Whiskey Men and Murder

        

Foreword:  Although incidents of gunplay in pre-Prohibition saloons were fairly common and deaths too frequently were the result, those usually involved the Wild West where reckless males with few family ties were on the loose.  By contrast, the four incidents of murder involving whiskey men briefly recounted here all involve relationships — fathers, mothers, children.  Family ties have an emotional dimension that barroom shoot-outs lack.  While each of these stories differs significantly from the others, their common thread is…

Shown here is Julius Goldbaum as a young whiskey man who in his own time was accounted as an outstanding pioneer in making the Arizona Territory a viable place for settlement.  But first he had to overcome the trauma of the murder of his father, Marcus Goldbaum.  Marcus, a butcher by trade, was a restless man, moving his family from Denver to Arizona in 1861, never settling in one town very long.  By the early 1880s Marcus had moved to Benson, Arizona, a rail terminal about 45 miles south of Tucson.  There he expanded beyond butchering to dealing in beer and liquor.

Still Marcus was not content.  Catching gold fever, he turned over operating the businesses to his wife and set out prospecting in the nearby Whetstone Mountains.  As one writer has observed:  “It was a bad idea.”  Geronimo’s Apaches were on the warpath.  They raided Marcus’s mountain cabin, killed him, ransacked the place and took what they wanted.   A cavalry patrol found him days later but did not immediately recognize that the prospector was Marcus Goldbaum because he had been scalped.  An etching by the famous Western artist, Frederic Remington, in the book “On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo,” caught the scene.  The dead man was only 51.

Moving to Tucson, Julius opened a saloon and liquor dealership, shown here.  From that beginning, he began to “rectify” (blend) his own brands of whiskey.  His success was immediate and he became one of Tucson’s wealthiest men.  Civic minded, he also was a volunteer fireman and elected to the Tucson City Council. Goldbaum was singled out for praise in an 1891 book that focussed on men “Who Have Made the Territory.”  Despite his father’s killing — or perhaps in part because of it — Julius stayed to make Arizona a desirable place to live. 

It is not clear when Dan and Mary (Sullivan) Hanley emigrated from Ireland to the United States.  Hanley first surfaced in San Francisco directories in 1863 working as a bartender at the Rotunda Saloon.  Before long he owned a grocery store and liquor business, including his own saloon.  Also living with the couple and their three young children was John Hanley, Dan’s older brother.   According to an account in the San Francisco Bulletin, the Hanleys had fenced in some property to the objection of a neighboring landowner named Dennis Ryan.  The result was ongoing trouble between the two families. 

In October 1877, during a raucous party at Ryan’s house, a dispute broke out between the two Irishman.  Both sides had firearms and shots were exchanged. John Hanley was hit in the hand and Dan was shot through the right thigh.  Ryan and an accomplice were arrested on a charge of assault to murder.  After lingering for six months Dan, only 37 years old, died of blood poisoning and the charge against Ryan became manslaughter.  Asked about what fueled the fight, witnesses told the press:  “Beer and wine were involved.”  Hanley’s grave is shown here.

Left with three children to raise, Mary Hanley, shown right, proved to have “the right stuff.”  Overcoming her grief she took over management of the family grocery, liquor store and saloon, running them for more than a decade.  As her son, John, reached maturity, he was tasked with working in his mother’s enterprises and learned the liquor trade, pursuing it for much of his life. 

When his father August died in 1905, William Krogman was well prepared to take over the operation of the family’s distillery in Tell City, Indiana.  He likely was unprepared, however, for subsequent events.   In 1911 a Tell City man named Joseph Wiegand was feuding with his neighbors next door, the Drury family.  According to press accounts, the problem was “some little difference about chickens.”  Mrs. Drury was standing in the yard of her home one day when Wiegand came around the corner of the house and shot her dead. Convicted of murder, Wiegand, apparently because of advanced age, escaped the gallows and was given a prison sentence.  

Left with five minor children and no one to care for them, the bereaved husband sued Krogman, characterized as a “wealthy man,” for $10,000 in damages (equivalent to $250,000 today).  Drury charged that his wife’s slayer had been drunk on liquor sold him by the distiller.  After legal maneuverings that lasted almost two years, a jury awarded Drury $2,500 in “blood money.”  He rejected that result as too little and filed for a new trial, this time suing in the name of his motherless children.  This second time around, after a venue change to an Indiana county where Mrs. Drury had once resided, a sympathetic jury increased the award to $7,000.  A local newspaper headline read:  “Heavy Judgment Rendered Against William Krogman.” 

