Two George Jacksons Struck Gold in Colorado

There are two notable George Jacksons in Colorado history.  One is famous for starting the state’s gold rush when he discovered rich placer deposits on the south fork of Clear Creek.  The other George Jackson, the subject of this post, earned his reputation striking gold as a successful liquor dealer and merchant in Pueblo, Colorado.

George A. Jackson’s discovery of gold occurred early in 1859.  It was followed by other strikes nearby, including a second miner finding the “mother lode” of the Colorado Rockies.  Those events resulted in thousands of prospectors from around the world descending on Clear Creek Canyon.  Many of them could not get their wagons and supplies into the site and set up camp at the mouth of the canyon.  When a group of Eastern miners arrived at the camp later that year, they decided to settle there, laid out a town, and named it Golden City, a name later changed to just plain Golden.

Meanwhile our George Jackson was growing up in New Brunswick.  Born in 1851, he was the son of Scottish immigrants to Canada, although census records indicate his father actually had been born in Portugal.  In 1877 at the age of 26 Jackson emigrated to the United States.  His first years in America may have been spent in Nebraska, if census data are correct.  In 1882 he decided his fortunes lay further West and he headed to Colorado, settling in Pueblo.


At the time Jackson arrived, Pueblo was booming.  The  city was a rail hub with an immense train yard located below the bluff along the Arkansas River.  By 1886 it had become known for its steel mills and was a regional smelting center.   Shown here in 1890, the city at that point boasted a population of 30,000 and was home to thousands of steel and railroad workers as well as employees in adjunct industries.  

Our canny Canadian early saw an opportunity to enter into a range of businesses,  including at various times sales of carriages, farm implements, agricultural products, and hardware.   Jackson’s main pursuit and the major source of his gold, however,  was alcoholic beverages. The workers and their bosses in Pueblo and surrounding regions were a thirsty lot.  Thus was created “Geo. Jackson, Importer, Co.”  Jackson located his store at 317 Union Avenue.  This was the main commercial hub of the city and his store there apparently hummed with activity.

The jugs in which he contained his whiskey were numerous, with several varieties shown above.   They include Bristol glaze containers, some with large cobalt lettering and others with the label barely intelligible.   He also employed two-tone “shoulder” jugs, both with inked and underglazed printed labels.   These jugs, most of them gallon sized, held whiskey.  His whiskey was sold at retail from Jackson’s Union Avenue store, as well as wholesaled to bars and saloons.   Jackson bought the raw product from distilleries in Kentucky and elsewhere, easily shipped to him by rail.  He perhaps did a bit of “rectifying” and sold the blends under his own labels.


Like other liquor dealers of his time, Jackson also merchandised beer.  About a hundred miles  up the road in Golden, in 1873 German immigrants Adolph Coors with a partner had established a major brewery. In 1880 Coors bought out his partner and became the sole owner. In those days many brewers sold their product in large barrels and allowed it to be bottled at the site of retail sales.  Jackson won the exclusive contract to be the Coors agent in Pueblo and surrounding counties.  In the 1900 census,  he gave his occupation as “brewer,”  although his brew arrived by railroad from Golden.

As a bottler he was able to order up embossed glass containers to meet his merchandising needs.  Most of them are trademarked “Geo. Jackson Agt”  with a pictorial monogram.  Shown here are three of Jackson’’s “Coors Golden Beer” bottles.   The first is a smaller “pony” blown in a mold with an applied lip.  The second is a quart in a champagne shape with a blob top.  The third is a quart that features a metallic label and a closure known as a Baltimore loop.    Jackson almost certainly personally chose the design of these bottles.

But it was not all work for the Scots immigrant.  At the somewhat advanced age of 44 and already a successful businessman in 1885 he married a considerably younger woman.  She was Annie, 26, born in Illinois with her mother an Ohioan and her father an Irish immigrant.  The 1900 census found the couple living in a house on 1032 Lake Avenue in Pueblo.   Living with them at the time was George’s aged mother, Lavina, and his 36-year-old brother, Harry.  The census materials gave no indication of children. 

