Joe Bignon and Big Minnie in the Bird Cage

In 1886,  Joseph W. (“Joe”) Bignon and his wife, “Big Minnie, ” reopened the Bird Cage Theater in Tombstone, Arizona, and created a legendary saloon that provided entertainment, women and whiskey to the overwhelmingly male population of the boom town.  It marked the culmination of Bignon’s long and colorful life.

According to a contemporary biography, Bignon, shown here in maturity, was born in 1851 in Montreal, Canada, the son of French immigrant parents.  Determined to become an actor, he ran away from home at the age of 12 and joined a minstrel show where he learned to sing and dance while traveling throughout Canada and the United States.  Eventually he joined the Grant Brother’s troupe that introduced country clog dancing.  When he was barely out of his teens,  Bignon, who also had management ambitions,  added “impresario” to his credentials.  During the early 1870s he operated several music halls saloons in the American Midwest.

Bignon left those pursuits to return to entertaining by joining a traveling show called The Australian Circus.  After a stint there, he jumped to Doc Hager’s Great Paris Circus and Zoological Aggregation,  a group that toured less-populous frontier towns in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota and Ontario.  He abandoned life on the road to buying a partnership in a Sheboygan, Wisconsin, saloon.  His biographer wrote:  “Joe has ever been of a restless nature and no matter how well he is prospering, when the desire to satisfy his roving disposition comes on, everything is sacrificed to that end....”

Having traveled over most of the midsection of North America by the age of 28, Bignon determined to make a new start by going West to the Arizona Territory.  In 1879  he found his way to Tombstone, a silver mining boom town of 3,000 people, later made famous by the shoot out at the OK Corral.   Allen Street, the main drag, is shown as it looked in about 1880.  Bignon opened a theater/saloon there but soon decamped for San Francisco to manage another theater.  He left that job for several more circus tours.  It was likely on one of those that he met his future wife, Matilda Quigley. She was a six foot tall, 230 pound dancer whom Joe called “Big Minnie.” Born in England about 1852, she is said to have  “dazzled” audiences by prancing around the stage in pink tights.

During Joe’s absence from Tombstone,  a local entrepreneur named William J. “Billy” Hutchinson had hatched a plan to build a new variety theater and saloon.  Constructed of adobe over wood,  the structure, shown here, at last was opened in 1881. He called the establishment “The Bird Cage.”   After an initial period of success,  an economic downtown likely caused by falling silver prices,  caused Hutchinson to sell the property to San Francisco interests who shut it down.   Sensing an opportunity,  Bignon and his hefty bride returned to Tombstone and reopened The Bird Cage in 1886.  In addition to entertaining, Big Minnie, shown here,  also was said to have been a bouncer at the establishment.

The focal point of Bignon’s “palace” was the highly polished bar at one end.  Shown here in a latter day, the bar boasted two large crystal and brass lamps, a large mirror, and space for a wide variety of whiskeys, wines and other liquor.  Throughout a raucous evening the liquor stock was replenished with supplies from a storeroom below the stage.  At one side of the bar was a hoist-like contraption by which drinks could be sent to the boxes above the theater.
 
The partition that separated the barroom from the theater held its own attraction, shown here. It held a huge painting of “Fatima,” a well-known West Coast belly dancer who had graced the Bird Cage stage with her bare-breasted presence in 1882.  The stage was small, only about 15 feet wide, 10 feet high and 15 feet deep. Still it was enough for the songs, sketches, acrobats and dances that comprised an evening’s program.  The mental image of Big Minnie swinging her 230 pounds in pink tights around that tiny space is fascinating.

Along two sides of the theater was a one-level balcony that jutted from the wall and seemed to be suspended. It was divided into separate small rooms.  One writer has described the purpose of those rooms at the Bird Cage:  "The smoke-filled establishment was named, with heavy frontier humor, for the 12 tiny balcony boxes where soiled doves plied their trade behind curtains. When uncaged, the painted ladies pursued less profitable sidelines such as shilling drinks and dancing with drunken cowboys, hardhanded miners, and nimble-fingered gamblers and gunmen."  The scene is alleged to have inspired the writing of the well-known 19th Century ballad, “She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.”

