Fritz Jessen: A Migrating Soldier and His Arizona Saloon

It is an historical fact that almost a quarter of the troops fighting for the Union in the Civil War were foreign born, among them some 216,000 from Germany.  Less well known were the thousands of immigrants who stayed in the military, moved West and fought in the Indian Wars.  Among them was Fritz Jessen who eventually found a permanent home in Prescott, Arizona, running a popular saloon and earning praise as “a good citizen in every sense of the word.”

Jessen was born in Hamburg, Germany, in November 1842.  When he was eight years old, he arrived in American with family members who settled in Massachusetts.  The youth continued his education in American schools but I find no record of an early occupation.  He was 19 when the Civil War broke out, joining the 29th Regiment Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry in December 1861, the only non-Celtic regiment in the famed Irish Brigade.

Over the next four years the young German would experience considerable hot combat.  Deployed to a variety of theaters, Jessen’s regiment took part in 29 battles and four sieges, including Vicksburg.  Just before the South surrendered, during the siege of Petersburg, Jessen’s unit suffered its worst casualties of the war during the March 1865 Battle of Fort Stedman, shown above.  Jessen appears to have escaped serious injury throughout the conflict.

Unlike other Union soldiers, who went back to civilian pursuits at war’s end, Jessen stayed on as the battalion was reorganized and re-designated in 1866 as the U.S.12th Infantry Regiment and ordered to the Presidio of San Francisco to counter resistance from Indian tribes. In June 1870 the federal census found him there, unmarried and 28, assigned to the Signal Corps.  Stationed with him were a number of other German-born soldiers.  It is likely that Jessen took part in the war against the Modoc tribe in California during 1872-1873.

In California, Fritz found a wife, Mary L. Clinton, born in New Jersey.  Married in Arcata, he was 31 and Mary 18.  The couple would have three sons, Frederick, born in 1875;  Richard, 1876, and Charles, 1884.  By 1880, Jessen had been ordered to Fort Whipple near Prescott, Arizona Territory.  Shown here is the original headquarters building as it looks today.  

From the amount drunkenness and violence reported in Prescott involving soldiers, discipline appears to have been lax at Fort Whipple.  Jessen may have been among the witnesses to the hanging of a soldier at the fort, convicted of murder, shown here.

Perhaps as early as 1882, Jessen left the Army for a civilian occupation, having his eye on the Arizona Brewery, a brewery and saloon that had been founded in 1867.  As a former soldier, Fritz recognized that cost considerations meant that beer, not whiskey, was the preferred drink of the troops.  As a German, he also knew something about beer.  In 1882 after the murder of the brewery’s German Swiss owner, Jessen stepped in to buy the property and changed its name to the Headquarters Saloon.  Located on busy Gurly Street, it is shown on the postcard view below, the two story frame building second from right.

As a partner, Jessen took Valentine Riehl, who had been the “boss brewer,” at the Arizona Brewery.  While Fritz clearly needed the kind of beer-making expertise the German-born co-owner brought, he soon might have realized a mistake. Riehl was a “bad actor” even by Wild West standards.  By 1886, the two had split with Riehl heading to San Bernardino, California, where it was reported he bludgeoned a fellow worker to the point of killing him. Later, Riehl was convicted of attempting to beat to death with a whip his common law wife, known as “English Rose” and sentenced to two years in San Quentin.  

Now sole proprietor of The Headquarter Saloon, Jessen advertised frequently in the local newspapers, emphasizing sales of both draft and bottled beer. He also claimed to have “The best Wines, Liquors and Cigars in the market always on hand.”  Over the next few years, Jessen thrived in his adopted city.  The Headquarters Saloon proved to be one the most popular in Prescott, known throughout the West for its teeming “Whiskey Row” of drinking establishments.

 As a Civil War veteran Jessen was an active member of the local Barrett Post of the G.A.R.  He also apparently held a local office, possibly elective, involved with Prescott schools.  Then tragedy struck.  Fritz’s beloved wife, Mary, became seriously ill and in November 1891 died in Prescott.  She was only 35.   Charles, their youngest son, was still a boy of seven;  Frederick and Richard were in their mid-teens.  Townspeople said Jessen never got over his wife’s death.  His health declined and he sold the Headquarters Saloon and retired to look after his family.  A second blow fell in 1898 when Richard, only 22, also died.

The 1900 census found the three surviving men living together on North Granite Street in Prescott.  Frederick was working as a cattle herder, Charles as a day laborer.  Later Charles would go to work at the Iron King Mine in nearby Humboldt, Arizona.  Their father was given no occupation.  Although said to be feeble, Jessen remained active with the veterans and was frequently seen around town “cheerful and good spirited.” 

