“Chicago Joe” and Her Reign in Helena, Montana

During her relatively short life, she was known by multiple names:  Mary Welch, Josephine Airey,  “Chicago Joe,” Mrs. James Hensley, and the “Richest Woman in Helena. Montana.”  She perhaps is best remembered today for her career as a saloonkeeper and brothel madam of the Old West.

She was born about 1844 as Mary Welch, a fairly common surname in Protestant Northern Ireland.  Evidence indicates that the family was Catholic, which may have contributed to their decision to emigrate to America in 1858 when she was 14 years old.  The family landed in New York and apparently determined to stay there.  Her parents doted on the girl, making sure of her education, including attendance at a “etiquette school.”  As Mary grew to maturity in “The Big Apple,” the Irish lass determined to change her name and settled on Josephine Airey, a surname with Scottish origins.  

As Josephine, she soon tired of New York and looked west to Chicago as a likely place to seek her fortune.  In Chicago, where she would be no embarrassment to her family, she gravitated to prostitution.  Although she would carry the nickname “Chicago Joe” for the rest of her life, Josephine’s stay in the Windy City was relatively short.  Still restless and scouting for quick riches, she was attracted to Helena, Montana, founded as a gold camp and established as a city in 1864. Three years later Josephine arrived and immediately went to work.  She had come to the right place.  As a result of the gold rush, Helena rapidly was becoming a wealthy city.  By 1888 an estimated 50 millionaires resided there. 

Helena MT in late 1880s

 

Josephine knew exactly what the miners needed.  At the age of 23 she opened a brothel in Helena in a log cabin.  Despite the primitive surroundings, she employed a small orchestra to provide additional entertainment for the male patrons.  Noted one observer:  “Josephine’s brothel took off in terms of popularity.”   Before long she moved to larger, more elegant quarters. 

In May 1884, Chicago Joe’s establishment was challenged when a passenger on a train stopping in Helena headed straight to the local police.  He reported that seven girls who had come into town on the same train with him had been lured to Montana from the East by Josephine on the promise of work in a local hotel. Their true destination, he claimed, was dancing and selling drinks in her bawdy house.  As reported in the Helena Daily Independent:  “The report soon gained pretty general circulation and a good deal of interest in this affair was shown.”  The mayor sent two officers to investigate.  Upon returning from Josephine’s establishment the men reported that in Chicago when the girls boarded the train — a trip paid for by Josephine — they knew “what service would be expected of them.”

Still skeptical, the newspaper sent a reporter to investigate further.  “The reporter rang the doorbell of Chicago Joe’s residence and the summons was answered by the proprietess herself.”  She gathered the seven women, all of whom attested that before embarking to Helena they fully comprehended the work they were to do.  “This of course settled the matter, and the reporter withdrew.”   The women clearly had found themselves more affluent than they had ever been as they shared in the profits of drinks sold, dancing with customers and “personal services.”  The prospect of meeting and marrying one of Helena’s millionaires was further incentive.

The reporter might have inquired but apparently did not about an incident that had occurred at Josephine’s several days earlier.  A longtime employee, a “dancer” named Martha Hughes, better known as “Dutch Leina,” was found dead on the premises, seemingly from the effects of morphine, self-administered.  “An empty envelope marked “15 grains “ morphine was found in the room…It is supposed that the the diseased took it all at one dose.” reported the Daily Independent.  A coroner’s jury ruled Dutch Leina’s death a suicide.  No motive was given for her act other than she had been drinking heavily on that day and had to be put to bed.

No amount of controversy seemed to impede Josephine’s upward trajectory in Helena.  When a fire in 1874 damaged buildings owned by residents who lacked the resource to rebuild, she bought up the properties, refurbishing them and renting out the space.  A shrewd business woman, Josephine is said to have mortgaged each property, including “three dozen pair of underclothes.”  As a result, she became one of the largest—and richest— landowners in Helena.  By this time she also opened the largest brothel in town, shown here, located at the corner of State and Joliet Streets.  Josephine called it the “Grand,” a building that stood until torn down in the 1970s.

