Cleveland’s Daniel Myers Frequented the Bar — of Justice

 

Daniel Myers, a major Cleveland business figure, a man thoroughly steeped in liquor and wine merchandising, is pictured here in 1901 in association with three companies,  Benton, Myers Druggists; Metropolitan Fire Insurance, and the Computing Scale Company.  All three connections would entangle Myers in the U.S. justice system, once to his great peril.

The dapper Myers, with his stern eyes, flowing mustache and ample goatee, began his career working for Horace Benton, a well-known Ohio druggist, who was the senior partner in a firm founded in 1865, called Benton, Myers & Canfield.  Myers was a self described “junior partner.” Beginning as a wholesale drug firm, the company in the early 1880s branched out into whiskey, wines and other beverages.  A Cleveland business directory lists them in that trade in 1874, located at 127 Water Street.  In 1882, Canfield left the firm and it became Benton, Myers & Co.  It sold a wide range of goods, including products for soda fountains.

At that time it was not unusual for wholesale drug firms to be in the liquor trade.  Benton, Myers packaged its whiskey, probably secured from Ohio and Kentucky sources, in a variety of ceramic jugs, as shown here.  These kinds of containers frequently were used by liquor dealers, knowing that that saloonkeepers and bartenders would pour it into their own bottles, many with fancy labels.  Early Benton, Myers jugs usually are straight-sided and have the words “druggist” on them.  Two are shown here, one with an Albany slip top and a Bristol glaze base, the other entirely covered with the brown glaze and a stenciled label.  Later whiskey containers omit the “druggist” reference and are “ginger jar” shaped with underglaze labels.  Some had bail handles.

It was wine, not whiskey, however, that first put Daniel Myers and his firm into the courts.  In 1884 they had made a longterm agreement with a Sandusky, Ohio, wine grower named Duroy to market his premier wines through their firm.  After a few years, Duroy decided to establish his own winery and bottling operation in Sandusky, thus abrogating the agreement.  Benton, Myers quickly sought an injunction against the use of the Duroy name, citing their contract.  The case initially was heard in a Cleveland district court.  The conflict, to use the modern vernacular, “went viral.”  According to a report in an 1893 issues of The American Druggist periodical, the suit became the talk of the industry.  The judge found that the Duroy Wine Company was a trademark exclusive to Benton, Myers, but that Duroy could use an alternate label using his name.  That was fine with Daniel Myers and his partner but Duroy proceeded to fight the case in the circuit court and finally took it to the Supreme Court of Ohio.  After a lengthy hearing of the evidence, that body reaffirmed the decisions of the lower courts. Benton, Myers continued to sell Duroy-labeled wines but the source was not Duroy’s vineyards.

The next brush with the legal system for Daniel Myers was more serious and put him personally in jeopardy.  Myers had been an officer of a fire insurance company in Buffalo, New York, which apparently put him in touch with similar commercial interests in New York City.  In February 1899 he was elected president of the Manhattan Fire Insurance Company in Gotham and moved swiftly, according to a New York Times story, to control most of its stock.  Within months the company was found to be insolvent with debt of $600,000 (equivalent to $15 million today) and assets amounting to virtually nothing.  Accused of grand larceny in draining the firm’s resources, Myers was arrested in Cleveland by a New York detective sergeant and brought to the city where he was indicted.

Myers’ attorney attempted a plea bargain in which his client would plead guilty and confess in return for immunity as a witness for the prosecution.  That offer was turned down.  His second proposal was to plead guilty in return for a suspended sentence.  That too was rejected by prosecutors but Myers was allowed to go free on bail until his trial.  As the legal process proceeded Myers frequently was in the headlines in New York, Cleveland and around the country.   Amazingly, given his apparent willingness to confess, Myers subsequently was found “not guilty” by a jury and was free to resume normal life.

The unfavorable publicity surrounding Myer’s criminal trial may well have blighted his business career.   By the following year, he either had resigned or was pushed out by Horace Benton.  In 1876 Benton had taken as a “silent” partner the firm’s star salesman, an Ohio native named Lucien Hall.  In 1904 the company that once bore Myer’s name became Benton, Hall & Co.  By 1909 it was no longer being listed in Cleveland directories as selling liquor.

