Al Swearengen, Dreaded Deadwood Saloonkeeper

Al Swearengen

Most of the “Whiskey Men” profiled on this website were upstanding, contributing citizens of their communities.   A few others had flaws but a redeeming quality or two.  Ellis Alfred Swearengen, shown left, who made his name in Deadwood, South Dakota, may be a singular exception.  A historian who minutely studied Swearengen’s life had this to say:  "I think he was a real vicious bastard. I think he had a heart of stone.”

There is nothing in Swearengen’s background to account for the man he became.  He was one of twins, the oldest of eight children born in July, 1845, in Osklaoosa, Iowa, to Kentucky-born Daniel Swearengen and his wife Keziah.  Theirs was a farm family.  “Al,” as he was known, and his twin brother, Lemuel, seemingly stayed at home even during early adulthood, apparently working on the farm with their father.

Our next glimpse of Swearengen is his 1876 arrival in Deadwood, South Dakota at the age of 31.  With him was his wife, Nettie, 25.  Showing no interest in mining as many of the inhabitants did, he apparent had already gained some experience operating an entertainment venue.   Previously he had run a dance hall in Custer, South Dakota, a small but apparently successful venture.  Deadwood was where the money was flowing, however, and Swearengen was drawn there.

His first enterprise in Deadwood was a make-shift timber and canvass saloon he called “The Cricket.”  When that establishment proved profitable, Swearengen closed it to build a much larger saloon and dance hall called The Gem Variety Theater, shown above.  The local newspaper called it as “neat and tastefully arranged as any place of its kind in the west.”  The Gem provided dances, prize fights, comedians, and singers in its theatre, shown right.

The Gem also housed a well-stocked saloon, below. That is Swearengen, third from right, standing behind the substantial bar, surveying the customers.  According to one observer, the theater and bar were mostly “a masquerade for its primary purpose as a brothel, which soon gained a reputation for its debasement of the women who were pressed into service there.” 

  

“Al Swearengen recruited women from the East by advertising jobs in hotels and promising to make them stage performers at his theater.  Purchasing a one way ticket for the women, when they arrived, the hapless ladies would find themselves stranded with little choice other than to work for the notorious Swearengen or be thrown into the street. Some of these desperate women took their own lives rather than being forced into a position of virtual slavery. Those who stayed were known to sport constant bruises and other injuries.”

As shown here, the theatre and bar were at the front of the Gem.  In the rear were rooms where the “soiled doves” plied their trade.  “On its balcony, the Gem band was said to have played every night, while the girls beckoned to potential customers to come forth. Once inside, the women charged their customers 10¢ for a dance, 20¢ for a beer and $1 for a bottle of wine.”  Other services were extra.

Swearingen’s wife, Nettie, left him not long after they arrived in Deadwood and later divorced him claiming spousal abuse. They had no children. Swearengen would marry two more times while in the mining town, both marriages resulting in divorces and claims of abuse by the wives.  Shown below is said to be photo of the Gem’s owner, driving a buggy with one of the later wives by his side, as townsfolk looked on.

The Gem, while a popular spot with the rough and rowdy mining crowd, was notorious for gunplay.  Bullets frequently could be seen flying through the saloon as drunken miners worked out their disputes.  The women could also be targets and some armed themselves against harassment.  Legend has it that a Gem prostitute named Tricksie shot her abuser through the front of his head after he beat her.  Called to the scene a doctor probed for the bullet, amazed that the man was still alive.  Thirty minutes later he wasn’t.

Seth Bullock

At this time “law and order” in Deadwood reposed in one man, Seth Bullock.  Born in Canada, Bullock and a companion had arrived in Deadwood in August 1876 looking for opportunities.  Rather than scratching in the ground for gold, they went into business selling a wide range of goods, first from a wagon and then from a building they constructed at the corner of Main and Wall Streets.

From the outset, Bullock, a former Montana state senator, was convinced that Deadwood badly needed law and order if it was to thrive.  Within weeks of his arrival he had become the de facto lawman of the town.  When Deadwood became part of Lawrence County in April 1877, the territorial governor appointed Bullock its first sheriff.  He proved to be stellar lawman, seldom resorting to a gun.  As one observer noted:   “During his tenure as sheriff, Bullock settled disputes over mining claims; rounded up horse thieves, road agents and stagecoach robbers; investigated murders; presided over trials; oversaw the transport and lodging of prisoners; organized militias to combat Indian attacks; and broke up countless fistfights.”  It was said of him that he could outstare a mad cobra or a rogue elephant.