Possibly because her real estate dealings brought her into frequent contact with the businessmen of Helena, Josephine decided to marry and have a man around able to assist her.  She met James T. Hensley, decided he was a likely prospect and wed him in 1878.  Hensley may not have been her first husband, it turns out.  I have found a document indicating that under the name “Mary Welch” she was recorded marrying an Albert Jenkins in Montana in April 1869.  After that nothing more is heard of Jenkins.

With Hensley as a partner, Josephine continued her ascent in Helena.  With her husband’s help she built and opened the Red Light Saloon and a large variety theatre, costing $30,000 to construct.  (That is equivalent to just short of $1 million today.)  The couple called it “The Coliseum.”  The venue was a success with its fancy furnishings, beautiful girls who performed — and an adjoining brothel.

Josephine became known for her elegant dress, fancy lifestyle and the elegant parties she and Hensley threw.  Shown here is an open invitation from Josephine for a “masked ball” on Christmas Eve 1883 at the Red Light Saloon.  As shown here, at such occasions Josephine would appear in all her finery.  Wearing diamond rings on her fingers, elegant earrings, a large necklace, and a fancy tiara, she had every inch of a regal bearing.  The madam known as “Chicago Joe” had become the “Queen of the Red Light District.” She also gained a reputation for her generous donations to local charities and political candidates.

Her example set a business model for other Montana women, including her former “girls.”  In 1875 Lou Couselle, after a stint with Josephine, opened her own brothel in Bozeman, Montana.  She also used mortgages and the profits of prostitution to her advantage.  At the time of her death Lou had an estate of $20,000 (current value $616,000).  “Mollie "Crazy Belle” Crafton was another woman in Helena reputed to have followed the path blazed by Josephine:  “Mollie built the Castle Bordello, which cost over $12,000 in the early 1880s. Josephine's success clearly had a profound effect on the minds of other women in the area at this time,”  recorded one observer.

Power and popularity, however, could be fleeting in the Old West.  As an absentee owner, Josephine was vulnerable to theft of her horses and cattle.  An incident occurred in April 1882 when John Miles, alias Bronco Johnny, with an accomplice, raided her ranch in nearby Silver Creek.  Although forewarned, lawmen waiting in ambush caught the sidekick.  Johnny got away with a stolen horse, at least temporarily.

Josephine also faced legal problems.  In 1885 the Montana legislature instituted a ban on brothels, key to her business empire.  Many such houses in the state were forced to shut down.  When she did not, authorities took her to court.  Able to afford the best legal talent in Montana, her lawyer ensured she was found innocent.  He pointed out to the court that the law plainly stated that the brothels to be shut down were “hurdy gurdy” joints, where music was provided by turning a crank on a box.  He was able to demonstrate that Josephine had never used that method of entertaining.  Nonetheless, for a time afterward, she closed her houses, quietly opening a new one later as adjunct to her “Variety Theater.”

Apparently reluctant to leave him, Josephine was also having difficulty with husband Hensley.  He was drinking heavily and, often when drunk, gambled away her money. In January 1883 she placed a notice, seen above, in the Daily Independent notifying liquor dealers in Helena not to sell Hensley intoxicants, gambling houses not to let him play, and for no one to lend him money.  “Any one that does contrary to this notice I will prosecute.”  She signed the notice:  “Mrs. Josephine Hensley.” 

A crushing financial blow for came for Chicago Joe with the Financial Panic of 1893.  Apparently caused by a series of negative worldwide economic developments, including a stock crash on Wall Street, the ripple effect reached Helena where Josephine found herself highly leveraged and her creditors demanding immediate payment.  She watched as one by one her large property holdings were gobbled up by others.  Left virtually penniless, except for the Red Light Saloon, she and Hensley were forced to live in small rooms above the drinking establishment they had built.

