When Dr. Wesley Peacock, Sr., looked out the front widow of his Peacock Military Academy, he could see his male students creeping off campus to destinations in downtown San Antonio, Texas. The schoolmaster knew that some were headed to saloons like the one adjacent to Main Plaza run by German immigrant August Limburger, shown right.
Founding his college preparatory academy in 1894, Dr. Peacock, shown left, envisioned it as “the most thorough military school west of the Mississippi, governed on the honor system and conducted on the principles of a cultured home.” His newspaper and magazine ads promised: “Educate your boy in this dry and elevated atmosphere….Discipline….We look after our boys day and night.” Yet the city San Antonio was anything BUT “dry” and it was impossible to keep track of the boys 24-7. In Dr. Peacock’s mind, however, a plot was forming.
Oblivious of the schoolmaster’s ruminations, Limburger meanwhile was operating one of San Antonio’s more upscale drinking establishments. He had been born in Germany in 1868, the son of Henry and Matilde “Hilde” Amberace Limburger. When August was about 16 the family, with his siblings came to America in 1884, settling in Texas, a destination for many German immigrants. There his father established a meat market on San Antonio's Milam Street and a saloon on Austin Street.
As they reached maturity, Henry Limburger brought his sons into his businesses. An 1891 business directory identified Henry Jr. as a bartender and later the son who eventually took over the meat market. August joined the drinking establishment, learning the liquor trade. After his father moved to a new saloon, August, still only 24, became the proprietor of the Metropolitan Bar at 651 Austin Street. His success in the liquor trade was indicated by a move he made in the late 1890s to a higher visibility location at 501 West Commerce St., just off the Main Plaza. This location, in addition to holding the Bexar County Court House and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, was home to the city’s more upscale drinking establishments.
This address also brought him closer to Dr. Peacock’s Academy and put his saloon in the “cross hairs” of the pedagog’s conspiratorial mind. The headmaster had noted a Texas law that required proprietors selling liquor to post a liquor dealer’s bond that carried penalties for selling to individuals under 21, habitual drunks, or “students of an institution of learning.” The penalty for serving a student was a fine of $500, paid to the educational entity filing a complaint. The $1,000 from two offenses was equal at that time to about $25,000 today.
Dr. Peacock must have cackled and clapped his hands thinking of the largesse. Then he dispatched two of his students, Joe Speed and John Bivins, with cash to Limburger’s Metropolitan Bar. They had doffed their cadet hats and uniforms and were in civilian clothes. Limburger himself was not on the premises to see his obliging bartenders serve each of the young men a beer.
Speed and Bivins returned to Dr. Peacock as expected and related their experience. Then in modern parlance, the schoolmaster “dropped the dime,” hauling Limburger into Civil Court and demanding that he pay the $1,000 penalty. The saloonkeeper’s attorneys countered that there was no way the bartender could identify the young men, dressed as they were, as belonging to Dr. Peacock’s institution. The judge was sympathetic to the defense and instructed the jury to decide liability on the basis of whether Limburger or his employees reasonably could have known that the Speed and Bivins were students. The jury said “no” and Dr. Peacock went away empty handed.
Limburger became known as one of San Antonio’s most genial and generous saloonkeepers. While bar tokens were common most were of the five cent variety. The German immigrant gave away tokens worth 12 and 1/2 cents, known widely as “one bit” (“two bits” made a quarter). It was enough to buy a shot of top shelf whiskey. Limburger also gave good customers mini jugs, each with a few swallows of whiskey. The one shown below in two views recently sold at auction for $510.
When Four Roses, a premier American whiskey, advertised in San Antonio it included “Aug. Limburger" among the local establishments stocking their liquor behind the bar. The saloonkeeper also featured his own “house” brands, advertising “Spring Bourbon” and “XXX Pearl Rye.” He advertised each at 85 cents a quart, moderately priced whiskeys. Limburger also expanded into mail order sales.
Despite the growing urbanization of San Antonio, the city was still part of the “Wild West” and Limburger’s saloon was not immune from incidents. In late July 1908, while his bartender, Charles Artzt, was serving a customer along the hardwood, a drunken man with a gun walked up to the bar and fired point blank at him. The bullet narrowly missed Artzt's head and shattered a large mirror behind the bar. Before the drunk could fire again the bartender disarmed him and turned him over to the police.
Whether it was this incident or another reason, within a few months Limburger sold the Metropolitan Bar and became proprietor of the Elite Hotel and Bar, shown above. He disappeared from San Antonio business directories after 1913, dying in September 1823 at the age of 55. He was buried in St. Johns Lutheran Seminary in San Antonio.
Losing the $1,000 did not daunt Dr. Peacock. His Academy was chartered in 1904 and became one of the first Junior-ROTC schools recognized by the Department of War. Later staff would include future President Dwight D. Eisenhower. When it closed in 1973, Peacock Military Academy was nationally recognized as the "West Point of Texas" and had graduated over 15,000 cadets, many of whom served and commanded in World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Vietnam War. Dr. Peacock died in 1926.
Note: As frequently occurs, this post was triggered by a single bottle for sale on an internet site. In looking into the background of August Limburger, the whiskey man who produced the mini-jug, I came across the 1902 incident with Dr. Peacock. Two principal sources were the Wikipedia entry on Peacock Academy and a Texas Supreme Court document on the case of Peacock v. Limburger.
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