Whiskey Men Meet Carrie Nation

                           

Foreword:  Born in June of 1846 in Kentucky, Carrie (“Carry”) Nation was woman who stood six feet tall and weighed in at 175 pounds. A fervent member of the Temperance Movement, in 1900 she heard a “Voice from Above” that told her to take something hard in her hands and go wreck saloons. Soon she had adopted a hatchet as her weapon of choice and intensified her attacks.  Although arrested some 30 times and spending many nights in jail, she became a national heroine of the Prohibitionist movement. During her escapades she encountered many “whiskey men,” primarily saloonkeepers.  This is the story of three of them.  

In February 1901 Carrie took her crusade to the streets of Chicago.  In his 1931 book “The Old-Time Saloon,” writer George Ade reported of Chicago:  “Saloons were everywhere and many of them open all night and all day Sunday.  One of the most familiar statements…was to the effect that when a drink parlor was opened anywhere in the Loop, the proprietor went over and threw the key into the lake. The more famous hang-outs had not been closed for a single moment for years and years.”  

As a result when Carrie showed up early one morning on busy Dearborn Avenue, above, she found the modest saloon owned by one Henry McCall, open and doing business.  The interior likely resembled the photo here of a typical Chicago drinking establishment, except that McCall, apparently an art lover, featured a revealing statue of a nude woman in his front window.  Gathering her entourage around her, Carrie rushed into the saloon screaming:  “Cover that wicked and shameful object.”

McCall was not in his establishment at the time and the bartender William Luther took the brunt of Nation’s charge. Promising to be back to check on the results, Carrie left to make a speech.  Unsettled by the event, Luther immediately got in touch with McCall, apparently a bachelor who lodged at the Auditorium Hotel in downtown Chicago, shown here. The owner rushed to the scene.  According to press accounts McCall tossed a “flimsy pink netting” over the statue that left two nipples peeking seductively through the mesh.

True to her promise, Carrie returned sometime later.   According to press accounts, the hatchet-wielder became even more outraged. She instructed McCall:  “I want you to take away that statue or clothe it properly at once.  Dress it as you would wish to see your mother and sister dressed.  Now, I mean what I say, and if you don’t obey by night I’ll make souvenirs of that statue.”  

McCall, correctly reckoning that “a soft word turns away wrath,” told Carrie he would not like to see his sister insufficiently clothed, He promptly dressed the statue in an encompassing Mother Hubbard dress and plopped a sunbonnet on her head.  Carrie left apparently satisfied she had safeguarded the morals of Chicago. But McCall was playing a game.  As soon as she was gone, he pulled down the gown to expose the figure’s impressive left breast and tilted the bonnet seductively.  Said a biographer:  “Overnight the bar’s celebrity was sealed.”  Chicagoans crowded into McCall’s saloon to see the famous statue.  The proprietor is said to have enriched himself considerably from the publicity.  

In 1846 the Maine legislature passed the first laws in the United States outlawing the sale of liquor statewide except for “industrial and medicinal purposes.”  Over the years those prohibitions were broadened and strengthened. Nevertheless, John A. Burns, among a number of Maine whiskey men, operated a wide open business for years, taking advantage of being located in Bangor, Maine — a city that earned the ire of Carrie Nation.

In Bangor a different alcohol regime prevailed.  Liquor dealers, saloons, hotels and restaurants operated under what was called “The Bangor Plan.”  Under this arrangement owners of establishments that sold whiskey, beer or wine could go to court twice a year and pay a set fine, some termed it a “tax.”  Police and other officials would ignore the traffic in spiritous drink the rest of the time.  

Burns was the most prominent of the city's liquor wholesalers.  A Bangor historian has noted that “…The framed whiskey advertisements of Bangor wholesale dealer J. A. Burns & Co. [were] hanging in saloon windows all across town.”  Having been elected to the Bangor town council probably enhanced Burns’ reputation.  He was going into court semi-annually to pay a fine for his “liquor nuisance,” amounting to $210, equivalent to something over $5,000 today, but a still a bargain.  Moreover, as recorded by the Maine Attorney General, citations to Burns for liquor violations inevitably resulted in “no prosecution” — reasons not given.  

