Author name: Jack Sullivan

Forword:  This post is provided through the courtesy of the Virtual Museum of the Federation of the Historical Bottle Collectors.  The text is based upon a much longer and detailed account of this pioneering spirits-selling family by descendants Ted and Lee Samuel, described as “well known San Francisco educators.” 

What must have been going through the minds of a couple of German teenagers as they peered through the Atlantic fog heading for New York from Hamburg. Wolff, 15, and Moses, 13, the two oldest sons of Schmul and Hännchen Samuel, were off on the greatest adventure of their lives!

One wonders why so many of the Samuel children left home. Historically, after the 1848 revolutions, Prussia clamped down on all its citizens, and thousands of people from this area came to America between 1849 and 1860, both to avoid the harsh government and the possibility of being drafted into the king’s army. The Samuel children might have been part of this migration. In addition, the lure of gold, discovered in 1849, brought thousands of European immigrants to California, crossing the Atlantic, and then either going around the Horn or traveling to Panama, which they crossed by foot or train, and taking another ship to San Francisco.

They sailed together to New York, where they were befriended by the Bloomingdale family and worked for a few months in the Bloomingdale store. They sent letters home referring to “Tante Bloomingdale” and describing the Hudson River, frozen in winter. When the ice began to thaw, in the Spring of 1860, the boys got themselves jobs as cabin boys on a ship heading for San Francisco, around Cape Horn. This was a voyage that took all summer (winter around the horn), and they arrived in San Francisco in the late Fall of 1860.

The boys then had to get to the Gold Country so they boarded a ship heading north, up to San Francisco Bay, to the “Delta” to Sacramento, a big port in those days, situated on a river leading into the bay. From Sacramento, they had to take a stagecoach to Nevada City, which meant going through the valley and heading up into the foothills, covered with trees. In summer, this trip might take only a few days, but in winter, during the rainy season, the coaches were mired in mud, and passengers had to get out constantly to help push the coaches out. The trip could take a month or more.

Wolff and Moses knew they were getting closer to the Gold Country because all the trees disappeared, and the hills were brown and barren. For example, the Empire Mine cut down all the trees within miles to burn for fuel for its heavy mining equipment, and what was not burned was used for building.

Nevada City

Finally, in November 1860, Wolff and Moses arrived in the twin cities of the Gold Rush, Nevada City, and Grass Valley, four miles apart, both bustling with activity. By 1860, ten years after the Gold Rush had begun, there were law courts, judges, a county seat in Nevada City, and large Victorian homes built of wood, some of which were owned by those who had come early and done well, and some used as boarding houses. The boys quickly found lodgings, Moses in a boarding house, and Wolff in a room above the Union Restaurant on Main Street. Moses began to work for H. Levy as a clerk in his store, and Wolff worked as a peddler, going into the mining camps with a pack on his back to sell supplies to miners who couldn’t get into town.

The first records found began in 1865 when Wolff Samuel received his U. S. Citizenship on August 17, 1865, as cited in the minutes of the County Court in Nevada. He did not, however, register to vote. Also, in 1865 records, the first of many transactions in quartz mines (gold is found in quartz) was made by Moses Samuel, who sold his interest in a mine called “Little Anna” for one dollar in gold. By 1867, Moses became a United States citizen at the county court in Nevada City. He also sold, with a large group of other men, interests in two other quartz mines, one for ten dollars.

Moses had also risen to assume the lease of his boss’s store, which became “M. Samuel and H. Levy, Tobacconist,” and sold the right to live in two buildings behind the store for as long as he held the lease. According to the 1867 Grass Valley directory at the Nevada City Historical Society, M. Samuel, of H. Levy & Co., business at 91 Main Street, Tobacconists, resided on Church Street; W. Samuel (dry goods) boarded at the Union Restaurant, and Aaron Samuel, (dry goods) boarded at the Pacific Hotel. Later, both the Union Restaurant and the Pacific Hotel had been destroyed to put up a freeway, but the building across the street, according to a Grass Valley resident, housed a brothel, and the present owner, an auto mechanic, stores his equipment in the cribs on the second floor.

In 1867, Wolff Samuel, as part of a large group of investors, sold his interest in a quartz mine for $20 in gold. There was only one record of Wolff investing in anything in the area, but Moses was quite a high flyer, and he sold his quartz mine interests in 1869 and in January 1870, just before he left. Also in 1869, Moses bought 160 acres in Nevada City for $205 in gold. According to the 1870 census, Moses, 24, was listed as “retail liquor and tobacco” with a net worth of $4,000.

Samuel logo

By 1871, Moses had relocated to San Francisco, and Wolff returned to Janowitz, (now part of a united Germany) where he took up German citizenship as “Wolff Schmul.” Moses stated that he arrived in Grass Valley on November 15, 1860, and left for San Francisco on January 5, 1870. He went into partnership in the jewelry business with a friend from Grass Valley and married Sarah Rebecca Wolf in 1872. However, having been in the wine and liquor business in Grass Valley, he gradually went into that business, called M. Samuel, Wine & Liquor.

Samuel Whiskey – Three Angles

When his youngest brother, Benno, arrived in 1879, the business became Samuel Brothers, Wine & Liquors, which supported much of the family as they came over from Europe, as well as gave jobs to the children of his sister and brothers. The business was extremely successful and included several wineries. The oldest winery in Fresno county is the one at Lacjac, which was originally called the Sanford winery, date of origin unknown by the wine historians, but it is possible that Moses or the company owned it and it was named after Moses’ son, Sanford. In 1899, Lachman & Jacobi (hence the name Lacjac) bought the Sanford winery and enlarged it in an attempt to fight the monopoly of the California Wine Association. There is also some connection with the Mt. Tivy winery in Fresno county, which was purchased from the estate of Paul Samuel in 1933.

Moses Samuel would continue his business through the 1880s and early 1890s when the Samuel Brothers & Co. filed articles of incorporation in May 1894 in San Francisco, California. The Directors were Moses Samuel, Samuel R. Samuel, Benno C. Samuel, Paul Samuel, and William Samuel. Their capital was listed as $150,000, of which $2,500 had been subscribed. The brothers were wholesale wine and liquor dealers located at 132-134 First Street. There was also a Max Samuel listed as a salesman in 1897. The firm also had a New York City office in the very early 1900s that was headed up by Benno Samuel.

Note:  The Samuel Brothers bottle was imaged on location by the FOHBC Virtual Museum studio led by Alan DeMaison.  The Virtual Museum is a growing online treasure of information about historical American bottles.  The text, derived from the Virtual Museum website, references a manuscript from the Museum of the City of San Francisco, jointly credited to Ted and Lee Samuel.  The Samuels-related photos added here are from the museum site and elsewhere on the Internet.

 

 

Twice before this blog has featured a post dedicated to the various risque advertising and merchandising artifacts that the distilleries, rectifiers (blenders), wholesalers, liquor stores and saloons of the pre-Prohibition era issued to promote themselves and their brands. In ensuing months I have collected nine more images from that period that reflect the same “sex sells” attitude.

One thing always to keep in mind about America before 1920 is that women generally were not allowed in saloons.   That enabled publicans to feature over  their bars and at other points within their drinking establishments,  pictures of unclothed or otherwise suggestive images of females, knowing there would be no outrage among their patrons.  For those selling whiskey, therefore, providing a steamy sign that advertised their liquor was a natural. 

The first, for Gilt Edge Whiskey, was the flagship brand of Wichman, Lutgen of San Francisco.  The lady, legs akimbo, lies on a red coverlet with a bottle of whiskey next to her.  She seems to be waiting for someone.  Either she or the whiskey is declared “A Treat that Can’t be Beat.”  Perhaps “Guilt Edge” might have been a better name for the booze.  Wichman, Lutgen, founded in 1877,  saw their building destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and rebuilt, but could not survive Prohibition.

