E. R. Lilienthal: Noble (Cyrus) of Western Whiskey

  

Shown right, Ernest Reuben Lilienthal was the scion of a family that had no businessmen in it.  His father Sam was a famous homeopathic doctor and his uncle Max a well known rabbi.  Nevertheless, Ernest forged a highly successful business career in the Western liquor trade selling a brand of whiskey called “Cyrus Noble.”

The Lilienthal family had originated in a valley in Schnaittach-Huttenbach, Germany, a Jewish enclave, and until 1814 had been named Seligmann until an ancestor changed it to Lilienthal, meaning “lily of the valley.”  Sometime during the 1840s, Dr. Sam and Rabbi Max and their wives had emigrated from Germany, settling in Lockport, New York, near Buffalo.  There Ernest was born in 1840.  He had a good education culminating in a law degree from the Cincinnati Law School.

Lillienthal never practiced.  Cincinnati also was the home of Rabbi Max’s good friend, Julius Freiberg of the firm of Freiberg & Workum, wholesale liquor dealers, rectifiers and distillers of whiskey.   Max convinced Freiberg to give his nephew a job.  The newly-minted attorney began in the blending department and, impressing the partners, subsequently was sent as a salesman to New York City.  

At the time Freiberg and Workum’s principal brand was Cyrus Noble Bourbon, named after an Ohio man whose talent for tasting and blending whiskey earlier had earned him the superintendent’s job in their distillery.  Noble, however, was a heavy drinker and, so the story goes, one day while inebriated and checking a premium vat of whiskey, fell in and drowned.  Nothing would do but to name the company’s flagship whiskey as a memorial to Cyrus. 

Lilienthal strongly embraced the brand and convinced Freiberg & Workum to give him the financial backing to establish a wholesale liquor agency in San Francisco.  Arriving in town in 1871, he lost no time in renting store space at 223 California Street and putting out his sign:  “Lilienthal & Company.” At the outset he bought his liquor only from Freiberg & Workum.  They made sure he was well stocked with Cyrus Noble and their other straight and blended brands.

The whiskey was shipped in barrels, most often on sailingships that took it around Cape Horn.  The rock and roll ride at sea widely was believed to speed aging and add flavor.  Once landed in San Francisco, Lilienthal sold the liquor by the barrel or bottled and sold it by the case to saloons and restaurants. 

Through the 1880s, Lilienthal’s traveling salesmen, marketing an expanding list of alcoholic products, fanned out through the West, not only in Pacific Coast states but throughout Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Utah and Montana.  The sales force even made forays into Mexico and Central America in search of customers.

With the aid of these efforts and vigorous outdoor advertising, such as the huge painted sign on a San Bernardino building, Lilienthal & Company grew rapidly and by 1895, it had become the largest wholesale liquor company on the West Coast.   As Lilienthal diversified his business, the distilling and rectifying operations were hived off and became “Crown Distilleries,”  a name that occurred on the labels of his whiskey and embossed on bottles of Cyrus Noble. 

In the meantime, Ernest was having a personal life.  In May 1876 he married Hannah Isabelle (called “Bella”) Sloss in San Francisco.  He was 34, his bride was 20 and the daughter of Sarah and Louis Sloss, a prominent member of the Alaska Fur Company.  The Lilienthal’s first child was born a year later.  They would go on to have a family of seven, including four sons, all of whom later would be employed in their father’s liquor interests.

In their 1968 book on “Spirits Bottles of the Old West,” Bill and Betty Wilson provided some observations into Lilienthal’s personality:  “A good salesman, Ernest talked freely in a deep baritone voice.  His reputation for fair dealing, his judgment of markets, his ability to make quick sound decisions, and the assurance he had for his product won him a respect not always accorded to those in the industry…He could talk well…and could argue in legal terms on almost any subject.  He rarely showed anger and never grew personal — a quality his customers enjoyed.”

Within two decades of Lilienthal’s arrival in San Francisco, Cyrus Noble had become a favorite among Western whiskey drinkers.  The story is told that in May of 1899 when George Dewey, “the hero of Manila Bay,” was informed of his promotion to Admiral of the United States Navy he celebrated with a friend: “He reached for a bottle of Cyrus Noble, a sour mash bourbon, and filled two glasses.”  They drank a toast.  

In 1901, another story goes, a thirsty prospector named John Coleman stumbled into Searchlight, Nevada, willing to trade his claim for a bottle of the best bourbon in town.  It turned out to be a bottle of Cyrus Noble.  When the claim later yielded more than $250,000 in gold (more than $7 million today) it was christen the Cyrus Noble Mine.

Lilienthal was lavish with his giveaways to saloons, restaurants and other establishment carrying his liquor.  Shown throughout this post are bar signs he provided, all of them with a “Old West” motif.  He also handed out multiple varieties of back-of-the-bar bottles and shot glasses, many advertising Cyrus Noble whiskey.

Other Lilienthal family members were enlisted in the business.  Albert, a son of Rabbi Max, and Ernest’s first cousin joined the Lilienthals in San Francisco with the idea of developing the hops and grain business of the company.  He did not like California, according to the Wilsons, and returned to New York.  There, with his sibling Theodore, he founded Lilienthal Brothers, the East Coast representative of the family’s liquor interests.

Ernest Lilienthal as he aged turned over responsibilities for running his multifaceted liquor-based empire to family members, chief among them his eldest son, Benjamin.  Anticipating the coming of National Prohibition, they shut down Crown Distillers Company in 1917.  The 1920 census found father and son both claiming their occupation as “sugar” merchants, likely one of the subsidiary businesses they had spun off from Lilienthal & Co.   Ernest lived long enough to see America go dry, dying in December 1922 in San Francisco.  He was 76 years old.

Throughout National Prohibition Benjamin kept the trademark for Cyrus Noble whiskey but sold it in 1934 to his brother Samuel as Repeal approached.  Samuel in turn sold the rights to the name to the Haas Brothers, related to the Lilienthals by marriage.  Originally San Francisco grocers, the Haases switched to whiskey wholesaling and continued to market Cyrus Noble for a number of years.

A final appreciation of Ernest R. Lilienthal, a man who built the largest liquor wholesaling house on the West Coast and made a household name of Cyrus Noble whiskey, can be gleaned from the Wilsons’ biography.  His customers, they said, “got good liquor…and plenty of good conversation” from an urbane entrepreneur with an aristocratic bearing.  Lilienthal truly had become a recognized nobleman of American whiskey.

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.”