Philly’s Edward Middleton — His Will and His Way

It is supremely ironic to me that Edward Penton Middleton would have by far the largest monument, one apparently carrying his bust, in the Presbyterian Church Cemetery of Blackwood, New Jersey, given the strong prohibitionary stance of the denomination.  Middleton, you see, was an extremely wealthy man whose major source of funds had come by selling whiskey and other alcoholic beverages.  This memorial and other unforeseen outcomes were all part of Middleton’s strong will and having his way.

Edward Middleton was born in New Jersey, outside Philadelphia, circa 1820 (records differ) at a time when Christianity was beginning to experience a sharp divergence among Christian denominations on the subject of alcohol.  Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans were considered “wet;”  Methodists, Evangelicals, and Middleton’s family church, Presbyterian, decidedly “dry.” 

Living in the village of Blackwood, the Middletons, however, were in the business of serving liquor.  Edward’s father owned a tavern in the village center, the oldest building in town.  A series of previous owners had failed to make it prosperous but when a relative of the Middletons established a stage coach route from Camden to the small town, the family’s “public house” prospered.  Edward Middleton’s early years were spent there.  Sometime after receiving an elementary education, he moved the fifteen miles to Philadelphia.

My speculation is that Middleton was employed there in one of the city’s liquor houses. By 1843 when he would have been in his early twenties, he opened a whiskey business of his own.  In this endeavor he had the help of a younger brother, George.   Likely blenders of whiskeys obtained from the many distilleries that dotted the Pennyslvania landscape, the brothers, as advertised above, also featured imported wines and brandies.

In more recent times E. P. Middleton & Bro. has become known because of the highly sought applied seal glass bottles in which the company packaged its liquor.  This method of embossed labeling had originated in Europe in the 17th Century, brought to the U.S. and employed by glassworks into the 1800s. 

When a whiskey bottle had been finished and was just beginning to cool, a hot glob of glass was carefully placed on the container, usually on the shoulder or high on the side where it could easily be seen.  A worker then used a special tool to flatten the molten glass that would be inscribed with words and/or sometimes a symbol.  This produced a seal now permanently attached to the bottle, the removal of which would damage the entire vessel.  Such bottles are referred to as slab seals or applied seals and are highly prized by collectors.  Shown here are several examples from the Middleton company, ranging in color from a light amber to a dark green.  

Shown here is what I take to be an early Middleton bottle.  It carried a seal that bore the message “E. P. Middleton Wheat Whiskey” and the date.  The date is notable because the “2” in 1825 was embossed backward.  Other seals indicate that error was not repeated by the glasshouse.  The date “1825” is something of  mystery.  Middleton would only have been about five years old that year and hardly the proprietor of a liquor house.  My guess is that he set up in the liquor trade by buying an existing Philadelphia business that traced its origins back to that date.

For more than twenty years the Middletons ran a highly profitable liquor establishment in Philadelphia.  In 1864, however, Edward and his brother parted ways. The reasons for the split are unclear.  The elder brother possibly was dictating the way the liquor house would operate;  the younger brother may have had other ideas.  The separation was far from amicable.  Witnesses later would testify that the brothers not only argued but that George Middleton had threatened Edward with “personal violence” and the two had become permanently estranged.  George set up a liquor store of his own in direct competition with his brother and operated it until at least 1886.

After the split, Edward Middleton lived only another five years, his residences a series of boarding houses and hotels like the La Pierre House, shown here.  He sickened in May, 1869, and died early in April.  By the time of his death he had, as one observer put it, “amassed great wealth.”  My estimate, based on court documents, is that he was worth in today’s dollar roughly $16 million — most of it money made from his liquor sales.

Edward had never married and if he had died intestate his fortune would have been divided equally among his surviving three brothers and three sisters, each of whom might have expected a sixth of the fortune.  But Middleton had made a will, kept in a safety deposit box at a local bank.  In court a bank executive testified that Edward had anticipated that his will would be controversial, telling him that the document would cause “a high old time after my death.”  In it Middleton gave substantial but not whopping amounts to five sisters and brothers.  George got nary a cent.  By far the largest bequest, equivalent today to roughly $10 million, went to a nephew, Charles D. Middleton, a paper hanger by occupation.

