American Whiskey History

Journalists expose whiskey frauds in 1868.

Just after the Civil War, a New York investigative journalist from “The World” went into groceries and saloons and took samples away for analysis. Their purpose was to show consumers what they were actually eating and drinking. We often think that the Food and Drug Act in 1906 was the first time that the American people were confronting false advertising and questioning the contents of their food and drink, but these concerns began quite early for our country. Dishonesty from salesmen to squeeze those few extra cents/dollars from the consumer was not new, but it was becoming more commonplace as small communities grew into bustling towns and cities. Inventors in the early 1800s were marketing various meters that could be used to examine products and detect fraud. Hydrometers were available, but they were expensive and only really utilized by government inspectors when barrels were sold wholesale to retailers. Port cities like New York and Baltimore passed acts of legislature in the early 1800s which required that all spiritous liquors offered for sale undergo inspection by a gauger and be stamped with a designation revealing the proof of a container’s contents. Once whiskey was in the retailer’s hands, however, it was hard to know what they were serving their customers. New York had always been large, and unscrupulous retail salesmen were always a concern, but there was nothing to really regulate truth in labeling.

With exposes like this one in “the World”, people were starting to pay attention. It is rather odd that the proof of whiskeys were able to be dropped so significantly- from 50% to 30% without much notice. It may speak to the denseness of the spirit in those days which may have allowed it to hold up when diluted, but it’s difficult to truly know without more information. The first consumer protection laws were introduced a little over a decade later- in 1879, when Congressman Hendrick B. Wright of Pennsylvania made the first push for national legislation governing adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs. Hundreds of other regulations were passed over the next 30 years, finally culminating in The Food and Drug Act in 1906. The hard work of journalists went a long way toward exposing frauds and conmen who were taking advantage of the success earned by honest liquor men.

The origin story of the Gibson Distillery near Belle Vernon, Pa is closely tied to Jacob Spears, the “father of bourbon.”

The land upon which the Gibson Distillery (later Moore & Sinnott) was built was sold to John Gibson by Noah W. Spears in 1853. Noah’s father (also named Noah) was the founder of the borough of Belle Vernon. His grandfather, Henry Spears, and grandmother, Regina Froman, moved the Spears family from Virginia to the Monongahela Valley in 1772. Their farm would later become known as Gibsonton Mills.

Henry and his sons (Jacob, Solomon, Henry, and Noah) were all skilled distillers, so Gibson’s decision to buy the Spears farm was made with the knowledge that the site had already been producing whiskey for 8 decades. In all likelihood, John Gibson had been sourcing the rye whiskey stocks he was selling in Philadelphia directly from the Spears family for years before purchasing the property.

Henry Spears died after being kicked by a horse just one year after settling onto the property (1773) beside the Monongahela River, but the log cabin he built for his family was preserved on the distillery property until about 1880. (The cabin was near the brick residence of the distillery’s manager, T.L. Daly.) Jacob Spears, Henry’s son, was a pioneer settler of Kentucky and the founder of the Spears family in that state. He left the family’s homestead near Belle Vernon soon after his father’s death (around 1775) and headed south, finally settling near Paris in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Jacob Spears is often credited with giving bourbon its name and is referred to as the “father of bourbon.” What is often left out of his famous origin story is that Jacob was taught to distill by his father, who had been a distiller of RYE whiskey, not corn whiskey. The style of whiskey being manufactured by Spears was probably similar to that of George Washington, who was ALSO a rye whiskey distiller from Virginia.

How local, “ground roots” efforts brought Prohibition to the national stage.

While we tend to associate Prohibition with the 1920s, the individual states had their own temperance laws set in place decades earlier. The earliest efforts to be rid of alcohol use by town and county governments began almost a century earlier- in New England during the 1830s. Local option laws were used to vote alcohol out of communities. What are/were local option laws? A local option is the ability of local political jurisdictions, typically counties or municipalities, to allow decisions on certain controversial issues to be enforced within their borders, usually referring to a popular vote. If you were in the voting minority, there was little recourse to be had once the law has passed. These local options were particularly useful to groups that wished to push an unpopular political agenda- If you could get the votes, it didn't matter what the majority of citizens wanted. Today, we see local option laws used for anything from ma*****na use and pandemic or environmental ordinances to women’s healthcare.

