The Haunted Houses of Whiskey Men

Foreword:  Over the years I have profiled three pre-Prohibition whiskey men whose saloons in our time have achieved the reputation of being haunted.  According to the stories circulated, ghosts are regularly sensed or heard, if not seen, in those former drinking establishments, some incidents solemnly attested to by psychics and “licensed” ghost chasers.

The first paranormal venue is “The Bird Cage,” a variety theater and saloon in Tombstone,  Arizona.   Constructed of adobe over wood, the place was founded by Joe Bignon, an actor, dancer and “impresario” who operated a number of music hall saloons before settling down in Tombstone with his wife, Matilda Quigley.  She was a six foot tall, 230 pound dancer whom Joe called “Big Minnie.  She is said to have “dazzled” audiences by prancing around the stage in pink tights.  She doubled as a bouncer.  Both are shown here. 

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.

Because of changing economic times, Joe and Big Minnie in 1892 pulled up stakes and moved to Pearce, Arizona, where a gold strike had occurred.  Under other ownership, The Bird Cage survived until National Prohibition and then was shut for a period.  As Tombstone evolved into a major tourist destination, mainly featuring the gunfight at the OK Corral, the theater-saloon was revived — but now reputed to hold ghostly inhabitants.   

Guests report seeing prostitutes in the bar, shown below, wearing elaborate dresses and cowboys who are glimpsed and then disappear.  One of the most famous is a “man in black” wearing heavy boots who is said to stomp back and forth on the stage.  At night sounds of laughter, yelling and music sometimes are heard from the saloon’s interior, shown here.  A psychic trying to enter the Bird Cage has reported being stabbed repeatedly in the chest by a ghost, causing her shortness of breath (nothing fatal).

These phenomena may have their explanation in Tombstone’s strong interest in the tourist trade.  The Bird Cage offers “Ghost Tours” daily starting at 6:15 p.m., tickets available at the box office.  The brochure suggests:  “Bring your camera and sense of adventure.”  The heritage of showman Joe Bignon lives on.

The Holyoke, Massachusetts, Tourist Bureau may be overlooking a prime opportunity by not exploiting the derelict building at 30 John Street, shown here.  Once it held a drinking establishment owned by Patrick “P. J.” Murray that opened about 1913.  Called the Murray Saloon, it was popularly known as the “Bud,” possibly because Murray was Holyoke’s first distributor of Budweiser beer and president of the Bud Wine Liquor Company.

Only after National Prohibition did Murray’s establishment merit attention as a potential hangout for ghosts.  He closed the first floor saloon, but a speakeasy, was stocked with Murray’s brands of liquor, including The Pee-Jay Rye Whiskey No. 6.  

This illegal drinking establishment was rigged with flashing lights to warn patrons of impending raids. There were escape routes through passageways behind fireplaces on each floor and apparently a tunnel leading from the basement of City Hall to Murray’s basement.  It is said that the mayor and police chief used to visit the speakeasy after hours using this tunnel.

The ghost of P.J. Murray is said to haunt the Bud. Ex-bartenders and regulars at the establishment talk of strange happenings over the years.  One patron reported encountering a ghost in the men’s restroom, a sighting written up in the Holyoke Transcript newspaper.  Others speculate that the ghost is Murray’s nephew, Joseph Murray,  who inherited the establishment.  The structure currently is on the local inventory of historic buildings and a candidate for rehabilitation and use.  Get busy Holyoke Tourist Bureau!

The final ghost story involves a family named Arbona that ran The Gulf Saloon in Pensacola, Florida, for thirty five years.   When the premises, shown left, 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 widely has been considered haunted. 

The family founder,  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 and sentenced to an Alabama prison.  When the Civil War broke out in 1961, Arbona was released after serving only ten years of his sentence, possibly on the expectation that he would join the Confederate Army.

Instead Arbona married, started a family, and moved to Pensacola, Florida, where he opened the Gulf Saloon.  Several years later he divorced and returned to Spain, leaving his ex-wife and an elder son to run the drinking establishment in what became known as the Arbona Building. 

When the Pensacola Historical Museum was moved to the Arbona Building in 1991, 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 had 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 below 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 Arbona and analyzing his criminal 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.”

Haunted?  Who can say authoritatively about any of these sites?  Although in each case the circumstances differ, these three former saloons have provided the venue for unexplained paranormal activities.  Perhaps even in the nether world, folks get thirsty for a shot of whiskey. 