In reality what Canadian Joe and Big Minnie were running, in addition to a theater and saloon, was a bordello.  A $25 Bird Cage token exists, reputedly from this era, that guarantees:  “Square and Honest Gambling, The Best Liquors and Wine, Always Many Lovely Fancy Women,  Acclaimed the Best Sporting House in the Southwest.”  The flip side of the coin promises that it is “Good in Trade Toward All Favors of the House.  Our Fancy Women Will Fulfill Any Wish.”  It is signed by Joe Bignon.   Wyatt Earp, the famous sheriff of Tombstone is said to have carried one of these coins around in his pocket as a lucky piece.

In addition to running this wide open establishment  where, accurately or not, gunfights sometimes were reported, Bignon may also have been mixing and compounding his own brand of whiskey.  Shown here is a saloon sign for “Moon Castle Whiskey” that noted that the liquor was being served at Tombstone’s Own Bird Cage Theatre.  I can find no reference to this brand in the usual sources and conclude that Moon Castle was Bignon’s house brand.  The picture of the European castle beside a river in the moonlight suggests a level of sophistication that, despite his lack of formal education, may have resulted from the Canadian’s broad experience with people and places.

Meanwhile, Tombstone’s silver-based economy was faltering.  Despite Joe and Minnie’s best efforts to keep the whiskey flowing and provide varieties of entertainment, the dismal financial conditions in that part of the Arizona Territory had doomed their enterprise. Suddenly news came of a gold strike by a man named Pearce in Cochise County, Arizona, at what would become the Commonwealth Mine. In 1892, the childless couple literally “pulled up stakes” and joined a number of Tombstone residents who were already in the new gold camp.  After selling the Bird Cage Theatre they dismantled their wooden Tombstone house, loaded it on a freight wagon, and moved it through South Pass, and reassembled it at the foot of Six Mile Hill at the Pearce mining camp.

In Pearce, now considered an Arizona “ghost town,” the enterprising Bignon set up a saloon, the first in the area.  Known in reference sources variously as the “Pioneer,” or “Palace” this establishment, hailed for being “lavish” in its appointments, opened its doors in 1896.   It advertised that it offered faro, roulette and “the finest spirits.”  Although nothing was said about prostitution,  one suspects that at least some of the Birds in the Cage followed the Bignons through South Pass to the gold fields.

With miners flush with money as his customers,  Bignon flourished in Pearce.  In 1900, however,  Matilda “Big Minnie,” died.  Buried in Pearce  Cemetery, her blue granite tombstone has a fancy sculptured design.  Her first name, however, appears to have been misspelled.  Although the elegance of her grave marker bespeaks close affection by Bignon, within a year he had remarried.  Her name was Ellen McGrogan (on her death certificate “McGregery), from Patterson, New Jersey, and the daughter of John McGrogan, an Irish immigrant.  Ellen was younger by 13 years than Joe.   The 1910 U.S. Census taker found them living in Pearce.  Bignon's occupation was given as “saloonkeeper.”

Although the coming of National Prohibition shut down Bignon’s establishment in Pearce, the couple continued to live there the remainder of their lives, even as the population ran out along with the gold.  Joe died in 1925 at the advanced age of 85 and is buried near Minnie in the Pearce Cemetery.  Her gravestone is shown here, foreground; Joe’s is the black slab behind.  Second wife Ellen also is believed to be buried in the same cemetery but no marker has been found for her.

The odyssey of Joe Bignon’s life was the stuff of fiction.  Beginning at the age of 12 and encompassing 73 years, his days and nights presented constant challenges to give his audiences and customers what they wanted.  In 1888 “The Cricket,”  a 19th Century general interest magazine did a feature on Bignon.  It provided a summary that seems appropriate to repeat here:  “There are few managers...who are more enterprising and successful than Joe Bignon, and the fallacy of saying ‘that a rolling stone gathers no moss”  was never better shown than in his case.”

Note:  Much of the information for this post came from the April 1935 issue of the Arizona Historical Review, published by the University of Arizona.  The article by C. E. Willson, entitled “From Variety Theater to Coffee Shoppe,” also described the fate of the Bird Cage after the Bignons departed. More recently the Bird Cage has been restored as a tourist attraction in Tombstone.  Photos are from that restoration.

