The J. Millers’ Cross-Country Cock Fight

When James Miller’s “Chicken Cock” from Kentucky challenged John Miller’s “Game Cock” from Massachusetts,  the one-on-one battle was not fought within a cockpit of feisty roosters but in a court of law. Those chickens came home to roost in a dispute over whiskey trademark infringement. The conflict ended with one rooster defeated and  the proprietor “licking his wounds.”

James Miller had been dead almost four decades when these events occurred but his name still was connected to the Bourbon County, Kentucky, liquor he had originated and named “Chicken Cock.”   When Miller died in 1860 he left several thousand dollars to George G. White, a man who had been a clerk at the distillery.  With partners, White bought the facility, operating it as the Chicken Cock Distillery, shown above. 

Soon it had a mashing capacity of 400 bushels and was turning out about 9,000 barrels annually.  In addition to making sweet mash whiskey under the Chicken Cock name, the distillery had the capacity to produce its own barrels and feed the spent mash to 500 head of cattle and 800 hogs.  About 1880 the name of the facility was changed to G.G. White Distillery and the whiskey became “J.A. Miller Chicken Cock.”   By 1886 White had expanded its mashing capacity to 600 bushels a day and boasted six warehouses capable of storing some 32,000 barrels.

 

By dint of vigorous advertising, Chicken Cock Whiskey now was being sold nationwide through a wide network of distributors,  including Kohn & Adler of Rock Island, Illinois; Peter Crowley of Boston, and — as shown in the ad above — Jacob Dudenhoefer of Milwaukee.  One California newspaper, in an 1870 news article discussing the reputation of Chicken Cock whiskey, claimed that it was a favorite with large dealers, selling in lots from fifty to fifteen hundred barrels. 

The symbol of George White’s brand was a strutting rooster as displayed on tin signs mean for saloons and bottles meant for pouring from back of the bar.  As the Circuit Court of Massachusetts noted:  “This whiskey for more than 30 years has always been known in the trade as “Miller’s Chicken Cock Whiskey:  or “Chicken Cock Whiskey,” and has been noted for its high grade and uniform excellence; and this mark has been stamped on every barrel or package of the whiskey made or sold by Miller or his successor in the business.”

Off in Boston, John Miller, a major local liquor dealer, was taking note of this popularity.  Miller had founded his company in 1850 and operated it with considerable success for several decades at Boston’s Park Square. During this period Miller featured several brands of whiskey: "Calumet Rye,” “Elkwood,” “Overton,” and "Owl Gin.  Eventually he  brought his sons into the business.  William A. Miller appears on a company letterhead dated 1898 and Louis J. Miller is listed in directories after 1900. 

Almost certainly noting the identity of his own surname and first initial with the Kentucky distiller, in 1887  John Miller hatched an idea to sell more whiskey.  He adopted brand names for whiskeys called “Miller’s Game Cock Bourbon” and “Miller’s Game Cock Rye.”  For a time Miller’s whiskey did not attempt close identification with Chicken Cock. Note the plain bottle at left.  Soon that mode of merchandising was abandoned.  Game Cock advertising, labels and embossed bottles began carrying a likeness of a rooster standing upright, often enclosed in a circle.  As the Massachusetts Court pointed out, a glance at the two marks indicated that John Miller & Co. had “taken bodily the picture or representation which forms the complainant’s trade-mark and appropriated it to their own use.” 

The Boston “copy cat” effort clearly met with success.  A bottle shown right with the rooster was issued by the Rothenberg Company of San Francisco, who also featured a shot glass with the standing chicken.   Other distributors for Game Cock Whiskey could be found on the East Coast and Midwest.  It must have been galling to George White and his colleagues that while Chicken Cock was straight bourbon whiskey,  Game Cock was a rectified blend, cooked up by the Millers in some back room of their Boston address.  Even more galling was that the difference became a part of Miller’s defense.  His lawyers claimed that because a barrel of “straight” whiskey needed two federal stamps and a rectified whiskey only one, that no one would ever be deceived.  The court dismissed the argument as specious.

