Three “Bad” Women of the West

 

Foreword:  The “Wild West” chiefly has been thought of as a man’s domain, one where the male of the species could express himself without the undue strictures of Eastern America.  Yet for a few women the West afforded opportunities that would have been difficult to achieve elsewhere.  Recited here are vignettes of three women of the West who found their fortunes there.

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

Sarah often was called “The Great Western,” a reference to her height, estimated at over six feet tall, at the time taller than most men, and her weight, well over 200 pounds. At the beginning of the conflict with Mexico, General Zachary Taylor ordered Sarah and other women cooks to Fort Brown, Texas. When Mexican forces mounted a siege of the fort, The Great Western came to the fore for her bravery in providing food, drink, and other assistance to the soldiers. By the time Taylor’s troops relieved the garrison, Sarah’s legend was made.

Subsequently she met a newly discharged soldier named Paddy Graydon, an Irish immigrant, who was running a hotel and bar on the banks of the Sonora River.  The pistol-packing Sarah took over running the saloon and hotel, able keep order among the tough gun-toting clientele that mixed desperadoes with soldiers — and women.  After military adventures and dalliances with men, she opened a saloon and hotel in Fort Yuma, California, adopting several children and caring for them.

Sarah died in Yuma in December 1866 at the age of 53, reputedly from the bite of a poisonous spider.  A Catholic priest, Fr. Paul Figueroa, in his memoirs of Yuma wrote this eulogy about Sarah: “Mrs. S. Bowman was a good hearted woman, good souled old lady of great experience, spoke the Spanish language fluently…opened the first restaurant and kept it until she died.”  

Josephine Airey.  During her relatively short life, she was known by multiple other names:  Mary Welch, “Chicago Joe,” Mrs. James Hensley, and the “Richest Woman in Helena. Montana.”  She perhaps is best remembered today for her career as a saloonkeeper and brothel madam of the Old West.

No amount of controversy seemed to impede Josephine’s upward trajectory in Helena.  When a fire in 1874 damaged buildings owned by residents who lacked the resource to rebuild, she bought up the properties, refurbished them and rented out the space. As a result, she became one of the largest—and richest— landowners in Helena.  By this time she also opened the largest brothel in town, shown below, located at the corner of State and Joliet Streets.  Josephine called it the “Grand,” a building that stood until torn down in the 1970s.

Josephine continued her ascent in Helena. She built and opened the Red Light Saloon and a large variety theatre, costing $30,000 to construct.  (That is equivalent to just short of $1 million today.)  she called it “The Coliseum.”  The venue was a success with its fancy furnishings, beautiful girls who performed — and an adjoining brothel.

A crushing financial blow for came for Josephine, however, with the Financial Panic of 1893. The effects of stock crash on Wall Street reached Helena where Josephine found herself highly leveraged and her creditors demanding payment. She watched as one by one her large property holdings were lost. Left virtually penniless, except for the Red Light Saloon, she was forced to live in small quarters above the drinking establishment. In October 1899 Josephine was struck down by pneumonia at the age of about 55. The glory of her early days in Helena was no more.

Kitty Leroy. During her abbreviated life, Kitty Leroy (sometimes given as LeRoy) was by turns a dancer,  faro dealer, gambler, sharpshooter, and finally saloon owner.  Shown here, Kitty blazed a trail from Michigan to Texas to California to Deadwood, South Dakota, where she became proprietor of the Mint Gambling Saloon.  In her wake were five husbands, one of whom she shot and killed, another who shot and killed her. Women like Kitty Leroy make Western legends. 

With her drive and ambition, Kitty in another day, another time, might have been a nationally known American entertainer, perhaps with her shooting skills, another Annie Oakley.   Of her early life little is known.  She was born in 1850, but opinions differ on where.  My guess is Michigan where she first attracted attention as a 10-year-old performer in dance halls and saloons. There, as one writer has observed, “…She either picked up or augmented an innate ability to manipulate, along with gambling and weaponry skills that would serve her well for most of her life.”