Maine became the first state to ban alcohol in 1851, setting off a national prohibition trend. Oregon, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont went dry the next year and seven other states and one territory had prohibited alcohol by 1855. After the Civil War, the temperance movement was steadily gaining speed and more universal acceptance. Powerful controlling interests in the liquor industry were huge tax contributors, so their close ties with their state’s government often held the local option laws at bay. However, once the Anti-Saloon League determined that the way to achieve national Prohibition was to continue to work on the local level, more and more counties, even in very wet states like Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Illinois, and Kentucky began to go dry.

In 1887, Texas sought state-wide Prohibition through local option. Pennsylvania would seek state-wide Prohibition two years later in 1889. Neither would be successful attempts at state-wide bans, but the temperance forces were not going to give up easily. They only needed 36 of the 48 states to force through a national ban on alcohol, so they went back to work. Dominoes continued to fall, and by 1917, a Constitutional amendment for National Prohibition was assured. It may have taken a long time, but a small minority opinion was able to obtrude itself upon the American populace by its promoters chipping away at the local level. (Today, about 2/3 of the population drink alcohol at least once a year, but before Prohibition, that number was likely higher due to alcohol’s widely accepted medicinal use.) By 1919, powerful men with controlling liquor interests redirected their efforts toward cornering the market in other ways. A handful of men were able to use the fervor of temperance to their own advantage. It didn't matter if they believed in the message behind the temperance movement, they stood to benefit financially from the immediate elimination of their competition- something they failed to achieve on their own (and they tried!) in an openly competitive marketplace.

I love this image printed in the Pottsville Republican on Nov. 4, 1909.
This ad shows a bartender/hotel owner pulling a cork from a bottle of J. Martin Rye, and it's telling you about the smell of the whiskey once you pull the cork. How great is that?! Whiskey geeks have always known that the nose of a whiskey is the first sign of a great whiskey. "J. Martin" was one of those old rye whiskey brands that had been around since the mid 19th century, before the Civil War. It was a trusted old brand like "Old Baker" or "Old Crow," though it had been used by so many companies that it's hard to know where the name originated. As popular as the brand had been, it did not survive Prohibition.

.Martinrye

Pennsylvania's President was a Rye Whiskey Drinker.

James Buchanan, our 15th US President, was the only native Pennsylvanian to hold our highest office. He’s also been referred to as one of America’ worst presidents because he was the guy that led our great nation into the Civil War, and he’s never going to win any awards for that. He was also followed by Abraham Lincoln, arguably America’s greatest president, so the shadow cast over his term is a long one. But politics and general likeability aside, Buchanan was a Pennsylvanian, with all the contradictions and complications that distinction brings. He was also the last president to be born in the 18th century. James Buchanan was born in 1791, the year our nation enforced the first excise tax on liquor which led to Western Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. He was the only president to ever remain a life-long bachelor, and his nickname was "Ten Cent Jimmy" because he stated during his campaign that 10 cents a day was plenty for an average working man to live on. Buchanan may not have been a great (or even good) political leader, but he was certainly a memorable figure in America’s whiskey history. His love for rye whiskey has made him, at the very least, memorable as a Pennsylvanian.

Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, a small community in Peters Township, Franklin County. When Buchanan assumed the presidency in 1857, Cove Gap distillery owner, David Unger, set down a special barrel of pure rye whiskey for him. David Unger manufactured double-distilled pure rye whiskey in fire-heated copper pot stills from the late 1850s until his death in 1862. Unger sent the barrel to Buchanan when it reached 3 years, and a short while later, received $75 in an envelope from an anonymous sender. A neighbor pointed out that the handwriting on the note to David was James Buchanan’s. A newspaper article in the Public Opinion explained that the 15th president “never allowed any expense of any entertainment at the White House to be paid out of the public funds, but always insisted that what his salary did not pay for must be paid from his own private purse.” The assumption was obvious that the president was thankful for the gift but didn’t wish to be thanked publicly.

