Pittsburgh’s John O’Connor: Benefactor to Young and Old

At his funeral, the Catholic archbishop of Pittsburgh eulogized:  “…Anything that I could say would be a poor tribute to a man, who according to his means and opportunities, was so large-hearted, so generous, so humble, so unostentatious in his exercise of his goodness and the bestowal of his benefactions.  Peace be to him.”  The archbishop was speaking of the man whose photo is at right — John O’Connor, a whiskey man through and through.

Unlike many Irish-American liquor dealers, O’Connor did not come from impoverished circumstances.  His father, the first Catholic settler of Auburn, New York, had arrived in 1810 and rapidly established himself as a community leader, including becoming warden of the State Penitentiary.  Born in 1825 John was accorded an exemplary education at Auburn Academy, left, and later as a student at the college of St. Suplice, Montreal, Canada, below.

Venturing west to Pittsburgh in 1847 at twenty-two years old, O’Connor carried a letter of introduction from William Seward, shown here, an Auburn attorney who would gain fame as Lincoln’s war secretary in the Civil War.  The youth’s early employment was as a successful hotel proprietor along the city’s bustling waterfront, shown below in a lithograph from that era.

In Pittsburgh, O’Connor met and in 1854 married Irish-born Mary Connelly, the immigrant daughter of a prominent merchant in County Donegal.  John was 29 and she was 24.  Educated beyond most Irish women, Mary has been described as “…A woman of the highest culture and refinement, and a heart overflowing with charity….”  The couple would have six children, four sons and two daughters.

At some point during the 1850s, O’Connor left the hotel business in favor of the liquor trade.  Pittsburgh was a thriving and important city during the Civil War, a significant source of arms, ammunition, and supplies to the Union Army.  The population burgeoned as workers arrived to find work, many of them new immigrants.  O’Connor, obviously having noted the profitability of alcohol sales in his hotels, shifted occupations.  An 1868 business directory recorded him operating a wine and liquor store at 104 Water Street on the waterfront and a saloon at 46 Ross Street.  The family was living above the saloon.

By the next decade, O’Connor’s liquor business and living quarters had moved to a new and larger location at 1814 Carson Street.  Shown here, the building still stands.  He advertised as “distillers and wholesale dealers in Pure Rye Whiskies, imported wines of every variety.”  In truth, he was not a distiller, instead obtaining his whiskey from elsewhere and often “rectifying” (blending) it before sales to saloons, restaurants and hotels.   

O’Connor packaged these goods in gallon or two gallon jugs for clients who in turn would decant them into smaller containers for retail use.  Shown here is an example of a cobalt stenciled jug used by the liquor house.

As his sons matured, John took them into his liquor business.  An 1899 directory entry lists Edward G. O’Connor working with his father.  In 1894 the name of the company was changed to “John O’Connor & Son.”  That name appears on a give-away item, a small barrel that contained several swallows of whiskey that would have been given to a select group of customers.  Later a second son, Paul, would be brought into the business and in 1912, “sons” was substituted in the company name.

Throughout this period the O’Connors continued to live above their store.  Money that the liquor dealer might have used to build a mansion went to the  philanthropic causes that the couple pursued.   John O’Connors' particular interest was in the orphans of Pittsburgh.  According to a biography:  “The building of the first St. Paul’s Orphan Asylum was the result of his study of conditions and untiring championship of its founding.”  Pittsburgh’s City Controller called O’Connor’s effort “a heroic achievement.”  Shown above are the orphanage structures; below, the sleeping quarters.

At his funeral, the Archbishop related of John:  “In earlier days when the orphans…were in greater need than at the present time, he not only gave what he could afford, he went from door to door and from one business house to another gathering food and clothing for the orphans….Almost every Sunday he visited the orphanage and inquired into their wants.”

In addition to orphans as the object of O’Connor’s philanthropy, he contributed generously to charitable institutions assisting the needy elderly, including the Little Sisters of the Poor home, and women in distress helped by the Sisters of Good Shepherd.  

