Tom Dennison—The Old Gray Wolf Who Ate Omaha

 Regular readers of this website know that I often feature “whiskey men” who have contributed to their communities by public service or philanthropy.  There were dozens of them.  Occasionally, however, the story is about an individual whose activities were so despicable that he deserves attention.  So it is with Tom Dennison, the early 20th Century saloon owner, political boss and crime kingpin of Omaha, Nebraska.  Shown here, he was known by locals as “The Old Gray Wolf.”

Born in Dehli, Iowa, in October 1858 of Irish immigrant parents,  Dennison moved with his family to Nebraska at the age of two.  At 15 he left home and headed to the “Wild” West. Over the next two decades Dennison traveled widely as prospector, gambler, and (some said) bandit.  As he matured he bought and operated gambling and drinking establishments, including the Board of Trade Saloon in Butte, Montana, and the Opera House Saloon in Leadville, Colorado.

Dennison was 34 years old in 1892 when he arrived in Omaha.  By that time highly experienced in “business,” he went there with $75,000 in cash, roughly equivalent to $2.5 million today.   He quickly understood that Omaha, a city of about 140,000, was “wide open” with minimal legal control over liquor, gambling, prostitution, and other nefarious enterprises.  More important, Omaha had no political boss.  His pockets budging with cash, Dennison about 1900 deftly moved into that role.

For the next quarter century, Dennison was the “king” of Omaha politics. He never held public office, instead buying influence through lavish campaign contributions and his ability to get out the vote. Acting as a power broker between the business community and the criminal element, it is said that: “His power was such that no crime occurred in the city without his blessing, the police reported to him daily, and the mayor himself answered directly to him.”

Dennison’s much quoted mantra was: “There are so many laws that people are either law breakers or hypocrites. For my part, I hate a damn hypocrite.”  This attitude, however, apparently did not prevent him from teaming up with local prohibitionists to close down half the saloons in Omaha,  sparing the half in which he had a monetary interest.  Dennison also operated a private bank, loaning money to privileged residents and providing a very private repository for individuals who for various reason avoided traditional banks.

While Dennison was building his criminal empire, he was also having a family life.  In Omaha he met Ida I. Provost. She had been born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the daughter of Charles Provost, a prominent Iowa  newspaper editor and publisher.  When they married in 1893, Dennison was 37, Ida was 26.  Their first child, Frances, lived to maturity.  Twin sons conceived 15 years later were dead at birth.   Amid the family sorrow the couple named them John and Thomas.

The 1919 Omaha Race Riot and Lynching 

The Old Gray Wolf recognized that his operation required controlling City Hall in Omaha.   He installed as mayor a crony named Jim Dahlman, shown here, who had come to Nebraska to escape murder charges for shooting and killing his brother-in-law in Texas. Dahlman, through Dennison’s machinations served eight of nine terms between 1906 and 1930.  The one exception was in 1918 when a reform candidate named Edward Parsons Smith won office promising to “clean up Omaha” and as mayor proceeded to do it.   This led Dennison to his most despicable deed — fomenting the Omaha Race Riot of 1919.

Smith

In an effort to force Smith out of office, Dennison contrived to create a situation that questioned the mayor’s ability to keep order.  With the help of the Omaha Bee newspaper he created false stories of assaults on white women by black men, sometimes using white police officers in blackface.  Each time the Bee blamed Smith’s administration.  Those stories plus the difficult economic situation facing returning World War One veterans created a racial tinderbox in Omaha. 

Then the Old Gray Wolf lit the fuse.  In late September, 1919,  a young white woman was with her crippled companion when a man with a black face beat the man mercilessly and raped the girl.  Police officers in Dennison’s pocket arrested an African-American named Will Brown, who was hapless enough to be near the scene.  He was thrown into the Douglas County Jail located in the County Courthouse.

Over the next several months, through the Bee and other resources, Dennison whipped up public fury against Brown.  On December 28, 1919, a mob led by Dennison’s cronies headed for the courthouse, looking for Brown, as shown above.  The rioters gained access to the building, found Brown, carried him out, hanged him from a lamppost, riddled him with bullets, then took him down and burned his body.

