The Whiskey Man Who Loved Chickens

Ernest Kellerstrass and His Chickens

As hard as it may be to believe, the young man with the cigar shown here talking to a rooster and surrounded by newly hatched chicks had a earlier, highly successful career as a distiller and liquor dealer.  His name was Ernest Kellerstrass and he made his mark in both whiskey and chickens in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ernest was born “Ernst” circa 1866 in Peoria, Illinois, the son of Fredrich Robert Kellerstrass, a German immigrant who ran a candy store.  His mother was Margaretha Augustine.    Their son appears to have been a “go-getter” from an early age.  In the 1880 census, when Ernest was but 14 years old, his occupation was given as “baker.”  Moreover, he is on record claiming he began his interest in chickens about the age of eight.

Kellerstrass appears to have grown up in Illinois and, according to information in Ancestry.com, was twice married there.   His first wife was a woman named “Daisy” --no last name given and fate unknown.  He subsequently married Emily Guesewelle, born in 1861 in Atchison, Kansas.  They would have three children,  Grace, Robert and Karl,  all born in Illlinois.   What brought Ernest to Kansas City and the liquor trade is unclear but his success appears to have been very rapid.

Kellerstrass, still in his 30s, showed extraordinary initiative.  About 1899 he established his company as the successor to the Columbia Supply Co. and located his main office in Kansas City, selling stock in the Kellerstrass Distilling Company  at $10 a share.  When he

Label with Distillery Picture

listed the officers of the firm, he named himself,  his children and other Kellerstrass relatives. He also bought a distillery in Paradise, Clay County, Missouri, that had been founded about a decade earlier.  Kellerstrass illustrated the facility on his labels. Through his distillery he was able to insure a secure supply of raw whiskey for his brands.  With success he created a separate sales depot across Missouri in St. Louis.  As shown below on his letterhead,  Kellerstrass emphasized his access to railway express to send his goods West from Kansas City and East from St. Louis.

The St. Louis Depot

He packaged his whiskey in embossed glass bottles, often covered by a colorful label,  including, as shown here, a picture of his St. Louis depot.  Like many liquor dealers of his time Kellerstrass featured giveaway items to favored customers, among them gold rimmed shot glasses. He also issued  the "Kellerstrass' Dream Book", a 32-page booklet that purported to explain the meaning of images seen in dreams. Despite its intriguing cover, the publication, issued about 1903, was a thinly-veiled advertising vehicle for Kellerstrass Rye and Whiskey.

Primarily operating a mail order liquor house, Kellerstrass offered premiums to retail customers.  He issued one certificate for each gallon of whiskey ordered.  Nine certificates earned a pen knife,  38 a revolver,  80 a double gauged shotgun and 300 a buggy.  Short a certificate or two?  Kellerstrass would would give you additional chits at a cost of 25 cents each.  By 1903, Ernest had gained notice from the Missouri business community and media for his success.   Bearing the headline “The Kellerstrass Christmas,” The Kansas City Journal in its Dec. 25, 1903, edition ran the following story:

Probably the most generous Christmas giver in Kansas City yesterday was Ernest Kellerstrass, the big distiller, whose presents to those who serve him, all given in gold, amounted to just $2,710. Every man and woman in his employ, or who has been of service to him in the last year, received gifts ranging from $5 to, in one case, $1,000 in gold. The telephone girls at the Central office, the express wagon drivers, the postman and everyone else who came in touch with his enormous business, was remembered.

The princely generosity of Mr. Kellerstrass had been well known in the past, but this year he fairly outdid himself. "But the Kellerstrass Distilling Company never did such a business in its life as in this year," said he, when speaking modestly of his munificence, and I wanted all those who had helped its success to share in its good fortune."
The employees of the company did not forget Mr. Kellerstrass either. The women "chipped in" and bought him two magnificent imported tankards, while the men combined in a smoking set of horn and ivory, mounted in gold, with his monogram on the ivory. Two handsomer gifts were not given yesterday.

Leavening this local celebrity status, Ernest suffered a personal tragedy.  His wife, Emily, age 41, died, leaving him with three small children.  He married again within a relatively short time.  This time his wife was Clara Krull.  According to the record in Ancestry.com, she was the daughter of John Henry and Emma Krull and hailed from Steubenville, Ohio.  Clara was 12 years younger than Ernest.  The couple would have four more children, all girls.