The following bar sign is typical of many in which a demure young lass with flowing hair is shown draped loosely in a blanket or shawl of some type with a bit, just a tantalizing bit of a breast showing. It was issued specifically for by Auge’s for its G and H brand whiskey. So far my research has not been able to uncover either the brand or the outfit that issued it.  

The sign advertising White Seal Whiskey points up another frequent scheme for showing female nudity:   Place the ladies in a mythical or Oriental scene.  Here a pair of young lovers — she bare breasted — are being escorted down their river of love on a flower garlanded boat by no fewer than five totally nude river nereids.  This was a very popular bar sign from the Hulman & Beggs Company of Terre Haute, Indiana.  Herman Hulman, progenitor of the famous Hulman motor racing family,  was in the liquor business for many years but his alliance with John Beggs apparently lasted only from 1894 to 1896.

The fairy atop the Old Maid Whiskey sign clearly has a kinship with Hulman’s sea nymphs  and even more generously proportioned and clearly delineated.  When Orene Parker, a Covington KY rectifier,  took Old Maid as his flagship brand, he initially advertised and labeled the whiskey with a sour faced old maid.   The owner of a vaudeville theater and showman,  it apparently did not take Orene long to decide that a more appealing image might sell better.

Gustav Fleischmann,  part of the well-known Fleischmann yeast and distilling family, issued a saucy sign might help sell his principal label,  Gold Grain Whiskey.  Gustav, an immigrant from Germany, apparently liked his ladies with amplitude.  Thus the woman on his saloon sign has a particularly robust backside.  Engaged in a Buffalo wholesale liquor firm beginning about 1882, Fleischmann bought out his partner circa 1893 and changed its name to Buffalo Distilling Company.  It survived until 1918.

Another format for risque’ images were paper items like calendars and trade cards.  These would be given out to customers of all stripes to remind them of the proprietor and his wares.  The first here shows a quintet of comely maidens each dressed from head to toe and hardly scandalous in appearance except for the five cats peeking from their bloomers.  With a calendar attached, this image could be referred to on a daily basis for a year.

The trade cards that follow are from a single whiskey man whose name was Simon Hirsch.  A German immigrant who settled first in Leadville, Colorado, serving whiskey to silver miners, Hirsch moved on to Kansas City where he founded a very successful whiskey business. There his flagship brand was Quaker Maid rye.  Initially his label and advertising showed a modestly clad damsel.  But the racy images of the boomtown obviously prevailed and his ads featured women in various stages of nudity, but,  just as interesting, a male presence to ogle them.  Hirsch founded his business in 1877 and continued selling whiskey until 1918 when he switched to hawking an alcohol-laced patent medicine.

Still a third format for using risque in merchandising liquor was the use of the tip tray.   These were liberally provided to saloons and restaurants for use on the bar or by servers to present a bill, hold the payment, bring the change, and, presumably, find their tip.   The Edwin Schiele Distilling Co. put a bare breasted goddess on its tray advertising “Autocrat Whiskey,” his flagship label.  She seems to be emerging from a shimmer of silk or maybe soapsuds, but clearly thirsty for a shot of the good stuff.  The company was founded by Edwin Schiele about 1900 and lasted until Missouri went dry in 1918.

Notes:  The two prior whisky risque’ posts appeared on this website on May 25, 2023 and Sept. 30, 2023.  Longer biographies of many of the “whiskey men” cited here also maybe found on this website: Wichman, Lutgen, July 23, 2012;  Hulman, Jan. 23, 2012; Parker, March 24, 2012; Fleischmann, Mar. 29, 2012; Hirsch, Dec. 10, 2011; Schiele, Aug. 12, 2012, and Moore, May 27, 2012.

In Greek mythology a lizard-like amphibian, the salamander, could live in fire and flourish.   Having experienced three conflagrations including the Great Chicago Fire, Peter Van Schaack and his drug and liquor business became known as “The Old Salamander,” a title he eagerly embraced.  In truth, much of Van Schaack’ s life involved surviving in the face of adversity.

Van Shaack was born in May 1832 in Manlius, New York, a bucolic town amid the rolling hills of Onondaga County east of Syracuse.  He was the fourth son of Peter and Louise Smith Van Shaack, affluent parents able to give their sons good educations.  Disappointment came early to young Peter.  Attracted to the medical profession, he left home as a youth to live with an uncle, Dr. Lucas Van Shaack, one of New York’s most eminent doctors, to study with him to become a physician.  When his uncle unexpectedly died, Peter was forced to give up the pursuit of a medical career and went to work in an Albany wholesale drug house.  

After two years there, the rugged winter climate of New York State appeared to affect his health.  Having sufficient resources, Van Shaack gave up his job and visited the warmer West Indies, an addiction to travel that would become a lifelong obsession.  Deciding to give up New York for warmer climes, Van Schaack gravitated to Charleston, South Carolina, about 1859 where he founded his own wholesale drug house.  Although that enterprise seemingly was successful, when the Civil War broke out two years later, with Charleston as the epicenter, Van Schaack was forced to make a choice.  Opt for the Confederacy or leave.

Choosing the Union cause, he made a quick decision to abandon his enterprise in Charleston and return to New York.  His drug house was confiscated and he lost what has been described as “the accumulation of years.”  With his remaining resources, Van Schaack made the first of at least ten extensive tours of Europe before settling back to business.  This time he chose Chicago for his wholesale drug house.  The Windy City would be his home for the rest of his life.

During those intervening years, Van Schaack and his business came to be known as “The Old Salamander,” the result of surviving three devastating fires and each time coming back strong.  I have been able to document only one of those conflagrations, that of the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871. The fire began in a neighborhood of southwest Chicago and spread rapidly to destroy much of the central city. 

 

Shown here at No. 30 is the location of Van Schaak’s wholesale drug company two blocks within the fire zone at 138-140 Lake Street.  The scene above, looking from the Chicago River, captures the ferocity of the flames that consumed his wholesale drug company.  As a biographer explained:  “Mr. Van Schaack has had the misfortune to be entirely burnt out three times, on [no] occasion having the fire originate in his own store…By energy, pluck and untiring perseverance, was enabled to re-establish himself on a firmer basis than before.”

As a result of those recoveries, fellow businessmen and Chicago citizens alike began to refer to Van Schaack, as “The Old Salamander,” harking back to the ancient legend.  The man himself eagerly embraced the acclimation as an emblem of his ability to bounce back from adversity stronger than ever.  The nickname became part of his advertising efforts, appearing on informational brochures and his letterhead.

In the meantime Van Schaack married.  In 1853 when she was 20 years old and he was 21, Peter wed Louise Smith of New York City.  Over the next decade the couple would have four sons,  John, born in 1858; Henry, 1860; Robert, 1862, and Cornelius, 1863.  The father eventually would house this family in a comfortable frame house at 617 Linden Avenue in Chicago.  Shown here, the house still stands.

As they matured all four boys would assist their father in his fire-beset wholesale drug emporium.  It included vigorous merchandising of his products, including Van Schaack’s proprietary brand of liquor, advertised as “The Famous Rialto Whiskey” and represented below with a back-of-the bar bottle.  The proprietor registered the name with the U.S. Patent Office in 1891.  As shown by the ceramic jug here he also appears to have sold spirits blended in his quarters

under his own name.

Van Shaack’s company became known in Chicago and the Midwest for his annual catalogue of many pages advertising its wares.  Customers were allowed just one and may have eagerly paged through each edition seeking the imaginative illustrations Van Schaack provided.  Perhaps the company’s best known illustration was one for sponges.  Shown below, it has been reproduced frequently through the years, appearing on T-shirts and caps.

Chicago Orphan’s Asylum

“The Old Salamander” also was an activist in his trade and in Chicago.  He served as first vice president of the National Wholesale Drug Assn., first vice president of the Central Drug Exchange and president of the Chicago, Drug, Paint and Oil Exchange.  He also served a term as a director of the Chicago Orphan Asylum and was a member of the Citizen’s Assn. of Chicago, a group that formed to secure the city against further disasters from fire.  It was responsible for laying the foundations of the water system and a modernized fire department.