Note:  Prior posts on this blog have featured longer descriptions of each of these whiskey men and their saloons:   Joe Bignon and the Bird Cage, January 8, 2014;  P. J. Murray and the Bud Saloon, September 7, 2017 (author, Ferdinand Meyer); and the Arbonas and the Gulf Saloon, October 6, 2014.

W. C. Patterson: A Fortune Lost in Whiskey Flames

William Chamberlain Patterson for decades seemed to live a charmed life.  Brought to Philadelphia as a boy, he became prominent in military, business and political circles there, including presidency of the Pennsylvania Railroad, “amassing a handsome fortune,” according to an obituary.   Patterson’s life changed drastically, however, when he involved himself in the pre-Prohibition whiskey industry and a disastrous fire brought him to the brink of ruin.

Patterson neither made nor sold liquor.  His role was in providing storage for whiskey as it aged from Pennsylvania distilleries that entrusted their product to him for safe and sanitary keeping.  To that end, on Front Street, above Lombard, he had erected a structure known as Patterson’s bonded warehouse.   It was composed of eight buildings, all but one seven stories high and 220 by 135 feet.   The walls of each structure were 18 inches thick and solid from the cellar foundations to the roof.  The buildings were connected by stout iron doors, kept closed at all times.  

Said one observer:  “Each was supposed to be completely fireproof, and built without connection with each other, and therefore supposed to be perfectly safe for destruction by fire.”  During the Civil War the complex had held supplies of sugar, molasses and cotton, but afterward “vast amounts of whiskey” had been placed there by both the U.S. Government and some eleven individual distillers, among them some of Pennsylvania’s best known whiskey-manufacturers, including companies operated under the names of Hannis, Gibson and Young.

On the night of August 4, 1869, one wall of a building facing Lombard Street collapsed, reputedly because of excessive weight from 25,000 liquor barrels on the floors.  Stored whiskey went down with the ruins and in a few moments a violent explosion occurred, scattering timbers, bricks and flames.  Firemen appeared to have isolated the damage and it was thought other sections of the warehouse could be saved.  Then a second building exploded in fire and soon the entire complex was engulfed.  The front page of the Harpers Weekly of August 21, shown above, told the story.

Burning whiskey ran down the gutters and into the sewers, exploding and breaking open a section, but not impeding the flow through a sewer leading to a Philadelphia wharf, setting it ablaze.  The flames threatened a ship at the pier, but it was towed to safety.  Philadelphia folklore says that citizens could be seen scooping flaming whiskey from the gutters with every conceivable container — a story that is unconfirmed.  A photo above from the Heaven Hill Distillery fire in 1996 shows what a river of burning whiskey looks like.   The ruins of the huge warehouse  became a favorite of photographers, some of whom created stereopticon view for 3-D effects.  

Accounted one of the worst conflagrations in Philadelphia history, no direct casualties were laid to the disaster.  The largest loser among those with whiskey stored there was H.C. Hannis & Co.  

Founded by Henry Hannis in 1863, this distillery had experienced phenomenal growth almost from the outset. Establishing his headquarters in Philadelphia, Hannis bought the Mount Vernon Distillery in Baltimore, shown here, and changed the name to his own.  Although his Baltimore facility had four warehouses for aging whiskey, they proved inadequate to his needs, leading him to store 8,000 barrels in Patterson’s warehouse, almost one-third of the total lost.  Some of his prime whiskey was estimated to be worth $15 a gallon. [See my post on Hannis, Feb. 2, 2012].

Now all eyes turned to William C. Patterson, a man who up until that time had seemed “golden.”  Born in Tazewell, Clairborn County, Tennessee, in 1820 he had come to Philadelphia as a seven year old boy with his parents.  He was the brother of General Robert Patterson, a man 21 years his senior and already established in the Philadelphia banking community.  William’s career began by working for his brother.

The younger Patterson’s rise in business circles was swift, at the age of 34 elected as a director of the Pennyslvania Railroad and chosen as its president a year later.  The Pattersons also had political clout and William was elected to the Philadelphia City Council, later to the Pennsylvania legislature, and once was an unsuccessful Democratic Party candidate for mayor.

When the Civil War broke out, Robert Patterson, who had been a major general in the Mexican-American War, was called back to service.  Although he inflicted an early defeat on Stonewall Jackson, Robert was blamed for events that contributed to the Union debacle at the first Battle of Bull Run.  He was mustered out of the Army in July 1961.  William, holding the rank of colonel, had accompanied him to the front as his unpaid aide and the two returned to Philadelphia to resume their business careers, both amassing fortunes.

