Edward Martin: The Enigma from Enniscorthy

When Edward Martin left his birthplace in Enniscorthy, Ireland, and traveled to the New World, he was just one of the thousands of impoverished Irish youths who left home looking for a better future.  The next few years of his life are puzzling and downright mysterious.  Having joined the California gold rush of 1849, Martin emerged from the mines inexplicably a stupendously wealthy man, becoming one of the largest landowners in the West.  Amid these riches, in an unusual move, he founded a controversial San Francisco liquor house.

Martin was baptized on March 5, 1818, in Enniscorthy, the second largest town in Wexford, a coastal county in southeastern Ireland.  He was the eldest of twelve children of Thomas Martin, apparently a butcher, and Anne Johnson, from a well-known family of Irish weapons makers.  Although Catholic children were denied public education, Edward likely received some schooling as a youth before entering employment locally.

Evidence is scant on what happened next.  One account has Martin leaving for Santiago, Chile, before he was 21.  Another source indicates he may have been 26.  It is known that he spent five years in Chile engaged in commercial activities.  After getting word of the 1848 gold strike Martin is said to have boarded a sailing vessel and headed to California.  After a voyage of six months he arrived in San Francisco in September 1849 and headed straight for the gold fields.   

The news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.  Most sought the precious metal in vain and went away poorer than they came.  Martin was a startling exception.  He apparently struck it rich — very rich — and soon exited the mines.  That is the heart of the enigma.  None of Martin’s biographers document what he found or where he found it.  It remains a blank page and a mystery.

Biographers also differ wildly about what happened next. One claims Martin took a long ocean trip back to Ireland.  If so, it was possibly to share his wealth with family.  Then he is said to have returned to San Francisco to establish a real estate company.  A second biographer has Martin going directly from mining to a  career in real estate, prospering, and retiring before long to take an extended ocean voyage to Europe and the Far East.  A third source has Martin visiting the cities of the Eastern U.S. before deciding to make San Francisco his permanent home.

Biographers agree that Martin invested heavily in large tracts of land in California and Oregon.   One says he he owned about 200,000 acres in California and over 600,000 acres in Oregon.  An historian of the West disputes the latter figure, figuring Martin owned no more than 450,000 acres in Oregon.  An 1870 account called Edward “our greatest Irish landowner” of the far West.  

When many San Francisco banks failed, Martin joined a group of successful San Francisco Irishmen in establishing the The Hibernia Savings and Loan Society (later the Hibernia Bank),  serving as the secretary-treasurer from 1859 until his death.  The bank building is shown here. By this time Edward had adopted his mother’s maiden name, Johnson, as his middle name.

More important, for the purposes of this blog, Martin ventured into the whiskey trade.  In 1859, he partnered with three San Francisco locals in establishing a liquor house they called E. Martin & Company.  Initially the partners located it at 604-606 Front Street but soon outgrew those premises and moved by 1868 to 408 Front.  Although Martin was prominently identified the concern, another partner, Daniel V. B. Henarie, appears to have handled day to day management.

Sometime in the 1860s, Edward married.  Irishmen were noted for marrying late and he would have been well into his forties at the time of his nuptials.  His bride was a widow, Eleanor Downey Harvey.   Said to be “beautiful and lively,” Eleanor was an immigrant from County Roscommon and the sister of John Downey,  the seventh governor of California and the first Irishman to hold that office, serving from 1860 to 1862.  

With one living child from her first marriage, Eleanor would bear Edward three sons:  Peter, Walter and Andrew.  A biographer said of her life as Martin’s wife:  “She now lived in a palatial mansion on Broadway in San Francisco’s exclusive Pacific Heights, where she entertained and soon became a trend setter among the burgeoning ranks of San Francisco society.”