Solomon Klinordlinger Hit a Home Run in Pittsburgh

Beginning in Civil War times Solomon Klinordlinger for years had a profitable but modest wholesale liquor business. Then he named a whiskey brand after the emerging Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team and hit a merchandising home run.  A man with a baseball bat in his hand, shown here, paved the way to Klinordlinger’s fame and fortune.

Like many successful whiskey men,  Klinordlinger was an immigrant.  He was born in the town of Bayern, Germany, in 1834, the third in a line of five Klinordlinger sons. At the age of about 15 he accompanied an older brother, Abraham, and two younger siblings, Nathan and Max, to the United States.  The 1860 U.S. Census found Solomon and his brothers living together in Pittsburgh with Abraham’s wife and child.   The older brother was listed as a merchant, probably involved in the liquor trade, and indicated significant assets to the census taker.  Solomon apparently was working for Abraham.

By 1865 Solomon was financially secure enough himself to marry.  His bride was Fanny Bierman, daughter of Feist Bierman, who like her husband had been born in Bayern, Germany.  It is unlikely that they had been childhood sweethearts reunited after some absence because she was 10 years his junior. The new couple made their home in Pittsburgh.  Over time their union produced four children, daughters Minnie, Laura and Carrie, and a son, Sidney.

In time Klinordlinger struck out on his own.  Although he claimed that S. Klinordlinger & Co. harked back to 1860, his firm first showed up in local business directories in 1872.  His early location in Pittsburgh’s Diamond Square indicated strong financial underpinning to the enterprise.  Diamond Square, a prestige location, was home to the city’s first courthouse and jail (1775) and its first newspaper (1786),  and today is known as “Market Square.”  The Klinordlinger firm billed itself as “Wholesale Dealers in Pure Rye Whiskey and Importers of Brandy, Gin and Wines.”  Solomon also was a “rectifier,” blending and compounding whiskey obtained from other sources.  As shown here, he initially sold his products in large ceramic jugs decorated in cobalt, many of them holding two or more gallons.

His business grew steadily over time.  In a barely disguised ad, The Pittsburgh and Allegheny Illustrated Review  of 1889 declared:  “Mr. Klinordlinger...has established a trade which today ranks him as one of the leading merchants in this line. His business is chiefly done in the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and West Virginia, and is thoroughly canvassed by his salesmen. He carries a large stock of pure rye whiskies, free and in bond; also a large line of brandies, gins, wines, etc., which are of the best quality. Special attention is paid to mail orders, and the firm would be pleased to receive from any dealer a trial order, and are confident of their ability to convince him of their superiority in supplying his wants.”

Despite these indications of success, Klinordlinger was facing stiff competition. In the latter years of the 1880s,  no fewer than 41 wholesale wine and liquor dealers were operating in the Pittsburgh area, including one run by his brother, Abraham.  All were vying to sell to 70 retail dealers, and more important, 1,400 saloons.  Those wholesalers all were seeking a healthy slice of the estimated $6,100,000 in annual Pittsburgh liquor sales --  in today’s dollar, more than $91 million.

Meanwhile a home town baseball team named the “Alleghenies” had joined the newly formed National League and on pulling out of their earlier league had been denounced by the competition as “piratical.”  Making sport of the accusation and obviously noting the alliteration with Pittsburgh, the team officially changed its name to “The Pirates.”  At the same time the newly ordained Pirates were showing great baseball prowess and gaining huge fan support.  Winning season followed winning season.  The Pirates were the National League champions in 1901 and 1902 and played in the first World Series in 1903, losing to the Boston Americans. In 1909 the team won the World Series against the Detroit Tigers.

Klinordlinger was not just cheering the Pirates from the grandstand. With the wisdom of his namesake Solomon foresaw the potential for baseball in the Steel City.  Capitalizing in on the team’s immense popularity he named a whiskey brand after them, calling it “Pirate Club Pure Rye Whiskey.”  The picture on the label showed a strapping man with a large mustache and a baseball bat in hand with “Pittsburg” prominent on his chest.  Sol merchandised the brand in three sizes of bottle, shown here, from a clear quart to an amber flask to a two ounce “nip.”  He also issued shot glasses with an etched picture of the player.  Those were given to favorite customers in retail stores and saloons that carried Pirate Club whiskey. About this same time he took on a partner and the name “Klinordlinger & Wallace” appeared on some items.

