The Murphys of Chillicothe — Sometimes Down But Never Out

       

Experiencing famine, fire, and premature deaths, the Murphys of Chillicothe, Ohio, often were beset by the kind of ill-fortune that might have doomed another family.   They stuck together to build a successful liquor house and reputations as local businessmen who had the confidence and esteem of their community.

The Murphy story began in Ireland during the depths of the “Great Hunger” — the Irish potato famine.  There Patrick and Mary (King) Murphy had married and begun a family that included three children, Frank, Mary and Lizzie.  With his family threatened with starvation, in 1846 Patrick determined to come to America to find employment.  Although many Irish immigrants crowded the cities of the Northeast,  Patrick had a half-brother, Martin O’Neil, who ran a grocery store in Chillicothe, Ohio.  A town of more than 6,000 located in southern Ohio along the Scioto River, Chillicothe had been the first state capitol.  As with other groceries, O’Neil’s sold liquor.

Patrick went to work with his kinsman, sending money back to Ireland to sustain Mary and their three children.  It took four years of toil, however, for him to accrue sufficient funds to arrange passage for his family to America.  Meanwhile Mary was left a single parent to care for her children during a time of national suffering.  Three more children — Kate, Thomas, and John — were born after the family’s 1850 arrival in Chillicothe.

The market run by O’Neil and Murphy on Water Street operated successfully until April 1, 1852 when a raging fire swept through the city.  The local news headline read:  “Terrific Conflagration!  Chillicothe in Ashes!”  Both homes and commercial buildings were destroyed and 2,000 people left homeless.  An artist’s version of the fire is shown above.  

Among the casualties was the Water Street grocery and all its stock, located in the area shown in black on the map here.  After this disaster, Patrick seems to have been disheartened about starting over as a grocer.  Afterward he worked at various jobs, most often as a common laborer.

His eldest son, Frank, sprang to the fore.  In his mid-teens, he went to work as a clerk with the firm of James Boulger & Company, a grocery and liquor store where he remained for twelve years, learning the business and developing a reputation as a bright and rising young local.  When Patrick died in 1874, Frank became the “man of the house,” living unmarried at 34 years old with his mother, Mary, and other siblings.  That same year a younger brother, John, died at 22 years, a devastating blow to the family.  Mary passed the following year, age 71.

By this time, Frank Murphy had left Boulger to strike out on his own.  He purchased the liquor business owned by Hugh Curry, calling it “Frank Murphy & Company.”  In 1882 he took as a partner his younger brother, Thomas, who had joined him at fifteen working as a clerk.  Shown above is a corkscrew bearing the company name.

With subsequent success, the Murphys eventually needed more space and bought a considerably larger building at 85 N. Paint Street, the main commercial avenue of Chillicothe.  This establishment they named Murphy Distilling Company, advertising itself as “Jobbers and Brokers in Fine Whiskeys, Wines, Cordials, Champagne, Gins, Bass Ale and London Porter.” The brothers also were acting as “rectifiers,”  that is, blending and mixing whiskeys to achieve particular taste, smoothness and color.  Their flagship brand was “Old Lafayette Club.” Shown here is a postcard of Paint Street from the early 1900s.  On the left, and in detail here, can be seen the Murphy sign.

Meanwhile Frank was having a personal life.  In 1889 he married Ella Kirby Piatt, the eldest daughter of William McCoy and Julia Ann Keagan Piatt of West Liberty, Ohio.  Her father was a noted inventor and holder of numerous patents.  Shown here, Ella, a comely young woman, was only about 20 when they wed;  Frank was 25 years older.  Their marriage would prove tragically short.  During their first year together she became ill with what was termed “winter sickness,” actually tuberculosis.  Hoping to recuperate, she went home to her parents in West Liberty, but died there in October 1890 and was buried in the Piatt family plot.  The Murphys had been married less than 13 months.  Frank must have been shattered at the death of his young wife.  He never married again.

Instead, he threw himself into conducting his liquor house.  This included his emphasis on advertising through giveaway items.  Above is an ice pick that would have been given to the restaurants and saloons carrying Murphy products.  The company provided tokens to retail customers with their purchases that could be redeemed for merchandise, including a triangular gold token and a round metallic coin.  Shown below is vintage tin advertising plate, one that could be used as a tip tray in a saloon or fastened to a wall as decoration.  The front shows a maiden carrying an urn full of flowers.  The reverse says:  “Compliments of the Liquor House You Hear About, Murphy Distilling Company.”