Van Shaack also was kept busy on the home front.  His eldest son, John, had fallen in love with Florence Palmer, 17, one of four daughters of Captain Palmer of Covington, Kentucky, and reputedly the niece of Potter Palmer, a major Chicago land developer.  When Florence and John met at a social function in Chicago, the attraction was mutual.   Although his father objected to the marriage to Florence, presumably because of her age and erratic behavior, John married her anyway. The newlyweds moved to New York and had a son.  After seven years married, following an 1807 visit by John to his parents in Chicago, he failed to come home.  Florence told the press:  “I fear his father has influenced him to desert me.”

In a continuing saga that made headlines in Chicago and New York, Florence hired a well-known attorney and sued Van Schaack for $65,000 in damages for alienation of affection.  Tried in a New York court, the “Old Salamander” was found guilty and directed to hand over the $65,000.  Perhaps even worse from Van Schaack’s perspective, John, apparently out of concern for his own son, returned to Florence despite his father’s opposition.

As this “soap opera” marriage continued to attract press attention, Florence’s behavior became more bizarre.  She attempted an abortive stage career, then claimed that John was having an affair with an unnamed “countess” and that the other woman had attempted to poison her with a glass of champagne.  A police investigation labeled Florence’s charge “a dream.”  The couple divorced.  In April 1911, at the age of 53,  John died of an apparent heart attack while staying at a Washington, D.C. hotel.

None of his travails could curb Van Shaack’s zest for travel.  By 1894 he had taken ten voyages across the Atlantic.  With sons Robert and Cornelius to look after the business, he and Louise were free to enjoy extended trips to England and the Continent.   The Chicago Tribune reported:  “He has marked the progress of ocean travel from the thirty day trip to the seven day jump and anticipates crossing inside four days before he lays aside his traveling bag and spyglass.”

Van Schaack’s reputation as a wealthy American businessman opened doors for him abroad, among them that of William Gladstone, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Gladstone’s service spread over four non-consecutive terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894 — the most ever of any British prime minister.  The Van Schaacks appear to have encountered him not long after he had retired from politics and was living at his estate in Hardwarden, England.  

Gladstone invited the Van Schaacks to visit as Peter related to the Tribune upon the couple’s return to the U.S.. “He is rightly named the “Grand Old Man and while avoiding all references to politics or public matters, was brimming over with sociality,” said Van Schaack.  Gladstone showed the Van Schaacks a tree he had taken down a few days earlier that was being carved into keepsakes to be sold at a charitable fair by Mrs. Gladstone.  The Van Schaacks clearly had “arrived.”

Van Schaack, now approaching 70 continued to be listed as the head of the wholesale drug business he had founded and nurtured through three devastating  fires.  He died in December 1904.  After a private funeral in Chicago, his body was returned to his birthplace in New York for burial in the Manlius Village Cemetery. shown below.  Louise would join him there 13 years later.  In the meantime Peter’s sons guided the wholesale drug firm into the 20th Century.  The legacy of “The Old Salamander” lived on.

Note:  A wide variety of sources was employed to craft this vignette of Peter Van Schaack, among them stories in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.  Another major contribution was a biographical article in the January, 1889, issue of “The Pharmaceutical Journal.”

    

 

Born Joseph Geoffrion, Joseph Jefferson fled his French Canadian home as an eight-year old boy, depriving himself of an education and as an adult unable to read or write.  Signing his name with an X, Joseph, shown here, became an honored Civll War soldier and co-owner of a successful Springfield, Massachusetts, liquor house, able to give his children the good education he had been denied.

Joseph’s story began in February 1827 when he was born in Varennes, Quebec, the fourth of five sons of Julie Girard and Pierre Geoffrion.  The boy never knew his father who died when Joseph was three.  Soon after, his mother married again.  The stepfather resented the boys and treated them badly.  Joseph determined to run away to the United States.  Although the circumstances of the escape are not clear, this act ended any prospect of Joseph receiving formal education.   

Likely with one or more brothers, the boy crossed the border as early as 1835, to Plattsburgh, New York, and changed his name to Jefferson, just a short stretch from “Geoffrion.”  His early years are lost in the mists of history, but we know he never went to school.  Joseph comes to the public record in October 1845 in Plattsburgh when he married Adeline Venet in the Presbyterian Church.  Eight years later, after having three children, they repeated their vows in St. Peter’s Catholic Church, above.   Descendants have assumed that Joseph converted to Catholicism.  My guess is that as a French Canadian, he had been one from birth and was returning to the faith.

Joseph and Adeline would have seven children between 1847 and 1862, four boys and three girls.  Sadly, one would die in infancy and two others succumbed before reaching maturity.   Between 1858 and 1860 the family relocated to Chicopee, Massachusetts, where they opened a boarding house and accommodated eight residents.  Several years later the family pulled up stakes again and moved to Springfield, just four miles down the road. Shown below, it would be their permanent home. 

With the onset of the Civil War, Joseph’s age (37) and illiteracy did not prevent his enlisting in  the Union Army in August 1864.  In his earlier years he apparently had developed skills as a “moulder,” a skilled craftsman accustomed to shaping metal objects, i.e. cannon balls. He was inducted as a private in the 30th Massachusetts Unattached Heavy Artillery Regiment and sent to help garrison Washington , D.C. 

In July 1864 Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early had led 14,000 Confederate troops across the Potomac River into Maryland and then circled around to attack the Union capital from the north in what became known as the Battle of Fort Stevens.  Early and his men made a few probing runs at the fort, but quickly realized that even with their superior numbers, victory was impossible.  By the time Joseph arrived on the scene, however, any serious threat to the Nation’s Capitol was over.  He served for the remaining months of the Civil War and was discharged in June 1865.  In 1891, the 64-year old veteran would be awarded his Civil War pension.

Shortly after Joseph returned to Springfield, Adeline died, leaving him with a household of minor children.  Perhaps seeking a mother for his brood, he soon married Euphemia Anna Woods, shown here in middle age.  Thirteen years younger than Joseph, Euphemia was born in Quebec of French-Canadian parentage. She came to the U.S, in the late 1850s as a skilled weaver and worked in the mills of Ware, Mass.   It was her first marriage. Together they had four children between 1871 and 1880, two daughters and two sons, bringing Joseph’s total progeny to eleven. Called “Phebe,” a family biographer said of Euphemia: “She worked diligently raising her children, keeping house and running a boarding house.”

By this time Joseph had determined that a more profitable life style lay in selling liquor.  After an initial location at 45 Railroad Street, Joseph moved his saloon to larger quarters at 189 Main Street. He and his family and their boarders resided above the business.  By 1890, the saloon/boarding house had moved once again, this time to 67 Water Street. The residence now was called Jefferson House and a wholesale liquor business had been added to the saloon.  Subsequently called Jefferson & Sons, by 1894 the family enterprises moved once again to 10-12 Bridge Street. The sons involved were Charles and Albert from Joseph’s first marriage, now grown to maturity.

About 1896 the business was renamed once again, becoming Jefferson & Sons Restaurant and Saloon.   Having shucked themselves of the boarding house, Joseph and Euphemia for the first time in their married life were able to live apart from their business.  Their home, shown here, a  large three story residence located at 37 Palmer Avenue was large enough to accommodate them and the families of two daughters.  As they aged, it meant that the couple was surrounded by grandchildren.

For the next few years, Joseph continued to guide the fortunes of Jefferson & Sons, adding cigars, tobacco, billiards and pool to the food and drink available at Jefferson & Sons.  By 1910, Joseph had retired and his son Charles took over the liquor dealership, closing the saloon, restaurant and pool hall.  The company became Jefferson & Deely Wholesale Liquors.  This new partner was John J. Deely, a local businessman.  In a final move their establishment was relocated at 192 Worthington Street in Springfield.