Myers apparently still had a hand in business as a director of the Computing Scale Company, a Dayton, Ohio, outfit.  One of the company products is shown above.  The firm’s board had sued the Toledo Computing Scale Company, complaining that it had infringed one of its patents on drum scales.  The dispute worked its way through the courts until it reach the Chicago bench of the famous Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.  Landis found for the Dayton company.  He ruled that the Toledo firm had infringed patent rights, the Dayton company could recover monetary damages, and granted a “perpetual injunction” against the Toledo firm making, using or vending any scales made on the trademarked patent.  Myers and his fellow directors emerged completely victorious.

Information about Daniel Myers’ personal life is scant. He married and had at least one son who became a Cleveland businessman.  He seems to have avoided the census taker throughout his life and his gravesite is not identified by Internet sources.  Much of Myers activity is revealed through court documents.  We are left contemplating a individual who at least three times went before the bar of justice and and came away each time tasting the sweet liquor of success.

The Arbonas of Pensacola and the Skeleton in the Cellar

As we approach Halloween, a ghost story seems appropriate.  This one involves a family named Arbona that ran a saloon in Pensacola, Florida, for thirty five years.   When the premises, shown here, later were being expanded, the skeleton of a man was found in the excavation.  Evidence indicated he had been stabbed in the chest.  Since then the Arbona Building, left, widely has been considered haunted.

Certainly the founder of the family,  Eugenio Arbona has fallen under suspicion as knowing something about the bones and how they got there.  Born in 1931 in Palma Mallorca, Spain, he emigrated to the United States while still in his twenties and settled in Mobile, Alabama, working as a bartender.  Eugenio and a friend subsequently were convicted of murdering a local cigar maker named Encino Hernandez and sentenced to the Alabama prison in Watumpka, shown below.  When the Civil War broke out in 1961, the government released him after serving only ten years of his sentence, possibly expecting him to join the Confederate Army.

Instead, Arbona moved to Georgia.  There he met his future wife,  Fannie (Frances) Trice.  She came from a long established Southern family.  Eight years younger than Eugenio, Fannie was the daughter of Thomas Jefferson  and Susan McDonald Trice.  Following their marriage, the newlyweds left Georgia and moved to Watumpka where Eugenio, apparently ignoring his earlier incarceration there, sought out business contacts.  It was in Watumpka that their eldest son, Joseph, was born in 1867.

Perhaps sensing better business opportunities in Pensacola, in 1869 Eugenio moved his growing family there, shown above as it looked in the 1880s.  That city in Florida’s Panhandle was experiencing something of a economic boom as its port access to Gulf of Mexico ship traffic and railroads resulted in a rapidly increasing population.  Saloons were numerous and Eugenio likely found work in one.  The Arbonas moved into a home at 115 Zaragoza Street.  When it burned in 1884, the family escaped harm and Eugenio immediately rebuilt it on the same site.  Did that work give him an opportunity to stash a cadaver in the cellar?

The rebuilt Arbona Building, as it was now called, was designed to be occupied by a saloon on the first floor and Eugenio, Fannie and by now five children, lived on the second floor.  They called their drinking establishment "The Gulf Saloon."  In addition, the Arbonas likely were blending and compounding whiskey and selling it at wholesale as well as serving it over the bar.  A two toned stoneware jug bearing Eugenio’s name, dates from this time.

After two years running a saloon, the Arbonas divorced.  Had Fannie became aware of the skeleton underneath their feet?  Or had Eugenio’s reputed bad temper proved too much?  He is said to have tried on several occasions to have one of his children arrested.  After the split Eugenio determined to go back to Spain and signed the business over to his wife.  Fannie proved to have a singular ability to run the establishment.  The Gulf Saloon became even more popular because she had the foresight to purchase refrigeration equipment that made it possible for her to serve the only really cold beer in Pensacola.

Fannie was assisted by her oldest son, Joseph, who also demonstrated ability as a saloonkeeper.  After an absence of several years, however, Eugenio suddenly reappeared in Pensacola.  He demanded that the family sign the property back over to him.  But Fannie, Joseph, and other family members refused.  The father returned to Spain where, on July 15, 1890, he committed suicide.

As his mother aged, Joseph took over increasing responsibilities for the business, expanding into tobacco products and advertising and distributing nationally known products like Duffy’s Malt Whiskey.  Joseph also married.  His wife was Margaret.  The 1900 U.S. Census found them living in Pensacola, wedded three years.  Meanwhile, Mother Fannie was keeping an eye on the premises, living upstairs until her death. In 1920 with the coming of National Prohibition, after a business life of 35 years under the Arbonas, the doors of the Gulf Saloon were shut.  

