“White Beaver” and His Alcoholic Nostrums

Forward:  It may be a stretch to call Dr. Frank Powell, aka “White Beaver,” a whiskey man—but only slightly.  A medical school graduate, comrade of Buffalo Bill, Western hero of dime novels, and inventor of patent medicines, Powell was peddling nostrums, more alcoholic than most whiskeys.  Moreover, his story is so bizarre as to merit telling.

Many a boy, fetching the dime novel hidden in the corn crib, thrilled to the adventures of “White Beaver” as in story after story the hero overcame all odds to best his evil enemies.  White Beaver, in reality Dr. Frank Powell, found one adversary too strong:  It was the federal Food and Drug Agency that declared fraudulent the heavily alcoholic patent medicines that the doctor had invented and sold.

Born in a Kentucky log cabin in 1845, David Frank Powell was the son of a physician of Scottish descent and a mother who was half Seneca Indian.  When his father died at an early age, his mother took him and his brothers to live in New York State during the Civil War.  During the postwar period, the Powells moved to Chicago where Frank went to work as a drug clerk and then on to Nebraska.  In 1868 he entered medical school at Louisville University in Kentucky graduating at the head of his class.

While in Nebraska, Powell had met Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and other figures of the old West.  After graduation he went back to the state and was named to a government post as surgeon in the Department of the Platte and later made Medicine Chief of the Winnebago Indians.  According to legend, Frank got his name, “White Beaver” from riding into the camp of a hostile group of Indians, in order to inoculate the residents against small pox.  Others say he got it by rescuing a Sioux princess.  Regardless, he embraced the title, let his hair grow long, and began to polish his legend.

During this period he also had become reacquainted with Buffalo Bill.  An excellent marksman, Powell from time to time provided Cody’s touring show not only as a doctor but also a sharpshooter.  Shown here is a photo of the two (Frank right) as they looked in their touring days.  With his Indian nickname, his time in the West, and his association with Buffalo Bill Cody,  Frank Powell was a natural for dime novel fiction, a boom business in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  The stories were about his “daring do” against a string of fictional adversaries.  

Powell is depicted here on the cover of Beadle’s Dime Library, on the trail of evil-doers.  Among his titles were “White Beaver, the Indian Medicine Chief: the Romantic and Adventurous Life of Dr. Frank Powell;” “The Wizard Brothers, or, White Beaver’s Red Trail,” that also featured Powell’s brothers; “Buffalo Bill’s Sharpshooters, or, the Surgeon Scout to the Rescue;” “Buffalo Bill’s Swoop, a Buffalo Bill and Surgeon Frank Powell Adventure.”   Although some stories  were attributed to him as author it is doubtful that he wrote any.

In fact, much of the time Powell was working as a small town doctor in placid LaCrosse, Wisconsin.  By now divorced and remarried, he also was putting his energies into mixing up and marketing a series of patent medicines.  This was an era when Indian remedies were very popular with the American public and Dr. Powell was quick to jump on the bandwagon.  Buffalo Bill helped him by investing in manufacturing the nostrums.  

Best known of these concoctions was “White Beaver Cough Cream.  The cough cream was described as:  “A soothing compound of lung healing root and herb juices, an unrivaled remedy for the cure of coughs, colds, croup, pleurisy, bronchitis, and all other diseases of lungs or bronchial tubes.”  Fifty cents would buy a generous helping of the cream in an apothecary type glass jar with a removable top.  Smaller amounts came in clear embossed flask-shaped containers.  

In his advertising Powell often used testimonials.  W. G. Smith of Mahias, Michigan, opined on the cough cream:  “I consider it the Best Cough Medicine in the Country.”  N. F. Wetmore, a M.D. from North Freedom, Wisconsin, hailed it for “excellent satisfaction.”   Another potion was “White Beaver’s Wonder Worker” said to “instantly relieve either internal or external pain.”  A third product Powell dubbed “Yosemite Yarrow.”

