The Van Schuyvers: Prospering in Portland; Ousted in Oregon

Father and son, William J. and William O. Van Schuyver, for more than a half century were proprietors of a Portland, Oregon, wholesale liquor business that contemporaries called a “powerhouse.”  The elder Van Schuyver, shown here, was hailed as “pioneer” merchant of the Northwest but his son was threatened with disaster when Oregon went dry.

The birthplace of William J. Van Schuyver variously has been given as Ohio and Indiana.  His mother, Mary Craw, was from a family that originated in New York and proudly counted ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War.  Her father brought the family to Cleveland in 1832 where members were engaged in contracting and her brother became a member of Cleveland’s first city council.  There Mary met Joseph Van Schuyver and their only son, William Joseph, was born in July 1935.

His fortunate circumstances of birth soon darkened when his father died in 1839, only 27 years old.  This heartbreak was compounded ten years later when his mother, only 31, also died, leaving William J. an orphan of 14 years.  Mary had Craw relatives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who took the boy in, saw to his education, and raised him to maturity.   Early in his career William J. seemed headed for a business career in Fort Wayne, working as a bookkeeper in a branch of the Indiana State Bank.

That future apparently had little appeal for the young man.  When the California Gold Rush began, William J. chucked the banking job, departed Fort Wayne and hopped a boat for Panama.  Crossing the Isthmus he took another ship to San Francisco and headed for the gold fields.  His results were disappointing.  After toiling in California with pick and shovel for several years with little to show for his effort, Van Schuyver gave up and headed north, finally locating in Portland.

There he found employment as a bookkeeper for Ladd, Reed & Co., a Portland general merchandising outfit that likely sold whiskey among its products.  There William J. would have learned how lucrative the liquor trade could be.  After a brief foray into Eastern Oregon for employment with a steamship company, he  returned to Portland in 1865 to open a wholesale liquor house with a partner, Levi Millard, who like Van Schuyver had come to Portland from the East as a young man.

In October of that year, William J. married at the age of 30.  His bride may have been a sweetheart he had left behind in Indiana.  She was Harriet Hamelia Angell, six years his junior, who also had been raised in Fort Wayne, the daughter of Mrs. Orange Angell.  Wed in a ceremony in San Francisco, the couple would have three children.  Their first child was a boy, born in 1967 and christened William Orange Van Schuyver.  He was destined to be integral to his father’s enterprise and carry it on.  His birth was followed by two sisters, Mary C., born in 1869 and Helen A.,1877.  

According to city directory entries William J. and his partner first located their liquor house on Front Street.  Within a few years their business success caused them to move to larger quarters on Second Street.  In 1877 Levi Millard died leaving his partner as the sole owner of an enterprise rapidly renamed “W. J. Van Schuyler Company,” as shown on the letterhead below.  When William O., reached maturity he joined company management.

The Van Schuyvers featured a variety of brands.  They included "Atwoods Pure Alcohol,” "Beech Grove,” "Boat Club,” "Cumberland Club,” “G.O.Taylor,” "Graves' Maryland Malt,” "Judges Favorite,” "Kentucky Union,” "Laurel Wreath Gin,” "Mackinaw Rye,” "Old Heritage Rye,” “Old Bailey,” "Shields Gin,” “Superba," "The Judges Favorite,” "Union League Club,” "Walnut Hill Pure Rye.”  Many of these labels were trademarked brands from nationally known distillers and wholesale liquor houses, including five from Chester H. Graves & Sons Co. of Boston.  Records indicate that the Van Schuyvers’ Portland liquor house trademarked no brands of its own.

The company’s featured whiskeys were from Cyrus Noble, a distillery with roots in Ohio and Kentucky.  The Van Schuyvers featured an illustration of the facility on their letterhead.  This identification linked their firm to Lilienthal & Co,  a liquor wholesaler based in San Francisco that was the principal distributor of Cyrus Noble products on the West Coast.  [See my post on Lilienthal, Feb. 22, 2018.]   This link later would prove highly valuable to the Van Schuyver fortunes. 