Through this period and into 1900s,  Jackson’s several enterprises were thriving. Pueblo was called “the Jewel of Colorado.”  Union Street continued to be a lively retail avenue, plied by trolleys and an occasional motor car.  A 1910 post card shows the prosperous street as Jackson must have seen it. As nearby states voted to ban alcohol,  he watched mail order sales dwindle but Colorado and Pueblo stayed “wet.”   On February 21, 1914, age 63, Jackson died of unspecified causes.  It is not clear if his business continued  during the six years before National Prohibition would have shut it down permanently.

In the summer of 1921 Pueblo itself was to receive a devastating blow.  Although the populace felt themselves safe from flooding by the Arkansas River, a massive storm unleashed its fury on the area and the reservoirs along the river gave way. Exact numbers were not kept, but it is speculated that hundreds were killed. Union Avenue, shown here after the  deluge,  was inundated under 10 feet of water.  Rail cars and bloated horses floated past once prosperous storefronts. The entire commercial district of Pueblo was wiped out.  Out of necessity, the city moved its business district north to Main Street. Low lying Union Avenue, shown here after the flood, was left largely in its ruined and abandoned state until restored in the 1980s.

George Jackson would surely have mourned loss of his familiar haunts.  But he could rest easy knowing that he had made his mark as a leading whiskey man in the State of Colorado, thereby mining his own kind of gold.

Simon Jung Gave Milwaukee His Best Shots

Once upon a time in Milwaukee there lived a liquor dealer who loved shot glasses and produced them in prodigious numbers to advertise his whiskey brands.  In so doing, it can be said he gave the people of that Wisconsin city his best shots. The dealer’s name was Simon Jung.

It is likely that growing up in his native Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jung knew nothing about American whiskey or how it was measured out behind the bar.  Census data does not record his date of immigration to the United States.  When he arrived, probably in the 1870s, he may have had relatives in Milwaukee where he settled.  Sometime in the early 1880s,  Simon married a woman seven years his junior.  Her name was Adelheid Breslauer and she had been born in Germany and when young emigrated with other family members to Milwaukee.

The Breslauers were themselves liquor dealers with the establishment in 1883 of a retail liquor store on East Water Street,  later moved to  242-244 Broadway.   Simon Jung may have served an apprenticeship with his father-in-law, A. Breslauer,  at the Water Street address but within several years opened his own wholesale liquor dealership, located initially at 425 Chestnut St. on Milwaukee’s East Side.  It apparently was an amicable move,  likely funded by his father-in-law since A. Breslauer was listed as Jung’s partner for one year.


About this time, as well, Simon and Adelheid started their family.  Son Frederick, known as Fred for most of his life,  was born in 1883.   A second son,  Edward, would be born six years later.  After the departure of A. Breslauer from his dealership,  Simon added Michael Weiner as a partner.  In 1897 S. Jung & Company moved from Broadway to three addresses on East Water Street    Shown here in a postcard view circa 1909, Water Street was home to a number of retail and wholesale liquor houses.

In 1906 the company occupied a new building at 236 North Water, possibly built to Jung’s specifications.  According to a contemporary account, the premises consisted of a four-story building with a basement,  30 by 150 feet.  It was equipped with an elevator and allowed the storage of a large amount of stock that included imported liquors from Scotland, Ireland, Holland, France, England,  and the Caribbean.  The company also sold wines from California and Ohio, and  house labels, including “Grape Brandy & Rock and Rye,”  a beverage Simon officially trademarked in 1908.


Most important to S. Jung & Co. were sales of American whiskey.  Jung brought it from the major producing states of the time, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Kentucky. Doubtless he also had a blending operation in his building since he featured several of his own brands.  They included “Homer Club,” “Ole Bull,” and “Underhill,”  the latter which he trademarked in 1906.  His flagship brand was “Mountain King,”  In his 1905 trademark application for this whiskey Jung reserved the name and a label design that entailed,  as he wrote,  “a  scene composed of a group of mountains and on the top of one is a mountain goat.”

By employing salesmen to travel throughout the Midwest, Jung was able to build a customer base for his brands that, to paraphrase a contemporary account, “broadly radiated.”  Not only was he selling liquor in Wisconsin but also in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan.  To keep saloons and retail outlets coming back for their products, most liquor wholesalers featured giveaways to favored customers.  Jung was no exception.  As noted earlier, he loved shot glasses and gave away a wide variety.