William continued to aid the war effort by rendering services to the troops.  From one account:  “Day after day he forwarded to the hospitals and to the refreshment saloon supplies for the passing troops or delicacies for the sick and wounded, and many of the convalescent owed their returning strength largely to drives taken in the carriage he generously placed at their disposal.”  In these efforts he was assisted by his wife, Caroline Ellmaker Patterson.

As a result of the fire Patterson faced the greatest challenge of his life.  The loss of his warehouse and its contents was placed at $5,000,000 — more than 20 times that in today’s dollar.  Of that amount only $2,299,000 of the lost whiskey was covered by insurance.  No fewer than 54 insurers were involved, including five in England, all of them to be dealt with individually.  Typically insurers were slow to act, difficult to deal with, and often suspicious that whiskey-related fires had been set.  Patterson’s burned out buildings also were covered by multiple insurers.

The bottom line for Patterson was the personal responsibility to make good all uncovered losses.  The cost is said to have swept away most the wealth he had amassed earlier.  Said his obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “From this blow his fortunes never entirely recovered, but as he had borne prosperity without being spoiled by it, so he met adversity with a calm front and an equal mind.”  

Patterson’s reputation as a businessman remained unaffected by the fire.  Opined his obituary:  “His business talents and his lofty integrity of character, illustrated by the grace of courtly manners and by natural kindness of heart, secured and retained the esteem of his old associates in mercantile and railroad circles…”  When a new Philadelphia bank, the Union Trust Company, was chartered in the early 1880s, Patterson was elected its president.  

He held that post for only a few months, however, before a fall on the ice fractured a leg.  The break was a serious one requiring a heavy cast and absolute bed rest.  The result, according to the medical terminology of the day was “ossification of the arteries.”  Patterson died on the morning of June 21, 1883, at the home of a son, William C. Patterson Jr. at the age of 70.  He was buried in Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery where many of the city’s whiskey men are interred.  Shown here is his unusual monument, one shared with his brother, General Robert.

Despite all the precautions that Patterson and his architect had made to fireproof the whiskey warehouse, they had not calculated correctly the weight-bearing capacity of the structure.  Anxious to make sure that the interior space was fully occupied, Patterson had allowed the floors to become overloaded with heavy barrels of whiskey, leading to the second largest fire in Philadelphia history up to that time.  Thus, because of a single fatal error, the wealth Patterson’s ample talents had earned him over many years of effort virtually were wiped out overnight — a fortune lost in flaming whiskey.

The Odd Couple of Natchitoches and Their Saloon

Natchitoches (pronounced Nack-a-tish) is a picturesque town in south central Louisiana founded by the French in 1714.  There Henry Hughes, an Irish Catholic, and Morris Aaron, a Jew, forged a friendship that led them to open the Phoenix Saloon in downtown Natchlitoches during the 1880s and run it successfully for  years until local residents in 1907 voted to shut them down.

The Phoenix Saloon building, located at the corner of Horn and Front streets, still stands.   It can be seen above as it looks today, overlooking Cane River Lake, on the left, just to the right of the tall yellow building.  Fortunately, a photo also exists of the Phoenix as it looked in its heyday.  The first floor housed a lobby, a segregated pair of barrooms for blacks and whites (a law in Louisiana) and a gambling room where men played poker and faro.

Built in the 1830s, the saloon also featured an ornate winding iron staircase, shown here, that rose to a rear veranda and the second floor.  The Phoenix Restaurant was located there providing Natchitoches residents with a good Cajun meal.  Second floor balustrades also featured decorative wrought iron.  Behind the building was a smaller structure where the partners stored whiskey and wine.

Hughes and Aaron were not just selling liquor over the bar, they were mixing, bottling and labeling their own brands of whiskey, retailing it through their saloon in pint and half-pint glass containers. Shown here is a magnificently preserved clear bottle embossed with their names and address.  The partners asked that it be returned to them for washing and refilling.  Two other Phoenix Saloon bottles are shown below, one in aqua and the other amber, likely found by bottle diggers.