In 1893 former Maine Governor Neal Dow, a Prohibition Party stalwart, was asked:  “Do you know anything about how the prohibitionary law works in the city of Bangor.  Dow replied:  “I do not know anything good about Bangor.”  It likely was Dow and his compatriots who invited Carrie Nation and her hatchet to come to Bangor.  She would go anywhere she was asked, if her way was paid.  Her arrival in 1902, announced by the press, must have been anticipated by both “dry” and “wet” forces, including Burns.

Her sponsors checked her into the Bangor House, shown left, then the largest hotel in Maine and considered the city’s finest hostelry, boasting a fireplace in each room and steam heat throughout.   Soon after arriving, Carrie drifted downstairs to the hotel restaurant where she found guests being served alcohol drinks.  She promptly raised a ruckus.  But alerted to her visit, local authorities were waiting. Carrie promptly was escorted back to her room, made to pack, ejected from the hotel, and delivered into the custody of the local police.  Although not incarcerated, she was shown the way out of town.   Thereafter, Carrie had only invective to heap on Bangor.

Having been arrested in her native Kansas, fined and jailed for a time, about 1905 Carrie moved her operations to the town of Guthrie in the Oklahoma Territory where a controversy was brewing about adopting a “dry” constitution when Oklahoma became a state.  A biographer commented:  “Paradoxically, the region was as lawless as any part of the country, the refuge of gunmen and rustlers, a place beyond the reach of state and federal marshals….”  

There Carrie met Moses Weinberger. In 1889 Weinberger had headed for the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to seek his fortune.   It came to him initially through the sale of bananas to homesteaders and later when he opened the first legal saloon in the Territory.  He was known as “The Same Old Moses,” also the name of his drinking establishment, shown below.  The center figure, I believe, is the proprietor.

Weinberger was a popular gent in Guthrie, a genial saloon proprietor who regularly gave his customers tokens good for drinks and gifted them with other items.  He demonstrated his sense of humor by inviting Carrie Nation into his drinking establishment to give a temperance speech.  Weinberger made one stipulation, however, there was to be no axe swinging.  Carry kept her promise until the end of her speech when she apparently felt she had to satisfy the fanaticism of her entourage.  Having been handed a hatchet by one of her adherents, Carrie whirled about and did what she called a “hachetation” on Moses’ mahogany bar, removing a chunk of it. 

Carrie promptly was removed from the premises and Weinberger later hung a sign over a wall of the saloon that read:  “All Nations welcomed except Carrie.”   The hacked bar took on an instant celebrity, shown to visitors repeatedly as the place where the prohibition zealot had done her damage.  It also reputedly became the place where saloon patrons banged their empty beer mugs when they wanted another round.  In 1907 Carrie left Guthrie for Washington, D.C., never to return.

Weinberger’s memory is enshrined in a marker on the spot where his saloon once stood.  It tells the story of the pioneer saloonkeeper, his encounter with Carrie Nation, and the coming of statewide prohibition..  On a list of “State Greats,” in a history book used in Oklahoma schools the name of Moses Weinberger could be found in the company of humorist Will Rogers and athlete Jim Thorpe.  Carrie Nation’s name does not appear.

Notes:  The incidents that make up this post come from a variety of sources.  The Chicago incident has been written up several times, including by Robert Lewis Taylor in his 1966 book, “Vessel of Wrath: The Life and Times of Carry Nation.”  The Maine incident is from news stories.  The Oklahoma account was derived from a 1937 interview of Moses Weinberger by Ruth W. Moon for the Indian-Pioneer History Project.  Longer biographies of Burns and Weinberger on this post can be found, respectively, at April 8, 2016, and February 15, 2014.

Henry Sturm Faced Down Trouble in Dodge

 Known as among the wildest of Wild West communities, Dodge City, Kansas, had a reputation for frequent murders and casual justice.  Neither seemed to deter Henry Sturm, a immigrant saloon keeper and liquor dealer, who faced off in Dodge against two formidable opponents —  a gun-toting gang led by Bat Masterson and later fanatic prohibitionists in the sway of hatchet-swinging Carrie Nation.