Frank Murphy continued to manage the company he had founded almost up to the day of his death on September 1, 1901.   By coincidence it was the same day as the assassination of President McKinley, a fellow Ohioan.  At this point Thomas took over the management of the liquor house.  

One of his early activities was to trademark the company flagship brand of whiskey, called “Old Lafayette Club.”  His ads claimed that the whiskeys used in their blend were bottled in bond, claimed as a sign of quality, and that Old Lafayette Club was “unexcelled by any whiskey on earth.”   That was emphasized in ads by two filmy clad women, one of them sitting on the moon.

Thomas Murphy was active in the civic and political life of Chillicothe.  For eight years he served as a member of the city board of elections.  He also was considered a leader among Democrats, holding several position within the party.  He also was active as a member of the Catholic Church.

Thomas also married, suffering a fate similar to his brother.  His wife was Annie Hydell, the daughter of Anton and Annie Hydell, both immigrants from Germany.  Annie gave him one child before dying about two years after their wedding.  With tragic fate, that child died a year after Annie.  Subsequently Thomas was recorded living at 250 W. Water Street with his sister, Kate. The house, shown here, is still standing.  He later married a woman named Eugenia.

By 1909 the Murphy Distilling Company had disappeared from Chillicothe business directories, possibly the result of Thomas having died.  I have been unable to find a exact date of his death or place of interment.  I hope a descendent will see this vignette and fill in details.

We remember the Murphys  of Chillicothe as whiskey men who overcame unusual hardships of famine and fire only to face devastating deaths, seemingly emerging undaunted from every trial and able to be acclaimed by a biographer as “successful business men, possessing universal confidence and the esteem of all who knew them.”  

Note:  Much of the information for this post came from the volume, “A Standard History of Ross County, Ohio”  Vol 2., ed. Lyle S. Evans, Lewis Publishing, Chicago, 1917.

Whiskey Men and Natural History

Foreword:   This is the sixth in a series of posts that examines the activities of whiskey men who previously have been profiled on the blog, grouping them for analysis under various headings.  In this case the common thread in each man’s story was an interest in natural history.  In some instances the individual collected items that were of museum quality and interest.  In others, the collections were meant to enhance the interior of a saloon.

Butterflies and Booze:  In 1906, Edward Louis Graef gifted the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences with two examples of the rare butterfly shown above.  It is called the “Morpho Hecuba,” perhaps because the differences between the butterfly underside, left, and its top.   Over his lifetime Graef, shown right, would donate some 10,000 individual butterflies and moths, representing 80 species, to the museum.  All the while he was distinguishing himself in the New York business world as a successful liquor dealer.

While still a teenager, Graef became interested in insects and began amassing a collection.  Like many amateur entomologists of the time, he largely confined his acquisitions to butterflies and moths, known to scientists as “Lepidoptera.”  As he matured, he befriended likeminded collectors and professional lepidopterists.  With one of them he would found the Brooklyn Entomological Society.

Even before he reached 18 Graef was tasked with earning a living.  With an older brother he began a liquor business on a busy commercial avenue in downtown Brooklyn.  Later, needing more space, he moved the operation a four-story building that provided considerable room for storing whiskey and wine.  He bottled his products in canteen shaped glass bottles containing embossing of his company name, “H. Graef’s Son.”

Graef’s collection, one that included insects from the United States as well as from overseas grew to more than 10,000 individuals.  Apparently because they were a distraction from his aggressively pursuing his liquor trade, in 1900 he donated the entirety to the Brooklyn Museum.  Among the specimens was the strikingly attractive moth, “Anthoscharis Ausonides,” shown above.  With the whiskey man’s gift and other donations and purchases, the museum gained recognition for the largest Lepidoptera collection in the U.S.  In recognition of Graef’ s contribution he was appointed honorary curator at the Museum and elected a patron of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Scientists.

Rocks of the Yellowstone.  San Francisco’s Yellowstone Saloon was in danger of closing.  Previous owners had bailed out.  Then the place caught fire and although the flames were quickly extinguished, the interior suffered damage, including some loss of stock and fixtures.  Enter James Twomey and Vincent Mihalovich.  Twomey, shown right, was a 36-year-old Irish immigrant.  Mihalovich was two years older and an immigrant from Montenegro.

