How does an individual earns the title of “Dean of the American Liquor Industry”? It helps to begin working in a distillery when you are 15 years old. It also is advantageous to have been an active whiskey man right up to your death at age 92. It also is important that during the intervening 75 years, amid tribulations and rapid change, you have maintained a quality presence in the industry. Based on those criteria, the Cincinnati Enquirer headline of April 22, 1960, above, is an accurate description of Edward “Ed” Wertheimer.
Shown here in his youth, Ed was born in Rodney, Mississippi, in 1870, the son of Jacob and Emily Ehrman Wertheimer. Both parents were immigrants from Germany, Jacob from Baden-Wurttemberg and Emily from Bavaria. The father was recorded as a “merchant” in Rodney, a town approximately 32 miles northeast of Natchez. Once considered as a possible capital of Mississippi, Rodney began a swift decline to a virtual ghost town after the Mississippi River changed course in April 1876 leaving the town “high and dry.”
Apparently anticipating the downturn, Jacob in the early 1880s moved his wife and family 215 miles north to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. There he founded a retail liquor establishment under the name Greenbrier Distilling Company. As his sons Lee and Ed entered their mid-teens, he brought them into the business. Both youth showed an aptitude for the trade. When Jacob retired, Lee became president and Ed vice president of a liquor house they called “The Old Spring Distilling Company.” It proved to be a successful venture and they followed with a second company called “L. & E. Wertheimer, Inc., an outfit that apparently was a liquor brokerage, acting as “middle men” between distilleries and wholesalers.
Meanwhile, Ed was having a personal life. In June 1901, he married Sarah Kuhn, shown right. The daughter of Abe Kuhn, a prominent Ogden, Utah, businessman Sarah was born in the Junction City Hotel, probably owned by her father. How the couple met is something of a mystery since Ogden is 1,500 miles northwest of Pine Bluff. Likely there were family connections. The marriage of the handsome Ed, 31, and the comely Sarah, 21, on June 12, 1901, made headlines in several newspapers. A Salt Lake City paper provided portraits of the couple, including the one that opens this post. Over the next four years their union would produce two sons, Jean and Edward Jr.
Early in the 20th Century, the ambitions of Lee and Ed began out outgrow the prospects of Pine Bluff. Northeast by 630 miles, Cincinnati, the leading liquor distribution city in America, beckoned. In 1903 the brothers moved the Old Spring Distilling Company, Ed’s family, and themselves to “The Queen City” on the Ohio River. The L. & E. Westheimer firm remained for a time in Pine Bluff with local management.
The Wertheimer liquor house in Cincinnati initially was located at 121 Produce Alley. When the volume of business at that site required more space the brothers moved to 333 Sycamore Street in 1906. Two years later a final move took the Old Spring Distilling Co. to 129 West Third Road. The company was selling its brands, “Old Spring,” “Hump-Back,” and “Old Time Gin” to the public in quart and flask sizes. These were issued in clear and cobalt blue bottles, with “Cincinnati” embossed on them.
As was customary with the liquor houses of the time, the Wertheimers were generous in bestowing gifts on the saloons, hotels and restaurants featuring their whiskeys. Among them was glassware. Along with the usual advertising shot glasses, the brothers provided customers with highball glasses, a signal that some of their liquor offerings were intended for mixed drinks. These items seem to have concentrated on advertising the Wertheimer flagship label, Old Spring. The brothers, however, never bothered to trademark the name and other U.S. liquor dealers also used it.
Displaying a sense of humor, the Wertheimers also issued a whimsical trade card showing a quart bottle of Old Spring with the motto, “Belongs on Every Sideboard.” Known in the trade as a “mechanical, on the flip side is a illustration of a worried man and the caption, “Don’t look so dam serious.” When turned over the man is smiling and the caption reads, “It may not be true.”
For a number of years, Ed and his brother had no serious challenges. A longtime bachelor, Lee eventually married and had two children. By now wealthy, Ed was able to move his family into a spacious home at 4075 Beechwood Avenue in a fashionable section of Cincinnati. Still standing, the house is shown below. At the same time, however, the onrush of the prohibitionist tide was diminishing business. In 1916 Ohio voted to go “dry” and the result was the Old Spring Distilling Company closed its doors in 1818.
As a fallback, the Wertheimers moved their Pine Bluff outfit, L. and E. Company to Cincinnati. Whatever its principal business had been in Pine Bluff, now it became a brokerage firm with Edward and his brother in charge. Throughout the 14 years of National Prohibition they bought and sold “medicinal” whiskey under the watchful eye of the federal authorities. This period also saw considerable activity in the buying and selling of idle distilleries that may have presented the brothers as brokers another avenue of revenue. As Prohibition stretched on, Ed brought Edward Junior into the company. Lee eventually left the firm and moved to Los Angeles where he died in 1943.
When Repeal came in 1934, Ed, now age 67, was ready. Unlike the majority of “whiskey men” who abandoned the trade permanently, this Wertheimer immediately revived the Old Spring Distilling Company and its flagship brand. Once again the business thrived. As Edward aged, however, he began to reduce his management responsibilities. In 1948 he sold the Old Spring Company and brand to Schenley Industries to concentrate on L. and E. brokerage. After two years heading that organization he ceded it to Edward Junior and became board chairman.
Meanwhile Edward was achieving a reputation for philanthropy, known for large donations made to the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Jewish causes, including the Rockvale Avenue Temple. He also knew sorrow. While he and Selma, his wife of 53 years, were on a Mediterranean cruise in 1953, she suffered a heart attack aboard ship and her body removed at Alexandria, Egypt. Under the supervision of her grieving husband her body was flown back to Cincinnati for burial at the United Jewish Cemetery on Montgomery Road. Several years later Ed established a UC scholarship in her name.
On his 90th birthday, Ed made his daily visit to his office at L. and E. Company. There, a surprise, he received a hand-lettered plaque extolling his accomplishments and listing his contributions to the business and community life of Cincinnati. The plaque bore the names of 60 friends and business associates. When asked the secret of his longevity on that occasion, Ed replied: “I have always avoided overindulgence in anything.” Clearly this did not include business.
Still active in early April 1960, Ed suffered a stroke from which he never recovered, dying a week and a half later at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital. He was 92. Following a well-attended funeral, he was buried next to Selma. The headline from the Cincinnati Enquirer that opens this post was no “local hero” hyperbole. Edward Westheimer by his unbroken 75 productive years in the whiskey trade richly had earned the right to be considered “The Dean."
Note: Using a number of sources, this post relies heavily on the extensive obituary on Edward Wertheimer from the Cincinnati Enquirer of April 22, 1960, and on genealogy references.
Addendum: Just recently, Edward Wertheimer's great-granddaughter, Ann Hollander was in touch with me about this post. She was interested in connecting me with her 89-year old father, Edward Wertheimer III, known by family and friends as "Eppy." She sent me a photo of her father and arranged a telephone call so that we could converse. Eppy was himself intimately involved in the family whiskey business and we had a delightful chat. After Edward Sr.'s death, he joined the company as a salesman of distillery products to both wholesale and retail dealers. When the business was sold to Old Fitzgerald in 1984, Eppy pivoted to commissioning the design of decorative decanters, filling them with bourbon, and selling them in the U.S. and abroad. I am happy to include below a photo of this whiskey man from a great family tradition, holding a bottle of the company's "Old Spring Kentucky Bourbon." And add my thanks to Ms. Hollander for bringing us together.
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