Inexplicably, in 1904 and at the height of his success, Kellerstrass, still short of 40 years old, sold out his distillery and mail order  liquor empire to a syndicate from St. Louis.  The new managers operated the business under the Kellerstrass name until 1916 when they were forced to shut down.  The Webb-Kenyon Act of Congress in 1913 had forbidden mail order sales of liquor into “dry” areas of the country, killing off their freight express trade.  After that it was only a matter of time.

Meanwhile, Kellerstrass with wife and family had retired to his chicken ranch.  There he tackled farming chores with typical enthusiasm, energy and intelligence.  He built new chicken houses according to his own design and began to breed a superior kind of poultry.  The eggs from the Kellerstrass Farm became known regionwide for their freshness and quality.  Show here is truckload of his eggs on their way to consumers.   Note the antique vehicle hauling them to market.

Soon many in America would know about Kellerstrass and his chickens. In 1910, after only a few years in business,  he self-published a book called “The Kellerstrass Way of Raising Poultry” and charged $1 for it.  The picture that began this article, showing the author talking to a rooster, was on the cover.   Clearly very proud of the progress he had made with his chickens, the book is full of advice to poultry raisers.  Kellerstrass introduced the volume by saying:  “It has been constant aim in writing this book to use common sense, and to give the public as much good practical advice as I possibly could,  and remember, that this book was written by a man who is out working with his chickens ever day.”

In the 1920 census,  Kellerstrass gave his occupation as “farmer. He does not show up in the 1930 census but in 1940 he was listed as “retired.”  Shown here are Ernest and Clara in later life.  Both look like vigorous elderly folks.  In 1942, Ernest died,  age 80. His wife, Clara, outlived him by 17 years,  passing at the age of 85.

A nagging question remains:  Why did Ernest Kellerstrass leave his highly successful whiskey business for chicken farming?  Did the St. Louis syndicate make an offer too good to turn down?  Or did Kellerstrass foresee that the mail order whiskey business eventually would be doomed by Prohibition forces?  Or is it possible his third wife did not like the whiskey trade?  All are plausible explanations.  But I recall Kellerstrass’ declaration that he had been interested in poultry from an early age.  Perhaps, just perhaps, he made the change because he was a man who truly and passionately loved chickens.


 

The Lavignes of Vermont Proved the Bishop Wrong

V

Bishop Michaud

In an 1908 letter the Catholic bishop of Burlington, Vermont, John Stephen Michaud, has been quoted as saying:  "As to the prominence and influence of French-Canadians, the claim that they possess either, is misleading. Good people and devoted, yes. But they have not the education or the other qualities for prominence and influence, either in Church or state.”   The Lavignes,  Joseph and J. Henry, French-Canadian whiskey men from the diocese of Burlington, were to prove him wrong.

Although born in the United States, the Lavignes were from a strong French-Canadian family.  The progenitor, Henri Lavigne, hailed from the town of St. Darnesse, Quebec Province, where Joseph, was born in 1844.  Henri moved to Vermont in 1848,  adjourned briefly to Indiana, and then returned permanently to Chittenden County in the Green Mountain State, part of a large contingent of French Canadians who congregated in that part of Vermont.   By the 1850s, the influx was so great that if it were not for the French-Canadian immigration, Vermont would actually have registered a decline in its total population. During the ten years from 1850 to 1860, the French-Canadian population of Chittenden County went from 2,904 to 4,308.

Despite the Bishop’s disparaging remarks about the educational capabilities of these immigrants, most of them Catholics, Joseph is reported to have attended the local schools and a secondary “classical institute.”   Of a studious nature, he was said by a biographer to have subsequently improved his mind by reading and study at home while from the age of 16 assisting his father in the manufacture and sale of bricks.

Monument to French Canadians

About 1885,  Joseph Lavigne served a brief apprenticeship in a wholesale grocery house in Burlington, Vermont.   Apparently a quick study,  within a year he had established himself in his own retail grocery store in nearby Winooski,  a town with a strong French Canadian presence from men working in the textile factories there.  They were thirsty customers and like many grocers of his day (and ours),  Lavigne’s store provided whiskey, wine and other alcoholic beverages along with foodstuffs.

