Freiberg & Workum Were “The Biggest Fish in a Very Large Pond”

In the six decades before National Prohibition,  Cincinnati, the self-styled “Queen City,” was the center of America’s whiskey trade.  The Ohio River town boasted hundreds of distilleries, whiskey “rectifiers,”  wholesale and retail liquor dealers, brokers and more than 2,000 saloons.  As many as 40,000 Cincinnatians were engaged in the alcoholic beverage industry.  The industry there paid in taxes one-sixth of the entire internal revenue of the United States.  At the pinnacle of this soaring commerce sat brothers-in-law, Julius Freiberg and Levi J. Workum.

The clear driving force of the pair was Freiberg, born in Neu Leiningen, Germany, in 1823.  At the age of 24, he immigrated to the United States in 1847, settling first in Williamstown, Kentucky, where he ran a general store for several years.  In those days liquor was a staple of such enterprises and Freiberg soon became acquainted with leading Kentucky distillers and their products.  After a few months, he decided that the future lay in selling whiskey not whisk brooms and 1852 he moved to Cincinnati.  There he initially was a whiskey broker, credited with bringing the first commercial quantities of bourbon out of Kentucky.  In 1855 he partnered with his future brother-in-law, Levi Workum, to establish a wholesale liquor business.  A year later he married “Duffie” Workum, reputed to be the first Jewish child born west of the Allegheny Mountains.  Two years later their first son, J. (Jacob) Walter Freiberg, was born.

The first location for Freiberg & Workum was a small store at 20 Sycamore Street,  where the company remained until 1858 when larger quarters were required and the partners moved across the street to 13-15 Sycamore.  Like many wholesalers, the partners were looking for an assured supply of whiskey for their liquor dealership and in 1857, after a brief time in business, they bought a newly completed distillery in Lynchburg, Highland County, Ohio.  Their first label was “J. A. Bowen Whiskey,” named for the builder.

At the outset the Lynchburg Distillery was small, capable of mashing only 100 bushels a day, but over ensuing decades, as shown above, it was expanded to a capacity of 3,000 bushels a day, with a storage capacity of more than 100,000 barrels.  Seen sitting on a few are some of their distillery employees.  As their distillery expanded, Freiberg & Workum introduced new brands, including “Lynchburg Rye,” “Lynchburg Extra Fine Whiskey,” “Highland Pure Rye,” and later, “Clinton Whiskey.”  The company advertised all these labels vigorously, including full page ads in national publications.

Freiberg & Workum became so successful that in 1867 the company purchased the Boone County Distillery at Petersburg, Kentucky.  Located on the Ohio River not far from Cincinnati, this was a huge facility boasting a mashing capacity of 4,000 bushels per day and storage for 60,000 barrels.  As early as 1860 the distillery is reputed to have produced an amazing 1.125 million gallons of whiskey.  

Author Michael E. Becher, commenting on this purchase, has described its impact: “…Freiberg and Workum were the biggest fish in a very large pond.  By 1880, the Petersburg distillery was making more whiskey than any other distillery in the state of Kentucky.  That year, the distillery was worth $250,000 ($6.25 million today) and produced 975,820 gallons of whisky.  By comparison, the nine distilleries in famed Bourbon County produced only 433,263 gallons of whiskey.  By 1887 the Petersburg Distilleries annual capacity had ballooned to 4 million gallons.”  

In 1869, again needing more space for their burgeoning trade, the firm’s office and store was moved  to 28-30 Main Street where it remained for 27 years.   Meanwhile, important corporate changes were taking place.  After Levi Workum died in July 1883, Julius Freiberg reorganized the firm.  He took as directors his two sons, J. Walter and Maurice J. Freiberg, as well as Levi’s two sons, Jephtha L. and Ezekiel L. Workum.   

Julius Workum also was making a name for himself in political, and religious activities in Cincinnati.  In 1873, for example, he was selected as one of the city’s representatives to the Ohio Constitutional Convention.  He also was active in Jewish affairs, serving as president of the Bene Israel (Orthodox) congregation for 25 years.  He also was active with Reform movements, working with Rabbi Wise when he founded the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) in 1873 and the Hebrew Union College two years later.  Julius served as an officer of the UAHC and its president from 1889 to 1903. He helped found and support a number of Jewish charitable organizations.