It was well-known that James Buchanan Jr. liked his rye whiskey. In fact, written records reveal that his favorite rye whiskey was made by Lancaster County distiller, Jacob Baer. The Baer family had been making rye whiskey in Hempfield, Pennsylvania since the mid-1770s, so when a young James Buchanan moved to Lancaster to pursue a legal career in 1809 (Lancaster was the state capital until 1812), he must have found Baer’s rye whiskey very much to his liking. When Buchanan became a US Senator in the mid-1830s, he bought his whiskey weekly, in 10-gallon quantities, directly from Jacob Baer. A journalist and political contemporary, John W. Forney, wrote of Buchanan’s taste for alcohol;

“The Madeira and sherry that he had consumed would fill more than one old cellar, and the rye whiskey that he has ‘punished’ would make Jacob Baer’s heart glad.”

It’s not an unlikely coincidence that Baer’s “J.B. Whiskey” was Buchanan’s favorite because the men shared the same initials. Forney also remarked on Buchanan’s ability to seem immune to inebriation. He described Buchanan as being able to consume large amounts of rye whiskey or madeira without showing any physical signs of drunkenness. This façade wouldn’t last, of course, because James Buchanan suffered from excruciating gout later in life, brought on by a diet of rich foods and overindulgence in alcohol.

There were huge, vaulted wine cellars beneath the Brooklyn Bridge that once housed millions of dollars in wine.

America’s domestic wine market was slow to establish itself in the 19th century. Most of the wine consumed in the U.S. was imported by wholesale wine/liquor firms, but America didn’t have wine caves for long term storage like those in Europe. Warehouses often damaged the quality of delicate imported vintages. In New York, however, a brilliant solution presented itself while the Roebling family began laying the foundations for the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1876, on either side of New York’s East River, construction began on the foundations for the ramps leading toward the bridge. The costs of building the bridge continued to skyrocket, and one of the solutions Roebling found to collect funds for the project was to offer space to rent below the structure. The vaulted arches of the support structure were dark, cold, and protected- not ideal for people or offices, but perfect for the storage of wine! The Luyties Brothers, who had been building their reputation for imported wines in New York since 1866 were quick to take advantage of the space on the Manhattan side. (John Rackey’s Wine Establishment used most of vaults on the Brooklyn side.) Gerhard and Henry E.G. Luyties had been enlarging the capacities of their warehouses over the years, relocating their business every 6 or 7 years to accommodate their growth. When the bridge vaults were opened in the late 1870s, the Luyties Bros. were at Broadway and Duane Sts. (150-152 Duane St.)

By 1894, the Luyties Brothers were merging their business with that of Mr. Gustav Amsinck. Amsinck’s wine business was handled by William Kessler, a wholesale merchant from Queens. Together, they formed Luyties Bros. & Kessler. Gerhard Luyties conducted their export business from Hamburg, Germany while Henry Luyties and Kessler handled the business in New York. Amsinck became a silent partner after the merger. The vaults beneath the bridge continued to expand as the bridge was updated, and by the turn of the century, Luyties Bros. & Kessler were using all 22 of the arched vaults (on the Manhattan side). They spent years and a small fortune to upgrade the vaults with electricity and elevators. They painted the walls with decorative murals, scrolled mottoes in French, German, and Italian, and named each vault after a street with a European and/or epicurean twist. (Avenue Sichel Bordeaux, Avenue Les Deux Oefs, Avenue Regaud, Avenue Des Chateaux Haut Brion, etc.) There was even a shrine to the Virgin Mary that had been imported from the Pol Roger cellars Epernay, France! By the turn of the century, Luyties Bros. & Kessler were huge with their main sales office in the new Astor Building at Broadway and Prince Sts which had its own cellars and sub-cellars.