A 1894 biography in the book “Men of Vermont,” says of Joseph Lavigne:  “In this business, as well as in his previous career, he has earned the reputation of being an honest and upright man. He has been elected to various town and village offices; was a member of the board of school commissioners for eight years; selectman, grand juror; trustee of the village; and town representative in 1892.”   Joseph also was an active Democratic Party member and was said to have been influential in local and state party councils.

In 1865 Joseph married Adeline Desautels, whose origins also were in Quebec.  The couple had three children, among them J. Henry Lavigne in 1868. Adeline died two years later.  Subsequently Joseph married again,  Mary Chagnon,  also of French-Canadian heritage.  She assisted in raising J. Henry, as well as bearing Joseph four children of their own.  In Nashua, New Hampshire, a statue has been raised to the early French-Canadian immigrants.  I imagine it depicts Joseph Lavigne’s second wife, Mary, involved in the education of her stepson.  As the eldest son,  J. Henry probably was taken into his father’s grocery business as a teenager, likely beginning as a clerk.

After a time in this occupation,  J. Henry determined to strike out on his own and opened a retail liquor store,  probably with some financial backing from his father.  The exact dates are uncertain.   He located this business on a major Burlington commercial avenue,  College Street, shown here in the early 1900s, and advertised he was a “dealer in all kinds of wines & liquors.”  Shown here are views of a shot glass and a larger drinking vessel that Lavigne issued to favored customers.  

Note that  these giveaways emphasized that his emporium was only half a minute’s walk from the railroad depot, shown above.   The idea here was not that travelers could stroll over between trains but that Lavigne was able to ship his liquor easily to other parts of the Northeast from Burlington’s wharves on Lake Champlain or via the Rutland & Burlington  or Vermont Central Railroads that maintained hubs in the city. Lavigne’s liquor shipments no doubt included express deliveries to “dry” areas in nearby states like Maine that had flirted with Prohibition since before the Civil War. 

J. Henry married a woman named Philomene Germain who bore him three children before dying in 1909, at the early age of 40.   About year later,  in October of 1910,  Lavigne, living at 73 Main Street according to his marriage license, wed a second time. This second wife,  Josephine Almina Childs Robarge,  is worthy of particular attention.  Born in French Canada of a French father and English mother,  she had been the much younger wife of one of Burlington’s richest citizens,  John Robarge.   Robarge was a land baron, owning much of the neighborhood in the “New North End” of Burlington,  holdings that included tenement blocks.   When he died without an heir,  all his property devolved upon Almina (sometimes given as “Elmina”).  Almina disposed of some of the real estate but retained a considerable land in the Burlington area and was counted as a wealthy widow.  In marrying her,  J. Henry became a major actor in local land development.

The Webb-Kenyon Act of 1913 eventually shut off J. H. Lavigne Co.  shipments into dry localities and the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919 doomed all liquor businesses.  The 1920 census found the Lavignes living in Burlington with their three teenaged children,  Rock, Helen and Horace.  J. Henry gave his occupation as “real estate.” He would live another 13 years, dying in 1933 just a year shy of seeing National Prohibition repealed.  He was buried in the Catholic Cemetery, his gravestone shown here.  Almina is buried beside him.  His first wife also is buried nearby, along with other family members.

By their successes in business and public life, the Lavignes, father and son whiskey men, were living proof that the Bishop of Burlington apparently was expressing his own personal prejudices rather than the reality of the French Canadian capacities in his diocese and state.  The Lavignes’ achievements may have help lead the way for many others from the same heritage to make notable contributions to Vermont and America.

Henry McKenna: Ireland’s Gift to American Whiskey

Henry McKenna’s story begins in Ireland where he was born in Draperstown, County Derry, in 1819.  As a youth Henry worked for a period in an Irish distillery and later clerked in a liquor store for a relative.  When he emigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1837, a period of exceedingly hard times in Ireland, he apparently had no thought of becoming a whiskey maker, but was very intent on making his mark in the New World.

