Whiskey Men and the Automotive Age

                                 

Foreword:  By dating the dawning of the automotive age as 1908 when Ford made its first Model T, the next 12 years before the imposition of National Prohibition allowed those involved in the liquor business to engage themselves in varying degees with the on-rush of the “horseless carriage.”  Each of the four "whiskey men" profiled here had his own special experience with the motor car. 

Dodge City, Kansas, above, was known as the roughest, toughest, most lawless town in the West.  It was, that is, until Chalkley “Chalk” Beeson, shown here, came to run the famous Long Branch Saloon, stayed to help bring law and order, and in the process organize a highly celebrated cowboy band that played at a Presidential inaugural. 

Beeson has been seen as a transitional figure, living long enough to see the wild West tamed or, as the Kansas City Star put it:  “One may now walk the streets of Dodge City and Abilene, and by exercising reasonable control of his mouth, may get back to the hotel without being carried on a screen door.”  The photo below, showing Beeson, center, standing as repairs are made to an early automobile, epitomizes the changing times. The age of horse transportation was ending. 

For Beeson, however, perhaps not soon enough.  In August 1912, he was sitting on a horse at his ranch watching a nearby construction crew.  A sudden noise spooked the animal.  It bucked and Chalk was thrown hard against the saddle horn causing internal rupturing. The man who had survived for years amidst the constant dangers of Dodge City could not be saved.  Three days later, Beeson died at the age 64.  

Deemed by some a “historic figure” of the American West, Warren Richardson Jr. , shown here arrived in  newly founded Cheyenne, Wyoming, as a toddler and stayed there for the rest of his life, devoting himself to the advancement of that frontier town. Richardson’s efforts included meeting the needs of the populace for alcohol and other pleasures he called the Tivoli Saloon.  

During the early 1900s Richardson developed a new passion:  Fast cars.  Described as “an enthusiastic member of the Cheyenne Motor Club, he threw several thousand dollars and his abundant energies into creating a four mile race track outside of town.  A 1917 issue of Automobile Dealer and Repairer magazine reported:  “Mr. Richardson worked unceasingly, and it was not long before what had been a stretch of prairie was transformed into a hard packed level race track.”   

Barney Oldfield, the celebrated early race driver, was enticed by Richardson to Cheyenne in his 200 H.P. Benz and created two new world records.  A photo exists of Oldfield sitting behind the wheel of his machine.  Richardson is standing coatless at the left of Oldfield.  

When John Withers, shown here in maturity, was growing up in a distilling family,  he may have  thought there were better ways to make a living and so he became a jeweler.   After working about 23 years at that trade he apparently decided that the real “gold ring” was captured by making whiskey.  And so created the Withers Distillery in Allenville, Missouri.  

With the coming of the motor car,  Withers became obsessed.  With the profits from his distillery, he bought an expensive convertible machine, one in which he could seat his entire family of eight.  According to one account, the family “takes delight in taking a spin in the high-powered car that Mr. Withers owns and operates.”  There is a marvelous 1913 photograph of the Withers clan in their automobile. 

Sitting proudly in the front seat is Distiller John, his wife and baby Opal.  In the back seat, seemingly somewhat crowded are Roy, Adam, Eddie, Myrtle and Waldo.  Note that the steering wheel is on the right side. 

“It will pay you to meet me,” claimed Abraham Freeman, pictured here, the flamboyant proprietor of a “cut price” liquor business in Atlantic City, New Jersey.   Men named Brown, Fleming and Sooy would have taken issue with that assertion.  They probably would have been much happier had they never met Freeman.  

The three men figured in a bizarre episode in Freeman’s life:  While automobiles were not an entirely new conveyance, they were expensive and many people, including Abe, did not own one but he liked “joy riding” with friends around town and the countryside.   In 1913 Freeman engaged a vehicle from one William Brown who rented out his open touring car for $4 an hour (almost $100 in present currency) and provided a chauffeur, in this case Mr. Fleming.   

Loading the automobile with friends,  Freeman jumped into the front seat beside driver and they took off.  Enroute, a gust of wind blew Fleming’s hat in the air and in an effort to catch it he let go of the steering wheel momentarily.  Seizing the opportunity to drive, Freeman grabbed the wheel.  The car swerved to the side of the road and crashed into a ditch.  According to an account given in court:  “All the occupants of the car were more or less injured and Fleming sustained a dislocated shoulder.”  

Freeman’s troubles had just begun. The car was left where it had been ditched and Abe hied off to the nearest inhabited place where he met, likely for the first time, Mr. Sooy.  He hired Sooy and some bystanders on the spot to remove Brown’s damaged car from the ditch.  By the time the party returned to the scene of the accident, it had turned dark. 

