Author name: Jack Sullivan

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.

Recently Whiskey Magazine listed the 100 “Greatest Whiskey People,” highlighting individuals worldwide who left a lasting legacy on the whiskey trade over the years.  Frederick Stitzel was among that chosen few.  His claim to fame was based on his patented invention for stacking barrels of whiskey for aging.  Earlier the custom was to stack them directly on top of each other.  This was a highly risky practice.  Each barrels held about 53 gallons of whiskey and filled would weigh around 500 pounds.  Putting one of those behemoths on top of another could cause leakage, outright ruptures and other problems.

In his patent application, Stitzel explained: “This my invention relates to a new and useful improvement in racks for tiering barrels containing whisky or other spirituous liquors, the object of which is to provide a portable rack or frame made in sections that will be sufficiently strong to bear the weight of as many barrels as may be tiered between the floors of the house without resting upon each other, thereby avoiding the danger of crushing the staves by the weight, as each tier is made to rest on separate rails projecting on the inside of the frame independent of the others, thereby causing a free circulation of air between the barrels, and at the same time making it easy to remove any of the barrels in the lower tiers without interfering with those above or below.”   The Stitzel rails are in general use even today.

These were just two of perhaps a dozen or more Stitzel inventions.  Shown below left is the drawing for his 1883 improvement for railroads.  Noting that in telegraph, electric signals, and other electronic devices, the batteries operating them steady weakened and required replacement , Stitzel proposed an innovation that would automatically cut out the weakened battery and insert a new one.  Thirty years later in 1923 at 80 years old, Stitzel was still inventing.   Shown right is a “spring wheel” device for automobiles he patented to help smooth out bumps on rough roads.   Stitzel and other family members regularly were in touch with government and industry marketing his ideas for railroads, automobiles and, yes, even airplanes.

The  Stitzel distillery, above, eventually covered an area of two and one half acres.  An 1895 publication entitled “Louisville of Today,” featured the facility:  “Here are a large and splendidly equipped stillhouse, elevator, immense warehouses, cattle sheds, etc.  The plant stands second to none as regards modern high-class machinery and appliances, power being supplied by a thirty horse power engine.”

The expanded capacity allowed the brothers to issue a variety of brands.  At various times they included “Billy Burke,” “Champion,” “Friend of Man,” “Glencoe,” “Lock Horn”, “Merryland Rye,” “Mondamin,” “Parkland,” “Parkwood,” “Pomona Rye,” “S. B. Co.,” and “Old Fred Stitzel.”  Despite Frederick’s frequent contacts with the U.S. Patent Office, the brothers trademarked only one label.  Shown on a shot glass here, the brand was Mondamin, named for a Native American god of corn.

The distillery was listed in Kentucky State tax records as Stitzel Brothers until 1919 and the coming of National Prohibition.  During this period, the plant continued to be expanded.  At Prohibition the company had a large stock of whiskey in its commodious warehouses that it was authorized by authorities to bottle for medicinal spirits.  The distillery itself was dismantled.  The relationship of Frederick to the company during the 1910s is not clear.  Some indications are that he may have left actual distilling with his Stitzel brothers and nephews in favor of operating  a whiskey brokerage in Louisville — and pursuing his inventions.

Stitzel was stricken with bronchial pneumonia in the autumn of that year, lingered only a short period and died on September 18 at the age of 81.  He was buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery, where so many Kentucky bourbon barons are interred. His widow Emma would join him there 11 years later.  Stitzel was commended in the press as a Louisville distiller who supported: “All public enterprises of any moment calculated to advance the prosperity of this section”. 

Still receiving patents up to a year before his death,  Stitzel could never approach the record of 1,093 patents Thomas Edison received during his lifetime.  Nonetheless, inventing virtually up until the day he died, Frederick Stitzel richly earned the accolade as “The Thomas Edison” of whiskey men.

Addendum:  Frederick’s nephew, A. Philip Stitzel, later would join with members of the notable Weller Kentucky distilling family to create the famous Stitzel-Weller distillery that survived National Prohibition and brought Julius “Pappy” Van Winkle to the fore. See my post on Pappy, November 22, 2014.