In October 1899 Josephine was struck down by pneumonia at the age of about 55.  The glory of her early days in Helena was gone.  Nonetheless her death saddened many who had come to know her and made front-page news in the Daily Independent.  Her obituary there emphasized her generosity and charitable giving.  Following rites of the Catholic Church, Josephine was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Helena.  She is remembered today in Helena’s Montana Historical Society Museum where her ornate make-up box, below, is on display. 

Notes:  Josephine’s story is told in several sites on the Internet as well as articles in the Helena Daily Independent, that consistently referred to her as “Chicago Joe.”  Wikipedia also contains information and photographs of this enterprising woman of the rowdy Old West.

Eureka! I Spy a $2,600 Bar Token.

The image that opens this post is of a celluloid bar token with a face value of 12.5 cents.  Two of them would be enough to buy a shot of reasonably good whiskey at the Owl Liquor Company and saloon in Eureka, Nevada.  Not long ago that token was sold at auction for $2,600,  enough to buy 5,000 shots and set ‘em up for most every drinking man, in 19th Century Eureka.

Shown below in the late 1800s, Eureka was a boom town.  The community, shown above, had been settled in 1864 by a group of prospectors who had discovered silver-lead rock, attracting two competing mining companies to the area.  Mining for silver and lead triggered an economic boom town to emerge, one that in 1873 became, and still is, the county seat.  The town’s population surged, reaching 10,000 by 1878.

To satisfy the ever-thirsty miners, liquor companies and saloons proliferated,  among them a “watering hole” called The Owl Liquor Company.  Although the identity of the proprietor has faded into the mists of history, he left us a trade card that purports to offer a bit of “Western philosophy.

The Eureka saloon keeper showed similar imagination in issuing bar tokens, usually minted from metals like copper and iron.  He was using celluloid — celluloid — the world’s first industrial plastic.  Put into mass production in 1872, celluloid rapidly became popular for its ability to be shaped and to carry elaborate colored lithographic images. In particular it was suited as backing for small items that could be stowed away in a pocket.  Because celluloid took color well it proved a good venue for advertising, as the proprietor of the Owl Liquor Company saloon realized.

He provided his customers with a winsome picture of a baby girl with long curly hair, wearing a frilly dress and holding a large red rose.  It is a highly attractive image, one that a customer might wish to keep as a “lucky piece” rather than trade it at the Owl bar for half a drink of whiskey.  The company and artist behind the token are not revealed.  My surmise is that it may have been the product of the Celluloid Manufacturing Company of Newark, New Jersey.

Owl Liquor also produced a second celluloid drinks token.  This one, however, lacks the innocence of the first.  Shown below it depicts a semi-nude woman with a “come hither” look and gesture, wearing what appear to be a few shreds of clothing.  This token shows signs of discoloration typical of many aging celluloid artifacts. It also has sold in recent years, fetching $1,300 at auction despite its less than pristine condition. 

The Owl Liquor Company likely went out of business as national prohibitionary laws and finally a “dry” Constitutional amendment was adopted in 1919.  By that time the silver and lead mines had played out.  Eureka’s population plummeted from about 10,000 to 414 today. (2020 census).  The town is shown here as it currently looks.

Eureka exploits its isolation. It is located in the southern part of Eureka County at 6,461 feet elevation in the Nevada’s Diamond Mountains.  Shown here is a sign that greets visitors: “You are entering the friendliest town on the loneliest road in America.”  The nearest towns via the highway that bisects the Eureka are Austin, 70 miles west (pop. 167), and Ely 77 miles east (pop. 3,924).  

As “The Loneliest Road in America,” U.S. Route 50 at Eureka is one of the locations where the U.S. National Park Service provides a stamp for its travel “passport.” attesting that the user has accessed Eureka and its main street.  Of course the town museum, in a former newspaper office, must be open to obtain the certification. 

My assumption is that the Owl Liquor Company had its own house brand of liquor, as did most other saloons that advertised themselves as companies, indicating a business beyond just serving drinks over a bar.  That tradition is being carried on by Joe and Lauren Luben in Eureka.  They are owners of a blended whiskey line they call “Two Bitch,” named after their dogs.  Three bourbon varieties are created in their building shown in the photo.  In Eureka’s boom days the structure was a Methodist Church and now a tourist stop.