The Van Schuyvers packaged their whiskey in quart amber bottles embossed with their name,“Portland, ” and a crest involving a crown and a shield, with a “V” prominent on the crown.  Those bottles would have had paper labels that have disappeared over time.  They also packaged their product in flat sided flasks of varying sizes.  Those also bore the company name and “Portland, Oregon.”

A key element of the company business was sales of Van Schuyver’s “Bohemia Bitters,” advertised as “a certain remedy for Indigestion, Biliousness, Constipation, Malaria, and other kindred disorders.”  A full wine glass of the bitters three times a day was advised.  Heavily laced with alcohol, this “palatable tonic” might have relieved some symptoms, but malaria was a stretch.  Since no one at the time really knew what caused malaria, such claimed cures were common for a wide variety of nostrums.  Advertised with “arty” trade cards with a definite feminine appeal, Bohemia Bitters seems to have been aimed at women.  If the lady of the house imbibed three full wine glasses a day of this “certain remedy,” however, she might have had difficulty making dinner.

Together the father and son built their liquor house into one of the most successful in the American Northwest.  Their trade extended well beyond Portland into surrounding regions.  As he aged, however, William J.’s health faltered.  Falling ill at Christmas, 1908, he came under the under the care of a physician and initially seemed to improve.  According to the Portland Oregonian: “It was believed at that time that he would in a short time be able to resume charge of his business.”  Instead his condition worsened and William J., age 73, died at home on January 7, 1909.  After a funeral service held in his home, the wholesale liquor dealer was buried in Portland’s Riverview Cemetery, Section 4, Lot 38.  A cross marks the family burial plot. 

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 William O., now 42 years old and married, took full charge of the business, operating it with continued success for the next few years.  Although the loss of his father must have been a blow to the younger Van Schuyver, more trouble was to come.  In 1914, five years prior to National Prohibition, the voters of Oregon passed an amendment to the state constitution banning the manufacture, sale and advertising of intoxicating liquor.  After implementing legislation was passed by the state legislature, the law became effective Jan. 1, 1916.  Immediately, all stocks of liquor in the state were subject to confiscation and destruction at the hands of authorities.

The canny William O. was ready.  According to an article in the Pacific Wine, Brewing and Spirits Review,  Van Schuyler entrained to San Francisco on January 18, 1916, ostensibly to give a speech on the disaster the prohibitionary law had inflicted on Portland during the first two weeks of its enforcement.   According to investigative work by the author of the online Western Whiskey Gazette, Van Schuyver had an ulterior motive:  “Rather than allow the wholesale looting of his warehouse by police, and suffer complete and total financial ruin, William…met with the principals of Lilienthal and/or Crown Distilleries. He probably made arrangements to have his entire inventory transported by rail cars to their warehouses.”

This was just the first step in maintaining the Van Schuyvers in the whiskey trade.William O. then made arrangements to transfer his operations to San Francisco.  By opening a small depot there and obtaining a post office box, he was able to provide liquor to his Oregon customers by mail order.  Federal laws prohibiting such transactions were still working their way through court challenges and express companies were willing to ship whiskey in unmarked packages to “dry” states.  

Shown here is a quart bottle of 100 proof “Old Bailey Straight Whiskey” that “has been bottled and guaranteed by W.J. Schuyver & Co., San Francisco.”  The rear label below suggests:  “If you wish to reorder these same goods send for assortment number 7..2 which will assure prompt service and quality desired.”  The neck label states that the whiskey was made in 1911 and bottled in 1916.  This may indicate that Van Schuyver was successful in liquidating his Portland stocks and was able to continue by buying liquor from Lilienthal or other sources in “wet” California.  With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920, all such activity ceased.  After a run of 55 years the Van Schuyvers were out of business.

The 1920 census found William O. working as the manager of a construction company in Portland.  By the 1930 census he was running a stocks and bond brokerage.  This occupation may have proven less than profitable given the onset of the Great Depression.  By the 1940 census, William O. was listed as a commercial salesman in the metal polishing industry.  He died in 1961 and was buried in the Van Schuyver family plot not far from his father.

Note:  Drawn from a range of genealogical and other sources, this post draws heavily on a May 1913 post in the Western Whiskey Gazette online site for information and images on the Van Schuyvers’ operations. Obituaries for William J. from the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette and the Portland Oregonian provided other key information.