For some months after Miller put his whiskey on the market, George White was blissfully unaware of what was afoot until 1889 when he found out and subsequently brought his suit in the courts of Massachusetts.  That in itself was a bold act.  The history of trademark infringement cases was that a complaint and subsequent granting of an injunction was seldom successful in the state in which the offender did business.   Politics frequently got in the way of a fair hearing.   Circuit Court Judge Colt, however, was not one to be swayed by local ties.  In his written opinion, one by one he swatted down John Miller’s arguments and agreed with White’s lawyers.  He granted an injunction to the Kentucky distiller.  In the cross-country rooster tussle, the Chicken Cock had bested the Game Cock.

The injunction simply told John Miller that he must find other ways to illustrate his whiskey.  So he did.  The result was a change in the way he advertised Game Cock Rye.  Instead of the upright chicken, the birds were shown dead, presumably shot, hanging upside down from the front of a barrel.  Added was the motto:  “The King of All Whiskies.”  As shown right, that label was applied to full quart bottles and to pint flasks.   Now Miller’s Massachusetts birds could not be mistaken for Miller’s in Kentucky.

Within a few years, however, the court settlement meant nothing to either party,  Prohibition shut down both operations for the duration of America’s “dry” period.  Chicken Cock Whiskey was revived after Repeal, but a brand name only and under other auspices.

The Feuding Pair

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Henry Fleckenstein: Portland’s Peripatetic Pioneer

At Henry Fleckenstein’s death in Portland, Oregon, a Morning Oregonian headline read “Pioneer Laid to Rest,” and hailed his fifty years as a local resident and successful businessman as senior member of local wholesale liquor firms.   The newspaper, however, failed to note the round-about route that Fleckenstein, shown right, took in getting to Portland and achieving prosperity by selling whiskey. 

Henry was born in 1838 in the historic city of Worms, in the province of Rhine-Hessen, along the banks of the Rhine River in what is now Germany.  His father was Daniel Fleckenstein, likely in the brewing or wine trade that was so important to that region. After receiving an elementary public education, at the age of sixteen Henry, the third son, was apprenticed to the brewery trade where he labored for the next six years.   

At that point, Henry’s peripatetic ways took hold.  Not likely to inherit his father’s wealth and seeking better opportunities, in 1860 he left for America.  The trip was made by sailing ship, subject to both wind and calm, and took 35 days before he landed at New York harbor.   Almost immediately he headed off across the continent to St. Louis, Missouri.  It was city with both a large German population and a brewing center. 

Fleckenstein worked in a brewery there for three years, before the wanderlust took over once again.  Retracing his steps to New York, he sailed on a ship for Latin America, disembarking at a town then named Aspinwall, now Colon, Panama.  It was the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Railroad, constructed as a fast route to California during the Gold Rush.   Henry took the train across the Isthmus to the Pacific side.  There he went on board a steamer for San Francisco.  He spent a year there, apparently working in a California brewery.  

Once again he got itchy feet and looking even further westward saw the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) which increasingly were an interest of the United States, but still independent. From San Francisco, he shipped out for Honolulu.  He was intent on starting a business, probably a brewery to provide beer to the growing number of foreign workers coming to the islands.  Possibly because of the growing influence of anti-alcohol Protestant and Mormon missionaries, he was denied a license and ended up working for someone else.  His 1903 biographer related what happened next:  “After thorough test of the prevailing conditions on the islands he found that his health was impaired and a change of climate was imperative.”

Making yet another move, the peripatetic Fleckenstein took a ship back to San Francisco.  Things there did not suit him, however,  and with a short time he moved to Portland, Oregon.  There he found employment as a foreman in the Weinhard Brewery.  Weinhard in 1864 had purchased an existing brewery and then moved the operations to a larger site where business boomed.  Fleckenstein was still intent on running his own business, however, and by 1866 had established his own bottling works.  This enterprise also must have proved unsatisfactory:  the very next year Fleckenstein began the wholesale liquor house for which he became locally famous.