Eureka is living proof that no place in America is too small or too isolated to produce whiskey.

Joseph Stonebraker: The Once and Always Maryland Rebel

In his memoir of his Civil War service,  entitled “A Rebel of ’61,”  Joseph Stonebraker cites the British politician, Charles Fox:  “The term of Rebel is no certain mark of disgrace.   All the greatest asserters of liberty, the saviors of their country,  the benefactors of mankind in all ages have been called Rebels.”  

Throughout his life, whether as a young firebrand or Baltimore liquor dealer, Joseph enjoyed the role of rebel. Although he was born in Missouri, his family roots were strong in Maryland.  Through his mother, Anglica, he could trace his lineage in the state back to the arrival of an ancestor to America in 1772.   

Shown left, his father, Henry Stonebraker, was an immigrant reputed to be escaping from religious persecution who landed in Maryland.  After marrying Angelica, right, in 1837, the father settled down on a farm in  Washington County, Maryland, but yearned for something more.

Lured by stories of greater opportunities in the West, in 1840 Henry uprooted his wife and  an 18 month old baby girl and headed to Missouri.  After an arduous three week journey, the family arrived in Shelby County, received a land grant and worked to create a farmstead.  Henry also erected a grist mill and a distillery, Cheated by a partner, he lost all his property, including a black slave girl belonging to Angelica.  In 1845, Henry moved his family, now with three babies, to LaGrange, Missouri, a town of fewer than 400 people. There he opened a small hotel.  Joseph Stonebraker was born there in February 1844, the sixth in a line of nine children.

When the boy was three, Henry and Angelica abandoned their Missouri dreams and returned with their children to Maryland, settling in Antietam where Angelica’s family lived. There Joseph grew up and was educated in the local public schools.  Maryland was a slave state and from childhood the youth was accustomed to seeing blacks in servitude, assisting in homes and working on farms.

When the Civil War broke out Joseph was 17, working for his father who was actively disobeying military orders by selling farm products across the Confederate Virginia border.  Both Stonebrakers came under scrutiny of Federal authorities and young Joseph, unabashed and vocal in his support for the rebellion, was arrested and kept in a stockade with other prisoners in Fort McHenry, near Baltimore.  Released without a trial, Joseph, shown left,  almost immediately traveled south to join Confederate troops as a private in Company C of the Maryland First Cavalry.  His family assisted his move by buying him a horse.  He named it “Bill.”

So mounted, Joseph saw considerable combat as recounted in his book, engaged in numerous battles in General Lee’s Army of Virginia. Shown here, a memorial to the Maryland cavalry stands at Gettysburg.  Joseph fought in that battle and succeeding ones until the last. Lee’s army was forced to leave the capital, Richmond, and withdraw to western Virginia.   Engaged in desperate encounters and suffering from lack of food, the Rebels took a final losing stand at Appomattox, Virginia.  Lee was forced to surrender.  

Members of the Maryland Cavalry, however, were not persuaded to cease fighting. Heeding the call of their commanding officer, General Thomas Mumford, they disbanded temporarily, planning to regroup near Wayesboro.  When Joseph reached there, he found that Mumford himself had surrendered and written his Maryland troops:  “Let me urge upon you to remain quiet and keep your armor burnished — You who struck the first blow in Baltimore and the last in Virginia have done all that could be asked of you.”

With that admonition, Joseph Stonebraker started for home, likely on foot because he had traded “Bill” to a farmer in return for two weeks of meals.  On May 7, 1865, he formally surrendered to the Provost General at Union Army headquarters pledging that:  “…If I am permitted to remain at my home I will conduct myself as a good and peaceable citizen, to respect the laws in force where I reside, and will do nothing to the detriment of, or in opposition to the United States Government.”  This Rebel’s war was over.

