey barrel and some broken and intact bottles.  The words were by George A. Little and the music by Earl K. Smith.  Another Geo. Little song, “When a Black Man is Blue” was recorded by Duke Ellington’s band and is still available on disc.

Some new words and phrases were coming into the vocabulary of the average American, words like bootlegger, rum-runner, speakeasy, home brew, and moonshine.  Actually moonshine had been around for a while.  Bert Williams, a black man who performed in black face, had a hit song in the Ziegfeld Follies called “The Moon Shines on the Moonshine.”  Williams was by far the best selling recording artist before 1920 and is said to have done much during his career to push back racial barriers.

                                   Oh, could you ever keep from doing it,

I mean the moonshine shudder,

After gurgling, guzzling, lapping up home brew

First you shiver at your throat,

Then you shimmy at your chest;

You wiggle out of your coat,

And you nearly shed your vest.

But you cannot keep from doing it,

I mean the moonshine shudder,

After gurgling, guzzling, lapping up home brew.

As Prohibition wound on through the 1920s and into the 1930s, the songs continue to come.  Some representatives titles were “Kentucky Bootlegger,” “Bootlegger’s Story,”  “Moonshiner,” “Prohibition is a Failure,”  “The Old Home Brew,” “Whiskey Seller,” “Down to the Stillhouse to Get a Li’l Cider,” and “Drunkard’s Hiccups.”  The last-mentioned song is also known as “Jack of Diamonds,” a euphemism for hard drink.   An excerpt from it seems a suitable way to end this post:

Wherever I go

Jack of diamonds, jack of diamonds

I’ve known you from old

You’ve robbed my poor pockets

Of silver and gold.

 Foreword:  From “Yankee Doodle,” to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” to “Blowin’ in the Wind,”  many American songs have had a strong political content.  National Prohibition spawned many such a lyric,  both in anticipation of the Nation going “dry” in 1920 and during the 14 year experience of “The Great (Failed) Experiment.”  This post and the one to follow will explore some of those songs and their messages.  This post deals with the anticipation of Prohibition; the second will feature songs spawned by the actual experience.  

 

The lyrics below are from an 1918 ditty by writers William Jerome and Jack Mahoney, two of the best known songwriters of the early 20th Century.  Jerome created many popular songs of the era as well as musical comedies.  Mahoney, a lyricist, is best known for his co-authorship of the American favorite “When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose.”  Their anti-Prohibition song was entitled “Every Day Will be Sunday When the Town Goes Dry,” alluding to the general Lord’s Day ban on alcohol sales.   The cover of the sheet music shows a well-dressed gent in a top hat contemplating the doom destined to fall with National Prohibition. 

 

 

Goodbye, Hunter; So long, Scotch; Farewell Haig and Haig;

Oh my darling old frappe, they will soon take you away,

At the table with Lola they will serve us Coca-Cola;

No more saying: “Let me buy,”

No more coming thru the Rye;

Old Manhattan and Martini have received the big subpoena,

Ev’ry day’ll be Sunday when the town goes dry.

In something of the same vein is “How Are You Going to Wet Your Whistle (When the Whole Darn World Is Dry?”)  It shows a similarly tuxedoed man about town asking the crucial question outside a cafe that once sold whiskey and draft beer that tried to get by on candy and soda.  Apparently the attempt failed since the sign on the door says “for rent.”  One of the authors, Percy Wenrich, began his career as a music demonstrator in a Milwaukee store and staff writer for music publishing companies.  Moving to New York Wenrich became one of the Nation’s most successful song writers, remembered even today for “Moonlight Bay,” “Sail Along, Silv’ry Moon,” and “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet.”

Like the foregoing, several pre-Prohibition songs speculated on the kinds of effects the alcohol ban would have on daily life.  Among them was “What’ll We Do on a Saturday Night (When the Town Goes Dry).”  It shows a young swain talking his lady friend to the movies but worried about what to do afterward:

 

What’ll we do on a Saturday night,

When the town goes dry?

Where will we go after seeing a show

to make the weary hours fly?

Imagine a fellow with a cute little queen,

Trying to win her on a plate of ice cream;

        What’ll we do on a Saturday night,

           When the town goes dry?

The songwriter was Harry Ruby, who with his longtime partner Bert Kalmar were a successful songwriting team for nearly three decades.  In 1950 MGM made a musical of their lives called “Three Little Words,” starring Fred Astaire as Kalmar and Red Skelton as Ruby.