Joseph was forced to find a new occupation and, as many ex-whiskey men did, opened an automotive business.  The 1920 census found him still in Pensacola, living as a widower with five children, ranging in age from thirteen to one year old.  Following Repeal in 1934, Joseph and family members continued running a drinking establishment at the Zaragoza address.  Fannie Arbona died in 1935 and was buried in Saint Michael’s Cemetery in Pensacola.  Her son Joseph followed in 1951.  The gravestones of both Arbonas are shown here, memorializing individuals who overcame a hot tempered, and possibly dangerous, husband and father to give Pensacola a storied saloon.

Here is where the ghost story begins. In 1991 the Pensacola Historical Museum was moved to the Arbona Building.  That is when spooky things began to be noticed.  Museum volunteers have reported many paranormal experiences.  According to a book called “Pensacola Haunted,”  objects in one location in the museum in the evening were found in a different location the next morning.  Cigar smoke was smelled at times although smoking is forbidden.  Noises frequently were heard after hours on the second floor where the Arbonas lived.  Visitors have run down from the second floor in fright because of a strong feeling they were not alone. The elevator has been known to move between floors on its own.  In 2008 a young woman was touring the museum room shown at left when she felt a sharp tug on her shoulder.  She thought it was her boyfriend, but when she quickly turned to complain, not a soul was standing there.  

In 2008 the Atlantic Paranormal Society came to Pensacola to film an episode of “Ghost Hunters” in the museum.  Members of the filming group were standing at the front desk talking about Eugenio and analyzing his shady past.  As recounted:  “Suddenly, everyone present heard three rapping sounds coming from the back of the building.  They were the only ones in the Arbona Building at the time.  They concluded that someone did not want Mr. Arbona’s name slurred in his own house.”

My own speculation differs from the conclusions of the  Atlantic Paranormal Society.  If anyone was rapping, it more likely was the spirit of the skeleton found in the foundation of the Arbona Building.  My guess is the ghost was signaling:  “Just set me free and I will be avenged on my killer.”  Would the target be Eugenio Arbona?  Only the ghost would know for sure. 

Notes: “Haunted Pensacola” is by Alan Brown, and part of a series called “Haunted America.”  It was published by The History Press of Charleston, S.C., in 2010. Not only is the book the source of much of the information in this post and the photo of the museum room, the book is an interesting and sometimes spooky read.  The Arbona jug shown above recently sold at auction for just over $1,400.  Maybe, sometimes, crime does pay.

George Buchanan: Kentucky’ s Once and Future Whiskey King

                               

In 1872 George C. Buchanan was accounted the largest distiller in Kentucky, operating no fewer than three major plants capable of mashing 4,885 bushels of grain and producing 500 barrels of whiskey a day.   Twelve years later, forced to sell at auction a mansion he had just redecorated, Buchanan made headlines as the “Bankrupt Whisky King.” Undaunted, he revived his fortunes and his reputation as whiskey royalty.

According to one author, Buchanan, with his brother, Andrew, began their business careers as wholesale grocers.  They moved into distilling about 1870, with George credited with buying and building three major distilleries in Louisville.  They were known as the Anderson Distillery (RD #97), shown above, the Buchanan Distillery (RD #353), and the Nelson Distillery (DR #4), adjacent to each other in Federal taxing district #4.   As noted earlier, the three plants had the capacity for producing whiskey amounts second to none in Kentucky. 

An advertisement linked the three outfits and provided illustrations of their advertising logos.  The Anderson distillery featured a Maltese or Greek cross on much of its materials.  Shown here, for example, are a paperweight and a shot glass both touting Anderson’s handmade sour mash, copper fire whiskey.  These items would have been produced to give away to saloonkeepers and bartenders featuring Anderson’s brands.  The Anderson distillery produced a small-tub, hand-made whiskey that is said to have been light, rich, smooth and fragrant.  The grain was scalded with spent “beer” in small tubs and was left 24 hours before being mashed.  It was then fermented naturally and some liquid was boiled in a copper still and others in a copper vessel directly over the fire.