Within a few months Kitty had earned sufficient money to open her own “watering hole.”  She called it Leroy’s Mint Gambling Saloon. The Mint proved to be successful.  In addition to the booze available, Kitty provided gambling, entertainment and women, a combination that the prospectors and other fortune seekers found highly attractive. 

On June 11, 1877, Kitty married 35-year-old Samuel R. Curley, a Deadwood gambler and card shark. This time she had picked a husband besotted with her and a very jealous man.  Curley learned that Kitty had never divorced one or more of her earlier spouses and heard rumors of her having affairs other men.  After a stormy confrontation with Kitty, he stomped out of the Mint Saloon, moving to Cheyenne where he dealt faro in a saloon. Learning that Kitty had taken a new lover, Curley swore revenge on the couple and returned in a rage to Deadwood.  Kitty agreed to see him in her rooms. Curley was waiting for her, drew his revolver, and fired once. The bullet killed Kitty instantly.   Curley then fatally turned the gun on himself.

Note:  The foregoing are short summaries of three women each of whom made her mark in the West.  This website has posts on each one that tell a more complete story and also may be of interest:  Sarah Bowman, December 4, 2024;  Josephine Airy, September 27, 2024, and Kitty Leroy, June 18, 2023.

Trost Brothers Brought “Good Cheer” to Louisville

 The Trost Brothers, William, Harry, and Isaac not only were among the more successful whiskey dealers among the dozens in Louisville, Kentucky, but evidently among those with the liveliest sense of humor.   The evidence is contained in the storage case seen below.   It is the backside of a leather trunk that that carries a greeting of “Good Cheer” and identifies “Trost Brothers, Wholesale Liquor Dealers,” as the perpetrators.   

Known as a “mechanical” trade card, the Trosts have prepared a surprise for their clientele who turn the image around and discover they now can manipulate it to provide them with something to cheer about:

And lo, a comely young woman is in the trunk, kicking up her heels to get out! “Good Cheer” whiskey lives up to its name.

The positive note struck by the trade card was in keeping with the Trost surname, which loosely translated from the German, traditionally was applied to individuals known for “cheering up” those needing comfort and consolation.  The Trosts had originated in Bavaria,  immigrating to America where Joseph Trost and his wife Sarah settled in Ohio and began raising a family.  Their firstborn, a son, William, was born in February 1861.  Over the next 20 years there would be seven more children. 

This growing family spurred Joseph, a jeweler, to move from Ohio with the family to Memphis, Tennessee.  When William was about seven Joseph made another change, and transported Sarah and six children from Memphis to Columbus, in Lowndes County, Mississippi.  This small town lies just over the Alabama border and has a large African American population and a history of racial tension and lynchings.   There William and his Trost siblings grew up.  

The 1880 federal census records William working in a local store.  Sometime over ensuing years, with younger brother, Harry, they struck out on their own, opening a liquor store in Columbus.  Although it apparently was successful, Mississippi was increasing going “dry.”  In July, 1893, the brothers decided to try their skills in Louisville, Kentucky, a city rapidly becoming the center of American whiskey marketing.  William became president;  Harry, secretary-treasurer.When he reached maturity, Isaac Trost would join his brothers in the liquor house, initially working as a traveling salesman.

Opening their business at 125-127 Third Street, the Trosts featured a number of house brands, leading off with “Good Cheer” and including, "Elgin Club,” “Havsum,” "High Grade,” "M L Howard,” "Si Gordon,” “Sultana,” and “Walton.”   In a city that was teeming with competing whiskey brands, Trost trademarked Elgin Club, Havsum, High Grade, and Sultana in 1905, after the laws had been strengthened by Congress.  Inexplicably, Good Cheer was not protected until 1906.

Packaging for Trost liquor that I have been able to find is all of the flask variety, half-pints and pints.  Shown here are two of the smaller bottles, half pints, one clear and the other purpled.  As always when one of the purpled variety is discovered, the question becomes whether the item has been colored artificially by some enterprising collector.  