Prohibition closed the wine cellars, but the caves continued to be used for storage by the city and by “The World” newspaper. They reopened in 1933 and Anthony Oechs & Co. importing firm moved in. The vaults were purchased in 1936 by the Hearn department store which advertised its use by Oechs and encouraged people to visit and tour the labyrinth beneath the bridge. A note on the entrance wall read, “A house having a great wine stored below lives in our imaginations as a joyful house, fast and splendidly rooted in the soil.” (a quote from “The Egoist” by George Meredith, the Victorian poet)

The vaults would eventually close to the public and become the property of the city of New York. The anchorages are still used for storage, but most people have completely forgotten that the bridge's vast network of wine cellars ever existed at all.

Locations for Walters properties.

While researching the Walters of Baltimore, I found I wanted to know exactly where the family was operating.

William T. Walters lived at 65 Mount Vernon Pl. (Today, that same address is 5 W. Mount Vernon Pl.) The Walters Museum, built by William and his son, Henry “Harry” Walters, was built directly behind his home, with its main entrance on Washington Place. Mount Vernon was a very prominent neighborhood where some of the wealthiest members of Baltimore society lived. It was called Mount Vernon after the monument to George Washington at its center, the oldest monument dedicated to him in the country. The monument is a column with a statue of Washington perched at its top. After returning to Baltimore from his escape to Europe during the Civil war, Walters purchased a property north of the city which would become known as “St. Mary’s”, an Italianate mansion which served as his summer residence. It was located north of the city near the site of Morgan State University today. The 130-acre property extended form Woodbourne Ave. north to Belvedere Ave. There, he raised imported waterfowl, chickens, cattle, and French Percherons, a breed of draft horse he helped to popularize in the United States. Today, some of the land was preserved to make Chinquapin Run Park.

We discussed the fact that William T. Walters began as a commission merchant in Baltimore on Commerce Wharf with Samuel Hazlehurst. Their warehouse had access to the railroad and the harbor. The wharf no longer exists as it once did, but it was essentially an extension of Commerce Street out into the harbor. Today, you’ll find Baltimore’s World Trade Center sitting in its place. The building you see in 1850s ads for W.T. Walters & Co., listed as 68 Exchange Place, was on Lombard street, about a block away from the harbor. “Exchange Place” was the center of maritime commerce in the city, bounded by Gay Street, Lombard Street, and Water Street. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in the fire of 1904 and no longer stands today.

Edwin Walters originally sourced whiskey from Henry Boecker whose distillery was at Hudson Street and 3rd Avenue in Canton. His Orient Distillery, which he purchased in the mid-1860s, was in also Canton (about 8 blocks south) at Clinton Street and 4th Avenue. I’ve included a map below to show what that location looks like today. Many references describe the purchase taking place much later, but they’re likely conflating the date Edwin bought out the wholesale liquor portion of W.T. Walters & Co. (1884) with the year he bought his own distillery (1866). After buying out the company, he changed its name to E.Walters & Co. The distillery at Clinton & 4th was known as the Canton Distillery until Walters began calling it the Orient Distillery after 1870. An interesting side note here is that the renaming coincides with the construction of the Globe Distillery at Clinton Street and 5th Avenue, one block away, by the Flack Brothers. Thomas J. Flack & Sons was a competing firm, but their large distillery did not survive the Whiskey Trust and was converted into a fertilizer plant after the buildings were sold off in 1892. Edwin Walters died in a tragic accident in 1897, and the Orient Distillery was sold to another party.

William and Edwin Walters of Baltimore, MD.

I always thought I’d written about the W.T. Walters and Edwin Walters at length in the past, but it seems I have not. Time to remedy this, I think.