He also found time for marriage.  His bride was Christina Whitman, the daughter of Nicholas Whitman and Genovefa Holinger.   Born in Cincinnati, Christina had arrived in Portland in 1865 with her family.  The young couple married about 1868 in Portland.  She was a decade younger than Henry, twenty years old when they married.  The couple would have four children, Henry, Amelia, Ellie and Bernard (called Ben).

City directories indicate that Fleckenstein’s first location for his wholesale liquor store was 168 Front Street.  Exhibiting some of his earlier restlessness and likely needing to expand, he moved a year later to 147 First Street.    After ten years as single proprietor at that location, in 1876 Henry sold a half partnership to Julius Mayer, a local businessman.  They called their company Fleckenstein, Mayer & Co.  Henry was president and Julius served as secretary and treasurer.  Not long after creating the partnership,  they moved to 12 Front Street and subsequently  to even larger quarters at 24 Front Street.  By 1883, they had expanded their space to include an adjoining store front.   Their next move was in 1890 to 235 Oak Street at the northeast corner of Second Street, the large building shown here. 

They also opened an office in Cincinnati, likely to access supplies of whiskey.  Fleckenstein and partner were rectifiers as well as importers and wholesalers.  They were mixing up whiskey and other liquor in their establishment and slapping on their labels, many of them colorful.  They also were putting their products in amber bottles and flasks with their monogram embossed on the front.   Among their brands, either proprietary or imported included “Billie Taylor,” “Elk Tooth,” “High and Dry,” “Hickory,” “Our Monogram” and “The Penwick.”  They also sold a line of fruit brandies and even Damiana Bitters, a male potency builder. As advertising they gave out particularly attractive shot glasses.

During this period Fleckenstein also was making a name for himself in politics, serving in a number of offices in Portland, including a term as councilman for the Fifth Ward.  For a number of years he was a member of the City Parks Commission and credited with his “practical interest in the development of the park systems of Portland.”  Socially he was identified as a member of the Elks, Odd Fellows and United Workmen fraternal orders, as well as the Chamber of Commerce and the Commercial Club.

For 12 years Fleckenstein, Mayer Co. remained a stable, successful enterprise. It was able to open a second outlet at 204 to 206 Second Street.  In 1902, however, Henry sold out his half interest to his partner.  Mayer stayed at the Oak Street address, doing business under the old name.  Fleckenstein moved to the Second Street address and opened a new firm under the name Henry Fleckenstein & Co.  A photo below shows that location.  Henry appears to be standing in front of the business with his dog.

This firm merchandised its own set of liquor brands.  Among them “Bear Valley,”  “Belle of the Pacific,” “Buck Valley,” “Diamond Hill,” and “Old Elkader.”  Earlier Henry had not bothered to trademark his brands;  now in 1908 he registered both Buck Valley and Diamond Hill.  Gone from his embossed bottles was a fancy monogram, to be replaced by a griffin (mythical beast) trademark.  As he had earlier,  Fleckenstein provided giveaway advertising shot glasses to favored customers like saloon keepers and bartenders.

Even with competition from his old firm, one still bearing his name, Henry’s return to single ownership proved successful.   In 1903 one Portland publication declared:  “This venture has proved a success and Mr. Fleckenstein is now supplying a constantly increasing trade in this and other states.”

As he aged, Henry turned more and more of the business management of his liquor operation over to his son Ben.  Fleckenstein died in July 1910 at the age of 72, hailed for his fifty years of in business in Portland.  With the vicar of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church presiding, his funeral was a major affair with many dignitaries attending.  Among his pallbearers was the mayor of Portland.  Henry was buried in Section 8, Lot 94 of Riverview Cemetery.  His wife, Christina lived another 34 years before joining him.  Shown here is the family plot, but strangely a headstone is missing on both graves.  

The businesses Henry had built over almost half a century had only five more years of life.  In 1916 Oregon imposed statewide prohibition of alcohol sales and both liquor companies that bore his name went out of business.  Accounted a “pioneer” in Oregon, Fleckenstein had traveled over much of the globe searching for a place to settle and embark on a prosperous career.  When he found both in Portland, this wandering German never left. 

