The Life and Loves of Indiana’s Martin Bligh

 

Martin J. Bligh came to America from Ireland at age 14, settled in Logansport, Indiana, and carved out a 38 year career there selling liquor. His marriages, however, not whiskey sales, would earn Bligh newspaper headlines and intense local interest in his adopted country.

Bligh is an English name generally associated with the Cornwell region.  In the early 1700s John Bligh became the Earl of Darnley, creating the first family peerage in Ireland and triggering Bligh family migration to the Emerald Isle. Martin Bligh was the son of Michael and Mary Samidy Bligh.  Born in 1861 in Castle Rea, the third largest town in County Roscommon, the boy emigrated to America about 1875 at age 14, most likely accompanied by relatives.

The next few years are shrouded in the mists of history but indications are that Martin was able to achieve additional education.  At some point Bligh located in Logansport, Indiana, shown here, that became his home place for much of the rest of his life.  Along the way he apparently achieved sufficient experience to open a wholesale liquor house, a venture that proved to be very profitable over a period of the next 35 years.

Bligh used a variety of brand names for his whiskey.  They included "Dan Dalton,” “Decatur,” "Lone Valley Pennsylvania Pure Rye,” "Old Logan Club,” "Queen of Bourbon,” "Spring Creek,” "Valley Mills,”  and “Woodlawn." Bligh’s flagship brand was “Old Logan Club” shown here in a back-of-the- bar bottle that would have sat invitingly behind the barkeeper. 

 Another Bligh-gifted fancy carafe to saloons advertised “Queen of Bourbon.” He also gave away shot glasses to favored wholesale and retaiil customers, as shown below.  When Congress stiffened trademark laws in 1905, Blight copyrighted that name and all but one other brand (“Valley Mills”).  He did so despite the costs that discouraged other dealers from claiming protection for their liquor names.  It was an unusual — and expensive — move involving lawyers and other costs but Bligh apparently saw the value.  

Along with his busy occupation as a liquor dealer, Bligh was having a complicated — one might say, tumultuous — marital situation. In November 1800, at 19 years old Bligh returned to Europe to be married.  His bride was Elizabeth Ann Kelly, daughter of Anne Bergin and James Kelly.  Of similar ages, it is possible the couple had been childhood sweethearts.  Wed in Yorkshire, England, the new bride accompanied her young groom back to Logansport.

Bligh babies were not long in coming.  Their first child was a girl, Anna Hannah, born in 1882, when the couple were each about 21  Anna was followed in 1883 by Michael Francis.  Then after a hiatus of four years, Mary Catherine was born in 1887 and Bertha Agnes in 1889.  The next two births, sons Martin (1890) and “E.T.”  (1893), both died in infancy.   Over the years the relationship between Martin and Elizabeth Bligh changed dramatically.

Despite their four minor children, the couple became seriously estranged and Bligh began a new relationship,  By now 32 years old and accounted a wealthy man, Bligh divorced Elizabeth and shortly after married 19 year old Katherine “Katie” Eiserlo.  The story engendered newspaper stories around Indiana. The Logansport newspaper headlined:  “Married Yesterday at Cincinnati by a Justice of the Peace - The Groom Divorced Three Months ago.”

The paper told this story:     “The mother of the bride, it is said, objected to the union and she was greatly surprised yesterday morning, upon receipt of a letter from her daughter, worded as follows: ‘Mother - We have gone to Cincinnati. DO not be alarmed. Will return in a few days. - Katie.’ …The marriage occurred at the Palace Hotel…While the affair bears the favor of an elopement, the bride's father is said to have given his consent to the union, and had been informed of the time and place of the wedding.

Elizabeth Kelly Bligh, the cast-off wife, was not so easily dismissed.  In a suit filed in Kokomo, Indiana, she claimed that in addition to the divorce and payment of alimony she was owed an additional $10,000 in damages for defamation of her character.  After pleading that she had no money for a lawyer, Judge Kirkpatrick appointed two retired judges to represent her at the courthouse in Kokomo, shown here, a change of venue required by the intense scrutiny of the case in Logansport.

In her complaint for damages, Elizabeth charged that Martin had written a letter to her brother in which her he accused her of immorality and drunkeness, while she temporarily had returned to Ireland after being abandoned by her husband.  Bligh promptly countersued.  As reported in the Indianapolis Journal the ex-husband in an affidavit claimed that:  Mrs. Bligh was possessed of $10,000 worth of real estate, and has diamonds, horses and carriages and other personal property of the value of $10,000 more, and asked that the appointment of attorneys be set aside… The trial on the main issue commences Monday, and will be a prolonged contest.  Although I have been unable to find the outcome of the trial it is problematic that Bligh, known to be a wealthy man, could have walked away without some monetary judgment against him.  Elizabeth, with at least some of the children, promptly moved to Toledo, Ohio, where  she apparently had relatives. 