The most elaborate was one of four extant shot glasses advertising Mountain King rye.   Although it is not marked,  this shot glass, shown top right, has been identified by experts as the work of George Troug, an Italian-born artist in glass who found his way to Cumberland, Maryland, and its thriving glass industry.  in 1892 he opened the Maryland Glass Etching Works where he produced the premier images found on many American shot glasses.  Jung, with his passion for shots,  sought out Troug’s artistry 

   

Although the Mountain King glass below it lacks similar elaboration, the fluted sides and gothic letters for the message give it a distinction beyond the ordinary.   Although the last Mountain King shot is plain, the letter was done through a soft etch process and is a thin walled item. The same can be said for the final three Jung-produced shot glasses, two issued for Homer Club Rye and one for Ole Bull Bourbon.  Although they are largely without decoration and feature plain lettering, they were a quality giveaway and prominently advertised his whiskeys.   In short,  Jung consistently gave customers his “best shot.”

Jung’s success did not go unnoticed in the Milwaukee business community.  An 1896 publication called “Milwaukee:  Half Century of Progress,” featured the firm and its founder with a laudatory article.   It credited Jung with building public trust of liquors by selling pure and unadulterated products.  It also noted that Simon was a prominent member of the Milwaukee Manufacturers and Merchants Association and an adherent of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization.

As Prohibition forces slowly strangled the Midwest markets for Jung’s whiskey, his business began to suffer.   Throughout the region, town after town, county after county, went “dry” under local option.  In 1916, with strong backing from 

Henry Ford,  Michigan voted a total ban on sales of alcohol.  By 1918, Jung recognized the bleak future and shut the doors of his business.  He never lived to see Repeal.  In 1921 he died at age 71.   He was buried in Milwaukee’s Greenwood Cemetery as his widow, Adelheid, and bachelor sons,  Fred and Edward, stood by his gravesite in the cemetery’s section 3, block 9, lot  6.   They all would join him there eventually, Adelheid in 1931.

The building that housed S. Jung & Company still stands along Water Street.  After the company closed, it lay empty for a time.  Then in 1922, Valentine Blatz, of the Milwaukee brewery family,  moved a candy company to the site.  In 1928 it became headquarters for the Columbia Knitting Company.   Shown here in recent photograph, the building that Jung first occpied currently is home to a supply house for cat medicine with condos on the upper floors.  On the National Register of Historical Buildings,  the structure is a stop on the walking tour of Milwaukee’s Near East Side.

P. Vidvard & Son Wrote Their Names in Cobalt and Stone

Peter Vidvard, an immigrant from France, and members of his family proved to be extraordinary entrepreneurs,  using the money from selling liquor to fund a number of notable enterprises in Oneida County in central New York State.  In the process Peter and son imprinted their names in stoneware and in stone.

The story begins in Nancy, France, where Peter Vidvard was born in 1821.  While details of his early life are sketchy,  it is known that he emigrated to the United States about 1843, settling in Utica, shown here as it looked at mid-century.  Then about 22 years old, Vidvard appears to have entered the retail grocery trade at a time when selling liquor was a principal profit center. Four years later, having saved a little capital, he started his own business, selling liquor and cigars, located at 29 and 31 John Street in Utica.  Later he issued a certificate worth 15 cents in trade noting that address.

About the same time he married a woman several years older than he was.  Her name was Catherine (nee Oster).  Like Peter she had been born in France and had come to America as a child with her family.  Her father was John Oster  a well known grocer who owned a landmark hotel in Deerfield Creek, a village adjacent to Utica.   Records indicate she apparently had an earlier marriage and had been widowed with two children before her marriage to Vidvard.  The couple would go on to have six children of their own,  four girls and two boys.


Peter Vidvard’s business success was rapid, with sales notable throughout Central New York.  As a sign of his prominence, in 1859 he was elected treasurer of the New York State Liquor Dealers Association.  He also brought family members into the business.  Both sons,  John, and, Jules (sometimes rendered Julius), were groomed from an early age to the whiskey trade, working as clerks in their father’s store.  He also employed his nephew,  Francis X. Oster,  as a  salesman traveling throughout much of New York State.  When his stepdaughter,  Josephine,  married an Irish immigrant named John Sheehan,  the son-in-law was brought into the firm.  In 1868 Peter took the step of making him a partner and changed the company name to Vidvard and Sheehan.  A bottle with that name is shown above.