Sturm was born in Germany in 1837 and received his early education in local German schools.  At the age of 14 he left home and set out for the United States.  Fourteen was the youngest an unaccompanied youth could book such a passage, indicating Henry’s strong desire to settle in the New World.  The next twenty years of his life are unrecorded but my speculation is that he was working in the mercantile trades, including sales of alcohol.  According to a biographer, in the mid-1870s Sturm settled in Junction City, Kansas Territory, in government employment, possibly as a storekeeper.

He first came to Dodge City about 1876 when he was 39 years old, a distance of about 210 miles, to establish a wholesale and retail liquor store.   In some ways Dodge offered better opportunities than Junction City.  Buffalo hunters and traders made it a frequent destination.  More important, the town was a stop on the Santa Fe trail.  According to one observer, "If you stood on the hill above Dodge City, there was traffic as far as you could see, 24-hours a day, seven days a week on the Santa Fe Trail.”  When the railroad arrived in 1872, Dodge’s commercial base became firm, as indicated by a photo of downtown by 1880.

On the negative side, in 1876 here were nineteen places licensed to sell liquor in Dodge City, then a town of only twelve hundred residents.   Shown here is the interior of a typical Dodge City saloon.  During summer months when transients poured through town business was brisk.  For the rest of the year saloons and restaurants depended on the inhabitants — one watering hole for 60 people.  The residents did their part — one year the local press reported 300 whiskey barrels had been emptied.

Such reports did little to raise the reputation of the town.  A Kansas newspaper in the 1870s reported: “Kansas has but one Dodge City, with a broad expanse of territory sufficiently vast for an empire; we have only room for one Dodge City; Dodge, a synonym for all that is wild, reckless, and violent; Hell on the Plains."

Despite these challenges, Sturm prospered.  A year after his arrival he bought the Occidental Saloon from Moses Waters and James Hanrahan. It is shown here as reconstructed as part of the “Old Dodge” exhibit.  Sturm advertised…”a pint, a keg, or barrel of the very best, old Irish, hot Scotch, six year old hand made sour mash Kentucky copper distilled bourbon or old Holland gin.”  

Sturm also became the agent for Schlitz beer out of Milwaukee.   With the coming of the railroad, it became possible to receive fresh shipments of brew regularly. According to accounts, Sturm once unloaded an entire boxcar of Schlitz into his ice house and sold it to a horde of cowboys, resulting in a epidemic of drunkenness in Dodge.

Now firmly established in business, in 1878 Sturm took a bride.  She was Regina Berg, originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, where Henry may have worked for a time, and of German immigrant parents.  The difference in their ages was notable. He was 42, she was 18.  They would have a family of three girls.  In the meantime, Henry was gaining a local reputation for fair dealing and probity that saw him elected twice as Dodge City’s treasurer and at least once as councilman. “Mr. Sturm is a fair, square and honorable man,” opined the Dodge City Times in 1883.

His civic work brought him increasingly into efforts to tame Dodge City’s image as a lawless Wild West frontier town.  The violence was brought home to him in early September, 1879, when, following an altercation, a tailor shop owner sitting on a bench next door to Sturm’s saloon was brained with a rifle by a drunken antagonist.  

Sturm’s sternest test came during what was known as “The Saloon War of 1883.”  The conflict began when authorities arrested three women singers at Luke Short’s Long Branch Saloon. When things escalated, Short was banished from Dodge.  Quick with a gun himself, Short was backed by gunslingers like Bat Masterson, shown here, described at the time as “one of the most dangerous men in the West.”  Repairing to Topeka, Kansas, Short and Masterson assembled a gang of rowdies with the purpose of returning to Dodge and getting revenge.

Sturm put himself on the line, signing an anti-gang telegram on May 13, 1883, to a reluctant Kansas governor, George Washington Glick, asking for state troops.  He also signed an anti-gang article sent to the Topeka Daily Capital newspaper.  When Masterson and Short threatened to bring their gang to Dodge by train, the local sheriff enlisted local guns.  High tension gripped the town for days.  In the end, the issues were negotiated and no shots fired.  Masterson returned to Dodge a year later where he opened a short-lived newspaper, principally it seems to justify his position.