They carried a gas lantern to assist their work, sitting it on the ground to light the scene.  As they began to remove the vehicle an odor of gasoline was detected where it apparently had leaked from the gas tank and soaked into the earth.  In an instant the flame from the lantern touched off the fumes and the ground caught fire, spreading quickly to Brown’s expensive automobile.  The vehicle swiftly was consumed by flames and rendered a total loss.   

When Brown sued Freeman for damages, the liquor dealer contended that it was Sooy’s fault and he himself bore no responsibility.  The court of first jurisdiction disagreed and told him to pay up.  Continuing to object, Freeman appealed the verdict to the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals. There the result was the same.  Sooy was found to be in the employ of Freeman and as the employer Freeman was liable.  He paid.  It is doubtful that Abe ever went “joy riding” again.

Note:  Each of these whiskey men has been treated in a longer biography elsewhere on this blog. Chalk Beeson, August 17, 2014;  Warren Richardson, March 12, 1914; John Withers, April 3, 2013; and Abe Freeman, July 10, 2014.

Whiskey Men as Lawmen

Foreword:  It did not happen very often but upon occasion a saloonkeeper or liquor dealer would also pursue a career as a lawman.  Those instances generally were confined to the Old West where social and community ties were less rigid and a whiskey man could be seen as an effective keeper of the peace and nemesis to lawbreakers.   Here below are the stories of three such men.

 For decades the men of the Schwethelm (pronounced “Sweet-helm”) family were virtually synonymous with the Texas Rangers. A background as lawman subsequently gave Ernest Schwethelm important credentials for running saloons in the wild and violent Texas Hill Country.  Even a fellow Texas Ranger might find his demise, however, in one of Schwethelm’s drinking establishments. 

Ernest’s father, Henry Schwethelm, shown here, was born in Dusseldorf, Germany but at an early age with his family emigrated to Texas.  At 17 Henry joined Captain L. H. Nelson’s Texas Ranger Company stationed in San Antonio.  He moved on to serve with Capt. John W. Sansom’s company, headquartered in Kerrville, Texas.  Later two of Henry’s sons would be recorded as Texas Rangers, including Ernest shown above at a San Antonio reunion of the Capt. J. H. Callahan Rangers.   During the late 1800s Ernest with a partner came to own and operate saloons in Kerrville.   Among his drinking establishments was The Ranch Saloon, shown below still standing.   

The Ranch Saloon had a reputation for being a rowdy place and reputedly was the site of the murder of a Texas Ranger.  He was Tom Carson,  a tough, bad-tempered, and somewhat mysterious character.  About 1880, he was recorded as part of a small Ranger scouting party in the Fort Davis area looking for the perpetrators of a series of robberies.   Near del Norte they came across a gang of thieves carrying their loot toward Mexico.  In the firefight that ensued, a shot cut Carson’s hat brim and another passed under his leg, cutting his stirrup and wounding his horse.  Unfazed, he wounded one of the robbers and aided the killing and capturing of the band. Carson reportedly was shot and killed in the Ranch Saloon in April 1893.  Details about the event and Carson’s assailant are sketchy.  

Dodge City, Kansas, above, was known as the roughest, toughest, most lawless town in the West.  It was, that is, until Chalk Beeson, shown here, came to Dodge as a saloonkeeper and stayed to help bring law and order.  Leaving his native Ohio,  by the mid-1870s Beeson had moved near the town, purchased a ranch, and rapidly became wealthy in the cattle business. With a partner in 1878 Chalk bought what would become one of America’s most famous Western saloons, The Long Branch. 

The Long Branch is where Chalk became acquainted with noted lawmen and gunslingers of the time, men like Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Bill Hickok, and Bat Masterson. Throughout this period Beeson’s reputation as an outstanding citizen — and perhaps a steady gun — had been rising.  He was asked to run for sheriff of Ford County, was elected and served two terms from 1892 to 1896.  Among his accomplishments while serving as sheriff was killing a member of the notorious Doolin gang after it had robbed the Spearville Ford County Bank in broad daylight and escaped into Oklahoma Territory.  Without waiting for a posse and almost singlehandedly Chalk tracked one of the bandits to his hideout and in the ensuing melee shot him fatally.  For that act, Beeson collected the rewards offered by the state, banks, the railroads, and the insurance company for apprehending, dead or alive, a member of the Doolin Gang. 

The newspapers of his time were high in their praise of Sheriff Beeson  They described him as “a quiet, almost noiseless man” who believed in stopping trouble before it began and yet someone who “always got his man.” “He came to Dodge City when every man carried a gun and the fittest survived,  Beeson survived.  But he is not fierce.”   After his stint as sheriff his fellow citizens elected Chalk to two terms in the Kansas State Legislature where he developed a reputation for avoiding bombastic speeches and working quietly among his colleagues to get things done.  

