Max Mann and Booze Along the Bayou

                                         

Bayou Sara,  the Mississippi River town shown above, no longer exists.  When it was a bustling Louisiana port in the second half of the 19th Century, however, Max Mann, the son of immigrant Jewish parents, kept the often rowdy residents and visitors well supplied with whiskey and thereby rose to wealth and local prominence.

Mann’s parents likely were among the Jewish emigres from Europe who often were escaping from religious persecution in their own countries and seeking the opportunities offered by America.  Many of them arrived here with little money and began to forge a living as peddlers, bringing needed goods to farm families and isolated communities.   They invested their money wisely and eventually could open stores.   As one writer has put it, these Jewish emigres lent “much needed merchandising and business skills to agrarian societies along the Mississippi River corridor.

The Manns had elected to settle in a Louisiana river town with a notorious reputation.  According to residents, early in its history ladies did not dare go onto the streets of Bayou Sara, including its main street, shown above, in daytime unescorted — and never after dark.  Saloons abounded, most of them featuring gambling tables.  Drunken brawls were common and since most residents carried pistols killings were not unusual.   It is said that five men were killed in one night in Bayou Sara.

In time things settled down as the town became a busy cotton port with a thriving commercial center and residential areas. It boasted drug stores, sawmills and lumberyards. livestock traders, fish markets, livery stables, grocers, dry goods stores, a bakery, post and express offices, icehouses, banks, and clothiers.  Bayou Sara even had a fair grounds and a ball park.   But the focus of much community life were the saloons.

The most popular drink emporium in town belonged to Max Mann.  Shown above, it was two stories tall and backed on the Mississippi River, the front on Bayou Sara’s main drag.  Like other buildings in town, the top story boasted a porch with a fancy wooden balustrade surrounding it. Max’s place was a frequent stop where both steamboat passengers and locals could get a glass of beer or whiskey.  My guess is that Max and his family lived above the saloon.

I believe that is Max himself standing next to his establishment in the photo right, balancing a bail type jug on his hand.  Not only was he serving up whiskey over the bar, he was selling it in ceramic containers to the locals.  As advertised on the front of his saloon, the jug probably held “Five Feathers Whiskey.”  This was a brand from Edwin Schiele & Company of St. Louis that Mann was importing from up the Mississippi River, carried in the many river boats plying those waters.  As on a second jug shown here, he claimed to be the sole agent for the label in Bayou Sara and vicinity.  This jug, by the way, recently sold at auction for $1,500.  

Five Feathers must have been popular — the saloon shown below during a flood was advertising its “Silver Feathers,” a brand I can find nowhere else and likely named to be competition for Mann’s brand.  Max also was a dealer for “Harper Rye,”  presumably the whiskey that I. W. Bernheim was producing in Louisville, another city with river access for shipping liquor to Bayou Sara.  Mann ran frequent ads for the brand in St. Francisville True Democrat newspaper, emphasizing that Harper Rye had been “scientifically distilled; naturally aged; best and safest for all uses.”

Whatever success Bayou Sara experienced over the years, it could not escape the reality that, as per the picture above, it flooded constantly.  With all its buildings of frame construction, it also suffered from fires.  After one particularly disastrous flood in 1893, Max Mann moved his saloon, lock, stock, barrels and jugs, to Ferdinand Street in St. Francisville, a town located on a high bluff overlooking Bayou Sara.  At this point Max also was wealthy enough to find a place for his family away from his business establishment and built a spacious home nearby on Royal Street.

The U.S. census-taker found the Manns there in 1910.  Max had been married 17 years earlier to a woman named Hettie Schlesinger.   He was 25 when they wed, Hettie was 23.  The couple soon began a family.  When the census taker called there were three children, Theresa, 16; Laurence, 13, and Vivian, 10.  Max’s occupation was given as “proprietor, saloon.” 

Mann was not totally tied up in the whiskey trade.  As early as 1896 he was advertising in the local newspapers his availability as an agent for M. Born & Co., billed as “The great Chicago Merchant Tailors,” a firm that made clothes to order.  

Also active in civic affairs in Bayou Sara,Max was one of a group of local businessmen who sought a public levy to extend the tracks of the railroad into town by putting a spur track from its then terminus south of town along the levee to the upper end. The railroad brought cotton from local plantations to the river packets docked at Bayou Sara.  The petitioners sought by the tax to raise $1,000 to make the extention possible.  In 1905, Mann was elected as a director of the People’s Bank, a financial institution in St. Francisville, a position he held until the bank was sold in 1913.  He also had a political career, serving a term as an member of the Board of Aldermen for West Feliciana Parish (County).

Things changed drastically for the Manns in 1920.  Even though Louisiana had never voted Prohibition and was counted among the “wettest” states in the Union, with advent of the Volstead Act Max was forced to shut down his saloon.   The 1930 census found him and wife Hettie living in New Orleans with his married daughter and their grandchild.  Now age 62, he listed no occupation.  Within a year or so, the couple left New Orleans for Woodville, Mississippi, where they made their home in retirement.    

While on a visit to a daughter in Lecompte, Louisiana, in 1934, Mann was stricken suddenly and died,  leaving behind his widow, three grown children, a grandchild and a brother.  He was buried in the Beth Israel Cemetery near Woodville.   Hettie would join him there ten years later.  Their joint headstone is shown here.