It was inevitable that Bullock would come into conflict with Swearengen, whose ideas and conduct went to the wild side.  When the newly appointed lawman sought to regulate prostitution and gambling, he immediately ran into Al’s stout figure.  After numerous disputes with the Gem’s owner, Bullock recognized that the conflict was standing in the way of taming Deadwood.  By tacit agreement a line was drawn across Main Street.  The more respectable sections of Deadwood on upper Main were Bullock’s territory.  Lower Main, known as “The Badlands” were controlled by Swearengen.

Although the arrangement allowed the Gem to operate unimpeded, Swearengen could not control the fires that periodically burned the town.  In the summer of 1879, the Gem caught fire.  Damage was limited and the owner quickly repaired it and went on providing women and whiskey.  Three months later, September 1879, much of Deadwood went up in flames.  When the smoke cleared 300 buildings had been consumed.  The Gem was among them.

Swearengen lost no time in rebuilding the Gem on the ashes of the old structure.  This time he made it bigger and more ornate.  When the building opened three months later, the Daily Times hailed it as Deadwood’s “finest theater building”  Over the next two decades the proprietor continued to find gold without digging for it.  He is said to have averaged $5,000 a night in profits, sometimes exceeding $10,000 — more than $300,000 in today’s dollar.

In 1899 a third fire consumed the Gem.  This time, age 54, Swearengen called it quits, took his money and exited Deadwood forever.  In addition to Bullock, now a valued community leader, he left behind a reputation that bore him considerable emnity.  The Daily Times editorialized about the Gem’s demise, citing:  "Harrowing tales of iniquity, shame and wretchedness; of lives wrecked and fortunes sacrificed; of vice unhindered and esteem forfeited, have been related of the place, and it is known of a verity that they have not all been groundless.”  Other locals condemned the Gem as “the ever-lasting shame of Deadwood,"  "a vicious institution," and a "defiler of youth and a destroyer of home ties.”

Swearengen’s subsequent activities are murky.   He appears to have returned to Oscaloosa and from time to time lived with relatives, including his twin brother Lemuel.  Swearengen may have had some inkling his life was in danger.  He left Oscaloosa only a short time before Lemuel, who ran a meat market there, was subject to a savage attack at his home.  Shot five times but not robbed of $200 on his person, he survived the attack.  Speculation was rife that this identical twin had been mistaken for his brother.  Was someone with a grudge stalking Al Swearengen?  The answer may have come two months later in November 1904.

The scourge of Deadwood, now 59 years old, was found dead near a streetcar track in Denver, Colorado.  Swearengen’s obituary indicated that he was frequently in that city looking after his mining interests.  He had no money in his pockets nor any indication what he might have been doing at that location.  The coroner’s report called his death an accident, theorizing that he had fallen off the trolly and struck his head on the pavement, causing his death.  Subsequent investigations strongly indicated that Swearwengen was murdered, having suffered a massive head wound after being struck by a heavy blunt object.  He also apparently had been stripped of his cash by the killer or killers.

A Rock Island train brought Swearengen’s body back to his home town, accompanied by a brother, T.J. Swearengen.  The casket was taken to Lemuel’s Oscaloosa home.  The funeral followed the following day with interment in the town’s Forest Cemetery, shown below.  The exact spot was left unidentified, probably fearing desecration.   Swearengen’s death did not end the killing.  In July 1910 the hapless Lemuel was found unconscious outside his meat market, left.  He had been beaten on the head, like his twin, and died eight days later never having regained consciousness.

 

The story of Ellis Alfred Swearengen, however, does not end there.  What went on in Deadwood has always intrigued the public.  He was featured in a HBO TV series called “Deadwood” that made him the principal character.  Played by the English actor Ian McShane, the fictional Swearengen is portrayed as a “vicious but charming murderer who stabs, slices and cuts his way through scores of victims”  It is pure fiction.  I can find no evidence of the Gem’s proprietor, nasty as he may have been, murdering anyone.  

Note:  There is considerable material on Swearengen to be found on the Internet,including a long footnoted article in Wikipedia.  Considerable blank spots in his life story occur in the period from his childhood until he showed up in Deadwood.  Similarly information about his activities after leaving the town, until his death, is largely a blank.

