The stern and rugged visage at right is that of Almiran Smith Cole, a New England Yankee who in 1835 uprooted his family from their Massachusetts home, loaded a wagon with sale goods and set out for to a settlement on the Illinois River called Peoria. Arriving two months later, Cole subsequently founded the town’s first whiskey distillery, giving rise to an industry there that eventually return hundreds of millions in taxes to the U.S. Government and made the Yankee entrepreneur a very wealthy man.
When Cole left New England he was breaking with a family heritage of centuries. He was descended from Hugh Cole who emigrated from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, about 1654. Four generations later, Almiran was born in 1805 in Cheshire, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Of his education and early life details are scant but it would appear that as a youth Cole was engaged in the mercantile trades.
When he was 28 years old in January 1833, he married 21-year-old Chloe Brown, descended from a longtime New England family, in Pownell, Vermont. Their marriage produced nine children only two of whom lived into middle age. Two years after they wed, Cole decided that his fortune lay westward. Packing supplies and a cargo of trade goods, in September 1835 he and Chloe set out from Lanesboro, Massachusetts, driving horses and a wagon across the Appalachian mountains and into the Midwest. The trip took the family sixty days.
Shown above as it looked upon their arrival, Peoria was the oldest white settlement in Illinois and only recently had incorporated as a village. Cole saw opportunity in its accessibility by road and water and decided to settle there. Off-loading his trade goods, he opened a store on Main Street, the main commercial avenue. Although a canny entrepreneur, Almiran seems to have been restless in his business efforts. Two years after establishing his general store, he sold out to one of his clerks and moved in an entirely new direction.
Cole became a steamboat captain. He bought a steamer, named the “Frontier,” and ran it as a passenger packet between LaSalle, Illinois, and St. Louis. One of the first boats of its kind to ply the Illinois River, it has been cited as “intimately associated with the history of Peoria.” Shown here is a photo of steamer traffic on the Illinois. This foray onto the water brought Cole a lifelong sobriquet of “Captain.” Within several years, however, the Yankee tired of this occupation, sold the steamer, and returned to the mercantile business, erecting a new building for his store.
By 1844, he had once again gotten restless, sold the store, and erected the first distillery in the history of Peoria, one capable of mashing fifty bushels of grain a day. It was an inspired move. By this time Peoria was experiencing considerable growth and would incorporate as a city in 1845. Saloons were proliferating. Supplies of corn and other grains were abundant and easily accessed. With Cole leading the way, distilling proliferated. In 1850, 5,685 barrels of whiskey were recorded from Peoria. By 1859 distilling was the major manufacturing interests there, with hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. Six distilleries and two alcohol works were in operation.
With Almiran Cole as the pioneer, Peoria would become the whiskey capital of the world. No place on earth, according to the historians, produced as much bourbon and rye as that flowing from Peoria distilleries. In 1885, for example, more than 18 million gallons of whiskey were produced in the city. So great was the revenue from the whiskey tax paid to Washington that Peoria’s share was larger than any other city in America. Shown above is a steamboat with a sign proclaiming that Peoria had paid $3.5 million in taxes.
Meanwhile, Cole had become dissatisfied with his first distillery after two plus years and sold it as a prelude to building a much larger plant at the location shown here A large spring on the property provided water for the distillery and the river behind allowed shipping the finished products. With his own hands Cole is said to have done much of the excavation for the foundation and preparation of the timbers for the four story framework. The cost was $38,000 ($836,000 equivalent today). In Drown's "History of Peoria," issued in 1851, Cole’s distillery was referenced as one of the largest buildings in the Mississippi Valley. It was capable of mashing 1,600 bushels daily. 
In 1862, Cole again tired of making whiskey and sold his distillery to three silent partners, none of them apparently with experience in the industry. At that point he moved to his farm in East Peoria where he had built a stately home for Chloe and his children. He supervised the farm work and looked after his extensive real estate interests, financed by profits from his distilling ventures. His estate is said to have encompassed large tracks of land between East Peoria and Pekin,Illinois. The 1860 federal census ask people about their net worth. Cole claimed a total of $310,000 in assets, roughly equivalent today to $7 million.
Throughout his career in Peoria Cole had engaged in financing public benefits. In 1848, with a charter from the Illinois Legislature, he built the first bridge across the Illinois River. After the first bridge was carried away by ice floes before it could be opened, he built a second, called “Cole’s Bridge.” Shown here, it opened in October 1849 as hundreds of gleeful Peoria residents promenaded across. Cole also built a toll road at the eastern exit of the span to settlements on the other side, including one village named for him — Coleville.
A toll booth sat near the Peoria shore taking five cents for a pedestrian, 20 cents for a single horse and 25 cents for a two-horse rig. Business was good but problems continued. The year after the bridge opened the local newspaper reported that: “The steamer Planter hit the bridge…weakening the structure….A large drove of cattle were driven onto the span….The leaders stopped on the draw and caused it to tilt, dumping the entire herd into the river except for one….” Cole continued to control the bridge but in 1886 at age 81 sold the span and the toll road to the City of Peoria for a reported $30,000. It became a free bridge.
At age 86, Almiran died in December 1891. He was buried in Peoria's Springdale Cemetery in the circular Cole family plot shown above. There he joined Chloe who had died nine years earlier and some of their children who pre-deceased him. He has not been forgotten in Peoria. Among local landmarks is Almiran Street, Cole Hollow, and Cole Hollow Road, shown left. 
Moreover, the city employs an Almiran Cole “impersonator,” shown here, to regale tourists about this founding father and his deeds. The audience is told that from Cole’s first whisky-making facility in 1844 until National Prohibition in 1920, Peoria was home to no fewer than 74 distilleries. The New England Yankee had shown the way.
Note: Several references were key in composing this vignette. They are: Historic Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Peoria County, 1902, transcribed by Danni Hopkins; The History of Peoria County, Illinois, 1880; Centennial History of East Peoria, Daniel A. LaKemper, editor, 1984
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