Herrmann Bros. Were Louisville’s “French Connection”

 

“Though citizens of America and lovers of this country, we join with our adored France in all that makes her great and glorious and in all that might conduce to her benefit.  If she smiles in happiness, we smile with her; if she weeps with sorrow, we too weep.”

Those remarks, spoken on Bastille Day 1901 to a gathering of Kentucky Francophiles, were from Michel Herrmann, a man who knew weeping well as a surrendering soldier during the 1871 French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.  By the following year Michel was embarked across the Atlantic and new opportunities.  With help from his younger brother, F. Joseph, shown here, Herrmann Bros. Company would become a leading Louisville liquor house.  The pair, however, never forgot their roots in Alsace-Lorraine and France.

The sons of Francois and Marie Catherine (Hincker) Herrmann, Michel, born in 1850, was five years older than F. Joseph, who arrived in the U.S. not long after his brother.  The early years of the Herrmanns’ American careers have gone unrecorded but evidence from the 1880 census indicates that by then both brothers already were active in the Louisville whiskey trade.

Herrmann Bros. first appears in Louisville business directories in 1884, located at 531 Market Street.  Over the ensuing seven years, their enterprise apparently flourished to the point where they needed a larger space.  In 1901, the company moved to 234 Sixth Street.  As shown on the letterhead above, they called their enterprise, “Importers of Fine Wines and Liquors…Distillers & Wholesale Dealers in Fine Kentucky Whiskies.”  A photo their liquor house shows it to be a four story building of considerable size.  Piled high on the front sidewalk are cases of liquor as well as large and small barrels, indicating a busy trade.  Among the three men standing in the doorway likely are Michel and F. Joseph.

During the early years of their business, the Herrmanns were not distillers, but rather “rectifiers” who blended whiskeys from outside providers to achieve a particular taste, smoothness and color.  These they were selling at wholesale. They were bottling their blends in ceramic jugs of varying sizes, initially many of them covered with an Albany slip glaze and the label “scratched” into the surface.  This process, done by hand, could lead to botched displays, e.g. the “W” on the jug left. 

As they were building their reputation as a Louisville liquor house, the Herrmann’s were having personal lives that substantiated the axiom that Frenchmen are lovers.   Between the brothers they fathered 23 children.  The first to marry was F. Joseph in November 1876.   His bride was Theresa Meffert of Louisville, a woman of about the same age, who was the daughter of German immigrant, William (aka John) Meffert.  Together this couple would have 13 children over the next 22 years.  Michel was married in 1884 to Catherine “Carrie” Balmer, daughter of Swiss immigrants Wilhelm and Magdalena Balmer.  Carrie was a local girl seven years younger than Michel.  Over the next 20 years they would have ten children.

In addition to growing his liquor business and his family, Michel founded and led a local organization called “Cercle de Union Francaise" to foster French cultural and social events.  The annual highlight was the Bastille Day celebration where Michel traditionally was main speaker.  The menu for the 1909 event included as entrees sweetbreads, braised beef cutlets with mushrooms, roast chicken and fried black bass, accompanied by, no surprise, champagne almost certainly furnished by Herrmann Brothers.   Moreover, Paris had taken note of Michel’s efforts and named him French consul for Kentucky.   The result was a steady stream of overseas visitors and immigrants to his doors.

Meanwhile the Herrmanns were pressing ahead in liquor-centered Louisville to become a more “prominent factor in the trade,” as the Wine & Spirits Bulletin said of them.  As rectifiers they had become increasingly aware of the difficulty of obtaining sufficient whiskey stocks for their blending operations.  The emergence of trusts had pinched off sources and raised prices for “raw” whiskey.  Early on they had contracted with a small distillery in Nelson County, three miles south of Bardstown, Kentucky.  Built in 1780 with only a 20 bushel daily capacity, it was called the Pearl of Nelson Distilling Company.

Likely contracting for the annual output of the distillery, Herrmann Bros. by 1898 were advertising as distillers and had made “Pearl of Nelson” sour mash whiskey their flagship brand, as shown on the crate above.  They advertised it vigorously to their customer base in local newspapers.  In 1916 an even more attractive prospect opened near Bardstown when the Mattingly & Moore distillery went bankrupt.  The Herrmanns offered the creditors a bargain basement $18,000 to take over the operation of the distillery and an additional amount to pay for 1,500 barrels of 1911 and 2,400 barrels of 1912 whiskey held in the company warehouse.  “…Herrmann Bros. became sole controllers of distillery, the brand, and the whiskey,” noted the Bulletin. 

This facility had a production capacity far beyond the Pearl of Nelson Distillery. While the still itself was frame, the distillery boasted five bonded warehouses, according to insurance writers records, all of them of brick, stone or iron-clad with flame resistant roofs, and a sixth “free” warehouse, also fireproofed. The brothers pledged to keep the Mattingly & Moore name and aggressively distribute M&M whiskey, a popular brand before the bankruptcy.  After decades at toiling in the shadow of distillery-owning “whiskey barons,” the Herrmann’s  now could be counted among the royalty. The governor bestowed on F. Joseph the title of “Kentucky colonel.”

Unfortunately these French immigrants had little time to savor their success.  Although Michel continued annually to give the keynote address on Bastille Dayand bear the title of French consul well into that decade, his health was faltering.  In June 1019, at 69 he died of “pernicious anemia” in the capacious home at 1335 Hepburn Avenue he had purchased for his large family.  His Louisville Courier Journal obituary called Michel “A prince among men, he was generous to all charities, never asking about race, creed or color…”  After funeral services at Hoy Trinity Catholic Church, he was buried in Louisville’s St. Louis Cemetery.

Although Michel must have known National Prohibition was coming, he did not live long enough to see the liquor house he had co-founded come to an end after 43 years in business.  Now Colonel F. Joseph, shown here as he aged, was left to shut down their enterprise.  Providentially years earlier he had branched out into other commercial activities.  At his death in March 1935 at age 86,  F. Joseph was vice chairman  of the Liberty National Bank & Trust Company and treasurer and a director of the Washington Mutual Fire Insurance Assn.  The brothers are buried in adjacent and matching graves in St. Louis Cemetery.  Their French connection has been left unbroken.

Note:  As so often occurs, I was brought to the story of the Herrmanns and their ascent into Louisville whiskey aristocracy by seeing at auction one of the “scratch” jugs shown here.  Because the brothers each have extensive material on Ancestry, coverage in Louisville newspapers and the Wine & Spirits Bulletin, it was possible to follow their careers. Initially I was unable to find any image of Michel Herrmann until August 2024 when Christopher Golski of Phoenix contacted me, sending a newspaper clipping from the Louisville Courier Journal of August 10, 1914, with his photo, shown below.  Michel Herrmann was Christopher's great great grand uncle, through his mother.  My great thanks to him for the picture.

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