Together they set out to build a new reputation for the Yellowstone Saloon.  One aspect was to sell their proprietary whiskey in attractive jugs, as shown here.  Another was to open a museum devoted to rocks.  According to one commentator, the saloon held “…one of the most varied and interesting collections of minerals to be found in the state.”

The display included nuggets of gold, silver, copper, antimony, lead, tin, quicksilver, nickel and cobalt as well as “rare ores” such as covelite, shown left, and boleite, shown right.  Assembled over a number of years, the collection also featured semi-precious stones such as opals, agates, topaz, and quartz.

The Yellowstone Saloon minerals exhibit was reputed to be “a great attraction to visitors,” even those not interested in mining.  Twomey and Mihalovich welcomed questions about the items and, it was said “all information is freely and cheerfully furnished.”  It probably did not hurt to buy a drink first at the bar.  Unknown is the fate of the Yellowstone’s mineral collection after the saloon was closed by National Prohibition in 1920.

Seashells Along the Bar:  Charlie Rugers, shown left, inherited management of a  Houston, Texas, saloon and liquor dealership from his father when he was barely out of his teens.  A contemporary biography said of Rugers:  “He has had a ‘rough road’ to travel on the highway of life, but out of it he stands today strong and robust.”  After his father died, Rugers soon changed the name of the establishment to his own, the name to be found on the embossing of his whiskey flasks.

Rugers also was aware of the riches of seashells that regularly were washed ashore near Houston, a trove that propelled many locals into collecting.  The Houston Chronicle opined:  “You don’ have to go far to collect sea shells, they have washed up all over town…They’re everywhere…Some people are so passionate that they display them like works of art.”  Charlie used his collection to decorate his saloon.

The bar can be seen in a somewhat fuzzy newspaper photo above.  A sharp eye can make out starfish, conchs, scallops and other seaside flotsam.   Rugers' effort to distinguished his watering hole from others by a display of shells appears to have been effective.  An 1894 Houston business directory advised visitors to the city to pay a call at Rugers' saloon, calling it “particularly striking and remarkable” for its decoration of “sea shells and marine curiosities.”  Tourists were further advised that as they contemplated the wonders of this maritime tableau:  “They will be able to refresh the inner man with good stuff, which cheers but need not inebriate.”

Inebriation, however, was high on the mind of some Texas prohibitionists who were a force in state politics even before the Civil War.  By 1895 fifty-three of 239 counties were dry and another seventy-nine partially dry under local option.  In 1919 Texas voters approved a statewide prohibition law.  Charlie Rugers was forced to shut down his saloon and liquor sales.  He never saw Repeal, dying in May 1828.  The fate of his shell collection is unknown.

“A Historic Legacy”:  In Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town 

known for its football team rather than natural history, Frank John Baptiste Duchateau, who had inherited a thriving liquor dealership from his father, used his riches to amass a collection of Native American and other early artifacts that became the basis of the city’s history and science museum.   The local newspaper called Duchateau’s gift to Green Bay “a historic legacy.”

Although Duchateau, shown here, was successful in the liquor trade and other pursuits, including five elections as city alderman and a member of many Green Bay social and service organizations, his real passion was for archeology.  Described in the press as “one of Wisconsin’s most ambitious collectors,” he amassed an assemblage of Native American archeological items as well as early farm tools, ceramics, firearms, kitchen utensils and foreign currency.   Among the rarest of those was a wooden mortar and pestle used by the Menominee Indians to crush corn, akin to the item shown here.

Not content with buying vintage artifacts, Duchateau often found rare objects on his own.   While exploring at Point Au Sable near Green Bay, for example, he came upon a brass sundial made in Paris centuries earlier.  It carried the longitude and latitude of many of the cities of an earlier age and is considered extremely rare.

In 1915 Duchateau helped found the Neville Museum of Natural History of Brown County, located in Green Bay.  Over his lifetime he gave an estimated 12,000 items to the museum.  He also donated the first display cases and served as  vice president of the museum board, a post he held until 1929.  Living to be 87 years old he witnessed the growth of the Neville Museum, one that continuously garners plaudits from visitors like this:  “Their permanent exhibit about the history of the area is truly remarkable and can be enjoyed by folks of all ages.”  Thus does the legacy of Frank Duchateau, whiskey man, live on.