The liquor enterprise featured two house brands, “Westbrook,” a whiskey, and “Worthington,” liquor that came as both bourbon and rye. Neither brand appears to have been trademarked by the Jeffersons.  Shown above is the colorful label of Westbook, depicting a man with a long pole fishing in a picturesque mountain stream.   For their Worthington brand the partners issued shot glasses to customers at the saloons, hotels, and restaurants of Springfield and environs.

 

Now retired and residing amid the family he had been denied as a child, Joseph lived to be 86 years old.   Honored as a Civil war veteran and the patriarch of the Jeffersons, after a five week illness, he died on April 7, 1913 and was buried at Saint Benedict’s Cemetery, Springfield, next to his first wife, Adeline.  Euphemia would join them there four years later.  Shown below is their joint tombstone.  The other side of the stone records the earlier deaths of six of the Jefferson children, each one a source of family grief.

A fitting summation to the life of this extraordinary man has been provided by an anonymous descendant:  “Joseph Jefferson left his home at a tender age, depriving himself of his intended religion, his inheritance and any education. This proud Civil War Veteran, foundry worker, moulder and businessman worked hard, lived a long life yet he signed his name with an X. His children by both marriages were given the benefits of public schools and advanced learning denied the 8-year-old boy who ran away and crossed the border to a better life in Plattsburgh and beyond.”   To this I can only add:  “May he rest in peace.”

Note:  This post would not have been possible without a detailed biography found on the Internet seemingly written by an anonymous descendant.  I am hopeful that a knowledgeable person will see this vignette and let me know the source so that adequate credit can be given.

 

                         

Foreword:  Several years ago I was contacted by a semi-retired employee of the Jim Beam-Suntory Co. asking me to do some research on the early years of the distillery with an emphasis on Jacob Beam, the founding father.  My efforts yielded some material but little new except for an article in German on Jacob’s origins.  Nonetheless, over time I have gather sufficient details to attempt to tell the story of the three early family members who set Beam bourbon on course to become America’s favorite.

Jacob Beam — The Founding Father.  The Beam story begins with  a family named Boehm, a reasonably common German name found in Europe and the United States.  This family had its roots in Protestantism, although the denominational identity is debated.  I belief the family were Mennonites, a religious body that was discriminated against in Germany. barred from Medieval craft guilds for their beliefs.  A significant number of adherents turned to the distilling and selling liquor.  In some places the terms “Mennonite” and “tavern” are said to have become synonymous.

Facing discrimination in their homeland, many Mennonites in the 1700s emigrated to the American colonies.  Known for their hard work and rigorous deportment, the Quaker leader, William Penn, welcomed these immigrants to Pennsylvania.  Extant data indicates that Jacob Böhm (ca. 1693-1781) was a Mennonite for his entire adult life. He was listed as an elder/deacon in the Mennonite church as early as 1755. 

One observer points out: “The migration of Mennonites from Europe to Pennsylvania in the early 1700s occurred for several reasons, including: increasing religious persecution in Europe, destruction of property and starvation due to the continual warfare among the dominant European powers of that day, the availability of land in Pennsylvania, and the sympathy of the English Quaker, William Penn.”   Among these Mennonites was Nicholas Boehm who arrived about 1752, about 20 years old.  He was accompanied by a wife, Margaretha Myers, and one or two children.  Early marriages were common among the Mennonites.

The family settled in Berks County.  There Nicholas is credited with changing the family name to “Beam” to “Americanize it.  Presumably a farmer, Nicholas also proved to be a prolific progenitor, fathering ten children. Jacob was the fifth in line, born in 1760.  Five years later his father, only age 29, died leaving his widow with a household full of minor children.  

Upon the invitation of Jost Myers, a close relative Margaretha moved to Frederick, Maryland, with her brood, living at Myer’s large plantation where her children grew up learning farming skills.  Says one source: It was in Frederick, Maryland, that Jacob Beam learned how to ferment grapes into wine, apples into hard cider and rye whiskey as a teenager.  Apparently too young for service in the Revolutionary War, Jacob stayed at farming.  In 1785 he married a local girl named Catherine (called “Mary”) Eagle.  Over the next 19 years, the couple would have ten children, four boys and six girls.

During the war, Jost Myers had provided important service to the American army.Because of his advanced age, my assumption is that Myers’ contribution was in the form of provisions for the troops.  In 1875 the new government under George Washington paid Myers back by giving him an 800 acre tract in the newly opened land of Kentucky.   When he died two years later, Jacob Beam laid claim to a slice of that land, subsequently divided into eight parcels of 100 acres each.  Jacob received one.

The thought of having his own land, even though unseen, fired Jacob Beam’s pioneer spirit.  Packing up his family,  in 1788 Jacob set out for Kentucky.  Covering most of the journey on foot, the young family navigated the Cumberland Pass through the Appalachian Mountains, traveling 550 miles to their destination in Kentucky.  It has been suggested that Jacob brought with them a pot still for making whiskey.  The Beans settled in Nelson County, whose seat was and is Bardstown.  

Jacob found much to like in his new setting, although clearing the land involved back-breaking work.  According to a Beam family account, the Mennonite farmer on his arrival found that a group of fifty Catholic families from Baltimore, led by Basil Hayden, many of them distillers, were his welcoming neighbors.  They were willing to share their knowledge.“The Beams…learned more about distilling whiskey.  After three years of bumper crops of corn and other grain products, Jacob began to distill his first whiskey in 1795.   After the whiskey he produced became popular in his home county (Nelson) and another next door (Washington), he started buying the other seven 100 acre tracts of land from his relatives. By 1810 Jacob owned all 800 acres and sent his first barrel of whiskey to New Orleans. They liked it so much that they started ordering more whiskey on a monthly basis.”  Thus the Beam family dynasty was born with whiskey labeled “Old Jake Beam Sour Mash.” 

Shown here in old age, Jacob died in October 1843 at the age of 83. He could hardly have imagined the nationally popular whiskey he had engendered. Jacob’s body was returned to Pennsylvania where he is buried in Honey Brook Cemetery, Chester County. His weathered tombstone is shown above.

David Beam — The Innovator.  As Jacob aged, three of his sons engaged in the whiskey making.  They were Jacob Beam Jr.,(1787-1844) who as an infant had made the arduous trip over the mountains, and two younger brothers, John Beam (1798-1834) and David Beam (1802-1854), born in Kentucky. They were among the first children born in the newly formed Commonwealth of Kentucky.  When Jacob retired at age 60 in 1820 he singled out 18-year old David as his successor.   

Said to be ‘as smart as a whip,” David Beam was highly conscious of the industrial advances going on around him. After Jacob named him the “distillery manager” in 1820.  David is said to have: “Expanded the distillery from a modest family business into a good sized factory, naming it the “Old Tub Distillery.”  David also had the distillery transition from pot stills to column stills, becoming one of the first companies to use column stills in 1820.”  A column still can sustain a constant process of distillation. This, along with the ability to produce a higher concentration of alcohol in the final distillate, is its main advantage over a pot still, only able to work in batches. 

During the 1830’s David began employing steamboats to transport Beam whiskey to major cities throughout the Mid-West including; Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and points south, including Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans. Throughout the 1840’s, David also used the newly emerging railroads to send his bourbon to many major and medium cities throughout the Midwest, Northeast and spreading out across the eastern half of the United States.

In 1824 David married Elizabeth Settle and they produced nine children.  After the death of Elizabeth, David married a woman named Elizabeth Cheatham and had two more children.  Three of David’s four sons went on to become master distillers. Joseph B. Beam, John H. “Jack” Beam, and David M.Beam all followed their father David and went into making bourbon as a career.  In contrast with his long-lived father, David died in 1854 at the age of 52.

Davd M. Beam — The Consolidator. David’s third son, David M. would continue the family business and become president with his father’s death.   At this point the name chosen for the operation was “The Old Tub Distillery” although, strictly speaking, the tubs had been retired in favor of the column still.  The name symbolized the bourbon tradition and that suited the Beams.  

