The Hanleys: Murder and Mayhem in ‘Frisco

“Beer and whiskey were involved,” reported San Francisco’s Daily Alta newspaper about the shooting death of Daniel Hanley, founder of a liquor merchandising tradition carried on by his wife and son.  Nor, as will be seen, would Dan be the last family member to make the newspapers in an altercation in which a Hanley got the worst of it. 

The Hanley family story began in Mitchellstown, County Cork, Ireland, where Dan Hanley was born in 1837.   Unlike most communities in Ireland, Mitchellstown, shown above, was a planned town, located on the site of a medieval village that was torn down by a British lord to build a place of his own design, shown here.  It is likely that in Mitchellstown Hanley met Mary Sullivan, a woman eight years younger, whom he eventually would marry.

It is not clear when the couple emigrated to the United States.  Hanley first surfaced in San Francisco directories in 1863 working as a bartender at the Rotunda Saloon and living at 5 O’Farrell Street.  Before long, the Irish immigrant was listed owning a grocery store and liquor business, including a saloon.

In 1877, the Hanleys were living at 33 Eddy Street, likely above their establishment.  They had three children,  John about 5, James 3, and Molly, under one year.  Also living with them was John Hanley, Dan’s older brother.   According to an account in the San Francisco Bulletin, the Hanleys had fenced in some property to the objection of a neighboring land owner named Dennis Ryan.  The result was ongoing trouble between the two families.

In October 1877, during a raucous party at Ryan’s house, a dispute broke out between the two Irishman.  Both sides had firearms and shots were exchanged.  John Hanley was hit in the hand and Dan was shot through the right thigh.  Ryan and an accomplice were arrested on a charge of assault to murder.  After lingering for six months Dan, only 37 years old, died of blood poisoning and the charge against Ryan became manslaughter.  Asked about what fueled the fight, witnesses told the press:  “Beer and whiskey were involved.”

Left with three small children to raise, Mary Sullivan Hanley, shown right, proved to have “the right stuff.”  Without skipping a beat she took over management of the family grocery, liquor sales and the saloon.  At the outset brother-in-law John was available to help.  By the time her son John was seventeen, he was tasked with working in his mother’s enterprises, thereby learning the liquor trade.  A younger son, James, was able to go to law school, ultimately becoming a prominent San Francisco attorney and eventually its assistant district attorney.  

At some point during the early 1890s, the Hanleys apparently shut down their business and John, shown right,  went to work for a string of other San Francisco wine and liquor dealers.  He was recorded, for example, as secretary of the Golden Gate Champagne Co.  By 1896 he had settled in as the bookkeeper and secretary for the Joseph Melczer Co., located on Front Street.  Melczer was a Hungarian immigrant who had talent for wine and had built a prosperous San Francisco wine and liquor business.

While in this employment, John married.  His bride was Ella Cronin, born in California in 1877, the daughter of John and Ella Cronin.  Inexplicably, their wedding announcement in the San Francisco Call identified John as hailing from Nogales, Arizona, and said the couple would make their home in that state.  No evidence exists, however, that they ever left Frisco.  Their children, three sons and four daughters, all were born in California.

Hanley worked for Melczer & Company through 1904, and in 1905, the wealthy Melczer, with his wife Elizabeth, retired. Making an unrevealed financial arrangement with his former employer, Hanley took over the management of the wine and liquor house, soon changing its name to the Hanley Mercantile Company. The new owner wasted no time in issuing his own brands of whiskey. His flagship was “Hanley Rye,” shown here in two amber flasks, one with a label, the other as embossed in the glass.

Hanley’s timing might have been better. In 1906, the Great San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed Front Street, the avenue shown above in ruins.  In the conflagration, like many local whiskey men, John lost his entire stock of whiskey.   Undaunted, he opened again the very next year on Florida Street, advertising his liquor as “Good Goods."

Hanley Merchantile has been credited with a canny marketing move. In 1904 Oregon had enacted a “local option” law and a number of communities went dry. Meanwhile, San Franisco stayed predictably wet. Taking advantage of the Interstate Commerce Clause, Hanley advertised heavily in Oregon and did brisk business by mail order there, using the Southern Pacific Railroad to deliver the goods. 