Whiskey Men & 19th Century Science

 Foreword:  The concluding years of the 19th Century marked the beginning of the scientific era that stretches into the 21st Century.  They included a number of discoveries that are “old hat” today but initially generated considerable public discussion and speculation.  Some liquor dealers were quick to see the advertising benefit of bestowing a name on a brand of whiskey that reflected a scientific discovery of the time. Below are three examples of those efforts.

X-Ray Whiskey.  In 1895, at his laboratory at the Physical Institute of the University of Würzburg,Wilhelm Röentgen was investigating the external effects from various types of vacuum tube equipment.   At one point while he was assessing the ability of materials to stop the rays, he brought a small piece of lead into position while a discharge was occurring. Röentgen thus saw the first radiographic image: His own bones.    Röentgen's original paper, "On A New Kind of Rays" was published on 28 December 1895.  It ws only a matter of a few days that an Austrian newspaper reported the scientist’s discovery.  Immediately the word spread worldwide.

The news set off a wave of excitement, perhaps nowhere as intense as in the United States.  For those with an entrepreneurial spirit, the merchandising possibilities of the Roentgen’s discovery seemed endless. In Philadelphia Edward Mulligan, the liquor dealer shown here,, was among the first to climb on the X-ray bandwagon. He trademarked the name, “X-Ray Whiskey” in 1897 just two months after Roentgen’s discovery burst on world.  Shown below are a Mulligan ad that ran in local publications, advertising X-Ray Whiskey as “Scientific, Substantial, Beneficial.” 

 

Before the year was out, the Philadelphia Times published a “puff” piece for the label saying:  “Edward Mulligan & Sons…have secured the attention of good judges with their X-Ray whiskey.  It has a fine brandy tone and is forging to the front as a brand of whiskey that fascinates an educated taste.”  The firm gifted customers with change purses containing X-Ray brand advertising. The Mulligans’ liquor soon was joined by a plethora of products from prophylactics to stove polish, each claiming the X-Ray imprimatur.

Radium Spirits.  In 1898 radium in the form of radium cloride was discovered by the married French scientists Marie and Pierre Curie.  Like X-rays, radium took the public by storm.  Beginning in the 1910s it was used as a source for luminescent watch faces and in quack medicine for alleged curative powers.  Radium also caught the eye of Edward Beggs, shown here, and his brothers who were running the highly successful Commercial Distillery in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Shown below It was not only the largest distillery in the state but among the largest whiskey-making plants in America.

Taking advertising advantage of the Curies’ discovery of radium the Beggs called their flagship liquors “Radium Spirits.” They appended that name not only to their bourbon and rye whiskeys but extended it to their gin.  As shown below in a Beggs ad, the brothers hailed these libations as “the brightest, purest, sweetest.” In truth the brand name had nothing to do with the content of those alcoholic beverages.  Nonetheless, the Beggs copyrighted the label in 1905.

Today it would be unthinkable to name a drink or food after radium.  Exposure to the element over a period of years has been shown to result in an increased risk of some types of cancer, particularly lung and bone cancer.  Higher doses of radium have been shown to cause anemia, eye cataracts, broken teeth, and reduced bone growth in humans.  The name wisely has been abandoned as a libation.

Electro-Ozonized Bourbon.  X-Rays and radium both had been discovered in the latter years of the 1890s.  Earlier, Christian Friedtrich Schonbein, a German, had succeeded in 1839 in isolating a gaseous material he called “ozone,”  derived from the Greek word “to smell.”  Shown right, Schonbein is generally credited with the discovery of the chemical.

By 1872 George C. Buchanan was accounted the largest distiller in Kentucky, with headquarters in Louisville, operating no fewer than three major plants capable of mashing 4,885 bushels of grain and producing 500 barrels of whiskey a day.  Among them was the Anderson Distillery, below.  Known for his penchant for advertising with a Greek cross, Buchanan may have been drawn to the discovery of the Greek-named gas.

Thus was born the brand of Kentucky bourbon known as Buchanan’s Electro-Ozonized Bourbon Whiskey.  Advertised vigorously by the owner, the whiskey was claimed to be “…In the best shape for use where an alcoholic preparation for the LUNGS is needed.”  Packed in cases containing 24 bottles, the cost was $18.00 per case, a middling charge for Kentucky bourbon.  Buchanan did not copyright the name.