Meanwhile her husband was roiling the waters of the San Francisco liquor business.  In 1870, E. Martin & Co. enlisted John F. Cutter in an effort to steal the popular Cutter brand, founded by his father, J. H. Cutter, away from a Kentucky distiller named Charles P. Moorman and Moorman’s West Coast distributor, Anson Hotaling, a powerful and litigious whiskey man.  Martin even issued a bottle claiming to be “sole agent” for J. H. Cutter whiskey, shown below left.  A court fights ensued, described in detail in my post on Moorman of November 2, 2017.   When Martin lost, he issued a bottle for J. F. Cutter, shown below right.

Other Martin brands were notably less controversial.  They included “Argonaut,” “E. Martin & Co.,”  "Miller's Extra Old Bourbon,” "Miller's Extra Whisky,” "Miller's Old Bourbon,” and "Old Dorsey.”  The company trademarked Miller’s Extra Old Bourbon in 1875 and again in 1894;  Miller’s Extra Whiskey in 1901, and Argonaut in 1906. 

 Miller’s Extra brand likely was the firm’s top shelf bourbon available to a wealthy clientele.  This bourbon was bottled in three sizes:  a quart and two different sizes of flasks, as shown below.  Blown in a mold with applied lip, these are considered early bottles, dated from 1872 to the late 1870s.  Because the embossing pattern on both the quart and the flasks is the same, not usual on Western whiskeys,  it appears to some that E. Martin & Company were attempting brand recognition.  These bottles are very rare with only a few known and now avidly sought by collectors.

Although the E. Martin Company survived until 1919 and the advent of National Prohibition, Martin himself died in May 1880 at the age of 63.  The San Francisco Morning Call, in an editorial the day following his death said:  “As a businessman he enjoyed the confidence of the entire community.” A millionaire, Edward left Eleanor, a wealthy woman in her own right, with one of the largest estates in California.  She lived another 48 years, dying in July 1928 within six weeks of being 102 years old.  

To my mind, a California history might have had the appropriate last word on this whiskey man:   “Mr. Martin's appearance indicates the true Irish gentleman, for he has in his physiognomy that mixture of dignity and wit which characterizes the genuine Irishman.”  Enigmas and all, the boy from Enniscorthy had done well. 

Note:  A major source of information on Edward Martin was a 2011 article by Mark Codd that appeared in the organ of the Ui Cinsealaigh Historical Society.  Codd cites a number of the earlier histories that often give conflicting information about the wealthy Martin and contribute to the mystery surrounding him.

I. H. Oppenheim: Riding “The Jug Train”

As prohibitionary forces gradually shut down liquor distribution and sales in states and localities throughout America, the Nation’s imbibing public came more and more to rely on a phenomenon known as “The Jug Train.”   Though operations differed from locality to locality, basically the Jug Train brought liquor from “wet” states into “dry,” protected from being seized by the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  Isaac Oppenheim, a saloonkeeper and liquor dealer forced out of Georgia by prohibition into Tennessee, parlayed the Jug Train into personal prosperity.

Isaac was born in Charleston in 1858, the son of Joseph Hertz and Hannah Oppenheim, both of them South Carolinian natives of Jewish ancestry.   Joseph was a married man with a family in Charleston when the Civil War broke out but joined the Confederate Army as a lieutenant with the 16th Regiment of the South Carolina militia.   His service largely was guarding the islands and ports of the state against Yankee incursions and allowed him considerable home time.  

With the Southern surrender, Joseph established himself as a merchant in Charleston.  The 1870 census found the family there.  Isaac was the oldest son at 19, working in his father’s store.  He was followed by three brothers and four sisters, the youngest of them five years old.   

Perhaps seeking to “spread his wings” away from the family business, at some point Isaac moved to Atlanta, Georgia.  There he likely entering the liquor business in one of the many Jewish-owned saloons.  Marni Davis writes in her book,  “Jews and Booze,”  how strongly the Jewish community relied on selling alcohol for their livelihood.  Atlanta provided a good example.  Although only two percent of the population there were Jewish, more than ten percent of the businesses on Decatur Street were Jewish-owned saloons, including the one shown below.