One partner was Morris Aaron, born on October 12, 1866.  He was the son of Hysuaa and Emily Aaron, the father a Polish immigrant and mother a native born Louisianan.   Hysuaa was a reasonably affluent dealer in wholesale merchandise and apparently an ardent adherent of the Confederacy, even to naming a son “Jeff Davis” after the war.  The 1870 census found four-year-old Morris living in Natchitoches with his parents and three siblings.  By the age of 15 he was working as a clerk in his father’s store.

The other partner, Henry Hughes, was Louisiana born, on June 19, 1864.  His father, a native of New York whose parents had emigrated from Ireland, worked as a stone mason in and around Natchitoches.  At an early age it appears that Henry was headed for the construction trades, as were two older brothers.  The 1880 census found him at 17, having left school and working as a laborer.

What brought the two men from such different backgrounds together to open a saloon is unknown.  Both would have been very young at the time.  They likely had financial assistance from Aaron’s father.  Their partnership was highly successful for more than two decades until a clamor arose among a segment of the Natchitoches population who opposed the sale of alcohol.  Although Louisiana never imposed statewide prohibition, it allowed towns to license saloons and by vote to deny them a license and put them out of business.

The vote was held on August 17, 1907.   The headline in the Natchitoches Times told the story:  “Prohibition Wins.”  The goodly people of the town had voted 658 to deny saloon licenses and 481 to grant them.  By a margin of 177 votes, “dry” forces had been the victor.  The Times, that had editorialized in favor of granting the licenses, waxed philosophical, publishing:  “Law is law, and all good citizens must unite in upholding the will of the majority….”

During the next six months Hughes and Aaron did their best to unload their stock of whiskey and wine, and to provide for their customers who were dreading the dawn of January 1, 1908.  The Times ruefully opined:  “The closing of the saloons will mean a readjustment of business conditions….Some of the proprietors [will] engage in other branches of business.  We would like to see them all remain residents of the old city…and help in the making of a better and more prosperous Natchitoches.”

Hughes and Aaron heeded that call.  Their partnership survived as the two turned to a trade that was well known to the Irishman and his family — bricks.  They opened a factory to manufacture bricks in Natchitoches, calling it H. and A. Brick Works.  A small picture of their plant was included on the company letterhead, shown above.  The partners named their bricks after the town:  “Nakatosh.”  The enterprise must have been reasonably successful because the partners after only several years in business sold the brick works to other interests.

With a wife, Catherine (nee Quinn) and a family of three children, Hughes continued to engage in local business, opening a dry goods store, according to the 1910 census.  Aaron meanwhile had used the wealth accrued from the Phoenix Saloon also to go into banking and agriculture, having bought farmland around Natchitoches.  With the dawn of the automotive age, he opened a Ford dealership.

Hughes was the first to die, passing in July 1932 at the age of 68.  He was buried in the American Cemetery on Second Street in Natchitoches, a site that had was located across from a Catholic church and originally held a French fort.  Aaron lived until May 1943, dying at the age of 77.  He was buried at the Jewish Cemetery of Natchitoches. Their gravestones are below.

During the prime of their lives, these two men had come together in an enterprise involving strong drink — something that neither of their religious heritages disapproved.  But unfortunately for them, their town had a majority who were Protestant and for whom alcohol was anathema. Local opposition ended the more than two decade run of a memorable saloon, the Phoenix.  Shown below, at the far left, the building now contains a Natchitoches store catering to tourists.

Note:  I visited Natchitoches several years ago and became enamored of the town.  Intrigued by the photo of the clear flask shown above, I was doing research on the Phoenix Saloon and its proprietors when I came across an article in the Natchitoches Times of November 14, 2017 that told the story of the saloon closing in 1907, thirteen years before National Prohibition.  It was written by local historian Henry “Buddy” Maggio and had appeared in the newspaper only three days before I began my search for information.  Mr. Maggio’s article made this post possible.

Sam Pike: Riches from Whiskey and a Song in His Heart

When Jenny Lind, a famous soprano known as the “Swedish Nightingale," sang in Cincinnati in early Spring 1851, sitting in the audience was a successful young liquor dealer named Samuel N. Pike.  Struck to the core by her singing, Pike, shown right, vowed to use his wealth to build an opera house.  He ended up building three and had the following verse written in his praise by the 19th Century American poet, T. Buchanan Read: 

“Who builds a noble temple unto art

And rears sit grandly from his head and heart

Hath done a sacred service, and his name

Shall live upon the gold roll of fame.”