Customers would send Hanley Merchantile five dollars and the company would send back four bottles of Hanley Rye or perhaps Ashborne Rye, a name I believe can be related back to the San Francisco fire. Everything sent to Oregon, naturally, came in a plain brown wrapper.

By 1909, John Hanley had settled into more permanent retail quarters on Eddy Street when a incident occurred that would unwillingly thrust him into the newspapers.  The San Francisco Call of May 8, 1909 headlined:  “Mrs. Elizabeth Melczer, Rich Society Woman, in a “Fistic” Role, Seeks Dividends from Mercantile Company and Pummels Its President; Pulls Hanley’s Hair and Puts Up a Good Fight.”

Leaving from her mansion home in Palo Alto, shown here, the now Widow Melczar had gone with her attorney to Hanley’ office to collect dividends she said were due her from the liquor business.  The discussion deteriorated into an argument between the dowager and Hanley.  In the fracas, Elizabeth pulled Hanley’s hair yanking some of it out and chased him around his desk.  Hanley tried to protect himself with a chair that subsequently was broken. The eyeglasses of Mrs. Melczar’s attorney were broken in the melee. Hanley was forced to take cover under a table until the attorney could hustle the outraged female from the room.  The newspaper story the next day had all San Francisco laughing.

For a day or so, Hanley could not be found, clearly lying low until the buzz receded.  The Call ended its lengthy news account by reporting:  “According to Hanley’s friends,  Mrs. Melczer had business transactions with him, and expectations were that these would be settled within a few days.”  One can image John’s Irish mother, Mary, wishing she could have gotten in a few licks on the Widow Melczar.

Whether it was this event or the increasing momentum of Prohibition, by 1918 the Hanley Mercantile Co. was out of business. Congress had closed the loophole that Hanley  exploited. In addition, Oregon had gone totally dry in 1914 cutting off an important source of his revenues.   John Hanley went on to other pursuits.  When he registered for the World War One draft, he was working in a steel mill.  In subsequent census records he was recorded employed as a cashier for the railroad.

Mary Sullivan Hanley, continued to live in San Francisco all her life, dying in October 1924 at the age of 79.  Devoted to her Catholic religion, she was a member of the third order of St. Dominic.  Given a solemn requiem high mass at St. Charles Church on S. Van Ness Avenue, she was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, the burial town for San Francisco.  A widow for 44 years, Mary lies next to her late husband, Daniel, in Section H, Row 4, Plot 45.  In 1942 John died and joined his parents in Holy Cross Cemetery.  The Hanley cross-shaped monument is shown here.

Note:  Much of the material in this post earlier appeared in an article in “Placer Trails,” a publication of the Genealogical Society of Auburn, California.  Dated April 2014, it was written by Jacqui Marcella, whose Irish ancestors were from Mitchellstown and possibly related to the Hanleys.  

Whiskey Men and "The National Pastime"

Foreword:  Spring inevitably brings the quintessential American sport to the fore — baseball.   Several whiskey men have made it an important part of their marketing or their lives.   As the baseball season “heats up” both weather-wise and figuratively, it seems appropriate to bring three of these gentlemen to the fore.

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

Klinordlinger had faced stiff competition in the liquor trade. In the latter years of the 1880s,  no fewer than 41 wholesale wine and liquor dealers were operating in the Pittsburgh area.   Each of them was vying to sell to 70 retail dealers, and more important, 1,400 saloons.  They were seeking a healthy slice of the estimated $6,100,000 in annual Pittsburgh liquor sales --  in today’s dollar, more than $91 million. 

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

Klinordlinger was not just cheering the Pirates from the grandstand. With the wisdom of his namesake, Solomon foresaw the potential for selling whiskey through baseball in the Steel City.  Capitalizing on the team’s immense popularity he named a whiskey brand after them, calling it “Pirate Club Pure Rye Whiskey.”  The picture on the label showed a strapping man with a large mustache and a baseball bat in hand with “Pittsburg” prominent on his chest.  Sol merchandised the brand in three sizes of bottle.  He also issued shot glasses with an etched picture of the player. 