In 1895 Freiberg & Workum made its final office move to 216-218 East Front Street.  This was a large building with a 52-foot frontage, running 200 feet deep and five stories high.  As shown on the illustration here, it had a private siding for  loading and unloading freight cars.  The complex had a re-distilling and rectifying facility immediately in the rear and included departments for making barrels and bottling and storing whiskey.  The premises held up to 3,000 barrels of blended whiskey, kept at a steady temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit.  In 1897 the firm also opened a branch office in Chicago to serve the upper Midwest and coordinate sales to Western states.

These new quarters allowed Freiberg & Workum greatly to expand the number of brands they merchandised.  Among them were: “Admiration,””American Union Club,” "Bonanza Pass,” "Eagle Gin,” “Eureka,” "F. & W,” "Fitz Lee,” “Hyperion,” "J. N. Blakemore,” ”Juneau Club Rye,” "Livingston Club", "Lynchburg", "Melrose",,"O.K. Kentucky Cabinet”, ”Cabinet Rye,” ”Old Fort-Nine", "Old Kentucky Home,””R. N. Wickliffe,” "Roanoke Pure Virginia Rye,” "Saint Jacobs,” "W. T. Snyder,” “Waldorf,”and "Zenith."  Another well known brand they featured was “Cyrus Noble.”  Noble had been a distiller with Crown Distillers of San Francisco and originated the brand there.  According to one account, Noble later went to Cincinnati as a “taster and blender” for Freiberg & Workum and the name went with him.  In any case the Cincinnati firm began issuing Cyrus Noble whiskey in 1896 and trademarked it in 1906.

 

Freiberg & Workum’s success might also have resulted from their many giveaway items to select customers, including shot glass and letter openers.  Their wall signs given to saloons and restaurants featuring their brands were particular notable.   One shown here advertises Highland Rye, depicting the loser of a political bet being made to tow the winner down a busy street to the delight of onlookers.  A second,below right, was keyed to the railroad club car, showing two gents and a waiter with two bottles of Cabinet Rye.

In 1904, recognizing that it also needed to have supplies of “spirits,”  that is, pure grain alcohol, for its blending and other purposes, Freiberg and Workum joined several other distillers in building at Terre Haute, Indiana, a facility called the Commercial Distillery.  They advertised it as “…the most modern, best equipped and largest spirits distillery in the country.”   It would operate under this name until National Prohibition arrived in 1920. 

Julius Freiberg died in 1905 and was buried in a Jewish cemetery near Cincinnati.  His sons carried on the business for him with J. Walter Freiberg as the president.   In 1909 the son sold the Boone County, Petersburg Distillery to the Whiskey Trust.  The new owners reportedly operated it for some years, then sold off all the stored whiskey and eventually dismantled the buildings.  The Lynchburg Distillery in Ohio continued to operate under Freiberg & Workum Co. management.

As the 1900s progressed prohibition campaigns were fast shrinking Freiberg & Workum’s markets for liquor.  Localities and states one by one were voting to ban alcohol.  With Congressional passage of the Webb-Kenyon Act in 1913, the company’s express mail trade into “dry” areas eventually was ended.  When Ohio voted for statewide prohibition in 1918 the beginning of the end was evident for the 63-year-old firm.  Federal records show, however,  that J. Walter Freiberg was still making withdrawals from the company warehouses under government supervision as late as 1920.  He died a year later. 

Thus was concluded one of the swiftest rises in the history of the American liquor industry.  In just 12 years, from 1855 to 1867, and despite the intervening Civil War,  the brothers-in-law had gone from running from a small liquor store on a back street in Cincinnati to being the largest producers and merchandisers of whiskey in Ohio and Kentucky.   As long as the country stayed “wet,”  Freiberg & Workum was “the biggest fish.”  With the triumph of the “drys,” however, the company became “a fish out of water.”  Correction:  “...Out of whiskey.”