About 1892 the company was relocated from Diamond Square to 966-968 Liberty Avenue, its address for the remainder of its days.  In addition to Pirate Club, Klinordlinger featured other proprietary brands such as “Happy Moments,”  “Monongahela Golden Rye,” “Watch Dog” “Sensation” and “Toll Gate.”  He never bother to trademark any of his brands, not even Pirate Club Rye, despite a local competitor issuing a “Pittsburgh Club” label.  To favored customers the company issued shot glasses and an "American brilliant" back of the bar bottle with the owners names etched in.

The 1900 Census found Solomon, age 65, living at 1336 Pennsylvania Avenue in Pittsburgh. With him were his wife Fanny and their daughter Carrie with her husband Henry Weiskoff and a granddaughter.  Also part of the family group was son Sidney Klinordlinger, unmarried at 28, who had been brought at an early age into the family business. As his father aged, the son  increasingly took over the management of the firm.  That may explain why the 1900 census listed Sidney’s occupation as “liquor merchant” and Solomon’s only as “agent-liquor.”

With Solomon’s full retirement about 1912  Sydney took full ownership of the liquor wholesale company and changed its name once again, this time to S. S. Klinordlinger.  By 1917, however, the firm had shut down and Sidney was running a clothing store.  The reason for terminating may have been that mail order markets had been curtailed by an act of Congress in 1913, and other nearby states like Ohio and West Virginia had gone “dry.”

The elder Klinordlingers aged gracefully, surrounded by their family and friends. Recorded by a local Jewish periodical, the couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1915 at the Almanac Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the presence of all their children and grandchildren.  The renewal of their vows was blessed by Rabbi Arnhold, now 86 years old, who apparently had officiated at their original nuptials.  By now Solomon and Fanny were living with another daughter and her husband in their Pittsburgh home.

Solomon died at the age of 84 in September 1918 and was buried in Pittsburgh’s West View Cemetery, shown here.   He went to his grave knowing, as one latter day observer put it, that he had “...brewed some of the finest spirits in Western Pennsylvania from the 1880s through the early 1900s...Perhaps tastiest to all Steel City sports folks...Pirate Club.”   In Pittsburgh Klinordlinger clearly had hit a home run.

Herman Toser Provided “Gemuetlichkeit” in Its Truest Form

Gemuetlichkeit, a German word best expressed in English as “a friendly good time,” was the goal of Milwaukee’s myriad beer gardens, taverns, sample rooms and saloons in the 19th and early 20th Century.   Herman Toser,  a immigrant from Germany, understood the concept thoroughly and brought it to a wine cellar that bore his name. 

A photo from the establishment shows a routund gentleman at left contemplating a wine glass.  Herman F. Toser is sitting with a friend testing the flavor of sherry drawn from a barrel behind them.  They are seated in a establishment appropriately called Herman Toser’s Weinstube.  Established in 1872 it was a highly popular place for the business and professional men of Milwaukee to gather, especially those of German ancestry. Located on Milwaukee’s East Side at the corner of Mason and Water Streets, as shown here, it was accessed by walking off the street to a downward staircase and into a cellar filled with dozens of wine barrels.

Upon arrival the thirsty customer was surrounded by steins, tapestries and other cultural artifacts of the Old Country.  The main attraction in Toser’s Weinstube was a huge hand-carved sign that hanged over the manager’s station.  Carved out of three pieces of oak, the plaque, shown here, originally was used to cover a cask holding 36 gallons of wine.  The carving depicted four men, two standing, one sitting and one slumped onto the floor, all drinking freely amidst a bas relief of vines, leaves and grapes.  A dog is sitting on the floor silently and patiently observing the intoxicating effects. An inscription at the top says:  “Wine Office, Herman Toser.”

There was no bar in the cellar, only a series of tables and chairs for visitors to sit and enjoy the fine wines Herman imported from Germany, as well as hearty sandwiches of ham and corned beef served on thick slices of rye bread.  All around, groups of customers chatted or played cards, possibly “Sheepshead,”  a form of bridge brought from the Fatherland.  When the cask cover, furniture, steins and other relics were donated in 1958 to the Milwaukee Historical Society, the organization’s historian expressed great enthusiasm for the place.  He proclaimed that Toser’s Weinstube had provided “Gemuetlichkeit  in its truest form.”