Outcome:  None of these “scientifically” named whiskeys survived the advent of National Prohibition.  Perhaps reflecting the growing sophistication of the public toward science, none of the brands were revived with Repeal.  The day clearly was over when an alcoholic beverage could be marketed by linking it to scientific discoveries.  Today the labels are just collectors’ curiosities.

Note:  Longer posts on each of the whiskey-makers shown here may be found on this website:  Mulligan,  May 9, 2021;  Beggs, October 25, 2017; and Buchanan, October 1, 2014. 

 

Col. David Colson & “The Tragedy of Frankfort”

David Colson

In January of 1900 the quiet of the Capitol Hotel in Frankfort, Kentucky, was broken by the sounds of gunfire.  Afterward three men were dead, three others seriously wounded and a fourth injured.  One newspaper pronounced:  “The tragedy Is one of the most sensational In the history of the ‘dark and bloody ground.” Arrested was David C. Colson, two-term Democratic congressman, a colonel in the Spanish-American War, and a Kentucky distiller.  

Colson subsequently was charged with three murders, his arrest sending shock waves through the state and much of America.  He was known to be the high achieving scion of a notable Kentucky family. His grandfather, James Madison Colson, was a decorated soldier in the War of 1812.  Shown here, James’ grave is marked with a large American flag.  David Colson’s father, Rev. John Calvin Colson, known as the “Patriarch of Yellow Creek Valley” was a preacher, teacher, lawyer, doctor, farmer, miller, merchant— "being gifted along these lines but not educated for such pursuits."  

John Calvin built the home, some of it with slave labor, into which David Colson was born on April 1, 1861.  Shown here, still standing as the oldest dwelling in Bell County, Middlesboro, Kentucky, the house is adjacent to a bridge over a railroad line leading to Middlesboro.  The seventh of eleven children, David attended public school and later the academies at Tazewell and Mossy Point, Tennessee.  He studied law at the University of Kentucky at Lexington in 1879 and 1880. Admitted to the bar, he began a law practice in Bell County.

Colson’s interests soon turned to politics.  A Republican, he served in the Kentucky legislature in 1887-1888.  Seen as a political “comer,” he gave up his seat to run on the party candidate for State Treasurer, but lost.  He came back in 1893 to win a term as mayor of Middlesboro.  A popular figure, Colson in 1894 was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1894 and re-elected two years later.  He was named chairman of the Committee on Expenditures on Public Buildings, a “plum” assignment for a relatively junior congressman.

Colson also drew notice in the House of Representatives as a strong advocate for the “Free Cuba” campaign, taking the floor to denounce Spanish activities there.  When the Spanish-American War broke out he left his position, not resigning, but not running again.  A bachelor, he become one of four Representatives volunteering for wartime service and announced his intention on the Floor of the House.  Colson, an infant during the Civil War, may have seen his enlistment as means of advancing the honored military heritage of his grandfather.

Unfortunately, things did not work out that way.  Colson got nowhere near the fighting.  He joined the Kentucky Volunteer Infantry in July 1898 at Lexington.  Only days after the regiment was mustered in an armistice tentatively was reached between the United States and Spain.  The fighting ceased.  This was not the end of the 4th Kentucky, where Colson, likely because of his status, had been given the rank of colonel.  In mid-September the unit was ordered to Camp Shipp in Anniston, Alabama.  A photo below captures the Kentucky 4th in training.  Despite the end of the war, the regiment was not mustered out until late February 1899.  Although not subject to enemy fire, the Kentuckians lost 13 men to disease, 29 discharged for disabilities, 60 deserters, and one man murdered. 

 

It was an especially cold winter in the South.  Conditions at the camp were primitive. The Army and Navy Journal reported that in February 1898 the temperature at Camp Shipp reached 14 degrees below zero and “life in tents is not what one might call comfortable.”  The conditions were conducive to tension and hostilities among the troops.  There the seeds were sown that culminated in the Capitol Hotel shootout.  Colonel Colson had a run-in with a young lieutenant in the Kentucky 47th named Ethelbert Scott from Somerset, Kentucky, and sought to have him courtmartialed.

Scott was a young lawyer and a nephew of a former Kentucky governor, W.O. Bradley.  Angered by the move, Scott confronted Colson in a local cafe, they argued, and the young man shot Colson.  Although apparently not seriously wounded, the colonel subsequently suffered some paralysis from which he never fully recovered.   Colson declined to press any military charges against Scott who got off free.  The seeds of the Frankfort Shootout were planted.

