The Westermans Were Pekin’s Odd Couple

 Despite widely divergent reputations, seldom does a married couple dominate their city’s attention the way that Henry and Mary Westerman did in Pekin, Illinois, during the mid-1880s.  A favorite whipping boy of Pekin newspapers, Henry was a gun-toting distiller whose cheating on his revenue taxes brought him a federal arrest.  In contrast, Mary was a beloved, indefatigable worker for the welfare of Civil War veterans and Pekin civic betterment. 

Shown above, Westerman was born in August 1836 in St. Louis, the son of Conrad and Margaretha Lang Westerman.   When Henry was ten years old the family moved to Pekin.  There he attended public schools and went on to get a degree from Bell’s Commercial College in Chicago.  He returned to Pekin, shown below, to work as a clerk in a local dry good store.  In October 1856, he married Mary Leslie Gregg.  Henry was 20; Mary was 18.  They had four children only two of whom lived to maturity.

Westerman’s leadership qualities were evident early in his career. In 1861 at the age of 25 the voters of Pekin’s Fourth Ward elected him their alderman.  Apparently finding politics distasteful, however, he resigned the same year.  The post had brought Westerman in contact with Pekin’s mayor who owned a distillery he was seeking to sell.  Exiting dry goods, Westerman bought the plant in pursuit of wet goods.

Westerman clearly had an aptitude for the liquor trade.  Calling the distillery the “Pekin Alcohol Manufacturers Company," his whiskey was sold under the brand name “Crown.” The illustration below shows the extent of the facility.  Not only was it served by railroad, its location along the Illinois River allowed it as well to be connected to water transport, symbolized by a steamboat heading for the loading dock.

 

A second illustration depicts the large herd of cattle Westerman was grazing on a tract downwind of the distillery, seen in the background, and feeding on the spent mash from manufacturing process held in tanks.  Note that a railroad line runs along the edge of the property, suggesting that the railroad at the distillery was a spur.  All engraved illustrations here are from an 1873 publication entitled “Atlas Map of Tazewell County.”

A sure sign of the Westermans’ growing wealth and status in the Pekin community was the family’s impressive home, a large frame Victorian mansion the couple called “Rose Villa.”  The mansion was located on Washington Street at the head of Buena Vista Avenue, a street address now designated 420 Washington St.  Shown here, the property encompassed a sweeping driveway, numerous  walkways, and several outbuildings hidden behind impressive stands of large pines.  St.  Replaced by a subsequent owner in 1912 with a brick structure the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.

Mary Westerman was making her own mark in Pekin.  Although only 23 when the Civil War Broke out, she immediately took a leadership role in the Soldiers Aid Society.  Despite her youth she served as president of the local chapter for two years and another two years as its secretary.  In his 1879 “History of Tazewell County, Illinois,” Charles C. Chapman, while giving her husband only a paragraph, devoted two pages of tribute to Mary.

Chapman wrote of her:  “Her natural abilities are superior and are carefully cultured by study and extensive travel. She is a woman of great energy and a firmness of purpose that has assured success in all undertakings….At the breaking out of the Civil war, although young in years, Mrs. W. proved a woman of great foresight and executive ability, being a leader of what may well be denominated the "home guards," that noble army of women of whom history is silent, but from whose courage and generous aid the soldiers drew much of the inspiration which brought success to their arms.”

Mary's Letter

One notable success was Mary’s ability to importune The White House for autographed photographs of Lincoln to be auctioned off to raise money for the Soldiers Aid Society.  When her letter apparently went unanswered, she wrote the President a second time:  “I cannot give up the idea of our President giving us something. If you remember I stopped you at the White House steps on one Cabinet day and you asked me what I wanted you to do. I told you and you said that you were worn out and could not go up again for anything but said you would remember my petition.” 

“Now this time if you cannot conveniently give us anything else we insist on you send a large picture of yourself which we can make a great deal on it. It is the earnest wishes of our Soldiers Aid Society that you would do something as it would inspire others to donate.”  Mary went on to insist she was not an impostor and her identity could be be verified.  Lincoln’s secretary sent her six small signed photos, two of which are shown right.

