Orsamus Willard: America’s 1st Celebrity Bartender

Born in 1792 in a bucolic corner of Massachusetts, a young man with the unusual name of Orsamus Willard became America’s first celebrity bartender, earning a reputation that went far beyond New York City. The transformation of Willard, caricatured here, from farm boy to “The Napoleon of Bar-Keepers,” however, proved to be reversible.

Orsamus was the seventh of the eight sons of William and Patience Hazelton Willard of Harvard, Massachusetts, shown below.  It was a farming township 25 miles west-northwest of Boston.  The family lived in what was described as “an old house” on the edge of a settlement known as Shabikin.  Educated in local schools, the boy was too far down the line of inheritance ever to expect to share in his father’s farm land.  For a time Willard languished in a poor-paying local teaching job but wanted a better opportunity. At age 19, he left home to create a new life in New York City.

Young Willard was fortunate enough to find it at The City Hotel (1794-1849), called “the first functioning hotel in the United States.”  Located at 123 Broadway, now the Manhattan financial district, the building was five stories and had 137 rooms.  For decades City Hotel, shown here, was New York’s principal site for prestigious social functions and music events.  In addition to its plush accommodations tje hotel featured a ballroom, shops, coffee house and, importantly for Orsamus, a lobby barroom. 

Starting as an office boy, Willard quickly impressed the hotel management with his energetic and intelligent approach to hotel duties.  Able to write with either hand, his dexterity was noted as a skill that, accompanied by his outgoing personality and “urbane and courtly” manners, fitted him to become the hotel’s principal bartender, a position he held for almost 27 years. 

An 1894 history of the Willard family was lavish in its description of Orsamus’ abilities:  “He acquired a wide reputation for…his never failing memory of names, persons, and events.  He was known even across the Atlantic as the [bartender] who never forgot the face or title of anyone who had ever been his guest.  He…possessed in a remarkable degree the power of giving politely prompt and satisfying answers to the multifarious questions of guests, without interrupting the bookkeeping or other business details upon which he might be engaged.”

Just as important, Willard could whip up one helluva good cocktail.  David Wondrich, who has written extensively on early American bartenders, provides this observation:   “As one patron recalled: ‘Willard was one of the first in the city to concoct fancy drinks, and he introduced the mint-julep as a bar drink,’ frequently mixing them up three or four at a time.”  Among his other specialties were Whiskey Punch, Apple Toddy, and Extra-Extra Peach Brandy.  Wondrich quotes an English traveler who observed (with some exaggeration) that Willard’s name was “familiar to every American, and to every foreigner who has visited the States during the last thirty years [as] the first master of his art in the world.”   Willard was anointed the “Napoleon of Bar-Keepers.” 

One of many anecdotes about him indicated Willard’s sense of humor.  According to the New York Times, a visitor once walked up to his bar and ordered a brandy and water.  Willard, as was his custom, handed him the decanter and indicated the pitcher of water on the bar.  The gent thereupon filled the tumbler with brandy, added a couple drops of water, and tossed the drink down in one gulp as Willard looked on in amazement. After he put his payment on the bar, the customer was astonished when Willard returned most of it in change and said to him:  “You don’t pretend to say they only charge three cents for a glass of liquor at the City Hotel?”  “No,”  answered Willard. “We retail it at a shilling a glass but when we sell it wholesale we make a discount.”

For all his acclaim, Willard’s life must have been a lonely one. Usually working from dawn to late night at the lobby bar, he is said to have left the hotel only very infrequently. He lived in a single room at the hotel, serving people whose preferences he remembered but who in reality were not his friends.  One author has noted that: “His geniality was not professional only, but had it source in a kindly heart.”   He added that Willard “…was a great favorite of children and loved to have them about him.”   

Now in his early forties and still a bachelor, Willard apparently yearned for a wife and family.  Ignoring his fame, in 1836 he retired from bartending at the City Hotel, went home to Harvard, and returned to farming.  There Orsamus met Martha Stearns, the daughter of S.S. Houghton of Bolton, Massachusetts, a nearby community.  When Willard left home she had been a three year old toddler.  They married in Bolton in December 1837.  Their first child, a girl named Martha, was born three years later, followed the next year by a boy, Orsamus Jr. 