Although for a time the remedies sold well, with Frank regularly visiting Milwaukee and other larger cities in Wisconsin and neighboring states to push his merchandise.  With the passage of the Food and Drugs Act in 1906, however, Federal authorities were on White Beaver’s trail.  In 1915, the United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin filed suit in federal court alleging that both White Beaver’s Cough Cream and Wonder Worker were in violation of the pure foods statute.  Analysis by the Bureau of Chemistry showed that the cough cream contained morphine, chloroform, creosote, ammonium chloride, and methyl slicylate.   It also contained alcohol, one estimate putting the strength at 82% (164 proof).  The cough mediciine was declared misbranded by claiming that it was “a remedy for croup, pleurisy and all other diseases of the lungs and air passages and effective as a lung healer in consumption when, in truth and in fact, it was not,” according to Federal officials.

White Beaver’s Wonder Worker came in for similar harsh treatment.  In liquid form, it proved to be just under 75% alcohol, that is, 150 proof — putting it among the strongest alcoholic liquors on the market.  In addition, it contained 1.70 grams of chloroform, and .09 gram of morphine and traces of camphor, capsicum, oil of turpentine and free ammonia.  This concoction was not a cure for the many ailments claimed in its advertising, including cholera infantum, fever and ague, and “summer complaints of children.”  The company admitted guilt, paid a $300 fine, and White Beaver’s products disappeared.

Meanwhile Powell had complemented his doctoring with politics, winning two elections for mayor of LaCrosse and unsuccessfully running for governor of Wisconsin.  His campaigning involved handing out a card with his portrait, one without the long hair and leather garments, shown here.  It did,however, contain a reminder that the candidate was White Beaver.  Eventually Powell’s entrepreneur sights shifted Westward, taking him into lumber, mining and other ventures, likely with Buffalo Bill in tow.  He was on such a business trip to California in May 1906 when he died on a train near El Paso, Texas, at the age of 61. 

Even White Beaver’s going was the stuff of legends.  Powell reportedly had asked that he be cremated and his ashes be spread at Red Butte, Wyoming, shown here.   According to a biographer, the friends transporting his remains got drunk and failed to notice that his ashes were leaking out of a pack on their mule.  By the time the funeral cortege got to Red Butte, Powell's ashes were spread across a wide swath of the West.  

The Riddle of Patrick Sullivan — Knoxville Saloonkeeper

By reading the the plaque that the City of Knoxville has affixed to Patrick Sullivan’s pre-Prohibition saloon, the impression is left of a progressive Irish gentleman who built the first brick structure in a shanty town, served blacks during the Jim Crow era, and gave women the equal right to enter his establishment.  Yet there also are stories of Sullivan’s saloon as a place where a fight broke out over Buffalo Bill’s Indians, a notorious bandit shot and killed two deputies, and a bordello operated on an upper floor.  Separating fact from fiction about this whiskey man is not easy.

Patrick Sullivan was born in August 1841 in County Kerry, Ireland, the son of Daniel and Mary Martin Sullivan.  A child during the Great Famine in his homeland, Patrick as a youngster immigrated with his family to the United States in the early 1850s.  The advent of the railroad brought Irish immigrants to Knoxville in droves, many of whom worked on the railroad and settled down in a shanty town, known as the “Bowery,” northeast of Knoxville’s main commercial area.  Patrick’s family were among them.

The Sullivans are remember in Knoxville for being one of the founding families of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, shown here.  While still in his teens, Patrick was among volunteers who helped build the church structure in 1855.  When the Civil War broke out the immigrant boy left Tennessee for Kentucky where he volunteered for the Union Army.  He is said to have seen combat and risen to the rank of captain during the war, although I can find no information about his military service.

Sullivan returned to Knoxville immediately after the war and the same year was married.  His bride was Eileen F. Kavanaugh, born in Massachusetts of Irish immigrant parents.  She was only 15 or 16 when they wed, nine years younger than Patrick.  The couple would go on to have four children, two boys and two girls. 

The marriage may have spurred Sullivan into opening his first saloon and store, located in the Bowery.  The area was considered “seedy” by many Knoxvillians, known for its proliferation of saloons, brothels and wild nightlife.  The local Journal and Times newspaper commented that:  “In this district is congregated probably nine-tenths of the criminal element of the city (where) from 10 o’clock to midnight, of the entire section swarm with humanity.”  Yet many hardworking Irish also lived there and Sullivan accommodated them in his shanty-like frame drinking establishment adjacent to the Southern Railway depot.  He and his growing family lived upstairs. 