Note:  This post was informed by a number of sources.  A key one was John L. Thomas’s book “Whiskey Bottles and Liquor Containers from the State of Oregon.”  His account was particularly valuable for sorting out the tangle of two liquor firms existing simultaneously with Fleckenstein’s name prominent on both.

Nathan Van Beil and His Rock’n Rye Trials of 1880

                                     He's rock and rye crazy, down in the dock,

You'll see by his nose he loves rye and rock.

Now he has the snakes and thinks that they crawl,

He sighs for his bottle, he'd drink cork and all.

                          — Song circa 1880

If the gent in the song above was being going crazy by drinking rock and rye whiskey,  Nathan Van Beil may have driven near the brink of insanity by his energetic but ultimately fruitless efforts to claim total proprietary ownership of the words “rock” and “rye” in any combination.  In May 1880, he posted the stern warning below: 

Van Beil’s life up to this time seemed to have been aiming toward this product and 1880. He was born in Philadelphia in 1832, one of eight children of Herman and Elizabeth Van Beil.  His father was a Jewish immigrant from the Netherlands and a successful merchant.   The 1860 Census found Nathan at the age of 25, still living with his parents.  His occupation was given as “liquor merchant.”

My belief is that this Nathan early in his working life had experience in the whiskey trade.  Philadelphia directories indicate that beginning about 1859 Henry and A.C. Van Beil were operating a wholesale liquor house at 1310 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.  They featured the whiskey brand name, “Imperial Cabinet.”  Nathan likely was working for these Van Biels and learning the business.

By 1877 he had left Philadelphia and had opened a wine wholesale business in New York City at 88 Chambers Street, a building shown here that is still standing.  He sold his wine in glass bottles, many of them, as shown here, in amber and with a “slug plate” bearing his name.  The 1880 census found him living at 107 East 24th Street in Manhattan with his wife Valeria, an immigrant from France ten years younger than he,  and an eight-year-old daughter named Nina.  He gave his occupation as “wine merchant.”

Even then, however, Van Beil’s major interest was in a highly alcoholic patent medicine that in 1877 he trademarked as “Rye and Rock” with the Patent Office number of 7001. It was rock candy — large sugar crystals — dissolved in rye whiskey.  Nathan advertised it widely as:  “The great tonic sure cure for malarial diseases,”  — an easily made claim since at the time no one had a clue about what caused malaria.  He also touted this nostrum as a remedy for asthma, bronchitis, consumption (TB) and even diphtheria. Van Biel’s ads boasted that his Rye and Rock was recommended by “leading Physicians and adopted by the Clergy and other Professionals.”  As seen here, he used both amber quart bottles with a slug plate and clear embossed flasks.

During the several years after obtaining his trademark, Nathan promoted Van Beil’s Rye and Rock vigorously. A key method was through trade cards.  One featured a comely lass with an embossed bottle of the elixir in her right hand and small dose glass in the left.  A somewhat enigmatic card featured gent who apparently was down on his luck, sitting on a barrel looking desolate.  He apparently demonstrated “Hard Times.”  The card announced a contest, asking customers to send Van Beil contrasting sketches to illustrate “Good Times.”  The prize offered was $25. 

Van Biel’s advertising quickly paid off and he developed a customer base over much of the United States, despite this tonic being merchandised principally as medicine. The magazine “Epitome” in a 1880 promotional piece on the firm cited a letter from Richardson & Co., druggists of St. Louis:   “The sale of your Rye and Rock is steadily increasing here, and we look for a large trade in the article this fall and winter;  the quality of the goods being such to readily recommend itself to anyone afflicted.”  The alcoholic content of Nathan’s Rye and Rock, however, also made it a staple in saloons.

Seeing the need to expand, Van Beil moved to larger offices in New York, locating at 842-846 Broadway, and opened a new plant in Baltimore to manufacture the elixir.  Located at 39 South Liberty Street, the Maryland factory was said to be 50 by 200 feet.

Yet even as Van Beil’s sales soared, he increasing was finding himself battling “copy cat” competitors.  His ads began to reflect his feelings of being embattled.   The product was only good if it carried his signature. This was necessary he indicated elsewhere, “as there are many counterfeits, as also imitations of this preparation.”   The culmination was the stern warning that opened this post:  “Dealers  in imitation and counterfeit goods will be prosecuted.”

