Herman Eggers and Wetting “Dry” Kentucky

Try to put yourself in Herman Egger’s shoes.  In an overcrowded field of liquor dealers in Louisville, Kentucky, he was trying to distinguish himself and his “Old Drennon” whiskey by emphasizing mail order sales, asserting that for $3.20 he would ship four quarts to the nearest railway point of the buyer.   As more and more Kentucky counties under “local option” laws voted dry, however, he found his business rapidly dwindling. What could he do?

Adding to his problem was a quirk in the laws.  Kentucky banned Eggers from sending his whiskey to any county in the state that banned alcohol.  Because of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, however, liquor dealers other states could send booze by railway express to individuals in those counties with impunity.  Federal courts all over the U.S. had upheld that right.  

Faced with a dismal financial future, Eggers in 1912 from his Jefferson Street liquor house hatched a scheme to sell his whiskey to customers in officially dry Kentucky counties.  He composed and sent a form letter to doctors and druggists in “dry” localities asking them to help him.  In the letter the Louisville liquor dealer pointed out that for “medicinal purposes”  Kentucky law allowed licensed doctors and druggists to receive whiskey shipments in five gallons or less.  Eggers explained:  “There are a number of people in your neighborhood who would like to receive goods but cannot order within the state as the laws prevent shipments….If you will permit those who order to have goods shipped to you, without expense to you, it will be an accommodation to both of us.”

Eggers assured his potential collaborators that his proposal was within Kentucky law and urged them to write him with the names of friends who might be interested in shipments.  As a reward for their trouble in handling his liquor, cooperating doctors and druggists would be given one free gallon of whiskey for every ten gallons he shipped.  “I do not know if this would be legal,”  Eggers acknowledged, but went on to give detailed instructions how the process would work:

“Write on the back of this letter the names of those who may mail me an order in your name and have the goods go to you — they can call at your office for he package, or get it in your name, at the express office.  I will handle the shipments in such a way as to cause you no trouble, and your will receive a gallon of my very finest Old Drennon for your kindness, every time I receive orders for 10 gallons.”

Among the physicians who received Eggers’ letter was Dr. Thomas C. Holloway, an eminent gynecologist of Lexington, Kentucky, a town that intermittently had gone dry.   Dr. Holloway was caustic in his response to Eggers:  “As I have no intention of engaging in the whiskey business, I do not see what right you had to presume I would be interested in your bootlegging proposition.”  

Branding Egger’s proposition as insulting, Dr. Holloways sarcastically added:  Since you doubtless find it profitable to deal with the weaker element of the medical profession, I wonder that you do not branch out a little and include the illegal sale and distribution of cocaine, morphine and some of the other deadly poisons which doctors are permitted to order and which unfortunate human beings often want.”

“As for sending you a list of my friends I must say that unless your whiskey is vastly superior to your ethics, I have no friends for whom I care so little as so expose them to either, and I feel it would be a cowardly way of getting even with my enemies.”

Dr. Holloway ended his broadside by asking Eggers how he had gotten his name and what justification he might have for thinking he would be interested in the Louisville liquor dealer’s scheme.  The outraged physician went further by sending the exchange of letters to the Kentucky Medical Journal, the state’s leading publication for doctors and druggists.  They published it under the headline “Forum” on September 1, 1912.

With Eggers’ scheme exposed, its utility was gone.  Even if tempted initially, the “weaker elements” of the medical fraternity, to use Holloway’s term, likely found themselves walking away from Egger’s proposition once it was widely known to the medical fraternity and likely revealed to law enforcement officials.  Moreover, Eggers had been exposed as someone willing to conspire to evade the law.

Herman Eggers was born in rural Kentucky in October 1857 to Johannes and Amalia Stutenbecker Eggers.  At the time of his birth his father was 18 years old, his mother was 14.  After an elementary education in local schools, Herman moved to Louisville sometime in the 1870s where he likely served an apprenticeship in one of the city’s many liquor houses.

According to Kentucky records, Herman was married in 1881 in Louisville.  His bride was Elizabeth Henrietta  (called “Lizzie”) Simms.  Their union produced five children,  Herman Junior, born 1888;  Hiram — who became a doctor — 1890;  Eva, 1892; Helen, 1896, and Herbert, 1889.  Marriage may have provided the incentive for Eggers, age 25, to strike out on his own.  His advertising materials claimed 1882 as the origin of his company.

Egger’s establishment as described in public records appears to have been a combination liquor store, saloon and grocery.  He was known for heavily advertising his flagship brand, “Old Drennon.”   It likely was named for Joseph Drennon, an early Kentucky pioneer and the man who discovered the healing hot waters of Drennon Springs in Henry County.  Of this whiskey, Eggers boasted: “Old Drennon Wins…Everybody Votes Old Drennon the Best.”