O’Connor also was a major financial backer of the “Great Sanitary Fair” held in Pittsburgh during the Civil War, part of a national campaign.  That event opened in June 1864 to raise funds for wounded Union soldiers throughout the United States.  Through exhibitions and lectures on the grounds of the old Town Hall, more than $300,000 was raised — equivalent to $6.6 million today.  O’Connor was hailed as instrumental in making the event one of the Nation’s most successful fairs.  Accordingly, he was given a vote of gratitude by the local implementing committee and presented with the model of a mortar gun cast in a Pittsburgh foundry.

After 47 years of marriage, during which she had worked for many charitable causes side by side with her husband,  Mary O’Connor died in 1901. She was buried in Section N of Saint Mary Catholic Cemetery,  Allegheny County.  About the same time John retired from active management of his liquor house and son Edward took over.  As he aged, O’Connor suffered from a gradual loss of energy and muscle strength, eventually dying in 1912 at 86.  He was buried beside his wife in St. Mary Cemetery. 

John died as he lived, still residing above the liquor business he had founded more than sixty years earlier -- the source of the funds that fueled his philanthropy.  In death he continued as a benefactor to the needy, willing the greater part of his estate to charitable organizations.  The liquor house was continued by Edward O’Connor until shut down by National Prohibition in 1919.

As a final word, a biographer of John O’Connor provided this memorial:  “The warmth and generosity of his nature found its outlet in the performance of countless small deeds of kindness and in larger benefactions almost beyond number.”

Note:  Much of the information for this post and all direct quotes are taken from a 1922 biography of John O’Connor in a volume entitled “History of Pittsburgh and Environs” by Contributors and Staff Members of the American Historical Society, Inc., New York and Chicago.

The Tragers Had a Taste for the Titillating

In the highly competitive world of the Cincinnati wholesale liquor trade, It was necessary for proprietors to stand out from the crowd.  The strategy chosen by Isadore Trager and his two sons, Isaac Newton Trager and James Garfield Trager, was to emphasize the risqué in their advertising.  Hence the revealing portrait of the “Cream of Kentucky Girl” whose winsome features on a metal tray were given away to good customers and meant to be affixed to saloon walls.

Cream of Kentucky Whiskey was the flagship Trager brand.  While they recommended it for “family, medicinal, and sideboard purposes,” their advertising suggested its utility for less open activities.  Shown here is a trade card that when closed, has two chambermaids listening at what is happening inside “Parlor C.” When opened it reveals quite a party going on inside. 

 

With the caption “Have a drink of Cream of Kentucky on me,” the scene is of three men and three women, all but one drinking whiskey.  The exception is a man on the right who either is about to strangle a woman holding a glass or, more likely, embrace her.  At center is a man pouring a whiskey and offering more to a woman who, scandal of scandals, is smoking a cigar.  At left is a woman in a provocative pose and a man — my goodness, where is his left hand resting?

Another boudoir scene marks the cover of a Trager pamphlet entitled “Famous Paintings.”  The introduction provides a clue to the contents: “Who does not…admire a pretty women and relish a drink of good whiskey. To those who do, this book is respectfully dedicated and the publishers trust they will find many moments of pleasure from its perusal.”  

A catalogue of the liquor house products, the publication also includes a number of black and white photographs of nudes from paintings known as “salon art,” fashionable in Europe in the 19th Century.  At left is “Diana” by Louis J. M. Perrey, a Frenchman born in 1856.  At right is “Flora,” the work of Max Nonnenbruch, a German, born in 1857.

As ad men say, “sex sells” and the Tragers seemed to have profited thereby.  Their firm originated about 1887 and operated profitably until shut down by Ohio prohibition in 1918.  The founding father, Isadore Trager, born in 1846 in Elberfeld, Germany, was brought to the U.S. by his family when he was six years old.  The family settled in Louisville, Kentucky, where Isadore was educated in the local schools and at an early age went to work, likely in one of the many distilleries or liquor houses in that city.  By 1870, however, he had moved to Cincinnati.

In February 1877 Trager married Katherine “Kate” Hirschfield, born in Tennessee of German immigrant parents.  He was 31, she was 23.  They would have five children, three girls and two boys.  Perhaps as a result of his growing family responsibilities, in 1887 Trager with a partner struck out on his own, opening a liquor wholesale business at 103 Sycamore in Cincinnati.  Needing more space as business grew, the company moved to 327 Walnut and finally in 1906 to a six-story headquarters at 317-321 East Eighth Street, shown here.