Upon reaching America,  McKenna, shown here,  appears to have headed for Kentucky in 1838.  There in Lexington in 1847 he married Elizabeth “Lizzie” McGuigan, herself an Irish immigrant from County Derry.  Her surname is sometimes rendered as “Goodwin,” a name her family adopted apparently to seem more “American.” The couple ultimately settled in Nelson County, Kentucky, where Henry worked for a time on the roads.  Many Irish immigrants, including my great grandfather,  found their early employment in building the transportation infrastructure for our rapidly expanding Nation.

As often as possible, however, most moved on to less physical and more lucrative occupations.  Henry was no exception.  By 1855 he had gone into business with a partner milling flour in Fairfield, Kentucky.  Together they bought a plot of land at the edge of town, built a grain elevator and mill, and set about grinding wheat into flour for their neighbors.   The gristing process of those days produced considerable waste.  To put that material to use,  Henry bought a farm and pigs to eat the leftovers, but apparently had so much refuse that he decided to turn the rest into whiskey.

McKenna set up a wooden still in the back of his flour mill and began turning out about a barrel of whiskey a day.  At first he used only wheat but eventually turned to corn, the basis of true bourbon.  According to a Kentucky newspaper report, initially he did his own distilling with the help of a slave. By 1858 he apparently had enough business to hire a fulltime distillery manager,  another Irlish immigrant whose name was Patrick Sweeney.

McKenna is said to have been a stickler for sanitation.  He never simply whitewashed his fermenter tubs with lime, as some early distillers did to save time, but had them scrubbed and sterilized with boiling water before reusing.  This was the only way to insure that “wild” yeasts did not adulterate his product.  A newspaper of the time also credited him as unique among Kentucky distillers for refusing to sell his whiskey until it had been aged at least three years.

Meanwhile, his family was growing.   The 1870 census found Henry, age 51, living in Nelson County with Lizzie and boys,  Daniel, 21; John, 20; James, 15; Stafford, 7, and a girl, Mary, 11.  His occupation was given as “distiller and miller.”   As his children matured he saw to giving them good educations and from an early age engaged all of them in the distilling business.

In 1880 McKenna opened an office on Louisville’s Market Street to market his whiskey but rapidly found those quarters too constrained and later bought “The Old Blue House” on Market Street.   That name is found on some McKenna whiskey jugs.  Shortly after he moved his Lexington offices once again, this time to Fourth Street near Main, the latter soon to be known as Louisville’s  “Distillery Row.”

Probably reflecting the great care McKenna took with his product,  his whiskey proved to be very popular.  In 1883 he built a brand new brick distillery.  It had the capacity to make three barrels a day.  Testimonials from recognized figures assisted sales.  A doctor named Dudley Reynolds was quoted saying:  “H McKenna’s whiskey is the purest and best I have ever seen.”  By the 1890s the Irishman’s Old Line Sour Mash Whiskey was being sold throughout the United States.   Although McKenna never officially called it “bourbon,” that is exactly what it was.   Even his liquor containers were notable, including Albany slip jugs with his label “scratched” into the glaze, two of them shown here.

In time McKenna became widely recognized as one of the true patriarchs of Kentucky whiskey.  In 1892 a bill was introduced into Congress asking for an unlimited bonding time for whiskey.  It was known as “The McKenna Bill.”  A year later Henry was dead at age 75.  He was buried in Saint Michael’s Cemetery in Fairfield, Nelson County.  In death he joined his wife, Elizabeth.  Their joint gravestone is shown here.

With great forsight Henry had brought his two older sons into the business after sending them to get university educations.  Daniel McKenna, the eldest, who had helped around the distillery almost since he was out of diapers, took over the management.   His brother, James, was also involved, earlier having been sent to Louisville to head up marketing the family’s whiskey.

By today’s standards, the McKenna production was small.  Family members have insisted that capacity never exceeded more than nine barrels a day and then only for nine months of the year.   Because Henry believed that summertime was bad for correct fermentation,  production ceased for three months.  Even after McKenna whiskey was well established, the family continued with milling and farming, so their year remained full.

Under Daniel’s leadership the McKenna brand continued its strong growth.  The 1911 Mida Financial Index listed the distillery as having a capital value of $125,000 to $150, 000, ten times that in today’s dollar.  Daniel McKenna advertised broadly and continued his father’s preference for ceramic containers, modernizing the underglaze labels.   As glass began to replace pottery, the McKennas adopted  embossed amber bottles.