Not only did Oppenheim find a career in Atlanta, he found a bride in Florence F. Meyer.   They married in December 1889.  There was one child, Leon Henry, born in 1891.  It may have been family obligations that caused Isaac to leave his employer and in 1892 set up a saloon of his own, located at  One Whitehall Street.  He appears to have met with immediate success.  A 1904 Atlanta business directory indicates his expansion to three saloons:  27 North Pryor, 33 North Forsyth and 7 East Alabama Streets.  At the last location Oppenheim also was retailing liquor and wine.

His proprietary whiskeys were “Oppenheim’s No. 14 Rye,”  “Oppenheim’s Mistletoe Rye,” “Strate Whiskey,” “Royal Warrant,”  “Old Pharaoh,” “Wellworth,” and “Farm Bell” rye and corn whiskeys.   He sold those brands in amber glass bottles embossed with his name, “fine whiskey,” and Atlanta. The liquor came in sizes ranging from quarts to pints and half pints, the latter shown here.  All would have had paper labels, most lost over the years.  Like other whiskey men, Oppenheim never bothered to trademark any of his brands.

By 1905 Isaac was back to running one saloon and liquor sales at 7 East Alabama.  His North Forsyth address had been turned into a cigar and tobacco store.   This move presaged Isaac eventually founding the Oppenheim Cigar Company in Atlanta, with his son, Leon, as the secretary treasurer of the organization and its head salesman.

Meanwhile, Georgia was edging ever closer to passing a statewide ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol.  When the hammer fell in 1908, Oppenheim quickly moved his operation to Chattanooga, Tennessee, 120 miles northwest of Atlanta.  He set up his liquor house at 1013 Chestnut Street and in that railroad town quickly made use of the Jug Train.  He ran ads in Atlanta newspapers stating:  “Fifteen years in Atlanta — send your orders now to Chattanooga.”

A buyer would send Oppenheim money by mail order.  Upon receipt of the funds in Tennessee where liquor sales were still legal, he would send a “wet” package via the Jug Train to Atlanta.  Since it had been purchased out of state, the liquor was legal in Georgia.  Competition came from what was known as the “lightning express.”   This was an illegal extension of the Jug Train phenomenon.  An Atlanta buyer paid cash to an intermediary and thirty minutes later liquor was delivered in a package stamped “Chattanooga” — clearly having made the 120 mile trip in “lightning” time.

Oppenheim in a trade journal took aim at that practice, writing:  “All the injurious effects attributed to whiskey comes from mixed, manipulated stuff that is but a poor imitation of the real article…Every drop of whiskey sold here is guaranteed absolutely pure.  I stake my reputation on every transaction.”   The good stuff — “government standard whiskies” — came from Chattanooga, Isaac attested.  Moreover, he paid express charges. 

Shown here is a cartoon that depicts liquor being pumped south into dry Georgia from Chattanooga and north from Jacksonville, Florida, via the railroads.  Although Atlanta was a principal destination, Jug Trains fanned out from that city across Northern Georgia to smaller towns.  One writer, describing the disastrous effects of prohibition in Griffin, Georgia, noted that:  “A daily train, called the jug train, was run between Atlanta and Griffin, bring liquor of all kinds to Griffin.”  The prominence of Jug Trains throughout the U.S. caused Congress to outlaw the practice in the Webb-Kenyon Act of 1913.  After seven years of riding the “gravy train” Oppenheim shut the doors on his Chattanooga liquor house in 1915 when Tennessee also went “dry.”  He returned to Atlanta and his cigar business. 

With son Leon to look after that enterprise, Isaac, as he aged, apparently took the opportunity to vacation.  A tobacco trade journal in June 1919 noted that: “The senior Mr. Oppenheim is making preparations to visit the east, of course, landing in THE CITY…where he will enjoy the company of his manufacturing friends for some time;  then for a nice peaceful, quiet rest in some secluded part of the New England states.”   Isaac must have found the East to his liking, eventually buying a house in Ostego County, New York, not far from Cooperstown, and living there with his sister, Yetta.