In addition to “Cream of Kentucky,” the Trager featured a number of other brands, including:  “Black Warrior,” “Creme De La Creme,” “Deerfield,”  “Edgemont,” "Forest Hollow,” "Old Colony Club,” "Tulip Rose,” ”Union Rye,”  and "Youghiogheny Malt.”  Some of these labels it trademarked:  Cream of Kentucky in 1901 and in 1906, after Congress strengthen the laws, Deerfield, Edgemont, Forest Hollow, and Old Colony Club.

The company merchandised its whiskey in labeled clear and amber bottles, ranging in size from half-pints to quarts.  As can be seen here, below the labels the containers were embossed in the glass with the Trager name and Cincinnati.  Some echoed the claim that I. Trager & Co. was a distiller and the firm often implied owning Distillery No. 10 in the 7th District of Kentucky.  

That was the Peacock Distillery of Bourbon County, founded in 1857.  While Trager may have had a financial interest in this facility, there was no evidence he was the sole proprietor.  He also apparently was getting supplies from the Old Darling distillery in Prestonville, Kentucky owned by Elias Block & Sons.  In truth, the company was “rectifying” (blending) whiskey obtained from these and other sources.

Being competitive in the Cincinnati market required more than sexual innuendo.  Wholesale liquor houses had to gift its customers with advertising items such as back-of-the-bar bottles and most particularly shot glasses.  Just a few examples of the Trager output are shown here.

As Isadore’s two sons reached maturity the father brought them into his wholesale liquor business:  J. Garfield as company bookkeeper and I. Newton likely as a traveling salesman.  In the 1910 census, Isadore and Kate were living in their mansion home, shown below, with J. Garfield, a daughter, Elina, a German housemaid and an Irish cook.  Clearly the strategies employed to stand out among the liquor competition had paid off.

The 1910 census would be Isadore’s last.  He died in July of that year from his spacious home, above, and was buried in the Walnut Hills United Jewish Cemetery.  I. Newton Trager took over as president of the liquor house that continued to bear their father’s name.  J. Garfield Trager was the treasurer.  Together they managed the firm their father had built until forced to shut the doors after Ohio voted statewide prohibition in 1916.  Despite that unfortunate ending, the Tragers have left us artifacts from which future generations, as their advertising promised, can “find many moments of pleasure….”

The Jaegers: Doing their Duty in Dubuque

Originating as pioneer immigrants from Germany, three generations of the Jaeger family made and sold whiskey for almost half a century in Dubuque, Iowa.  In 1904 a local newspaper commented:  “Jaeger is so closely identified with the trade that it is a household word.”  The family also was recognized by their sense of duty to their community and adopted country. 

Appropriately christened “Adam.” the progenitor of the Jaegers was born in 1811 in Darmstadt, Germany, and educated in the public schools of that  country.  Of his early life little has been recorded, including his occupation.  When still in his early twenties in Germany he married Margaretha Mueller, a woman about his own age.  Their first son, christened Adam F. Jaeger Jr., was born in Germany just before the young family embarked for America, in 1840 settling in Dubuque, Iowa, shown above.

There Adam Sr. established what the Wine & Spirits Journal referred to as “…The pioneer [liquor] house of Northwest. Its history is dated back to the earliest days of the state.”  He appears to have been successful from the very beginning in building up a strong business in wholesale liquor.  This Jaeger also set the standard for community service.  During the years 1857-1858, he ran and was elected to the Dubuque City Council from the 5th Ward and said to have served “ably.”  During the same period, Adam Sr. expanded from selling liquor to  building Dubuque’s first distillery.

As soon as Adam Jr., reached maturity, the father providently brought him into the firm.  The young man quickly showed an aptitude for the whiskey trade, recorded as establishing his own distillery in 1861 on Bee Branch, a Dubuque waterway.  In 1859 the 21-year-old Jaeger married, his bride Sarah Schaffner, a woman of similar age from Dubuque and the daughter of German immigrants.  Their first child, son Henry, would be born in 1862.