Daniel died relatively young in 1917 not long before Prohibition. It was left to James McKenna to shut down the whiskey-making but the distillery itself was left intact throughout the “Dry Era.”  Following Repeal, James, now age 79 and his younger brother, Stafford, a mere 73, reopened the Nelson County distillery.   They employed a distiller named Coleman Bixler.   He had been taught by Sweeney and apparently knew the original Henry McKenna recipe despite the seventeen years shutdown.  Soon the distillery had a 20 barrel a day capacity and warehouses to store up to 8,000 barrels.

After James died in 1940, family members sold the distillery to the Seagram Corporation, a Canadian outfit that continued to issue the Henry McKenna brand.  (According to one authority,  however, the Canadians may not have been given the original McKenna recipe.)  Seagrams packaged the whiskey in glass but also in 1964 issued a white ceramic jug with a cobalt blue label of Amish country tulip design.  Although its advertising called the container “scarce as hen’s teeth,”  a dozen or more of these jugs are offered for sale every day on Ebay.

Seagram dismantled the the original distillery in 1976, selling the brand name in the early 1980s to Heaven Hill Distillery of Bardstown, Kentucky, which to this day markets McKenna bourbon nationwide.   Thus the name of Henry McKenna,  Ireland’s great gift to American whiskey, has continued to be recognized on the U.S. liquor scene.

The Froehlichs of Newark: Notable in New Jersey

Downtown Newark, early 1900s

One of my objectives for this blog is to have at least one whiskey man or family from every state in the Union. After more than two years, I have been unable to find an interesting subject in about dozen states.  Most are states with early prohibition efforts.  It had not occurred to me that New Jersey might be one in which finding notable candidates for a vignette would be difficult.  But the search has proved frustrating.  After considerable time, I have centered on the Froehlich family of Newark -- three generations of wholesale liquor dealers.

The progenitor of this family was Ignatz Froehlich,  born in Europe in 1819.  His country of birth was given variously as Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia.   His wife, Henrietta, was of a similar background.  Both were of Jewish heritage.   The 1870 Census found Ignatz living with his family in Newark,  his occupation given as “wholesale liquor dealer.”   There were two children,  a son, Samuel, age 20, listed as a “clerk,” likely in his father’s liquor store, and a daughter, Lizzie, 14.

By 1880,  Samuel, now 30, shown below, had stepped into his father’s shoes.  He was running a wholesale liquor business, with a partner, Philip Koehler.  At this time Samuel was married to a woman with a similar immigrant background.  Her name was Laura Schwartz.  They would have a family of at least one son, Irving, and two daughters.

Samuel’s firm, Froehlich & Koehler, issued a saltglaze stoneware jug with a cobalt script label that bore their names.  It also mentioned Newark prominently.  By the late 1800s,  the partnership seems to have been dissolved and Samuel Froehlich struck out on his own.  As his son, Irving, came to maturity, Samuel brought him into the business and the company name became Froehlich & Son.  Their liquor business was located at 49-51-53 Mechanic Street in Newark.


The Froehlichs had a single flagship brand. It was “Black and Gold Rye,” a label they merchandised heavily and trademarked, somewhat belatedly, with the federal government  in 1912.  For favored saloons and other establishments the business provided a embossed back of the bar bottle and shot glasses, all advertising Black & Gold Rye.  The glasses also featured a monogram F & S in an outlined shield design.

The Froehlichs also also provided a “bar coin” to be used by patrons flipping for drinks.   The winner “heads” showed a donkey head and an ad for Black and Gold Rye.  The loser “tails”  showed a different element of the donkey’s anatomy.   They also issued a unusual but practical scorecard in the shape of a baseball.  On it one could chart the score, innings, and outs. A unique giveaway in the whiskey trade, it probably was aimed at the retail customer.

There is other strong evidence of the Froehlichs success in Newark.  Samuel was elected as a member of the Newark Board of Trade, an organization dominated by Anglo-Saxon names such as Brewster, Heath, Tompkins, Halsey and Bathgate.  Despite the success and prestige the firm achieved,  Froehlichs ultimately ran afoul of the Pure Food and Drug laws.