Mayor Smith, endangering his own life, attempted to help Brown.  He was grabbed by the rioters who attempted to hang him as well.  Smith narrowly missed Brown’s fate when  Omaha police detectives intervened in the nick of time to save him from the noose.  Cut down, Smith required hospital treatment and lost his taste for politics, declining to run again. Jim Dahlman, known as “The Perpetual Mayor,” was returned to office, much to Dennison’s delight.

 

Along with Brown two rioters died in the melee and dozens of Omaha police officers and other citizens were injured.  The courthouse was torched.  Some 1,700 federal troops from nearby Fort Omaha and Fort Crook were dispatched to Omaha by the Governor, equipped with cannons and machine guns.  By the next day order had been restored.  In the aftermath not a single rioter was arrested.  Shamelessly, Dennison, while not admitting to his role publicly,  was said to gloat about it when closeted with cronies.

The Old Gray Wolf and National Prohibition

Fast on the heels of the Omaha riot came a new challenge for the Old Gray Wolf when January 1, 1920,  brought National Prohibition. Nebraska ostensibly had gone “dry” earlier. As usual Dennison had an answer.  Early on Dennison created the Omaha Liquor Syndicate to monopolize the bootleg booze traffic in Omaha, creating alliances with Al Capone in Chicago and Tom Pendergast in Kansas City. [See post on Pendergast, Dec. 2, 2013.]

In 1919 Dennison bought a mansion home in an upscale neighborhood of Omaha, shown above.  When Prohibition arrived he arranged for a series of underground tunnels to be built connecting his residence and his downtown offices.  The tunnels are believed to have led to a location where the tracks of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway intersected and freight could be unloaded and carried into town.  As one commentator has noted:  “The unobstructed path to the railroad would have been an ideal way to transport liquor by moonlight.”  As shown here, vestiges of the tunnels still exist in the neighborhood of the former Dennison home.

In 1922 Dennison suddenly sold the house and moved away.  The change may have been linked to the death that year of Ida, his wife of almost 30 years.  Known for her charitable work in Omaha, Ida was a foil for Dennison’s reputation.  At age 54,  after suffering a stroke that left her paralyzed and on the brink of death, she was allowed go home from the hospital and died there with Tom and a daughter at her bedside.  Her visitation at home and funeral at Holy Angels Catholic Church were thronged with mourners.  Burial was at Forest Lawn’s Memorial Park.  Shortly after, Dennison sold their mansion home. Perhaps the house held too many memories.

Ida’s death, however, did not distract Dennison from his criminal enterprises. He was still strongly in control of the city's politics and the Omaha liquor trade.  A survey in 1929 found more than 1,500 outlets in the city illegally selling alcohol, many controlled by  Dennison. The Old Gray Fox also ran Omaha's Flatiron Hotel as a lodging for mobsters running from the law in Kansas City, Chicago and St. Louis.

The End Game in Omaha

In the early 1930s Dennison hold on Omaha weakened.  The unsolved murder of one of his most outspoken opponents shocked the community.  Public opinion began to turn against him.  His hand-picked candidates began losing at the polls.  Dennison’s marriage at 72 years to 17-year-old Neva Jo Truman not only raised eyebrows in Omaha but made him the subject of ribald jokes.  The oddly matched couple is shown below. The marriage lasted just three years before Neva Jo filed for divorce. 

 

As he entered his 70’s, Dennison’s heath began to falter.  In June 1932 he suffered a stroke but recovered quickly.  The following December, however, when a bout of pneumonia nearly killed him, he formally announced retirement.  The Old Gray Wolf was, however, finding that it was not as easy to control federal lawmen as it was Omaha’s.  In August 1932 Dennison and 58 of his cronies were put on trial by federal authorities for violating Prohibition laws.  That trial ended in a hung jury and was declared a mistrial.  Hauled into court again a few month later on conspiracy charges, Dennison and his lackeys were acquitted.