Having left Congress, Colson turned distiller.  Returning to his home town he joined with two friends to create the Middlesboro Distilling Company, likely the first commercial whiskey-making facility in Bell County.  In early March 1901, the local newspaper reported:  “The Middlesboro Distilling Company has started up their plant and have made their first run of whiskey.  Judges of the article say the quality is good.”

In the meantime Colson had wreaked a bloody revenge, probably planned from the day Scott shot him.  The scene was Frankfort’s elegant Capitol Hotel on January 16, 1900.  The place was crowded with the political elite of Kentucky and onlookers excited by pending contests for the state legislature.  Colson was sitting in the hotel lobby with a friend, Luther Demarree, a local postmaster,  when Ethelbert Scott came up  the stairs from the hotel basement bar with Captain B. B. Golden, his friend and another veteran of the Kentucky 4th.   

Colson who was armed with two sequestered two pistols plainly was waiting.  When Scott and Golden appeared, Colson rose from his chair and began firing.

Scott instantly returned fire.  As the fight escalated and gunsmoke filled the air, Colson moved toward Scott, who, still shooting, retreated, According to a newspaper account: “Colson emptied the chambers of a 38-caliber revolver, and quickly brought a 44-callber into action. Scott by this time had been shot several times, and as he staggered back and fell down the stairway, Colson, who was within a few feet of him, continued the fire until the form of Scott rolled over and showed that life was extinct.”  Shown above is a newspaper artist’s drawing of the scene.

When the smoke cleared and a measure of calm restored, Scott and Demarree were dead. A bystander, Charles Julian, a wealthy farmer from a prominent local family died later from his wounds.  Captain Golden was badly wounded and a second man had been shot in the foot.  Another casualty was a Chicago man who sustain a broken leg when Scott’s lifeless body struck him on the stairway. Colson had been shot by Scott twice in the arm. The bullets splintered his left wrist to the elbow, tearing his cuffs and sleeves to shreds.

Disregarding his wounds, Colson ran out of the hotel and hurried to the home of Chief of Police Williams where he surrendered, saying:   "I am sorry, but he would not let me alone. There were three of them shooting at me."  A doctor was summoned to dress Colson’s shattered arm and he subsequently was taken to jail, despite asking to allowed to post bail.  He declined to discuss the shootout with reporters and was said to be “…In a highly nervous state and appeared to have been weeping.”

The Grand Jury, meeting the next day, heard Captain Golden claim that Colson had been responsible for all three killings but chose to indict him only on the murders of Scott and Demarree. A number of prominent political figures immediately pledged their support for Colson, including several of his former colleagues in Congress, including the Attorney General of Tennessee.  The story received national attention, one newspaper reporting:  “Colson's mail from all over the country, as well as from Washington city, Kentucky and Tennessee is very heavy. Many society women have written him words of sympathy. Some are strangers. Brought to trial Colson was acquitted of all charges.

Folllowing his acquittal Colson apparently returned to his investment at the Middlesboro Distilling Company.  The distillery was a success, winning a gold medal, as below, for its Mountain Dew Corn Whiskey at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.  The company issued a trade card to commemorate the award.  The opposite side, shown below, contained a “double entendre” message. The distillery also announced that it was opening a large wholesale liquor store in Frankfort’s Gorman Building.

The Middlesboro distillery, however, could not escape controversy.  In mid-December 1905 the plant and 14,000 gallons of whiskey was seized by U.S. Revenue officers.  An investigation had indicated that the company was disposing  of whiskey without paying taxes.  By this time Colson had died, the cause unrevealed but likely related to his serious woundings.  Death came on September 27, 1904.  He was only 43 years old.

David Colson was buried in the family graveyard in Middlesburo, his large grave marker shown here.  The stone memorializes his service in the 54th and 55th U.S. Congress and as colonel in the 4th Kentucky Voluntary Infantry.  Obviously it does not reference his participation in “The Tragedy of Frankfort” but the people of that city remembered and the story lingered on for decades.

Note:  The account of David Colson recounted on this post is primarily from historical sources and newspaper articles at the time.  I stumbled on the story much by accident while researching the trade card shown here and decided Colonel Colson might be an interesting subject.  Little did I imagine the tragic story that would unfold.

 

C. E. Roback — The Once and Ever Swedish Charlatan

 

                            

The man known to Americans as Dr. Charles W. Robeck made a lifelong career out of chicanery.  Forced to flee his native Sweden for his misdeeds, he found a home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  From there he sold liquor and phony nostrums to Americans nationwide.  The drawing left is Roback, as he desired to be seen, a Medieval scholar and savant.