Although he was shut down by the coming of National Prohibition, Klinordlinger continued to be remembered in Pittsburgh because, as one observer put it:  He “...brewed some of the finest spirits in Western Pennsylvania from the 1880s through the early 1900s...Perhaps tastiest to all Steel City sports folks...Pirate Club.”   In Pittsburgh Klinordlinger clearly had hit a home run. 

Moritz Seligmann was a successful whiskey wholesaler whose tall silk hat and passion for Milwaukee’s baseball team, the Brewers, made him a local celebrity.  “Hi-Hi,” as the colorful Seligmann was known, became a virtual household name in Milwaukee.

In a story on the Republican House, Milwaukee’s fanciest hotel during the late 1800s, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported:  “Seated every afternoon at the bar, where merchants, bankers, actors, cigar manufacturers, brewers and men about town discussed politics, baseball and other topics of the day, was Hi-Hi Seligmann, immaculate and resplendent in a high silk hat and black suit and a red carnation in his buttonhole.  As sure as 4 o’clock rolled around, ‘Hi-Hi’ walked in.  He was a great baseball fan and did a lot of talking between drinks.”  

I assume that Moritz also wore a top hat to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball stadium at Borchert Field where he was a familiar figure and frequently the subject of attention by local sports writers.  On June 26, 1896, The Sentinel, reporting on a bad loss by the local team, recorded that:  “Even Hi-Hi Seligman left the scorers stand and took a seat in a rear section of the grandstand where he grieved alone….”  How Seligmann came to be nicknamed “Hi-Hi” is not clear.  From hints in press accounts, it likely stemmed from his familiar loud cheering for the home team. 

Seligmann’s liquor house featured several proprietary brands, including “Eremite Sour Mash Rye,”  "Prince William Rye,” “Challenge Kentucky Bourbon,” and  “Gold Star Sour Mash.”  He never named one after his favorite baseball club, but did issue a saloon sign for Eremite Rye that feature four men at a bar including one wearing a top hat.  My instinct tells me that man is Hi-Hi himself, indulging in his favorite pastime, talking baseball with one foot on the brass rail.

An inheritor of a thriving Chicago liquor house founded by his Irish immigrant father,  Thomas Dennehy proved to have a flair for advertising puffery.  He first tried to identify his “Old Underoof Rye” with Native American themes including an Indian chief called “Old Un-Der-Oof, but that gambit fell short of expectations.  He then switched to an aristocratic look featuring colonial grandees, but that advertising failed to be satisfactory.  Dennehy hit his stride several years later when he conceived of a series of ads in Chicago newspapers keyed to what was happening with the Chicago Cubs baseball team.  

The Cubs were in their heyday in 1910, sparked by the famous double play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance.  The Cubs had won the World Series in 1907 and 1908 and although coming in second in 1909 had compiled a record of 104 wins against only 49 losses.    When the team sparkled in 1910 and gained the World Series again, Dennehy hired local cartoonists to craft Old Underoof ads that discussed the contests.  

One cartoon, entitled “Still in the Game,” showed a bear holding an elephant gun with four spent shells on the ground.  They represented the four Cub pitchers who had given up 13 runs in the two previous Series games to the Philadelphia Athletics.   The Cubs also lost a third game, occasioning a cartoon entitled,  “No They Are Not Dead.”  The Chicagoans won the fourth game by one run in extra innings and then lost the next and the Series.  Undaunted about the loss, by opening day 1911 Old Underoof was back and Dennehy was optimistic about the season.  It would be 108 years and 2016, however, until the Cubs would win their next World Series.

Although it might seem that other whiskey men might have jumped on the baseball bandwagon to sell their brands, the answer may be that beer, not hard liquor, has always been closely associated with baseball.  In a sense Klinordlinger and Dennehy were breaking out of the mold in their celebration of the Pirates and Cubs.  Hi-Hi Seligmann faced a different reality.  He hardly could have advertised a whiskey named “The Brewers.” 