Meanwhile, John Vidvard was demonstrating considerable talent as a businessman.  At the age of 21, with backing from his father’s “large command of capital,”  he started his own company in 1873 to manufacture and sell cotton pants, overalls,  and shirts. He also dealt in other dry goods sold at retail.   Two years later John took over an Oneida County brewery that had been destroyed by fire and rebuilt.  He changed the name to Vidvard Brewery but sold it just a few years later.

The year 1879 marked a major change in the Vidvard firm.  John Sheehan had departed the partnership in 1878 to start his own wholesale and retail drug company in Utica.  Almost immediately Peter made son Jules a full partner and changed the firm name to P. Vidvard & Son.   He marked this occasion by commissioning a special whiskey jug that displayed the new name and the date.

He ordered this stoneware containers from the famous White’s Utica pottery.  This ceramics factory had been founded  in 1839 by Noah White, formerly a barge pilot on the Erie Canal.   White saw that Utica was an ideal spot for a pottery.  The canal could be used to transport clay from New Jersey and return finished products to markets in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia.  His stoneware, as the crock shown here, often used hand-drawn cobalt designs.  Vidvard saw the benefit of having his fancy containers made right in town.  Note the similar decoration on the 1879 whiskey jug.   Other containers shown here, although unmarked, also show White’s Utica characteristic features.

Although the Vidvards continued to prosper, their success was not without its pitfalls.  In  1881 a local woman named Margaret Rawlins filed for civil damages against Peter Vidvard.   In court she testified that her husband, upon whom she and her children depended for support, went drinking at the bar of a Utica hotel called the “The Yorkville House.”  She claimed that he got drunk on liquor sold him there, fell from the loft of a barn on the premises, broke his arm and sustained other injuries that prevented him from working for more than six months.

Although Vidvard owned the hotel, he had leased it to a “Mrs. B” who operated it.  Ms. Rawlins obviously saw Peter, rather than the hotel management, as having the deep pockets to pay compensation.  The jury was sympathetic to her story and awarded her $150.  Vidvard appealed the verdict to the New York Supreme Court which ruled on the case in 1884.  The high court overturned the earlier verdict finding that there was no evidence that Vidvard had been responsible or negligent in any way for the accident.  It stated: “If the sale of three glasses of whiskey to the same person within a few minutes would authorize an award of exemplary damages against a tenant, it would not be in a case against a landlord without further proof.”  And there was none.

Happy as Peter must have been about the judgment, he was facing other difficulties.  His nephew,  Francis X. Oster,  in 1884 had quit his uncle’s employment and struck out independently.  Initially with partners, Oster started his own wholesale and retail liquor business in Utica, competing with P. Vidvard & Son.  More important,  Peter’s own health had been declining for the past several years.   In June 1885, he died, age 65 years, 9 months and 12 days old.  A member of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Utica, we can assume he was buried in the church cemetery at Webster and Eagle Streets, surrounded by grieving family and friends. Although written before his death, the following tribute in a tome called “A Historical, Statistical & Descriptive Review” of Oneida County might serve for Peter’s obituary: “We may fairly say that no one in this community is more highly respected and esteemed for his general upright dealing and amiable and generous disposition.”

The business of P. Vidvard & Son was carried on by Jules for a number of years after his father’s death.   White’s Utica Pottery, challenged by competition for markets, went out of business in 1910.  Thus all the containers shown here are at least 103 years old and possibly a decade or two older.

Lacking a picture of Peter Vidvard tombstone,  we do have his name carved in marble as one of the donors in 1870 to purchase a new bell for St. Mary’s Church.  It can be found at the lower right hand corner of the list of names on the tablet shown here.  Unlike the other people memorialized for their gift, Peter chose to advertise. The name inscribed is P. Vidvard & Son.

The Hasterliks: Six Brothers and Whiskey Galore

There were six Hasterlik brothers,  all of whom spent some time in the liquor business in Chicago.  Their principal company, Hasterlik Bros., had a thirty-five year run and over time merchandised dozens of whiskey and other spirits brands.