In the meantime Martin and bride Catherine set about creating a new family.  Their first child, Thomas H. was born in 1895, followed by Edgar J. in 1898.  Two daughters followed, Bonita A. in 1900 and Almytra in 1904.  The couple’s last child, George, was born in 1909.  All lived to maturity.  To house his family Bligh provided a large house at 1209 High Street in Logansport, shown here.

Bligh appears to have redeemed his reputation in Logansport despite the contentious divorce and scandalous remarriage.  He continued to operate his liquor house in Logansport until 1918 when Indiana passed a law banning the sale of alcoholic beverages.  It had proved to be a lucrative business, complementing a lumber and coal yard Bligh also owned.   The local press accounted him a “power’ in the Republican party in Cass County, Indiana, calling Bligh a: “A keen businessman, very resourceful, a staunch friend….”

Bligh subsequently moved 24 miles to Rochester, Indiana, where he had farming interests.  Over the next few years he suffered financial reverses leading to his retreat in 1925 from Rochester back to Logansport.   The local paper there speculated:  “When reverses overtook him he did not show it in his demeanor and his friends believed that if his health had not been bad he would have over come his financial difficulties before he died.”

Bligh’s death certificate testified to the story.   He was stricken with heart problems beginning in March 1927 and under the care of doctors for the next two years until he died of a brain clot on April 5, 1929.   Katherine and his children, all now adults, were gathered for his funeral at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.  He was buried in St. Vincent Cemetery.  Bligh’s grave stone is shown above, along with Katherine’s who passed away 32 years after her husband.   In a final irony, Elizabeth, Bligh’s cast-off wife, also is buried in St. Vincent’s.

Note:  The sources for much of this post on Martin Bligh are stories from Indiana newspapers.

  

       

 

The Bitters Trade Cards of John Sheehan, Utica NY

 

After a brief mention of John H. Sheehan for this blog on February 28, 1913, I had notanticipated visiting this Irish immigrant again 12 years later.  My main subject then was Peter Vidvard, a Utica liquor dealer,  Sheehan had married his daughter, joined in a brief partnership with Vidvard, and later left to open a drug store.  But not, however, to give up selling spiritous beverages.  

Sheehan offered a highly alcoholic remedy he called “Dandelion Bitters” calling it The Great Herb Blood Remedy.  He boasted that his nostrum was a “Rapid and Sure Cure For Loss of  Appetite, Habitual Costiveness [Constipation],  Nervous and General Depression, Indigestion, Biliousness, Sleeplessness, Rheumatism, Kidney Complaints, and General Debility.”  To advertise this broad spectrum remedy Sheehan issued a series of trade cards that deserve attention because these artifacts reflect elements of the late 19th and early 20th Century in American.

The first set of Dandelion Bitters trade cards shown here have much the same theme, cards based around pictures of early telephones. In 1881 the American Bell Telephone Company,  working from the invention of Alexander Graham Bell,

registered profits of $200,000 (6 Million equivalent today) from the virtual telephone monopoly it owned.  It leased telephones to customers and retained ownership of the instruments it owned.  Although these trade cards all find something humorous to convey,  the telephonic instruments employed differ in size and appearance, indicating a beginning of some variety.

The Bufford firm, celebrated for its drawings of trade cards and celebrated in my post of February 5, 2025, was the enterprise of John Henry Bufford.  Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bufford apprenticed in Boston and by 1835 briefly moved to New York, where he opened a lithography business. Five years later he returned to Boston and formed a partnership with his brother-in-law in a new lithographic printing firm, for which he did most of the drawing. The business thrived for the next forty years.  The message below was typical of the flip side of such cards.

The following two trade cards aparently were products of other (unnamed) print shops that provided Sheehan with two pictures of attractive children to advertise his bitters panacea:  a winsome little girl who appears to be wearing a large flower on her head as a hat and and a sturdy little chap in a sailor suit with his dog. The message on the flip side tells us that Dandelion Bitters prevents “The usual Lassitude of approaching warm weather…By keeping the system in good order, the wastes of the body are freely carried off which keeps the Blood pure, preventing and curing Rheumatism.”   Obviously knowledge of human biology was not a Sheehan strong point.

One last  trade card, also with an unidentified artist and publisher, is not a bitters ad.  It advertises “John N.  Sheehan…Druggists, Utica, N.Y.”  This image is billed as a “souvenir” and depict a weeping youngster dressed in what I believe is a South American musician’s costume.  Although I have not seen a similar item I suspect the card may be part of a series of children in foreign costumes, meant to be collected.