Toser was born in Germany in1833 but at an early age emigrated in 1854 from his homeland to the United States, settling in Milwaukee with its large German population.  There, at the age of 21,Toser married a woman of about the same age, also an immigrant from Germany whom he may have known back home.  Her name, as given in census records, was Phellippina, affectionately known as “Phene.”  The 1860 Census found the couple living in Milwaukee with three children, Elizabeth, age 6;  Lena, age 4; and Herman, still an infant.  Toser’s occupation was given as “merchant.”

That same year Herman launched another spirits-related enterprise.  It was a wholesale and retail liquor dealership, with attached saloon.  There he sold various types of  liquors and wines, both imported and domestic.  For the first five years Toser had a partner in this company, known as Toser & Arend.  It was located at 424-426 East Water Street not far from the Milwaukee River that runs through the city’s  downtown.  By 1871, Arend had left the organization and Toser,  apparently needing larger quarters, had moved to 275 East Water,  his address for the next eight years.  Over the life of his firm he would move twice more, both times within the 400 block of East Water, an avenue that boasted a number of liquor dealers.

A late 1800s photo shown here captures the activity outside the ground floor of Toser’s three story store and office building.  The front door is surrounded by liquor barrels, both full and empty, while a drayman rides off to deliver whisky to saloons all over Milwaukee.  The loungers in the doorway may be employees or gents just heading in to buy a jug or bottle or to order one from the bartender inside.  A Milwaukee journalist later described the experience of entering Herman Toser’s Wines and Liquors.  Once inside, he said, the thirsty customer reached the bar “by a long walk between hogsheads of whiskey and wine.”  Toser also was advertising vigorously.  A stock trade card showed a winsome Spanish or Italian lass balancing a large jardoniere of wine on her shoulder.   In an age when California had yet to discover good wine, Toser emphasized European imported vintages.

Toser also was selling some of the best brands of whiskey from Kentucky and other sources.  Shown here is a fancy jug with gold lettering in which he was merchandising “Old Crow,” at that time a premier brand.  In addition to selling good whiskey, he and his employees were busy mixing up their own liquor on the upper floors of his building.  Toser was a “rectifier,” that is, someone blending and compounding whiskey to achieve a distinctive taste.  Then the spirits were bottled and a proprietary label slapped on them and sold as house brands.  Among Toser’s offerings were   "Old Abe Rye,” "Old Waveland,”  "Tosco Club,” and “Pelican.”  The last was the only brand for which the Toser Co. bothered to obtain a trademark,  registering the name in 1907.

Because Herman’s had lived through the American Civil War,  it would be natural to assume that he named Old Abe Rye after the martyred President, Abraham Lincoln.  Not so. The brand name referred to an American bald eagle named for Lincoln.  The bird, known as “Old Abe” was tamed by the 8th Wisconsin Infantry during the conflict.  This aggressive raptor accompanied the troops into action and was reputed to have attacked Confederates from the air.  Twice wounded and reviled by the Johnny Rebs as “that damnedYankee buzzard,”  Old Abe survived the war and died of old age in Wisconsin in 1881.  With an eagle depicted on the label, Toser was taking advantage of the bird’s fame in marketing his whiskey.

In addition to his whiskey brands, Toser also was mixing and merchandising his own brand of bitters, a  highly alcoholic potion that also claimed to have medicinal values.  He called it “Monopole Bitters.” Shown here is a decanter embossed on the back with the name.  It is a very rare bottle today with reputedly only a couple of known examples.  Made by the glass house of William Frank & Sons of Pittsburg, whose mark it bears, this graceful, deep red decanter was, by my reckoning, a back-of-the-bar bottle,  given to special saloon customers.    Most bartenders stocked at least one brand of bitters for those drinkers who who were “feeling poorly” and needed a remedy.