Probably relieved to have escaped justice a second time, Dennison took off for a holiday with friends in Chula Vista, California, in February 1934.  There he was fatally injured in an automobile accident.  Ironically, National Prohibition would end the same year.  His body was returned by train to Omaha for burial.  Suggestive of the hold Dennison still held on Omaha, an estimated 1,000 people attended his funeral at St. Peters Catholic Church.  He was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery next to Ida and the stillborn twins.  While some may have grieved his passing, many others in Omaha celebrated knowing that the Old Gray Wolf was dead at last.

Note:  This post was drawn from two principal sources:  The Wikipedia entry on Dennison and his obituary in the Omaha Bee of February 18, 1934.  By the way, it is just a remarkable coincidence that this article, published on the eve of New Years Day, 2024, would be  #1111 in the series of posts.

The Terrells and Three Centuries of Paducah Whiskey

War of 1812 era soldier, slaveholder, and pioneer Kentucky distiller, Caleb Terrell,  shown here as he appeared on a whiskey label, in 1835 began a family dynasty making whiskey in Paducah that stretches down to the present day — an astounding 188 years. 

Born in Virginia in 1791, the son of Jonathan and Mary Terrell, Caleb first appears in public records in 1808, as an 18th-year-old private in Battalion One of the 19th Virginia Regiment, stationed in Richmond.   Accounted as a War of 1812 Era veteran, Caleb actually saw no fighting and his unit was disbanded in 1809

by official orders of the U.S. President and Virginia governor that “it was “no longer required to be held in readiness for actual service.”  Caleb was discharged and apparently did no further soldering.

He next appeared in the 1830 United States Slave Census recorded living on a farm in Montgomery, Tennessee.  Still single at 39, Caleb owned seven slaves, three males and four females.  By 1840, Caleb had moved to a new site in Ballard County, Kentucky, near Paducah. Still single, he was recorded now owning twelve slaves, five males and seven females.  It was there in 1835 that Caleb began his distillery as an adjunct to farming, accounted among the earliest distilleries in Western Kentucky.  It was a common practice to use slaves in making whiskey below the Mason-Dixon Line and they played an important role in early American distilling, as illustrated below.

The 1850 Slave Census indicated the growth of Caleb’s distilling enterprise over the decade.  Now he had a total of 15 slaves,  of whom six were children, ages three to thirteen.   He died in May 1861, accounted 69-70 years old and was buried in Ballard County’s Jenkins Cemetery, a burying ground located on a farm 2 and 1/2 miles east of LaCenter, Kentucky, the county seat.  With Caleb’s death his distillery was shut down.

Meanwhile, back in Paducah, Caleb’s nephew Thomas was prospering as a pork packer, general trader and commission merchant for tobacco.  He and wife, Mary Francis, would have a family of eight sons.  Among them was Albert Sidney “Sid” Terrell, born in 1862, a grandnephew of Caleb’s.  As he grew to maturity, learning about the earlier Terrell distillery, Sid vowed to resurrect what Caleb had begun.

Of Sid’s early life, details are lacking.  Kentucky whiskey guru Michael Veatch has this to say about him:  “Sid was something of a legend in western Kentucky, during a time when notoriety was often earned through mischief, storytelling, and a bit of hellraising. The Wild West was taking shape, and Sid Terrell certainly embodied that spirit in the western-most part of Kentucky.  

My supposition is that Sid had spent sometime learning the whiskey making trade working at one of the many distillers dotting the Kentucky landscape.  When in 1903 he resurrected what Caleb had begun, Sid was about 41 years old, married, and had at least one child.  Almost immediately he faced one major problem. Unlike Louisville, Lexington, Bardstown and other Kentucky distilling centers at that time,  Paducah lacked railroad access for shipping.  Everything had to be brought in and out by water over the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers that have their confluence at Paducah. Sid was undaunted and eventually the Illinois Central line was extended there.

As shown above in an early ad, Sid named his flagship sour mash whiskey after his ancestor, calling it “Old Terrell,” and providing a portrait of a stern-looking Caleb and a motto:   “Quality not Quantity.”  As noted in the Sanborn fire map below, Sid built his distillery about two miles northwest of Paducah’s city hall.  Called the Old Terrell Distillery, in Federal parlance it was RD #34, 2nd District.   The facility was run only five months of year, yielding four gallons of whiskey per bushel of corn. It featured a bonded warehouse seven tiers high capable of storing 12,000 barrels of aging product.