Note:  This blog contains longer and more detailed biographies of the four whiskey men feared here.  They are: Edward L. Graef, July 8, 2015 ; Twomey & Mihalovich, August 11, 2015;  Charles Rugers, January 1, 2015; and Frank Duchateau, January 28, 2014

How James Hanley Landed in Rhode Island's “Hall of Fame”

Brought to America as a toddler aboard an Irish famine ship, by dint of personal exertion, not family name or inherited wealth, James Hanley in 2007 was judged worthy of inclusion in the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.  Beginning in the liquor trade, expanding to brewing and other enterprises, Hanley carved out a brilliant career as an entrepreneur and horseman — including owning the fastest thoroughbred pacer in America, one he allegedly fed whiskey to induce speed.

James was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, to Patrick and Brigid (Farnell) Hanley on September 7, 1841.  When he was five years old, at the peak of the Great Famine, the family, including his two brothers, took a ship across the Atlantic, settling in Providence, Rhode Island. While his father worked as a laborer, Hanley grew up, according to testimony, knowing “the hardships of toil and little of the school, but he had the gift of clear thinking and an ambition to know….”

At the beginning of the Civil War, at age 20, Hanley took his first step into commerce.  Transforming the family home at 131 Main Street into a saloon and retail store, he imported and sold a variety of whiskeys, other liquors, foreign and domestic wines, ales obtained from New York and Philadelphia, and cigars.  He employed a brother, Thomas, as a clerk.  A crudely made ceramic whiskey jug shown here has that address impressed in the clay.

The following year, on May 9, James married

Martha Josephine Cummings, born in Rhode Island of English immigrant parents.  He was 21, she was 20.  The couple would go on to have nine children, including two sons, Walter and George, who would join their father’s enterprises as they matured.  With his increasing prosperity, Hanley commissioned the construction of a large Victorian style home for his family in Providence. The house, shown here, still stands at 159 Prospect Avenue. 

In 1866, outgrowing the 131 Main Street location, Hanley relocated his business to 139 North Main, where he sold a variety of bourbon, rye and wheat whiskeys, as well as wines and liquors.  As the Providence agent, he also offered Burton’s India Pale and XXX Ales.  With the steady growth of business, Hanley moved to open several locations in town, eventually having the space to advertise sales of ale in “hogsheads, barrels, and half hogsheads”  and gravitate to wholesaling.  While continuing to assist James, his brother Thomas opened his own liquor store.

In 1870 the Hanley brothers created a formal partnership and with it a new company they called James Hanley & Bro, locating it at 341 High Street. They eventually moved to 32 Exchange Place, an address that later became 50 Exchange Place. In 1883, Thomas died and James erased the “& Bro.” from the firm name.  A Hanley cobalt labeled jug from that period 

exists.

 

Two years later, obviously seeing the need for a partner in his liquor house, Hanley took F. P. Hoye as a partner.  Of Irish heritage like James, Hoye earlier had been with the wholesale liquor house of Green & Company.  Hanley, Hoye & Co. vigorously advertised their ability to provide all of the most popular brands of Eastern ryes and Kentucky bourbon whiskeys. The partners featured Woodford Club Pure Rye as their flagship label, trademarking the whiskey in 1900 and featuring it on a pocket mirror.

In the meantime Hanley was building his reputation in Providence.  One memorial put it this way:  “…As he grew in years, knowledge of men and things and books came, and with it broadness of character and a business ability of wide and successful range.”   This range became evident in 1876 when, with a fellow Irishman named James P. Cooney, a local liquor dealer, Hanley began a career making beer.  Fast friends, the two James agreed to branch out from wholesaling whiskey and enter the brewing trade.   They found a existing property in nearby Pawtucket, Rhode Island called the Merchants Brewing Company.  It became the Cooney & Hanley Brewery.

Three years later at the early age of 41, Cooney unexpectedly died.  Ownership of the brewery, one that eventually was relocated to Providence, became Hanley’s alone.

  

Extant are a number of artifacts for James Hanley & Co.  Among them is a serving tray advertising his “Peerless Ale” as “The Best Yet” and an early automobile as a 1901 calendar.   I am particularly fond of a saloon sign that advertises Hanley’s India Pale and Cream Ales.  It shows a frog on a lily pad lifting a glass of beer to a bulldog on the shore.

  

Hanley seems to have had a natural affinity for making beer.  With two partners in May 1883 he also incorporated the Rhode Island Brewing Co. with initial capital stock of $500,000.  He served as its president and treasurer.  He also was identified with the Providence Brewing. Company.