The Buchanan marketing approach featured more elegant designs.   Buchanan’s Green Label whiskey displayed an elegant script and a wire-covered top.  Equally interesting was a liquor called “Buchanan’s Electro-Ozonized Bourbon” for the lungs.  Taking advantage of newly discovered interest in electricity, this whiskey was advertised as “in the best shape for use when an alcoholic preparation for the LUNGS is needed.”  Nelson Distillery used barrels to announce its products, including brands known as “Coon Hollow” and “Big Spring.”  These were, it claimed, “whiskies of the people.”

The Buchanan Distillery produced a heavy-bodied, hand-made sour mash whiskey that could be blended but when aged became deeply flavored and had a fragrant bouquet.  The Nelson Distillery produced a mash of 80% rye and 20% malted barley that was labeled as “Nelson’s Pure Rye.”  It also made “Nelson’s Pure Malt,”  composed entirely of barley malt and stored it in both charred and uncharred barrels.  Another featured brand was “U.S. Club,” whiskey that was used for both rye and bourbon blends.  It also marketed what the owners called “a quick maturing whiskey,” aged only three or four months.  A relatively cheap drink, it had a substantial customer base.

The overall company was known initially (1871-1875) as Newcomb, Buchanan & Co.  George Buchanan was president.  In 1876 and 1877, the distillery outfit reorganized with similar management and a slightly altered name.  Along the line the Buchanan built the Greystone Distillery, later known as Elk Run.   

By now a very rich man, Buchanan did as many whiskey royalty and bought a mansion.  It had been designed by Henry Whitestone, one of Louisville’s most noted architects at the time, originally for a man named Tompkins.  In the Italian Renaissance style, as shown here, the structure has a definite institutional look with its flat facade rigidly articulated by a belted look at each floor.  Like many houses in Louisville at the time only the main facade was of limestone, the remainder brick. However homely the exterior might be,  Buchanan determined to make the interior the height of Victorian extravagance.  A local newspaper contained a description of the still-new decorations at their height:  “Nothing short of the most lavish means could have provided such a bewildering array of blended utility and artistic beauty.”  A photo of the Buchanan parlor and a room beyond attest to the elegance of the place.

By 1884, however, Buchanan was bankrupt and the Louisville Courier-Journal speculated that he might have been “on the lam.”  The paper called him “a sort of Napoleon of the liquor trade.” It added:  “All his operations were colossal, and his successes or failures were pitched on the most splendid scale.”  When he had promised earlier to pay his enormous debts, people had believed him.  Now he was bankrupt and missing.  It was whispered to be a case of fraud. But Buchanan’s friends knew where he was and he quickly returned.  He had assets. There were at least 67,000 barrels of whiskey in Buchanan’s warehouses.  Some 3,000 were slated for removal subject to $8,000 tax, equivalent to $375,000 today — an amount the distiller could not raise.  In the end, Buchanan was forced to put his distilleries into bankruptcy.  His mansion and its furnishings went too. 

But George was far from finished.  Although his distilleries were reorganized under new ownership, he apparently retained the confidence of whiskey men in Kentucky and throughout America.  He set himself up as a Louisville whiskey broker.  He could, he said, arrange large quantities of whiskey from distillers to wholesalers and retailers, and offered to bottle whiskey for parties under their own labels.  Shown here is an Anderson whiskey issued through a St. Louis outfit that may have been the result of a Buchanan brokering effort.  In his advertising Buchanan said:  “I have close business relations with the owners of a very large percentage of these old whiskies and can execute on the most favorable terms.”  He proved those relationships by issuing a 169-page booklet about Kentucky whiskey that carried ads from many major distillers.  He called it “Fine Whiskey Facts” and gave it a fancy cover. 

This publication also gave Buchanan an opportunity to pontificate on Kentucky whiskey:  “A standard Kentucky Whiskey is the best and safest beverage in the world, and especially suited to the American climate in which a stimulant of its specific character is a necessity.”  He ended this screed with a warning to Kentucky distillers and dealers to be “satisfied with a legitimate profit” so as to encourage the “cheapness at which they can be afforded” and thus increase sales.  He also strongly advocated lowering Federal taxes on whiskey.

