Savoring the Saloons of Times Gone By

 

Just recently I have been reading a book called “Watering Holes of Yore: The Saloonsthat Made Texas Famous,”  by multiple authors.  Over the years for my own edification, I have collected a number of photographs of old time saloons.   Now it occurs to me to share them on this blog.   They include two saloons that I personally have visited and one, at the end, that is an all-time favorite.

The first establishment shown here is a Texas saloon, but not one covered in the book I have referenced.  My fascination is with the imaginative way that the proprietors have rendered the word “whiskey.”  Obviously with tongue firmly in cheek,  they have proclaimed it “The Road to Ruin.”  Yet the front door is open wide and the gents on the porch obviously have left the bar to have their pictures taken.   This photo identified the state but not the town.  It reputedly was taken in the 1880s.

The next photo replicates the theme.  From the designation as the “Lone Star Saloon” and the symbol provided, it might be assumed that it was located in Texas,  the Lone Star State.   Wrong.  This establishment was located in Corona, New Mexico.   The date given for it was 1919.  By that time Texas was fully into the Temperance Movement and increasingly legal restrictions were being put on saloons and drinking.  By contrast New Mexico was still wide open. 

The next image is from South Dakota and although it has no sign,  the passengers on the stage coach stopping there would know that strong drink was to be had inside.  This photo is from an earlier article I wrote on a Western character known as “Devil Dan” Roberts.   As cowboy, he rode up to a stage stop saloon very much like this one in 1886.  Roberts was employed by the VVV Ranch on the Belle Fourche River and was heading for Deadwood for the Christmas holidays when he dropped into the saloon to warm up from the frigid Dakota weather.

A holiday dance was in progress and the saloon owner, who had been nipping at his own booze all day,  was heading to bed to sleep it off.   He asked Devil Dan, who did not drink,  to look after the business. The well-likkered cowboy crowd got rowdy and began to break up the furniture and knock out windows.  Dan let them have their way but as the men sobered up he made them pay for the damages.  The next morning the owner sold the place to Roberts for $125 and departed.  Dan repaired the damage and appears to have taken to the role as saloonkeeper.  After running the  establishment for a few months, he apparently sold it and leased the Cliff House, a larger stage coach station and saloon, in nearby Deadwood.

The next picture is from Creede, Colorado.  Two men standing in the open doorway of the “Holy Moses Saloon,”  which is next to the narrow, rocky canyon walls that surround the town,  located in Mineral County.   Note that the building is rather ramshackle with a broken cornice and a barrel lying out front.  A note on the photo says that the man standing in the white shirt and vests was the owner and the sheriff of Creede whose name was William Orthen.   His saloon was the first liquor den in town.

A much better known lawman cum saloon keeper was Judge Roy Bean, who billed himself as the “Law West of the Pecos.”  For about 16 years, Bean lived a prosperous and relatively legitimate life as a San Antonio businessman. In 1882, he moved to southwest Texas, where he built his famous saloon, the Jersey Lilly, and founded the hamlet of Langtry. Saloon and town alike were named for the famous English actress, Lillie Langtry. Bean had never met Langtry, but he had developed an abiding affection for her after seeing a drawing of her in an illustrated magazine. For the rest of his life, he avidly followed Langtry's career in theater magazines.

Before founding Langtry, Bean had also secured an appointment as a justice of the peace and notary public. He knew little about the law or proper court procedures, but residents appreciated and largely accepted his common sense verdicts in the sparsely populated country of West Texas.  By the 1890s, reports of Bean's curmudgeonly rulings, including an occasional hanging,  had made him nationally and internationally famous.  After his death Lillie Langtry made a belated visit.

The following photo of the gents standing in front the El Paso Saloon has intrigued me for the wide variety of headgear they sport, as well as the varied positions of their hands.  Several look as if they might be preparing to draw and shoot.  Despite the name it is not possible from the picture to identify the town.  El Paso Hotels with saloons were located not only in El Paso itself but also in Fort Worth and San Antonio.   I assess the date as about 1910 or after. The advertising sign over the door for Fredericksburg Beer on tap has a definite  20th Century look.