 

In November 1915 the United States attorney for the District of New York,  acting on a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture,  filed a case against Samuel and Irving Froehlich, charging that they had violated the law on a quantity of apricot brandy, “which was adulterated and misbranded.”   Although the label read that it was apricot brandy, an analysis by the government showed that: “The product contains little or no apricot brandy.” Instead it was, according to the analysis,  “neutral spirits, artificially colored and flavored in imitation of apricot brandy.”   Moreover, it contained a high level of “fusel oil,” considered an unsavory and unhealthy byproduct of alcohol distillation.  The word “fusel” was from the German and originally meant “bad liquor.”

On January 10, 1916, the Froehlichs entered a plea of guilty to the charges and the U.S. District Court imposed a fine of $25, the largest amount allowed under the Food and Drug Acts.   The Froehlichs must have smiled at that small financial “slap on the wrist” as they paid the fine.   But more serious challenges were on the horizon.  In 1919 the U.S. approved an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned liquor everywhere.   New Jersey, which never had had statewide prohibition, was made to comply.  Froehlich & Son shut its doors.

The 1920 census found Samuel, now age 70, and his wife, Laura, living with their daughter, Edna, her husband and three children in Newark.  Samuel listed himself as “retired.”   Two years later he would die.  He was interred at B’Nai Jeshuron Cemetery in the town of Hillside, Union County, New Jersey.  His gravesite and that of his wife are shown below.

According to his descendant, Irving Froehlich married and lived in northern New Jersey.  He left the liquor trade, however, possibly because of the advent of National Prohibition.

With Prohibition came the end of at least a 50 year tradition of Froehlichs in the liquor trade in New Jersey.   They were truly a successful liquor dynasty in a state that gave the Nation few notable whiskey men.

Note:  The photo of Samuel Froelich and of the gravesite both were courtesy of one of his descendants, Andrew Schwartz of Clifton, N.J., to whom I am very grateful for the help.  He also provided the information on Irving Froehlich's future.

An Irishman on DC’s “Rum Row”

When the inaugural parade for Theodore Roosevelt stepped off on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC in 1905, many of the spectators held in their hands a souvenir program.  Edward J. Quinn,  a saloonkeeper on the avenue,  likely watched the marchers  from his business address,  knowing that the program held a prominent ad for his flagship brand, Oronoco Rye. The Irishman Quinn had truly “arrived” in the Nation’s Capital.

Quinn’s story began in Galway, Ireland, from whence his father, also named Edward, emigrated to the United States in 1859.  Three years later, during the midst of the Civil War,  he settled in Alexandria, Virginia,  a town then occupied by Federal military authorities.  Shortly after the end of the war the Senior Quinn established a grocery business on a tract of land he had purchased lying north of Oronoco Street and west of St. Asaph Street.   He married and had a family of seven children, including a son, Edward, whom he brought into the business with him as the boy matured.  The father featured a flagship brand of whiskey which, appropriately enough, he named “Oronoco.”

Fast forward a few years.  In the late 1800s, Edward J., with his father’s blessing and likely financial support, established a saloon and a retail liquor store at 604 Pennsylvania Avenue,  strategically placed in DC opposite the Pennsylvania Railroad Station and adjacent to the National Hotel.  The avenue held a plethora of drinking establishments and had earned the nickname “Rum Row.”  The 1900 Census found Quinn, age 33,  living above the saloon with his wife Ellen.  With them was his widowed mother, Brigid, and two children, Mary,  three years old, and a baby, Helen, who later died in infancy. Two servants were also recorded in the household.

Edward Quinn also had the rights to market the whiskey his father had created.  He advertised Oronoco Rye vigorously in Washington newspapers and other media outlets.   He boasted that his whiskey was “a time-honored stimulant of absolute purity.” He suggested that when the doctor prescribed “a little whiskey,”  he meant Oronoco Rye.  “Therefore, it is essential that you always have a supply of Oronoco Rye on hand.”  Almost as an afterthought Quinn also suggested it was preferred for mixed drinks -- something the doctor may not have ordered.  Quinn also offered a second brand, “Bluemont Whiskey.” He trademarked Bluemont in 1904 and Oronoco in 1905.

