Imagine if you will a brand of whiskey that was initiated by a religious communal group of German immigrants in 1827, distilled and on sale from their village for some 68 years. The distillery eventually was sold to a Pittsburgh liquor dealer who merchandised the whiskey widely until National Prohibition in 1920. Called “Old Economy,” this brand continued to have life after Repeal.
In 1905, a German farmer and winegrower in Iptigen, Germany, named Johann Georg Rupp, discarding his native Lutheranism, founded a religious organization that attempted to replicate the communalism of the early Christians while awaiting the immanent Second Coming of Jesus and the end of the world. With about 750 followers, Rupp, shown here, brought his Harmony Society to Butler County, Pennsylvania, where they held all property in common and practiced celibacy. There the Harmonists established a cloth factory, sawmill, tannery, vineyards, and a small distillery.
Finding the location not entirely conducive to Rupps’s vision, his adherents sold out in 1814 and moved to Posey County, Indiana, where they founded the town of New Harmony and there built similar industries. In 1824, with their leader still seeking a perfect site, many of the Harmonists moved with him to Beaver County in Western Pennsylvania. There they founded the town of Economy, shown below, where Rupp died in 1847.
Under the leadership of Rupp’s son, Ferdinand, the Society flourished. It eventually became one of the richest communities in western Pennsylvania. The inhabitants purchased large swaths of area real estate, funded the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, and established the Economy Savings Institution, Economy Brick Works, Economy Oil Company, Economy Planing Mill, and Economy Lumber Company. All this was accomplished in the shadow of the Harmonist Church, right, as adherents awaited the end times.
Along with those enterprises and making wine and cider, the Harmonists in 1827 constructed a distillery in their new settlement. Thus the logo that opens this post. They called the product “Old Economy Whiskey.” Although current guides to the historic town contend that the community never found sales of its alcoholic beverages profitable, its whiskey gained a reputation for quality in the region. The Society also made a cure-all medicine called “Boneset Bitters” with whiskey as a primary ingredient but apparently found little market for it. A bottle is shown right.
Old Economy Whiskey was distilled from a fermented mix that might have contained corn, rye, wheat or barley. The distillery building has been identified as the one below left, located along Big Swickley Creek south of the town center. At right is a re-creation of the wooden barrels in which the whiskey was aged. The spent mash from the distillery was fed cows and pigs kept in nearby (down wind) barns. The original Harmonist distillers, Johann Viehmayer and Philip Beker, both had died by 1871 but their recipe was maintained. Workers from outside the Society were hired to continue whiskey production.
With time and a declining number of Harmonists to manage the community’s business empire, a result of the celibacy requirement, John S. Duss, who had inherited leadership of the community, eliminated several industries of Economy. Among them was the distillery. Duss sold it in the 1890s to a group of Pittsburgh “whiskey men.” Thus began a new era for Old Economy Whiskey.
Unfortunately none of the information about the distillery sale, including Duss’s 425-page memoir, directly identifies the new owners of the facility and the Old Economy label. My research efforts, however, have uncovered a promotional letter sent out by the new owners, shown above. It identifies the president of the corporation as J. J. Speck of Pittsburgh. According to city directories, Jacob Speck began as a barkeeper. In 1866 with a partner, he founded a wholesale liquor house at 145 Water Street. Subsequently moving out on his own, Speck had been very successful. One history recounts that his series of buildings on Pittsburgh’s Second Avenue took up half a block. Now Speck headed a group that owned the former Harmonist distillery.
Calling it the Economy Distilling Company, the new owners signaled a strong shift toward vigorously merchandising the Old Economy brand. As shown above, in both flask and quart size the bottles bore well-designed labels identifying the product as “double copper distilled” and “pure rye.” Speck and his co-investors targeted a wholesale trade, gifting back-of-the-bar bottles and attractive reverse glass signs to saloons, hotels and restaurants serving Old Economy. The glass signs currently are valued at up to $5,000.
A more unusual giveaway were packs of playing cards. These would have been given to wholesale customers such as saloons, hotels and restaurants as well as good retail customers. Many of the cards carried slogans for the brand: “Wins on Quality” and “Economy Leads to Wealth.”
The new ownership made a concerted effort to promote their whiskey nationwide, sending sales representatives to the Far West with the pitch that the distillery, still located in its original location, was “such as to lead to a perfect fermentation and vigilant supervision is given to the storage of goods in our stream heated warehouses.” Unfortunately, on the morning of February 9, one of those warehouses, located in Pittsburgh at the corner of 13th Street and Mulberry Alley, caught fire. As firemen attempted to contain the blaze, an estimated 8,000 barrels of Old Economy Rye exploded, causing a wall to collapse. Nineteen individuals were killed in the blast, one of the worst disasters in Pittsburgh history. The loss to Jacob Speck and his partners was set at $750,000, millions in today’s dollar.
Nevertheless, the distillery continued operation through the first two decades of the 20th Century by Speck and his colleagues as the Harmonist community of Economy was being dissolved by its remaining adherents. The buildings were incorporated into the adjoining town of Ambridge, and eventually purchased by the state as a tourist attraction. It is now a National Historical Landmark Site run by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920, Old Economy Rye disappeared, only to be temporarily revived with Repeal in 1934. Now the brand was produced in a distillery in Logansport, Pennsylvania, owned by the Weiner brothers, Irwin and Morris, under the name, Pennsylvania Distilling Company. Shown here is an ad from that period. Note that it replicates the original Harmonist 1827 logo. The Weiners aged the whiskey for only one year and recommended it for blending, suggesting that despite its distinguished pedigree, Economy Rye had become “cheap booze.”
About 1940 the brothers sold their plant to a combine headed by Adolph Hirsch of Michter Whiskey. The company name was changed to Logansport Distilling. I can find no evidence that the Old Economy brand survived the change. After a run of 113 years, with time out for Prohibition, the whiskey given its birth by the pious souls of Economy, Pennsylvania, as they awaited the Second Coming, had come to an end even as the world whirled on.
Note: This post derives from a number of internet sources dealing with the rise and demise of Rupp’s Society, as well as the 1943 book by John Duss entitled “The Harmonists, A Personal Story,” reprinted in 1970. The link to J.J. Speck and his collaborators who bought the Enterprise Distillery and merchandised the whiskey nationally for about a quarter century was a lucky find.
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