Another anti-Prohibition song of 1919 contemplated massive unemployment as a result of shutting down saloons and cafes.  Called “No Beer — No Work,” the cover of the sheet music shows four men, all apparently unemployed, standing outside a closed drinking establishment with a for rent sign. It is padlocked and someone has thrown a rock at the front window.  The lyrics told a story about a miner named Johnny Hymer who being told impending about National Prohibition, threw his tools on the ground and intoned:  “No beer, no work will be my battle cry;  No beer, no work when I am feeling dry.”  Hymer’s unemployment seemingly would be self imposed:  “I’ll hide myself away, until some brighter day.”

Naturally the thought of National Prohibition would bring on “The Blues” for many and songwriters were there to express it.   Al Sweet, a rather obscure composer who died in 1945 at the age of 59, wrote both the music and words to a 1917 “Prohibition Blues,” that included this lyric:

Oh! my Brothers and Sisters, listen to what I say

By nineteen twenty dere’ll be no boose sold in the U.S.A.

De whole country am goin’ bone dry,

Prohibition am de battle cry,

‘Scuse me while I shed a tear,

For good old whiskey,gin and beer.

Goodbye forever, Goodbye forever

Ah got de Prohibition, Prohibition, Prohibition blues.

The cover for the sheet music is particularly interesting for the image of the distraught diner over not having any wine, the weeping waiter, and the bottles of wine, whiskey and beer flying away.  The man in the top hat peering around the corner was known as “Mr. Dry,” the creation of a New York cartoonist. [See my post on “Mr. Dry” on December 23, 2023.]

Since it is not possible to copyright a title, a second “Prohibition Blues” followed in 1918.  This one was produced by two celebrities.  Ring Lardner, noted as one of America’s prime short story writers and novelists, also was a composer and lyricist.  His co-author, Nora Bayes, was a well known American singer, comedienne and actress of the period.  In 1918 she was at the height of her fame, having been heavily involved in morale-boosting activities during the First World War.  Her photo and credits on the front of the sheet music would have boosted sales.  A year later Bayes recorded “How Ya Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree),” a huge hit for Columbia Records.

As the months rolled on toward total abstinence, the song “I’ve Got the Prohibition Blues (for My Booze)” was rolled out in 1919 by the Elite Music Company of St. Louis.  The sheet music featured a waitress and two customers faced with a choice of tea, coffee, milk or soda, and clearly unhappy with any of them.  The lyrics to many anti-Prohibition songs are far from distinguished, but this one is among the worst.  Penned by an obscure songwriter named Carl Zerse, part of it goes like this: “I’m so thirsty that I’m blue, Old friend Booze I long for you.  I never knew that I’d miss you, the way I do, Boo-hoo, Boo-hoo.”  Think of that verse put to music.

Joseph McCarthy was an American lyricist whose most famous songs include “You Made Me Love You,” and “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”  For this 1919 song — “I’m Going to Settle Down Outside of London Town (When I’m Dry, Dry, Dry)” — he teamed with four time Academy Award nominee, James Monaco.  The words tell the story of a man who loves America but will settle in an English village by the sea come June.  He hates to say “goodbye,” but he is man “who must have a little liquor when I’m dry, dry, dry.”  He then pledges to come back when America has changed its mind.  That, unfortunately would be more than 14 years away.

Others apparently saw no reason for such drastic action.  Another 1919 song seemed to take the alcohol ban with some aplomb.  Written by a trio of New York “Tin Pan Alley” songwriters, it was entitled:  “(For If Kisses Are Are Intoxicating As They Say) Prohibition, You Have Lost Your Sting.”  The cover of the sheet music indicated that it had been successfully introduced by Sophie Tucker, backed by her band, the Five Kings of Syncopation.  Known as “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas,”  Ms. Tucker was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the early to mid-20th Century.  With the advent of television in the 1950s she had a rebirth of popularity and I remember her well.  Over the years she spawned almost as many imitators as Elvis.

As January 1, 1920, hove into sight, one song captured the dread.  As the cover of the sheet music made clear, even as the couples waltz around the floor, the hour was about to chime midnight ushering in an “alcohol-free” America,  The Grim Reaper — perhaps Mr. Dry in disguise — was lurking there to point out the lateness of the hour.  The song is entitled “At the Prohibition Ball.” Written by Alex Gerber and Abner Silver, the lyrics provide a fitting conclusion to the songs antecedent to “The Great Experiment.”

We’ll be at the Prohibition Ball,

There we’ll mix with Mister Alcohol;

Folks will pay their last respects

to Highballs and to Horse’s Necks.

Note:  The songs above all were penned and published in advance of the imposition of National Prohibition.  The next article, to be posted shortly, treats some of the songs that followed during the ensuing 14 (ostensibly) “dry” years.