The Roback Imposture Comes to America:  In 1854 Roback self-published in Boston what has been called a “fantastical autobiography,” shown right, in which he fabricated his origins and ability as a seer/scientist to provide “valuable directions and suggestions relative to the casting of nativities, and predictions by geomancy, chiromancy, physiognomy.” The volume purported to tell the story of his life and accomplishments, beginning with his invented origins.

There Roback described his mythical birthplace:  “The building was the ancient castle of Falsters, in Sweden, my ancestral home.  Within its walls, the family of Robak, or as it is spelled in the old Norse records, Robach, had dwelt from time immemorial….I have no recollection of my parents, both of whom died in my infancy….”   By the age of ten. Roback claimed, he had certain prophetic gifts and a special talent for magic, astrology and other occult lore as the “seventh son of a seventh son.”  The purported autobiography spins along extolling the charlatan’s remarkable talents.

The facts tell a somewhat different story.  Roback was born in Sweden in May 1811 and baptised Carl Johan Nilsson.  Later for reasons unclear, he adopted the surname Fallenius, becoming known in some circles as Fabello Gok.  In June 1833 at age 22 he married Greta Nilsdotter, 20, and they had two sons, Nils Johan and Karl Wilhelm.  Roback/Fallenius became a dry goods merchant in the city of Oskarshamn, shown here, and when the business went bankrupt turned to confidence scams involving stock and commodity markets.  Arrested in 1843, he was sentenced to five years in a Swedish prison.

Abandoning his wife and children, he fled to America landing in Baltimore, at first calling himself William Williamson aka Billy the Swede.  About 1847 he moved to Philadelphia where he was transformed into Dr. Charles W. Roback, astrologer.  Ever restless, in 1851 he moved to New York City and two years later on to Boston.  Apparently finding neither city satisfactory, after a brief sojourn in Montreal, he settled in Cincinnati about 1855.

Along the way, now divorced from Greta, Roback married Mary H. Sinnickson, a New Jersey native.  Mary’s mother was from a French Quaker family, her father, Seneca Sinnickson, an American born Swede.  Seneca had a somewhat rocky past, condemned by the Quakers in 1819 “for marrying contrary to discipline” and subsequently dismissed from the congregation “for disunity.”   Mary may have known about Roback’s past and thought him not unlike her father.  In fact, Roback was old enough to be her father.

Chicanery in Cincinnati:  Rok’s occupation in the Eastern cities as astrologer apparently was less lucrative than he might have imagined.  Few Americans had ever heard of a Swedish savant or cared to hire one.  Now married and moved to Cincinnati, he entered the liquor trade as shown in the letterhead above, calling himself a “distiller, rectifier, manufacturer” of domestic wines and liquors.  Roback assuredly was not a distiller, a phony claim made by many dealers.  He possibly was a recifier, mixing up his own brands from whiskey bought from others.  He most assuredly, however, was a manufacturer of alcohol-charged medicinals.

About 1855 in addition to selling whiskey Roback introduced a group of proprietary medicines, calling them “Scandinavian” Remedies.  These included his Scandinavian Blood Purifier,  Blood Pills, and Roback’s Vegetale Dyspepsia Complaint tonic.   Subsequently he issued Roback’s Stomach Bitters featuring a likeness of the faux doctor on the label. 

The highly alcoholic bitters were vigorously advertised nationwide. In one ad he began by asserting that this potion would not remedy all human ailments, but had broad application:  “In the Bilious districts of the West and South there has, for a long time, has been much needed an article of Stomach Bitters which, if taken in proper quantities, and at the proper time, are a sure preventative of Bilious Fever,  Fever and fatigue, Liver Complaints, Dyspepsia, Indigestion, Jaundice, Kidney Complaints and all diseases of a similar nature.”  The nostrum was sold in distinctive ribbed bottles in varying shades of amber, as shown below.

At some point Roback apparently decided that his proprietary medicines, now selling briskly nationwide, were eclipsing his liquor sales.  He created a new corporate name for his nostrums.   Shown here,  the company became the U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company, occupying part of the same building shown on Roback’s letterhead, at 56-62 East Third Street in Cincinnati.  Some writers have assumed this was a different ownership but I can find no evidence  of that. 