George Middleton, backed by other siblings, upon the reading of Edward’s last will and testament immediately hollered fraud.  A jury trial ensued in Federal Court that lasted the greater part of five weeks as dozens of witnesses were heard.  One testified to Edward Middleton’s special affection for his nephew, pointing out that he had paid for Charles’ support and education after the boy’s mother and father died, had financed his paper hanging business, and considered Charles “the only man in the family who took care of himself.”  After a lengthy instruction from the judge, the jury retired but quickly brought its verdict:  The will was legitimate.  

Made a rich man overnight, Charles exited paper hanging.  The 1880 census gave the 42-year old heir’s occupation as “gentleman,” i.e. no longer needing to work for a living.  Charles now was living in a large home on Limekiln Pike in Philadelphia.  In addition to his wife and two children, his household included his mother, mother-in-law, and four live-in servants, including a chambermaid, cook, gardener and coachman.  Charles, as Uncle Edward had anticipated, knew how to take care of himself.

Middleton also gave the equivalent of $23,000 each to the Presbyterian and Methodist churches of Blackwood, the latter shown here.  As the liquor dealer likely anticipated, neither congregation turned the money back as the profits of the hated liquor trade. 

Moreover, Middleton was buried in the Presbyterian church yard where, as one observer noted, “a very elegant and costly monument was erected to his memory and a marble tomb placed over his grave.”  Of late not neatly kept, Middleton’s grave, shown here, is by far the largest memorial in the church cemetery.  Onlookers can peer into a recess in the massive pillar to see the bust of Edward Middleton, gazing serenely over the countryside.  He had established his will and had his way.

Note:   Although the material for this post was gathered from multiple sources, a principal document was a summary of the challenge to Middleton’s will in U.S. Circuit Court— a case called Otterson v. Middleton,  decided December 15, 1871.

The Cummins of Kentucky Had Bourbon in Their Blood

        

Well before the Civil War and extending to the advent of National Prohibition, the Cummins family were major figures in the development of the Kentucky liquor industry.  Beginning with Richard Cummins, its members seem to have been born with bourbon flowing through their arteries.  So recognized for quality whiskey were they that the Cummins brand name was revived after Repeal.

The story begins and revolves around Richard Cummins, born in Ballykealy, County Carlow, in the South-East Region of Ireland, the son of Arthur and Ellen (Walen) Cummins.  Shown here in maturity, Richard was from a poor family and seems to have had only a rudimentary education.  He may have been functionally illiterate, for example he signed his will only with the initial “R.”  At the age of 14 Richard was apprenticed as a distiller’s helper and yeast maker, an essential element in making whiskey.  After spending four years at that job, Richard at 18 emigrated from the Emerald Isle to the U.S., arriving on the ship “Defence.”  He initally settled in New Jersey, working in a distillery there.

After four years learning the whiskey trade, Cummins teamed up with a fellow Irishman of future renown, Henry McKenna. [See my post on McKenna July 1, 2013.] In 1852 the partners opened a distillery in Illinois but after several years saw better opportunities in Kentucky and in 1858 migrated there  — and split up.  Cummins located in Raywick, a small village in Marion County, teaming there with Dr. Taylor Mitchell in running a distillery.  There Richard originated the brand “Cummins Sour Mash.”

In 1851, in the midst of the Irish famine, Richard was able to help pay for passage to America for other members of his family, including his parents, two brothers, Patrick,18, and David,11; and a sister, Margaret, 16.  After residing in New Jersey briefly the parents moved to Louisville, possibly to be closer to Richard.

In Marion County Cummins met Emily J. Brady, a Kentucky-born woman who was eight years his junior.  She was the daughter of John and Mary Simpson Brady, from a family that was part of the Irish Catholic migration from Maryland to Kentucky early in the 1800s.  They were married in 1861 at St. Francis Church in Raywick.  Emily was said to be “a valiant woman of keen intellect and zealous for the obligations of duty and right living.”  The couple bore ten children, only five of whom would live to maturity.  They also welcomed eight other children, orphans and “half orphans,” and raised them as their own.  Said a local newspaper:  “Their open-handed generosity went out for the blessing of many….”