According to a Beam website David M., “instilled hard work at the distillery.”  It fell to him to guide the family enterprise through the tumultuous years immediately leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War and through that wrenching conflict.  Kentucky was fractured with many of its young men fighting for the Confederacy and others for the Union.   Some Kentucky distilleries shut their doors during those years.  David M., by determined effort, was able to continue making whiskey during the conflict.

David M. “navigated the uncertainty of the times”  by moving the distillery closer to Bardstown and better access to railroad lines for more reliable shipping.  The move opened opportunities to reach many parts of the Nation after the cessation of the fighting.  The reputation of Beam bourbon whiskey was beginning to be recognized throughout America. David took the opportunity to add new brands to the distillery offerings.  They were “Pebble-Ford,”  “Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey,” “Belle of Kentucky, Blended Whiskey,” and “Clear Springs Bourbon.”

David M. was the father of James Beauregard “Jim” Beam, born in 1864 while the Civil War raged on.  His middle name, that of a Confederate general, indicates where his father’s sympathies lay in the conflict.  Jim was destined to take the distillery into the 20th Century and subsequently to have the whiskey named for him.  But that is another story for a later time.

Note:  This post draws from several websites maintained by the current ownership of the Jim Beam bourbon brand.  The post also makes use of my research done earlier for a Beam company historian.

With the world being on the cusp of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, gold medals are on many minds.   One  gold medal has been in my mind since I won it on an internet auction site.  Shown above, it actually is a bronze reproduction for use as a paperweight. The medallion has an interesting bas-relief design showing a woman wearing a crown, trailed by a small boy and a man carrying an ax who seem to be encountering three individuals dressed somewhat haphazardly in togas.  Not an easy message to decipher.

The clue to its identity lies in the writing below.  It represents a medal awarded at the “Exposition Internationale de Gand,”  that is, the World’s Fair in Ghent, Belgium, in 1913.  Such expositions tended to give out gold medals like lollipops in a kid’s barbershop to all kinds of products that bothered to participate and demonstrate their wares.  In this case, turning the medal over, shows — perhaps suprisingly — that this medal was awarded to the American whiskey maker,  Jack Daniel.

Depicted here on a paperweight,  in 1857 Daniel began his career as a teenage  apprentice to Dan Call, a man who was both a distiller and a Lutheran preacher in Tennessee.  After a visit from a female Prohibitionist the preacher gave up the distillery, located on interestingly-named Louse Creek, and Daniel took it over.  As early as age 14 he was making wagon trips as far as Huntsville, Alabama, to market his whiskey.  After service in the Civil War he was able to acquire distillery property near Lynchburg, Tennessee and about 1866 he registered with the state as Jack Daniel’s Distillery.  

Within a few years Daniel with his nephew Lem Motlow had build his whiskey business into one of the largest in the the United States.  Daniel believed in advertising and publicity.  When an international fair was held in Liege, Belgium, in 1905,  his whiskey was represented and won a gold medal.  By the time of the Ghent fair, however, Daniel, a bachelor, was dead, victim of a gangrenous injury in 1911.  Having no wife or children he left the distillery to Motlow.  The latter was of the same mind about publicity and took his whiskey wares to Ghent.

The Exposition was held on an area of 130 acres not far from the center of town, close to a recently completed railway station.  Renovations were made to a number of buildings in Ghent.  The construction is said to have been controversial and the fair ended on the eve of World War One when many Europeans were not in a fair-going mood   Despite having been sold to townsfolk as an economic boon,  the Ghent Expo ended seriously in debt.   By that time, however, Motlow was home in Tennessee savoring his gold medal.

The medal design was by Godefroid Devreese (sometimes given as “de Vreese”) Shown here, he was born at Courtrai, Belgium, in 1861. From the age of fifteen he practiced sculpture in the studio of his father, Constant Devreese, a well known Belgian artist.  At the time of the  Exposition,  the young Devreese was considered one of Europe’s outstanding sculptors in the mode of  “art nouveau.”  That style had been the rage during the latter part of the 19th Century but was slowly going out of fashion in the 20th.  Nonetheless, Devreese created his gold medal in the art nouveau mode.

It is worthwhile comparing the Devreese original with the Daniels reproduction.  A primary difference is in the backgrounds.   In the original the wall behind the figures is utterly plain.  It emphasizes the six figures shown.  The Devreese design indicates that the woman with a crown likely is greeting three Greek muses, probably those associated with music,  “Aoid”, song; “Melet,” practice, and “Mneme,” memory.  This may be why the boy behind the woman has is throwing flowers from a basket toward them.  Concertgoers know that performers are thrown flowers.  

None of this pageantry is evident in the Daniels paperweight.  There a pebbled background obscures the grace of Devreese’s design and makes it look clumsy and “heavy.”  Moreover, the molding of the figures on the reproduction is crude, particularly when compared with the elegant original.

Nevertheless, the Jack Daniel whiskey folks are proud of their medal, despite it having been awarded through a little known and apparently unsuccessful World’s Fair.  As further evidence the distillers included it on a shot glass of their issuance.  Shown here, it is rendered in gold and carries a reminder that it was bestowed on Jack Daniel at  “Ghent, Belgium, Gold Medal, 1913.”

The discovery of this glass opens a question:  Was the company bronze paperweight issued around the time of its award 111 years ago, dating that definitely would make it an antique? Or was it manufactured and distribute more recently?  I lean toward a later, possibly post-Prohibition date.  Although such signs sometimes can be misleading,  the item lacks the patina and evidence of wear that artifacts of that vintage might be expected to display.

Moreover, Jack Daniel’s is a whiskey producer that has outdone all of its U.S. rivals in the number and variety of paperweights it has issued since the end of National Prohibition.   I have collected no fewer than nine,  all of them circulated since 1935, and there are many more. Among those in my collection are an attractive etched black glass weight, decorated with ears of corn and sheaves of wheat, shown here. It carries a sticker on the back identifying it as a product of the Fenton Glass Works of Williamstown, West Virginia, one of America’s oldest and most successful.  Founded in 1905  Fenton glass appears to have weathered the onslaught of foreign competition and at least the last time I looked is still doing business under direction of the Fenton family.

The Jack Daniel’s crowd, however, do not always “buy American.”  Shown above is a weight that displays a variety of whiskey labels related to the Tennessee whiskey.  It bears a sticker on its felt-lined base that identifies it as from the “Waterfill Glass Collection.”   Research discloses that items so marked come from China.

Note:  Jack Daniel and his whiskey have been the subject of several posts on this website.  Others a reader may find of interest can be found Sept. 19, 2017, April 21, 2018, Nov. 26, 2019, Nov. 14, 2021, and Nov. 11, 2022.

To say that John McGlinn was a “multi-tasker” is something of an under estimation.  At his death in July 1926, this Irish immigrant was described in the press as president of the Philadelphia Brewing Co., president of the John McGlinn Distilling Company, president of the Baltimore Distilling Company, president of the Fairhill  Coal Company, president of the John McGlinn Building and Loan Company, vice-president of the Continental-Equitable Title and Trust Company, a director of the Integrity Title and Trust Company, and treasurer of the Catholic Standard & Times newspaper.  McGlinn’s career included being a principal in three successive Philadelphia liquor houses, where, according to an obituary, “the bulk of his estate was accumulated.”

Tracking the McGlinn story from the arrival of an immigrant youth on these shores to riches and recognition as a major Philadelphia businessman is complicated by the plethora of other McGlinns seemingly involved in the local liquor trade.  In 1845 this John McGlinn was born in Ireland, likely County Donegal, the son of Annie Kennedy and John McGlinn.  His birth coincided with the onset of Great Irish Potato famine that found many Irish departing for foreign shores.  McGlinn, however, was 24 years old when he left Ireland for America and residence in Philadelphia, arriving in 1869.

His early occupations in the City of Brotherly Love have gone unrecorded but I speculate that he found work among McGlinn kinfolk who were active in the whiskey trade.  He first comes to public notice in 1875 when he opened a small liquor store at 200 Brown Street, moving almost immediately to 736 North Second Street. There it was reported McGlinn “engaged in the retail liquor business in a small way.”  Within several years he recognized that creating and wholesaling  whiskey was a considerably more lucrative path to riches and directed his energies there.

