When Kentucky distiller Robert B. Lancaster died in May 1904, his local Lebanon newspaper said: “He was a strong, substantial, God-fearing citizen, who sought the right course in every affair of life and shaped his action accordingly.” By contrast, when his distiller brother Samuel P. Lancaster died two years earlier near Bardstown, he was remembered for his often chaotic financial past and his highly controversial will.
Samuel born in 1830 and Robert in 1835 were sons of Anne P. and Benjamin Lancaster, a farmer, working the land in Marion County near Loretto, Kentucky. Their mother, shown here, was of a distinguished lineage, the daughter of Ignatius Aloysius Spaulding, who was elected to two terms each in the Kentucky House and Senate, served as state railroad commissioner, and was a member of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1890.
When the boys were stlll youngsters, the family moved near Bardstown in Nelson County. There Samuel and Robert were educated at St. Joseph’s School, grew to maturity, and worked on the Lancaster family farm. After their father died in 1840, as the eldest son, Samuel inherited the farm and with the next eldest brother, James, built a distillery on the land. When that location proved unsatisfactory, in 1881 the brothers moved the plant to a site on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad northwest of Bardstown.
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| St. Joseph School |
Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the new distillery was of frame construction with a metal or slate roof. The property included a cattle shed and two warehouses. One was iron-clad and located 150 feet northeast of the still. The second also was iron-clad located 100 feet east of the still. Each building had a “free” section not under the requirements of the Bottled in Bond Act. It was known as S. P. Landcaster & Company, federally designated RD#415, 5th District.
At the outset Samuel and James, neither of whom apparently married, jointly managed the distillery. They also became known in Nelson County for raising and owning racehorses as well as for the quality of their whiskey. Meanwhile, younger brother Robert, with no prospects for an inheritance, at age 21 moved to Lebanon, Kentucky, about 25 miles from Bardstown, where he became a clerk in a local dry goods store. A year later he met Mary Theresa Abell and the couple married in Lebanon’s Catholic Church. Robert soon moved with his bride to a farm in nearby Washington County.
When the Civil War broke out youths of his age were highly sought in Kentucky by both sides as soldiers. Robert reacted as did others of his Kentucky contemporaries and decamped to Brazil, returning to Mary in June 1864 as the conflict in Kentucky was ebbing. The couple would go on to have six children, three sons and three daughters.
In 1874, with the help of distiller R.N. Wathen, his brother-in-law, Robert had sufficient resources to build a distillery just outside the Lebanon city limits. They called it the Maple Grove Distillery, designated RD#263, 5th District. Wathen soon sold his interest to Lancaster. Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the distillery property included a single iron-clad warehouse fitted with a metal or slate roof located 120 feet east of the still. A cattle shed sat 40 feet west of the still.
For a time Robert teamed with distiller W. Q. Emison, for a partnership at the Maple Grove Distillery. It ended in 1901 when he bought out Emison shortly before the latter’s death. By that time Robert himself had known the grief of death when in January 1879, Mary Theresa died leaving him with children to raise. She was buried in St. Augustine Church Cemetery in Lebanon.
Eighteen months later he remarried. His bride was Sarah Elizabeth “Sallie" Daugherty, born in Ireland and living in Louisville. They would have one child whom they christened Robert B. Lancaster Junior. The photo below shows the family on the front porch of their home. Robert is seated with Junior on his lap as Sallie stands by and Lancaster children are scattered around the porch.
At some point Richard became the owner of a Nelson County distillery. My assumption is that he bought out his brothers but that is not certain. At its peak the plant was capable of mashing 400 bushels of grain a day. Bonfort’s Newsletter would call it “one of the best houses in the state.” That distillery later would be sold to the Whiskey Trust.
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| Citizens Nat'l Bank |
Robert’s distilleries were highly profitable. Robert produced “Maple Grove” and “Falcon” proprietary brands eventually adding “R.B. Landcaster” whiskey among his labels. The assets generated by his distilling allowed him to branch out into other enterprises. In March 1890 he became president of Lebanon’s Citizens’ National Bank and the following year was elected president of the Lebanon Roller Mills Company, a position he held for the next two decades before turning management over to his son Benjamin.
Subsequently with another son, Joseph, Robert organized the Cleaver Horse Blanket Company, an enterprise called in the local press: “One of the most desirable business ventures of the town.” Robert was a promoter of and later director of the local telephone exchange. He also served for twelve years as president of the Springfield and New Market Turnpike Company. As the Lebanon Express newspaper notrd in Robert’s obituary: “Fortune smiled upon him in all his enterprises and soon he became one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of the town and county.”