By 1905, Buchanan was firmly back in control of the distilleries he had built and nurtured.  He had established a relationship with the New York City-based Paris, Allen Company, who were attempting to make their own “Trust-like” inroads into the Kentucky whiskey trade.  When Paris, Allen bought the Anderson-Buchanan-Nelson Company, they capitalized it at $2 million and incorporated it in New York State.  They named Buchanan as the president and general manager of the new entity.  The King of Kentucky Whiskey had returned.  A trade paper in reporting the deal opined:  “The Bulletin feels that the stockholders of the new company are to be congratulated on securing the services of Mr. Buchanan in the operation and distribution of the products of these plants;  we also congratulate Mr. Buchanan on having returned to his old first love.”

According to Kentucky tax records, the firm subsequently became known as the Allen-Bradley Distillery and operated under that name until about 1914. The property subsequently was known as the Elk Run Distillery before the entire complex was shut down by National Prohibition.  During the “dry” era the warehouses were under Federal supervision and used to store medicinal alcohol. A flood damaged large steel tanks on the property that broke loose and demolished several warehouses.  All but one of the distilleries then were dismantled, most buildings were razed, and the property became a scrap lot.

By that time George Buchanan had largely disappeared from the public record.  He seems to have eluded the census taker throughout his life. He is, however, worthy of a final word.  His mansion, now part of a university campus, still bears the Buchanan name and is listed on the National Register of Historic Properties.  In the official narrative that accompanies such designations, the Whiskey King is described, quoting one of his contemporaries.  The quote makes a fitting conclusion to Buchanan’s story:  “He was a liberal promoter of public improvements and a generous contributor to charities that administer to the helpless…” [but nevertheless] “…retained a very ample supply of this world’s goods.”

The Historic Legacy of Green Bay’s Frank Duchateau

                                  

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town known for its football team rather than archeology,  Frank John Baptiste Duchateau, who had inherited a thriving liquor dealership from his father, used his riches to amass a collection of Native American and other early artifacts that became the basis of the city’s noted history and science museum.  The local newspaper called Dechateau’s gift “a historic legacy.”

Frank was the son of Abelard (sometimes “Abeillard”) Louis Donat Duchateau, a native of Oud-Heverlee, Vlaams Brabant Province, Belgium, and his wife, Felicite Juliane, also of Belgian origin.  At the age of 20, Abelard had immigrated to the United States arriving at Green Bay as a port of entry in July 1856.  He initially found work as a tailor in Door County, Wisconsin,  moving to Green Bay around 1867, with Felicite, whom he had married in 1861.

About 1870 with a sibling Abelard established a liquor dealership in Green Bay calling it Duchateau & Brother.   It was located at the corner of Main and Washington Streets in the heart of the city’s commercial district.  The locale is shown above on a postcard, apparently during a patriotic parade.  The 1880 Census found the family residing on Cedar Street with their five children, ages 18 to 11.  Frank, born in 1868, was 12.  Abelard’s occupation was recorded by the census taker as “liquor dealer - merchant.”

The Duchateaus were not only liquor dealers but also rectifiers, that is, blending and compounding whiskeys to achieve a specific taste.  They packaged their products in glass with an embossed logo on the front.  The company’s flagship brand was “Old Beauford Rye.”  Although the name apparently was never trademarked, it was advertised on saloon signs like the one shown here depicting an affectionate elderly couple at mealtime with a flagon of booze at hand.

But not all the Duchateaus advertising was so benign.  A trade card has a definite suggestive motif.  It shows what appears to be a couple sprawled on the ground under a large red umbrella.  A man, identified by his shoes, pants, and jacket, appears to be atop a woman.  We see only one of her shoes and a bit of stocking.   Most surprising is the figure of a second man with a straw hat and a fishing pole who is calling out, “Hold on, I’m in for some of that too.”   What is this, a group grope?  But no!  When opened it reveals a young foursome sitting by a lake drinking from a full case of “Old Beauford Rye.”  Everyone is enjoying a beer glass full of the liquor, which may indicate that the real action may come later.

Frank Duchateau was educated in the Green Bay public schools but left at the age of 16, working first as an office boy and then as a clerk in a shoe store owned by a relative, entering his father’s liquor business in 1885.  His first job was as bookkeeper, advancing to manager. The company progressed to being Green Bay’s largest import and wholesale liquor operation.  Frank was fully trained and capable of taking over the business when Abelard died in 1889 and was buried in the Green Bay’s Allouez Cemetery.   