In addition to selling Oronoco behind his bar, Quinn retailed it in glass bottles. Some like the one shown here had a fancy label that described the Irishman as the “sole distributor.    He also featured fancy embossing of many of his quarts and flasks, again bringing his Oronoco brand to the fore.   Like many other Washington whiskey men,  Quinn found it expedient to provide giveaway items to favored customers for his whiskey.   Such gifts principally found expression in fancy etched shot glasses for bartender use.  Those also prominently advertised the Oronoco brand.

A Republican like his father, Edward must have been proud to have his ad in the program for Roosevelt’s inaugural.   We can imagine him standing in the doorway of his drinking establishment waving as the President-elect rode by in the parade.  His whiskey sales were making Quinn increasingly prosperous.  As a result he found it possible to move his family away from his saloon to a real home.   By the time of the 1910 census the Quinns had moved to a house on fashionable Massachusetts Avenue, number 1234.  In addition to wife Ellen and daughter, May, he now also had a son, Edward, age 4.  His mother, now 73, was still living with them as were two boys named Cox, possibly relatives of his wife.

Quinn, however, was not long to enjoy his riches.  About 1911,  he died and his widow, with young children to raise and clearly needing money,  almost immediately sold the Pennsylvania property and business, including the rights to Oronoco Rye.  The buyer was another DC Irishman named D. J. O’Connell.  The latter lost no time in making the switch of identification.  Shown here is a bottle or Oronoco Whiskey in which the regular label has been pasted over with a second label identifying it as D.J. O’Connell’s.

Whatever prosperity O’Connell gleaned from his saloon and package sales would be short-lived.   Temperance advocates had targeted Washington for prohibition, knowing that a simple vote of Congress, which governed the District, could do the job.  Accordingly on March 3, 1917,  by vote of Congress, DC officially went  “dry.”  At the time there were 267 saloons and bars in the city.  All of them, including those on “Rum Row,” were forced to close.  The Washington Times estimated that the District thereby lost 2,500 jobs and $500,000 (in 1917 dollars) in revenue.

That was the end of the booze business built by Edward Quinn on Pennsylvania Avenue.  For the next 17 years no parade down that storied street would pass by a saloon, “sample room,” beer joint or any semblance of a watering hole. The memory of that pre-Prohibition time and one enterprising Irishman, however,  is kept alive by the artifacts in bottles and glass still to be seen in local collections.

Wiley Searcy: Kentucky Distiller in War and Peace

Battle of Perryville

As he looked back on his life, Kentucky whiskey man Wiley Searcy probably fixed on the  years of his service in the Union Army during the Civil War as perhaps the most memorable time of his life.   Few soldiers on either side saw as much action as Searcy did, in the process rising from a lowly private to the rank of captain.

The Searcys were a large and well-known clan in Anderson County, Kentucky.  Wiley was born in 1843, the son of Madison Searcy and Susan Mountjoy.  The 1850 census found him, age seven, living with his parents, a brother and two sisters. His father’s occupation was given as “tavern keeper.”   As Wiley was growing up, his mother died, leaving Madison Searcy a widower.

Wiley reached maturity just as the Civil War was beginning.  Kentucky citizens were torn between North and South in their loyalties.  For unrecorded reasons, the Searcys chose the Union side and rosters of Kentucky federal regiments included many with that name. Wiley, age 19,  joined Company  E of the 21st Kentucky Infantry, serving as a private in the ranks.  This company was recruited from parts of southern Anderson and the adjacent Mercer County and mustered at Green River Bridge on January 2, 1862.   With the 21st, Searcy saw action in several battles, including Perryville in October 1862,  shown above.  During that period he advanced to sergeant.

Early the following year he was discharged from his infantry unit and had accepted an officer’s commission to become a 2nd lieutenant in Company L of the 9th Kentucky Cavalry.  The unit was  commanded by a relative, Captain William M. Searcy.   With the 9th Cav Wiley rode in pursuit of Col. John Hunt Morgan and his cavalry raiders as the Confederates slashed and burned through Kentucky and on into Indiana and Ohio.  Battles ensued at Marrowbone, Burkesville, Buffington Island, and, at last, the capture of Morgan at New Lisbon, Ohio, on July 26, 1863.  Several months later,  his enlistment period apparently over, Searcy was discharged and went home.