About the same time he met a fellow Irish immigrant, William Boyle, a man with similar ideas.  Beginning in the early 1880s, they created a partnership called “Boyle & McGlinn, Sole Proprietors,”  located at 145-147 South Second Street.Then they went looking for a name for a flagship brand.  They found it close at hand in a social organization that had been created by Philadelphia newsmen who met at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, a landmark building in center city Philadelphia, shown here.  They called the group “The Clover Club.”  Perhaps the name reminded Irish proprietors of the shamrocks of the “Auld Sod.” They registered the name as their trademark whiskey.

Boyle and McGlinn soon became known as prolific advertisers, aiming for both wholesale and retail customers with larger than usual ads in a variety of motifs but all featuring Clover Club Whiskey. “It is the best” became a familiar mantra in the partners’ efforts to make their flagship brand among Philadelphia most popular liquors.  An 1889 ad, top right, featured three and four leaf clovers.  By 1897 the slogan for Clover Club, lower right, had become “It is liquid velvet.”  The advertising blitz vaulted Boyle & McGlinn into the front ranks of Philadelphia liquor dealers.

As McGlinn was building the business, he was also having a personal life.  Five years after he had arrived in Philadelphia, he married a local woman named Jennie McGlenn.  Given the varied spellings of the name it is possible Jennie, seven years younger than her husband, was a distant relative.  Over the next sixteen years the couple would have six children, sons, William, John Jr. and Joseph;  daughters, Marie, Regina, and Helen. In the 1900 census the household also contained Glinn’s mother-in-law and two Irish housemaids.

Their success as a liquor house suggested to Boyle and McGlinn that they should expand into making beer and the Philadelphia Brewing Company was born.  Boyle was president and McGlinn secretary-treasurer.  As shown in the two ads above the two Irishmen gave their beers distinctly German names.  Shown here is of a squat ale bottle bearing the embossed names of the partners.

The beginning of the 20th Century would bring important changes — and sorrows — to the life of John McGlinn.  In August 1901, Boyle, died suddenly while vacationing at his summer home in Spring Lake, New Jersey.  His body was brought back to Philadelphia where his funeral Mass was celebrated by the Catholic bishop of the diocese.  Boyle’s death was followed a few months later when McGlinn’s wife Jennie also passed away. 

The Irishman proved resilient.  In 1905 at the age of 58, he remarried.  His bride was a local woman named Mary E. Morgan, 52.  He also renamed the business  that he and Boyle had fostered, calling it the John McGlinn Distilling Company.  Despite the new name, the liquor house had not suddenly gone into making its own whiskey.  Rather, he was buying supplies from Pennsylvania and other distilleries for “rectifying” (blending) into his house brands.  Shown here is a certificate of purchase by McGlinn of 25 barrels of whiskey from the Alexander Young Company of Philadelphia. (See post on Young, January 7, 2015.)

Over the next five years McGlinn blossomed into a man of many occupations.  While continuing to look over his liquor house and brewery he became engaged in the financial sector, becoming heavily involved in several of Philadelphia’s building and loan organizations as an investor and member of their corporate boards.  At home, McGlinn’s household continued large.  According to the 1910 census, in addition to second wife, Mary, his son, John Jr., was living there and working for the liquor business.  Also in residence were two adult daughters and a teenaged son.  Rounding out the residents were two Irish servant women and a Maryland-born butler.  McGlinn clearly was prospering.

The Philadelphia Brewery

Over ensuing years, the Irish immigrant, now a fully credentialed American capitalist, continued to direct the commercial affairs of the John McGlinn Distilling Company and the Philadelphia Brewery.  As he entered his 70s, however, McGlinn’s health began to fail.  The diagnosis was “fatty degeneration of the heart.”  He died on June 11, 1916, in Philadelphia, a city he had called home for almost a half century, and was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery next to Jennie.  McGlinn’s obituary headline in the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger read:  “Well-Known Financier and  Liquor Dealer Dies.”

By this time two of his sons were prepared to take over the management of the family conglomerate.  William McGlinn became president of the McGlinn liquor interests and John Jr. was vice president.  With the coming of National Prohibition, the McGlinns shifted away from alcohol.  In 1925, John Jr. was listed in local directories as president of Continental-Equitable Title & Trust Company, Fairhill Ice Company and the Philadelphia Brewery, now producing soft drinks.  The liquor house that John McGlinn had created and nurtured was not revived by his sons with the repeal of Prohibition.  

Note:  This post was created from a wide range of Internet sources, with ancestry.com as the most important. 

A prior post (August 13, 2023) dwelt upon the use of children’s images to merchandise liquor, a pre-Prohibition practice that would certainly never be countenanced in contemporary America.  The examples of kids selling whisky continue to come to attention on ephemera such as trade cards, postcards, calendars and advertisements.   Shown here are another ten such items, along with commentary about their origins.

Louis Sommer was a Chicago druggist who featured an “in your face” depiction of a child hawking liquor.  Of all the ads shown here, Sommer’s is the only one showing a youngster holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a half-full glass in the other, suggesting that the tyke might have had a nip or two.  Sommer, who also used the brand name “Jim Dandy Whiskey,”  is listed in business selling drugs and whiskey from 1904 until 1918 when likely closed down by prohibitionary pressures.  

The second child shown here, obviously is gifted in being able compose in English. She is advertising two brands from Applegate & Sons, a firm founded by a Kentucky colonel named C. L. Applegate.  The Colonel first forges onto the scene in 1876 when he and a brother, Edward, purchased land in the small town of Yelvington in Daviess County.  There about 1878 they constructed a distillery.  Information from insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the Applegate property included a two frame warehouses, both with metal or slate roofs. Warehouse “A” was 115 ft north of the still house, warehouse “B” was 107 ft south. The distillery itself was constructed similarly. The property also included cattle and a barn.

The golden haired terminally cute child shown next appears on a oval metal serving tray advertising The Jacob Pfeffer Co., Cincinnati OH. Brands on the tray include Zeno, Tippecanoe and Lenox.  Pfeffer who was in business from 1876 to 1918.  He advertised as a “rectifier and wholesale liquor dealer and dealer of imported and domestic brandies and wines.  Admitting that he was a “rectifier,”  that is, a blender and compounder of whiskies, set him apart from other  dealers who disliked admitting that they truly were not distillers.

The hooded child that follows is shown in a trade card by the seashore where despite the cold, she has been digging in the sand.  This item  is from Andrew M. Smith who was was born in Denmark, came to the U.S. as a merchant sailor, served in three different outfits in the Civil War, and moved West.  He opened the first California Wine Depot in Salt Lake City, Utah, then moved to Philadelphia where his enterprise failed.  He then set up in Minneapolis in 1886 and found success. Smith died in 1915 but his son, Arthur Mason Smith took over the business.  Smith’s company used the brand names, “Amsco,” “Fine Old U.S. Cabinet Rye,” “Flour City Rye,” “Golden Buck,”  “Harvester,” and “Pennant.”

A greeting card showing a small boy urinating in the snow to spell “Good Luck”  may have had a secondary message.  The Bonnie brothers, whiskey dealers of Louisville, Kentucky, initially were four.  After the eldest retired, Ernest Bonnie, the youngest and still in his 30s, wanted out.   The remaining two Bonnies bought him out for $70, 000, more than a million in today’s dollars.  For that compensation Ernest sold all interest in the business and in the brand names. Unlike his brother, however, Ernest had no intention of retiring from the whiskey trade. Taking two Bonnie Bros. employees with him, he shortly thereafter went into competition with his siblings using the name, E.S. Bonnie  Company and continued use of the Bonnie name.  I surmise this card was Ernest’s subtle way of “sticking it” to his brothers.