During a highly energetic lifetime James R. “Jim” Hogg managed to juggle the responsibilities for making and selling a popular brand of whiskey while serving four terms as County Sheriff.  He ran numerous enterprises, with his distillery as the largest money-maker as he expanded beyond a local market for his whiskey to regional and even national recognition.

His enterprises were not sufficient to absorb Hogg’s high octane energies. Reportedly at the insistence of his friends, he ran for the office of sheriff of Butler County on the Republican ticket in 1892 and was elected.  During that first term he became highly popular for his kindly acts.  One of them later was reported in a Popular Bluff publication called the Ozark Beacon.  The story told of a $200 license fee charged to every circus that came to Poplar Bluff, a cost that one circus manager was unable to meet.  The publication reported:  “Although Mr. Hogg was not particularly fond of the early day circus people who came to the city, he had a soft spot in his heart for the many children who would be unable to witness their first circus unless the necessary license fee was paid. Mr. Hogg never discussed the incident but friends confided in later years, the beloved sheriff paid the $200 circus fee to the city and the children were not disappointed.”

Unable to succeed himself as sheriff by Missouri law,  Hogg ran to become the third elected mayor of Poplar Bluff and won a two year term.  But his true love apparently was being sheriff of Butler County.   In 1902 he was again elected to that office and served through 1906. Once again he was prohibited  from succeeding himself and he retired to private life at the expiration of that term but ran for the office again in 1920. He was elected and served through 1924.  

Hailed for his thoughtfulness and diligence in solving crimes,  Hogg also had difficult moments as sheriff.  In 1903 he accompanied two convicted murderers to the gallows, the first public hangings in twelve years in Butler County.  The first hanging went badly.  Although the condemned man’s neck was broken by the fall, according to press accounts, he was able to speak for a while and his body twitched and contorted for almost fifteen minutes before he died.  Jim Hogg’s reaction to this scene has not been recorded.

Note:  Elsewere on this blog are longer biographies of each of these whiskey men who also served as lawmen.  The reference is:  Ernest Schwethelm, November 15, 2013;  Chalk Beeson, August 17, 2014; and Jim Hogg, November 29, 2013.

Whiskey Men and Music, Music, Music

                            

Foreword:   Wherever a drinking establishment might be found, chances are the sounds of music would be cascading out the door.  In at least one case, as we shall see, the music had been created by the proprietor.  For others the music took several forms, including the formation of bands that achieved regional or local recognition.   This is the story of four “whiskey men” for whom music achieved unusual importance.

The son of a freed slave, Thomas “Million” Turpin learned the niceties of running a saloon from his father, “Honest John.”  Then Tom established the Rosebud Bar in St. Louis and made it the showplace for offbeat rhythms the world has come to know as “ragtime” music.

While working at his father’s St. Louis saloon, Tom began to entertain customers by playing the piano.  Largely self-taught since a boy, he had developed his own hard-thumping style that lent itself to the new syncopated rhythms that people were calling ragtime.  

Turpin also was writing music in this idiom, in 1897 becoming not only the first published St. Louis ragtime composer, but the first black composer with a published rag.  Called the “Harlem Rag” it proved to be successful and was issued in several editions.  It gave the youth the money to strike out on his own.

In 1900 Tom opened the Rosebud Cafe at 2220-2222 Market Street near downtown St. Louis — destined to become a legend.  The saloon, shown here, soon became the gathering place for black pianists during the height of ragtime popularity, hosting such well-known composers as Scott Joplin, Joe Jordan and Louis Chauvin.  Tom Turpin himself often was the star entertainer.  As he got older, he carried three hundred pounds or more on his six-foot frame.  His large stomach made it difficult to see the keyboard so that he often played standing up in front of a raised piano, banging out ragtime tunes in an inimitable style.  

Turpin also continued to write music.  Afterissuing “Bowery Buck” in 1901, he composed “A Ragtime Nightmare,” a tune based on a work by a black playwright.  He followed that up with “Buffalo Rag.”  Although he composed a number of other ragtime pieces, these are the ones by which Tom Turpin is best remembered today. Turpin died in August 1922 at the relatively young age of 50, the cause of death listed as “peritonitis” from a rupture of the abdominal wall.

Although New Orleans was known for its tolerance, John Henry Oelkers ran the kind of saloon that was anathema to many in the city.  The New Orleans Times-Picayune in a page one story on Thursday, September 27, 1883, informed its readers that: “…Oelkers, the keeper of a negro barrel house …is a young German, who sells whisky to negroes at his barrel house.”  Oelkers would have been familiar with the sounds emanating from his drinking establishment on South Rampart Street, music many called “barrelhouse.”

