The Kerr Brothers: Buffalo Whiskey Men

As armed struggle over slavery between North and South became increasingly likely, in Erie County, New York, Rosetta Tucker, 21, and Patterson Kerr, 25,  shown below, produced two boys, Abram, born in 1835 and Albert, seven years later.  Both Kerr sons were eligible for Civil War service. Abram chose to stay at home and learn the whiskey trade. Albert enlisted in the Union Army and served until the South surrendered in 1865.   With peace the brothers created Buffalo liquors houses that would endure for almost a half century.

At 19 years Abram moved in 1954 to nearby Buffalo where he worked as store clerk for two years and then two more as a bookkeeper for a plumbing firm.  In 1858, apparently determining that he had learned a sufficient amount of merchandizing and numbers crunching, Abram jumped to the whiskey trade,  as a partner in a Buffalo liquor house, called Kerr & Laing.  Despite being of draft age, he spent the duration of the Civil War selling whiskey.

Meanwhile, his younger brother, Albert, had enlisted in the 64th New York Infantry in December 1861.  He served as an enlisted man throughout the war, engaging in sixteen major battles, including Gettysburg and Cold Harbor.  Albert witnessed the Appomattox surrender.  During the war the 64th New York suffered the death of 283 enlisted men and 18 officers.  Albert appears to have been among the more fortunate ones.  I can find no record of his even being wounded.    He returned a hero to his family.

In 1870 Abram broke his partnership to start his own wholesale liquor house at 59 Main Street in Buffalo.  Apparently successful from the outset, in 1873 he moved to larger quarters at 99 East Seneca St., A major Buffalo commercial avenue, shown here about 1890, it would be the company location for the next 35 years.  The building was a brick structure 25 x 125 feet in area, with four floors and cellar  for wines and other goods requiring low temperatures.  Abram carried a stock valued then at $30,000, equivalent to $750,000 today.   In 1875, his brother Albert came to work for him.

In the meantime, Abram and Albert both were having a personal lives.  Abram married Rebecca Marshall.  Their first son, Abram T. would be born in 1873 and a second, Frank M. in 1876.  Albert married Francis Price.  They would have four sons, including George A., born in 1871;  Fred H., 1873; Albert D., 1876, and Harry P., 1876.  Both men were able to house, clothe and feed their families in comfort with the ample proceeds of the Kerr liquor business.

 

The Seneca Street quarters gave Abram the space to feature his own brands of whiskey,  including “Monongahela,” “Adam Crowe,” “Buck Run,” and “Fern Cliff, rye and bourbon advertised to be “distilled for this house and handled exclusively by it.”  His flagship brand was “Old Amber,” a label that he neglected to trademark, possibly because of the expense and lax enforcement at the time.  Abram sold his liquor to his wholesale customers — saloons, hotels, and restaurants — in a variety of ceramic jugs, several shown here.

A “puff piece “ in an 1885 Buffalo directory commented:  “For twenty-five years connected with the business interests of Buffalo, the head of the house, Mr. A.T. Kerr, has secured for himself an enviable name in the trade; and those who appreciate a first class article in wines and liquors of any kind should bear in mind the house of A.T. Kerr & Co.”  The piece goes on to extoll the the “fair and gentlemanly treatment” to be found at Abram’s establishment whose customer base was said to include Western New York and adjacent Pennsylvania.

After almost three decades at the head of the liquor house that bore his name, Abram died at the age of 64.  His demise caused a split in the family.  He had left his worldly goods, including the liquor business, to his widow, Rebecca. His son Frank Kerr, who was already working at the establishment, quickly claimed the presidency.  He was only 23 tears old.  Albert, his uncle, after more than two decades years working side by side with Abram, was, in effect, “left out in the cold.”

Albert retaliated by quitting and opening his own competing liquor business several doors away at 85 Seneca Street.  Shown here is a 1903 city directory listing for both.  The competition was destined to last only a short time.  In 1903, only four years after Abram’s death, Frank Kerr at 27 years old suddenly died.  The liquor house bearing his father’s name struggled along until 1906 and then went permanently out of business, leaving Albert to carry on the Kerr tradition in alcohol.

Albert wasted no time in cloaking himself in the mantle of Abram’s success, implying in ads that he was responsible for establishing the business on Seneca Street and had blended whiskey there ever since.  Headlining a story “A.D. Kerr Company Has Been in Distilling Business Half Century,” the Buffalo News opined:  “It is therefore one of the oldest whiskey stores in Western New York.”  The article completely ignored Abram’s role, or that Albert had joined his brother’s business in 1875, or that A.D. Kerr Co. had existed only since 1903 — far short of the half century mark.

 

Nonetheless, Albert set his own mark in Buffalo.   Early on the he took ownership of the “Old Amber Whiskey” brand,  trademarking it in 1906.  He also introduced several new proprietary brands, all blends. They included “Kerr’s Genuine Rye,”  “Onondaga Whiskey” and “Russett Whiskey.”  Albert sold some whiskeys in ornate jugs, designed to stand out “back of the bar” and on store shelves.  Below are two views of a decorated jug advertising his liquor house crafted by the Fulper Pottery of Flemington, New Jersey. 

Albert employed five traveling salesmen who covered New York as far east as Utica and Northwestern Pennsylvania.  He brought into the company his son, George, to assist in management. As a premier “bottled-in-bond” Kentucky bourbon, Albert added “Beechwood Whiskey” to his offerings.  That quality brand was the product of the Vogt - Applegate Company of Louisville [See post on Applegate, June 21, 2012.]

Already in his 60s when he founded A. D. Kerr, Albert’s health declined over the  next decade and he died in 1916, having run his liquor house for just over a dozen years.  Already pressed by prohibitionary forces, the company in effect died with him.  Albert was buried in Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery in a Kerr family plot.  Abram’s resting place is not far away.  Their proximity is a reminder that even though the lives of the Kerr brothers were closely intertwined, generational outcomes are not easily predicted.

Note:  This post was researched from a wide number of sources of which two were particularly important: ancestry.com and “Find a Grave.”  Although I was able to find and include pictures of the parents of the Kerr brothers, I have not discovered photos of either. I am hoping some alert relative will see this post and help fill that gap.