The photo following caught my eye for the 20 mule team in the foreground and the row of saloons in back. Thirsty customers had a choice of the “The Yellowstone Bar,”  “The Butler Saloon,” or the “High Grade Bar” and so on down the line of watering holes in the town of Rawhide, Nevada,  at the 1908 height of the Gold Rush. In the short span of two years the town went from its peak population of 7,000 to fewer than 500 residents by the latter part of 1910. Helping push the decline of Rawhide even further along was a fire that swept through town in September 1908, along with a flood the following September, from which many residents did not recover or rebuild. 

When the original mines worked out the remaining gold and silver from the veins, more people left Rawhide. There remained only a few  who eked out a livelihood working in the mines, or processing the ore, or just working their own claims and prospecting.  Most of the saloons had closed and the town became a hollow shell of what it once was.  By 1941 only a few hardy souls were left in Rawhide, and the post office was closed.  Today it is a “ghost town” with only photos to remember its heyday.

The only watering hole in color and one I have actually visited is “Big Nose Kate’s Saloon.”  This place got its start as the Grand Hotel in Tombstone, Arizona.  Opening in September, 1880, it was consider one of the state’s premier hotel, boasting thick carpeting and costly oil paintings.  The lobby was equipped with three elegant chandeliers and more luxurious furnishings, while the kitchen featured both hot and cold running water and facilities to serve as many as 500 people efficiently.

It is said that Ike Clanton and the two McIaury brothers stayed at the Grand the night before the famous gunfight at the O. K. Corral.  Now the place is named for the erstwhile girl friend of another participant in the famous showdown, Doc Holliday.  I was in Tombstone a few years ago and stopped into Big Nose Kate's to look around and have a beer. Sadly, it was no different than the other touristy bars and restaurants along the main drag, but the history is still there.

The final photo is not in the Far West but from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  But, you may say, it looks more like a church than a saloon.  Yes, it does.  The building was constructed as a Methodist house of worship in the late 1800s only to find itself smack dab next to Milwaukee’s ever-expanding Pabst brewery.  The perfumes of beer production wafted over the structure frequently.  After Prohibition the church was sold to the brewery which made the first floor into a restaurant and bar and used the upstairs for a training center.  They called it the “Forstkeller” and supplied it with fresh beer daily.  For years it was my favorite watering hole. Even after leaving Milwaukee, I always walked in the door at least once on every visit to town.  Unfortunately the Forstkeller has been shut for many years.

There they are,  nine of my favorite saloon scenes.  Just looking at them makes me thirsty.  Think I will head out for a tall cold one. 

Note:  Two saloon owners noted here are treated at more length elsewhere on this website:  “Devil Dan” Roberts, April 18, 2012, and Judge Roy Bean, October 4, 2016.

A.T. Atkin: The Rocky Road from Tshamingo to Memphis

In Mississippi the first major success of the Prohibition movement occurred when the legislature passed a local-option law allowing counties to prohibit the sale of alcohol. By the early twentieth century the sale was illegal or seriously limited in a large majority of the state’s counties.  In Aberdeen, Monroe County, Allen T. Akin, a wholesale liquor dealer had a dilemma:  Go into another line of work — or move from his native state.  He chose the road.  It proved to be a rocky one.

Akin was born in Tishomingo, a tiny town in an extreme northeastern corner of Mississippi, shown here as it looks today, population 339.  The date was April 20, 1849.  Originally from Virginia, his father, William Edwin “Will” Akin was a farmer.  The 1850 Census found Will, 27, and his wife, Louisa, 23, living in Tishomingo County with daughter Elizabeth, 3, and Allen, 1.  The 1860 census sighted the family still in Tishomingo, with indications the father was prospering as a farmer.

By the 1870 census, the family had grown to seven children, including three sons, Allen, Johnson, and William, old enough to be recorded as working for their father on the farm.  Shortly after, Allen Akin is cited moving to Simpson County, Kentucky, to work on a farm.  From there his progress is a blank slate until, during the 1880s he fetched up as a saloonkeeper in Aberdeen, Mississippi, a town 87 miles southwest of Tishomingo. 