Although the Trosts claimed to be distillers they actually were “rectifiers,” buying whiskeys by the barrel from one or more distilleries and mixing it to achieve desired taste and smoothness.  A Louisville publication was quick to praise the Trosts’ efforts, claiming: “Their trade extends throughout the South and East, amounting to $100,000 annually.” [More than $2 million in today’s dollar.]  “The firm’s special brands, Good Cheer, Elgin Club and Sultana, have been received with high favor by leading connisseurs everywhere.”  

The Trosts also specialized in providing their wholesale and good retail customers with shot glasses advertising their brands.  Most glasses featured the owners’ names and “Louisville,” increasingly being recognized as the whiskey capitol of America.  Other Trost liquor labels memorialized by shot glasses were “High Grade” and “Elgin Club,”  shown here.  “Elgin Club” also was represented by a Trost “back-of-the-bar” bottle.

Meanwhile William was having a personal life.  In October 1890, he married Sarah Selig, a local girl, in Columbus.  At the time of their nuptials he was 29, she was 19.  Records indicate that they had only one child, Milton Samuel Trost, born in 1894, a year after the family arrived in Louisville.  In the 1910 census, William, 39, was recorded as head of a household that included wife Sarah, young Milton, William’s younger brother Isaac, Sarah’s sister Fannie, and two 27-year-old female servants — a total of seven residents.  They made their home in an attractive house at 2160 Barringer Avenue, shown here as it looks today.

By this time Harry Trost, a bachelor, had died at the early age of 38 at home in Mississippi where he apparently had gone to recuperate from illness, the cause not disclosed.  Harry’s place was taken by brother Isaac Trost, who remained a bachelor,  During those years Trost Brothers twice changed business addresses.  In 1909 apparently needing larger quarters their liquor house moved to 131 North Third Road.  A final change occurred in 1916 when the company moved to121 West Main Street. This address was on Louisville’s famed “Whiskey Row,” shown below, a sign that the Trosts had “arrived” among the liquor nobility of Louisville.

The Trosts' climb to Whiskey Row, however, was destined to be short-lived.  Only a year later they were forced to shut their doors by prohibitionary pressures.  The Louisville 1920 census recorded both men now engaged in other occupations.  William was an officer in a manufacturing company;  Isaac was listed as a wholesaler.  A decade later in the 1930 census William, now 69, listed as an insurance broker; Isaac, 62, was recorded an “agent.” 

William died in December 1943, as he approached 83 years.  According to death records, he died of a heart attack at Louisville’s Jewish Hospital after a short illness. William was buried in the Trost plot in Louisville’s Adath Israel Cemetery.  His wife, Sarah, followed four years later.  

The Trosts were remembered as  participants in the Louisviie business community  and active  members of the National Wine and Spirits Association, further evidence that brothers coming from a small town in Mississippi could “make it” in the big city as  Kentucky whiskey barons.  

Note:  The Trost Bros. story was gathered from a number of Internet sources. They included an unusually large number of illustrations of liquor artifacts including the unusual “mechanical” trade card that opens this post, an item seemingly unique to the Trost Louisville liquor house.  Unfortunately, photos of William and his brothers were not found but my hope is that a relative may see this post and be able to supply them.

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American “Drys” — Loving the Russian Czar

 Foreword:  The professed affection of President Trump for the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, brought to mind the attraction of American prohibitionists to the autocratic Czar of Russia.  Despite being more than a century old,  the story deserves to be told.

In 1914 members of the American Prohibition Movement fell in love with the Russian Czar, He was Nicholas II, shown here in his prime. With the outbreak of World War One, Nicholas was convinced by his ministers to prohibit all forms of alcohol because of their assumed detrimental impact on the readiness of Russia’s military forces. Drinking vodka and other spirits was a daily habit with many Russians, including members of the armed forces.   A considerable number regularly imbibed to excess.

The ease with which the Czar could cut off the alcohol spigot was made possible by the fact that since 1894 the Russian government had controlled all production of vodka and other spirits, reaping huge revenues in the process. American Prohibitionists took admiring notice of the Czar’s action and cheered as liquor was spilled on Moscow streets.