An historian of Bayou Sara and St. Francisville has described the benefits that the Jewish settlers brought to Louisiana:  “Accepted as contributing members of their adopted communities along the Mississippi River corridor, these immigrants as they succeeded in business supported public works and served in important civic offices.”  . 

Edwin Schiele Sat an Autocrat at the Bar

Edwin Schiele’s family were anything but aristocracy.  His father, Sigmund Schiele was a German Jewish  immigrant to America who settled in St. Louis, Missouri. For reasons unknown, in the immediate post Civil War era Sigmund suffered the indignity of being made to swear a special pledge of allegiance to the Union.  Sigmund’s signed oath, shown here, now resides in a Missouri museum.  The practice has subsequently been denounced by observers as a disgrace on the state.  Born in 1862, at the time of this incident Edwin was only three years old.

Not discouraged by his treatment at the hands of Missouri officialdom,  Sigmund engaged in the wholesale liquor business in St. Louis.  With his wife,  Fanny Shulman Schiele, he groomed Edmund for a business career.   The boy attended public schools until he was fourteen, then went to work for a local wholesale notions store called Judd & Pratt.  After three years in that business, Edmund became part of his father's liquor establishment at age 17, as a traveling salesman hawking his father's liquors.  

In 1882, age 56,  Sigmund died and was buried in New Mount Sinai Cemetery in St. Louis County.  His monument is shown here.   His son, now just 22 years old,  took over the father’s business and  changed the name to Edwin Shiele & Co.  The company was located at 107 North Main Street in St. Louis.   After 14 years of building his business,  Edwin in 1898 married Minnie Kramer, daughter of Abraham Kramer.  Over the next few years they had three children,  Herbert, born 1899;  Frances, born 1903, and Edwin Sidney, born 1909.  The family lived at 4558 Washington Avenue.

Schiele proved to be a excellent merchandiser for his alcoholic products.  Among the limited number of brands he featured were “Five Feathers," “Geisha Malt Rye,” and "Old 91,” the last shown in a purple bottle.   His flagship label was "Autocrat Whiskey."  He did not come to “own” that name, however, without a fight.   The Autocrat brand was contested between Schiele and the Wichman, Lutgen Co. of San Francisco. (See my July  2012 post on Lutgen).  Both outfits registered the trademark with the Federal Government in 1905.  How the dispute was settled is not clear, but Schiele continued to feature the Autocrat brand.

His merchandising to saloons included shot glasses and other giveaways, with tip trays being his special mode of advertising for Autocrat whiskey.  Displayed throughout this post are four examples of the lithographer’s art that Schiele featured on his trays.  All of them present two figures and often, but not always,  a bottle.   One shown above is an exception, showing an elderly, apparently married, couple sharing a cup of tea and a newspaper.   The couple shown above seem a  bit more lively and presumably are preparing to quaff a bottle of Autocrat Whiskey.  The same bottle has more prominence in the tableau of a monk playing cards with a vested gent.   It plays an even larger role in the picture of a bare breasted woman and a cherub in a woodsy scene.

As his business prospered, Schiele became well known in club circles,  belonging to the Westwood Country Club,  the City Club,  the Triple A Club and Columbian Club.  A 1921 biography said he was “widely and favorably known in the membership of these organizations.”  He also was active in Masonic orders and attained the 32nd degree of the Scottish rite.  A member of the Ethical Society, he also attended a St. Louis synagogue.

Unlike most whiskey men, in politics Schiele was a Republican, apparently ignoring the many “dry” advocates in the party.  During the height of the Temperance Movement  before nationwide Prohibition, the voters of Missouri rejected prohibition in three separate initiative elections in 1910, 1912, and 1918. When temperance crusader Carrie A. Nation entered a bar in Kansas City in April 1901 and began to smash liquor bottles with her hatchet, she was promptly arrested and fined $500 ($12,926 in 2010 dollars), which the judge stayed as long as she agreed to leave Missouri and never return. The Missouri General Assembly did ratify the 18th Amendment in 1919, but only after it already had received enough ratifications to become part of the Constitution.

As a result of Missouri’s tolerance for alcohol,  Schiele was able to operate for
some 36 years.  In 1903, he moved the company to 204 S. Fourth Street, a location he would occupy for the next 13 years.  About the same time,  as other whiskey wholesalers and blenders were doing, he added to the company name the designation “distillers.”   A final move occurred in 1916 when Schiele moved one last time to 118 North Third Street, before shutting down because of Prohibition.

Even with losing his whiskey business Schiele never missed a beat.  In 1913 with a brother, Seymour, he had founded an advertising business which proved to be very creative and grew, according to contemporary accounts, into one of the leading firms of its kind in St. Louis.  After 1920 he concentrated on the advertising business.  He also was the treasurer of Griesedick Beverage Company.  The Schiele family became well-known nationally for their pioneering work in the phonograph and records industry.  With Edwin’s money backing the effort, son Herbert Schiele founded Artophone in St. Louis.  It produced an early phonograph and subsequently became a national distributor of phonograph records.  Edwin was a director and the outfit’s treasurer and likely principal financial backer.

In 1935, at the age of 73,  Edwin Schiele died in St. Louis and was buried next to his father and mother and other family members in New Mount Sinai Cemetery. Whatever indignities had been visited on his family were long in the past and the Schiele name had come to be highly respected in St. Louis business circles.   Edwin was no autocrat but he put the brand name into many a Midwest saloon.