Van Beil meant his threat.  By the pivotal year of 1880 he was suing in the New York courts on the grounds that his trademarking of Rye and Rock gave him exclusive right to the words, in any combination, including “rock and rye.”  His first target was an enterprise headed by Henry W. Prescott, who appears in New York directories to have been a saloonkeeper and liquor dealer.  Prescott claimed that he and his predecessors in business had been selling white rock candy dissolved in rye whiskey for at least 10 years and selling it as “Rye and Rock.”

When the lower court agreed with Prescott, Van Beil in 1880 appealed the verdict to the Superior Court of New York.  To plead his cause, he hired one of the most flamboyant attorneys in the city — and perhaps in the Nation.  Described as “a rather tall, distinguished-looking gentleman with head of bushy gray hair fast approaching whiteness,”  Andrew H. H. Dawson was a lawyer renowned for his florid prose.  As the chairman of the annual Robert Burns dinner, for example, he once wrote Poet Samuel Longfellow asking him to write a poem for the occasion, a letter that included this sentence:  “The presence of so many illustrious men, men of wealth, literary fame and political power to celebrate the natal day of the plowman [Burns] will administer a rebuke to the bold and bad men who are seeking to scatter broad cast in the virgin soil of this great republic the dragons teeth of communism.”  Wonderful!

Dawson did a “tour de force” for Van Beil.  A New York legal journal of the day opined: “…There can be no doubt in this case that the judges read every word, and ought to have laughed at every one of of the fifty brilliant pages.”  The journal excerpted large chunks of Dawson’s brief in which he discoursed on the wonders of Van Beil’s nostrum.  The appeals court judges, however, failed to be impressed and sustained the lower court decision.  They held that Van Beil had no exclusive right to the name “Rye and Rock” and others could use it.  The publication in jest suggested that Henry Prescott might have been “dispensing his compound not at the bar alone, but also at the bench”  to influence the verdict.   

Van Beil obviously had to have been very disappointed with the decision. Other brands of rye whiskey and rock candy, as those shown above, proliferated.  As a result, Van Beil changed his advertising approach, captured below on a trade card:  A shipwrecked man has ditched his bottle of cod liver oil and is reaching for a  bottle of Van Beil’s Rye and Rock.  The label on the bottle acknowledges that it contains “Baker’s Pure Whiskey” in combination with white rock candy.   Baker’s was a quality Kentucky whiskey and the name would have registered with customers nationwide.  Nathan now was wooing drinkers, not just druggists.

I have not been able to determine when Van Beil quit the wine and liquor trade.  Sometime after 1900, he terminated his business, moved out of New York City, and headed westward to Los Angeles. He died there in 1915 at the age of 80, was cremated at Forest Lawn Cemetery and at his request, his ashes scattered.  That was 35 years after the pivotal time in 1800 when his dream of “rock’n” into riches with a rye whiskey remedy — without any competition — came to an abrupt end. 

Today “Rock and Rye” is available behind the bar in most drinking establishments, with multiple brand names and manufacturers.  Over the years other flavors, like lemon and tutti-frutti, have been added.  In many ways the variety available today was made possible in 1880 when a New York Superior Court told Nathan Van Biel that his trademark claim of an exclusive right to "rye and rock" could not be enforced.

James Bumgardner MADE Virginia Whiskey

On land that their family had owned and occupied almost since the American Revolution,  James Baumgardner put the family name in the forefront of American distillers and established Virginia-made whiskey nationally as a quality liquor.

Born in 1801, James was the son of Jacob Bumgardner, who had inherited a Virginia farm on which he started a small distillery.   When Jacob died even though James was the second youngest, he inherited his father’s entire interest in land, slaves and other property.  A descendant believes that was either because he had the best head for business or because his brothers were otherwise occupied.