 By this time Akin had married.  His bride was Amanda Bunch, called “Mandy,” the daughter of Erasmus H. and Mary Ann Cowen Bunch. Unusual for those times, Amanda appears to have been four years older than her husband.  The couple would have two children, Ernestine, born in 1885, and Collins, in 1889. 

The county seat of Monroe County and located on the banks of the Tombigbee River.  Aberdeen, population 3,500, was one of the busiest Mississippi ports of the 19th century. Cotton brokerages flourished in town and for a time Aberdeen was Mississippi's second largest city.  The wealth of the city expressed itself in the many mansions that dotted the landscape and in lively patronage for the city’s saloons.  Akin’s establishment also sold whiskey, advertising the availability of Tennessee and Kentucky liquor, including “Old Cutter” from Louisville.

For years as a whiskey dealer, Akin had to deal with a state legislature where the forces of “dry” constantly were making inroads.  An earlier law made it illegal to  purchase less than a gallon at once, aimed at local saloons and taverns.  Violators could face fines of between $200 and $500 — ruinous amounts when a shot of whiskey fetched five cents.  Repealed three years later, this statute was followed by others seeking to cripple the liquor trade, including an 1873 law that if any state legislator was found drunk the individual could be charged with a crime and removed from office.  About 1900, as Monroe County contemplated a “local option” ban on alcohol, Akin felt forced to leave his native state and a municipality he considered his home town.  He packed up his small family and his liquor supplies and moved to Jackson, Tennessee.   In 1908, Mississippi would become the first state to ban all alcohol sales.

Tennessee looked to many liquor dealers in states like Mississippi as an oasis that might never vote “dry.”  For Akin it was  a 180 mile journey almost straight north to a Jackson, a rapidly growing city of about 15,000 people, almost five times the size of Aberdeen.  After the Civil War Jackson became a hub of railroad systems ultimately connecting to major markets to the north and south, as well as east and west. This was key to its development, attracting trade and many railroad workers in the late 19th century.  Akin opened a saloon and liquor business at 209-211 N. Market Street in Jackson’s busy downtown, shown above.

Indications are that Akins was taking advantage of the excellent train connection to ship whiskey from sources within Tennessee and reaching up into Kentucky where transit was easy.  He may have had difficulty initially in finding potteries to make his jugs as indicated by the two containers shown above.  Both are crudely stenciled.

As shown above and below here, Akin eventually was able to find a potter to provide him with an attractive design using an “underglaze transfer” of applying a distinctive label.  The size of his containers varied from quart (top left) to gallon (top right), two gallon (below left) and five gallon (below right).  The larger jugs would be for his wholesale customers, the whiskey to be poured into smaller containers before being served across a bar.

Although exact dates are hazy, Akin was established in Jackson by at least 1904.  That year he incorporated as A.T. Akin Company, with capital of $7,700.  He headed the incorporators joined by a W.T. Akin, relationship unclear, and two others in Jackson.  As the newly-come Tennessee whiskey man was to find out, that state was not immune to “dry” laws.  At the county level prohibitionist were whittling away at liquor sales. Jackson was not immune.  

By 1908 Akin had moved to still “wet” Memphis.  There he operated the A. T. Akin Company, Wholesale and Retail Whiskies at 150 South Main Street.  His son, Collins Akin, now an adult was the establishment’s manager.  By 1915 Akins’ liquor house had moved to 325 South Main, below, and Akin had taken a partner named Bates.  He also had put the management of the liquor house into other hands, including son Collins and retired with wife Amanda back to Aberdeen.  The same year a Tennessee law forbidding all alcohol sales passed court tests of its validity and began to be enforced.

From Aberdeen, Akin could watch the end of his peripatetic liquor house after a run of almost a third of a century.  Now 67 years old, his health was failing.  On March 14, 1916, Akin died.  He was buried in Aberdeen in the Old Fellows Rest Cemetery above.  His tombstone contains this tribute:  “None knew thee but to love thee.”  Amanda would join him there in 1923.  Her memorial reads:  “Thy memory will ever be a guiding star to Heaven.”

Note:  There are notable “holes” in this narrative about A. T. Akin, including how he was able to move from farm work to keeping a saloon.  I am hopeful some alert descendant will see this post and help me fill in the gaps.