As the years passed, Fritz grew increasingly weaker.  One day in May,1903, he was seen downtown, joking with friends.  The following day at his home he was discovered lying unconscious in a pool of blood by a man who had come to paint his house.  A physician was summoned but Jessen was beyond help,  He never regained consciousness and died about 11 A.M. that day.  He was 69.  The coroner ruled that death had occurred when an artery in his head had been ruptured.  His sons quickly returned to Prescott to make funeral arrangements.

The local press was full of tributes to a man hailed as a Civil War veteran and longtime Prescott resident.  Said the Weekly Arizona Journal Miner:  “Deceased from his long residence in Prescott had made a great many friends, who will be pained to hear of his death. He was a good citizen in every sense of the word, and during his business career, was always progressive and enterprising, taking a natural pride in the progress of the town.”

Jesson’s rites were held a week later at Logan’s undertaking parlor under the auspices of the G.A.R.  As reported in the newspaper, his funeral “was quite largely attended” by the people of Prescott.  He was buried next to Mary and Richard at the town’s Citizen Cemetery.   Fittingly, his tombstone memorialized him not as a saloon owner or an Indian fighter but for his Civil War service to the Nation as a private in Company A of the 29th Massachusetts Volunteers. 

Clearly touched by the outpouring of sympathy and support they had received from the Prescott community over the death of their father, the Jesson boys responded in the press with a “card of thanks” to its residents:  “We hereby extend our heartfelt thanks to the many kind and sympathetic friends who assisted us in the hour of need occasioned by the death of our father, Fritz Jessen.”   A tough town had shown some love for an old veteran and longtime resident.

Note:  Fritz Jessen and his Headquarters Saloon are the third post on this blog involving Prescott’s Whiskey Row.  Earlier I featured F. G. McCoy and his Wellington Saloon (April 4, 2016) and Dan Thorne and his Cabinet Saloon (August 26, 2016).  A brief mention of Jessen in the book “Prescott’s Original Whiskey Row,” by Bradley G. Courtney, published in 2015, prompted my searching out the “back story” on the German immigrant.  The 29th Mass. also was featured in my earlier post about another whiskey man, Col. Lawrence L. Logan of Boston (August 2, 2019).

F. G. McCoy of Prescott, AZ's “Whiskey Row”

                           

For more than a century a two-block stretch of South Montezuma Street in Prescott, Arizona, for excellent reasons has been known as “Whiskey Row,”  one of the most famous “sin” strips of the Old West.  When F. G. McCoy established his Wellington Saloon at 136 South Montezuma, he was neither the first nor the last to establish a rip-roaring “watering hole” on that notorious street, just one of the more creative. 

 

When McCoy opened his saloon in 1902, Whiskey Row already was in full swing.  The original strip, as shown above,  was largely of frame construction.   Dozens of drinking establishments — some said as many as 40 — had stood shoulder to shoulder for two blocks since the early days of Prescott.  Located in the center of the state and the seat of Yayapai County, in 1864 Prescott was designated the capital of the Arizona Territory.  In 1867 the capital was moved to Tucson for 10 years and then brought back to Prescott.  In 1889 Phoenix became the permanent capital.

According to local legend, prior to 1877 Prescott’s Whiskey Row had been located several blocks from its present location.  It was moved, some say, because wives and local employers insisted.  They complained that patrons of the Row were forced to cross a footbridge over Granite Creek and in the wet season those who had taken a “drop too many” were in danger of falling in and drowning.  Prescott poet Gail Gardner wrote:

"Oh they starts her in at the Kaintucky bar,

at the head of Whiskey Row,

and they winds up down by the Depot House, 

some forty drinks below."

In July 1900 the Row was destroyed by fire.  Patrons of the Palace Saloon, Arizona’s oldest, were not deterred.  They carried the saloon’s ornate Brunswick bar across the street to safety and continued drinking.  Within a few days of the fire, rebuilding commenced, this time using brick and masonry.  Most of the buildings were constructed between the Fall of 1900 and 1905.  Shown above, they were built in typical early 20th Century styles.  

Enter F. G. McCoy.  In 1902 with a relative, J.E. McCoy, he established the Wellington Saloon at 136 South Montezuma, between the Palace at 122 and the Owl Saloon at 138.  Unlike many of his fellow Whiskey Row neighbors, McCoy was not just selling liquor as received from wholesalers.  He also was decanting whiskey into flask-sized bottles in half-pint, shown left, and pint size, shown right, both with his own seal.