Notes:  This post was gathered from a wide range of sources, of which the more important were records of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and “Louisville Today,” issued in 1895 by Consolidated Illustrating Co., Louisville. 

Claiming Neal Dow, shown here, as a “whiskey man’ may seem like a stretch. Dow has been cited as the “Father of Prohibition” and ran for President of the United States as the first Prohibitionist Party candidate. Consider, however, that in 1855 Dow illegally bought a supply of liquor valued at $56,000 in today’s dollar, stashed the supply at city hall in Portland, Maine, and as mayor held the key.  His seeming duplicity incited a riot during which a man was killed.

Dow was born in March 1804 into a prosperous Portland Quaker family.  Although the youth demonstrated exceptional intelligence, his father, a man said to be of lofty morals, refused to send him to college, wary of the influences of college students of that day.  As a result, Dow early joined his father in his tannery business and before long was made a partner.  But hides were not his passion. Drink was.  According to a biographer, even as a boy Dow strongly hated alcohol.  At that time Americans drank three times as much as they do currently.  Portland was a hotbed of legal and illegal drinking establishments, estimated at as many as 300 for a population of 21,000. The young man had found a cause worthy of his ambition. 

After co-founding the Maine Temperance Society in 1827 at the age of 23, Dow became a five foot, two inch, firebrand speaker against the evils of liquor.  His orations were filled with horror stories of drink swilling immigrants, particularly targeting the Irish and their “notorious groggeries.”  Outlawing alcohol, he predicted, would result in  “better public buildings, better ways of living, in multiplied and enlarged industries, and in prosperous, thrifty, happy homes.”

Increasingly Maine residents listened to him.  An 1846 effort by the state legislature to promote liquor sales proved in ineffective.  In 1851, however, Dow was elected mayor of Portland and with Maine Temperance Society members drafted a more stringent law, pushed legislators to pass it and the governor to sign.  The law, earliest in the Nation, made Dow famous with prohibitionists throughout Northern States and he was widely in demand as a speaker.  As mayor he was quick to crack down on drinking in Portland, directing raids against saloons and allowing the booze to flow in the gutters while the thirsty looked on.  Elected again in 1855 by only a slim margin, Dow nevertheless pledged to double down on alcohol suppression.  

Here things get murky.  Because whiskey was still part of the medical pharmacology, Maine law allowed towns to appoint one government agent, aided by a selection committee, as the sole legal entity to buy and distribute spirits intended for “non-beverage” use.  Apparently not willing to give up personal authority over alcohol, Dow disregarded the law and in his own name bought a stash of booze valued then at $1,600 ($56,000 today).  His purchase probably contained rum, whiskey and grain alcohol. Only when it arrived in Portland did he bother to inform his colleagues.  Dow put the liquor under lock and key in City Hall in what came to be known as “The Rum Room.”  He held the only key.  It is not clear what he had in mind for the stocks.  The situation suggests that he planned to supply it to doctors and druggists upon written requests he alone would approve.  His antagonists, however, saw hypocrisy and wrongdoing.

Because the purchase had not been made under the letter of the law, the liquor theoretically became subject to seizure.  Determined to embarrass Dow, his “wet” opponents drummed the matter into a major issue.  They filed a complaint with the Portland police that the mayor’s purchase had been done illegally and now should be confiscated under the prohibitionary law.  When police seemed slow to act, the protesters went to court.  In Maine, any three citizens could ask a judge for a search warrant if they believed a crime had been committed.  The protestors asked for and on June 2, 1855, were issued a warrant by a friendly local judge.

Brandishing the warrant, a small delegation went to City Hall, shown above, demanding entry so they could search the premises.  By this time Dow had caught wind of their gambit and ordered police to bar the door.  When it became evident that the police would not honor the warrant, the crowd grew to some 3,000 men. The mood became increasingly angry at the apparent duplicity of Maine’s leading temperance crusader having his own large supply of booze protected by the police.  Shown here is one cartoonist’s (unfriendly) view of the protest.