In an early ad, Sid Terrell came out slugging:  “The only sure way to get pure Whiskey is from an actual distiller. The United States government allows no adulteration on the distillery premises. When Whiskey passes to the dealer, then the doctoring commences.  The cheaper they sell, the more water and adulteration you get. When you buy from me you get it from first hands and save dealers' profits and adulterations.”   He further advised:  “Now appreciate it by sending in an order.”

Subsequent Terrell ads emphasized the same themes:  “Pure Still House Whiskey.  direct from actual distiller to the consumer. Sold at DISTILLER prices—better than WHOLESALE prices, as you save the wholesaler’s profits and have the satisfaction of knowing you are getting pure whiskies direct.”  Ignoring the time gap between Caleb’s operation and his, Sid also urged:  “Patronize home industry.  The first distillery in Paducah.”   Subsequently an artist’s label on Old Terrell bottles included an alternate, seemingly more benign portrait of Caleb.

As the years advanced, Sid was able to increase production to mashing 60 bushels of grain a day and annually bottling 1,800 barrels of bourbon.  Says Veach:  “Sid’s passion for doing things his own way brought great success to the Old Terrell distillery…Old Terrell became well known throughout the South prior to World War I.”   After 14 years of notable progress, several factors apparently conspired to end Sid Terrell’s distilling.  Among them were wartime restrictions on grain supplies, the increasing pressure of prohibition through “local option” laws, and a damaging fire.  In 1917 Sid, now 55, shut down the Old Terrell facility in 1917.

When he died eight years later Sid was buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery where so many Kentucky whiskey greats are interred.  His widow, Ella, followed him in 1862.  Their joint burial site is shown below.

The story does not end with the termination of the Old Terrell distillery and Sid’s death.  Flash forward to the present.  A three times removed great nephew of Sid named T. Logan Davis has set about to revive the Old Terrell brand.  A successful Kentucky financial planner and real estate entrepreneur, Davis has sold his business interests to dedicate full time and effort to reviving the Old Terrell brand, in keeping with his family tradition.  He intends to build the new distillery on farmland he owns near Paducah.  The Terrell tradition goes on!

Notes:  This post was assembled from a number of sources, including a brief conversation with Logan Davis.  This is the last post of 2023.  On to 2024!

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The Life and Death of “Mr. Dry”

In the decades of struggle over the banning of alcoholic beverages in the United States the proponents on each side were branded as “Wets” and “Drys.”  The Wets were those who opposed a ban on strong drink on the grounds that it was an unwarranted infringement on personal liberty; the Drys saw alcohol as the devil’s work and were certain America would be a much better place without it.

By careful manipulation of public opinion, such as marches by substantial citizens as shown above, the Drys eventually  were able to pressure “finger in the air” politicians into doing their bidding.  With the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution and Congressional implementing legislation known as the Volstead Act, National Prohibition,the so-called “Great Experiment,” became the law of the land in January 1920.

Among those outraged by Prohibition was a middle-aged aged native of Illinois named Rollin Kirby, shown here in a portrait,  When Kirby’s career as an artist and illustrator proved disappointing, he turned to political cartooning.  After working for two other New York City newspapers, he made his home and reputation at the New York World.  He was there in 1920 when the saloons closed, bars were shuttered and liquor dealers by the thousands were left unemployed. 

Out of his anger, Kirby invented a character who would become the symbol to many of what Prohibition meant.  In an editorial cartoon that was dated January 17, 1920 he depicted a tall, lean foreboding figure wearing a frock coat, stovepipe hat, and black gloves, carrying a black umbrella.  He quickly became known as “Mr. Dry.”  In his first  appearance Dry was depicted standing in front of a giant water bottle looking like a choral director and commanding: “Now then, all together, ‘My country ’tis of thee.”  

The image was an immediate success and Kirby followed up with other cartoons of Mr. Dry.  Christmas, a holiday that always had been a time of convivial drinking, had now been made bleaker by the ban on alcohol.  The cartoonist memorialized that sad situation by showing a grinning Mr. Dry dowsing an unsuspecting Santa Claus in the face with water from his syphon.