Under a 1914 headline entitled, “A Despot Needed,” one American commentator rhapsodized that: “Enlightened Russia knows the way, great Russia, with her tyrant czar; he twists his wrists and in a day the lid is placed on every bar....I wish we had a despot here, just to end ‘Old Booze.”  The Washington DC Evening Star editorialized that a “miracle” had occurred in Russia, noting cheerfully that the miracle had been made possible by Russia’s autocratic form of government.

As two cartoons published by the U.S. Dry lobby suggested, the Czar had become someone to be looked up to and emulated. In the first a Cossack has arrested a vodka bottle and is marching it off to detention. In the second “King Alcohol,” personified as a wicker covered bottle, salutes a Russian official while four apparently Americans look on approvingly.

Seen in the light of history, however, the Czar’s decision was a disaster. Fully one-third of Russia’s revenues came from the sale of vodka, even then an annual billion dollar business. Without the funds from alcohol sales, the government entered World War One with substantially less money than it needed. 

Moreover, prohibition made large segments of the Russian population angry. The rich still were able to buy vodka and other drinks at their clubs and in fancy restaurants. Only the lower classes were forced to give up drinking.

The country’s poor showing in the war and the growing unpopularity of Czar Nicholas gave rise to the Russian Revolution of 1918 in which the Communists came to power. The Czar and his family were executed. The new rulers led by Lenin, shown here, initially were opposed to drinking but Russians gradually had ceased to worry about the ban on vodka. Just as Prohibition in the U.S. (1920-1934) gave rise to bootleggers, in Russia,  potatoes were everywhere and so were illegal stills. By Soviet official count they tripled in numbers in the period from 1922 to 1924.

Gradually the Communist government ban on alcohol eased. Wine was legalized in 1921, beer in 1922, other alcohol in 1923, and, finally, in 1924 vodka sales again were permitted. Russians, as shown below, now could drink freely once again.  And do it legally.

By that time the United States, yielding to the “dry” fervor sweeping the country in 1920 had enacted its own National Prohibition.  America’s outlawing of spirits would be imposed until 1934, a span of some fourteen years.  The Russian ban on alcoholic drink lasted only about ten. 

The Life and Loves of Indiana’s Martin Bligh

 

Martin J. Bligh came to America from Ireland at age 14, settled in Logansport, Indiana, and carved out a 38 year career there selling liquor. His marriages, however, not whiskey sales, would earn Bligh newspaper headlines and intense local interest in his adopted country.

Bligh is an English name generally associated with the Cornwell region.  In the early 1700s John Bligh became the Earl of Darnley, creating the first family peerage in Ireland and triggering Bligh family migration to the Emerald Isle. Martin Bligh was the son of Michael and Mary Samidy Bligh.  Born in 1861 in Castle Rea, the third largest town in County Roscommon, the boy emigrated to America about 1875 at age 14, most likely accompanied by relatives.

The next few years are shrouded in the mists of history but indications are that Martin was able to achieve additional education.  At some point Bligh located in Logansport, Indiana, shown here, that became his home place for much of the rest of his life.  Along the way he apparently achieved sufficient experience to open a wholesale liquor house, a venture that proved to be very profitable over a period of the next 35 years.

Bligh used a variety of brand names for his whiskey.  They included "Dan Dalton,” “Decatur,” "Lone Valley Pennsylvania Pure Rye,” "Old Logan Club,” "Queen of Bourbon,” "Spring Creek,” "Valley Mills,”  and “Woodlawn." Bligh’s flagship brand was “Old Logan Club” shown here in a back-of-the- bar bottle that would have sat invitingly behind the barkeeper. 

 Another Bligh-gifted fancy carafe to saloons advertised “Queen of Bourbon.” He also gave away shot glasses to favored wholesale and retaiil customers, as shown below.  When Congress stiffened trademark laws in 1905, Blight copyrighted that name and all but one other brand (“Valley Mills”).  He did so despite the costs that discouraged other dealers from claiming protection for their liquor names.  It was an unusual — and expensive — move involving lawyers and other costs but Bligh apparently saw the value.  