By that time Bumgardner was already married, recorded as having wed a woman named Mary in Virginia in 1853.  By the birth dates on their tombstone, that would have made James 18 at their wedding and Mary only 11, possibly an error.   As his children came along — there would be 14 in all — Bumgardner saw the need to build a new and more substantial home for his family on his property .  To that purpose in 1857 he engaged Jonathan Brown, a Richmond carpenter and contractor who moved to Augusta County to oversee the construction.

Brown fashioned a home known as Bethel Green, shown above, that still stands  and is on the National Historical Register.   Although the house was built according to the eclectic fashion of the times with Gothic style porches, fancy chimney stacks, scrolled lattice work, and Italianate bracketed cornices, the interior was Victorian from its wallpaper and carpeting to its furnishings, all of them preserved.  An historian has speculated that:  “Bumgardner apparently was determined to decorate and furnish his house in the latest fashion and the excellently preserved interior survives as an important example upper-middle-class taste of the period.”

However much Bumgardner might have enjoyed his new home,  he had only a few years to enjoy it until the Civil War broke out.  When the war ended, the farm and distillery were in ruins, many of his slaves had departed and the entire countryside around lay in ruins.  Undeterred, he determined to recoup his fortunes by rebuilding the distillery and making "Bumgardner Pure Old Rye Whiskey" a well-known, well-respected national brand. His unembossed bottles bore labels that depicted an artist's view of his operation.  His company also trademarked the brand name and a logo, shown above.  James' motto for his whiskey was:  Wherever it goes, it goes to stay."  Before long the Bumgardner's whiskey was being sold from coast to coast.

Like other distillers of his time, Bumgardner was quick to use testimonials to the quality of his product.  From Prof. J. L. Campbell of Washington & Lee University at nearby Lexington, Virginia, his liquor got the following praise:  “The sample of Whiskey sent here by you for analysis has been subjected to careful Chemical examination and found to be free from all drugs or substances foreign to Pure Rye Whiskey.  Its mildness and purity adapt it very well to Medicinal purposes for which PURE WHISKEY is wanted.”  Prof. R.S. McCulloch was highly complimentary and added:  “Our people little know or imagine what villainous fabrications are sold to them, sometimes even poisonous by dealers in cheap Wines and Liquors.”

Captain James also was quick to protect his brand, even from a family member.  His son, Randolph, recounted this anecdote:   James, was a man of big heart, but positive in language and convictions. “[His brother, Lewis] after coming back to Augusta, decided to start a distillery and adopted as his brand, "Old L. Bumgardner Whiskey". [Capt. James] was far from pleased at the opposition business, and much more displeased at the similarity of trade names, with the consequent likelihood of confusion in the mind of the trade:  The following interview is said to have transpired:  "Lewis, I understand you are going to start a distillery?"
"Yes, James".
"They tell me you are going to call it 'Old L. Bumgardner Whiskey."
"Yes, James."
"Well, Lewis, all I have to say to you is, that you want to make that 'L' most damned plain.'

By dint of Bumgardner’s energetic merchandising, he was able to engage the H. B. Kirk Company of New York, an organization that marketed “Old Crow” Kentucky-made whiskey for a group of New York investors.   Kirk also began featuring Bumgardner products in its advertising calling the brands:  “The Two Best Whiskeys in the U.S.”   Given the national advertising of this group,  this Virginia whiskey was put firmly on the map.  Note that the two Kirk trade card have distinct “Old South” themes.  At right, the familiar “darkies are singing in the fields” is reprised.  At left an African-American lad is sitting on a rail fence, pointing at a mountain.  In reality, some of James’ freed slaves stayed around Bethel Green after the Civil War.  

Other family stories tell more about James: “The old gentleman would never argue a proposition. He was firm in his convictions, and, if he thought, he was right, would invariably back his judgment with his money. If anyone challenged his opinion, his answer was, "I'll bet you ten dollars", and it was put up or shut up.”   As he aged, he turned his distillery and farming interests over to two sons, J. Alec and William, and enjoyed the comforts of his home.  As a descendent told it:  In his lifetime Bethel was a cheerful place with its large gathering around the blazing hickory-wood fire in the living room. Grandfather occupied the big horsehair chair in the center, his tall, gold-headed staff in his hand or in easy reach, and his favorite dog old "Tige" slumbering peacefully at his side.”