Leo Straus “Loved His Fellow Men” and Sold Them Whiskey

It  is unusual to begin a story about an individual by focusing on his grave marker.  For Leo
(Leopold) Straus, however, the quote on his headstone sets the theme for this vignette on his life.  The inscription reads:  “I pray thee, then, write me as one that loves his fellow men.”  Heeding that admonition,  this post about Straus, a Chicago whiskey man,  emphasizes his contributions of money and time to charitable causes as evidence of his orientation toward humankind.

Straus was born in 1857 in Ligonier, a small town in the northeastern part of the Indiana, the son of  immigrant German Jewish parents. Given his subsequent interest in agriculture, it is possible his father was a farmer and that he was raised on a farm.  Although Straus failed to show up in any U.S. census,  he was recorded as engaged in the wholesale liquor business in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as early as 1878 when he would have been about 21 years old.  He was admitted to a partnership in a company called “Nathan Bros. & Straus,” described as wholesale liquor dealers and “redistillers,” that is, blenders and compounders of whiskeys.

About 1879 (dates differ)  Leo apparently decided that Fort Wayne, although considerably bigger than Ligonier,  was too small for his ambitions.   He moved to Chicago, Illinois. There he teamed with his younger brother, Eli, to open a liquor emporium at 203-205 East Madison Street.  They called it “Straus Brothers Company,  Distillers and Importers.” Leo was the president;  Eli was the secretary and treasurer.

Their business apparently was successful from the start.  Described in a 1900 business biography as “young men” (Leo was then 43 and Eli was 37), the publication extolled the prowess of the Straus Brothers:  “This firm is one of the most important wholesale liquor dealers in Chicago. It handles only the better quality of goods, principally those used for medicinal and sacramental purposes. It occupies three floors of the large business house at 203 and 205 East Madison Street. It is among the largest dealers in bonded goods in the United States, and is owner of a large distillery at New Haven, Kentucky; has in stock fifty brands of Kentucky whisky, a large line of Pennsylvania and Maryland ryes, and a full line of domestic wines...They employ seven traveling salesmen, and their goods are sold in nine different States. These gentlemen are prominent members of the "Chicago Liquor Dealers Association."

The assertion that Leo and his brother owned a distillery at New Haven, Kentucky, may have been exaggerated.   New Haven, a town in Nelson County, was indeed a center of the state’s whiskey industry, but my research into the histories of distilleries in or near New Haven has failed to disclose any Straus ownership.  More likely the brothers had a financial interest in one or more Kentucky distilleries that provided them with raw whiskey to use for “rectifying” into their house brands. 

There were a number of those labels, including “Monticello Club,” “Germania Club,” “Hecla,”  “Kenwood,”  “Syracuse,” “Roanhorse,” and “Wellington.”  Unlike many rectifiers,  Straus trademarked most of his brands,  Germania Club, Hecla, Solo, Sycamore, and Wellington in 1905;  Kenwood and Roanhorse in 1906.   They advertised Solo as “Best on the Bars.”  Germania Club was named after a well known gathering place for the German elites of Chicago.

Straus Brothers packaged their liquor in a variety of ways.  For wholesale customers, there were large four gallon jugs.  For consumers,  fancy ceramic  containers made by the Fulper Pottery of Flemington, New Jersey.  Their retail trade also included packaging brands like Monticello Club in glass containers from flask to quart sizes.   Stiff competition from other Chicago liquor dealers also occasioned the firm to distribute a variety of giveaway items to favored customers,  usually saloons and restaurants carrying their liquor.  The Old Cabinet bottle shown below was meant for back of the bar use, as a reminder to the boys on the stools. A fancy match safe embossed with the firm name would have been a gift to an owner or a bartender.  Even members of the drinking public might benefit from Straus Bros. largesse. The invention of printing on celluloid had made items like pocket mirrors inexpensive to produce with ads -- such has the one shown below for Old Cabinet Rye.

By 1913 Straus Brothers had adopted a new letterhead, one probably occasioned by a change in address.  Their company did not move,  the address changed when Chicago’s officialdom decided on a citywide street renumbering.  By that time both brothers had married.  Leo wed a woman named Emma.  His family included two children, a son and a daughter.  