Along with his busy occupation as a liquor dealer, Bligh was having a complicated — one might say, tumultuous — marital situation. In November 1800, at 19 years old Bligh returned to Europe to be married.  His bride was Elizabeth Ann Kelly, daughter of Anne Bergin and James Kelly.  Of similar ages, it is possible the couple had been childhood sweethearts.  Wed in Yorkshire, England, the new bride accompanied her young groom back to Logansport.

Bligh babies were not long in coming.  Their first child was a girl, Anna Hannah, born in 1882, when the couple were each about 21  Anna was followed in 1883 by Michael Francis.  Then after a hiatus of four years, Mary Catherine was born in 1887 and Bertha Agnes in 1889.  The next two births, sons Martin (1890) and “E.T.”  (1893), both died in infancy.   Over the years the relationship between Martin and Elizabeth Bligh changed dramatically.

Despite their four minor children, the couple became seriously estranged and Bligh began a new relationship,  By now 32 years old and accounted a wealthy man, Bligh divorced Elizabeth and shortly after married 19 year old Katherine “Katie” Eiserlo.  The story engendered newspaper stories around Indiana. The Logansport newspaper headlined:  “Married Yesterday at Cincinnati by a Justice of the Peace - The Groom Divorced Three Months ago.”

The paper told this story:     “The mother of the bride, it is said, objected to the union and she was greatly surprised yesterday morning, upon receipt of a letter from her daughter, worded as follows: ‘Mother - We have gone to Cincinnati. DO not be alarmed. Will return in a few days. - Katie.’ …The marriage occurred at the Palace Hotel…While the affair bears the favor of an elopement, the bride's father is said to have given his consent to the union, and had been informed of the time and place of the wedding.

Elizabeth Kelly Bligh, the cast-off wife, was not so easily dismissed.  In a suit filed in Kokomo, Indiana, she claimed that in addition to the divorce and payment of alimony she was owed an additional $10,000 in damages for defamation of her character.  After pleading that she had no money for a lawyer, Judge Kirkpatrick appointed two retired judges to represent her at the courthouse in Kokomo, shown here, a change of venue required by the intense scrutiny of the case in Logansport.

In her complaint for damages, Elizabeth charged that Martin had written a letter to her brother in which her he accused her of immorality and drunkeness, while she temporarily had returned to Ireland after being abandoned by her husband.  Bligh promptly countersued.  As reported in the Indianapolis Journal the ex-husband in an affidavit claimed that:  Mrs. Bligh was possessed of $10,000 worth of real estate, and has diamonds, horses and carriages and other personal property of the value of $10,000 more, and asked that the appointment of attorneys be set aside… The trial on the main issue commences Monday, and will be a prolonged contest.  Although I have been unable to find the outcome of the trial it is problematic that Bligh, known to be a wealthy man, could have walked away without some monetary judgment against him.  Elizabeth, with at least some of the children, promptly moved to Toledo, Ohio, where  she apparently had relatives. 

In the meantime Martin and bride Catherine set about creating a new family.  Their first child, Thomas H. was born in 1895, followed by Edgar J. in 1898.  Two daughters followed, Bonita A. in 1900 and Almytra in 1904.  The couple’s last child, George, was born in 1909.  All lived to maturity.  To house his family Bligh provided a large house at 1209 High Street in Logansport, shown here.

Bligh appears to have redeemed his reputation in Logansport despite the contentious divorce and scandalous remarriage.  He continued to operate his liquor house in Logansport until 1918 when Indiana passed a law banning the sale of alcoholic beverages.  It had proved to be a lucrative business, complementing a lumber and coal yard Bligh also owned.   The local press accounted him a “power’ in the Republican party in Cass County, Indiana, calling Bligh a: “A keen businessman, very resourceful, a staunch friend….”