The brothers were all born in Slatina, Bohemia, the sons of Joseph and Esther Hasterlik. In 1874, Ignatz at the age of 16, with his younger brother, Charles, only 14, with a third brother, Adolph,  emigrated to the United States heading straight for Chicago.  There they joined another brother, Simon, who had preceded them and was living with an aunt, Katherine Steiner.  Katherine’s husband appears already to have been in the liquor business and had taken Simon as a partner.

Not long after their arrival, Ignatz and Charles, shown here in maturity, pooled their meager capital and started their own small liquor store.   The business grew rapidly and as it did other members of the Hasterlik family over time arrived in Chicago.  They included Henry, who was blind, Samuel, the youngest,  a sister Babette, and last the parents, Joseph and Esther.

By 1886,  Ignatz and Charles had expanded their trade to wholesale liquors and wines, and advertised themselves as importers and wholesale dealers in bottlers supplies, manufacturers of cased liquors,  distiller/rectifiers of cordials and whiskeys and brewers of lagered beers.  As shown on a letterhead from that era, their address was a large building at 216 and 218 Randolph Street, Chicago.   Of this facility, the Chicago Times in 1892 reported:  This is among the leading houses in its line in the West. It carries the largest stock of the finest goods, at all times, the stock on hand seldom, if ever, falling below $400,000 in value, while the sales reach $1,500,000 a year. It occupies the entire five floors, 40 x 200 feet each, in the great building where their offices are located.

The Times noted that the Hasterliks' brewery, known as the Best Brewing Company of Chicago, was located at the corner of Hendron and Fletcher Streets and covered grounds 135 by 250 feet.  The brewery was under the direct management of Charles Hasterlik.  Brothers Simon and Adolph joined Hasterlik Bros. but eventually left the company,  apparently under good terms.  Simon continued in the liquor business on his own from 1892 until 1918.  Adolph appeared in Chicago directory listings running a saloon and alcohol retail sales but later left the whiskey trade to become an insurance agent.  In 1889 the youngest Hasterlik, Samuel, was made a partner in the liquor firm.

Hasterlik Brothers over time advertised some eighty brands of spirits.  Those included “German Nordhausen Kornschnapps,”  “Old Shamrock Irish Whiskey,” and “Thistle Dew Old Scotch Whiskey.”   The partners also featured a menu of tonic drinks. “Brazilian Quinine Bitters” would cure indigestion, dyspepsia and nervous debility.   “Balsam Tolu”  was good for such ailments as bronchitis, asthma and even tuberculosis.   Each of these remedies had a strong alcoholic content.

The flagship whiskey brand was “Daniel Brady Rye and Bourbon.”  Company advertising showed that  Daniel Brady whiskey and rye bottlings came from the Old Times Distillery (Kentucky) and the Penwick distillery (Pennsylvania), respectively.  Shown here is a saloon sign that portrays a Wild West scene, illustrating cowboys chasing one of their kind who is holding up a bottle of whiskey. The caption says:  “The Demand.” The next picture shows the cowboys enjoying a drink as of one their number slugs down booze straight from the bottle.  The sign also advertises other Hasterlik brands:  “Physicians and Surgeons Medical Rye,”  “Lakeside Club Rye & Bourbons,”  “Paul Revere Rye & Bourbon,”

A second giveaway sign to saloons advertised two additional Hasterlik brands, ”Queensbury Rye” and “Crab Blossom Rye."  Like the earlier advertisement this display featured men on horseback, but this time at a race track, and the drinks were being poured, not on the prairie, but in the judges’ stand.  Interestingly, the Hasterliks do not seem to have registered the trademark any one of their brands.

Meanwhile the Ignatz and Charles were having personal lives.  Ignatz, now in his forties was found by the 1900 census unmarried and living with his blind brother, Henry.  They each gave their occupation as “liquor wholesale.”   In 1906, at age 48, Ignatz abandoned bachelorhood to marry Lillian, a woman twenty years younger.   She had been born in Chicago of immigrant parents from Austria.  Ignatz and Lillian had one child, Therese, born the same year as their marriage.  Younger brother Charles had married much earlier, about 1883. His bride was Louise.  Born in France and an immigrant to Chicago she was only three years his junior.  This couple had one child, Clara, born in 1884.  The 1900 census found a bachelor brother, Samuel, age 34, living with the couple.