Meanwhile another even more serious challenge had arisen for Sturm.  Kansas always had harbored a prohibition-leaning population, individuals who saw in liquor the cause of the unrest and violence that marked the state’s history.  In 1881, those forces pushed through a relatively weak “temperance” law.  It did virtually nothing to curb the sale of alcohol through stores or saloons.  Proprietors like Sturm annually paid a small fine and kept the doors open.  The meantime the German immigrant was pursuing other avenues.  He built a bottling plant where he manufactured a range of soft drinks, including soda, mineral waters and cider.  He owned two ice houses, respectively 20 by 230 feet and 30 by 50 feet and regularly stored 400 tons of ice to supply the city

In 1885, however, a new law, one with real force, was enacted by the State Legislature.  Sturm and his colleagues had no choice but to shut down their watering holes.  He advertised the sale of eighty barrels of four-year-old whiskey and other liquor.  He even sold the bar fixtures.  The law, however, still allowed the sale of alcohol for “medicinal, mechanical, and scientific purposes.”  Henry Sturm became a “druggist” with permission to sell alcohol for those purposes, locating the new enterprise just down the street from his old saloon. His druggist’s permit, recently donated to a Dodge City museum, was dated Nov. 30, 1885.

One author has described this blatant effort to circumvent the prohibition laws:“…Druggists equipped their shops with a rude plank or bar, set up whiskey barrels to accommodate the legions of suffering who daily arrived for medical aid….The most preposterous device of the time, not uncommon, was the ‘refillable prescription for chronic alcoholism.’”  While Sturm also served his brands of soft drinks in his drug store, liquor was its mainstay — as it was for hundreds of similar enterprises throughout Kansas.

Carry Nation, the crusading prohibitionist, had recently moved back into Kansas and led the campaign to close those establishments, wielding a hatchet as she went from town to town, shouting at proprietors, “Stand aside, you felonious purveyor of bottled drugs from Hell!”   Although no evidence exists that she ever visited Dodge City, her rampages made news throughout America. Sturm could never be sure she would not show up at his front door someday, swinging her hatchet.

This possibility may have been part of his motivation for helping to build a church in Dodge City.   With beer shipments no longer arriving regularly, one of his ice houses became superfluous.  He had it torn down and donated the stone to build St. Cornelius Episcopal Church, completed in 1898.  Shown here, the small edifice has been described as a “little gem — the most artistic building in Dodge City.”  Still standing, the church architecture has been compared the chapels of rural England.

In middle age Sturm developed health problems.  In March 1886 Denver newspapers noted his arrival, “a prominent merchant from Dodge City” for unspecified medical treatment.  In 1897 at the age of 60, he died and was buried in Dodge City’s Maple Grove Cemetery, Section 3. Regina would join him there 50 years later.   Shown here is their joint tombstone.

In a town filled with colorful and flamboyant characters,  Henry Sturm stands out as the kind of solid citizen that help build respectability for Western towns.  The statement he signed onto about the Luke Short and Bat Masterson gang set the tone:  “The occasion or what the press have called trouble is…a clearing out of an element composed of bold daring men of illegal profession who, from toleration from the respectable portion of the community, are allowed to gain a prestige found difficult to unseat.  This element has to be banished….”

John Burns Was Wringing “Wet” in “Dry” Maine

                   
Maine was the original home of prohibition against alcoholic beverages.  In 1846 the Maine legislature passed the first laws in the United States outlawing the sale of liquor except for “industrial and medicinal purposes.”  Nevertheless, John A. Burns, a Maine whiskey wholesaler, operated a wide open business for years, taking advantage of what many called “The Bangor Plan.” 