This move suggests a rift in Isaac’s marriage to Florence.  She seems to have remained in Atlanta with Leon while Oppenheim was in Chattanooga and did not follow him to New York.  She died in Atlanta in 1925 and was buried in a local cemetery.   Isaac died seven years later at the age of 73.  He was buried in East Worcester, Ostego County, where, as shown here, he shares a gravestone with Yetta.

For about seven years Oppenheim had a ticket to ride — a very lucrative ticket.  From Chattanooga virtually every day he shipped liquor back to Georgia via the Jug Train.   No only did the railroad traffic make him rich, it provided a measure of sweet revenge on the state that had banned the sale of alcohol and put him out business in Atlanta.

  

Hon. Stephen Buhrer — Self-Made in Cleveland

Foreword:   As in the past when I find a piece on a whiskey man of interest that has been written expertly by someone else, my practice is to print it on this blog, giving credit to the author.  In this case it is my friend and president of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) , Ferdinand (“Ferd”) Meyer.   As a bitters collector, Ferd concentrated on his subject’s bitters products.  At the same time, however, Buhrer was making and selling whiskey and other liquor.  His story is interesting and Ferd tells it well:

Stephen Buhrer was born on Christmas day, December 25th, 1825 on the Zoar farm in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, to Johann Casper Buhrer who was from a province of Baden, Germany and Anna Maria Miller from Stockach, Germany. Johann and Anna Maria arrived in Philadelphia, with many other Germans in 1817 and settled in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. They were married in short order and had one daughter, Catherine. Knowing of many other Germans and Anna Maria having friends in Ohio, the Buhrer’s moved to the rich farmlands of Zoar, Ohio.

Zoar was formed by a group of German Separatists who left southeastern Germany to escape persecution for their religious beliefs. The Separatists thought that the church should be simple and bereft of all ceremony and they emphasized a mystical and direct relationship with God.  Zoar was one of the most notable experiments in communal living in our nation’s history.

A Zoar Farm

Unfortunately, Buhrer’s father died in 1829 and Buhrer was entrusted to this strict German society of separatists. At a very early age, and without a wage, Buhrer was put to work on the communal farm and at the age of nine was given the task to manage the sheep in the vast pasture ranges of Zoar where he labored for three years.  When he was twelve years old, he was placed in a cooper shop in the society. A cooper was someone who made wooden staved vessels, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads.

Buhrer did not attend traditional school and was educated mainly in Sunday school and by any education he could pick up after a long days work.  Buhrer not only learned the trade of coopering, but at different times did almost any kind of work including brewing and slaughtering.  He also was a hostler at the Zoar Tavern and drove horses on the Ohio canal.  Buhrer finally left the society and farm life and traveled to Cleveland in 1842 and continued work as a cooper. He accepted a position as a traveling salesman in 1846 with his territory at first covering Ohio and later Indiana and Michigan.

With ill health and the prevailing malarial fevers of this era, he cut short his work as a traveling salesman and returned by rail to Detroit. With his funds exhausted, he sold much of his valuables including clothes and purchased deck passage on a steamboat bound for Cleveland, which he regarded his new home. Continued ill health then sent him almost to the poorhouse until a friend revived his spirits and supported him financially until he recovered. With a renewed vigor, Buhrer then returned to coopering and briefly worked at a shipyard in 1847.

In 1848, Buhrer married Eva Maria Schneider and had three children: John, Mary Jane, and Lois Catherine. Eva died in 1889 and after her death, Buhrer married Marguerite Paterson. With a family and responsibilities, Buhrer put his strong work ethic to task and went into the coopering business for three years. He then sold his interest to his partner in 1853, at which time he turned his attention to the business of rectifying and purifying spirits. During this period, he was associated with the Masons and Cleveland City Lodge No. 15. He was also First Junior Deacon of Bigelow Lodge No. 243.