A.E. Beitzell — A Capitol Whiskey Man and His Red Raven

Albert Ernest Beitzell, a prominent merchant in the Nation’s Capitol, sold whiskey, soft drinks, seafood and theater seats in a career that contained a lifetime of unpredictable events, including witnessing a suicide.  Nevertheless, Beitzell maintained his sense of humor, including advertising his whiskey with a red raven, a mythical bird of his own devising.

Albert was born in June 1869 in Wicomico, a community in the Northern Neck of Virginia, the northernmost of three peninsulas (traditionally called "necks" in Virginia) on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  His father Josiah Beitzell was 35 at his birth, his mother Mary Agnes (Weser) Beitzell was 33.  Albert was their third child.  Four more would follow. The 1870 census found the family in Wicomico where Josiah was working as a sailor, almost certainly on an oyster boat.  Three oystermen in their early 20s boarded with the family.

As a youth Albert would soon become aware of the uncertainties of harvesting oysters from the Chesapeake Bay.  Weather and water related developments can affect the oyster catch, often leaving the watermen “high and dry.”  The 1880 census recorded the family having moved to Abell in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, still located on Chesapeake Bay.  Josiah apparently had given up the waterman’s life and listed his occupation as “farmer.”  Four years later he died at 50 years old, leaving behind five minor children.  As a likely consequence Albert was forced to end his formal education after the 8th grade.

Mother Mary Agnes apparently was able to weather the loss of her spouse as her older children took employment.   The family continued to live in Abell.  Five years later, however, she died.  Albert Beitzell was now an adult and on his own. Seeing more opportunities in the big city he moved to Washington D.C.  There, likely with the help of friends in the seafood trade, he went to work as an oyster wholesaler.  The 1900 census found him engaged in that occupation at 30 years old.  Bietzell also had been married for one year to Mary Margaret Cumberland, 26, the daughter of a boathouse keeper on the Potomac River.  The couple later would have two children, Louise and Albert Jr.

Beitzell’s rise as a D.C. merchant requires some speculation.  At some point in the early 1900s he appears to have left wholesaling seafood, perhaps discouraged by the the variability of the oyster harvest.  Instead he entered the liquor trade, a solid money-making occupation in Washington, D.C. as congressmen, government appointees, lobbyists, and political hangers-on provided a ready customer base for liquor stores and saloons throughout the Nation’s Capital.  Beitzell’s signature label was “Red Raven,” featuring a mythical avian not seen in nature.  He sometimes compounded the enigma with the puzzling slogan:  “Ask the Man.”  The brand proved to be popular. 

The success of his liquor house at 210 Tenth Street SW  brought Bietzell to the attention of the city’s business elites.  Among them was Harry Crandell, a local businessman who owned a chain of 18 theaters including the Apollo and others in Washington D.C.  His venues also could be found in Baltimore,  Martinsburg WV, and elsewhere.  Shown here, Crandall struck a friendship with Beitzell that blossomed into a business relationship.  The liquor dealer became vice president of Crandell’s theatrical corporation.

One result of Bietzell’s theater involvement was membership in the Washington Garrick Club, named for a famous British men’s club geared toward actors and others with ties to the stage.  Located on the second floor of a building at 1347 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Garrick Club had a similarly theatrical membership.  Bietzell unexpectedly would find himself in the center of a drama that played out at the Garrick Club on the morning of July 1, 1907.

As reported at length in the Washington Evening Star of that date, Bietzell was visiting the club that morning with Raleigh F. Luckett, the 27-year-old brother of a well-known local theater manager.  Although seemingly in good spirits, Luckett was involved in a two month separation from his wife, Gertrude, who had left him and taken their two children.  They greeted the club manager, E.S. Doughty, shown left, and chatted. Then Luckett excused himself. He said he intended  to read a newspaper in the club’s front room.

The Star reported ensuing events: Those in the back room about five minutes later heard the report of a pistol….Mr. Beitzell, stepping into the front room, discovered young Luckett collapsed in his chair with a bloody wound in his breast and a smoking revolver in his hand.  ‘It is all over. it is all over’…the wounded man gasped.  ‘What did you do this for?  asked Mr. Beitzell; but the only reply was, ‘It is all over.’