Mary’s fair raised $3,163 for the Union cause.  The Soldier’s Aid Society, however, was roiled about how to spend the money.  A majority of the board wanted to buy religious tracts and Bibles to distribute to soldiers.  Insisting that the funds go for clothing, medicine and sick room supplies, Mary hired a lawyer who filed an injunction.  Mary was pilloried in several local papers as a Southern sympathizer but prevailed.  Author Chapman commented:  “Knowing the righteousness of her cause, she persevered with the true courage which rises superior to taunts and scoffs, and in the end was her complete vindication.”  Later Mary would be hailed for her contributions to the Pekin Public Library for her prominent role in founding the Ladies Library Assn., its forerunner.

While the Westermans were enjoying their prosperity and social status in Pekin, a major scandal was brewing.  During the Civil War the federal government had put a tax of $2 a gallon on every gallon of whiskey produced.  In an attempt to avoid the levies, a conspiracy that became known as “The Whiskey Ring” was formed involving distillers, “rectifiers (blenders), and corrupt government officials.  As much as 2/3rds of liquor taxes were being avoided.  Beginning in St. Louis, the revenue conspiracy spread to cities across the Midwest.  Among them was Pekin.

As the local press reported, Pekin’s large city cisterns, meant to hold water for fighting fires, surreptitiously were drained and filled with highly flammable whiskey.  Liquor also was said to have been stashed away in corn stalks and in hundreds of wooden kegs sealed and sunk in the Illinois River.  In one reported incident an honest revenue agent was arrested by Pekin authorities and held in custody on a trumped up charge while a boatload of illicit whiskey was cleared off the dock and hidden away.  Identified as the “kingpin” of this criminal enterprise was Henry Westerman.  

In December 1875, a Federal District Court issued a warrant for Westerman’s arrest.  He was charged with frauds perpetrated at his Pekin distillery, specifically for refusing to produce the books of the Pekin Alcohol Manufacturing Company during the period of the conspiracy.  The penalty was from $500 to $5,000 and six months to ten years in prison.  More than 300 individuals were arrested as participants in the Whiskey Ring but only 110 ultimately were convicted in federal court.  They tended to be the “lesser fry” in the scheme and many of those at the center of the Whiskey Ring paid fines but were not sent to jail.  Westerman appears to have been among them.  

Elements of Pekikn’s press were not shy in pointing out that the accused former head of the Pekin whiskey ring was still at large.  This enraged Westerman.  Among his antagonists was William H. Bates, the editor of the Tazewell Republican.  Westerman, a Democrat, made headlines in November 1881 when he threatened Bates at his paper while brandishing what was described by the Peoria Journal as “an immense Missouri bushwacker’s rifle.”  The threat was unambiguous to Bates and other critics.  The same paper reported that the editor of the Freie Presse,  “with blood in his eye and his ears flopping,” was marching around Pekin with a shotgun over his shoulder, apparently hoping to encounter Westerman. “All the editors here appear to be on the warpath,” the Journal opined. “Peace, peace, brethren.”  Eventually tempers cooled all around.

Despite Henry’s dubious reputation, the Westermans were considered among the  influentials in Pekin.  Perhaps some of Mary’s community work helped leaven her husband’s “bad boy” image.  In 1897 she died in Pekin at the age of 59 and was buried in Pekin’s Lakeside Cemetery.  Mary’s gravestone is shown here.  

Mary may have been the anchor that kept Henry in Pekin despite the negative press. They had been married for 41 years.  After her death Westerman promptly moved to California where he resided for the next 25 years, living with a daughter in San Francisco.  He died there in May 1922 at the age of 86.  His body was returned to Pekin where funeral services and interment occurred.  Although buried at Lakeside Cemetery, Westerman’s grave was left unmarked, perhaps to deter any revenge desecration.

Note:  This post would not have been possible without the diligent work of Jared Olar, an assistant at the Local History Room of the Pekin Public Library.  In several articles that deal with Mary and Henry Westerman, Mr. Olar draws on a rich body of resources to tell their story.