Toser could fix you up sacramentally as well as medicinally. he advertised heavily in a Roman Catholic publications, selling altar wines. He had enlisted the assistance of a Benedictine abbot named Nepomucene Jaeger to help plug the product.  The prelate, from St. Prokopius Abbey near Chicago,  was quoted from a letter he purportedly spontaneously wrote the company. Abbot Nepomucene enthused: For a pure wine, which has not been treated but has ‘made itself’ I heartily recommend yours,” 

With the success of his enterprises and growing wealth, Toser found time for recreation. A local newspaper reported in1888 that he and his wife and a daughter had embarked on an ship for Europe.  One assumes he visited his German homeland and arranged for wine shipments.  The 1900 U.S. Census found Toser, age 67, living with his wife at 220 Eleventh Street, just west of Milwaukee’s downtown  His occupation was given as “wholesale merchant - wine.” 

As his son, Herman, came to maturity, he was taken into the business and gradually assumed more of the management chores.  In 1907 Toser died at the age of 74.  Surrounded by family and friends, he was buried in Section 33 of Forest Home Cemetery, an expansive graveyard on the southern edge of Milwaukee.  The company he had founded continued to operate, apparently under his son’s management, until 1918 when it was shut down, apparently by the forces of Prohibition.  By 1922, the young Herman Toser was listed in business directories as a distributor of truck tires.

Given the number of instances in which both contemporary and subsquent scribes have waxed nostalgic over the joys and comforts of Toser’s Wine Cellar, it must have been an extraordinary “watering hole” in a town full of good ones.  Throughout its existence under the watchful eye of its owner,  his establishment had been a gathering place not only for the leaders of the German community, but many other business and professional men of Milwaukee.  For 37 years Herman Toser had proved, indeed, that he could provide “Gemuetlichkeit” in its truest form.

The Whiskey Dealer and the President

Pendergast in caricature

 Some say that Thomas J. Pendergast was just a Kansas City, Missouri, saloonkeeper and whiskey dealer who came to the rescue of a failed clothing store proprietor.  Others say he was a high powered political boss who helped make Harry Truman the 33rd President of the United States.  Both are right.

For many years in the early 1900s Pendergast controlled Kansas City, historians say, much like a CEO controls a large corporation.  Presenting himself as a businessman, he ran the city, providing jobs for the working population, choosing municipal and state leadership, and directing a political “machine” that helped fill his pockets with kickbacks and bribes.  Although he had many business interests,  Pendergast was first and almost always (with “time  out” for Prohibition) a dispenser of liquor.

Born in 1873, he was the last of nine children of Michael and Mary Reidy Pendergast, immigrants from County Tipperary, Ireland.  His father was a teamster, driving a team of horses. Tom attended school until at least the sixth grade.  He later claimed to have attended college for two years but no records have been found to support the claim.  City directories and newspaper accounts, however, indicate that he worked in a variety of jobs during his early years, including as a laborer, clerk, and grocery wagon driver.

Climax Bar token

Tom arrived in Kansas City at at 17 in 1889 to help out his older brother, James. Known as “Big Jim,” this Pendergast was a power in the local Democratic Party and ran a saloon in the seedy West Bottoms area of Kansas City. He called the establishment “Climax” after a famous race horse of the time.  Initially employed as an accountant by the brother,  Tom proved to be an able student of both the liquor business and politics.  A large, powerful man, he was reputed to be quick with his fists to get his way.

When Big Jim died in 1911, both the keys to the saloon and political power fell into Tom Pendergast’s willing and able hands.   Before long he was operating three saloons on 12th St. in Kansas City and had branched out into selling whiskey, becoming proprietor of the T. J. Pendergast Wholesale Liquor Company.  Beginning about 1911 Kansas City directories list this enterprise operating at 525-527 Delaware Street in the Midland Building.

Although he was a “new boy” on the Kansas City liquor scene,  Pendergast proved to be very successful at the trade.   Shown here is a liquor crate with his name.  It was found years later in a mysterious sealed room along with thousands of empty jugs,  many of them with the Pendergast label.  Tom’s featured brand early in his career was “Old Grimes Straight Bourbon.” He also was importing wines , including Baron del Rivera brandy from Spain, shown here with a Pendergast label. 