After the end of the Civil War, Cummins in 1866 uprooted his growing family and moved to adjacent Nelson County, about seven miles south of New Haven, Kentucky, at a site he called “Coon Hollow.”  He built a large house there, said to be one of the first in the area to have indoor plumbing.  Cummins also organized and built a distillery he named Coon Hollow Distilling Co. and originated the brand “Old Coon Hollow.”  Cummins started small, able to mash only 100 bushels a day.  He believed in distilling with the latest advances in machinery, however, and over time was able to increase daily capacity to 1,000 bushels.

Richard operated the Coon Hollow Distillery successfully for fifteen years and then, for unexplained reasons, in 1881 sold out to the Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Company,”  one manifestation of the “Whiskey Trust.”  The Trust also bought the rights to make Coon Hollow whiskey and continued to market it.  As a result flasks with the name and a possum embossed may have been produced after Cummins relinquished ownership.  The same caution extends to a Coon Hollow shot glass.

With whiskey-making still in his blood, Cummins took his profits and bought into the Mattingly and Moore Distillery at Bardstown, becoming a third partner.  The facility is shown here.  Apparently restless to have his own facility after three years he sold his interest in that distillery and in 1885 bought the Ballard & Lancaster Distillery at Loretto, Kentucky.  The Irish immigrant soon changed the name to R. Cummins and Company.  A photo circa 1890 is said to show Cummins, as second from left on the platform, with some of his distillery employees.

Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the distillery was of frame construction. The property included two warehouses:  Warehouse A was iron-clad with a metal or slate roof and located 170 feet north of the still.  Warehouse B was brick with a composite roof, located 110 feet north of the still.  Although handicapped by a stroke in 1886, Cummins operated this distillery until his death.   In July 1903 at age 73 Richard was stricken a last time while at home.  He was buried three days later in a family plot in St. Vincent's Cemetery, New Hope, Kentucky.

By this time other members of the Cummins clan had become involved in the whiskey trade.  Richard’s son, J. P. Cummins, had joined his father in the Loretto distillery, serving an apprenticeship to learn all aspects of the business.  Meanwhile Patrick Cummins had settled in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and was working as a house painter.  His son and Richard’s nephew, Arthur Cummins, after finishing elementary school, at the age of 14 joined his uncle at Coon Hollow where Richard taught him the elements of yeast-making and distilling.

Bearing Richard’s endorsement, Arthur was eagerly sought as a distiller.  For two years he worked for the Sam McLancaster Distillery in Bardstown.  From there in 1892 he became distiller and general manager of the Crystal Springs Distillery in Louisville.  After years of working for others, in 1898 Arthur had sufficient wealth to build his own distillery back at Coon Hollow.   He called it the Willow Springs Distillery and produced “Willow Springs Bourbon.”  In this endeavor he was assisted by other Cummins family members.  His son, Arthur J. Cummins was involved as were his cousins, J. P. and Martin Cummins. Insurance underwriter records compiled in 1892 suggest that the distillery was of frame construction. The property included a single warehouse, iron-clad with a metal or slate roof, and located 114 feet north of the still.

Meanwhille, after Richard’s death J. P. Cummins was continuing to run the R. Cummins & Co. distillery at Loretto.  He early on found a way to memorialize his father by naming a whiskey “Old Pap.”  The label contained a photo of Richard Cummins as “Master of the Art.”  With the coming of National Prohibition both the Cummins distilleries were forced to shut down.  Family members disposed of the facilities and moved to Louisville.  Arthur died in 1924 and was buried in Louisville’s Calvary Cemetery, his gravestone shown here.  

A passion for making whiskey, however, still flowed in Cummins’ blood.  As a biographer put it:  “Being so closely associated with the whiskey business all his life and not wanting to retire, it was not long before Arthur J. Cummins was again resuming his activities.” After National Prohibition ended, Arthur and a partner purchased the plant and equipment of a “mothballed” plant in Atherton, Kentucky and called it the Cummins-Collins distillery.  Also involved in plant operations were Arthur J.’s brother, Charles, and the brother's son, Charles W. Cummins.  