While both of James' sons are identified in various ways with the Bumgardner whiskey reputation, William and J. Alec (Jacob Alexander) are alleged to have been less gifted businessmen than their father.  A family narrative blames them for a financial setback to the Bumgardner fortunes because of bad investments they made during an 1890s economic turndown. Another descendant notes that financial problems and the deaths of both James, whose gravestone is shown here, and William in 1890 had a negative effect on J. Alec who had the principal responsibility for the farm and its enterprises.  A sister, Bettie Waddell Murphy, bought the property but allowed J. Alec to live there untl his death in 1830.

How long whiskey continued to be made at Bethel Green is unclear. Certainly distilling would have had to cease when statewide prohibition was voted in Virginia in 1916.   After a history stretching almost back to the American Revolution the family’s distilling enterprise came to a halt.  In the meantime whiskey drinkers all over the U.S. had taken notice of Virginia for quality.

Note:  It should be noted that an earlier version of this post had some important errors in it that an alert descendant who has identified herself below only as "Alice" has pointed out and provided new information. Some of the personal items related here about James came from a letter document written in 1923 by his son, Randolph, relating anecdotes about his father for the edification of his daughter.  The information is on the Internet and describes the life of the family patriarch in an affectionate, if episodic, fashion. 

A Tale of Two Gieses in Great Falls, Montana

When Richard and Charles Gies, immigrant brothers from Germany, arrived in Great Falls, Montana, in the 1890s, they each headed into different aspects of the whiskey trade, one in wholesaling to saloons and the other running one, but both found success and recognition as pioneering businessmen of the West.  

The Gies brothers originally were from Hesse Cassel and their ancestors were prominent in the Prussian Army. Their grandfather, Johannes Gies Sr., was said to have been “well known in military circles.”  Their father,  Johannes Jr., had a distinguished record wielding a saber in a troop of Hussars light cavalry.  Johannes Jr. married Katherine Rickel and the couple had ten children, two daughters and eight sons.  Among them was Richard, born in 1865 or 1866, and Charles, born in 1868.

Their coming to America could have been triggered by any of several reasons:  In such a large family their prospects of inheriting any land or wealth may have been bleak, joining the Prussian Army often meant death for new recruits even in training, or they may have had a lust for adventure.   One story has the pair among three brothers who went to Montana in the 1870s, one of whom, Vincent, became a prospector and miner.   Another narrative has Charles at the age of 16 arriving in America in 1884 with an uncle and settling in St. Paul, Minnesota.  There he is said to have worked at the baker’s trade, one to which he had been apprenticed in Germany.  According to this story, it was not until 1887 that Charles traveled further west to Montana and joined his brothers at a settlement called Maiden.

Today a ghost town, in those days Maiden was a ramshackle but booming community, as shown above, a product of a gold strike in the region. By 1881 the population had grown to 6,000 with many men living in tents by a creek.  As the result of a push to build more sturdy structures, two years later there were 154 log and lumber houses and other establishments. 

At the time the Gieses were resident, Maiden boasted seven general and clothing stores, a blacksmith, two barbers, several banks, a feed stable and eight saloons.  Among those drinking establishments was one run by Richard Gies, whose tin bar token is marked with his name stamped on one side and “Maiden” on the other.  There also was a Gies Meat Market and Bakery in town, likely Charles’ enterprise.  One account indicates that he may also have run a restaurant.

As gold deposits in the area began to play out,  the Gies brothers had the foresight to see that Maiden was a rapidly diminishing economy.  By 1896 only about 200 residents remained.  Earlier they had looked down the road to a place called Great Falls that quickly was becoming a thriving industrial and supply center, boasting ample hydroelectric power and a stop on the Great Northern Railway.  Shown here on a map of 1891, Great Falls seemed destined to become one of Montana’s larger cities. Leaving Vincent behind in Maiden, the Gieses took their energies and savings there in the mid-1880s.