Buhrer eventually became a well-known wholesale distributor of alcoholic beverages and ran Eagle Distilleries. He had only been a resident of Cleveland for eleven years, and was 29 years old when he was elected a member of the City Council in 1855. He also ran and served on the City Council in 1863 and 1865. He served on the council during the Civil War, as he could not be drafted because of his health, and was a stalwart champion of the Union and federal government. After his three-terms with the city council, Buhrer was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1867. He served as the Democratic Mayor until 1870.

Buhrer’s Gentian Bitters first appeared around 1865 and remained one of his strongest brands well into the 1880’s. Along with foreign and domestic liquors, he also sold and bottled mineral and other natural table waters. 

Buhrer as Mayor of Cleveland

Buhrer was one of the prominent business men of his day and as Mayor, brought forth the project of building a viaduct to connect the east and west sides of Cleveland. The Cleveland House of Correction & Workhouse was also built under his term. After serving two terms, he returned to serve another term on the city council before he died in Cleveland on December 8, 1907.

To me, it is truly amazing that this self made man, with no father or older brothers, no money to borrow from relatives, became so successful in America as such a young age. He truly must have had some type of divine intervention as his trade card above depicts.

Note:   Many of the illustrations shown here are from Ferd Meyer’s Peachridge Glass website, well worth a look for any bottle aficionado.

Whiskey Men Fighting for the South, Part 2

Foreword:  The Civil War that raged between 1861 and 1865 was a defining event in American history.  An increase in alcoholic consumption among the public during and after the conflict has been attributed to it.  The war also has been credited with spurring the temperance movement in the country that ultimately led to National Prohibition in 1920.  Many who fought on both sides had an interest in the liquor trade.  Often their stories are compelling.  This is the second post on Confederates and features three men who in the post-war period ventured North to find success in selling whiskey.  This article will be followed shortly by one on Northern combatants. 

Born in 1843, George Shawhan joined the Confederate army in Kentucky in 1862 at the age of 19.  He stood six feet five inches tall and weighed 250 pounds — a giant of those times.  In late July, 1863, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan brought the Civil War north to Indiana and Ohio. Morgan and his men on horseback pillaged and terrorized dozens of hamlets and towns, moving east from Indiana.  A contemporary lithograph from Harper’s Magazine, shown here, depicted the attack by Morgan’s Raiders on Washington Court House, Ohio. With them was Shawhan.  Captured with Morgan trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia, he spent the rest of the war in a Yankee prison. 

After the war, George returned to Kentucky, got married, tried farming and quickly decided that making whiskey was a better way of life. It was an easy choice since his family had been involved in distilling for three generations.  In 1872 he transplanted his family and mother to a town in Missouri called Lone Jack.  There Shawhan’s strength became legendary. He was said to be able to raise a 400 pound barrel of whiskey, hold it by the rim, and drink from the bung hole. On one occasion, the story goes, the tailgate of his wagon holding full whiskey barrels opened, spilling the cargo onto the street. Working alone, Shawhan corralled the big kegs and heaved them back onto the wagon.  He also built a successful distillery in Lone Jack, shown here. 

When it burned in 1900 he moved to Weston, Missouri, and bought a distillery there.  It was located near a pure limestone spring and the quality of the water caused Shawhan to enthuse that with his whiskey formula he could “beat those Bourbon County fellows all hollow.”  His flagship label was Shawhan whiskey and bore his likeness.  In 1908 Shawhan sold his Weston distillery and the brand name to the Singer family who operated the distillery until Prohibition. Shawhan continued to be involved in aspects of the whiskey business until his death in 1912 at the age of 69.  He is buried near Kansas City in Lee’s Summit Cemetery, a fitting resting place for an old Confederate.

Shown here in uniform, Frank Hume led a life that included service as a Confederate spy, later becoming the largest grocer and purveyor of liquor in Washington, D.C., and ending as a well-known philanthropist whose name continues to be memorialized in his native Virginia. Collectors also note the elaborately embossed bottles of his whiskeys.