Hanley, like many Irish, was passionate about horse racing and was nationally known as the owner and trainer of successful thoroughbreds.  One of them, a pacer named Prince Alert, held the world record for running the half mile in 1.57 minutes.   Hanley issued a paperweight with a photo of the horse to mark the occasion. 

 

Not everyone was as impressed as Hanley.  While calling Prince Alert “a handsome bay gelding of more than ordinary interest,” a Chicago Tribune racing scribe went on to describe the pacer as a “hop horse,” one that did his best when he was under the influence of stimulants.  “…Horsemen are well aware that some of his best miles…have been paced with a jorum of coffee and whiskey taken just before the start.”  In those days apparently it was legal to administer that kind of toddy.

Horses also became the symbols for Hanley’s beer.  Before the Budweiser Clydesdales were even a thought for August Busch, Hanley had developed prize teams of horses.  His most famous team was “the Big Nine,” shown here on a postcard, a synchronized team of three by three by three roan Belgian horses, ranging in height from 17 to 19 hands.  The entire team weighed in at over ten tons and pulled a Hanley beer wagon.

But the Irishman’s reputation was built on more than liquor and beer.  Credited with “a business ability of a wide and successful range,” he also was a successful investor in real estate and other Rhode Island enterprises:  “…Although frequently importuned to accept positions in financial institutions, persistently refused until he became a member of the reorganization committee of the Union Trust Company, and later when that company sold to the National Exchange Bank, he became a director in the latter institution.”  

Hanley also became known for his generous treatment of his employees.  In 1907 when his brewery employed some 90 workers, state inspectors rated conditions in his factory highly.  He also became known as a benefactor of numerous charitable causes, including those connected with Irish-American welfare and the Catholic faith to which he adhered.

On August 22, 1912,  at the age of 71,  James Hanley died unexpectedly.  He had been a hands-on manager of his liquor and beer interests until the end.  With his children, grandchildren, other relatives, friends and business associates gathered by his graveside, Hanley was laid to rest at St. Francis Cemetery in Pawtucket.  His family erected a large granite monument to his memory and that of his wife, Martha, who had passed two years earlier.  According to business directories, the breweries and wholesale liquor house were carried forward into the 1920s by sons Walter and George Hanley.

During his 66 years in Providence, Hanley had risen from poverty to prominence in Rhode Island and done it as the state’s leading purveyor of spiritous beverages.  Said one memorial:  “The secret of his success was a combination of industry, clear business judgment and fairness toward those with whom he dealt.”  Those qualities, blended with the wealth from alcohol, ultimately earned James Hanley a place in the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

Note:  Unless otherwise indicated, the direct quotes here are from a memorial tribute to James Hanley adopted by the Irish American Historical Society on the occasion of his August 1912 death.

Additional Note:  Below in comments, Greg Theberge takes me to task for having quoted his material and used images in this article without asking permission or giving credit to him. After researching his concerns, I find that he is indeed correct that in this instance I failed on both counts and for that I profoundly apologize to him and his father.  Such definitely is not my practice and I am at a loss to explain how it happen in this instance. But that is not an excuse. The material and images in question came from a book by Edward J. and Gregory Theberge entitled "The History of the Brewing Industry in Rhode Island," a truly impressive volume -- well written and elegant typographically. It is available online at: https://www.scribd.com/document/196011962/Rhode-Island-Brewery-History

Adolph Schwarz: A Wealthy Patron Was No Guarantee

Most immigrants to these shores in the 1800s arrived with few if any dollars in their pockets and no wealthy relatives to welcome them.  When Adolph Schwarz arrived from what was then Bohemia, awaiting him was his cousin, a wealthy and well-placed New York City lawyer.  That connection, however, did not shield Schwarz from the vagaries of the liquor trade in America.

Schwarz, shown here in a newspaper illustration, was born in 1847, a cousin to Samuel D. Sewards, a prominent New York attorney.  Sewards was particularly active in German-American circles, the president of two elementary schools in Manhattan devoted to the education of German-speaking children not able to attend public schools because of their lack of English.   For some time Sewards had urged Schwarz to come to the U.S. and when Adolph reached the age when he could travel alone across the Atlantic, he came.

