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.”
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