On page 207 of a 1902 volume entitled “Fetter’s Notable Men of Kentucky” are photographs of two men facing each other under the headline “Distillers.” They are Henry Thierman and William Ruedeman. Unlike the members of such well known whiskey dynasties as the Beams, Stitzels and Browns, both men came from obscure beginnings in Germany. After Immigrating to the United States as virtually penniless youths, Thierman and Ruedeman eventually joined in creating a distilling company hailed in 1895 as “an immense business, broadly distributed over the whole of the United States, the total of which average $750,000 each year.” — today more than $37 million dollars annually.
Shown here, Henry Augustus Thierman was to first to arrive on these shores. He was born in Germany in January 1836 and educated in the good local schools. In May 1853 at the age of 17 he left Hanover for America. Upon arrival he appears to have gone almost immediately to Louisville, Kentucky. Burial records for that city indicate Henry likely had Thierman relatives there who initially took him in.
According to his obituary, Thierman’s first business venture was as a dairyman where “…He displayed the same shrewdness and business then that afterward made him successful in a broader field.” That unnamed field was selling liquor. About 1864, he ditched sour cream for sour mash, becoming a Louisville wholesale liquor dealer.
With a local named Prande (aka Prante), Thierman opened a store at 221 Market Street. The partnership was short-lived. After two years, he stuck out on his own with a firm he called “H.A. Thierman Company.” Over the next few years, he would move several times as success brought a need for larger quarters.
While Thierman was growing his whiskey trade, he met and in May 1865 married a local woman, Louise Simm, the daughter of a well known Louisville furniture dealer. At the time of their nuptials Henry was 29 years old, Louisa, 25. The couple would have three children over the next 11 years, girls Ida and Lillie, and son Julius who died in early adulthood.
Meanwhile in Hessen, Germany, William Ruedeman,was born in May 1854, the son of Dorothy and Ernest Ruedeman. Eighteen years younger than Thierman, William was 17 when he arrived in America in 1871 aboard the steamship Berlin from Bremen and settled in Louisville. Whatever brought the two men together, the bond became close. Ruedeman joined Thierman at his liquor house, initially as a porter. Before long he had been promoted to vice president of the firm and had married Elizabeth Thierman, a relative of the boss. The couple named their first son “Henry” after William’s benefactor.
With a third man, E. M. Babbitt, the H.A. Thierman Company now began a period of acquisition and growth. At that time the firm was located on Louisville’s West Main Street. the so-called “Whiskey Row,” a prestigious address for a liquor company without its own Kentucky distillery. Thierman remedied that omission in 1882 when he bought an existing faclity in Jefferson County that had been producing whiskey brands “Mayflower” and “Ashton.” Thierman promptly changed the name to the Mayflower Distilling Company.
As recorded by insurance underwriters, the distillery, shown below, was of frame construction and had the capacity to mash 400 bushels of grain daily. The plant included three warehouses: Warehouse A was brick with a metal or slate roof and located 46 feet east of the still. Warehouse B was brick with a metal or slate roof, located 63 feet SW of the still. Warehouse C was iron-clad with a metal or slate roof, located 6 feet beyond Warehouse A. These warehouses were capable of holding 20,000 barrels. Cattle pens were 115 feet downwind of the still-house.
Responsibility for managing this distillery seemingly fell primarily to Ruedeman and Babbett until Thierman sold it in 1892.
In the meantime Thierman in 1864 had bought a second distillery, this one located in Louisville at 36th Street and Missouri Avenue. This facility had been operated by John Roach and colleagues producing such brands as “Belle of Louisville.” (See my post on Roach Feb. 15, 2022.) Initially called the American Distillery, it was renamed by Thierman as the Rugby Distillery Company, RD#360, 5th District in federal records. He undertook to expand the facility in ensuing years.
Insurance underwriter inventories of 1892 indicate that the distillery was frame with a metal or slate roof. The property included four warehouses, all brick with metal or slate roofs: Warehouse A was located 62 feet south of the still; Warehouse B, 66 feet SE; Warehouse C, 80 feet east of the still, and Warehouse D, 84 feet east. The warehouses were all heated "not over 80 degrees”. In total, the Rugby Distillery had a daily mashing capacity of 400 bushels of grain and storage capacity for 35,000 barrels of aging whiskey. The property also contained a cattle barn.