Beitzell and others summoned an ambulance.  Luckett was rushed to a hospital where doctors thought there was a chance of saving him.  The young man, however, was too badly injured and died shortly after.  The liquor dealer never forgot the shock of seeing his young acquaintance so unexpectedly mortally wounded.

As the 20 Century moved forward Beitzell experienced another devasting event.  Enacted by Congress, prohibition came to D.C. in 1917, three years before it was enacted into law nationwide. All legal bars in the District were ordered to be shut down. In a single day wholesale liquor dealers like Beitzell saw their customer base wiped out.   But Prohibition didn't succeed in eradicating alcohol from the nation's capital. Instead, some 267 licensed saloons morphed into nearly 3,000 speakeasies, disguised in a variety of forms. Ostensibly Beitzell moved into selling soft drinks, near-beer, and fountain supplies.  A  favorite brand was “Checonia Evans.”  When asked his occupation by a census taker in 1920, Beitzell told him “Temperance Manager.”

Shown here is a Beitzell truck from that era, advertising “beverages and fountain supplies.”  The owner’s great grand-niece who supplied the photo hinted that it also might have been used to carry illicit alcoholic beverages.  She also suggests that the photo shows Albert Beitzell himself behind the wheel.  While that might be questioned, the modernity of the truck for the time is indisputable.  Instead of hard rubber wheels, this vehicle featured pneumatic tires on the front wheels. The tread pattern of the pneumatics lessened the amount of direct contact with the road and made steering considerably easier.  

Was this truck used to haul bootleg liquor?  Family lore tends to raise that suspicion without actual proof.  Clearly Beitzell never lost his interest in “the hard stuff.”  When it became clear that National Prohibition had been a gigantic mistake, expanding the drinking public and forcing the trade underground into criminal hands, he sensed Repeal coming and in the early 1930s began negotiations overseas to represent Johnny Walker Scotch and Bols Liquors from Holland in anticipation of the “dry” laws being terminated.

At this time Beitzell was living in a spacious home at 7316 Alaska Avenue, shown here.  Still standing,  the house and grounds are valued today at $1.2 million. His great grand niece, Christina, suggests that he suffered business reverses during Prohibition, had returned to the oyster trade afterward and was recovering his fortunes in the late 1930s.  

About 1938 Beitzell suffered setbacks in his health and retired.  He died in May 1942 at 72 years old, survived by his widow, Mary Margaret, and both children.  Following a funeral Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Washington, he was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, honored as a 50-year resident of the District of Columbia, a member of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Elk’s Lodge 15, and active in the Washington Aerie of Eagles.  Mary Margaret would join him at Mount Olivet in 1952.  Their grave stones are below.

Note:  This story of Albert Beitzell was largely revealed on an internet site provided by his descendant, Christina, whose last name was not given.  She also included the Evening Star report of the suicide.  A variety of other sources provide other details of this Washington D.C. whiskey man.

The Hessbergs: Whiskey in Four Virginia Cities

 

The whiskey “empire” founded by Matthew Hessberg and his son Benjamin encompassed four major Virginia cities, at the time the state’s largest liquor chain.  The Hessbergs’ success in business, however, was plagued by the frequent early deaths of family members.  The Hessbergs named their flagship brand “Satisfaction Rye” but found that satisfaction did not include longevity.

Matthew Isaac Hessburg was born in Danville, Virginia in January 1821, the son of Isaac Hessberg, an immigrant from Bavaria.  Isaac, according to the 1860 census, worked as a leather tanner and currier (expert in preparing hides).  His mother, Rachel Gunst Hessberg, was native born from Orange, Virginia.  Both Isaac and Rachel died when Matthew was just a youngster, nine when his father died at age 31, eleven at his mother’s passing two years later, also 31.

The ensuing years while Matthew and a sister were orphaned are a blank slate. My guess is that members of the Gunst family may have taken them in.  Henry Gunst, likely a relative of Rachel, was a highly successful and wealthy liquor dealer in Richmond, Virginia. [See post on Gunst, August 3, 2011.]  Too young to have been a Rebel soldier, Matthew apparently grew up in the capital of the Confederacy, apparently witnessing its surrender, reconstruction, and the city’s post-war rebirth.  