By the time Burns came along in the late 1800s, Maine had been fiddling with “dry” laws for a long time.  Because the 1846 law dealt only with sales, in 1851 a stricter statute was passed that also banned manufacturing.  When enforcement became a problem and bootlegging thrived, that law was repealed and for a while alcohol was available.  In 1862, another law created a “Commission to Regulate Sale of Intoxicating Liquors” that controlled spirits sold for medicinal and other authorized uses.  Liquor laws were tightened again in 1871 when the sale of wine and hard cider were proscribed.  Efforts to repeal these strictures failed, often narrowly.

In Bangor, Maine, a different alcohol regime reigned.  Liquor dealers, saloons, hotels and restaurants operated under what was called “The Bangor Plan.”  Under this arrangement, owners of establishments that sold whiskey, beer or wine could go to court twice a year and pay a set fine, some termed it a “tax.”  Police and other officials would ignore the traffic in spiritous drink the rest of the time.

   

In 1893 Maine resident Neal Dow, a Prohibition Party stalwart shown left, was asked:  “Do you know anything about how the prohibitionary law works in the city of Bangor.  Dow replied:  “I do not know anything good about Bangor.”   

When the Bible-toting, axe-swinging anti-drink activist, Carrie Nation, shown right, came to town in 1902, she made a scene at the Bangor Hotel below, because drinks were served.  She promptly was escorted to her room, made to pack, ejected, and put into the custody of the local police.  Thereafter, she had only invective to say about Bangor.

What put Governor Dow and Carrie Nation into passions of anger, suited John Burns very well, thank you.  A native of the city, born there in November 1861, he was the son of Irish immigrants, his father a laborer.  Educated in local schools, he showed up in the 1887 city directory listed as a”shingleman,”  that is a provider of roofing and siding.  The following year, at the age of 27, he married.  His wife, 26, was Margaret.  She was of English ancestry, her parent both born in Canada.  Very soon they began to propagate Burns children.

The challenge of being a family man may have propelled Burns into more lucrative occupations.  In 1891 his directory listing was as the proprietor of  Riverside House on Bangor’s Washington Street.  Two years later he was listed as a grocer with Burns & Kanaley at 65 Exchange Street, the major commercial avenue shown above.  By 1897 he had teamed with Patrick H. O’Donahue in an enterprise at 119 Exchange that billed itself as “bottlers, grocers, cigars and tobacco.”  Whiskey and beer were major products.

By 1900, the partnership had been dissolved and Burns was operating as a sole proprietor at 119 Exchange.  He called himself a “bottler” in directories.  We might call him a liquor wholesaler, featuring his own embossed bottles into which he had decanted whiskey.   Shown here is a labeled quart of “Old Zach Taylor Pure Rye.”  The label indicates it was made in the 5th District of Kentucky, a federal designation that covered 136 individual distilleries, but Burns claimed was “bottled under our own supervision.”  My research suggests that this was a proprietary brand from Burns, named to mimic the well-known “Old Taylor” brand of Kentucky bourbon.

In addition to selling whiskey, Burns probably was “rectifying” it, that is, blending and compounding it in his own facilities before bottling.  The notion that this whiskey was Burns’ own, is enhanced by the embossing on the rear of the bottle.  It reads:  “Old Zach Taylor Pure Rye, J. A. Burns & Co., Bangor, Me.”  Liquor wholesalers usually embossed a brand on a bottle only if they knew it would be their own and would sell over a substantial period of time.  A Bangor historian has noted that “…The framed whiskey advertisements of Bangor wholesale dealer J. A. Burns & Co. [were] hanging in saloon windows all across town.”  Having been elected to the Bangor town council probably enhanced Burns’ confidence.

Remember that the Irishman’s open selling of whiskey occurred amidst the harsh Maine dry laws.  He was going into court semi-annually to pay his fine for “liquor nuisance,” amounting to $210, equivalent to something over $5,000 today, but a still a bargain.  Moreover, as recorded by the State Attorney General, some citations to Burns resulted in “no prosecution” — reason not given.  He was among six Bangor wholesalers paying the fine/tax, along with 91 saloons and other drinking establishments.