Sam Pike’s past is somewhat shrouded in mystery.  On Federal census forms his birthplace was given as New York.  In 1866, in applying for a passport, Pike swore he was a native-born American citizen.  Yet in his biography of Pike, Ohio Historian Henry Howe claimed Sam was born in 1822 in Heidelberg, Germany, and brought to the United States with his family at the age of five.  Moreover, Howe asserts, the family name originally was “Hecht,” a word in Yiddish that means the pike fish, and later changed to Pike. 

The circumstance of his family and his upbringing are murky but in 1844 at the age of 22, Pike came to Cincinnati and engaged in the liquor trade.  Several years later Pike married Ellen Miller, the daughter of a Cincinnati judge.  Ellen was several years younger than Sam and likely in her late teens when they wed.  As recorded by the federal census in 1850 their household included a three year old son, Lawrence; Ellen’s very wealthy mother, and several servants.   Sam’s occupation was listed as “liquor merchant.”

Then Jenny Lind came to Cincinnati and Sam Pike would never be the same again.  With the famed impresario P. T. Barnum orchestrating her tour, the songstress gave concerts throughout the U.S. spanning 1850 to 1852.   At the time Cincinnati had no opera house so her venue would have been one of the several large theaters downtown.  Although her voice was never recorded, Lind’s singing was singularly impressive to hearers and a revelation to Pike.  He made a personal pledge to build an opera hall for Cincinnati. 

After eight years of selling whiskey, Sam finally had the wealth to make his dream  a reality.  Pike’s Opera House opened in 1859 with a Grand Italian Opera Company performing.  Shown right in a cameo view, it was hailed as an ornament to Cincinnati.  Featuring a grand stairway and 2,000 seats for patrons, the opera house was the first of its kind west of the Appalachians.  Said one observer:  “At that time, there was nothing out West that could compare to it.” 

Meanwhile, the people of Cincinnati began to know who Sam Pike was.  Of medium height and slender, as shown above, he wore a heavy mustache, and though dark complexioned, was noted for piercing steel-gray eyes and a short, abrupt way of speaking.  Noted one observer:  “He always dressed in the height of fashion, wore a silk hat, and used perfume.  As he saunter up town of a morning from his residence on West Fourth Street, smoking his cigar, he looked like an elegant man of leisure, rather than one of Cincinnati wealthiest and most active citizens.”

   

Pike likely was walking to his liquor house, shown above at 18-20 Sycamore.  The building was five stories, giving him ample space to operate.  Although from time to time he referred to himself as a distiller, he was a “rectifier,” buying product from nearby Kentucky distilleries across the Ohio River and blending it  achieve taste and color.  His flagship brand was “Magnolia.” a name he trademarked in 1849. 

In 1866 Pike’s fancy opera house burned to the ground.  A story is told of Sam’s standing calmly on the roof of a nearby hotel watching the conflagration:   “…He saw the structure of his pride and ambition vanishing in the flames.  He quietly smoked his cigar as unruffled as the most indifferent spectator…”  While he stood there impassive, according to the story, a pickpocket relieved him of a very expensive pocket watch.

As an example of what onlookers called his “colossal wealth,” Pike lost no time in rebuilding.  Just a year later a new Pike’s Opera House rose from the ashes.  Just as ornate as the earlier building, this one was larger, filling a half block on Cincinnati’s Fourth Street.   This gesture earned Pike the dedication of a piece of music called “The Opera March” with a picture of his new opera house on the cover.  

By this time, Pike was growing increasingly restless in Cincinnati.  Known for being good to his employees, about 1863 he took as partners two of his clerks, Joseph Tilney and George W. Kidd.  While continuing to own S.N. Pike & Co., Sam branched out to New York City, launching a liquor house there.  In 1868, Pike moved totally to New York, selling his building in Cincinnati together with the all apparatus for blending whiskey.  The buyer was Mills, Johnson & Co., local wholesalers and rectifiers.  

In his move to The Big Apple, Pike took with him his family and his partners, doing business at 78 Broadway and listed in city directories as a liquor dealer and rectifier.  The family lived at 613 Fifth Avenue.  By this time, in addition to his wife and son, there were three daughters, Nettie, Hester and Alice.  Indications are that Pike’s move to New York was occasioned at least in part by the desire to join the wealthy social elite that included the Astors and Vanderbilts.   