  

Show left is another bottle of a slightly different shape in purple/puce.  Uncommonly too, McCoy also incorporated his business.  The embossing on his bottles read:  “F. G. McCoy Co., Inc., The Wellington Saloon, Prescott, Arizona.”  Arizona bottles of this kind are rare and are highly prized by collectors of Western whiskey bottles.  Although they rarely come up for sale, when they do, McCoy’s bottles draw fancy prices. 

McCoy also was selling bottles of mineral water from the Bartlett Springs Company in Lake County, California.  The November 10, 1903, issue of the Arizona Journal-Miner, the local daily, reported that McCoy had just received a carload of “this famous water for the Prescott trade.”  The newspaper glowingly described the health benefits of the water over nine column inches of type,  including the following observation:  “It is also claimed that Bartlett Water removes all desire for alcohol in persons who unfortunately have developed a taste for and acquired the drinking habit. Every effect of the alcoholic poison is corrected and the system toned up and invigorated until the necessity for a stimulant no longer exists.”

That McCoy would promote a beverage to remove the desire for alcohol was another sign that he was not just an ordinary saloonkeeper.  His Wellington Saloon prospered by promoting that  “alcoholic poison” and by encouraging “the drinking habit” in its denizens.  Among incentives McCoy provided to buying a drink was a token good for five cents in trade. For that amount, equivalent to about $1.25 today, one could get a shot of prime whiskey.  A full glass cost fifteen cents.  Although such tokens were common along Whiskey Row, McCoy’s coin had a fancy “face”:  Note the decorated “5.”

Each Prescott saloon had its own regulars, cowboys, miners, soldiers or businessmen, and each had its own attractions.  McCoy’s Wellington Saloon encouraged gambling on premises.  A local artist caught the action of a game of chance there. From the dress of the gents in the Wellington picture, McCoy’s clientele were from the local business community.  They were shown playing faro.  That was a card game, more related to blackjack than poker, popular in the Old West for its fast action, simple rules, and better odds than other games.

In 1904, the owner took a second relative, B. L. McCoy, into his operation as a partner.  F.G. McCoy’s tenure at the Wellington, however, proved to be relatively short.  By 1907, the saloon was no longer listed in directories.  The reason may have been Arizona’s off-and-on flirtation with prohibiting alcohol sales.  In 1901 a “local option” law was passed permitting individual counties and towns to decide on how to regulate alcohol.  Although no evidence exists that Prescott went “dry,” McCoy may have felt it affected his business in adjacent towns.  The law was repealed in 1909.

By 1912, F. G. McCoy surfaced again in the saloon business.  This time he was recorded as running a Prescott saloon with F. C. Whisman.  Frank Whisman had been a Prescott bartender, likely working at the Wellington Saloon.  The partners called their enterprise simply “McCoy and Whisman.”  It too was a short-lived enterprise, forced to shut down when Arizona voters in 1913 approved a statewide ban on alcohol that went into effect on New Years Day, almost six years before National Prohibition. 

The outcry from Whiskey Row, shown above circa 1914, was strong.  Several saloonkeepers posted signs on their locked doors reading:  “Closed.  Our business and our right to earn a living have been destroyed by a crowd of imported agitators.”  Well, not exactly.  The perpetrators primarily were the ladies of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, more than a few of them the wives of Whiskey Row customers.

The actual effects on the town’s once booming liquor industry were less than catastrophic.  Although the Journal Miner opined that “Prescott will have the appearance of the proverbial deserted village,”  the changes largely proved to be cosmetic.  The fronts of the saloons were converted into ice cream parlors, but liquor was readily available in back rooms and basements.  With the local sheriff taking a lenient view toward enforcing “dry” laws, a 1920 census indicated some 60 saloons were still operating in Yavapai County.  

National Prohibition similarly seems to have had little effect on the drinking habits of Prescott residents.  Because getting to the town from Phoenix by road was difficult, Federal agents likely had trouble reaching there and few news accounts exist of liquor-related arrests in town.  Post-Prohibition Whiskey Row, as shown below in 1935, rebounded quickly in neon lights and busy bartenders to satisfy a thirsty Arizona clientele.

During the superficially “dry” years, F. G. McCoy faded into the mists of time.  He seems to have avoided the U.S. census takers during his life and his place of interment has not yet been recorded.  Still, we remember F. G. McCoy as a “whiskey man”  who created the Wellington Saloon on Whiskey Row, achieving recognition by artists, historians and collectors, and leaving behind flasks and bar tokens as his lasting legacy.

Note:  Today the 100 block of South Montezuma Street is still touted as the famous “Whiskey Row” and visitors to Prescott are encouraged to stop at its shops and eateries.  Unfortunately, the current strip has been described as “too touristy,” by some who are disappointed that it does not present a more authentic Wild West setting and appearance.