Wheeling’s Fred Driehorst: Liquor, Loans and Liability

As regular readers of this blog know, a striking number of liquor dealers  graduated into the world of banking both before and after National Prohibition.  Thinking about it, the shift makes sense.  Successful “whiskey men” often have had the financial resources to fund banks and the management skills to run them.  Fred C. Driehorst of Wheeling, West Virginia, is a good example of someone who made the successful transition.  Shown here, Driehorst has a  story of achievement that deserves to be told.

Driehorst was born in Wheeling in October 1855,  the son of Sophia Bahre and Charles H. Driehorst, an “express delivery” man driving a horse and wagon.  It must have been a lucrative enough business to allow young Fred to be educated in private schools and at the Wheeling Business College.  His first recorded employment was in 1880 when he went to work for a successful local merchant named John Reid Jr., who advertised himself as a “family grocer” but prominently featured wines and liquor. 

Reid jug

Recorded as the bookkeeper, Driehorst stayed with Reid for approximately nine years.  During that time he came to understand that the business of selling alcohol, although it had its risks, was far more lucrative than canned anchovies. 

About 1899, Driehorst left Reid and with a partner named Schaefer, opened a liquor house at 1428 Main Street in Wheeling.  Tearing down an existing structure the partners built an imposing five story building topped with a cupola, shown here.  The space allowed the partners to advertise that they carried all leading brands of whiskey — and to list 25 of America’s best brands in their ads.

The company’s two proprietary labels were “Old Fort Henry Rye” and “Green Band Rye.”   There is no evidence that Driehorst registered the trademark of either brand.  He likely was buying the whiskey for his recipes for these two brands from nearby Pennsylvania and Ohio distilleries and “rectifying” (blending) them to achieve a desired color, smoothness and taste.  

As the business was growing, Driehorst had a personal life. In 1885 he married Julia Gardner of  Ohio County, West Virginia.  Over the next 17 years they would have five children.  To house them he bought a spacious home at 923 Main Street, not far from his liquor business. The couple’s eldest son, Harry, born in 1886, sadly would die in infancy.  Another son, George, would die in adolescence, again a source of grieving to his parents.

Although his name remained on the company, shown above on company jugs, Schaefer early left active management to be replaced by Clark Hamilton, Jr.  Listed as the secretary and treasurer of the liquor house, Hamilton had been the federal deputy collector of revenue for the State of West Virginia, responsible in part for collecting the liquor taxes.  Born in Preston County, West Virginia, he brought his knowledge of the whiskey trade and political connections to the business.

Perhaps as early as 1911 Driehorst apparently decided that the growing prohibitionary forces in West Virginia would prevail.  He saw his markets shrink because of county and town “local option” restrictions on making and selling whiskey.  By the time the state adopted a blanket ban on alcohol in 1914, he had shut down his liquor house, taken his profits and was looking around for other opportunities.

In 1916 Driehorst became president of Wheeling’s Germania Half Dollar Savings Bank and immediately brought change.  Founded in 1897, this financial institution received a new look by tearing down its original building and constructing a new one designed by architect Fred Paris.  At its grand opening, the Wheeling Intelligencer newspaper on July 3, 1917,  featured a front page drawing of the entrance and a tag line “Just as Strong as it Looks.”  Driehorst reciprocated by advertising lavishly.  When the onset of World War One in 1918 made things “German” controversial, he quickly changed the name of the bank.

  

Wheeling Fire Ins. Co.

About the same time Driehorst was helping grow the Wheeling Fire Insurance Company, serving as director and treasurer.  Two major local fires in 1917 and 1918 had reenforced the need for effective insurance.  The first destroyed following a winter storm was Hermann’s Department Store.  The following year Wheeling’s premier hotel, the Stratford Springs, went up in flames.  The Wheeling News-Register headlined:  “Only Gaunt Chimneys Mark Stratford Springs Hotel Site.”  Originally the German Fire Insurance Company of Wheeling, the only such insurer in all of West Virginia, it too changed its name in 1919 becoming simply the Wheeling Fire Insurance Co.   Driehorst remained an officer until his retirement. 

Fred Driehorst died in May 1939 at the advanced age of 83. The cause listed on his death certificate was bladder cancer. He was buried in Wheeling’s Greenwood Cemetery, next to his wife, Julia, who had passed in 1928, and adjacent to their two deceased sons.  The couple’s joint gravestone is found below.   Driehorst had spent his entire life in Wheeling.  His liquor house is gone, a victim of National Prohibition but the Wheeling bank and insurance company he served continues to this day, providing a more lasting memorial.

Notes:  This post was assembled from a variety of sources.  Standouts among them are “History of Wheeling City and Ohio County, West Virginia, and Representative Citizens” by Hon. Gibson Lamb Cranmer, Biographical Printing Co., Chicago, 1907; and “Progressive West Virginians” compiled by Robert E, Murphy, The Wheeling News, 1905.  For other “whiskey men” involved in banking  see my post on this site describing five of them on October 16, 2018.