He succeeded, in part because he immediately began to build a third Grand Opera House.  Shown here, the building cost him $1,000,000 (equiv. to $25 million today.) The first performance, on January 9, 1868, was Il Trovatore, followed during the next four months by  seven Jacques Offenbach operettas.

Successful selling whiskey on Broadway, Sam grew ever richer and expanded into real estate.  He engaged in a major speculation that involved draining New Jersey marshes near New York.  With inventor Spencer Driggs the partners reclaimed 3,000 acres using iron plates as a core for dikes and sold the land to farmers to grow corn. This venture is said to have brought “immense profits” making Pike a millionaire many times over.  He was quoted saying he “…could not see why he should make money — he never fretted himself — he couldn’t help it.”   

Nonetheless, he was able to raise his family in luxury and move among New York’s richest.  After a failed romance with the famed explorer-journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, his daughter Alice married Albert Barney, an heir to E. E. Barney, the railroad car magnet.

In 1872, at the relatively young age of 50, Sam Pike died and was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, New York.  His gravestone is shown here.  For a time his  Manhattan liquor house continued to be operated under his name by his surviving  partners. They subsequently formed a new corporation under the name George W. Kidd & Co.  That business subsequently was dissolved and the liquor house closed.  

Son-in-law Albert Barney was put in charge of Pike’s financial interests in Ohio and the family moved back to Cincinnati for the next ten years.  S. N. Pike’s Magnolia Whiskey became a brand of the Fleischmann distillers of Cincinnati, the bottle shown above.

Aided by his wealth, Pike had kept his personal vow to Jenny Lind by building no fewer than three opera houses to the memory of her voice.  They would prove to be fleeting tributes.   After watching his first theater burn, Pike was no longer alive when in February 1903, his second Cincinnati opera house was destroyed by a fire described at the time as historically the city’s largest.  The responding twenty-seven engines companies could not save the structure.  A year after opening his New York opera house Pike had sold it to financiers James “Diamond Jim” Fisk Jr. and Jay Gould.  Never financially viable, that building later was converted to a movie theater and torn down in 1960 for a housing development.

Whiskey Men as Inventors

Foreword:  During the six years I have profiled more than 560 pre-Prohibition “whiskey men,” — distillers, distributors and saloonkeepers — it has been striking how many of them also took a turn at inventing things.  Perhaps my astonishment was misplaced, however, when one remembers that the late 1800s and early 1900s were the age of Edison, Bell and the Wright Brothers.  Many Americans were trying their hand at inventing new things and patenting their ideas.  Whiskey men were simply following the temper of the times.  Among a number of possibilities I have selected four men who best epitomized this innovative mentality while otherwise engaged in making and selling liquor.  

Perhaps the most prolific among them was David D. Cattanach of Pawtucket, Rhode Island — the Leonardo DiVinci of whiskey men.  Shown right, like Leonardo, Cattanach was an artist and an inventor in many fields.  As a youth in Scotland he invented a continuous process for manufacturing ingredients for gun powder.  Upon emigrated to the U.S. and Pawtucket, he innovated the use of hydrochloric acid for making stained glass windows, decorating churches throughout New England.  Later he invented a coal-efficient stove and a process for refining and treating oils.

In 1885 Cattanach took an initial step into the liquor trade when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded him two new patents.  One was for an “apparatus for the manufacture and distillation of alcohol, hydrocarbons, and acetic acid, and for aging and refining liquors.” The illustration he submitted with the application, shown here, is not as elegant as Leonardo’s drawings but presumably more practical. The second patent was for the process involved in using the distilling apparatus.   More than a decade would elapse, however, before Cattanach opened his own distillery.  Perhaps unable to sell his system to others successfully, he determined to employ it himself.

With a local partner, he created a corporation they called the Beverage Hill Road (B.H.R.) Distilling Company, capitalizing it at $100,000 — equivalent to $2.5 million today.  His flagship brand was “Heather Blossom” whiskey.  Clearly citing his inventions, Cattanach’s ads claimed that his liquor was made by an entirely original process and contained no fusel oil or other poison. Things did not go well, however, for the Beverage Hill Road enterprise.  Perhaps the Cattanach distilling process gave an off-taste to Heather Blossom and other B.H.R. products.  Whatever the reason,  the evidence is that only three years after it opened Cattanach’s company summarily shut down.