Note:  Considerably more detailed information on of each of these whiskey men can be found at the following posts:   Solomon Klinordlinger, January 4, 2014;  Moritz “Hi-Hi” Seligmann, June 28, 2016; and Thomas Dennehy, June 18, 2014.

John Low — Rising High in War and Peace

During the Civil War, John S. Low of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, advanced from corporal to captain over the course of three years of heavy combat only to return home, his heroism apparently forgotten, to menial jobs and near penury.  Once more through personal exertion, Low rose significantly in income and local business esteem, in large part by producing a popular whiskey he called “Elk’s Pride.”

Within a week of President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 men to serve for three months at the outset of the conflict, Low, 25 years old, joined a Carlisle troop called the Sumner Rifles and was given the rank of corporal.  His unit ultimately became Company C of the 9th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, performing garrison duties in Delaware and West Virginia.  When its term of service ended the company returned to Harrisburg to be mustered out.

Anticipating its end, Low enrolled again at Carlisle and in August 1862, his leadership skills being recognized, he was enlisted in Harrisburg as 2nd lieutenant of Company G, 130th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.  Within a month Low was engaged in hot combat at Antietam, West Virginia, one of the costliest battles of the Civil War.  A monument to the 130th stands today on the Antietam battlefield near the “Bloody Lane” where many Union soldiers fell.

This was just the first fierce fighting for the 130th Pennsylvania as it participated at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862 and at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.   Meanwhile, Low was being promoted to 1st lieutenant in August 1862 and then to captain in February 1863.  By the time the 130th was mustered out after Chancellorsville, the regiment had lost 92 men during service, four officers and 56 enlisted men killed or fatally wounded;  32 enlisted had died of disease.  Once back in Carlisle, Low headed a home guard company.

None of Low’s Civil War heroics seemed to translate into prosperity.  John had been married with at least two children when he went off to war.  His wife was the former Rebecca Humes, a Carlisle resident and a girl of 19 when they married.  Over the next few years the couple would have five more children.  A history of the First Presbyterian Church reported that Rebecca had six of their children baptized on one day in June 1869.

The 1870 census found the family living in Carlisle on Sassafras Street with their seven children, the oldest 13, the youngest, John S. Low Jr., eleven months.  Low’s occupation was listed as “produce dealer.”  This enterprise may have failed since a subsequent directory gave his occupation as “mechanic.”  The same directory listed Low’s taxable assessment at just $100 — among the lowest amount recored.  In the 1880 census Low’s occupation was listed as “huckster,” defined as a person selling items from a push cart or stall.  He seems to have been distant from from the prestige and prosperity that greeted many Union Civil War officers upon their return home.

But Low’s fortunes were about to change.  His reputation and income appear to have risen significantly sometime in the 1880s when he established a liquor wholesale house and bottling facility.  He featured a proprietary brand that he marketed as:  “A Whiskey Without a Headache.”  It was “Elk’s Pride.”  Shown here is a ceramic mini-jug “on the square” advertising the liquor.  

Low also sold his whiskey in glass bottles.  Shown here are two views of a Elk’s Pride flask, blown in a mold with an applied lip.  It is large at 9 1/2 tall by 4 1/2 inches wide and 2 1/2 inches deep and probably held a quart of whiskey.  It is considered rare and is sought by collectors because of its heavy embossing involving a stag elk’s head.

Elk’s Head Whiskey appears to have been a blend, likely a mixture of rye whiskeys obtained from Pennsylvania distilleries and “rectified” by Low or one of his employees to achieve desired color, taste and smoothness.  This operation likely occurred in the large building occupied by Low’s operation.  Shown here, the structure was located in the first block of North Pitt Street in Carlisle.  Its size also allowed Low and his son, John S. Low Jr., who eventually had joined his father in the business, to expand from whiskey into beer and soft drinks.