Note: This short (extra) post would not have been possible without the Peachridge Glass website publication of the trade cards , dated February 3, 2015.  The author is Ferdinand Weber, former president of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors, who graciously has allowed me to publish the Sheehan images. The Vidvard artcle was published February 28, 2013.

Addendum:   In researching the Sheehan story, I found evidence that the druggist also apparently had a line of whiskeys that the proprietor sold in elaborately decorated ceramic jugs.  I had never seen them before and think they also deserve attention.

W.C. Fields: The Tippler in Ceramics

 

NEWS BULLETIN:

On February 24, 2025, this website (blog) surpassed 2,000,000 views, as measured by Google, since its inception in April, 2015,  This milestone was reached through Internet attention to the 1,194 individual posts on the site dealing with the pre-Prohibition whiskey trade in America.  I am grateful to the thousands of individuals in the U.S. and worldwide who have taken time to view the posts and hope they have found them interesting and informative.  For myself it has been a labor of love.

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                       W.C. Fields: The Tippler in Ceramics

The American comedian W. C. Fields, shown here, has been a favorite of mine since grade school. From movies like “My Little Chickadee,” and “The Bank Dick.” to his radio sparring with Charlie McCarthy, Fields’ wit and ability to create a distinctive persona have never failed to engage my attention – and that of millions of others. Much of his humor revolved around whiskey, a personal obsession of Fields that ultimately would lead to his death. In life, however, he made it a prime source of his humor.  Some examples:

“Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.”

"Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.”

"How well I remember my first encounter with The Devil's Brew. I happened to stumble across a case of bourbon— and went right on stumbling for several days thereafter.”

“So long as the presence of death lurks with anyone who goes through the simple act of swallowing, I will make mine whiskey. 

"When life hands you lemons, make whisky sours."

“The advantages of whiskey over dogs are legion. Whiskey does not need to be periodically wormed, it does not need to be fed, it never requires a special kennel, it has no toenails to be clipped or coat to be stripped. Whiskey sits quietly in its special nook until you want it. True, whiskey has a nasty habit of running out, but then so does a dog.”

As a result of this close identification of Fields with drinking, he has been depicted numerous times on spirits bottles, jugs, beer steins and mugs. I have a whiskey decanter/ jug from the Turtle Bay Distilling Company of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, called W.C. Fields Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. It dates from about 1970. In this case, Fields’ head is filled with whiskey. It is accompanied by a water pitcher with a similar face.   Shown above, neither item has a pottery mark but have been attributed to the McCoy Pottery Company of Roseville, Ohio.

The David Sherman Corp. (DSC), more recently known as Luxco, issued at least three Fields decanters for their whiskey. They depict Fields with a tam from his golfing spoofs, the typical top hat and as a uniformed guard from the movie, “The Bank Dick.” In each case the hat is removed to decant the spirituous contents. 

These ceramics were issued during the mid-1970s. Each jug bears the name of Paul Lux, a founding partner of DSC in 1958 and later the CEO of the firm. Lux is assumed to be the designer of these bottles. The St. Louis based organization owned at least 60 liquor brand names and produced the Fields bottles for its network of distributors, wholesalers and retailers.

England’s Royal Doulton Pottery, famously the largest producer of Toby Jugs, made Fields the subject of a character jug, one that emphasized his florid face and red bulbous nose. A piece of his walking stick serves as the handle. The jug was issued in 1982 as part of the pottery’s Celebrity Collection and included on the base a line from the Fields movie “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break”: "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for."

Two other Toby-like jugs, likely designed as water pitchers for bar use, appear to have come from Japan. The one at right shows Fields in a straw boater hat with a more benign look than is usual. On the base a mark identifies this item as a creation of “Sigma the Tastesetter,” This was a Japanese-based organization. A second jug, left with a black hat has no attribution but the appearance of the item also seems a product of Japan.

Fields also has been a popular figure for beer steins and mugs. One dated 1971 on the right appears to be a hand-thrown artisan creation. The comedian, in bas relief, appears to be struggling to emerge from the vessel. A more conventional beer stein, unmarked on left, emphasizes Field’s top hat and swollen nose.  Although the Fields image most often appears on items linked to drinking, the McCoy Pottery also used his face as the motif for the ceramic cookie jar below.  He also has made appearances on a number of glass objects, including shot glasses, drinks glasses and decanters.

Question is, how long will W.C. Fields be recognized as the American icon of the tippler? Note that many of these items were made years after his death in 1946. Because his movies will continue to be available to generations down through the years, my guess is he will be remembered for a long, long time and artifacts bearing his face will continue to be collected.