Charles Gies may have been the first to open a business.  In July 1888 he is said to have begun a bakery and pursued selling bread and pastries, apparently with success for four years.  In 1896, however, he apparently concluded that another occupation would be more rewarding.  Selling his baking factory and store, he formed a partnership with a local, Frank Glab, in the wholesale liquor business.

According to their letterhead of 1898, Glab & Gries Co. also were selling cigars and were “bottlers of all kinds of mineral and soda waters.”   The brands of whiskey the company advertised indicated that they were getting national brands by railway from the East.  Those included “Our Pride,” from J. & E. Freiberg of Cincinnati and “Old Hume.” from Humphrey-Staff of St. Louis.  In addition, they were bottling and labeling a proprietary brand they called “G & G Monongahela,” indicating a Pennsylvania origin.

During this period, the Gies Brothers were having personal lives.  In 1894 Richard married Isadora F. (sometimes given as Issadore) Turnblade, a woman who had been born in Iowa.  Future census records would show them with a family of three boys, as well as harboring Isadora’s widowed mother.  Two years later Charles tied the knot with Mayme Miller (sometimes given as Mame), the daughter of Matthias and Katherine Bauer Miller.  They would go on to have a family of five, three girls and two boys.

Glab & Gies grew rapidly as Great Falls expanded and in their ads, as on this trade card for “Yellowstone Whiskey,” called themselves “The Leading Montana Wholesale Dealers.”   Yellowstone was a nationally distributed brand from Taylor and Williams of Louisville that advertised Western scenes like that shown here, a view that clearly was intended to appeal to a Great Falls consumer. 

In 1900, for unexplained reasons, Frank Glab and Charles Gies dissolved their partnership and Gies continued in the business by himself at 504-506 Central Avenue.  His letterhead above from 1906 indicated that the firm now had an additional line of goods in bar supplies and glassware.  He also was advertising a new line of whiskeys, including Tippecanoe and Union Club from the Union Distilling Co. in Cincinnati and Hermit Old Rye from F. P. Gluck of the same city.  (See my post on Gluck, June 2014). 

As prohibitionary forces were gradually reducing the markets for Gies’s products, he was able to fall back on non-alcoholic drinks as a bottler and jobber of “all kinds of mineral & soda waters.”  Shown here is a quart bottle of Chas. Gies “Orange,” advertised as a “a most refreshing and palatable beverage.”  But even soft drinks could have pitfalls.  In 1913 the Montana Department of Agriculture cited Gies for “misbranding” his 12 ounce strawberry soda, claiming that the bottles tested failed to meet that volume. 

Meanwhile Brother Richard Gies was operating a highly successful drinking establishment.   He called it the “16 to 1” Saloon, a reference to the hottest political issue of the day — the ratio of silver to gold coinage value.  Gies like most of his Great Falls customers was a “Silverite,” members of a political movement who believed silver should continue to be the monetary standard of the U.S.  The cause was popular in the West where advocates believed “cheap silver” would help them alleviate their debts.  As in Maiden, Richard issued bar tokens and for special customers, a match case of metal and celluloid. 

The businesses of both Charles and Richard came to a halt in 1920 when National Prohibition arrived.  As a number of other ex-liquor dealers did, Charles took his profits and invested in the fast-growing automobile business and in real estate development.  Richard all along had diversified by being active in gold mining.  About 1897 with profits from his saloons, he had purchased four mining claims for $40,000 ($1 million equivalent today) and over time added other mines, until Gies had nine key claims and consolidated them as “The Goldstone Mine.”

When Richard Gies died in 1920, his widow Isadora stepped up to manage his business interests, a woman noted for her financial acumen.  Eight years later Charles Gies was stricken with what was called “influenza-pneumonia” on a Sunday  morning in February and within several days was dead.  The brothers are buried not far apart in Section 11 of the Great Falls Highland Cemetery.  Each of their gravestones are shown here.  At their deaths both whiskey men were hailed in Montana newspapers as respected pioneer businessmen of Montana.

  

Note:  The story of the Gries family origin in Germany and of Charles Gies career in the U.S. was obtained principally from a 1913 book entitled “History of Montana”by Sanders.  Other material on the brothers was derived from a variety of sources, including U.S. census records.