Born in Culpeper County, Virginia, in 1843, Hume at the age of 18 enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving as a signal scout with General J.E.B. Stuart. He participated in eleven major battles, receiving a serious wound at Gettysburg. Part of his service was reputed to have been as a spy sneaking Northern battle plans from D.C. to Gen. Robert E. Lee. It was during this escapade that he apparently stopped in Alexandria long enough to have his picture taken.

After the war Hume entered the grocery trade, in 1871 opening his own store on Pennsylvania Avenue. The grocery prospered, with the sale of “wet goods” -- liquor -- being an important part of his merchandise. Among Hume’s brands was “Old Stag, sold in an elaborately embossed bottle.  Hume is shown here in 1892 perusing a ledger.  At that time Hume was enjoying life at his newly acquired mansion called Warwick Estate.  It served as his summer home, positioned on a hill overlooking Alexandria, Virginia.  

Hume also gained a reputation as a philanthropist.  In 1891 he donated the land for a school in Arlington, Virginia, along with an adjacent area for a playground.  In a more controversial act of generosity, Hume provided food for Coxey’s Army. That was a protest march by unemployed American workers, led by the populist Jacob Coxey.  They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that to that time was the worst in U.S. history.  After a lifetime of achievement, in 1906 at the age of 63 Frank Hume died.  

Morris Ullman was born in 1835 in Baden-Wurtemberg, Germany, and emigrated to the United States in 1851 at the age of 16. According to newspaper accounts, he first settled in Alabama and then moved to Guilford County, North Carolina, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1857.  In 1861, like hundreds of thousands other Southern boys, he joined the Confederate Army and served for the duration of the Civil War.  The role of Jewish soldiers in the Confederate Army generally has been overlooked by historians. Shown here is a caricature of one from Jewish magazine More than 10,000 fought for the South.  Gen. Robert E. Lee allowed his Jewish soldiers to observe all holy days. Northern generals, including William Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant, by contrast, issued orders making Hebrew observance difficult.  

Morris came North after Lee’s surrender and after 1866 moved to Cleveland. There, assisted by his brother, he founded a liquor house.  After the untimely death of his brother in 1881, Morris as managing partner joined with other relatives to create Ullman-Einstein & Co.  Almost immediately the company began to merchandise Black Cat Whiskey throughout Northern Ohio and beyond.  

The company also featured the cat on a range of giveaway items, including back of the bar bottles and shot glasses. With its distinctive whiskers and eyes, it projected real personality. The feline was also featured on a giveaway inlaid cloisonné porcelain watch fob that also depicted the Cleveland municipal flag.   

While Morris and his partners continued to pilot the liquor business successfully into the 20th Century the end was near. Unlike those felines said to have nine lives, the Black Cat had only one. Prohibition in Ohio and in the Nation dealt the kitty a death blow. Ullman-Einstein went out of business in 1919, taking with it the Black Cat brand.  Nevertheless, in his own way, the Confederate soldier who ventured to Yankee-land had been victorious. 

Note:  This post of three former Confederate soldiers who found success in the liquor trade are taken from longer posts  on each man on this blog.  They are:  George Shawhan, May 11, 2011;  Frank Hume, February 24, 2012;  and Morris Ullman, February 5, 2012. 

N. C. Cannon: Black Whiskey Man in a “Jim Crow” State

Known as “Jim Crow” laws, Mississippi began to roll back the anti-racist legislation of post-Civil War Reconstruction in 1880, just as Nathan C. Cannon, an African-American, was growing into manhood and a career as a liquor dealer in Vicksburg.  Despite the imposition of segregation, Cannon managed to prosper until his untimely early death cast his wife and son to fend for themselves.