In addition to pouring liquor at the bar, Sullivan was decanting barrels, likely received by railroad, into smaller ceramic jugs.  He would have provided those to the public and to other saloons in the vicinity.   The labels of these containers identified them as from “Dan and Pat’s Saloon.”  Dan Dewine was a fellow Irishman, born in Tennessee of immigrant parents and Pat’s close friend.

By 1888, Sullivan had accrued sufficient wealth to commission a three-story red brick Victorian building on the corner of Jackson and Central as his saloon.  Situated to face the corner, said one observer, the saloon was “attention grabbing.”  

Today the building is on the National Register of Historic Places, considered one of the best examples of a Nineteenth Century Southern drinking establishment.  Except for the chairs, the interior today is said to look much as it did in Sullivan’s day.  The saloon also acted as a magnet for erecting other permanent buildings in the Bowery — now known as the “Old City.”  

At his new corner saloon, Sullivan continued selling whiskey by the jugful.  Shown here is a half-gallon ceramic that features the new address — 100 North Central Street — and names his manager, R. H. Jones.  This jug recently sold at auction.  Although expected to fetch $600, it actually sold for $1,700, a whopping  price for a ceramic whiskey.

Despite the statement on the plaque above, I can find no other evidence that Sullivan served blacks in his saloon in defiance of Tennessee’s Jim Crow restrictions on racial mixing.  After 1872 the State had enacted 20 such laws including two that required segregation of public accommodations.   Adjacent to the Bowery, however, was a black area of Knoxville whose residents, according to historians, were welcomed in Bowery stores and reputedly in Sullivan’s saloon.   As for women, although saloons generally were “men only” some of the more elegant establishments like Patrick’s offered hospitality to “respectable” women.  No evidence exists of a bordello operating on an upper floor during Sullivan’s ownership of the building.

Sullivan’s tenure, however, apparently was not without incident.  The story is told that in October 1897, Buffalo Bill Cody and members of his troupe who had been performing in Knoxville, dropped in for a drink.  The group included several Sioux Indian performers who felt insulted by a “paleface” customer. A brawl ensued that ended only when Cody fired his six guns into the ceiling. Some believe although the showman is known to have visited the saloon, the incident may apocryphal. 

In 1902, under suspicion for a recent train robbery in which $40,000 was taken, the notorious outlaw Harvey Logan, aka “Kid Curry” from Butch Cassidy’s gang, was hiding out in Knoxville under the name “William Wilson.”  The story is told that Curry had stopped for a drink one night at Sullivan’s when a fight broke out.  Summon to the saloon were two deputy sheriffs — William Dinwiddle and Robert Saylor.   Hating lawmen and quick to the trigger, Kid Curry, shown above, shot and killed them both.  He soon was captured and taken off to jail.  According to press accounts the charming and handsome Curry, shown here, had a steady stream of visitors in jail to hear his stories and get autographs.  A few months later the outlaw escaped, allegedly riding away on the sheriff’s horse.  While the incident has been verified, some sources identify the shootings happening elsewhere than Sullivan’s saloon.

In 1907, after a visit to the city from the famous hatchet-swinging prohibitionist, Carry Nation, Knoxville outlawed saloons.  Along with other publicans, Sullivan was forced to close his establishment by November 1.  His saloon hosted a massive party the night before, drinking up his stocks until the clock struck midnight.  The premises later became an ice cream parlor.  In the 1910 census, Sullivan, giving his occupation as “farmer,” was found living in Knoxville with two adult sons and a sister.  Wife Eileen had died more than a decade earlier.  By the 1920 census, Patrick, now retired, had married again.  Her name was Margaret, a woman Tennessee born and 18 years younger than he. 

At the age of 84, Sullivan suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on September 5, 1925.  After a large Catholic funeral in the church he had helped  build years earlier, Patrick was interred in Knoxville’s Calvary Cemetery next to Eileen.  After a time the beautiful Queen Anne building Sullivan had fostered became vacant and lapsed into disrepair.  In 1986, however, a local businessman refurbished and reopened the structure as Patrick Sullivan’s Steakhouse and Saloon.  Thus has the Irish saloonkeeper continues to be remembered in Knoxville.

Note:  Although we bear the same surname, Patrick Sullivan is not a known relative.