Saltville Battlefield

Still restless for action, in March 1864 he enlisted again and helped to raise a troop designated as Company G of the 30th Kentucky Mounted Infantry.  This time he was elected by the men and served as the company commander with the rank of captain.  Searcy would carry the title “captain” for the rest of his life.  The company saw action in central Kentucky,  southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee, fighting many pitched battles.   According to an obituary,  Searcy had two horses shot from under him in one afternoon.   In October 1864 during the second battle of Saltville, Virginia,  the 9th Kentucky lost two officers killed and several others “severely wounded.”   Among the latter was Wiley Searcy.

When he had sufficiently recovered,  he rejoined his unit and as an officer saw action against guerrillas (called “bushwhackers”) in Central Kentucky until the regiment was mustered out at the close of the war and discharged from service in April 1865.   Even then Searcy sought to serve.  He was recorded as an officer of the Kentucky militia that was enrolled to maintain a military presence and keep the peace in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, a reserve unit that served until 1869.

In 1867 Wiley was married in Anderson County to Susan Linney. They would have one child but not long after childbirth Susan died.  The 1870 U.S. census found Searcy a widower with a young son named Frank.  Searcy was working as a “U.S. storekeeper,” a job that apparently entailed his being responsible for government supplies and also possibly for the mail.  In 1871 Searcy married again.  This time his wife was Mary Agnes Mountjoy, likely a relative of his late mother.  The couple would have another son,  Matthew.

What brought Searcy into the whiskey trade is unclear.  Obviously as the son of a tavern keeper, he had been around liquor much of his life.  In 1886 he is recorded as having purchased a distillery that had been established in Anderson County in 1818 by Joe Peyton, widely known as “Old Joe.”  It is said that Peyton pitched his tent near the mouth of Gilbert’s Creek and commenced to build a distillery.   After a succession of owners, it looked as shown here.   When Searcy bought it, according to insurance records,  the distillery was of frame construction with a metal or slate roof. The property included two bonded warehouses, also of frame construction with metal or slate roofs. Warehouse "A" or No. 1, was located 600 ft south of the still. Warehouse "B" (No. 2) stood 10 ft from No. 1.The facility was known as Distillery No. 45,  8th District of Kentucky.

The Captain wasted no time in advertising his “Old Joe” brand of whiskey, as shown here.   His product contained “no jug yeast,” he claimed and was “The best whisky that can be made.”  At a time when Eastern money men were contemplating “whiskey trusts” in Kentucky, Searcy emphasized that he was an independent distiller. He packaged “Old Joe” in ceramic jugs, making sure that his name was prominent.

Under Searcy’s leadership, the distillery flourished. He added structures and boasted two bonded warehouses and a third “free” (not under the Bottled-in-Bond Act) warehouse. Federal revenue records indicate his very active insertions of raw whiskey into the bonded warehouses and subsequent withdrawal of aged liquor.   At one point he called the facility the Zeno Distillery Company but after 1898 dropped that name in favor of The Wiley Searcy Distillery.

Wiley Searcy Distillery

In 1909, as occurred many times for distilleries, fire ravaged the complex, destroying all three warehouses.   The loss of whiskey was considerable. Searcy, by now 66 years old and perhaps feeling the effects of his wartime wounds, declined to rebuild and instead sold the property to the local Ripy Brothers in 1911.  They rebuilt the distillery and operated until shut down by Prohibition.  The Ripys also changed the name to the “Old Joe” Distillery The mini jug shown here is likely is from the post-1911 period, as is an “Old Joe” label with the picture of a Kentucky “colonel.”

Wiley Searcy died in January 1917. The local newspaper gave the cause as “la grippe (influenza) and other complications.”  He was 74 years old. Surviving him were his widow,  both sons and two young granddaughters. After a service in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, he was buried  at the Old Lawrenceburg Cemetery, Section #9. The  graves of Wiley and Mary Searcy are said to be marked only with a large boulder for a headstone with a small bronze plaque with names, but no dates or mention of the Captain’s extraordinary military service.  One of his labeled jugs might serve as a monument:

Note:  Although Searcy was not honored with the kind of monument that many Civil War soldiers have been given,  his story was recounted in a large tome, featuring several authors, entitled “Anderson County History and Families.”  Information here was derived from that and other sources.