Vicksburg in the 1870s

In order to insure his election, President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 promised Southern white politicians to end Reconstruction that had seen blacks participating in political life and repealing pre-conflict racist laws. It did not take Mississippi long to respond.  By the time Cannon reached 12 in 1878 it had become against the law to teach white and black children in the same school.  In 1880, marriage between the race was banned.  That was followed by enforced segregation on streetcars and railroads and at hospitals, waiting rooms, and public lavatories.

Although details of Cannon’s early life are sketchy, census records indicate that he was born in Georgia and migrated to Vicksburg at an early age.  He showed up first in city directories in 1906, running a saloon at 309 Washington Street, a major Vicksburg commercial avenue, shown above.  By this time Nathan, by now in his thirties, was married.  His wife was Minnie, a native Mississippian who was about nineteen when they wed in 1902.  Their union produced one son, born in 1903.  They named him Nathan Jr.

A 1906 Vicksburg street directory seems to indicate the irony that although blacks were being discriminated against in public facilities, the private business sector still permitted black-owned enterprises in predominantly white commercial blocks.  Cannon’s Washington Street address put him between Harry Speyerer’s meat market and Barkin Bros. shoe store, both apparently owned by whites.  Moreover, the saloon was located immediately across the street from C. J. Miller’s saloon, also white.  [See my post of November 26, 2014, on Miller].

Like Miller, Cannon also was selling his liquor at retail from his saloon, using pottery jugs made in the vicinity of the city.   Shown throughout this post, the ceramics were somewhat crudely made.   In sizes from quarts to half-gallons and gallons, they featured a “beehive” design with an Bristol glaze body and an Albany slip top and handle.  Cannon’s name and address appears on them all.  He advertised “Jug trade a specialty.”

Circumstantial evidence exists that Cannon was selling whiskey to whites as well as blacks.  The advertising notebook shown right provides the clue.  Note that the cover states: “We have a reputation for prompt attention to mail orders”…and…”Send us your Mail Orders.”  The notebook contains the jottings of Mary Ratliff, the young daughter of a white farmer in Smedes, Mississippi, a hamlet about 30 miles north of Vicksburg.  Since Mary was too young to order whiskey, we can assume Cannon sent the item to her father as part of a mail order liquor shipment. 

The notebook contains a page that lists Cannon’s liquor offerings.  They included at least two proprietary brands, “Cannon’s Favorite” at $2.00 a gallon and “Cannon’s Select Rye.”  This suggests that he was buying product from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere by the barrel and then decanting it into his own labeled containers.  He also featured nationally known brands including “O.F.C. Taylor,” “Anderson Rye,” and “Nelson County.”

Cannon’s success in the liquor trade did not go unnoticed in Vicksburg’s black community.  Although he was not involved in Republican politics like his fellow black saloonkeeper,  Jere Blowe [see my post on Blowe, April 6, 2013],  Nathan was active in community affairs. One of Cannon’s efforts was the formation of a local chapter of a black insurance cooperative known as the “Benevolent Industrial Assn.”  One of 75 chapters in Mississippi, the Vicksburg unit claimed 4,800 members.  Cannon was elected as treasurer of the organization.

Within three years, whatever death insurance Cannon had, his wife was collecting.  At the untimely age of 40, he died in 1909, leaving Minnie with a thirteen-year-old girl named Etta that the couple had adopted, and their son, Nathan Jr., now seven.  Ten months after Cannon’s death, the State of Mississippi went “dry,” banning completely the manufacture or sale of alcoholic drink.  It rendered worthless the liquor business Nathan had left behind.  Fortunately Minnie had sufficient education to find employment as a teacher in a black Vicksburg public school, a profession she pursued for many years.

Minnie Cannon lived 34 years as a widow before dying in 1943.  She was buried with Nathan in Division D, the black section of Vicksburg’s Cedar Hill Cemetery.  Their gravestones, shown here, lie next to each other.  For me the couple symbolize Mississippians who saw their civic rights whittled away one by one and yet persevered in the Jim Crow era to build a family and a business, both seemingly successful.   Moreover, we have the whiskey jugs as a continual reminder of their indomitable spirit.