As his economic  and political fortunes grew, Pendergast married.  His bride was Carolyn E. Dunn,  a woman whose roots were in New York State.  She was nine years younger than her husband.  The 1920 U.S. Census found them living in Kansas City on Parkway at  57th Street.  In their household were three youngsters, Marceline, 10; Thomas, 7; and Aileen, newly born.  With them were Carrie’s sister and three household servants.  Their home was a mansion, shown here, located in a fashionable section of Kansas City.

The Pendergast Mansion

When National Prohibition arrived, by his own reckoning Pendergast had in stock 14,000 barrels and 1,500 cases of liquor.  Piously, he later  claimed he had a chance to sell his bonded distillery whiskey for a $2 million profit during Prohibition but turned it down because he believed the whiskey would be diverted to bootleggers.  Ending liquor sales in his own operation,  he moved into producing and merchandising mineral water and soft drinks.

"King Tom's" headquarters

Meanwhile Pendergast’s political power was growing rapidly  In 1924 he bought the Monroe Hotel at 1904 Main Street and several years later next to it built a two-story yellow brick building he called “The Jefferson Club.”  From that location Tom is said to have held court and dispensed patronage and controlled city, county and even Missouri state politics.  He also was building a business empire of construction and other companies to undertake public works and services that were fertile sources of graft money.

Enter Harry Truman.  Truman had served with distinction in World War I but found civilian life more challenging. Co-owner of a men’s clothing store in downtown Kansas City he saw the business go bankrupt within two years,  a victim of the 1921 Depression.  A comrade in arms of Pendergast’s nephew, the honest and hardworking Truman soon came to the attention of Pendergast himself,  who backed Truman’s election for presiding judge of the county court.  Truman won and kept the job for eight years.

For all his honesty, Judge Truman never took Prohibition too seriously.  As a youngster he had served a stint “tending bar” in a drugstore.  The druggist kept bottles of whiskey behind the prescription case and local citizens -- some of them vocal Prohibition advocates -- snuck around for a drink rather than be seen entering one of the local establishments.  In his Memoirs,  Truman said he learned “...To think more highly of those who frequented the saloons than I did of the prescription-counter drinkers.”  During Prohibition, the future President was a frequent guest at the 822 Club, an inner circle of Kansas City businessmen who met to play poker and evade the dry laws in congenial surroundings at an elite men’s club.  Truman’s mentor,  “King Tom” as he was called,  always saw to it that Kansas City was wide open to illegal liquor.  

Harry and Tom

All along Pendergast had calculated that Prohibition would not last many years.  In addition to his own sequestered and aging stock, throughout the period he was buying up whiskey receipts.  When Repeal came,  he was positioned to be able to provide aged and bonded liquor almost immediately, profiting handsomely on the return of legal drinking.  By that time most other Kansas City liquor businesses and their brand names had long since disappeared,  leaving Pendergast with virtually no competition.  In short order he became the city’s largest distributor of liquor.  Before long there were allegations in the press about alleged price-fixing of alcohol in Kansas City.  Fingers were pointed at the T.J. Pendergast Wholesale Liquor Company of  2101 Central Street. Nothing was ever proved.

Riding high, Pendergast celebrated by issuing a new brand “Old 1889 Whiskey,” commemorating the year he first came to Kansas City. It was advertised as Kentucky bourbon, aged seven and one-half years, and was a hefty 100 proof.  The brand was introduced in 1934, the same year Pendergast launched Judge Truman on the road to the White House when he handpicked him to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate.  Truman won and went to Washington where he served well. When Franklin Roosevelt sought a compatible Vice President a decade later Truman got the call.  A moderate drinker of bourbon and “branch water,” Truman was in his office with friends pouring a drink when he was told of FDR’s death and his own ascendancy into the White House.

But as Harry Truman’s star was rising, his friend and mentor, Tom Pendergast, was on the skids. A

Pendergast after prison

strong reform movement in Kansas City eventually kicked out machine politicians.  King Tom’s own gambling habits got him into heavy debt, that he attempted to pay off with money from crooked deals.  Arrested and convicted in 1939, he spent 15 months in prison.  While he was incarcerated and even afterward, his son Tom Pendergast Jr. took over the management of the family liquor interests.  Following his release Pendergast lived quietly at home until his death at the age of 73 in 1945.  With scores of family and friends attending his funeral, "King Tom" was laid to rest in Kansas City's Calvary Cemetery.  Despite many who urged him to do so,  Harry Truman never renounced his friendship with the political boss who gave him his start.