The next image of a tyke is that of a lad who apparently has had a successful effort at spear fishing or, alternatively, has stolen a barrel of dead fish.  It appeared on a trade card issued byL. R. Cain who advertised himself as a wholesale and retail dealer in wines, liquors and cigars in Decatur, Illinois.  His featured brand was Old Gum Springs Hand-Made Whisky.  Cain’s card indicates that he also was proprietor of a saloon.  He advertised “a good, substantial lunch every day.”

The three child images to follow feature two children, in each case a boy and girl, but in distinctly different modes.  The first, a 1906 calendar advertising Export Pony Whiskey, uses a design by Ellen Clapsaddle, a noted illustrator of children.  She is credited with more than 3,000 greeting cards and her images of children continue to be popular.  (See my post on her, March 2, 2012). Here she has given us two youngsters having a tete-a-tete across a stone fence.  This calendar was issued by the U.S. Bar, located in Los Angeles.

Old Maryland Dutch Whiskies issued a series of trade cards, often depicting children.  The company itself is something of a mystery, claiming to be located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore but failing to show up in any directories.  It is possible that the brand name came from a Baltimore rectifier who chose to remain anonymous.  Some of the assertions made on the card are novel.  They include: “When not taken immoderately, there will be an entire absence of Nervous Prostration.”   And “Emphatically ‘The Whiskey of our Daddies.’”

What are we to think of a card that shows two kids dress as adult, of whom the boy is throwing coins into a hat with no crown being held by a frog in a suit.  The trade card includes a poem that fails to help with an interpretation:  “Children cry, Papa’s dry, And wants some Sour Mash Rye.”   The flip side of the card advertised Schwartz & Malmbach’s “famous” whiskey as sold by J.E. Hughes, the proprietor of the Central Hotel in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.  Hughes obviously ran a saloon along with the hotel and also asserted “Good Livery attached.”  Your horse was well cared for while you were drinking.

The last image is an 1897 ad from Green River Whiskey and shows the five children of a proud distilling father,  John McCulloch.  McCulloch, a former U.S. revenue agent, shucked his federal career when the opportunity arose for him to buy an Owensboro, Kentucky, distillery.  He built the whiskey into a well-recognized national brand.  Among his strategies was vigorous advertising.  These children are not from an artist’s imagination but portraits of real people. At left, the boy hugging the baby is his McCulloch’s eldest son, Wendall.  The baby is his brother, Charles.  Below them are two other brothers, on left is John Wellington, Jr. and on right, Hugh.  Standing at right is his daughter and the oldest child, Martine.  Several of his sons as adults followed him into the whiskey trade.

There they are, ten more examples of selling whiskey by using the images of children.  As unthinkable as it is in our age, the practice was common in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and apparently a successful merchandising strategy since it was so frequently used.

Notes:   More complete treatment of several of the “whiskey men” cited here may be found elsewhere on this website:   Applegate & Sons, July 21, 2012;  Jacob J. Pfeffer, December 15, 2015; A.M. Smith, May 19, 2013; E. S. Bonnie, April 29, 2014;  John McCulloch, April 1, 2014.

 Foreword:  For years Steve Abbott has been an excellent historian of antique bottles whose many informative articles have graced the pages of collector magazines.  Although I have featured a number of guest authors on this website, I have never had a contribution from Steve.  Recently I was researching a story about Michael Cronan, a liquor dealer of Sacramento, California, when I encountered an article on Cronan that Steve published in the December 2018 issue of “Bottles & Extras” magazine.  His story offered an opportunity to recognize the many contributions Steve has made to whiskey history.   He graciously has allowed me to abridge and adapt his text for presentation here.

Michael Cronan

Michael Cronan, Sacramento whiskey and soda dealer, was too ill in the early fall of 1908 to attend the funeral of one of his best friends in San Francisco, so he sent his son Joseph in his stead.  San Francisco cemeteries are mostly at the edge of town in Colma, San Mateo County.  The horse drawn funeral proceeded through a drizzle along the dirt road, stopping at taverns, not necessarily saloons, every so often to water the horses and warm the mourners.

At the last stop, Malloy’s, the bereaved went inside for a final toast to the deceased friend.  Then, one of the sentimental Irishmen thought how unkind it was for the living to be having a drink inside a warm tavern while the deceased lay in a hearse out in the rain.  So the boys brought their friend in from the cold.  Not only did they bring him in, but they took him out of his coffin, stood him by the fireplace, and toasted him for the last time, hopefully with a glass of Irish dew.

This story was passed down by Joseph Cronin whose son “Bud,” passed it on to this writer.  It is a great story from an Irish family whose American origiins began with Mike’s birth in Caven County, Ireland, December 12, 1846.  Family history says that he probably came from a farm family and immigrated in the late 1860’s.  Mike worked in mills of some sort in the East, then worked his way to California, where he was employed on a railroad route headed to the Bay Area.  Somehow, and it seems to be true of other early immigrants, he came up with a substantial amount of cash., which the family says was about $10,000.  With this money in 1872 Mike bought his way into the Brooklyn Hotel at 85 Front Street (address pre-1880) Sacramento.

Within three years, he went into business with Hugh Casey, the son-in-law of Owen Casey, the proprietor of Eagle Soda works, and together Hugh and Mike morphed that business into Casey-Cronan at 50 Front Street (218 Front Street post 1880).  They were not only business partners, but best friends, Hugh being Mike’s best man at his wedding to Julia O’Brien in 1875.  At some point Hugh decided to go back to Ireland for a few years and Mike began his liquor dealership in 1887 at 230 K Street, a building earlier occupied by whiskey distributors Hall, Luhrs and Mazzini Bros., then Cronan, Cronan-Wissemann, and later George Wissemann.  The earliest ephemera for this budding  company is a forwarding card which would be sent to retailers when Mike would be in their vicinity for sales.  

By 1887 Mike had gone into business under his own name, M. Cronan.  Circa 1898 Mike decided to take an up-and-coming German businessman, George Wissemann, as a partner.  The merger of Irish and German immigrants did not last past 1900 when Wissemann stayed at the 230 K Street location and Mike, incorporated as Cronan & Company, moved to 323 K Street.  Upon splitting with Wissemann the company incorporated with Mike owning 365 shares, his wife Julia with 5 shares, his sister Anna Blanche with 5 shares and two investors, Thomas Kennedy and Thomas O’Neil with 12.5 shares each.  According to information passed through the family, Mike knew that national prohibition was coming and had already become law in some states. 

 

Sharing his risk and welcoming the investments of two other Irishmen (Kennedy and O’Brien) seemed prudent.  Plus Mike wanted day-to-day help running the business.  Apparently Mike did not keep an agreement with Kennedy who was paid a salary, but whose dividends in the company were not paid off in cash but used to pay off his investment in the company.  When Mike died and the estate was settled, Kennedy sued the estate for what he considered to be his share and won.

Michael Cronan’s part of the whiskey business came to an end on November 10, 1908, when, as the Sacramento Bee so delicately put it, Mike “dropped dead.” He was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery.  The company was worth between $50,000-$75,000, had a good credit rating, and paid good wages according to the Dunn credit rating reports.  The company continued until 1911 when Mike’s widow closed shop, moved to San Francisco, and tended to her business interests in Sacramento and elsewhere.

Michael Cronin’s life spanned his youth on an Irish farm, then in America as a mill and railroad worker, hotel owner, liquor dealer, property owner, and Sacramento businessman.  He was a true “Lad of the Old Sod,” who applied an immigrant’s ambition, risk, hard work, and left part of his legacy to those of us who collect bottle related objects and who try to preserve some of the history related to them.

Notes:  My thanks to Steve Abbott for allowing me to bring his narrative about Michael Cronin back to attention. Steve provides an informative story about a successful immigrant “whiskey man” that fits well with the purpose of this website. Most of the images shown here are from the original article.  Two other liquor dealers mention in Steve’s text have been featured in past posts on this website:  Hall, Luhrs, May 1, 2015, and George Wissemann, July 18, 2016.