Bligh subsequently moved 24 miles to Rochester, Indiana, where he had farming interests.  Over the next few years he suffered financial reverses leading to his retreat in 1925 from Rochester back to Logansport.   The local paper there speculated:  “When reverses overtook him he did not show it in his demeanor and his friends believed that if his health had not been bad he would have over come his financial difficulties before he died.”

Bligh’s death certificate testified to the story.   He was stricken with heart problems beginning in March 1927 and under the care of doctors for the next two years until he died of a brain clot on April 5, 1929.   Katherine and his children, all now adults, were gathered for his funeral at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.  He was buried in St. Vincent Cemetery.  Bligh’s grave stone is shown above, along with Katherine’s who passed away 32 years after her husband.   In a final irony, Elizabeth, Bligh’s cast-off wife, also is buried in St. Vincent’s.

Note:  The sources for much of this post on Martin Bligh are stories from Indiana newspapers.

  

       

 

The Bitters Trade Cards of John Sheehan, Utica NY

 

After a brief mention of John H. Sheehan for this blog on February 28, 1913, I had notanticipated visiting this Irish immigrant again 12 years later.  My main subject then was Peter Vidvard, a Utica liquor dealer,  Sheehan had married his daughter, joined in a brief partnership with Vidvard, and later left to open a drug store.  But not, however, to give up selling spiritous beverages.  

Sheehan offered a highly alcoholic remedy he called “Dandelion Bitters” calling it The Great Herb Blood Remedy.  He boasted that his nostrum was a “Rapid and Sure Cure For Loss of  Appetite, Habitual Costiveness [Constipation],  Nervous and General Depression, Indigestion, Biliousness, Sleeplessness, Rheumatism, Kidney Complaints, and General Debility.”  To advertise this broad spectrum remedy Sheehan issued a series of trade cards that deserve attention because these artifacts reflect elements of the late 19th and early 20th Century in American.

The first set of Dandelion Bitters trade cards shown here have much the same theme, cards based around pictures of early telephones. In 1881 the American Bell Telephone Company,  working from the invention of Alexander Graham Bell,

registered profits of $200,000 (6 Million equivalent today) from the virtual telephone monopoly it owned.  It leased telephones to customers and retained ownership of the instruments it owned.  Although these trade cards all find something humorous to convey,  the telephonic instruments employed differ in size and appearance, indicating a beginning of some variety.

The Bufford firm, celebrated for its drawings of trade cards and celebrated in my post of February 5, 2025, was the enterprise of John Henry Bufford.  Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bufford apprenticed in Boston and by 1835 briefly moved to New York, where he opened a lithography business. Five years later he returned to Boston and formed a partnership with his brother-in-law in a new lithographic printing firm, for which he did most of the drawing. The business thrived for the next forty years.  The message below was typical of the flip side of such cards.

The following two trade cards aparently were products of other (unnamed) print shops that provided Sheehan with two pictures of attractive children to advertise his bitters panacea:  a winsome little girl who appears to be wearing a large flower on her head as a hat and and a sturdy little chap in a sailor suit with his dog. The message on the flip side tells us that Dandelion Bitters prevents “The usual Lassitude of approaching warm weather…By keeping the system in good order, the wastes of the body are freely carried off which keeps the Blood pure, preventing and curing Rheumatism.”   Obviously knowledge of human biology was not a Sheehan strong point.

One last  trade card, also with an unidentified artist and publisher, is not a bitters ad.  It advertises “John N.  Sheehan…Druggists, Utica, N.Y.”  This image is billed as a “souvenir” and depict a weeping youngster dressed in what I believe is a South American musician’s costume.  Although I have not seen a similar item I suspect the card may be part of a series of children in foreign costumes, meant to be collected.

Note: This short (extra) post would not have been possible without the Peachridge Glass website publication of the trade cards , dated February 3, 2015.  The author is Ferdinand Weber, former president of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors, who graciously has allowed me to publish the Sheehan images. The Vidvard artcle was published February 28, 2013.

Addendum:   In researching the Sheehan story, I found evidence that the druggist also apparently had a line of whiskeys that the proprietor sold in elaborately decorated ceramic jugs.  I had never seen them before and think they also deserve attention.