“Dry” forces in Maine constantly were attacking the “Bangor Plan” that let Burns and others operate openly.  Said one prohibition organ: “The city is overrun with saloons and low dives; gambling machines are scattered over the county by scores; the business of robbing drunken lumbermen continues, licentiousness and criminality abound and unarrested law breakers thumb their noses at the court.”

When the heat was on, saloonkeepers often tried to reduce their visibility.  Although the Bangor historian quoted earlier mentioned Burns’ signs hanging in saloons, the photos of local drinking establishments above and below seem to tell a different story.  Said to be a “typical saloon front,” the windows look almost austere, with just a few bottles showing to indicate it presence.  The interior, below seems similarly chaste — no nude paintings, large liquor or beer ads. Note that a partition has been built behind where drinkers stand, presumably to free them from prying eyes. 

Meanwhile Burns was having a family life. He and Margaret were living at 20 Newbury Street in Bangor’s First Ward.  Built in 1880, their frame house, shown here, had eight bedrooms and five baths, to accommodate their growing family.  The 1910 census recorded the couple with five children:  Mary, 19; George, 16;  Margaret R., 13,  and John W., 5.  The household also contained one servant.  In addition to his liquor interests, by 1910 Burns also was owner/manager of the Graphic Theater at 177 Exchange Street, shown below. That is the occupation he gave the census taker.

Things came to a head in Bangor in late 1912 when a prohibitionist governor decided to press Maine’s “dry” laws on the town.  In succession he removed three sheriff’s for failing to enforce the law.  According to the New York World, it was thought that in Bangor “a good many of the liquor dealers would be sent to jail.”   John Burns surely would have been among them.  As lawyers for the liquor dealers repeatedly found flaws in state warrants, however, booze continued to flow into Bangor in carload lots.  In March 1913 alone, Burns was recorded as receiving one barrel and six cases of whiskey; one case of other liquor;  eight barrels, ten half barrels and eight quarter barrels of beer; and one barrel and one case of wine.  The newspaper commented:  “The great wave of liquor law enforcement which was started…with such a flourish of trumpets seems to have receded to a weak splash.”

After the farcical events of 1913 Burns and other alcohol purveyors in Bangor appear to have been left alone to operate openly for the next few years.  As National Prohibition loomed, however, even the most stubborn liquor dealers and saloonkeepers were forced to close.  In 1919 Burns hired a local contractor to make extensive renovations to his Exchange Street store to prepare it for other uses.  He continued to manage the Graphic Theater until February 1922.  Felled by pneumonia during a harsh Maine winter,  after two weeks illness he died at age 60.   Aided by the “Bangor Plan” during some 18 event-filled years, John Burns had managed to be thoroughly and openly wringing “wet” in “dry” Maine.

Note:   For years without success I had been seeking a Maine “whiskey man” to feature on this blog.  Then recently Peter Samuelson of Intervale, New Hampshire, introduced me to John Burns.  Peter collects labeled whiskeys and found and photographed for me the Old Zach Taylor Rye bottle shown above.  Those pictures and additional material he provided opened an opportunity to explore the life and times of this Bangor liquor dealer.  I am grateful for his help.

Moses Weinberger Parlayed Bananas into Saloon Fame

In 1889 a Kansas grocer headed for the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to seek his fortune.   It came to him initially through the sale of bananas to homesteaders and later when he started the first legal saloon in the Territory. His name was Moses (Mose) Weinberger and today he is counted by some among “Oklahoma State Greats.”

We know a great deal about Weinberger, the central figure in the photo above, because of an interview he gave in August 1937 as part of a program by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).   He told his interviewer of his birth in 1859 into a poor Orthodox Jewish farm family in Hungary.  In search of a better life he left his little village when he was 18 and took the steamship “Fresia,” to New York City.  He settled there for several years, working as a butcher.  Then he made the mistake of returning to Hungary, at the time under Austrian rule, to visit his parents.  Over his protest about now being an American, he promptly was conscripted into the Austrian Army.   Biding his time for six months until eligible for a furlough, Weinberger did not stop until he was back in New York City.  He immediately applied for U.S. citizenship.