Today Tom Pendergast's  legend lives on as a bad man who gave America a good President.

Note:  Material for this vignette came from a number of sources, including two books, “Tom’s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend,” by William Reddig and “Truman” by David McCulloch.

Otto Wagner and His Jugs of Distinction

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At a time when many liquor dealers were putting their alcoholic beverages into glass containers,  Otto Wagner, a major retail and wholesale whiskey distributor in Tiffin, Ohio, persisted in employing  ceramics for that purpose.  As a result he left behind a variety of stoneware jugs second to none in the Buckeye State or perhaps anywhere else.

Shown above, Wagner was born in Ohio in 1865,  just after the end of the Civil War.  His father was Francis Wagner, an immigrant to the United States from Germany as was his mother, Mary.   The parents settled in Tiffin, the seat of Seneca County in Northwestern Oho. The Wagners had six children,  four girls and two boys.  Of the latter,  Otto was the eldest. In a sense he was born to be a whiskey wholesaler and retailer. His father before him ran a liquor store in Tiffin.

It can be speculated that Otto began working in his father’s business at an early age and, as Francis aged,  took over the management during the latter part of the 1800s. He called his company, “Otto Wagner & Bro.”  The brother referenced was his younger sibling, Ervin.   Throughout its life the company was located at 173 South Washington Street , a major Tiffin commercial avenue shown here on a 1908 postcard.  His immediate neighbor at 174 South Washington was a funeral parlor, a juxtaposition that must have been the occasion for many jokey comments in Tiffin.  

Why Wagner preferred to use stoneware containers is not clear.  At the time the Great Western Pottery Company was located in Tiffin, the largest employer in town. Its products were generally ceramic kitchen and bathroom fixtures but an inventory of their pottery products indicates that they had ample capacity to turn out jugs for the whiskey trade. The assumption is that Wagner employed the local company.  Because he apparently was selling whiskey wholesale to saloons and hotels in Tiffin, Wagner often made use of large jugs.  Shown here are two stonewares clearly meant for the saloon.  One is marked two gallons and the other held a whopping three gallons.

Because Wagner also was selling to retail customers from his South Market Street store, he  needed containers holding smaller amounts of whiskey.  Shown here are three different quart jugs, each of them with a different style label.  The printing was applied by the potter with a roller to a partially fired body and then a clear glaze put over them.  Wagner’s jugs varied from fancy letters with serifs to block letters in cobalt to a commonplace san-serif motif.
  

Wagner’s gallon jugs could have been meant for either the retail or wholesale trade.  As shown here, they also run a similar range from fancy through block and plain lettering. This Tiffin whiskey man seems to have encouraged variety in labeling his ceramics.  While all  the jugs here are so-called “shoulder jugs,”  designed to stack easily in a kiln, note that each of the eight sported a slightly different label.

Meanwhile Otto was enjoying a personal life. The 1910 U.S. census found him living on Sycamore Street in Tiffin with his wife. Mary, also an Ohio native.   The couple had two children,  Alma, 10, and Frederick, 3.  Wagner’s occupation given in that census was “liquor merchant.”   Only six years later his participation in the liquor industry came to an abrupt halt when Ohio voted statewide Prohibition.  The 1920 census found the family at the same address.  This time, at age 54, Otto listed no occupation of any kind.

 

The Wagner family next appeared in the 1940 census.  Otto was 75 and Mary was 70.  Both adult children were living with their parents on Sycamore Street.  Otto is given as “retired.”  His son, Frederick, was selling insurance.  Four years later Mary Wagner died, followed a year later in death by Otto.  The couple are buried together at St. Joseph’s Catholic Cemetery in Clinton Township, Seneca County.

The Ohio whiskey man’s motivation for issuing so wide a variety of stoneware jugs remains unclear.  Given the frequency with which the jugs come up for sale on auction sites,  his liquor business produced hundreds of them.  They make a substantial collection and, more to our purpose, create a hallmark of distinction for Otto Wagner, shown below in a photo obtained years after the post.