By this time the Hasterliks clearly had a dynasty going.  A 1906 directory of Chicago directorships painted the picture:   Ignatz was president, treasurer and director of Hasterlik Brothers and a vice-president and director of Fairmont Brewing and a director of the Best Brewing Company. Charles was president, manager and director of Best Brewing Company, a director of Hasterlik Brothers, and a director of the Fairmont Brewing Company of Cincinnati and the Economical Beer Brewing Co. of Chicago.  Henry, despite his visual handicap, had been tapped as a director of Hasterlik Brothers and all three breweries.  Samuel was a vice president of Hasterlik Brothers and Fairmont Brewing and a director of Best Brewing.  Simon, the eldest who operated his own liquor store now was vice-president of a Chicago brewery called Crown.  The sister, Babette, had married Ignatz Neumann, who was listed as secretary of the Hasterliks' Best Brewery. Only Adolph, now selling insurance, was omitted from the directory.

In 1894, the Hasterliks decided their quarters on Randolph Street were too cramped. That year they moved to 271-273 Franklin Street and when that structure eventually proved inadequate, moved again in 1909 to 407-415 Aberdeen Street.  That building, shown here, was three stories and a half-block long.  It was the company home when Prohibition shut down all the Hasterlik alcohol-related enterprises in 1919.

I have not tried to trace the Hasterliks into the post-1920 period.  Their company and brands, like most others, did not survive the 14 years until Prohibition was repealed and liquor once again was legal.  My guess is that all the brothers had built sufficient fortunes by that time to survive the shock of the Dry Era.

A. P. Simms Was “In” and “Ousted” in Mississippi

A.P. Simms once was a big man in Natchez, Mississippi.  He owned a furniture shore.  He owned a meat market.   He owned a grocery store. He owned an express and telegraph company. He owned a saloon and a flourishing liquor business.  That profited him very little when, in 1909 he was, as a Mississippi court ruled in unusually strong terms, “perpetually banned from doing business in the state.” 

From indications, Simms was born Alpha P. Simms, likely in Arkansas.  For most of his early life, he seems to have avoided census-takers.  By the time Simms entered the public record in the late 1800’s he was already a thriving merchant in Natchez, Mississippi, with establishments on the town’s main commercial avenue,  Franklin Street, shown here as it looked in 1900.  He owned the A.P Simms Furniture Store, a large retail establishment that spread from 627 to 635 on Franklin. Simms’ meat market made news in Natchez when it burned in  1907.

This energetic merchant also was a family man.  From burial records and other sources, his wife was Mary Watkins, apparently known by a nickname “Cle.”  She was six years Simms junior and likely also Arkansas born.  Records indicate only one son, born in 1889 and given a name that indicates his father’s sly humor:  Jesse James Simms.

Simms big money maker was whiskey.  He ran his saloon in connection with a grocery store as attested by a drink token, selling whisky by the drink over the bar and bottled for retail customers.  He appears to have been a rectifier, not a distiller, a dealer who mixed liquor up in the back room and sold it in his own containers.  In Simms' case, and one of the reasons he is remembered, his whiskey was sold in a variety of stoneware jugs.  He must have kept potters working in the Mississippi Delta very busy turning out his containers.  Some are primitive, with rough exteriors and his name and "fine whiskey" stenciled in cobalt across the front. Others bear more sophisticated lettering and Albany slip brown tops on Bristol glaze white bodies.

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Simms did not just practice his enterprise on the Natchez side of the Mississippi River.  He also ran a saloon on the west bank, at Vidalia, Louisiana. The cross river proximity of the town is shown below.  That liquor outlet got him in trouble with the authorities in Vidalia.  In 1900 he was sued by the town for the amount of  $750, the price of a retail saloon license.   Simms claimed he already had a license and did not need another.   He was, he said, conducting a “Jim Crow” saloon.  He was selling to whites at one bar and to African-Americans at another bar, separate from the first but in under the same roof.  The saloon was so constructed that the bartender could serve whites on one side and then step immediately around the corner to the colored bar and serve customers. His lawyer likened the arrangement to the Jim Crow sections on railway and trolley cars.