In 1885, still looking for better opportunities, Weinberger headed to Kansas, farming at first and then moving to Wichita where he began merchandising fruit and later meat.  He also married a woman named Rose and started a family that eventually would include three sons.  When Moses heard that the Oklahoma Territory was to be opened for homesteading, he saw further opportunity by heading farther west.  On the morning of April 22, 1889, as the Oklahoma Land Rush was off in a cloud of dust,  Moses took a train from Wichita to Guthrie station, about a three hour trip.  Between noon and 6 p.m. on that date about 10,000 people descended on a once dusty railroad stop and by day’s end Guthrie was the largest town in the Oklahoma Territory.

Upon arrival Moses staked a claim to two lots in town, close to Cottonwood Creek on West Harrison Street, and pitched an improvised tent on them using a canvas wagon cover.  A provident man, he had bought two large sticks of bologna with him for his meals.  As shown here, hundreds of people stood in long lines in front of the Guthrie land office to stake their claims.  They had little or no food and dared not to leave the line to eat.  Many had virtually no money to spend for meals. Harpers Weekly had sent Correspondent William Willard Howard to Guthrie.  On May 18, 1889, he reported:  “During the first three days food was nearly as hard to get as water. Dusty ham sandwiches sold on the streets as high as twenty-five cents each, while in the restaurants a plate of pork and beans was valued at seventy-five cents. Few men were well enough provided with funds to buy themselves a hearty meal.”  Weinberger sized up the situation and immediately wired the Bryan Brothers Fruit Company of Wichita for boxes of bananas.  They came the next day by train and Moses went up and down the lines selling bananas at two for five cents.

With the proceeds he hired a team of mules and a wagon and during the following months peddled fruit all over town. In time he built a two room house on his lots and moved his family down from Wichita.  As time elapsed Weinberger abandoned the banana trade and went into the booming real estate business in Guthrie which had become the provisional capitol of Oklahoma. The short-story writer O. Henry characterized the region’s bursting energy,  writing that “when the Oklahoma country was in the middle of its first bloom, Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-rising dough.”  As shown here, it was still a Wild West town, but with a catch:  Because of its close proximity to Indian territory,  liquor sales were illegal although bootleg whiskey was common.

In June, 1891, Moses heard a rumor that it might be possible to obtain a license from the Federal Government to sell liquor in Oklahoma.  Although he never before had run a saloon he made application  and got it from Leavenworth, Kansas.  He quickly opened the first legal drinking establishment in the Oklahoma Territory.  As related by his 1937 interviewer, the following ensued: He fixed it up just like an ordinary saloon and began selling liquor openly.  He had put his license up on the wall with a piece of newspaper on it.  After a few days the officers came to raid him .  They said, “You can’t do this , Mose.”  “Why not?” he asked,. “Uncle Sam says I can,” and reached up and pulled off the newspaper so they could see his license.

The word soon got out that selling liquor could be legal.  Within two months there were 44 licensed saloons in Guthrie.  In time Weinberger would own an interest in seven of them,  the principal one known as “The Same Old Moses.”  It is the drinking establishment shown at the opening of this article.  Moses is standing between two of his bartenders, Mack O’Brien (left) and Ike Reed at the 211 West Harrison Avenue address.

The name of the saloon merits another story, as Weinberger recounted it to his interviewer:
On day he was on the street and met a fellow whom he had known in Wichita.  “Well if it ain’t the same old Moses,” was his greeting.  Mr. Weinberger took the man from Wichita  into the saloon and treated him.  Later Mr. Weinberger got to thinking about this expression and next day had a sign painter letter it on the window. “The Same Old Moses.”
  

Weinberger showed a sense of humor by inviting the saloon-buster Carry (Carrie) A. Nation into his place to give a temperance speech. The hatchet-swinging, whiskey-hating matron had settled in Guthrie after being run out of Kansas and was publishing her newsletter there.   Her likely motivation was to impact the Oklahoma state constitution to outlaw alcohol.   Weinberger made one stipulation, no ax swinging in his establishment.  Carry kept her promise until the end of her speech then did a “hachetation” on Moses’ mahogany bar, removing a chunk of it.  She was promptly removed from the premises and Weinberger hung a sign over the saloon that read:  “All Nations welcomed except Carry.”  The damaged spot reputedly became the place his patrons banged their empty beer mugs when they wanted another round.