Details are hard to come by about the timeline during which the Hessberg liquor interests came to encompassed four major Virginia cities.  Richmond, Danville, Roanoke and Bristol created a chain of liquor stores stretching from Tidewater to the Appalachians and beyond, a spread of some 325 miles.  Matthew’s initial liquor establishment appears to have been in postwar Richmond called Hessberg Bottling Company.  Matthew and Charles Gunst, likely a cousin, were proprietors. This was followed by the purchase of the Cousins Supply Company, a Richmond mail order liquor house, by Matthew, who now was working with his son, Benjamin, a traveling salesman and later a partner. 

  

Shown above are two whiskey jugs that display the company label, one and three gallons in size.  They identify their establishment as Cousins Supply and the address at 1100-1102 East Cary Street in downtown Richmond.   The Hessburgs, like other liquor dealers, were generous in gifting saloons and bars carrying their liquor with corkscrews and shot glasses. 

From Richmond the Hessbergs branched out into Danville, where Michael had been born, almost 150 miles southwest of Richmond.  Danville directories record Matthew as a partner in a liquor store and bottling company at 158 Main Street as early as 1888, but I have found no artifacts with that address.  The Roanoke liquor outlet was even farther from Richmond, an estimated at 184 miles.  Given the difficulty with ground transportation in that era, my assumption is that the Hessburgs hired local managers.  Again, I have found no Hessburg Roanoke marked bottles, jugs or other items.

In October 1875, Matthew had married a local Richmond girl, Yetta Rose, 19.  She would bear him four children, Benjamin R., destined to be the heir apparent, and daughters Ray and Merle.  A fourth child, Isaac died in infancy.  Yetta Rose  would sicken and die three years later, only 30 years old.  Five years after her death Michael married Frances Rose “Fanny” Hirsch.  She was 38 at the time of their 1889 nuptials, Matthew was 36.  There would be no children. 

By 1900 the census taker recorded Matthew living in back in Danville in a crowded household.  With him was his wife Fanny; her father Henry Hirsch; children Ray, Merle, and Benjamin;  a live-in cook and her husband.  Three years later, Fanny died, only 41. Gravestones for both women are shown above in Richmond’s Hebrew Cemetery.  Matthew did not marry again, instead concentrating on the Virginia liquor “empire” he was building.   As the years progressed the Hessberg household shrank considerably in size.  By 1920, it contained only Matthew, Benjamin and a nephew.  The three men lived in Richmond at 1102 West Street, shown right.

The Bristol, Virginia, outlet appears to have been the last to be established by the Hessburgs in 1909.  A whopping 324 miles from Richmond, this liquor house, located at 516-518 Cumberland Street, had local managers, W.H. Everett, followed by Otto B. Heldreth.  The output of artifacts from the Bristol location was impressive, including the labels shown above for “Old Eureka Whiskey” and “Satisfaction Rye.”

The Bristol outlet featured whiskey jugs in four sizes, an unmarked gallon ceramic and two, three and five gallon containers.  All displayed the same under-glaze label, “M.I. Hessberg Son & Co., Inc, High Grade Liquors, Bristol Virginia.” A Hessburg shot glass bore the same label. 

 

As Matthew aged his health began to falter and he came to rely increasingly on Benjamin to manage the sprawling liquor business he had created.  He died in October 19, 1920, at age 72 just as National Prohibition was about to be imposed, shutting off all whisky sales for the next 14 years. Matthew is buried in the Hebrew Cemetery next to Fanny.  His gravestone shown below.

Matthew Hessberg deserves a final word:  Orphaned at an early age, with limited education, and the all too frequent deaths of loved ones, he responded to adversity by creating a series of prosperous liquor stores in cities that virtually encompass the map of Virginia.  Only the coming of America’s short-lived experiment with Prohibition could bring down his accomplishments.  

Note:  Although this post contains artifacts from Matthew Hessberg’s liquor business it lacks information on how he was able successfully to manage his chain of Virginia stores.  I am hopeful that some sharp eyed descendant will find the post and help fill in the blanks.