Often it is a distinctive jug that draws me to research a story about the whiskey man whose name it carries. Shown below from several angles is a Nippon pottery container for “Old Velvet” whiskey that bears the name Ezra M. Higgins. The story behind the Higgins company of Rochester, New York, turns out to encompass some seventy years and in addition to Ezra involves multiple owners.
First, a look at the jug. It was the product of a Japanese pottery house founded in 1876 by Ichizaemon Morimura VI and his brother Toyo to sell Japanese pottery overseas. After opening an office in New York City the company was renamed Morimura Brothers in 1881. In the 1890s, the company shifted from retail to wholesale operations and started working on design improvements for pottery and porcelain ware. By the early 20th Century the company was creating European style hard white porcelain in Japan, decorating it by hand and selling it in the U.S. under the Nippon name.
While a variety of these jugs may have been employed as specialty containers by American liquor houses, they likely bore paper labels that long since have been washed away. The Higgins jug may be unique. It bears the names of the brand and the distributor as part of the Nippon decor. The colorful decoration, seen by some as an “Egyptian” design covers much of the porcelain surface, including the handle as well as the porcelain and cork stopper.
Higgins’ grocery business, one specializing in liquor and wine, was founded in 1851 — the year Ezra was born — by Henry L. Ver Valin. After his death in 1868, a former store clerk named James Backus and Elisha F. Hyde purchased the property. After buying out his partner in 1875, Hyde ran the Rochester establishment until he died in 1879. His widow, Martha, succeeded him and ran the business for the next two years, selling out to Higgins in 1881.
Ezra was an “up and comer” in local business circles. Born in Rochester, he was the son of Cornelius (sometimes “Henry”) and Alvina Higgins. In census data his father was listed as a laborer and later as a railroad baggage handler. The boy appears to have gone to work as early as thirteen and in the 1870 census was recorded clerking in a grocery store. By the time he was 30 he had enough money saved to buy out the Widow Hyde.
Higgins aggressively expanded the business. Three years after buying it he moved to larger quarters at 10 State Street. Before long he needed even more space. By 1891 he was advertising that his main store was at 59 State Street, with a branch in the 200 block of East Main Street, the avenue shown above. He also ran a cigar stand at the Livingston Hotel. The hotel, shown here, was a leading Rochester hostelry that claimed to be “strictly first class.” During much of this period Ezra was living with his widowed mother.
With growing wealth, Higgins was expanding his entrepreneurship into other areas. In 1895 he became an investor and officer of the Charles F. Burns Co. of Rochester, a manufacturer of supplies for electric railways. Three years later he helped organize a firm called Higgins, Olmstead & Company to manufacture gas and electric fixtures. Subsequently he invested heavily in the Rochester Telephone Company and was made a director.
His concentration on these outside interests apparently prompted Higgins in 1901 to sell the grocery and liquor business he had run so successfully for twenty years. The buyers were the Gucker family of Rochester, led by William J. Gucker, who may have been a bookeeper for Higgins. Shown here, Gucker became the secretary, treasurer and general manager of what continued to be named the E. M. Higgins Company.
Gucker maintained the two Main Street stores and was reputed to have “acquired a host of friends both in Rochester and throughout the State of New York.” Over the next 18 years Gucker expanded sales throughout the region. As shown here in an ad he was blending and bottling his own proprietary brands, including “Old Velvet,” “Worthmore Rye,” Higgins XXXX Monongahela Whiskey,” “Oldfield Rye,” and “Everglad Rye.” His ads admonished: “Remember these names — they are exclusive Higgins’ brands.”
Gucker’s success takes us back to the Nippon jug. The pottery mark on the base of the ceramic, according to experts, dates it after 1911, meaning that not Ezra Higgins, but his successor, was responsible for commissioning it. In so doing, Gucker may have been appropriating the name “Old Velvet.” This brand had been registered with the U.S. Patent Office about 1891 by the J & G Butler Company of Columbus, Ohio. This did not deter as many as seven other liquor houses across America from using the name, perhaps under license from the Butlers, but more likely not.
Authentic porcelain, painted by hand, and imported from Japan, these jugs would have been a relatively pricey item. To whom and on what occasion Gucker gave them away is unknown, but recipients would have been carefully chosen. Today Nippon whiskey jugs command up to $500 each from collectors. Virtually all of them would be more than 100 years old and are considered antiques.
With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920 Gucker was forced to shut own his liquor business. By 1921 local business directories were listing him as the vice president of the Rochester Food Products Corp., located at 440 Hudson Avenue. Within a few years, however, he had become an insurance broker, as shown in an 1927 business directory ad. After Repeal, Gucker briefly revived the E. M. Higgins Co. as a brewery that subsequently was subsumed into the American Brewing Company, of which he became vice president.
Note: The principal source of information for this post was “The History of the Jews of Rochester,” a monograph reprinted by the Rochester Public Library, no date.
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