Whiskey Men of the Gold Rush

 

Foreword:  Where gold was discovered in North America, whether in the American West, Alaska, or the Yukon, a rush of expectant miners could be expected as thousands of men from all over the globe undertook “moiling for gold,” in the words of Poet Robert Service.  Among those men were some fortune seekers who would discover in time that gold more easily gotten in selling liquor to other miners than in hacking at the ground.  Presented here are brief stories of three such “whiskey men,” — Italian, French, and Irish — who made that transition.

It may have been an ad like the one shown above that first lured Bernardo Levaggi from his native town of Lucca in Tuscany, Italy, to California to search for gold. The results of his twelve-years’ experience in mining is unclear, but he found prosperity in the whiskey trade when he went to San Francisco in 1874 to open a saloon. 

That enterprise led to mercantile activities with his sons that increasingly featured liquor. By 1910, Levaggi & Company had outgrown its original quarters and moved to a three-story building at 333-339 Clay Street in San Francisco  With the move the  abandoned the grocery department and concentrated on liquor.   It was reported that they had become the West Coast representatives of “several large Eastern distilleries.”   The firm issued several of its own brands, including “Royal Life Whiskey,” “High Life,” “Old Silver Creek,” “N.A. Hawkins,” and “Clermont.”  Levaggi also claimed owning the Clermont Distilling Company at Clermont, Kentucky.  In reality his company was getting and blending product from a variety  of distilleries. 

As National Prohibition began to draw a noose around the liquor trade,  Levaggi & Co. in permissive California continued to thrive.  In 1919, however, probably seeing the coming end of the liquor business, the Levaggi and his sons branched out into other areas.   In 1919 they set up a dehydrating plant for making dried fruit and  also became well known in the Bay Area as importers, according to one account, “…Building up  a large and important business.”  

Looking out from Belle Isle, France, where he had been born in 1815, Fortune Chevalier dreamed of striking gold in California.  According to accounts, Chevalier hatched a plan to get to California on the pretext of providing window glass for buildings for the boomtowns springing up on the West Coast.  He recruited a team of fellow craftsmen, bought a large stock of window panes, and in 1852 took the long sea voyage across the Atlantic, through the wild seas off the southern tip of South America, and then north in the Pacific to San Francisco.  He apparently hoped that while his companions were occupied in hanging windows, he could sneak off and pan for gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  It didn’t work.  Upon arrival his men had the same idea, abandoned Chevalier and the glass, and headed for the gold fields themselves.

The next few months apparently were lean ones for Chevalier.  If he tried panning or mining for gold, he apparently soon was discouraged.  In the mid-1850s, the Frenchman surfaced in Placerville, California.  There in 1857 Fortune went into the liquor trade as the F. Cavalier Company.  Within a year or so he moved his enterprise to Sacramento.  Chevalier carried on business there for more than a decade. Among his featured whiskey brands were “Hebe,” "Old Emmet” and “Relief.” 

 Apparently because of the expanding nature of his business over much of the West Coast, in 1870 Chevalier made a final move to San Francisco.  With his brother, Albert, he set up a wholesale liquor house.  He also bought an interest in the Castle Distillery in Kentucky and established the firm as the sole West Coast agents for “Old Castle” a brand name that Chevalier later bought outright.  He registered the name in 1872 and again in 1905 after Congress strengthened the trademark laws.

As his wealth grew large Chevalier bought a vineyard near St. Helens, California, in the foothills of Napa County.  There he built an imposing barn and a chateau, shown here, to rival those of his competitors in the neighborhood.  According to accounts Chevalier’s land was 40 acres of which about 25 were “under vine.”  His private roads were lined with olive trees and extensive gardens with winding paths along terraces, pools, and stone stairways.  There Fortune produced his Chateau Chevalier wines, according to one account “well known and appreciated locally as well as in the eastern states.”

Fortune Chevalier went almost halfway around the earth seeking wealth in the gold fields but instead found it in the gold coins he extracted from those who purchased his wines, cognacs and liquors.  Fortune had found his fortune.

Burned out of his home and business by the massive Pittsburgh fire of 1845,  Ireland-born Michael Kane traveled a long, rough, and sometimes discouraging road to California to find gold.  In the aftermath of the fire, Kane, who seemingly had a knack for impressing the Pittsburgh political and social elites, formed a joint venture of local young men, many the sons of the wealthy, for the purpose of traveling to California to mine for gold.  Kane called it the Pittsburg & California Enterprise Company.  Each participant in the wagon train paid $260 (equivalent to about $5,700 today) to provide funds for wagons, mule teams and provisions.  Families were left behind.

After a rough crossing of the West, Kane staked a claim in an area known as “Mud Springs” (now El Dorado) four miles south of Placerville.  That and subsequent digs seemingly were unsatisfactory as ensuing months found Kane moving from place to place.  By winter 1851, however, he was digging for gold near a California town called “Rough and Ready” and making $10 a day (equivalent to $220). Earning enough money to return to Pittsburgh, he gathered up his family  there and returned to California.

In San Francisco during the early 1860s Kane bought a one-third interest in an established liquor house.  When the other owners by 1872 had left, Kane, now thoroughly familiar with the liquor business, brought in a new partner, a fellow Irishman named Fergus O’Leary.  The company became Kane, O’Leary & Company.  Soon after, the partners made a move to a more upscale location at 221 and 223 Bush Street in San Francisco’ financial district.  Shown here, it was located on the ground floor of the Brooklyn Hotel.

There Michael and his partner offered up a number of brands, including "Morning Glory,” "Old Cabinet,” "Old Judge,” "Old Kentucky Club,” and “Paragon,”  “Double Refined Old Bourbon,” “Hunter’s Wheat Whisky,”  “Kentucky Farm Bourbon,” and “Copper Double Distilled Rye.”  These were packaged in glass bottles, usually amber in color and in sizes varying from quarts to pints and half-pints, as shown here. 

After years of lucrative business selling whiskey, Kane understood he had found a surer way to strike gold.  At age 65, however, the Irishman decided he had money enough to retire.  Indicative of his wealth, Kane purchased as a home for his family a mansion considered the finest residence in Alameda, California.  It was there across San Francisco Bay south of Oakland, that Michael Kane, 82,  died a wealthy man in November 1899.

Note:  More complete stories of each of these three “whiskey men” may be found on this website:  Bernardo Levaggi, August 18, 2012; Fortune Chevalier, June 11, 2017, and Michael Kane, June 23, 2019.