Eggers was not a distiller but was compounding his whiskey from product bought from in-state distilleries so that it could be advertised as the “pure Kentucky whiskey” he claimed it to be.  Blended to achieve a particular color, taste and smoothness, Eggers was selling Old Drennon wholesale in gallon and larger ceramic jugs, two variations shown here.  The one shown left featured a brown Albany slip top and a white Bristol glaze base on which a cobalt label has been under-glazed.  The example below combines the brown top with a basic salt-glaze finish.  

For retail customers, Eggers packaged Old Drennon in labeled bottles with embossing on the glass.  These could be quart sized, as shown in his ads, or flasks in several sizes.  Note that in the flask below, Eggers identified his business as “wines and liquors.”  The 1910 U.S. census listed his occupation as “retail grocery & liquor.” 

Those were prosperous days for Eggers who moved his growing family into a large house at 1181 East Broadway, a home big enough to accommodate a live-in servant woman.  Shown here, the house currently is divided into five apartments.

As the noose of National Prohibition slowly tightened around the Kentucky liquor industry,  Eggers phased out liquor and increasingly emphasized his grocery trade.   After Lizzie died in 1924, Herman, having reached his middle sixties, closed out his grocery business and retired.  The 1930 census found him at the East Broadway address, living with two unmarried adult daughters.  Eggers died in December of that year.  The cause given was heart disease.  He was buried next to Lizzie in Section 5, Lot 136, of Cave Hill Cemetery, a graveyard in which many Kentucky whiskey men are laid to rest.

I began this inquiry into the life of Herman D. Eggers by delving into his attempt to wet “dry” Kentucky with alcohol by convincing doctors and druggists into helping him reach customers in places where spiritous drink was outlawed.  It was a scheme blunted by Dr. Holloway’s scathing public response.  This leaves the nagging question of what effect, if any, the exposure of Eggers’ attempt at “bootlegging” had on his personal life and community standing.

John Nunan Knew the "Stings" of Prohibition

                           

John Nunan was a saloonkeeper in Winchester, Kentucky, downtown shown above. He ran an drinking establishment, shown below, at the corner of Washington and Marcie Street.   The photo indicates a business of some prominence and local prestige and is said to show John’s brother, Dennis, in the doorway at left.  Over the next few years Nunan was to take several “stings” from Prohibition zealots — at least one of them farcical — but in the end he was forced to succumb to them. Nunan’s was one story among thousands across America at the height of the so-called Temperance Movement.

Nunan’s travails began about 1906 when Professor H.K. Taylor, principal of a Louisville training school, was named president of the Kentucky Wesleyan College at Winchester.  This institution, shown below in a postcard view, had been founded in 1866 by the Methodist Church initially as a training academy for preachers.   Business and liberal arts courses later were added to the curriculum and in 1890 women were admitted for the first time.  Prof. Taylor was a well-known figure in church circles and an ardent foe of drinking.  In 1906, for example, he gave a well-publicized speech on how to “Improve the Standard of Civic Life” — presumably by banning drinking.

Early in his presidency of Kentucky Wesleyan, Prof. Taylor became highly affronted by the saloons in Winchester, apparently feeling they were hotbeds of temptation for his male students.  In 1908 Taylor plotted a “sting” he hoped would put Nunan and six other Winchester saloonkeepers either out of business or facing heavy fines and maybe jail time.   Apparently not trusting his older students, Taylor drafted a freshman named Roger Green, a minor, to go into Nunan’s and six other saloons to buy a bottle of beer.  The college president later said he took the step to get proof that could be used in court, including against the saloonkeepers, on selling alcohol to the underaged.

At each location, including Nunan’s, Green was successful in buying beer.  Taylor immediately whistled for the law and the seven saloonkeepers were arrested and hauled into court.  On the day of the trials, the crowd of onlookers was enormous.  The Winchester News reported:   “Nearly every attorney in the city is employed either on one side or the other, as each of the saloon men have a separate attorney.”  Counsels for the defense had a field day, making mincemeat of Prof. Taylor’s scheme.

Being of a theological rather than legal turn of mind, the don had failed to mount an airtight prosecution.  In the initial case brought against a saloon,  young Green said he was sure the proprietor had not sold the beer to him but could not positively identify either of the bartenders.   Other evidence that might have helped Prof. Taylor’s case were the bottles of beer that Green bought in each drink emporium.  Taylor had marked the each of the bottles to show what saloon it came from and had saved them as evidence.  The local newspaper told the rest of the story:  “…But the first night of the trial Prof. Taylor brought the bottles to the police court room and the trial was postponed.  Prof. Taylor left the bottles in the court room but they disappeared and therefore could not be produced.”