From the Atherton site the distillery issued a number of brands, including “Singing Sam Whiskey” and “A.J. Cummins Kentucky Straight Bourbon.” In 1946 Arthur J. sold the plant to Seagrams.  He then proceeded to build a new distillery on the grounds of an old brewery in Louisville with a daily mashing capacity of 900 barrels.  The facility had no warehouses, aging its whiskey in space rented from another distillery.  After Arthur J.’s death in 1949, this plant was sold, ending the Cummins whiskey dynasty.

A  contemporary label for “Old Cummins Bourbon.” dates the brand origins to 1844, the year when Richard Cummins first went to work in the distillers’ trade in Ireland.  Dated that way, the family distilling history encompasses much of two centuries as well as four generations of the Cummins clan.  Even though no family members were involved with this so-called Old Cummins Distillery or its brand of bourbon, the label reinforces the respect the Cummins name has been given in the Kentucky whiskey universe.

Note:  While this post was gathered from many sources, a key text was “A Sesqui-Centennial History of Kentucky” by Frederick A. Wallace and Hambleton Tap, published in 1942.  Another important reference was a webpage, “Cummins Family of County Carlow, Ireland,” compiled by Robert L. Goodin & Susan E. Clement.  Unfortunately, there is conflicting information available on the Cummins family.  I have done my best to choose the most likely narrative.

Whiskey Men and Murder

        

Foreword:  Although incidents of gunplay in pre-Prohibition saloons were fairly common and deaths too frequently were the result, those usually involved the Wild West where reckless males with few family ties were on the loose.  By contrast, the four incidents of murder involving whiskey men briefly recounted here all involve relationships — fathers, mothers, children.  Family ties have an emotional dimension that barroom shoot-outs lack.  While each of these stories differs significantly from the others, their common thread is…

Shown here is Julius Goldbaum as a young whiskey man who in his own time was accounted as an outstanding pioneer in making the Arizona Territory a viable place for settlement.  But first he had to overcome the trauma of the murder of his father, Marcus Goldbaum.  Marcus, a butcher by trade, was a restless man, moving his family from Denver to Arizona in 1861, never settling in one town very long.  By the early 1880s Marcus had moved to Benson, Arizona, a rail terminal about 45 miles south of Tucson.  There he expanded beyond butchering to dealing in beer and liquor.

Still Marcus was not content.  Catching gold fever, he turned over operating the businesses to his wife and set out prospecting in the nearby Whetstone Mountains.  As one writer has observed:  “It was a bad idea.”  Geronimo’s Apaches were on the warpath.  They raided Marcus’s mountain cabin, killed him, ransacked the place and took what they wanted.   A cavalry patrol found him days later but did not immediately recognize that the prospector was Marcus Goldbaum because he had been scalped.  An etching by the famous Western artist, Frederic Remington, in the book “On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo,” caught the scene.  The dead man was only 51.

Moving to Tucson, Julius opened a saloon and liquor dealership, shown here.  From that beginning, he began to “rectify” (blend) his own brands of whiskey.  His success was immediate and he became one of Tucson’s wealthiest men.  Civic minded, he also was a volunteer fireman and elected to the Tucson City Council. Goldbaum was singled out for praise in an 1891 book that focussed on men “Who Have Made the Territory.”  Despite his father’s killing — or perhaps in part because of it — Julius stayed to make Arizona a desirable place to live. 

It is not clear when Dan and Mary (Sullivan) Hanley emigrated from Ireland to the United States.  Hanley first surfaced in San Francisco directories in 1863 working as a bartender at the Rotunda Saloon.  Before long he owned a grocery store and liquor business, including his own saloon.  Also living with the couple and their three young children 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 landowner 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 wine were involved.”  Hanley’s grave is shown here.

Left with three children to raise, Mary Hanley, shown right, proved to have “the right stuff.”  Overcoming her grief she took over management of the family grocery, liquor store and saloon, running them for more than a decade.  As her son, John, reached maturity, he was tasked with working in his mother’s enterprises and learned the liquor trade, pursuing it for much of his life. 

When his father August died in 1905, William Krogman was well prepared to take over the operation of the family’s distillery in Tell City, Indiana.  He likely was unprepared, however, for subsequent events.   In 1911 a Tell City man named Joseph Wiegand was feuding with his neighbors next door, the Drury family.  According to press accounts, the problem was “some little difference about chickens.”  Mrs. Drury was standing in the yard of her home one day when Wiegand came around the corner of the house and shot her dead. Convicted of murder, Wiegand, apparently because of advanced age, escaped the gallows and was given a prison sentence.  