Frank Duchateau was married in September 1890 to Marie Beaupre. a native of Green Bay and the daughter of a local doctor.  Three years later she died in 1893 leaving him with a daughter, Olive Felicite, to raise.  Frank subsequently married a second time, to Mrs. Julia Lucas O’Leary, a widow whose father had been an early settler of Green Bay.  This marriage produced no children before Julia too died in 1911. Despite these tragedies in his personal life, Frank proved to be undeterred and as acute a businessman as Abelard.  In tribute to his father, about 1900 he changed the name of the firm to simply “A. Duchateau Company.”  

Like many other whiskey men of his time Duchateau branched out with a patent medicine called “Dr. Munros’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters.,” said to be a remedy for all types of intestinal disturbances.  The label carried a picture purported to be the visage of the estimable Dr. Munro, possibly a fictitious personage.  This nostrum eventually would be targeted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Food and Drug officials among purported medicinal preparations with an excess amount of alcohol and reported to be “insufficiently medicated to render them unfit for use as a beverage.”  As a result, Dr. Munro’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters thereafter would be subject to a special Federal tax on sales and were branded by Dr. Wiley, head of the Food and Drug administration, as a useless potion.

Meanwhile, Frank Duchateau was making a name for himself in Green Bay.  His business interests encompassed real estate, banking, the telephone and electric companies.  A Republican, he served five years as a city alderman from 1892 to 1897.  He also was active socially as a trustee of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, a member of the Knights of Pythias Lodge, the Green Bay Yacht Club, the Green Bay Driving Club, the Green Bay Turn Verein and the Green Bay Gun Club.  In 1919 the king of Belgium honored Duchateau for his money-raising efforts to aid wartorn Belgium after World War I by awarding him the King Albert Medal.

Important as these activities were, Duchateau’s real passion was for archeology.  For many years he avidly pursued the collecting of relics of early Native American and French trader life.   Described as “one of Wisconsin’s most ambitious collectors,” Frank, shown left in elder years, amassed an assemblage of archeological items as well as early farm tools, ceramics, fire arms, kitchen utensils and foreign currency.  

Among the rarest of these was a mortar and pestle used by the Menominee Indians to crush corn, similar to the items pictured below.  The mortar stood about two and a half feet tall and the pestle was six feet long.  Not content with only buying them, Duchateau often found rare artifacts on his own.  While exploring at Point Au Sable near Green Bay, he came upon a brass sundial made in Paris centuries earlier.  It carried the longitude and latitude of many of the cities of an earlier age and was considered highly rare.

In 1915, Duchateau help found the Neville Museum of Natural History of Brown County, located in Green Bay.  Over his lifetime he donated some 12,000 items to the museum, a gift termed by the Green Bay Press-Gazette as “a historic legacy.”  He also donated the first display cases and served as the first vice president of the museum board, a post he held until 1929.  

Although the coming of National Prohibition, shut down his wholesale liquor business, Duchateau was able to throw his abundant energies into his real estate interests, including erecting buildings on six blocks in downtown Green Bay.  He lived to be 87 years old, dying in 1954. He had seen the 1934 Repeal of Prohibition; the 1940 death of his third wife, Mary Laughlin; the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War.  Most of all, Duchateau witnessed the growth of a remarkable local museum, the Neville, one that continually garners positive online responses like this:  “Their permanent exhibit about the history of the area is truly remarkable and can be enjoyed by folks of all ages.”  Quite clearly the legacy of Frank Duchateau, Green Bay’s  whiskey man and amateur archeologist, lives on.

Fred Raschen Parlayed $2.75 into a Whiskey Fortune

Recorded as “prominent for over fifty-two years in the business life of Sacramento, California, Fred Raschen had arrived in town with $2.75 in his pocket and dreams of starting a career.  After a false start or two, he found the whiskey trade and never looked back. 

Raschen was born in Oldenberg, Germany, in 1845.  Educated in the schools of his homeland, he had a spirit of wanderlust.  As a young man he is reported as having traveled extensively in Europe, Asia and Africa.  A biographical sketch described him as “seeing the world and working at whatever he could do to pay his expenses and in this way gaining the broadening outlook on life which travel alone can give.”   In 1870, via the Isthmus of Panama, he arrived in California. After a brief sojourn in San Francisco, he settled in Sacramento.  He had $2.75 to his name.