When the district court dismissed this argument and ruled for the town, Simms appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court.  That body contended that the Jim Crow argument held no water.  Louisiana law mandated, the court ruled, “that there be separate saloons, kept in separate buildings, one from the other, i.e. the white separated from the colored.”  The panel ordered Simms to buy another license and pay court costs.

A more drastic blow to Simms’ liquor business was to fall eight years later. The voters of  Mississippi with their strong ties to the Baptist Church in 1908 voted a complete ban on the sale of alcohol throughout the state.  Natchez, despite its reputation as a rip-roaring river town, was left high and very dry.  A. P. Simms was undaunted.  Forced to shut down his saloon and liquor retail operation,  he simply moved his business across the river to “wet”  Louisiana and set up shop.  A Simms jug dated 1909, shown here, helps tells the story.  Not only did Simms plan to sell whiskey in Louisiana,  but also to send it into an increasingly thirsty Mississippi.  Several state courts had ruled that the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution made mail order sales into “dry” areas legal until such time as the U.S. Congress decreed otherwise.

Although liquor dealers often sent their products into states where liquor was banned via existing parcel companies and railway express,  those conduits increasingly were being harassed by arrests and legal action from local and state authorities, despite the Interstate Commerce clause. As a result, many carriers were refusing to carry booze into dry areas. Simms, always the entrepreneur, sought to obviate that problem by establishing his own carrier in 1908.  He called it the “Simms Express & Telegraph Company.”  He clearly intended it to be a large operation, advertising for an electric generating plant with sufficient output to supply 250 large lights.   His intent appeared to be taking telegraphed orders for whiskey and shipping it through his Louisiana operation back into Mississippi,  delivering it via his own express company.

It did not take officials in the State of Mississippi long to determine that A.P. and the Simms Express and Telegraph Company were attempting to skirt Prohibition laws.  In 1909 they enjoined him from selling or delivering liquors in the state.  Simms, not one to buckle to the authorities, took the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court asking that the injunction be dissolved.  The court not only disagreed, it made the injunction permanent.   Simms was  enjoined “perpetually” from doing business in Mississippi,  his company was declared “ousted from the State” and he was required to pay hundreds of dollars in attorney fees, expert witnesses and all court costs. 

Simms was finished as a whiskey man in Mississippi but apparently continued his Louisiana saloons, white and Jim Crow, in Vidalia, as well as maintaining a wholesale liquor trade.  When Louisiana went dry with the imposition of  National Prohibition in 1920, he was forced to shut those operations down and moved to New Orleans where he ran what has been described as “cheap hotel or rooming house.”  When the fire marshall in 1923 ordered the building torn down, it elicited three lawsuits from Simms in the courts of Louisiana.  As usual, he lost and was assessed all court costs.

In 1927 at the age of 62,  A.P. Simms passed away.  Ousted perpetually in life from Mississippi by court order he returned there in death.  His monument can be found in the Zurhellen Section I of the Natchez City Cemetery where he lies next to his wife.  But the true monuments to this enterprising (but not always successful) whiskey man are the many and varied stoneware jugs he left behind.

Sonn Brothers: Jewish Cowboys in Manhattan?

In July 1888 the New York Times reported a court appearance in which one of New York’s “Finest” described how he, a cop policing his beat along Seventh Avenue in Manhattan,  saw a two men, both on horseback, charging down the busy central city street at what he  described as a “furious gallop.”  He gave chase and caught one of the men and arrested him but the other rider got away.  The culprit’s name was Henry Sonn, one half of Sonn Brothers, well known in the Big Apple as liquor merchants.

Was Henry Sonn trying out to be a cowboy?  Was his brother, Hyman Sonn, the horseman that got away?  Were the Sonn Brothers, in effect, in the way of becoming Jewish Cowboys in Manhattan?   It could be argued that the siblings exhibited many of  the positive characteristics attributed to  cowboys, namely, fearless against the odds, adventurous spirits, multi-talented and coming out winners in the end.