Although Joseph had joined the Confederate cavalry as a boy, he emerged as a 21-year-old man who had seen months of hot combat and enough death and suffering for a lifetime.  Matured well beyond the hot-tongued youngster jailed for his support of the Southern cause, Joseph, as he walked the approximately 230 miles back to his Maryland home, likely contemplated what the future would bring.

In the meantime, his father Henry, abandoning farming for the streets of Baltimore, had found his true calling creating and selling patent remedies, livestock medicines, and pesticides.  Located at 84-86 Camden Street, Henry advertised  as “Stonebraker’s Valuable Family Medicine & Preparations.” His merchandise ran the gamut from “cough syrup.” to “rat killers.” Joseph joined him in the Baltimore store, followed shortly by his younger brother Charles.  By 1873 the company had become “H. Stonebraker & Sons.”

Joseph quickly took to the mercantile trade but soon decided that selling booze was more lucrative than bug spray.  Apparently with his father’s consent and  Charles’ help in 1876 he opened a liquor store at 89 Camden, across the street from Henry’s store.  When other space became available at 88 Camden next door to his father, Joseph moved there. 

 

Jos. Stonebraker & Co. featured a number of house liquor brands, none of which the proprietor trademarked.  They included: "Oriola Baltimore Rye,” “Setter,” ”Tarpon Maryland Rye.” "Wide Awake Maryland Rye,”  and "Zeigler Pure Rye.” Joseph appears to have been a successful merchant, apparently moving occasionally to increase his space or to achieve other commercial advantages.  Leaving Camden Street in 1883, he spent the next five years at 16 Light and then moved to 16 Hanover.

As Joseph was building his liquor company, he also was having a family life.  In 1870 he married Mary Catherine Bosler, from a well established Carlisle, Pennsylvania, family.  She is shown below. Mary was 27, Joseph 26.  Over the next several years, the couple would have four sons, one of whom died in infancy.  As the boys matured they were put to work in the family liquor establishment.

Joseph also was expanding his business interests, involved in the formation of the Fidelity and Deposit Company, a Baltimore banking institution, serving as a vice president for eight years.  The man who had survived the “whiz” of bullets, as he described, it was not fated for a long life.  Almost without warning in October 1903 Joseph was taken ill with what later was determined to be kidney failure.  

Seemingly on the mend, the end came while liquor dealer was being visited by a doctor friend.  A local newspaper reported:  “They talked for a while and Mr. Stonebraker jokingly referred to his having to remain indoors and said he expected to be up and out again very soon.  Almost without warning he rolled over on his side and closed his eyes in death.”  He was 59 years old.

As Joseph’s family gathered, including his 90-year-old mother, Angelica, his funeral services were held in his home, conducted by the pastor of the local Presbyterian church. With pallbearers that included leading Baltimore businessmen, Joseph Stonebraker was buried in Greenmont Cemetery.  His monument is shown here.  Under the guidance of his sons, the liquor house continued on for another 13 years.

To the end Joseph Stonebraker remained a Rebel.  In 1897 he published a memoir largely devoted to his military service, so that: My children may know the part I took in the War between the States.”  One critic has called it “a charming little book that sold very few copies, overshadowed by the hundreds of other Civil War memoirs published at the same time.”  Nevertheless, “A Rebel of ’61" has been reprinted numerous times since and is available today in reprints from several publishers.

In an introduction Stonebraker reasserted his support of the Confederate “Lost Cause.” He wrote:  “My view of the conflict was not so much to protect the right to property in the slaves as it was to maintain the great principle that the Creator was greater than the creature — the States made the Government and not the Government made the States.  It is now more than thirty years since the conflict ended and I have never had a regret for any part I took in the strife.”

John Lobmiller and the Whiskey Shakes

John Lobmiller was a glassmaker and inventor from Wellsburg, West Virginia, whose most memorable contribution to mankind may well have been a paperweight that contained shakable bar dice.