Krogman’s problems were just beginning.  As prohibitionary forces closed in on the production and sale of alcohol in the Midwest, his whiskey markets slowly dried up along with profits.  Finally, in 1920 the advent of National Prohibition caused the distillery his father had founded 57 years earlier to shut down completely.

This murder story made newspaper headlines from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to San Bernardino, California.   Across America people knew that two sons of Peter Dorsheimer, a prominent Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liquor wholesaler, had been jailed, accused by a third son of having murdered their father and mother 14 years earlier in their home, shown here, while making it look like an accident.   Until then, the public face of the Dorsheimers was of a happy family of solid Pennsylvania stock, high achieving and affluent, civically and politically active, and strong adherents to the German Reformed Christian Church.  Whatever tensions roiled beneath the surface had gone unnoticed. 

 On April 16, 1910, tragedy had struck the Dorsheimers.  The parents were found dead in their bed, asphyxiated by illuminating gas from a fixture in their bedroom. The flame had been extinguished but the deadly gas continued to flow.  The decision of the coroner, backed by the sheriff, was accidental death, as noted on Peter's death certificate shown here.  The theory as was that an errant piece of clothing from one of the two had brushed against the jet, blowing out the flame, and the couple had not noticed. 

Fast forward 14 years:  Benjamin and Chester Dorsheimer were arrested and jailed in Lancaster County on an allegation that they had murdered their mother and father on that April night as a way to get control of the lucrative liquor business.  The accuser was their brother, Frank, abetted by a sister, Lizzie. Frank also found a sympathetic ear in a rural justice of the peace with the power to incarcerate.

The brothers spent seven days languishing in jail.  At last a county judge held a hearing that included evidence that the door to Peter and Anna’s bedroom had been locked from the inside, making it impossible for someone to slip in and blow out the gas jet while they were sleeping.  He ordered Benjamin and Chester immediately released, ending their ordeal.  In the process, however, the Dorsheimer family circle that once had looked so strong had been broken and likely irreparably so.

Human interest is evident in each of these stories.  All of these murders — including the one alleged — involved families.  Fathers killed, leaving children to be raised;  a mother murdered, leaving a father with minor children, and adult children accusing each other over the deaths of their parents.  These are tragedies with implications well beyond shootouts inside a Western saloon.

Note:  More complete vignettes on these whiskey men are available on this blog:  Julius Goldbaum, March 2, 2017;  the Hanleys, May 5, 2018;  William Krogman, December 6, 2014; and the Dorsheimers, March 26, 2017.

The Krogmans of Tell City: Whiskey and "Circumstances"

          

Exactly what circumstances impelled August Krogman to leave his native Schleswig-Holstein, now part of Germany, to settle in a small Ohio River town in Indiana and start making whiskey, we do not know.  But from press accounts we do know the circumstances that drove the future of the Krogman Distillery and August’s son, William.  Those included murder, blood money, conspiracy and robbery.

August was born in December 1821, the son of Johann and Margarethe Krogman.  He learned the distilling business in his homeland, probably helping  make the popular liquor the Germans call “schnapps.”  He emigrated to the United States in 1855 and worked in a brewery in Davenport, Iowa, for three years.  It was there he met and married his wife, Dora Schubert.  They would have two children, Emma born in 1859 and William in 1863.

 In 1858 Krogman moved to Perry County, Indiana, working for a few years in the coal mines there.  By 1862 he had settled in Tell City, Indiana.  With a partner and a financial stake of $5,000, in 1863 Krogman constructed and opened a plant for “manufacture of bourbon, whiskey, and apple and peach brandies.”  His distillery is shown above in a postcard view.

Krogman had selected well in choosing his state and city of location.  Indiana reputedly had only one other working distillery and there was an active demand for whiskey.  Tell City, shown above as it looked in the mid 1800s, had its origins in a group of Swiss-German immigrants who had come together to purchase the site in the Midwest.  The tract of land they found was in southern Indiana, on the navigable Ohio River and strategically located on a railroad line.   Krogman had easy shipping access for his products to other cities and states.

Those shipments of whiskey most often were made in ceramic jugs.  They came in a variety of sizes and formats.  The one at right was stenciled over a salt glazed jug.  Despite the “s” in distiller being reversed, it recently sold for $1,100 at auction.  Other Krogman jugs included a Albany slip brown body with a reverse stenciled name, a Bristol glaze jug with cobalt label, an even larger label on a two-toned jug, and a quart-sized container with “Krogman Whiskey” in a circle. 