Owning these two distilleries and having a significant financial interest in the John T. Barbee & Company distillery in Woodford County, Kentucky, had thrust Thierman from a whiskey dealer, buying his stock from others, almost overnight into a major force in the Louisville distilling community. A report in the 1895 publication “Louisville of Today” enthused: “With these exceptionally fine facilities for the production of high grade whiskies, the company transacts an immense business, broadly distributed over the whole of the United States, the total of which average $750,000 each year.” Thierman had become a self-made millionaire.
His company claimed three names as its proprietary labels, “Belle of Jefferson,”Mayflower,” and “Indian Hill.” It would register their trademarks in 1902. Shown here, the label for Indian Hill Whiskey showed the silhouette of a Native American watching from a hillside. More interesting, as shown below, were the heads of two Indian chiefs and the “bas relief” lettering of “Indian Hill” bourbon whiskey” embossed on the bottles.
During the late 1800s, Thierman, using the substantial profits of the distilleries, bought Louisville’s Garvey Hotel as another investment. Shown here as it looked initially, the hotel has survived through the years, renamed “The Normandy,” and is an attractive lodging currently.
Time, however, was running out for Henry Thierman. Reputedly having contacted the flu, called “grip,” he first showed symptoms after Christmas 1900, when he was 65. Never hospitalized, his condition, initially not thought serious, took a turn in early February. According to Thierman’s newspaper obituary, doctors warned that his recovery would be unlikely. He lingered several more days before dying at home on February 15, 1901.
Thierman was buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery, the grounds where so many Kentucky “whiskey barons” are interred. He lies in Section P, Lot 25. Below is the monument and headstone memorializing this immigrant boy who rose to the pinnacle of Kentucky’s distilling hierarchy.
Ruedeman almost immediately stepped in as president of the H.A. Thierman Company, assisted by Babbit. He was active in the Louisville business community as a member of the Board of Trade, Commercial Club and the Masons. His caricature appeared along with other prominent figures, with a bowling ball and a pot belly. The uncomplimentary likeness cannot have pleased his wife, Elizabeth. She was living with their five children, Mary Louise, Dora, Henry, Ernest and William in a spacious home provided by her husband in an upscale neighborhood at 109 West Ormsby Avenue, shown below.
From the beginning Ruedeman demonstrated competent management of the H. A. Thierman Company. Throughout the early 1900s, however, he was facing increasingly strong prohibitionary forces that cut sharply into company profitability. Moreover, the Ohio River floods of 1913 were a disaster for the company’s Rugby Distillery. A warehouse containing 3,460 barrels of prime bourbon collapsed and was inundated. Although most of the whiskey was saved, many barrels were damaged and 200 barrels were a complete loss. In the aftermath of the flood, Ruedeman decided only partially to rebuild the distillery.
Ruedeman’s health began to falter as he enter his 60s and he died 1918 at the age of 64. The coroner’s verdict was “softening of the brain,” i.e. dementia. He was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery not far from Thierman’s grave. Meanwhile, with National Prohibition looming, the distillery was shuttered. After 1920 the site was vacated and its structures were allowed to fall into disrepair.
This sad ending does not, however, tarnish the reputations of two enterprising German youths who emigrated to the United States and over 32 years together built a Kentucky liquor house and distillery enterprise capable of generating the current annual equivalent of some $37 million dollars. Youthful immigrants Henry Thierman and William Ruedeman had become true Kentucky whiskey royalty.
Note: This post has been compiled from a wide range of sources, of which the two most important were the 1895 publication “Louisville of Today,” and the Louisville Courier Journal obituary of Thierman, dated February 16, 1900.
Afterword: For years I have tried to post a new story on this website every four days. As time goes by and having achieved 1,127 entries, now approach 89 years, finding good new stories of pre-Prohibition whiskey becomes increasingly more difficult and time consuming. As a result, in the future I will attempt to post every six days, beginning with the next entry.
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