The spectural figure soon “went viral” and became the icon for anti-Prohibition emotions being felt and expressed by millions of Americans.  It was natural then that others would adopt the image and turn it to their own mocking purposes.  Shown here is the patent design submitted in 1932 by inventor Alfred Flauder of Trumbull, Conn.  Here Mr. Dry is just a head with in two phases, an evil grin and a fierce scowl.  Approved as Design Patent No. 87,658, the device combined a bottle opener (the mouth), a jigger (the hat), a corkscrew, and on the back a swing down cocktail stirrer.  It was manufactured by the Weidlich Bros. Mfg. Co. of Bridgeport, Conn. and marketed as the “4 -in- 1 Friendship Kit.”

Multipurpose drink accoutrements proliferated to celebrate Kirby’s cartoon figure. The “Old Snifter” opener bears a strong resemblance to Mr. Dry even down to the umbrella.  Snifter’s hat concealed a swivel corkscrew, his hand is the bottle opener, and, as is helpfully noted on the box, the base can be used to crush ice.   This imaginative device was the brainchild of John Schuchardt of New York and the casting was done by the Dollin Die Casting Company of Irvington, New Jersey.

The wide and gaping mouth on the next Mr. Dry indicates that it has lost some metal over the years opening, I hope, bottles of beer.  Meant to be attached to a vertical wooden surface by screws though its ears, the cast iron face was the product of Wilton Products Co. which produced the item in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors.  The Wilton family began casting metal along the Susquehanna River in 1893 and eventually became known for producing hand-painted cast iron objects, including bottle openers, trivets, candle holders and a wide variety of novelty items.  From the number of them available on-line, this opener must have been a best seller.

In 1896, Gustav Schafer and Gunther Vater founded the Schafer and Vater Porcelain Factory in Thuringa, Germany, with the purpose of making high quality porcelain items. By 1910 the reputation of the pottery for craftsmanship and design had grown to international proportions and Sears Roebuck was importing and selling large quantities of Schafer and Vater pottery in the United States.   Among their products were a host of small figural liquor bottles for distribution by American distillers and saloons, often called nips.”  With the coming of National Prohibition to the United States, this major business opportunity was largely denied to the German potters.  Profits from their American exports were severely curtailed. The company response was to design and sell objects lampooning the notion of abolishing alcoholic drink.  Among them was this figural flask with a Mr. Dry look-alike who is drinking and described as “one of the boys.”

With the progression of Prohibition into the 1930s, Kirby continued to satirize its adherents.  In one cartoon published about 1930, shown below, he depicts the gent in three modes. In the first a neatly dressed Mr. Dry simply holds a sign reading "Thou shalt NOT!" The second Mr. Dry, gloating, holds a newspaper describing a "rum-runner" having been "shot by dry agent." In the third Kirby depicts a ragged Mr. Dry holding a tin cup and wearing a sign reading "I am starving.”  It was an allusion to the fact that a backlash against the ban on drink was taking hold in the Nation.

An early 1930s statuette (and bottle opener) that reads “The End of the Trail,” is a spoof of the famous statue by American artist James Earle Fraser that depicted an American Indian warrior slumped over his horse.  Here Mr. Dry has replaced the Indian and a camel (who can go days without drinking) has been substituted for the horse.  The message was clear:  The era of National Prohibition is about over.  And it was.

The final picture below, taken shortly after Repeal, documents the “death” of Mr. Dry, hanged in effigy on a city street by a group of seven men.  The sign affixed to the dummy indicates considerable lingering hostility to those who had engineered 14 years without legal strong drink.  It read “Death to the Drys.” 

 

Mr. Dry disappeared from Rollin Kirby’s cartoons for the New York World but his ability was to win him the very first Pulitzer prize given to a political cartoonist.  He would go on during his career to be awarded two more.

Note:  This article was posted just as this website hit the 1.6 million mark for "hits."  Thanks to all my viewers for reaching this landmark number.

  

 

Posted by Jack Sullivan at 1:03 PM

Labels: Alfred Flauder, John Schuchardt, Mr. Dry, Rollin Kirby

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