Watterson and Flexner : Louisville’s Liquor “Odd Couple”

Henry Watterson, shown here, has been called "the last of the great personal journalists,” writing colorful and thought provoking opinion articles carried by hundreds of American newspapers. Penning an early manifestation of the syndicated column, Watterson was known from coast to coast. Edward M. Flexner was a Louisville liquor broker whose attraction to Watterson led him to create a successful brand of whiskey in the journalist’s name.  As further evidence of his devotion, Edward named one of his sons “Henry Watterson Flexner.” 

The origins of the pair were entirely different.  Watterson was born in 1840 in Washington, D.C., into a family of politically connected journalists. His father was a crony of President Andrew Jackson and in 1843 was named editor of the Washington Union, the main organ of the National Democratic Party. An uncle would become a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  As a volunteer in the Confederate Army Watterson spent the war safely on the staffs of leading Southern generals.  Postwar he worked on newspapers in Cincinnati and Nashville before settling in Louisville about 1868, editing the newly formed Louisville Courier-Journal, shown left. Watterson would hold that job for the next half-century

Edward Flexner, by contrast, was the son of immigrant parents.  His father, Jacob had been born in the Bohemia region of what is now the Czech Republic.  The 1870 U.S. census gave Jacob’s occupation as “notions dealer,” which I interpret  meaning he made a living as a peddler, as did many newly arrived Jewish immigrants.  Edward’s mother, Laura Sichar Flexner, was an immigrant from Germany.  The parents met in New York City, married about 1857, and moved to Louisville in the early 1860’s.  Edward was born there in 1864, the third of seven children.

When Jacob died suddenly at the age of 51, Edward, 16, was the eldest son  with a widowed mother and four younger brothers and sisters — the youngest only five.  The inference is that his education abruptly terminated and at an early age he was tasked as the family breadwinner.  Living in Louisville, the center of the Kentucky whiskey industry, it is easy to imagine Flexner beginning his career as a clerk in one of the many distilleries and liquor houses located there.  He was intelligent and hardworking, rising during ensuing years to a position of wealth and influence in the Kentucky whiskey industry.

Although I can find no photo of Flexner, a passport application when he was 42 contained this description:  Height:  5 feet, 6.5 inches tall; face:  high forehead, oval face, and fair complexion;  hair gray and eyes dark.  He surfaced in Louisville directories in 1897 as the proprietor of the Edward F. Flexner Company, described there as a whiskey distiller and liquor house proprietor.  To my mind, neither was true.  Flexner’s business was not being carried on at a facility involving a still, warehouses, or any of the usual elements of a distillery.  Nor was his headquarters a building with a ground floor store where he might have been active as a “rectifier,” blending proprietary whiskeys on premises.  Instead, Flexner was working from Room 415 of the Columbia Building, Louisville premier office space, shown here. It later became known as the Commercial Building. Flexner subsequently moved his operation to Room 310 

In truth, Flexner was a whiskey broker, acting as a middleman between Kentucky distillers and wholesale and retail liquor dealers throughout America.  He was among those brokers who marketed their own brands of whiskey along with those of their clients.  Flexner had two labels:  “Henry Watterson Whiskey” and “Henry Watterson Rye.”  Although he may have selected the name because it belonged to Louisville’s most famous resident, “Marse Henry,” as the newsman was known, also had credentials as a strong foe of prohibition.

For example when baseball star Billy Sunday became an evangelist and vocal advocate for banning alcohol, Watterson in a column ridiculed him thus:  “Having exhausted Hell-fire-and-brimstone, the evangelist turns to the Demon Rum. Prohibition is now the trick card.  The fanatic is never very discriminating or very particular…Today it may be whiskey.  Tomorrow it will be tobacco.” 

Later Watterson would condemn “dry” initiatives in the U.S. Congress, lamenting:  “The death blow to Jeffersonian Democracy was delivered by Democratic Senators and Representatives from the South and West who carried through the prohibition amendment.”  A humorous mint julip recipe has been credited to Watterson:  “Pluck the mint gently from its bed, just as the dew of evening is about to form on it. Prepare the syrup and measure out a half tumbler of whiskey.  Pour the whiskey into a well-frosted silver cup, throw the other ingredients away, and drink the whiskey.”

Just as Flexner knew Watterson's “wet” views, he knew that his face and name on liquor might make a best seller.  Shown below is the Henry Watterson Whiskey label on a clear quart bottle,left, and a half pint flask. The label designates it as “bottled in bond” indicating that it was made after 1897.  The brand is prominently displayed as the product of the Flexner Distilling Company.  What quality of liquor these bottles contained is unknown.  My guess is that the broker was working with a local distillery to supervise the contents and labeling.  

The agreement Flexner struck with Watterson for the use of his name and picture has not come to light.  In those days the legal framework for use of celebrity names and images was virtually non-existent.  Given the whiskey broker’s evident esteem for Watterson, an amiable agreement must have existed between the two. 

In 1895 Edward at the age of 31 had married 26-year-old Belle Katz in Chicago.  A native of Illinois, Belle was the daughter of German immigrants.  In quick succession the couple would have two sons, Edward M.G. and Henry Watterson Flexner.  During this period Edward appears to have been commuting between a home in Chicago and Louisville, lodging there in the posh Galt House Hotel, shown here.  Meanwhile Watterson had built himself a large home in Louisville, a mansion he called “Mansfield.”  Residing with the journalist was his wife Rebecca and their six sons, two daughters, and several servants. 

 

In Louisville during the late 19th Century and early 20th, the whiskey industry was undergoing rapid change.  Distillery names, ownerships, and labels were altering with dizzying speed, leaving whiskey historians scrambling.  The Henry Watterson brand fits that description.  At some point during the 1910s, Flexner apparently sold the rights to the label to an entity calling itself the Watterson Distribution Co., as seen below.  The rear panel of this half pint flask indicates that the contents were distilled at the A. Mayfield & Co., Distillery No. 229, in LaRue County, two miles south of New Haven, Kentucky.  The distillery was operated under the auspices of the Whiskey Trust.

Adding to the confusion was a multiplicity of Kentucky whiskeys that traded on  Watterson’s name.  The John T. Barbee Co. in 1900 added the brand “Watterson  Club” to its list of proprietary whiskeys. [See post on Barbee, April 4, 2012]. The Pleasure Ridge Distillery of Jefferson County issued a whiskey it called “Old Henry Watterson.” Flexner had never bothered to trademark his labels, perhaps encouraging copycat brands to surface.

Ensuing years found Flexner working as an officer in other liquor firms.  For several years in the mid-1910s, directories listed him as the secretary-treasurer of the Old Jordan Distillery Company, located in Room 215 of the Columbia/Commercial Building.  Flexner then became secretary-treasurer of Belle of Anderson Distilling, a company operating from the same building. My assumption is that both these outfits were in effect liquor brokerage houses, possibly under direction of the Whiskey Trust. 

Both Watterson and Flexner lived long enough to see National Prohibition imposed. The journalist’s newspaper would survive, his liquor brand would not.  Shown here in old age, Henry Watterson died in 1921 at 85 and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery where so many major figures in whiskey history are interred.  Edward Flexner died in 1925 about the age of 60.  He was interred in The Temple Cemetery, a Louisville Jewish burying ground. 

Note:  This post was drawn from multiple resources.  Considerable information can be found on Henry Watterson on the Internet.  Robin Preston’s “pre-pro.com” website furnished valuable information on Flexner as did ancestry.com.  The photo of Flexner here was a later addition to the post, sent to me by an anonymous donor, to whom I am very grateful.