My interest in the Walters of Baltimore began while researching several Somerset County, PA rye whiskey distilleries that were acquired by Edwin Walters during the 1890s, but there’s so much more great history behind the family! None of Edwin’s success would have been possible without the business savvy of William T. Walters, his elder brother of 14 years. If you’ve ever heard of (or visited) the Walters Museum in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, that’s this family! W.T. Walters and his son, Henry, built one of the most extensive art collections in the country during their lifetimes, then built a museum down the street from their family’s home/mansion to make it available to the public. Long before the Walters men earned their fame as liquor men (or art collectors) in Baltimore, however, their young lives had been shaped by their experiences in eastern Pennsylvania. Edwin’s acquisitions of Somerset County distilleries later in his life were not arbitrary! The Walters knew exactly the caliber of rye whiskeys they wanted to purchase for their Baltimore firm, and that knowledge was based on experience.

William Thompson Walters was born in Liverpool, Pennsylvania on May 23, 1819 to Henry and Jane Mitchell (Thompson) Walters. Liverpool sits on the west bank of the Susquehanna River in Perry County, about 15 miles north of the point where the Juniata River meets its mainstem (the Susquehanna). Liverpool was first settled in 1808, but it became a hub of commerce as soon as the Main Line Canal was completed as part of the Pennsylvania Canal System in 1829. Liverpool became an important base for canal boat builders, hotel investors, and all manner of businessmen looking to capitalize on the town’s booming canal trade. William’s father, Henry Walters, owned several canal boats which made daily trips from his warehouse in Harrisburg to both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By the mid-1830s, Henry had become an esteemed businessman and cashier of the Harrisburg Bank. (Liverpool is about 20 miles north of Harrisburg.) When William came of age, he was sent to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to become a civil engineer. After completing school, William returned to Liverpool, but by the time he was 22 years old, his father encouraged him to relocate to Baltimore and establish a commission business there. The decision was an important one because Baltimore had become THE market for commodity tradesmen by the early 19th century. (It should be said that historic accounts describing the Walters men as being from a “podunk town” with few prospects is inaccurate and unfairly downplay the importance of the family’s roots in Pennsylvania.)

On January 1, 1841, William T. Walters partnered with Samuel Hazlehurst to form the commission merchant firm of Hazlehurst & Walters. Hazlehurst was 5 years older than William, and his family was well-established among Baltimore’s merchant class. The men acquired a warehouse on Commerce Street Wharf with access to both the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) and the inner harbor. This location was ideal because it placed them among Baltimore’s most influential traders. (These wharfs were at the innermost point of Baltimore’s “inner harbor”, where the National Aquarium sits today.) Hazlehurst also owned property in Garrison, northwest of the city, with direct access to the B&O Railroad. During the mid-to-late 1840s, the city’s bustling canal and harbor traffic led its wealthy traders to create an early form of Baltimore’s Corn & Flour Exchange on Bowley’s Wharf.

When Hazlehurst & Walters was founded, the city’s commission traders had been making independent transactions from their private offices, but by 1846, the famine in Ireland was creating wild speculation in grain, so the traders began meeting daily on Bowley’s Wharf (near the most prominent firms) to dictate prices and settle the market. This daily meeting became a ritual from which Baltimore’s Corn and Flour Exchange was formed. It was during this time of transition that Walters dissolved his partnership with Hazlehurst. Hazlehurst began investing in iron, but Walters chose to stay the course with grain. Now senior partner, Walters retained his old firm’s business and employees and found a new partner in Charles Harvey, forming Walters & Harvey in 1848. Walters’ firstborn son, Henry, was born the same year. In 1850, Walters struck out on his own, founding W.T. Walters & Co. at 11 Commerce Street. This transition into wholesale liquor would utilize his knowledge of the grain market and his experience as a commission merchant to become one of Baltimore’s most prominent liquor firms.

