The Frontier Saga and Sorrow of Henry Gesas

 

Harry Gesus was among the Jewish pioneers who helped build the frontier American West by helping to meet the mercantile needs, including liquor, of growing populations in Wyoming, Idaho and Utah.  Henry’s efforts, however, exacted a high family cost in precarious health, early death, and recurring sorrow.

Gesus, shown here in maturity, was born in 1864 in Silale, meaning “Pinewood,” a modest size town in central Lithuania,  He was the son of Nathan and Bessie Berman Gesas.  When Harry was six years old, his family came to New York City where his father established a shirt manufacturing business.  Young Harry was educated in Gotham, worked in the family business, and in 1884, age 20, married Anna Fitzer, a Russian-born woman whom he may have met as a child on the boat coming to America.  Over the next 22 years they would have 10 children.

During the 1890s, a decade of economic recession, Gesus family members began to head west in search of better opportunities.  The parents relocated to Chicago.  A daughter moved to Idaho.  By the end of the decade all but one of Harry’s siblings had left New York.  He and Anna with five children had chosen to locate in Kemmerer, Wyoming.  Shown below, Kemmerer was a new town created by finding rich coal deposits nearby. Coal was essential to the Union Pacific Railroad that was expanding its network across the West.  The products of the mines have been credited as “the latent power which built Wyoming industry and culture.”

In Kemmerer Gesus with a partner created a clothing and dry goods store to meet the needs of a growing population.  The business appears to have been an initial success. Within months they were planning a second store in the nearby coal town of Diamondville, an outlet that opened in 1898.  Located next to a liquor store it may have given Gesas his first inkling of the whiskey trade.  With his brother Barney, Harry also had part ownership of a similar store in Rockville, Wyoming, another coal town 70 miles from Kemmerer.

The Gesus family would appear to have achieved some level prosperity.  A photograph of three older children — from left, May, Jess, and Charles— shows a well-costumed grouping.  Even so, May’s infectious smile hides a delicate physical condition difficult to cope with in the primitive setting of Kemmerer.  Her health was a constant concern.   When May continued to decline during 1899 her parents took her for treatment 130 miles to the hospital in Salt Lake City.   Leaving Anna with the little girl, Gesus then returned to Kemmerer telling the local newspaper that “the little one’s condition was much improved and he thought she was far from being dangerously ill.”  

Within the week, however, he received an anguished call from his wife.  Mary had died, apparently from heart failure.  Gesus quickly entrained to Salt Lake City.  The family turned to the city’s Jewish community for burial arrangements in the local cemetery of the B’nai Israel Congregation, one of only a few Jewish burying grounds in the Mountain West.  They mourned as 10-year-old May was interred there.  Her gravestone is shown here. 

Meanwhile, Gesus and his partners were facing financial problems.  Kemmerer, Diamondville and Rockville were all company towns where coal mine owners dictated many of the condition of life for residents.  Possibly seeing the mercantile success of the Gesuses, owners pressured workers to use the company stores instead.  The Diamondville outlet closed within eight months.  The Gesus brothers tried opening stores in two other Wyoming coal towns, Fossil and Cumberland, again to no avail.  Faced with a growing family, declining prospects, and the memory of May’s death, Harry Gesus in 1902 moved his family to Idaho.

This time he abandoned selling lingerie and began to sell liquor.  His new location was Blackfoot, Idaho, a town not based on coal but boasting a large potato industry and known as the "Potato Capital of the World.”  Shown above is a portion of its main street.  In Blackfoot Gesus opened a saloon and liquor business he called the Kentucky Liquor Store, selling both at wholesale to local saloons and restaurants and at retail.  He was receiving whiskey by the barrel by rail from eastern distilleries and decanting it into gallon and two gallon jugs, like those shown here.  Gesus also opened a store in St. Anthony, a town 65 miles north of Blackfoot. 

Although living conditions in Blackfoot were better than Kemmerer, sanitary conditions were similarly poor.  Outdoor privies were often crudely constructed and water supplies could be polluted.  Doctors were few and often badly trained.  Hospitals were non-existent.  Son Walter Gesas, who had been born in Kemmerer in 1899, at the age of four died in Blackfoot of unrecorded causes.  Once more Harry and Anna traveled the tedious miles to Salt Lake City to bury Walter next to his sister in the B’Nai Israel Cemetery.

Two years later the Gesus family would anticipate the impending birth of another child.  It was a girl, born in April, 1904, a daughter they named Beatrice.  The Gesus household must have been an exciting place with a new baby.  Sadly, she was not destined to emerge from infancy.  By September Beatrice was dead.  Once again the Gesus family made the sorrowing journey to the Salt Lake City graveyard to watch as baby Beatrice was buried next to Walter and May. Harry and Anna must thought often about the toll rugged Western living had taken on their family.

After the death of Beatrice, Gesus did not linger long in Idaho.  Perhaps the memories were just too bitter.  The family moved to Utah, to the town of Price.  Price, 120 miles south of Salt Lake City, was a mining settlement known for its religious and ethnically diverse population.  The wide range of creeds present included Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Protestants, Mormons, Japanese Shinto, and a few  Jews.  There the Gesus family found a home.  Shown here is a portion of a mural showing the town in the early 1900s.

In Price Harry Gesas opened another liquor store, advertising himself as “The Whiskey Merchant.”  Again he was selling at both wholesale and retail, buying whiskey by the barrel and decanting it into ceramic jugs for his customers.  Shown here are four jugs of varying sizes that Gesus employed, ranging from top left to bottom right at half-gallon, gallon, three gallon and four gallon capacity.   Saloon keepers would in turn empty these larger jugs into smaller containers for over-the-bar sales.

While the exact dates of Gesus liquor business in Price are uncertain, he would have been forced out of business in 1917 when Utah voted to go “dry.”  Ironically, it was not the anti-alcohol Mormons but a Jewish governor who pushed through the prohibition law.  The 1920 federal census found the Gesus family living in Salt Lake City.  With their older children now grown, they still had three living with them, including their last, Francis, 9, born in Utah.  Harry Gesus was recorded  running a tobacco shop.

Subsequently the family moved to San Francisco where their eldest son, Charles, now married, was living.  Harry was listed in 1923 California voting registration records as a “merchant,” likely selling tobacco.  He died in November of that same year at the age of 58 and was buried in a Jewish section of a Colma, California, cemetery.  Anna would join him there 19 years later.  Shown here is their joint gravestone.  It is 740 miles from where their three young children lay.

Harry Gesus in a relatively short lifespan had created businesses in nine towns in four Western states,  including seven in bona fide rough and tumble frontier communities.  In each locale he faced challenges.  Not all his businesses were successful.  In two locales he and his family found heartache.  Yet the Lithuanian Jewish immigrant persisted.  In his doggedness Harry Gesus deserves remembering for embodying the spirit of entrepreneurship that helped build the American West.

Note:  It was seeing several Harry Gesus jugs that suggested there might be a story in this “whiskey man.”  That led me to an article in Western States Jewish History.  Dated October 1984, the article is entitled “Harry Gesus: Jewish Merchant in a Wyoming Coal Town.”  The author is Nancy Schoenberg, a Gesus descendant.  My deep gratitude goes to the former publisher of the magazine, David Epstein, for sending me a copy.  Ms. Schoenberg has provided the details of Gesus’ origins and his efforts in Wyoming.  His later activities selling liquor in Idaho and Utah were researched from a variety of sources.