The same good fortune was not smiling on his brothers, Samuel and James. In addition to running their distillery they were spending considerable time, energy and money on their Nelson County horse farm. They were breeding, training and racing thoroughbred horses, a chancy economic proposition even for the most professional of horsemen.
By 1879 the Lancaster brothers were in debt $150,000 — equivalent to $4.7 million today. Unable to pay their debts, they declared bankruptcy and assigned their distillery and 840 acre farm to Steven E. Jones for the benefit of their creditors. Watching these event unfold from his home in Lebanon, Robert decided to bail out his older brothers. For $26,000 he bought the properties at public auction. He also took over direct management of the Nelson County distillery,
Upon receiving the properties, Robert appointed Samuel and James as his agents with full authority to manage and control the properties practically as their own. Despite living only 25 miles away, Robert exercised virtually no supervision. “…He had placed the properties in the hands of his brothers and required of them no accounting whatever,” according to court documents.
James subsequently died, leaving Samuel managing the properties alone as Robert’s “agent.” His creditors were not assuaged. They claimed the arrangement was a sweetheart deal that attempted to shield Samuel’s estate and sued to take the Nelson County properties to pay off his debts. The brothers denied allegations of a fraudulent secret agreement. They claimed that the property was Robert's and that Samuel was his hired manager, having no beneficial interest in the distillery other than compensation in return for his labor. The case was decided in favor of the Lancasters in a local court, and on appeal affirmed in the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
After the U.S. Congress passed the National Bankruptcy Act of 1898, Samuel filed for bankruptcy, asking to be freed from his existing debts. His creditors strenuously objected but in 1899, he was absolved of all debts. Robert immediately moved to convey the Nelson County properties to Samuel along with all the racing stock and $26,000 on deposit in a bank, apparently profits from Samuel’s business dealings as Robert’s agent.
The older brother promptly dropped “agent” from his vocabulary and about the same time began widely to express ill feelings toward Robert. For several years before his death in March 1902 Samuel claimed that his brother, rather than being his benefactor, had robbed him of large sums of money and according to court documents “…Made statements to many witnesses which showed an aversion to his brother and a determination not to leave him anything in his will.” When Samuel died in 1902 his animus took the form of leaving the ancestral farm and farmhouse, together with all the furniture and the poultry, to Celia Mudd, an African-American woman. For many years she had been Samuel’s live-in housekeeper and cook, who perhaps served other roles. The rest of his estate he left to St. Monica’s Catholic School for colored students in Bardstown. Samuel was buried in Bardstown’s St. Joseph Cemetery.
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| St. Monica's School |
This stunning rebuke from Samuel came at a difficult time in Robert’s life. In April 1901, after 20 years of marriage, Sallie died. By the following January at age 66 he had married his third wife, a Lebanon widow named Bettie Edmonds. Samuel’s will caused Robert to seek its disqualification in Kentucky courts. His lawyers argued that he “…was his brother's benefactor; that he had purchased the assigned estate at great inconvenience to himself by a large outlay of money, actuated alone by fraternal love for his brothers….” The lawyers for the beneficiaries contended that Samuel’s animus toward Robert had substantial basis in fact. That argument was accepted by a lower court but overturned in the Kentucky Court of Appeals. The Lancaster properties were returned to Robert.
Robert had only two more years to live, dying in Lebanon in May 1904 at the age of 68. Funeral services were conducted at St. Augustine's Church, by the Very Reverend J. A. Hogarty, after which his remains were laid to rest in St. Augustine's Cemetery next to his first wife, Mary Theresa.
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| Samuel's Monument |
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| Robert's Monument |
The Lebanon Enterprise expended considerable ink in writing Robert Lancaster’s obituary. It included a lengthy editorial eulogy that included the following sentiments: “There are few men who ever lived in this community whose death made a deeper impression upon the citizens than the death of Robt. B. Lancaster….To the poor and deserving needy, he as ever the true friend, and the amount of charity he did, few will ever know for he was a man that made neither show nor parade of his generosity or the assistance he gave others.” No mention was made of Samuel in the article.
Notes: Three sources were important to charting the lives of Robert and Samuel Lancaster: The Biographical Cyclopedia of Kentucky, dated 1896; the case of Lancaster v. Lancaster, decision of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, June 17, 1905, and The Lebanon Enterprise obituary May 20 1904.
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