Do not let the benign face of the young man at left fool you. He grew up fatherless; educated himself in that fabled school of hard knocks; ran a store in a tough part of town, and after being strangled at gunpoint by a trio of robbers managed to shoot one of his assailants. He was Henry Wenzel Berger of Vicksburg, Mississippi, a whiskey man who did not like “being messed with.”
Berger was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in july 1865, not long after the end of the Civil War that had brought hard times to much of the South. His father, Charles Berger was a baker. When Henry was only seven, Charles died, leaving his mother, Barbara (nee Spengler) a widow with two young children to raise. Berger’s education and early career have not been documented but it can be assumed that he received the minimum schooling and went to work at an early age.
By the time Henry was 18 he had moved from Natchez 73 miles north on the Mississippi River to the larger city of Vicksburg, shown above in the late 19th Century. There at 18 years old he opened a restaurant/saloon under the name “H.W. Berger.” Located at Washington and China Streets, a rough part of town, his eatery was open round the clock. Berger claimed: “Tables are constantly supplied with The Best this and New Orleans or St. Louis Markets afford.”
Exiting the restaurant business, Berger then entered into a partnership with a Vicksburg local named Bove, setting up a general store on Washington Street that sold a wide variety of goods, including liquor. On a hot June night in 1891, Berger and his partner were just closing up when there was a knock on the door and someone calling “Open the door Mr. Henry.” Accustomed to being addressed in that fashion by customers, he opened the door and a man he did not recognize walked in.
When the man bought five cents of candy and proffered a quarter, Berger was obliged to open the safe to make change, shutting it immediately. In the meantime two other males he did not recognize had entered the store. All three then brandished pistols and demanded money. According to the Vicksburg Evening Post, the feisty Berger answered: “Well here is the safe, gentlemen, help yourselves.” When their efforts at opening the safe failed, one drew a large knife and threatened to cut Berger’s throat unless he opened it. Henry was unmoved.
Thwarted in that effort to intimidate the storekeeper the intruders found a cotton rope, made a loop knot and proceeded to strangle him. “Mr. Berger although in a suffocating position still pluckily refused to accede to the demand,” according to press accounts. Fearing for his partner’s life, however, Bove opened the safe. The gunmen took cash and fled. Just moments after his garroting, Berger leapt into action, grabbed his gun and began firing, slightly wounding one of the intruders. As the three armed men ran out the door, Berger continued to pursue them down the street, firing as he went. To no avail. The robbers got clean away.
Perhaps it was the trauma of this potentially deadly encounter that caused Bove to exit the partnership while Berger, remaining on Washington Street, continued in business, “prosperous and successful” according to one account. In March 1902, however, a calamitous fire of suspicious origins ripped through his store destroying the building and Berger’s entire stock. Two small homes that adjoined his building also were consumed. According to the Vicksburg Evening Post: “There was some delay in getting a sufficient water pressure. The work of the fire department was also somewhat deficient.” The loss was estimated at $8,000 ($176,000 in today’s dollar) only partially covered by insurance.
Berger, now 37 years old, again displaying toughness in the face of adversity, determined to start over. Understanding the profitability of the liquor trade, his new enterprise was a liquor, wine, cigar and tobacco store. He was selling liquor both at retail and wholesale in glass pints and quarts and in stoneware half gallon and gallon jugs. It was one of his two gallon jugs that recently sold at auction for $250, that led me to Henry and his story. Views of that jug, right, and a gallon jug are below.
The Mississippian appears to have been a “rectifier,” someone blending whiskeys in order to achieve a desired color, smoothness and taste. These then were sold as his proprietary brands, among them “Berger’s Private Stock Whiskey” and “Old Ft. Miro Rye.” He failed to trademark either label. In addition, Berger was selling national whiskeys like “Paducah Club” and “Kentwood Rye” both brands from Loeb, Bloom & Company, a liquor wholesaler in Paducah, Kentucky. [See my post on Loeb, Sept. 26, 2018]. Along with their whiskeys, Loeb, Bloom would have provided Berger with advertising giveaways, including mini-jugs and shot glasses.
Despite his heavy business responsibilities, Henry in his late 20s found time to marry. His bride was Clara Spengler, a woman of about 21 when they wed. Clara, a Mississippian born in Vicksburg in 1872, is shown here in maturity. They would have only one child, Mary Henrietta, born in 1895. The family eventually lived at 1101 Belmont Street, shown here, a structure now converted into a restaurant.
Family life, however, did not end Berger’s problems. The early 1900s found him as the proprietor of the Woodbine Saloon and the building it occupied at 106 Washington Street. He was arrested in March 1907 for having rented an upper floor of the building to a fraternal organization called “The Owls Club.” The club rooms consisted of a library, a dining and lounging room, and a large room where card games, chiefly poker, were carried on. Under a Mississippi anti-gambling statute both the owner and the occupant of a building where gambling was discovered were subject to legal penalties. After a police raid on the club Berger was slapped with a $25 fine.
Ever feisty and unwilling to pay up, Henry hired a top Vicksburg law firm to defend him. Several witnesses, including the Owls’ president, testified there was no way Berger could have known there were poker games going on overhead. The club entrance, his attorneys pointed out, was a stairway at the side of the building, well away from the saloon. When it was pointed out by the prosecution that Berger himself was an Owl, his defense crumbled. The Vicksburg judge added $100 to the fine.
More devastating to Berger than his conviction, Mississippi voted itself completely dry the following year. He was forced to shut down his liquor operation and the Woodbine Saloon. For the following several years Vicksburg directory entries indicate no occupation for Berger. Although bootlegging was common in Mississippi, he was never connected with it and he later ran a “dry” cafe. In 1945 Henry Berger died in at home at the age of 79 and was buried in Vicksburg’s Cedar Hill Cemetery. His headstone is shown here. There is no large monument to this feisty Southerner in the graveyard. Instead his liquor jugs keep alive the memory of a “don’t mess with me” whiskey man.
Note: As mentioned above, it was a Berger jug that first alerted me to the fortitude of Henry Berger facing multiple travails as a liquor dealer and saloonkeeper. Stories from the Vicksburg Evening Post and other newspapers furnished much of the material, augmented by the Federal census, Vicksburg directories, and genealogical sources.
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