In 1885, together with other Wellsburg investors in that Ohio River town, Lobmiller founded the Venture Glass Works shown below.  According to an 1886 newspaper account. the glassworks specialties were brown flint glassware and private mold work. The article praised the operation: “These works are operated with natural gas, and while the establishment is not quite so large as some others, the work turned out is equal to those of more metropolitan pretensions.”

As an inventor, Lobmiller had a number of ideas to improve existing tools and artifacts. In 1901 he filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office an application to make a new kind of paperweight. Most weights of the time were solid glass with an image pasted or sealed in the base. Lobmiller created a paperweight of glass and metal with a cavity. His application noted that “Moveable devices of circular or other form can be confined in the cavity....” Such devices, he noted, would add “novelty and attractiveness” to weights.

Two years later, on August 18, 1903, the U.S, Government issued Lobmiller his patent. There was an immediate interest in the invention from a source that Lobmiller may or may not have had in mind. Although his illustrations show small marbles in the cavity, whiskey dealers and saloonkeepers saw the open space as perfect for holding bar dice.

Shaking for drinks at the bar has been an American tradition almost as old as the Republic. Patrons gamble against the bartender or against each other about who picks up the drink tab. Bar dice games typically are played with a set of five six-sided dice. Each player takes a turn rolling the dice either to outdo opponents or to accrue points.   Bar dice that advertised a particular whisky was “a natural.”

Pre-Prohibition whiskey distributors like Harald Schmidt in Indianapolis (1903-1918) were quick to see the advantages of Lobmiller’s invention. The paperweight with dice would advertise Schmidt’s Fairmont Whiskey, reminding patrons of its availability behind the bar. 

In Memphis, Tennessee, Italian immigrant Dominic Canale had the same idea. He distributed five-dice paperweights to those saloons carrying his “Old Dominick” whiskey. Canale’s company (1885-1915) also featured brands, “B-Wise” and “Dominick Special Rye.”

On Milwaukee’s South Side, George Frank ordered up Lobmiller paperweights for his drinking establishment on National Avenue. His “sample room,” a high flown name for a saloon, is now the site of an apartment building. The base of all three of the weights above bear the Lobmiller patent date. It is unstated but likely that they were fabricated at his Wellsburg glassworks.

In addition to the artifacts featuring a round cavity inside a square glass, a second Lobmiller patent variety was a broader, round paperweight. This is exemplified by the Clingstone Rye weight, shown below, one that also bears the 1909 patent date. This item was distributed by the Shiff, Mayer Co. of Cincinnati, in business from 1906 until 1911. Clingstone Rye was its flagship brand.

Lobmiller’s success almost inevitably drew copycats. Shown below are four whiskey weights, all possibly from the same manufacturer and all bearing a “patent applied for “ designation. No evidence exists of a patent actually being granted, not surprising given how close the concept was to Lobmiller’s weight. Among the whiskey merchants making use of this “knockoff” were the Old Kentucky Fine Whiskey Co. of Kansas City, Missouri (1900-1902) and Winner Rye, the product of Wm. Mulherin & Sons, Philadelphia (1887-1918). 

A third was a weight advertising “Pennsylvania Pure Rye.”  It is unusual because it features only three dice. This weight was distributed by Buffalo, New York, whiskey rectifiers known as C. Person’s Sons Company (1850-1920).   The final “shaker” weight was issued by the Whallen Brothers, John and James, of Louisville, Kentucky (1902-1908).   In addition to their liquor house, one emphasizing mail order, the brothers were major power brokers in Louisville politics while running bawdy stage shows.

Despite the interesting legacy of whiskey memorabilia that John Lobmiller made possible, his own life apparently was plagued with difficulties. He committed suicide in Wellsburg in 1913. An obituary in a glassworkers trade paper cited “business troubles” as the cause.   

Note:  Four of the “whiskey men” cited here have individual posts on this website:   Canale, Nov. 26, 2011;  Persons, Jan. 2, 2012;  Mulherin, Jan. 8, 2013, and Whalen, Jan. 29, 2014.  All four were notable in the liquor trade.