An advertisement indicates that Low’s company wasacting as the local distributor for several important breweries, including Pabst beer from Milwaukee and Bartholomay beer from Rochester, New York, two very popular brands of the times.  The Lows apparently were able to bottle those and other brands of beer.  They embossed their bottles, found in clear and amber, with “Registered,” the company name, and Carlisle.

The Lows also were bottling soft drinks sold under their name, often using  Hutchinson patent bottles.  Charles G. Hutchinson had invented and patented the Hutchinson Patent Stopper in 1879 as a replacement for cork bottle stoppers that commonly were being used to cap soda water bottles. His invention employed a wire spring attached to a rubber seal. Production of these stoppers was discontinued after 1912.  Seen here with Low’s embossing, Hutchinsons, as they were called, featured a bulbous top.  

Over a period of less than two decades, John S. Low had made the move upward in Carlisle business circles from being recorded as a “huckster” to owning of one of the city’s largest manufacturing enterprises.   

In 1891, at the relatively young age of 55, John Low died.  Although he had not joined the Presbyterian Church with the rest of his family, his funeral service was conducted by its pastor. A later parish history opined:  “He may not have been a church member since he had a wholesale and liquor bottling business.”  Low was buried with military honors in Grave 31, Section C, of Carlisle’s Ashland Cemetery.  His widow, Rebecca, joined him there twenty months later.  Their monument is shown here.

Dates and places of John Low’s battles and his rise in the ranks during the Civil War have been amply documented by historians of that period.  Unfortunately, details are scanty of how Low after the war was able to lift himself and his family from what appear to be low-level occupations and near-poverty conditions to a place near the center of Carlisle commercial life.  I am hopeful that one of his descendants will see this post and comment here, bringing some of those details to light.

Alexandria’s Aherns: Ascending Amid Anguish -- and Elation

During the early days of the Civil War, Union forces invaded and occupied  Alexandria, adjacent to the Nation’s Capitol but part of the secessionist state of Virginia.  According a history, these events “forever changed the social, cultural and economic fabric of the old seaport town.”  They certainly changed the lives of John Ahern and his family.  In the 1860 census Ahern, an Irish immigrant, was listed as a laborer with a net worth of $50.  By 1870 he was an Alexandria grocer and liquor dealer worth $4,000.

The transformation can be laid to the changes made in the commercial life of the town shown above before the war. The city boasted 96 firms and 12,653 inhabitants. It was a center of the slave trade.  During the conflict two of every three Alexandria residents, leaving behind their homes and businesses, had fled to the South, many to Richmond, one hundred miles away and the capital of the Confederacy.  With a huge influx of soldiers, for a time chaos reigned in Alexandria. Murder and other crimes were rampant; drunkeness common; citizens feared to venture into the streets:  “…A condition of things perhaps never in the history of this country to be found in any other city,” according to one author.  Many felt the anguish.

In time, under martial law, the situation stabilized.  During the war Alexandria was transformed into a huge logistical supply center for Federal troops fighting in Virginia, with thousands of Union troops stationed there.   Hordes of black “contrabands”  — former slaves who escaped into Union lines — helped swell the population, elated by being free from slavery and earning a day’s wage.  Entrepreneurs, both legitimate and shady, descended on the city from all parts of the North.  Alexandrians remaining who failed to swear obedience to the United States were not allowed to engage in business.  Although many of the city’s Irish had joined the rebels,  Ahern was willing to take the oath of allegiance and agree to abide by the military rules.

Ahern’s rise in the city also was a lift to his family.   About 1853 when he was 35 years old, John had married another Irish immigrant named Margaret, a woman seven years younger than he.  The couple had produced three children by the time of the war, a girl, Mary, born in 1843;  Michael, 1847, and John P. (sometimes called Patrick), 1850.  

The postwar period proved no better for Alexandria.  According to a local history:  “Following the end of the Civil War, Alexandria found itself in a state of physical, mental and economic depression. With the withdrawal of most of the troops, little commerce remained. Hundreds of returning Confederate soldiers, many missing limbs, faced the daunting prospect of beginning life anew after their homes and businesses had been confiscated, and their former way of life swept away by the conflict.”