The liquor trade and his family apparently were left behind when the Civil War broke out and Adam Jr. heard his country’s call to arms.  He enlisted as a private in Company E, Iowa 21st Infantry Regiment in August 1862.  For the next three years, this Jaeger would face hot combat repeatedly, participating in 24 battles in Mississippi, including the siege of Vicksburg (shown above), Texas and Alabama.  The regiment lost 5 officers, 77 enlisted killed, and 168 dead of disease or accident.  Jaeger apparently emerged unscathed and was mustered out in July 1865 in Baton Rouge.

Adam Jr. returned home to assist his father and soon found himself in charge of the liquor house.  In May 1887 Adam Sr. visited his native Germany for six month.  Upon return he became sick and entered a slow decline.  In February 1868, he was confined to bed and died on April 10.  The Jaeger “pater familias,” age 57, was buried in Dubuque’s Mount Calvary Cemetery. His obituary in the local newspaper declared of Adam Jaeger Sr.:  “He was an active and enterprising man, a good citizen, respected by all who knew him, and an honor to the city.”

Adam Jr.’s initial efforts as a distiller were not crowned with success according to a report of the The Wine & Spirits Journal:  In 1865 The distillery was destroyed by a boiler explosion.  Adam Jr. then entered a new partnership and rebuilt the distillery, which afterward also burned.”  Subsequently, along with his brother-in-law, Liberat Alphonse “L.A.” Rhomberg, Jaeger Jr. joined Paul Traut, a local merchant, in establishing a wine and liquor business at 521 Main Street, Dubuque, claiming to be distillers as well as dealers.

This partnership lasted until 1879, when Traut departed to open a hat shop.  Subsequently, Jaeger and Romberg formed a new firm bearing their names at 465 Main Street, the building shown here.  This association lasted until 1889 when Rhomberg sold his interest to Louis A. Lang and a new business emerged called Jaeger, Lang & Company.  

In the meantime, the liquor dealer was pursuing a political career.  Following in the footsteps of his father, Adam Jr. was elected an alderman in 1866.  His credentials as a newly returned Union army veteran and bearing the respected Jaeger name likely contributed to his victory.  He proved up to the responsibility and served multiple terms on the Dubuque council until 1874, becoming a familiar figure around City Hall.  In September 1872, at the age of 34, he was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the sudden resignation of the mayor, but did not run for the office subsequently.

 Always interested in public causes, Adam Jr. organized and led the Illinois chapter of a group known as the Personal Liberty League.   This organization attempted to mediate between so-called “temperance” groups and brewers and liquor dealers, attempting to ameliorate the worst aspects of the spirits trade.  For example, local chapters campaigned to have saloons close during church hours.

The business of Jaeger, Lang & Co. flourished and the partners saw the need for larger quarters, moving into 356-364 Main Street, shown here.  This building had fifty feet of frontage, three stories, and a sub-basement that served as a wine cellar.  Following the explosions and fires at his earlier distilleries, Adam Jr. apparently was discouraged about making whiskey and moved to blending products from outside sources and issuing the results under proprietary labels.  The company flagship brands were “William Penn” and “Dubuque Club.” 

 

As they reach maturity, Adam Jr. brought two of his sons, Alphonse “Ollie”  and Charles F. Jaeger, into the business.  Ollie was the elder of the two, born in January 1862, just before his father marched off to war.  He preceded Charles by two years.  Educated in the schools of Dubuque, both young men served apprenticeships under their father, working as clerks and traveling salesmen.

Adam Jr. at 57 year old was still firmly in management control with Lang and apparently in good health in August 1894 when he ventured on an extended fishing trip up the Mississippi River with friends.  Said to have been enjoying the outing, he suddenly had an attack of severe cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting.  Brought home and believed recovering, he suddenly suffered a relapse and died.  Like his father, he was buried in Calvary Cemetery. 

His obituary in the Dubuque Daily Herald provided this tribute to Jaeger Jr:  “Mr. Jaeger was truly one of God's noblemen. He was the soul of geniality, kind-hearted and ever charitable and pleasant. In his business dealings he has made an enviable reputation. Honesty and integrity have been characteristic of him and few men possessed the esteem and warm friendship of his associates as he did.  He has ever been a public spirited man.”