Weinberger proved to be a genial barkeeper, providing regular customers with bar tokens good for five cents in trade, similar to the one shown here.  He also advertised in the local newspapers.  In addition to selling liquor over the bar he was retailing a number of nationally known brand whiskeys like McBrayer, Old Oscar Pepper and Guckenheimer Rye.  He also was featuring major beer lines such as Budweiser, Blue Ribbon and Bohemian.  “The success of my business,”  Moses asserted in a 1901 ad, “is due to honorable methods and quality of goods.”

But no amount of honorable methods or quality goods could stem the “Dry” tide in Oklahoma.   Carry Nation would have the last laugh as Prohibition forces focused their efforts there. The State’s Constitution upon adoption in 1907 banned all sales of alcohol within its borders.   Overnight Weinberger and his fellow publicans were forced out of 

business.  Moses sold his saloon equipment and shipped it out of state but later said the sale hardly brought enough to pay the freight.

Before Oklahoma’s prohibition, Weinberger had tried other occupations, none of which seem to pan out.  When some Indian lands were opened for homesteading, he had staked a claim near the town of Chandler and settled his family on it.  He rode out from Guthrie weekly to see how they were doing.  Dogged by floods, rattlesnakes, sickness among the children, and a distraught wife, Moses eventually gave up the claim and moved his family back to town.   His attempts to find oil ended first with a dry hole and then a drilling effort that he said:  “Instead of oil we got salt water.”

With the demise of his liquor trade,  Weinberger went into the transfer business, loading materiel and supplies on carts from railroad cars and hauling them to construction and other sites in Guthrie.  Although the transfer business proved considerably less lucrative than alcohol, the company gave employment to family members.  A Guthrie business directory for 1907-1908 shows several of his sons and their spouses working for the Weinberger Transfer Company, located at 501-509 Oklahoma Avenue. 

Always sensitive to the needs of the Jewish community in Guthrie,  Moses permitted its members to hold religious services in one of his buildings free of charge and for several years  a congregation did observe the high holy days there.   But the dream of a permanent place of Jewish worship in Guthrie was dashed when in 1910 a statewide referendum moved the capital to Oklahoma City.  Not only was Guthrie’s economy devastated but the blame fell on Jewish businessmen.   Seen here is an inflammatory headline in the Guthrie Daily Leader of November 1, 1912.  As a result of local enmity,  most Jews moved out.

Moses stayed.  His last business venture was a ladies’ ready-to-wear and men’s apparel store.  Business proved to be slack and he lost a considerable amount of money.   Regardless of that business setback and racial slurs, Moses was proud to have been an original settler of Guthrie and adamantly refused to leave.  The 1940 U.S. census found him living on West Oklahoma Avenue with several of his children.   He was eighty years old and died later that year.   He was buried in Guthrie’s Summit View Cemetery, Section 1, Block 4, Lot 12.   Interred near him are his wife Rose and several of their children.   Theirs are the only Jewish graves in the cemetery.

Although Weinberger is gone, his memory is enshrined in a marker on the spot of the “Same Old Moses Saloon,”  It reproduces the picture of the proprietor and his bartenders and tells the story in brief of Weinberger’s bananas, his saloons, his bout with Carry Nation, and the coming of prohibition.   His fame also is acknowledged in a history book used in Oklahoma  schools.  On a list of  “State Greats,” the name of Moses Weinberger can be found in the company of Humorist Will Rogers and Athlete Jim Thorpe.  His claim to fame:  “Opened first legal saloon in Oklahoma.”  Yes, Moses did -- and he started with bananas.

Note:  Much of this vignette was derived from a 1937 interview of Moses Weinberger by Ruth W. Moon for the Indian-Pioneer History Project, a WPA-sponsored effort to capture the stories of people about living in pre-statehood Oklahoma.  The full text is available on the Internet though the auspices of the University of Oklahoma Library.