Labels: Luxco, McCoy Pottery, Paul Lux, Royal Doulton Pottery, Sigma the Tastesetter, Turtle Bay Distilling Co., W.C. Fields

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The Weilers of Leigh County— Sheriffs and Their Shots

                   The Weilers of Lehigh County— Sheriffs and Their Shots

The Weilers, father Nathan and son John F., both served terms as sheriff in one of Pennsylvania’s most populous jurisdictions, Lehigh Country, including the city of Allentown.  Known for their skill with firearms, the Weilers’ most lucrative shots, however, came from elsewhere —  bottles of whiskey. 

Nathan Weiler was born in April 1810 in Longswamp   Twp., Berks County , Pennsylvania, the son of John and Maria Weiler.  Early in his youth Nathan was apprenticed to a blacksmith.  Although he learned the craft, he disliked the wprk and quit to work for a tobacco dealer.  At age 23, he married Maria Fogel.  The couple would have six children, of whom four would live to maturity, including one son, John F. Weiler, born in December 1847.

Changing occupations once again, Nathan, with wife, moved to Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, to work in a hotel.  That job led to his taking over management of a hostelry in neighboring Siegersville.  Active in Democratic politics, his activities brought him to the notice of prominent party members.   Nathan was nominated and elected sheriff of populous Lehigh County.   The demands of office caused him to move to Allentown, Pennsylvania, with his family.  The city became his permanent home.

Still looking for a more permanent occupation, at the end of his term as sheriff Nathan joined John P. Dillinger in the Allentown liquor trade.  After several years learning the business, Nathan bought out his partner’s share and continued to operate the liquor house until his death in January 1881 at just shy of 71 years old.  The cause was said to be pneumonia complicated by a kidney ailment.

Nathan was  buried in the family plot in Allentown’s Union West-End Cemetery. His gravestone is shown here. Citing Nathan as “a very well-off man,” the local newspaper in its obituary also commented:  “He ever was a well disposed citizen, simple in his tastes and habits and unobtrusive in his demeanor.”

John Weiler immediately took over management of the liquor house, located at 14 North Seventh Street and Center Square with its towering Civil War Monument, shown above. Now 34 years old, John had worked for his father in the liquor house since achieving maturity except while serving a term in Nathan’s footsteps as sheriff of Lehigh County.  By this time John, shown left, was married, his spouse, Ellimina “Ellen” Hass, a woman approximately the same age.  They would have four children, Edward, born 1870; Jennie, 1876, John Jr., 1885, and Marie, 1891.

After changing the name of the liquor house to his own, over the next 39 years, John F. made a number of important innovations.   Among them was containing his wholesale liquor in ceramic jugs with his name written on them in cobalt script.  Because each container was done by hand,  every label has a distinct character and is slightly different from the others, as shown here. 

 

John also packaged his wholesale whiskeys in less ornate jugs, as shown right.  For his retail customers, John provided liquor in glass bottles.  Left is a quart container with elaborate embossing that contains his name and address in large letters.  My assumption is that this bottle would have had a paper label naming the contents that long ago had been washed away and lost.  That renders Weiler’s Jamaica Rum bottle, right below, more interesting for an intact label that is more than a century old.

 

Following John’s term as sheriff, he co-sponsored an annual trap shooting meet as founder of the John F. Weiler Gun Club.  The tournament was held at a site on the grounds of the Duck Farm Hotel, located in a valley surrounded by sloping hills.  A local news story described the scene.  “A famous trout stream runs through the grounds just in the rear of the traps….The traps faced almost due north, and the targets being thrown against a hill background, made them made them more difficult to see—more particularly when thrown toward that part of the hill under cultivation.”  Nevertheless, trap shooters competed and prizes were awarded.  They frequently were won by gunners named Weiler.

John Weiler also was active in the fraternal organization known as the “Improved Order of Redmen.”  Established in 1934, Redmen rituals and regalia were modeled loosely after Native American traditions (as interpreted by white men.)  At its peak in 1935 the organization claimed half a million members before dwindling sharply in subsequent years.   In addition to providing a hall for fraternity meetings, John held the rank of chief of the Allentown “Lecha Wonka Tribe” also known as “The Keeper of Bundles.” 

John Weiler retired in 1917 after some 36 years operating the liquor house begun by his father.   His son, John Junior., took over the business.  Apparently seeing the coming of National Prohibition this third generation of Weilers converted the liquor store into a drug store and confectionary.

John Senior died in 1922 and was buried in the Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery, on a site adjacent to Nathan’s resting place.  The Weiler monument is shown below.  In his obituary, the sheriff cum liquor dealer was remembered as an “enthusiastic sportsman, with special interest in live bird shoots and clay pigeon shooting.” 

Note:  The story of the The Weilers of Allentown was gathered from a number of sources, including genealogical sites.  My hope is that some alert reader will be able to provide a photo of Nathan Weiler