Despite Jaeger’s death Louis Lang continued the firm under the original name and continued to employ his sons.  In 1905, however, he sold an interest to local merchant, John Brede, and the company became Brede, Lang and Company.   Apparently seeing limited opportunities with Lang, Ollie and Charles in 1904 decided to strike out their own by founding their own liquor house, calling it Jaeger Brothers Company.  They are shown here, Ollie at left.  By this time Ollie was married to Lizzie E., but no children reported.  Charles’ wife was Ida A. (nee Lynburner).  They would have a family of seven.

Charles appears to have managed the operations of the company while Ollie worked as a roving salesman for its products.  The brothers had kept the rights to  their premier label, William Penn Rye.   They issued an advertising trade card for the brand that featured a scantily clad young woman.   As Iowa edged closer and closer to statewide prohibition the Jaegers shut down their operation after 1907.  Thus came to an end three generations and 53 years of Jaeger productive involvement in the liquor trade of Dubuque.

Ollie went to work as a travel agent, before dying early at 46 years old in 1912.  Charles became a salesman for another Dubuque liquor company, switching to tobacco sales after Iowa’s prohibition.  He died in 1940, age 76.  The Jaeger burial plot where lie the two Adams, their spouses, and other members of the family is marked by a towering obelisk.  It serves to remind us that at a time when Prohibitionists were vilifying liquor dealers as tools of Satan, the Jaegers were serving their adopted country in war and their local government in peacetime, proving to be sterling citizens and honored by their community at their passing.

Note:  This post is drawn from a variety of sources, the principal ones being: The Wine & Spirits Bulletin 1903 and the obituaries of both Adam Jaeger Sr. and Adam Jaeger Jr.

Whiskey Men as Authors

          

Foreword:  Individuals in the pre-Prohibition liquor trade generally were not inclined to writing books.  The vast majority of distillers, rectifiers, wholesalers and saloonkeepers did not have the time nor the inclination to put pen to paper so busy were they operating their businesses.  This post briefly treats four exceptions, each of whose books remain available today.  

If your parents named you “Byron,” after the famous British poet, it might be expected that you would have literary inclinations.  Byron Veatch indeed did exhibit writing talent, authoring well-received books of fiction in the early 1900s, while at the same time contributing a well-recognized brand of whiskey to the Chicago liquor scene.  Veatch, somewhat ingeniously, found a way to combine his literary aspirations with selling liquor. 

While carrying on a thriving business called Security Distilling Co., begun in the Windy City in 1904, Veatch was writing stories.  His major work, “Men Who Dared,”  was issued in 1908 by Homer Harisun & Co, a Chicago publisher.  Opening with the motto, “The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,”  the book was composed of seven long short stories, all but one with settings in the West or Southwest.  They were yarns that provided lots of gunfire and knife play.  Although Veatch’s book seems stilted by modern standards of literature, it was the kind of fiction avidly read more than a century ago.  

The book went to at least two editions and Veatch was sufficiently encouraged to extract several stories and publish them separately. “Men Who Dared,” achieved some critical acclaim.  The Dial, a noted Chicago literary magazine, cited it as “One of the most remarkable books of short stories ever written.”  The eminent social critic, Elbert Hubbard, while calling Veatch “a spicy raconteur,” was enthusiastic about his novella,”The Two Samurai,” calling it the best thing the author had done “...better, stronger and, to my way of thinking, more interesting and thrilling....”  

Ever the promoter, Veatch saw an opportunity to mix his liquor and literary interests.  In October 1910 he sent a letter to customers along with a magazine he published, called “Good Cheer.”  The magazine contained literary articles but was primarily a merchandising vehicle for the alcoholic beverages to be obtained from Security Distilling.  The magazine also pitched his fiction:  “As the book is written by the patriarch of our firm,” we want every customer doing business with us to avail himself of the liberal offer there outlined” — and buy a book.  As shown here, in 2005 Amazon saw fit to reproduce Veatch’s book in a new format, 

Our next author called himself Andrew Madsen Smith, a name he assumed upon emigrating from Denmark to the U.S.  In his autobiography Smith identified himself as “Soldier and Sailor, Moulder and Merchant, Tramp and Trader, Soap-boiler and Scribe, Peddler and Philosopher,  Overseer and Understrapper,  Jack-of-all-Trades and Master of Fortune.”  He was all of those and additionally a successful whiskey man, with a thriving wine and liquor store in Minneapolis beginning in 1886. 