As indicated by the Times-Picayune story, Oelkers was running a particular type of New Orleans drinking establishment.  As  shown right, the wooden structure often was shed-like with a low ceiling and walls lined with barrels of whiskey and beer. Typically a piano stood on a raised platform in a corner of the room and much of the floor was open for dancing or other activities.  Often at the back of a barrel house were rooms where prostitutes to plied their trade.

Oelkers' and other barrel houses were contributing to the American music scene.  The vigorous and unpolished sounds coming from such saloons were making their mark on New Orleans and beyond.  Pounded out on a piano the music was characterized by an accented two-beat rhythm and became known as “barrelhouse” jazz.  

Through the “miracle” of recordings the music that began in saloons like Oeklers’ soon was being heard not just in New Orleans but across America.  Ma Rainey (1882-1936), shown here, was one of the first generation of blues singers to be heard on record.  Billed as “Mother of the Blues,” Rainey caught the barrel house wave, writing and recording “Barrel House Blues:”  

Although Oelker’s and  the other barrel houses eventually disappeared, the music that emerged from them remained vibrant and alive, even spreading worldwide in its appeal as contemporary audiences continued to value its rhythm and vigor. 

Dodge City, Kansas,  was known as the roughest, toughest, most lawless town in the West.  It was, that is, until Chalkley McArtor Beeson, shown left, came to run the famous Long Branch Saloon, shown below stayed to help bring law and order, and in the process organize a highly celebrated cowboy band that played at a Presidential inaugural.

Called “Chalk” all his life, Beeson was born in Salem, Ohio, in 1848.  His early career aspiration apparently was to be a musician and it was said of him that he was so talented that he could play any instrument in the orchestra,  In 1868 at the age of 19 he left home and moved to Denver where he found employment driving a stagecoach and working with a group of musicians.  At the same time he was gaining a reputation for his ability with firearms, eventually becoming sheriff of Dodge and helping to tame it.

Throughout his time in Dodge, Beeson had not forgotten his music.  He first created a small orchestra to play at his Long Branch Saloon for the clientele as they drank, one in which he played violin. The interior is shown here.  In 1879 he organized the Dodge City Cow-Boy Band, a brass ensemble of men dressed in cowboy regalia and carrying six guns along with their instruments, as shown below.  Beeson appears to be sitting at the far right.  The band played nightly outside his saloon.  

When in the summer of 1882 Beeson’s band received an invitation to enter a competition in Topeka, Dodge City cattle men, merchants and ordinary citizens came forward with funds to outfit the members and defray band travel expenses.  Organizers, however, disqualified the Dodge City musicians on the grounds that they were “professionals.”  But Chalk and his cowboys had the last laugh when the band was invited to Washington, D.C., in 1889 to march and play in the Presidential Inaugural parade for Benjamin Harrison.

Born in 1825, Luther Green King, shown left, was the fifth of John and Jemina’s King’s six sons. Upon his father’s death in 1858, he inherited an equal share in 217 acres, enough to begin a small farm. His father’s will also remanded to him and his brothers ownership of two slaves. Distilling may have been a natural step for Luther since he had manpower at his disposal and could easily buy rye grain from nearby growers. Along scenic Little Bennett Creek he built the only distillery ever known to exist in Montgomery County, Maryland, shown below.  King developed a thriving local business.

His first two wives having died, King at 74 married a 19-year-old great grandniece, Mary Lorena.  It was for her -- and probably at her strong urging -- Luther built the large new frame house he called “Trouble Enough Indeed.” We can speculate that this was a reference to problems of keeping a child bride happy.

Besides whiskey, the great passion in Luther King’s life was music. He lived at a time when many communities prided themselves on their brass band. Nearby Hyattstown bragged that its ensemble was “not to be excelled by any band in the county.” As a younger man Luther had learned to play the trombone and was a member of the Clarksburg Band. Subsequently he formed a musical group of his own called the Kings Valley Band. It included at least six other members of the extended King family.  A photo of the band taken in the early 1900s shows Luther, back row, fifth from left, clearly its oldest member.

For whiskey men, music could be a way of expressing themselves, or simply to provide entertainment for their saloon crowd.  Music also provided solace from the stress of daily life, whether it was caused by racial issues or pistol waving gunslingers or a sulky young bride.

Note:  For more details on each of these whiskey men, see the following:  Tom Turpin, May 2, 2017; John Oelkers, January 17, 2017; Chalk Beeson, August 17,  2014; and Luther King, November 9,m 2011.