The Sonn brothers were far from the “manor born.”  Their father, Hess Sonn, was a emigrant from Bavaria whose occupation was given in the U.S. census as “peddler.”  Hyman was born overseas in 1851 and as a mere babe accompanied his father and mother when they emigrated to the United States the following year, settling in New York.  Henry Sonn was born in New York a year later.  Both received public education and were schooled religiously in their Jewish heritage.  When and how they entered commerce is obscure, but in 1875 a business directory lists the Sonn Brothers selling fish at at 119 Warren Street.  In succeeding years they were recorded in New York City directories as grocers, first at 181 Reade Street and subsequently at 83 North Moore Street.


As grocers, they also sold liquor and about the turn of the century, the brothers made a shift in their mercantile interests and established Sonn Bros. Company, wholesale and retail liquor dealers.  The 1900 census found them living on West 74th Street in Manhattan in adjacent townhouses.   Their store initially was located at 410 Washington Street, with a move to 145 Washington by 1906.  Shown above is a Sonn wall sign from a Washington Street location.

Hyman and Henry were not distillers, but rectifiers, taking supplies of “raw” whiskey, mixing them to taste and bottling them in flask sized and larger glass bottles embossed with their name.  Bottle diggers continue to find Sonn containers in privies and dumps in the New York area.  Unlike many wholesalers who featured a blizzard of brand names in hopes of snaring customers,  Sonn Bros. bucked the trend and essentially featured only two labels.

Their flagship brand was “Buckingham Rye,” whose trademark the firm registered with the Federal Patent and Trademark Office in 1906.  The label featured a shield with the brother’s logo on it.  The brothers may have revolted against industry wisdom by sticking to two brands, but they were in the mainstream of their trade in being generous with their giveaways to bars and restaurants stocking their brands.  If a saloonkeeper featured Buckingham Rye he could expect to be offered a colorful reverse glass sign for his establishment.   The Sonns also could supply him with shot glasses and a back of the bar bottle with attractive an ad for Buckingham Rye.  Nor did the brothers neglect their second brand, “Old Cabinet Rye.”  That whiskey could boast shot glasses, one fancy with a rosette design and another plain, as well as a back-of-the-bar bottle with a gilded label that featured Old Cabinet on one side and Sonn Bros. on the other.

As their liquor trade grew, the brothers expanded to offices in Philadelphia and Chicago.   As early as 1900 the Sonns also opened a thriving real estate business in New York City, demonstrating their many talents.  The 1900 census listed Henry as a realtor with no mention of the whiskey interests. The brothers also were prominent in Jewish philanthropic affairs, contributing considerable amounts of money to less fortunate members of their religious community.  For a time Hyman was active as a member of the Board of Jewish Charities of New York.

Through their multiple enterprises the brothers continued to grow prosperous.  That was made clear in a New York Times story headlined “Fire’s Havoc in Mansion.”  It recorded an early morning blaze that raged through the four story residence of Hyman Sonn. It was located at 29 West Seventy-second street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  The fire destroyed, the story said, “sumptuous decorations and many valuable works of art.”  Hyman and his entire household escaped to the street in their night clothes but were able to snatch $30,000 worth of jewels (worth at least 10 times that today)  from the flames.

Another disaster was on the horizon for the Sonns with the coming of National Prohibition in 1920.  Unlike other liquor dealers who were bankrupted by its advent,  the brothers had been provident in being able to fall back on their flourishing real estate business.  The 1921 Manhattan telephone directory no longer listed them as liquor dealers, but rather as "Sonn Bros. Import & Export Co.” at the same Washington Street  address.  In the Exporters' Encyclopedia, 17th Annual Edition, 1922, they were described as having  “Foreign Markets: Africa, South and Central America, Far East.  Specialized in: Machinery, chemicals, paper, textiles, general merchandise." The Sonn Bros. import/export business stayed at that address until approximately 1925. After 1925 Hyman and Henry seemed to have been engaged exclusively in real estate.

Oh yes,  we never settled on Henry Sonn riding roughshod down Seventh Street in downtown Manhattan. He was adamant in claiming he was not trying to emulate a cowboy. He told the judge that he was just learning to ride a horse, that he lost control of the animal while practicing with an instructor, and the horse on its own charged down the street with Henry hanging on for dear life.  The second rider clearly was not his brother, Hyman, but his unnamed riding instructor, who had fled police rather than be arrested.  As it turns out, the Sonns, who had many positive qualities expected of cowboys, were not emulating their Wild West riding style. The judge bought Henry’s story and dismissed the charges.