John Daum

John Daum, immigrant, Civil War veteran, father of seven, and prosperous businessman of Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1881 faced a stark dilemma. Swayed by prohibitionist zealots like the hatchet-swinging Carrie “Carry” Nation, Kansas voters by 92,302 to 84,304 had prohibited all manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.  As a liquor dealer, Daum, shown here, was facing the devastating loss of his livelihood. What he did next took him into uncharted territory — and the Supreme Court of Kansas.

Daum’s story began in April 1840 with his birth in Hesse-Darmstadt.  His father was a blacksmith who taught him the trade.  In 1858 at age 19 the youth opted to emigrate to the United States and chose Saint Louis, a city with a large German population, as his destination.  There he found work as a hand in the engine rooms of steamboats that plied the rivers of mid-America.  In 1860, his ship docked for the winter on the Mississippi at Leavenworth, giving Daum considerable time to explore the city.

Founded in 1854 as the first community incorporated in the Kansas Territory,  Leavenworth, shown above, and its adjunct military installation, Fort Leavenworth, became animportant stop for thousands of pioneer wagons heading west to the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.  The city bustled with activity providing supplies to the travelers.  Baum liked the place and vowed to come back.

With the onset of the Civil War, however, Baum returned to St. Louis where he joined  Union Army as a member of the First Missouri Light Artillery.   Each company served as an individual battery, often separated from the other batteries in the regiment, making it difficult to know exactly in which battles Baum was engaged.  He is said to have fought at  the Battle of Shiloh, shown here, and at sites in Kentucky and Tennessee.  Because the First Missouri was located behind the front lines, casualties were light — only one enlisted man and no officers killed at Shiloh.  Baum apparently emerged from the war unscathed. Honorably discharged in 1864 he headed to Leavenworth.

Baum’s first recorded employment there was with Carney & Fenlon, grocers who were specialists in stocking pioneer wagons, including supplying them with whiskey.  Thomas Carney was a former governor of Kansas and several times elected mayor of Leavenworth.  With partner Edward Fenlon, he had built one of the largest wholesale grocery houses in the Midlands, operating a four story building and cellar crammed with goods in downtown Leavenworth and a large warehouse adjacent to both the Mississippi River and the railroad.  Company sales extended to Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Montana and New Mexico.  The partners saw something special in Union veteran Baum and raised him to stock manager.

Baum seemingly was drawn to the whiskey trade, however, and by 1866 had moved to employment as a clerk with A. McDonald & Company, a Leavenworth liquor store.  From that position,  about 1872 he moved to a partnership with a local named John Hannon to open a wholesale liquor house located at 113 North Fifth Street.  The partners called it Hannon & Baum. 

During this post-war period Baum was living the bachelor life, residing at Leavenworth’s Pennsylvania House hotel.  That was to change drastically about 1867 when he suddenly decamped to New York City to wed a woman named Mary German.  My guess is that their marriage occurred shortly after Mary arrived by ship in the U.S. from Germany.  Both about 27 years old, the couple may well have been childhood sweethearts.  

Returning to Leavenworth, Baum and Mary would have two children, William born in 1868 and Otto, 1871.  In fragile health Mary died in 1875, only 35 years old, leaving John to care for youngsters seven and four years old.  The following year, likely seeking a mother for his children, Baum married a second time.  She was 26, a local Leavenworth woman named Sophia Marie Endebrock, shown here.  Over the next nine years the couple would add four more sons and a daughter to the Baum household. 

Meanwhile, like a dark cloud on the horizon, Carrie Amelia Nation, aka “Cyclone Carry,” who became internationally famous as an American prohibitionist, moved to Kansas.  Although the state constitution prohibited alcohol sales, in many Kansas towns the law was ignored.  Saloons and liquor stores operated openly.  “Mrs. Nation launched a one-woman campaign against alcoholic spirits carrying a hatchet and a Bible. She prayed for fallen souls and left hatchet marks on bars.”

After demolishing a hotel bar in Wichita and destroying its liquor, Carrie roved Kansas smashing saloons and frequently being arrested.  Her visit to Leavenworth in 1901 was reasonably benign.  Leaving her hatchet behind, Carrie was given a police escort that kept close watch as she visited several sites, staying at the National Hotel.   As related by a city guidebook:  “…After being shown to her room.  , the saloon on the first floor was opened and did a brisk business, largely because of the many people who had turned out to see Cyclone Carry, as she was called by the newspapers.”  A postcard, showing the hotel, commemorated her visit to Leavenworth.

Although Carrie Nation’s trip to Leavenworth was uneventful, her prohibitionist activities were spurring state and local officials to enforce laws banning alcohol.  Baum faced an immediate deadline for shutting down his liquor business.  He did not hesitate to act.  The answer lay in a bridge over the Mississippi River to a location in Missouri called “Stillings.”  Not really a town, Stillings was a largely unpopulated geographical expression with a post office.  With several other Leavenworth liquor dealers, Baum moved his operation and supplies a few miles east to Stillings.

While continuing to live in Leavenworth and advertise in its newspapers, Baum was able to conduct his liquor business unimpeded in reliably “wet” Missouri.  Kansas residents had only to pick up the phone, dial 410, place an order, and within hours bottles or jugs of liquor would be delivered across state lines to their door.  U.S. courts generally had established that the Interstate Commerce Act (ICA) required unimpeded state-to-state trade, in effect undermining local and even state “dry” laws. Shown above and below are Baum jugs in several sizes marked with a Stillings logo.

Soon the forces of “dry” attempted to end the flow of alcohol from Stillings.  State authorities took Baum and four other liquor dealers to court, claiming violations of law.  After a lower Kansas court found for the defendants, the state’s attorney general and the Leavenworth county attorney appealed to the Supreme Court of Kansas.  The case was heard during July 1911.  The prosecution argued that the Stillings origin of liquor was a “subterfuge”  and that “certain wagons…with horses or mules hitched thereto and drivers thereon” were bringing liquor illicitly into Leavenworth.   This was not interstate commerce, the state contended, but “…Purely and simply…devices, shifts and subterfuges to avoid and violate the said prohibitory laws of said state of Kansas.”  

The Kansas Supreme Court disagreed.  The “whiskey express” over the Mississippi River was protected by the ICA.  The liquor traffic from Stillings continued. Two years later, however,  the Webb-Kenyon Act adopted by Congress exempted liquor from its provisions.  During the next four years, as the legislation was challenged in the courts, Baum could continue serving his customers.  Upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1917,  Webb-Kenyon, still on the books today, effectively ended the Stillings safe haven for Baum and the others.

Baum’s gambit apparently had minimal effect on his standing in Leavenworth where he was hailed as an early resident who “figured prominently in the expansion and growth of the city.”   Among his achievements was as a founding member and officer of the local GAR, an organization of Union Civil War veterans; an organizer and trustee of the Leavenworth Turnverein, a German athletic club, and a principle donor to building Turner Hall, below.  Baum also was reported to have “amassed considerable wealth and property.”

Baum took a particular interest in Leavenworth’s Greenwood Cemetery where he was buried following his death in 1935.  In his later years he kept the wooden gate to the cemetery locked as he reportedly “lovingly” cared for the burying grounds where rested his first wife, Mary, and other kinfolk.  Said to have feared that when he died “the property would spiral into ruin,” Baum proved to be prescient. Greenwood, among the first cemeteries in Kansas, was allowed to languish until 2022 when it was named to the roster of National Historical Places. Currently steps are being taken to restore the burying ground as a Leavenworth landmark.

A final word about Carrie Nation who returned to Leavenworth for a second time only in 1911.  Her saloon smashing days were over.  She was brought to a hospital in the city by a nephew and, very ill, died there five months later.  Ironically, Carrie, the prohibition zealot, subsequently was buried in reliably “wet” Missouri, while Baum, the liquor dealer, is buried in Kansas where “dry” restrictions today continue to be among the most stringent in America.

Note:  A number of resources were used in telling John Baum’s story.  The two most significant were his biographies in the March 1886 Leavenworth Times newspaper and a National Park Service document on Greenwood Cemetery.