Edwin (“Ned”) Walters was 16 years old when his older brother formed W.T. Walters & Co. When he came of age, Edwin followed his brother to Baltimore and began work as a commission merchant on Bowley’s Wharf for a man named Samuel Hurlbut. Hurlbut specialized in trading sugar and molasses, so most of their business transactions involved shipments from New Orleans. It appears that Edwin spent most of his early years in New Orleans as a representative of Hurlbut’s firm. By 1858, however, he opted to join his brother and Joshua Penn McCay as junior partner for W.T. Walters & Co. (McCay had been an employee of William’s since 1844.) William’s business, while finding a great deal of success in the liquor industry, was never solely focused upon it. He knew that the distribution/transportation of his goods via railroads and steamships was the key to his financial future. He established steamship lines between Baltimore and Savannah and had been president of the Northern Central Railway, but with so much of his wealth tied to business with the South, the Civil War created a huge conflict of interest for him. When the war began to pose a threat to his interests (and his reputation), William left the country. While away in Europe, he began to collect a great deal of artwork- a collection so vast that it would cement his reputation in the United States as a curator of fine art…rather than a profiteer of his business dealings in the South. The decision to leave the country allowed Walters to simultaneously maintain his reputation while continuing to operate his business just as he had before the war.

More to come.

What was the West Penn Distilling Company and what happened to them?

West Penn Distilling Company was established just after Repeal by David H. Stern. Stern had been a near-beer distributor during Prohibition and managed an apartment hotel in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. He entered the liquor business immediately after Repeal as president of his own company based in New Kensington (18 miles NW of Pittsburgh). The West Penn Distilling Company was licensed to produce rectified liquors and specialized in whiskeys, rum, and gin. Their most popular product was “Winner Whiskey” which started off as a rye but quickly became a blended whiskey by 1935 as the company sought to expand distribution across the state. Unfortunately for D. Stern, that push to expand distribution came with an investigation from the state liquor control board.

In January 1935, there was an inquiry into the Internal Affairs and treasury departments in Pennsylvania’s State Government over the preferential awarding of licenses and liquor contracts from the state stores. Robert S. Gawthrop, who had been a Superior Court Judge, was chairman of the board in 1935, and was interviewed by a House Committee in February 1935. He emphasized his belief that the board should have interventions and be regularly purged of “political inclinations.” He rattled off so many names of politicians, public officials, and well-known people that the audience for the hearing “laughed uproariously.” Their laughter was not unfounded. Gawthrop revealed during his testimony that the secretary-elect of Internal Affairs, Thomas A. Logue, and state treasurer, Charles A. Waters, came into his office to ask that the board give another order for “Winner Whiskey” to the West Penn Distilling Co. so that the company might have more distribution in central Pennsylvania and not just in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Gawthrop suggested that Logue was acting “on behalf of a client.” The pay-to-play activity in Pennsylvania, which had been ongoing before and during Prohibition, was laid bare, but was clearly a running joke within Pennsylvania’s political circles. The While West Penn Distilling Co. advertised quite a lot in 1934 and 1935, “Winner Whiskey” does not appear in print advertising after that.

While one of the foundational purposes for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board was to keep politics separate from the influences of liquor money, it was immediately clear that that would never be the case. The charges against David Stern and his West Penn Distilling Co. were dropped, and Stern continued to do about $800,000 a year in business with the state over the next 5 years.
In 1936, David H. Stern bought the Fry & Mathias Distillery in Manor, Pennsylvania from John T. Butler for $200,000. While only a brief couple of years (1934-35) were spent selling whiskey and gin through the West Penn Distilling Co., David Stern could use his new address in Manor (20 miles south of New Kensington) as a new warehouse location for his new products. Stern’s political connections were helpful in selling these stocks. 18 of his new brands were listed as being produced by one of 2 companies: Fry & Mathias, Inc. and/or Monongahela Rye Liquors, Inc. Stern’s legal issues only grew more intense over the next several years, and by 1940 he was back in court again, this time being threatened with jailtime.

If you want to read more about D.H. Stern and the controversies associated with his ownership of Frye & Mathias, read more here- http://www.dramdevotees.com/another-historic-example-of-pennsylvanias-distilling-past/