Eventually Smith’s wine and liquor business became one of the largest in the region.  As localities in Minnesota and neighbor Wisconsin were voting “dry” through local option, he also did a thriving mail order business.   Discussing his success, Smith said, “And we are continuing to do better and better and better. I have increased in size, property and family.”   

With his growing prosperity Smith decided, using a nom de plume, "Hans Lykkejaeger” to write the story of his early life and likely self-financed its publication.  Originally entitled “Up and Down in the World: Or Paddle Your Own Canoe” and later “Luck of the Wandering Dane,” the book ran 130 pages, with illustrations on virtually every page by an unnamed artist.  A reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly said sourly of Smith’s autobiography:  “Occasionally the tale is told with snap and cleverness, but on the whole its humor is rather of the swaggering sort and hardly worth smiling over.” 

Smith also was a world recognized collector of rare coins, beginning earlier in Philadelphia where he worked as a coin dealer as well as a liquor merchant.  He subsequently wrote three  books on coins, beginning in 1881.  His “Encyclopedia of Gold and Silver Coins of the World”  is still prized by numismatists. “Luck of a Wandering Dane” has been reprinted by Hewlett Packard as part of  a series of reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library.  

No figure looms larger in the early history of New Mexico than George Curry, a transplant from Louisiana who ran an early saloon in the territory but ultimately became the governor and then a congressman.   Along the way Curry, shown here as a young man, met Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson and other notorious Western figures.  He became a Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider and later served in the American occupation of the Philippines. 

Fortunately Curry described his colorful life in an “as told to” autobiography, an account that touches briefly on his life as a saloonkeeper.  In 1888 Curry was in Lincoln Station, part of the New Mexico Territory, working for a wealthy merchant named Dolan, whose general store included a large stock of hard liquor.  There he met Jack Thornton, a Dolan clerk, who asked Curry to partner with him in a saloon, hotel and livery stable.  Already experienced in Las Vegas, New Mexico, with running a hotel, restaurant and bar, handling as he  said, "everything from dishwashing and bookkeeping," Curry agreed and paid his share by borrowing $1,000 from a friend. The resulting establishment, shown above, became known as the Thornton-Curry Saloon and more recently as simply the Curry Saloon. The building, shown here, now is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Curry’s adventurous life was captured in the book, George Curry,1861-1947, an Autobiography, published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1958.  The editor was Horace Brand Henning, who knew Curry well and added a foreword.  A paperback reprint was issued in 1995.  

It is likely that the world would never have heard of Joseph J. Mersman if Dr.  Linda A. Fisher, a public health physician, had not been doing research for a lecture on the 1849 St. Louis cholera epidemic and came across Mersman’s diary in the Missouri Historical Society where it had laid “undiscovered” for years.  She found the whiskey merchant’s story intriguing, edited the diary with annotations, and put it into book form.  It was published in 2007 by the Ohio University Press.   As a result, the day to day activities and thoughts of the German-born St. Louis rectifier and liquor house owner have enjoyed a wide audience.

In November 1847 while serving an apprenticeship in a Cincinnati wholesale liquor business, Mersman began his diary, documenting his work in the whiskey  trade and other aspects of his daily life.  He soon moved to St. Louis, and 25 years old, with a partner, established a wholesale whiskey and tobacco house.  The company did well.  St. Louis boasted hundreds of saloons and other establishments selling alcoholic goods that Mersman could supply.  In March 1855, he abandoned his diary only to take it up again in 1862 after the outbreak of the Civil War.  Mersman’s last diary entry was made in 1864. 

Dr. Fisher sees Mersman’s diary as “a record of a man transforming himself from an impoverished, unschooled newcomer into a successful, skilled merchant…a path many took in the mid-nineteenth century.”  All that is true but seen from a slightly different perspective, his story also demonstrates how the liquor trade in particular hastened the economic and social rise of immigrants who understood — as Joseph Mersman clearly did — the riches to be made. 

Note:  All the books by whiskey men cited above are either still in print or available from used book sources.