In an attempt to avoid violence Portland police officers locked themselves in the Rum Room and refused to disburse the crowd.  An angry Mayor Dow then sent word to local militia companies to come quickly. Sensing impending disaster, one arriving sergeant suggested his men should load blanks. The diminutive Mayor Dow disagreed: “We know what we are about sir. We’ve consulted the law, sir.” 

At ten o’clock that night one militia group of about twenty men formed up in front of City Hall. Now backed by armed troops, Mayor Dow personally ordered the crowd to disperse. They responded with a hail of trash and garbage. Dow ordered the troops to fire to keep the mob at bay.  Their commander, a Captain Green, begged off, said his troops were insufficient, and asked permission to leave to recruit more men.   A reluctant Dow assented. 

It was a mistake. The sight of the militia marching off encouraged the crowd to become more aggressive. Rocks and bricks were thrown. The rioters discovered that the Rum Room had a door opening to the outside. John Robbins, a 22 year old sailor from nearby Deer Isle, said to have been on the eve of his wedding,  broke a window, crawled inside and unlocked the door. The crowd moved forward.  Just then the strengthened militia returned. At Dow’s command, they opened fire. Robbins was killed instantly.  As the crowd dispersed in panic, the firing continued for twenty minutes. Seven protesters were wounded.  Only because the militiamen were armed with antiquated muskets reputedly prevented the death toll from being higher. To “drys” it became known as the Portland Rum Riot. To “wets” it was the Portland Massacre.

In the days to follow Dow was charged with breaking the law he had helped pass, but was acquitted after a one day trial. The judge was a strong prohibitionist and a Dow supporter who ruled that the city — not Dow — owned the liquor. Considering himself exonerated, the mayor immediately issued a “Message on the Riot” in which he claimed John Robbins was an Irish immigrant who was wanted by the law.  It was a lie. Witnesses under oath testified that Robbins had been born in America, had never been arrested, and was a “steady, honest man, remarkable for his good nature and peaceable disposition.”  Nor was Robbins of Irish descent.

Historian Jack S. Blocker Jr. summed up the effects of the day’s events. The shootings, he says: “Irretrievably tarnished the prohibitionist dream of an orderly world of upwardly mobile abstainers…of Americans who were drawn to the vision of peace and prosperity that the enthusiastic prohibitionists such as Dow himself set before them.”  Dow’s reputation in Maine also took a severe blow.  Anti-prohibition media accused him of murder.  His attempt to be elected to a third term failed.  Opposition to the Maine law was strengthened as public opinion shifted and it was repealed the following year.  Dow’s rush to use lethal force had undone his singular success.

Elsewhere his standing among prohibitionists remained intact, sought as a speaker in the U.S. and England.  Also ardently against slavery, Dow at the age of 57 in 1861 volunteered for service in the Union Army during the Civil War, was made a colonel, and promoted to brigadier general.  Captured by rebels through a fluke, he spent eight months in a Confederate prison before being exchanged.  After the war he returned to his anti-alcohol crusade.  When the Prohibition Party was formed in 1880, Dow became its first candidate for president, receiving a paltry 10,305 votes.

As he aged, Dow curtailed his speaking activities, residing in the family home shown above, with his daughter and married son.  In October 1897, at age, 93, he died.  His body lay in state in Portland’s Second Parish Church prior to burial in the city’s Evergreen Cemetery.  The ardent prohibitionist had begun to write his memoirs but never lived to finish them.  Too bad.  Neal Dow, “Father of Prohibition,” might have revealed in them exactly what he had in mind when he bought all that riot-causing liquor.

Note:  Articles about Neal Dow and the Portland Rum Riot are numerous.  They also vary on some important details.  I have tried to select accounts that have more than one source.  As an addendum to this story, I have added below a postcard issued by a local newspaper during National Prohibition of a 1920s “Rum Room” in Portland’s City Hall.