It was widely understood that Leo  Straus after a few years in the liquor business had amassed a fortune.  It was then he set out to prove his love for his fellow man.  His philanthropy began to be recognized as something out of the ordinary, not just for Jewish causes, even though those seemed uppermost in his mind, but also his generosity to many local and national organizations.   Possibly because he had roots on tilling the land, at least two of his charities had farming connections.   One was the Jewish Agriculturalist Aid Society of America.  That was an organization that bought land in the Middle West and settled Jewish farmers from Europe.  Leo Straus was a director of the organization. By 1903 the Chicago branch he led had recruited more than 230 families for homesteading on the Great Plains, principally in North Dakota.

Leo was also a contributor to the National Farm School, an institution that trained young Jewish boys in “practical and scientific agriculture.”  Located in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the school had been founded about 1894 by Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf after a visit to a similar institution in Russia.  The institution was dependent on contributions from around the country.  Straus was a principal giver.

Straus also contributed to a program that  provided job opportunities to poor Jewish women in Chicago.  Employed by the organization, some twenty-five women sewed gowns, chemises, shorts, shirts, and other garments.  The products of their labors then were distributed to 400 Jewish families, estimated at 1,825 people, along with bedding, underwear, adult and children’s clothing.  Straus also was a benefactor of the Michael Reese Hospital, a medical  facility made possible by a contribution from a Jewish real estate developer who died in 1877.  The hospital was open to all people regardless of race, nationality or creed.  When the Associated Jewish Charities of Chicago was founded in 1900 on the eve of Passover, Straus was a founding member and elected as a director.

None of his charity work, unfortunately, could changed the Temperance tide. With the advent of National Prohibition,  Straus was forced to close the doors on his liquor establishment.  At that time in his 60s,  he apparently retired.  His younger brother, Eli, went on to be the treasurer of a paper factory.  In 1926 at the age 69 Leo suddenly dropped dead.  In apparent good health he had gone to the annual banquet of the Indiana Society of Chicago, collapsed, and died.  With his widow and children mourning his passing, Straus was given a funeral at Sinai Congregation, where he had been a trustee and benefactor, and buried in Rosehill Cemetery.   One Chicago newspaper obituary remembered him as “a well known figure in the city’s business, social, and philanthropic circles.”

Although the eleemosynary history of Leo Straus gave good evidence of his “love of fellow men,” the citation carved at his grave site raises questions:  “I pray thee, then, write me as one that loves his fellow men."  The quote is from an English poem about a man named Ibrahim ibn Adham,  a Middle Eastern legendary king who renounced his throne and became a religious ascetic.  Today Ibrahim is reckoned one of the most prominent Sufi Moslem saints.  It apparently was a different day when a Jew could quote a Moslem on his grave stone.  Or perhaps it was just another example of Leo Straus’s love for his fellow man.

Sonn Brothers: Jewish Cowboys in Manhattan?

In July 1888 the New York Times reported a court appearance in which one of New York’s “Finest” described how he, a cop policing his beat along Seventh Avenue in Manhattan,  saw a two men, both on horseback, charging down the busy central city street at what he  described as a “furious gallop.”  He gave chase and caught one of the men and arrested him but the other rider got away.  The culprit’s name was Henry Sonn, one half of Sonn Brothers, well known in the Big Apple as liquor merchants.

Was Henry Sonn trying out to be a cowboy?  Was his brother, Hyman Sonn, the horseman that got away?  Were the Sonn Brothers, in effect, in the way of becoming Jewish Cowboys in Manhattan?   It could be argued that the siblings exhibited many of  the positive characteristics attributed to  cowboys, namely, fearless against the odds, adventurous spirits, multi-talented and coming out winners in the end.

The Sonn brothers were far from the “manor born.”  Their father, Hess Sonn, was a emigrant from Bavaria whose occupation was given in the U.S. census as “peddler.”  Hyman was born overseas in 1851 and as a mere babe accompanied his father and mother when they emigrated to the United States the following year, settling in New York.  Henry Sonn was born in New York a year later.  Both received public education and were schooled religiously in their Jewish heritage.  When and how they entered commerce is obscure, but in 1875 a business directory lists the Sonn Brothers selling fish at at 119 Warren Street.  In succeeding years they were recorded in New York City directories as grocers, first at 181 Reade Street and subsequently at 83 North Moore Street.