Equally dedicated to inventing as Cattanach was Joshua Low. a liquor dealer of Steubenville, Ohio, who was considerably less successful in selling his ideas.  It appears that Low’s first invention was a “thill coupling,” that he patented in 1873 when he was 28 years old.   For those, like me, not familiar with the term, a thilll is one of two long shafts, usually of wood, between which a horse is hitched. Although no evidence exists that his “thill coupling” ever saw practical fulfillment, he turned his attention to coupling railroad cars.  This  invention, he claimed, could firmly join two pieces of rolling stock simply by pushing them together.  Again, there was apparently no commercial interest.

Low next turned his inventing fever to an area of where his knowledge was more personal — coaxing liquid out of a larger container and into a jug or bottle.  As a liquor dealer he had experienced years of tediously siphoning whiskey and wine out of barrels and into wholesale or retail portions. The task apparently had triggered a desire on Low’s part to facilitate a means whereby the liquid could be drawn off at a point higher than the tank or cask.  His patent drawing is shown here.  

Having patented this invention in January 1885, Low continued to work on the problem of emptying barrels.  His improved dual siphons needed to be stabilized in place if they were to work right, he subsequently suggested.  This required a specialized kind of siphon cork made of rubber to hold each tube in place.  With this further development, patented the following September, he claimed he had perfected “a device…that will meet the general demands of the trade….”  While Low himself may have employed this invention, again there is no evidence of general manufacture.  

Freeman Graham II and his sons were part of an era in American history, embodied in Thomas Edison, during which a knowledge of how machines worked and the inventive genius to improve them could be a way of upward mobility.   With their technical and executive know-how the Grahams moved from agricultural implements to success in making whiskey in Rockford, Illinois.

A native of New England, Graham was lured to the Middle West by the larger salaries he could make as a designer/manager for farm implement companies.  He was responsible for innovations that improved the performance of reapers and other agricultural equipment.  With his earnings he established the first distillery in Rockville, which also was the first sour mash whiskey facility in Illinois.  He called called it the Graham Distilling Company.   Shown below is a illustration of the distillery.  Smoke pours from a chimney on the building, while the warehouse on right has been constructed to resemble a medieval castle. 

With his son Byron, Freeman in 1884 patented a machine for cutting matches, the drawing shown here.  Likely this invention failed to return even a fraction of the wealth the family took from making and selling whiskey.  Although he had begun his career in the reaper business, Byron Graham was involved with the distillery virtually from its beginning.  He headed its management after his father’s retirement and about 1901 changed the company name to Graham Bros. Distillery.  The market for Graham rye and sour mash whiskeys continued to grow.  By 1891 the company was grossing the current equivalent of $7.5 million annually and employing 45 workers.

“The Cushing Medical Supply Company” and its proprietor, Dr. Ira Barrows Cushing, in their very names carry a certain expectation of authenticity and trustworthiness.  That is, until one discovers that the “medicine” mainly supplied by Cushing was whiskey that the homeopathic physician mixed up in his Boston headquarters, presumably using the “Cushing Process for Purifying Alcoholic Liquors,” that he patented in 1892.

Shown below is the Rube Goldberg-like contraption that Cushing assembled for a “process of and apparatus for purifying and maturing liquors or distilled spirits.”  His  patent application explaining how it worked ran to more than three highly technical and abstruse pages.  An example of his description: “My present invention consists in commingling a suitable quantity of oxygen gas with the atmospheric air employed for treating the liquor, whereby the air which is disseminated through the liquor is energized or rendered more active for the purpose of rapidly oxidizing the fusel-oils into their avoring-acids and the process of maturing the liquor thus accelerated and rendered more perfect than heretofore.”   

Whatever the examiner understood of “atmospheric air,” “avoring acids,” and the rest, on November 1, 1892, the United States Patent Office issued Cushing Patent No. 485,984.  Cushing reputed used his patented system for his own whiskey, a variety of brands sold largely on the basis of their medicinal value.  The label of “Cushing’s Process Purified Whiskey” shows a simplified version of his apparatus.  

Four years after the doctor’s death in 1908, his firm was dissolved and his whiskey brands terminated.  No evidence exists that any distillery or liquor house subsequently adopted the Cushing Process for making whiskey, suggesting that the reputed benefits of the doctor's invention may have been largely “atmospheric air.”

Note:  For a more complete rendering of each of these four inventive whiskey men, see my earlier posts on each:  David Cattanach, November 14, 2013; Joshua Low, April 19, 2017; the Grahams, August 9, 2014, and Ira Cushing, October 9, 2017.