Nevertheless, Ahern persisted.  He advertised his store as “Wholesale and Retail Dealers in Groceries and Liquors.”  His location was at a particularly advantageous intersection of three major streets — a triangular building where Prince, West and Commerce Streets come together.  A Sanborn fire map shows the site, with the address of 1319 Prince Street.  The building still stands at that location.  In time both his sons came to work in his establishment.

During the war restrictions on sales of alcohol discouraged saloons in Alexandria but after the conflict they blossomed.  Ahern found a ready market for his wholesale whiskey, received in barrels from Pennsylvania and Maryland distilleries and decanted into gallon-sized ceramic containers.  Some jugs were all white in a Bristol glaze with others boasted Albany slip on the top and neck.  Those included both cone tops and domes. The remnant of a paper label from the back of one of these jugs clearly identifies the contents as “whiskey.”  Another portion suggests it was advertised as “pure.”

For decades John Ahern guided the fortunes of his enterprise, with his sons — both unmarried — to assist him.   During the 1880s major efforts were made to ban alcohol in Alexandria. Prohibition legislation was a dominant issue of Alexandria elections. A local Temperance Society argued that if saloons were outlawed, an influx of families would migrate to Alexandria to escape the awful consequences of alcohol.  Probably to Ahern’s relief, the effort was turned back in the 1881 election when anti-prohibition Democrats were elected in a landslide. The Alexandria Gazette of May 7, 1881, noted:  “As soon as the polls closed...bon fires were lighted all over the city and there was great rejoicing over the victory. Men on the streets declared that Alexandria had rid herself of another ism…."

The city would stayed “wet” for another three decades, much to the benefit of the Aherns.  They advertised widely that: “We hold largely in United States bonded warehouse and carry in stock various brands of the best pure rye and malt whiskies.”

The founding father lived through the most of that decade, ceding management of John Ahern & Co. gradually to sons Michael and John Patrick.  John Ahern died  on April 25, 1889, at the age of 80 and was buried in  Alexandria’s National Cemetery.  His gravestone is shown here.

Michael and John P. carried on the business into the late 1910s, selling liquor until the state of Virginia went dry in 1916 after a statewide referendum in which Alexandria voted overwhelmingly wet.   

The bachelor brothers resided in a splendid home at 915 Prince Street in Alexandria’s Historic District, shown above.  Living with them was a younger cousin, Katherine Ahern, who kept house for them.  John Patrick died in February 1917 at the age of 65.  Michael followed in 1920, age 73.  The brothers were buried with a single headstone adjacent to their father’s grave in the National Cemetery.

The ascendancy of the Ahern family as Alexandria businessmen had been directly affected by the Civil War as John Ahern moved from being a laborer with a meager income to becoming a wealthy merchant selling fancy groceries and, most profitable of all, liquor.   Amidst a city often in turmoil and always in flux — anguish for some, elation for others — the Aherns had not just prevailed, but prospered.

Note:  The photos of the Ahern jugs are through the courtesy of two Virginia bottle collectors, Richard Lillienthal and Peter Rydquist, colleagues from the Potomac Bottle Club, now sadly defunct. The material on Alexandria during and after the Civil War is from a variety of sources.

Special Note:  This is marks the 600th vignette on this site devoted to pre-Prohibition whiskey men — distillers, distributors, dealers and saloon keepers.  It is particularly appropriate that this story is sited in Alexandria, my home city for the past 45 years.  One recent innovation is my condensing three or four earlier posts around a central theme every fourth upload.  Those topics range from whiskey men as inventors, to Civil War soldiers, friends of Presidents, and other subjects.  Those topical posts will continue in the future.

Since it was inaugurated in 2011, the blog as of this writing has had 597,212  look-ins.  While chiefly from the U.S., they have come from all parts of the world.  The blog currently registers 160 followers, for whom I am profoundly grateful.  I continue to find interesting whiskey men about whom to write and, as long as the good stories hold out, have set a goal of reaching 700 posts in the months ahead.