Left with five minor children and no one to care for them, the bereaved husband sued Krogman, characterized as a “wealthy man,” for $10,000 in damages (equivalent to $250,000 today).  Drury charged that his wife’s slayer had been drunk on liquor sold him by the distiller.  After legal maneuverings that lasted almost two years, a jury awarded Drury $2,500 in “blood money.”  He rejected that result as too little and filed for a new trial, this time suing in the name of his motherless children.  This second time around, after a venue change to an Indiana county where Mrs. Drury had once resided, a sympathetic jury increased the award to $7,000.  A local newspaper headline read:  “Heavy Judgment Rendered Against William Krogman.” 

Krogman’s problems were just beginning.  As prohibitionary forces closed in on the production and sale of alcohol in the Midwest, his whiskey markets slowly dried up along with profits.  Finally, in 1920 the advent of National Prohibition caused the distillery his father had founded 57 years earlier to shut down completely.

This murder story made newspaper headlines from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to San Bernardino, California.   Across America people knew that two sons of Peter Dorsheimer, a prominent Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liquor wholesaler, had been jailed, accused by a third son of having murdered their father and mother 14 years earlier in their home, shown here, while making it look like an accident.   Until then, the public face of the Dorsheimers was of a happy family of solid Pennsylvania stock, high achieving and affluent, civically and politically active, and strong adherents to the German Reformed Christian Church.  Whatever tensions roiled beneath the surface had gone unnoticed. 

 On April 16, 1910, tragedy had struck the Dorsheimers.  The parents were found dead in their bed, asphyxiated by illuminating gas from a fixture in their bedroom. The flame had been extinguished but the deadly gas continued to flow.  The decision of the coroner, backed by the sheriff, was accidental death, as noted on Peter's death certificate shown here.  The theory as was that an errant piece of clothing from one of the two had brushed against the jet, blowing out the flame, and the couple had not noticed. 

Fast forward 14 years:  Benjamin and Chester Dorsheimer were arrested and jailed in Lancaster County on an allegation that they had murdered their mother and father on that April night as a way to get control of the lucrative liquor business.  The accuser was their brother, Frank, abetted by a sister, Lizzie. Frank also found a sympathetic ear in a rural justice of the peace with the power to incarcerate.

The brothers spent seven days languishing in jail.  At last a county judge held a hearing that included evidence that the door to Peter and Anna’s bedroom had been locked from the inside, making it impossible for someone to slip in and blow out the gas jet while they were sleeping.  He ordered Benjamin and Chester immediately released, ending their ordeal.  In the process, however, the Dorsheimer family circle that once had looked so strong had been broken and likely irreparably so.

Human interest is evident in each of these stories.  All of these murders — including the one alleged — involved families.  Fathers killed, leaving children to be raised;  a mother murdered, leaving a father with minor children, and adult children accusing each other over the deaths of their parents.  These are tragedies with implications well beyond shootouts inside a Western saloon.

Note:  More complete vignettes on these whiskey men are available on this blog:  Julius Goldbaum, March 2, 2017;  the Hanleys, May 5, 2018;  William Krogman, December 6, 2014; and the Dorsheimers, March 26, 2017.

Ezra Higgins and the Nippon Jug

Often it is a distinctive jug that draws me to research a story about the whiskey man whose name it carries.   Shown below from several angles is a Nippon pottery container for “Old Velvet” whiskey that bears the name Ezra M. Higgins.  The story behind the Higgins company of Rochester, New York, turns out to encompass some seventy years and in addition to  Ezra involves multiple owners.

First, a look at the jug.  It was the product of a Japanese pottery house founded in 1876 by Ichizaemon Morimura VI and his brother Toyo to sell Japanese pottery overseas.  After opening an office in New York City the company was renamed Morimura Brothers in 1881. In the 1890s, the company shifted from retail to wholesale operations and started working on design improvements for pottery and porcelain ware.  By the early 20th Century the company was creating European style hard white porcelain in Japan, decorating it by hand and selling it in the U.S. under the Nippon name.