Using his contacts, Sewards secured a place for his cousin in the house of a dry goods company, a job Schwarz reportedly found tedious.  He stuck at it for a number of years, saving his money and achieving a level of economic independence.  Thoroughly sick of dry goods, and perhaps seeking some distance from Sewards, he left New York City about 1867 for Paterson, New Jersey.  That city was booming with dozens of mill buildings, and firearms, silk, and railroad locomotive manufacturing industries that had attracted tens of thousands of immigrant workers.  They in turn had spawned dozens of saloons.

Schwarz almost immediately joined the firm of Ledner & Steppen, a newly-established house in the wholesale and retail wine and liquor business.  When that partnership dissolved sometime later, Adolph stayed with one of the partners for several more years, until he had saved a substantial sum and earned the respect of potential clientele in Paterson.  Then he went into the liquor trade on his own account, locating his establishment at the corner of Straight and Mechanic Streets.

His wholesale liquor business seems to have been successful from the start. It resulted in his issuing a number of liquor containers, varying in size from half gallon to gallon jugs and glass bottles from half-pints to quarts.  Examples are shown throughout this post.  Schwarz proprietary brands included “Old Family Rye,” “Canoe Club Whiskey,” and “Forest Club.”   He never bothered to trademark any of them.

Meanwhile, Adolp was having a personal life.  About 1876 he wed Bertha, like himself, an immigrant, having been born in Prussia.  He was about 26 at the time of their marriage, Bertha was 22.  The 1880 census found the couple living in Paterson with their daughter, Isabelle, known as “Belle,” who was five.  Later Schwarz would commission a noted local architect, F. W. Rumpf, to design an elegant residence for the family, shown here.

So robust was his trade that Schwarz decided to establish two branch outlets, one on the corner of Main and Water Streets and the other at 96 Broadway.  He had not, however, reckoned on the vagaries of the U.S. economy.  The panic of 1873 was a severe nationwide economic depression that lasted until 1877.  Paterson’s industries laid off hundreds of workers.  Business at local saloons dropped off precipitously and along with it Schwarz’s sales of liquor.  He was forced to close the two branches and confine himself to his original location.  As the economy improved into the 1880s, his business rebounded and he moved to single larger quarters at 99 Main Street, occupying an entire building.

Schwarz also had noted an increased demand for domestic wine. In order to satisfy customer requirements he made arrangements directly with growers in Ohio, Missouri and California for shipments of product.  His ad for champagne claimed that “Mrs. Langtry Drinks our Wines.”  The reference is to Lily Langtry, the English actress, a subject of much public attention, who made several tours of the United States, undoubtedly tasting domestic wines along the way.

In 1881 Schwarz had a carload of wine shipped from St. Louis that was shunted onto a siding and forgotten.  The wine spoiled with a consequent major financial loss to Schwarz.  One observer wrote:  “But, undaunted, he sent another order which turned out in a much more satisfactory manner, and led to the success which is attending him today.  He is at present the proprietor of one of the largest establishments in this city and is agent for four of the largest distilleries in the United States.”

Meanwhile Adolph was diversifying his enterprises, becoming a prime investor in the Paterson Plastic Company and other businesses in New Jersey.  He also conducted a busy social life, with active memberships in the Masons, Old Fellows, Knights of Pythias and several German-oriented societies.  Now a citizen, Schwarz, it was said, “has been importuned on more than one occasion to accept the nomination for public office, but has alway declined.”

Unfortunately, Adolph Schwarz died before his full potential could be achieved.  It occurred on February 27, in either 1896 or 1897.  Both years have been recorded.  At that time he would have been about fifty years old.  Because Schwarz died intestate, it may indicate that his death came suddenly and unexpectedly.  He was buried in the Mount Nebo Cemetery at Totowa, New Jersey.

 The wholesale liquor firm Schwarz had founded continued on without him for a few years, now under the management of his son-in-law, Isaac Basch, married to Adolph’s daughter, Belle.  In 1897 Basch incorporated the business, keeping the respected Schwarz name.  Under that regime, the company continued to be listed in Patterson directories until Basch died about 1919 and the company and its brands with him.

Note:  Much of the information for this article and Schwarz’s likeness and that of his home came from an unsigned, undated article in a Paterson newspaper found on the Internet at the New Jersey Bottle Forum.  The Forum author speculates that Schwarz “...was maybe the most prolific bottler of whiskey and spirits that Patterson has ever known.”