The German immigrant soon found employment, working as a clerk for a grocery store on Second and M Streets.  Within a few months he had moved to a produce and commission house on K Street.   Because grocers almost always sold whiskey,  Raschen probably was exposed to that area of merchandise.  Two years after his arrival in Sacramento he went to work as a clerk for a wholesale liquor dealer located on J Street, a major commercial avenue shown above.  The company founded in 1874 under the name of Weinrich, Lohse & Company.  After two management changes over the years,  H. Weinrich became the sole owner in 1885.  His major brand was “Silver Sheaf.” A shot glass with the brand and Weinrich’s name is shown here.

Recognizing the business talents of his young employee and possibly in bad health, Weinrich made Raschen a partner in the firm.  In February 1899, the owner, according to a legal notice in the Sacramento newspaper, completely disposed of his interests to Raschen.  The latter was declared entitled to collect all outstanding accounts of the firm and would pay all demands against the firm.  While doing business at the same 514 J Street location, the new owner changed the business name to Fred Raschen, Wholesale Liquors. 

Raschen’s  flagship brand continued to be Silver Sheaf, but he also sold “Golden State” and “Tippecanoe.”  The former label had been trademarked by a New York firm in 1876 and the latter by a Cincinnati liquor dealer in 1905.  It is not clear if he was featuring these whiskeys under license from their originators or was poaching the names.  He packaged his whiskey in labeled amber bottles that contained embossing of his initials.  

Like Weinrich,  Raschen was partial to shot glasses as merchandising tools for his whiskey.  Several versions were issued for Silver Sheaf, one with an elaborately etched figure of a sheaf of grain and his name written in script below it.  Interestingly the sheaf is noted as a “trade mark,” yet I can find no evidence that Raschen ever registered his brand with federal authorities. While a second glass is less elaborate it has the name of the liquor written in Gothic letters.  He also issued shots for Golden State and Tippecanoe.   These items were principally meant as gifts to saloonkeepers and bartenders who were carrying Raschen’s brands.

Information about Raschen’s family life is scant.  He fails to show up in any U.S. documents and his biography made no mention of a wife or children.   He worked at the same location for 47 years as both employee and owner until shut down by National Prohibition  His recreational activities during that period, by contrast, were well recorded.  He became one of the best known and successful horsemen of the region, owning a number of thoroughbred trotting and driving horses.  He was a member of the California State Fair Assn. and the Sacramento Driving Club, racing his steeds at the fair grounds with good result, “thoroughly enjoying this gentlemen’s sport.”

Hunting was another Raschen passion.  He was the organizer of the Sacramento Outing Club, an organization that owned large shooting preserves in Sutter County.  An excellent marksman he is said once to have made the his limit of doves with fifteen out of eighteen shots — a record.  He also made targets of other birds, including quail, plover and wild pigeon. 

None of this sporting life detracted from his business interests that also enhanced Raschen’s standing in Sacramento.  It was said that he was “one who could be depended upon to do his share in promoting the financial and civic life of the city.”   For 47 years, as both employer and owner, Raschen worked at the same location.  In 1918, however, he was forced to shut the doors of his company, now called Fred Raschen Co., Inc., after a 1907 incorporation.

At 73 years old Raschen was far from finished with his career.  He decided to devote himself to the development of land.  With the considerable wealth he had accrued as a liquor dealer he bought 1,100 acres in nearby Yuba County.  Much of it was rich bottom land, covered mostly with cottonwood trees.  He directed the tree removal,  land leveling, and planting of peach trees.  Raschen also installed a concrete pipe irrigation system and other up-to-date equipment.  Given the fertility of the soil the peach trees grew rapidly and his ranch soon became considered a model of “modern” agricultural practices.

I can find no record of Raschen’s death or where he may be buried.  But a fitting memorial to this immigrant who came to town with $2.75 in his pocket and became a multi-millionaire was penned by a biographer while Fred was still living:  “Mr. Raschen is a typical Californian, for he has spent all of the productive years of his life here, has aided materially in developing and upbuilding, and has been a loyal citizen, with the best interests of his community always at heart.”

Note:  Much of the information for this post has been derived from a book authored by G. Walter Reed, entitled History of Sacramento County, California, with Biographical Sketches.  It was published by the Historic Record Company of Los Angeles in 1923.