Roback’s Enablers and Inheritors:  It appears that virtually from the beginning, Roback outsourced the distribution of his medicinal products.  That fell initially to Demas Barnes, a major figure in his own right as an adventurer, author, one term U.S congressman and subsequently a New York City drug merchant.  Shown left, the young Barnes had left his birthplace in Gorham County, New York, to cross the continent driving a horse and wagon, studying mineral resources in Western states and writing about his experience upon his return.  His publications brought him to the attention of the public and he won a term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

In 1853, Barnes began a wholesale drug business in New York City.   He rapidly became a prosperous patent medicine manufacturer, developing a national market for his nostrums.  How he and Roback connected is unclear but the Swedish liquor dealer agreed to give control of the national marketing of his pills, potions and bitters to Barnes.  When the law permitted, Barnes early on ordered private die tax stamps for the nostrums. Shown below are stamps for Roback’s bitters in four and six cents, bearing a likeness of the “Doctor’s” Cincinnati headquarters.  

Barnes was just the first of the merchants to see the value in Roback’s medicinals.  The Swedish con man, perhaps in ill health, about 1866 sold out his ownership of the Roback line and was listed in the Cincinnati directory as a manufacturer of “Fine Cut and Smoking Tobacco.” When the Swede died the following year, Cincinnati merchants lined up to claim Roback’s brands.   

From there the story becomes somewhat tangled and hard to reconstruct. It would appear that Prince, Walton & Company was the first to announce ownership of Roback’s Stomach Bitters.  It advertised the potion with an image of a striking nude woman, carrying a bottle and a glass, wrapped in the wings of a large black bird. the company also claimed to occupy the same East Third Street building in Cincinnati that had been Roback’s headquarters.  I can find little about Prince, Walton & Co. In an 1870 Cincinnati directory the company is listed as a liquor dealer located at the northeast corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets.  

By the end of 1871, according to one source, F. E. Suire & Company stepped in to claim ownership of U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company.  A Cincinnati business directory of1867 carried an ad, shown here, that identified this firm as “Importers, Manufacturers and Wholesale Druggists, located at the northwest corner of Cincinnati’s Fourth and Vine Streets.  As the ad shown here indicates, F. E. Suire offered a wide range of products, ranging from glass and glassware, paints and varnishes, snuff and cigars, perfume and druggist sundries, as well as medicine, wines and liquors.

What proprietary medicines F. E. Suire gained from Roback by buying the “medicine company” is not clear.  A clue may lie in the person of Edward S. Wayne, a highly respected druggist and chemist, who had arrived in Cincinnati about 1846.  During the 1850s Wayne had been associated with the Cincinnati College of Pharmacy as a staff member and the Medical College of Ohio as a lecturer in practical pharmacy.  In 1866, he became a partner in the Suire firm and, I believe, instrumental in claiming Roback’s medicine company.

When Suire died in 1874 and his company ceased operations, Wayne joined the wholesale druggist firm of James S. Burdsal & Company.  With Burdsal he created “Wayne’s Diuretic Elixir” and, I believe brought with him the rights to Roback's products that had come to him through F.E. Suire.  The Burdsal outfit was another pharmacy offering a wide range of products, featuring “medicines, chemicals and liquors” as visible below on its building. Also shown below is a trade card forJ.E. Burdsal that advertises its Dr. Roback’s Scandinavian Blood Pills.  The card also cites association with the U.S. Proprietary Medicine Company.   Finally, the figure at the center of the piece may be that of the self-imagined “legendary” figure, C. W. Roback.

The Passing of the “Fabled” Dr. Roback:   The man who called himself Dr. Charles E. Roback and over time by several other names, died on May 9, 1867, just short of his 56th year.  His body was carried to Mt. Holly, New Jersey, where he was buried in the Sinnickson family plot in Mount Holly Cemetery.   He had been preceded one year by his wife, Mary, who died at 32.  His tombstone is shown below,

The couple, in effect, left no heirs.  They had no children of their own.  Roback’s son, Carl Wilhelm Fallenius is reported to have visited his father in America, seeking money to buy a farm in Sweden.  The “doctor” apparently obliged and also remembered the young man in his will.  After Roback’s death, Carl is said to have declined any inheritance from his run-away father.  

Note:  This post draws heavily, but not exclusively, on a biography of Roback/Fallenius in Wikipedia.  Several of the images shown here are courtesy of Ferdinand Myers V who has devoted two posts on his “Peachridge” website to Roback’s bitters bottles.