As August aged, he brought his son into the management of his thriving whiskey business. William Krogman had received considerable education for the times, attending both elementary and secondary schools in Tell City and then spending some period at the University of Indiana in Bloomington.  In 1888, he had married Claudine Voelke, the daughter of Frederick Voelke Jr., well-known owner of the Tell City Brewery.  Their union produced two children.

 

At age 79 in 1900, however, the father was still giving his occupation to the census taker as “distiller.”  The year before, after more than 40 years of marriage, his wife Dora had died.  August followed her to the grave in October 1905, age 84.  By that time William Krogman was well prepared to keep the Tell City distillery in operation — but he likely was unprepared for the circumstances that were to befall him. 

In 1911 a Tell City man named Joseph Wiegand was feuding with his neighbors next door, the Drury family.  According to press accounts, the problem was “some little difference about chickens.”  Mrs. Drury was standing in the yard of her home one day when Wiegand came around the corner of the house and shot her dead. Convicted of murder, Wiegand, apparently because of advanced age, escaped the gallows and was given a prison sentence.  Left with five minor children and no one to care for them, the bereaved husband sued William Krogman, characterized as a “wealthy man,” for $10,000 in damages (equivalent to $250,000 today).  Drury charged that his wife’s slayer had been drunk on liquor sold him by Krogman.

After legal maneuverings that lasted almost two years, a jury awarded Drury $2,500 in “blood money.”  He rejected that result and filed for a new trial, this time  suing in the name of his motherless children.  On this second time around, after a venue change to an Indiana county where Mrs. Drury had once resided, a sympathetic jury increased the award to $7,000.  A local newspaper headline read:  “Heavy Judgment Rendered Against William Krogman.”

Unfortunately,  William’s problems were just beginning.  As “dry” forces closed in on the production and sale of alcohol, Krogman’s markets slowly dried up along with profits.  Finally, in 1920 the advent of National Prohibition caused the distillery his father had founded 57 years earlier to shut down completely.  Sealed by federal order, the Krogman warehouses were full of aging whiskey  The temptation proved to be too strong for William.  With four others, including two former Tell City town marshals and an ex-sheriff of Perry County, he hatched a plot to rob the Krogman Distillery warehouse in August 1921.  And got caught by federal authorities.  This time the headline read:  “Owner, with Four Others, is Held in Distillery Robbery.”

Arrested and hauled into Federal Court in Indianapolis, William and his four accomplices were charged with conspiracy.  As the presumed ringleader, Krogman’s bail was set at $3,000.  The others paid lesser amounts.  I am unable to find the outcome of the arrests, but in many cases such offenses were treated leniently even by the U.S. courts and the perpetrators let off with fines.  The rationale could reasonably have been that Krogman was only trying to purloin liquor that actually was his.   William continued to own the Krogman properties for some years but never saw the Repeal of the 18th Amendment.  He died in 1932 at age 68 and is buried in a Perry County cemetery.

The Krogman Distillery is recorded on a bank draft as having passed after Prohibition into the hands of the Gerbers, father and son Tell City merchants. In 1941 the Park & Tilford Co. bought the plant.  As testimony to the recognized quality of Krogman whiskey, that company issued a straight bourbon it called “Krogman’s Old Master” and packaged some of it in a fancy ceramic jug, shown here, attributed to the Uhl Pottery Company.  The plant operated into the 1960s when it was closed forever.

This final termination came almost a century after the distillery had been founded by August Krogman.  It had made him and his son rich and well-known in Tell City.  With the exception of certain "circumstances” whiskey-making had been good for both Krogmans.  

Special Note:  This post marks the 300th entry since the Pre-Prohibition Whiskey Men blog began in April 2011.  In the months since the 200th post, it has been possible to reduce to just two — Maine and North Dakota — the states where I have been unable to identify a whiskey man to profile.  Moreover, among the last hundred vignettes two women, Mary Dowling and Mary Jane Blair, have been featured.  Their achievements in the liquor trade definitely marked them as worthy of attention. 

Interest in whiskey has grown rapidly in recent years, as has attention to whiskey lore.  The prior posts have allowed me to shine some light on pre-Prohibition whiskey making and merchandising, a little-examined part of American business, social and political history.  It is gratifying that over the past few months several media outlets, history museums, historical publications and freelance writers have been in touch with me for information and other assistance. I am happy to give it.  Also gratifying are the 55 “followers” who have signed up for this blog, another indication of growing public awareness. My ongoing research into the subject allows me to be confident that sufficiently interesting other pre-Prohibition American whiskey men (and women) existed who are worthy to be subjects of vignettes.  My goal is to have profiled one hundred more by sometime in 2016.