As grocers, they also sold liquor and about the turn of the century, the brothers made a shift in their mercantile interests and established Sonn Bros. Company, wholesale and retail liquor dealers.  The 1900 census found them living on West 74th Street in Manhattan in adjacent townhouses.   Their store initially was located at 410 Washington Street, with a move to 145 Washington by 1906.  Shown above is a Sonn wall sign from a Washington Street location.

Hyman and Henry were not distillers, but rectifiers, taking supplies of “raw” whiskey, mixing them to taste and bottling them in flask sized and larger glass bottles embossed with their name.  Bottle diggers continue to find Sonn containers in privies and dumps in the New York area.  Unlike many wholesalers who featured a blizzard of brand names in hopes of snaring customers,  Sonn Bros. bucked the trend and essentially featured only two labels.

Their flagship brand was “Buckingham Rye,” whose trademark the firm registered with the Federal Patent and Trademark Office in 1906.  The label featured a shield with the brother’s logo on it.  The brothers may have revolted against industry wisdom by sticking to two brands, but they were in the mainstream of their trade in being generous with their giveaways to bars and restaurants stocking their brands.  If a saloonkeeper featured Buckingham Rye he could expect to be offered a colorful reverse glass sign for his establishment.   The Sonns also could supply him with shot glasses and a back of the bar bottle with attractive an ad for Buckingham Rye.  Nor did the brothers neglect their second brand, “Old Cabinet Rye.”  That whiskey could boast shot glasses, one fancy with a rosette design and another plain, as well as a back-of-the-bar bottle with a gilded label that featured Old Cabinet on one side and Sonn Bros. on the other.

As their liquor trade grew, the brothers expanded to offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.   As early as 1900 the Sonns also opened a thriving real estate business in New York City, demonstrating their many talents.  The 1900 census listed Henry as a realtor with no mention of the whiskey interests. The brothers also were prominent in Jewish philanthropic affairs, contributing considerable amounts of money to less fortunate members of their religious community.  For a time Hyman was active as a member of the Board of Jewish Charities of New York.

Through their multiple enterprises the brothers continued to grow prosperous.  That was made clear in a New York Times story headlined “Fire’s Havoc in Mansion.”  It recorded an early morning blaze that raged through the four story residence of Hyman Sonn. It was located at 29 West Seventy-second street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  The fire destroyed, the story said, “sumptuous decorations and many valuable works of art.”  Hyman and his entire household escaped to the street in their night clothes but were able to snatch $30,000 worth of jewels (worth at least 10 times that today)  from the flames.

Another disaster was on the horizon for the Sonns with the coming of National Prohibition in 1920.  Unlike other liquor dealers who were bankrupted by its advent,  the brothers had been provident in being able to fall back on their flourishing real estate business.  The 1921 Manhattan telephone directory no longer listed them as liquor dealers, but rather as "Sonn Bros. Import & Export Co.” at the same Washington Street  address.  In the Exporters' Encyclopedia, 17th Annual Edition, 1922, they were described as having  “Foreign Markets: Africa, South and Central America, Far East.  Specialized in: Machinery, chemicals, paper, textiles, general merchandise." The Sonn Bros. import/export business stayed at that address until approximately 1925. After 1925 Hyman and Henry seemed to have been engaged exclusively in real estate.

Oh yes,  we never settled on Henry Sonn riding roughshod down Seventh Street in downtown Manhattan. He was adamant in claiming he was not trying to emulate a cowboy. He told the judge that he was just learning to ride a horse, that he lost control of the animal while practicing with an instructor, and the horse on its own charged down the street with Henry hanging on for dear life.  The second rider clearly was not his brother, Hyman, but his unnamed riding instructor, who had fled police rather than be arrested.  As it turns out, the Sonns, who had many positive qualities expected of cowboys, were not emulating their Wild West riding style. The judge bought Henry’s story and dismissed the charges.