While a variety of these jugs may have been employed as specialty containers by American liquor houses, they likely bore paper labels that long since have been washed away.  The Higgins jug may be unique.  It bears the names of the brand and the distributor as part of the Nippon decor.  The colorful decoration, seen by some as an “Egyptian” design covers much of the porcelain surface, including the handle as well as the porcelain and cork stopper.

Higgins’ grocery business, one specializing in liquor and wine, was founded in 1851 — the year Ezra was born — by Henry L. Ver Valin.  After his death in 1868, a former store clerk named James Backus and Elisha F. Hyde purchased the property.  After buying out his partner in 1875, Hyde ran the Rochester establishment until he died in 1879.  His widow, Martha, succeeded him and ran the business for the next two years, selling out to Higgins in 1881.

Ezra was an “up and comer” in local business circles.  Born in Rochester, he was the son of Cornelius (sometimes “Henry”) and Alvina Higgins.  In census data his father was listed as a laborer and later as a railroad baggage handler.  The boy appears to have gone to work as early as thirteen and in the 1870 census was recorded clerking in a grocery store.  By the time he was 30 he had enough money saved to buy out the Widow Hyde.

Higgins aggressively expanded the business.  Three years after buying it he moved to larger quarters at 10 State Street.  Before long he needed even more space.  By 1891 he was advertising that his main store was at 59 State Street, with a branch in the 200 block of East Main Street, the avenue shown above. He also ran a cigar stand at the Livingston Hotel.  The hotel, shown here, was a leading Rochester hostelry that claimed to be “strictly first class.”  During much of this period Ezra was living with his widowed mother.

With growing wealth, Higgins was expanding his entrepreneurship into other areas.  In 1895 he became an investor and officer of the Charles F. Burns Co. of Rochester, a manufacturer of supplies for electric railways.  Three years later he helped organize a firm called Higgins, Olmstead & Company to manufacture gas and electric fixtures.  Subsequently he invested heavily in the Rochester Telephone Company and was made a director.

His concentration on these outside interests apparently prompted Higgins in 1901 to sell the grocery and liquor business he had run so successfully for twenty years.  The buyers were the Gucker family of Rochester, led by William J. Gucker, who may have been a bookeeper for Higgins.  Shown here, Gucker became the secretary, treasurer and general manager of what continued to be named the E. M. Higgins Company.

Gucker maintained the two Main Street stores and was reputed to have “acquired a host of friends both in Rochester and throughout the State of New York.”  Over the next 18 years Gucker expanded sales throughout the region.  As shown here in an ad he was blending and bottling his own proprietary brands, including “Old Velvet,” “Worthmore Rye,” Higgins XXXX Monongahela Whiskey,” “Oldfield Rye,” and “Everglad Rye.”  His ads admonished:  “Remember these names — they are exclusive Higgins’ brands.”

 Gucker’s success takes us back to the Nippon jug.  The pottery mark on the base of the ceramic, according to experts, dates it after 1911, meaning that not Ezra Higgins, but his successor, was responsible for commissioning it.  In so doing, Gucker may have been appropriating the name “Old Velvet.”  This brand had been registered with the U.S. Patent Office about 1891 by the J & G Butler Company of Columbus, Ohio.  This did not deter as many as seven other liquor houses across America from using the name, perhaps under license from the Butlers, but more likely not.  

Authentic porcelain, painted by hand, and imported from Japan, these jugs would have been a relatively pricey item.  To whom and on what occasion Gucker gave them away is unknown, but recipients would have been carefully chosen.   Today Nippon whiskey jugs command up to $500 each from collectors.  Virtually all of them would be more than 100 years old and are considered antiques.

With the coming of National Prohibition in 1920 Gucker was forced to shut own his liquor business. By 1921 local business directories were listing him as the vice president of the Rochester Food Products Corp., located at 440 Hudson Avenue.  Within a few years, however, he had become an insurance broker, as shown in an 1927 business directory ad.  After Repeal, Gucker briefly revived the E. M. Higgins Co. as a brewery that subsequently was subsumed into the American Brewing Company, of which he became vice president.

Note:  The principal source of information for this post was “The History of the Jews of Rochester,”  a monograph reprinted by the Rochester Public Library, no date.