The judge summarily dismissed the case on the grounds that not only was there no physical evidence of purchases, Green could not identify who had sold him the beer.  The decision applied to Nunan and the other saloonkeepers, who walked out of court seemingly vindicated.  Prof. Taylor became a laughing stock in Winchester.  Within several months, he resigned as president of Kentucky Wesleyan and his resignation was accepted, seemingly with alacrity, by the Methodist Educational Board.  

John Nunan went back to living a more normal existence.  He had been born in Ireland about 1865, the son of Thomas Nunan,  and immigrated to the United States about 1888.  His older brother, Thomas, had preceded him and was living in Kentucky.  The 1900 census showed the brothers, both bachelors, living together and running a saloon in Winchester.  The 1910 census found John Nunan, still living the bachelor life and recorded his occupation as the proprietor of a saloon.   Nunan’s life would changed in 1917, when he married Elizabeth DeBoor, daughter of Irvin J.  and Julia Shea DeBoor of Lexington, Kentucky.   John was 52 at the time of their nuptials and Elizabeth was 32, an age when many in her time would have considered her a spinster.  There is no record of children from this union. 

Nunan’s saloon seems to have been flourishing.  In addition to selling whiskey over the bar,  the proprietor was decanting barrels of product into gallon and other sized ceramic containers and selling them both to wholesale and retail customers.  He affected a fancy underglaze black label that involved a frame around his name and address.  Examples shown here indicate that the pottery firms creating these containers had limited ability and the labels often were uneven in their  application.   On those shown here Nunan advertised two whiskeys, “Old Anderson” and “Blakemore,” the latter the product of J. N. Blakemore distillery of Frankfort, Kentucky. 

Meanwhile, new prohibitionary stings for Nunan and saloons were building in Kentucky.  This time the antagonist was a woman and a Presbyterian.  Her name was Frances Estill Beauchamp, shown right.  She had moved to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1880 and began forming chapters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union all across Kentucky.  Mrs. Beauchamp summed up her views in a 1911 editorial published by the Prohibition National Committee:    “We mean death to the distillery and the brewery, and on the ways to the end we will lend a hand to put out of commission all their retail agents.”   She had John Nunan in the cross-hairs.

Through Mrs. Beauchamp's strenuous efforts, despite Kentucky being America’s major producer of whiskey, county after county through local options laws voted to ban alcohol sales.   Shown here is a picture of a woman at a Kentucky anti-drink rally with a sign reading “Dry” pinned to her shoulder and accompanied by her two sons.   She held a sign over the kids that said: ”Don’t let the Saloon have a chance at us.”   In 1915 Clark County, of which Winchester is the county seat, an election was held under local option authority that resulted in turning the city from “wet” territory into “dry.”   The result was immediately challenged and an electoral board declared the vote void, only to have that decision set aside by the Circuit Court.  Then on appeal to the Kentucky Court of Appeals the entire matter initially was held in abeyance.  

That did Nunan little good.  While he could continue to operate for a while, his saloon license was due to run out and the Winchester City Council would not issue him or his fellow publicans another.  In a case known as Nunan et al vs. City of Winchester, he took the matter to the local court.  After it ruled against him, he raised the issue to the Kentucky Court of Appeals.  Despite its prior decision, that court refused to overrule the decision of the City Council.  Nunan was out of business.

Having lost his livelihood, and perhaps angered at his treatment by the pious folks of Clark County,  Nunan subsequently moved to Lexington, Kentucky, in “wet” Fayette County.  Just 48 years old, he apparently found employment, likely in the liquor business.  That was not to last.  Mrs. Beauchamp was still on the warpath, declaring her goal to be: “…Total abstinence for the individual and total prohibition for the State.”  She is credited for having a 1919 prohibition amendment adopted to the Kentucky constitution.  The entire state went “dry.”  She and her cohort had successfully killed the distilleries and breweries of Kentucky, as well as its remaining saloons.  National Prohibition followed a year later.  

 

Nunan died at the age of 64 in Lexington.  He may have been in ill health for some time.  His death certificate indicated the cause was a cerebral hemorrhage and that he was retired.  He was buried in Lexington’s Calvary Cemetery on December 9, 1929.  His marker shown above.  His widow Elizabeth would join him in 1945.   

Several recent books have emphasized the political and social importance of the saloon in the development of the United States.   John Nunan was just one of hundreds of publicans all across the country whose liquor business had to cope with constant challenges -- stings -- from prohibitionary forces.  Sadly, Nunan did not live long enough to witness Repeal, the return of alcohol sales to Clark County and Winchester, and a measure of vindication.    

Note:   Despite the end of National Prohibition 81 years ago, a majority of Kentucky counties are still totally or partially “dry.” The legacy of Frances Estill Beauchamp marches on.