But the Big Apple was not finished with the Napoleon of Bar-Keepers.  In 1828 John Jacob Astor bought the City Hotel and gave it to his granddaughter, Sara Langdon, as her marriage dowry.  Neither she nor her husband appear to have been capable owners and after Willard and other management personnel left the hotel, it faltered financially.  In 1843 a frantic message and appealing salary offer brought Orsamus back to New York again to run the City Hotel lobby bar.  The event was newsworthy enough to persuade The New York Dramatic Mirror to send a reporter to the scene:

He wrote: “All was right with the world.  Willard was in his place behind the bar, a little fatter than of old and somewhat gray with cabbage growing, but his wonderful memory of names and faces seemed full of vigor, and what with the tone of voice, the dexterity of furnishing drinks, the off-hand welcome to two every comer-in, and the mechanical answering of questions and calling to servants, he seemed to have begun precisely where he left off, and his little episode of farming must have seemed to him scarcely better than a dream.”

All, however, was not “right with the world.”  Saving the City Hotel, now far fallen from its heyday, would take more than Willard could accomplish.  By 1848, Sara Langdon determined to tear down the venerable hostelry and replace it with a block of stores and offices she called the Boreel Building, named after her husband.  Likely with feeling of relief, Willard retired a second time and returned to Harvard and the farm.  A second son, Charles, would be born there in 1850.

As noted earlier, as the seventh in a line of eight sons, Orsamus could not have expected any inherited land from his father.  His three oldest siblings, however had died in infancy, ultimately giving the family inheritance to John Willard, the fourth in line. Ignoring other brothers, none of them married, when he died John bequeathed his property to Orsamus.  Now owning a substantial tract of land  Willard fulfilled his dream of raising and breeding cows. 

The erstwhile bartender also was able to build three homes on property in an area of Harvard township called  Still River.  This was an agricultural settlement located on a well-traveled thoroughfare that connected Harvard with Lancaster to the west and Bolton to the south.  Willard divided the parcel into three smaller farms, each with a modest house, barn and outbuildings.  With his wife Martha, Orsamus lived in one house and gave a second, immediately north, to Orsamus Junior for his residence.   Willard’s home, the story goes, had room numbers on every interior door, apparently as a reminder of his palmy City Hotel days.  

After living his life out as a farmer and small time cattle breeder, Willard died in 1876 at the advanced age of 84 and was buried in a hillside not far from his home.  In time, Martha and other family members would join him there.  The couple’s joint monument is shown below.

 

Orsamus Junior’s homestead would pass though several hands until 1992 when the owner sold the cottage, barn, and 4.5 acres of wooded land to the Harvard Historical Society to be converted into a museum reflecting the early history of the area.  Shown here, the present status of what is known as the Willard-Watt house is unclear.

An old saying advises: “You can take the boy out of the farm, but you cannot take the boy out of the farm.”  My own family experience validates the truth of that saying, as does Willard’s life story.  Here was a man who made it to the mountain top of recognition in “New York, New York,” and well beyond as a celebrity bartender but was willing to give it up for a quiet agricultural life with family in a rural corner of Massachusetts.  By ignoring fame Orsamus Willard truly demonstrated a special kind of genius.

Note:  This post owes a great deal to David Wondrich, who has made the early bartenders of America a special subject of attention of his writing.  His article on five early U.S. bartenders is available on the Internet and recommended reading, along with his 2007 book, “Imbibe.” Through other internet sources I have been able to fill out Willard’s personal and farming life in rural Massachusetts.  The image of Orsamus that opens this post is from a quilt portrait by Ken Ellis, an artist who specializes in this art form.  

 

John Raab & Surviving the Johnstown Flood

 When the  Great Flood of 1889 roared into Jonestown, Pennsylvania, it swept away the liquor house that John L. Raab successfully had operated for almost two decades. Raab was able to rebuild higher and better.  He could not, however, bring back his brother and other family members who died in the watery disaster.

John Ludwig Raab was born in January 9, 1837, in Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany, the son of Conrad and Susanna Raab, and was educated in the excellent German school system of the time,  In 1853  his family  immigrated to the United States, settling in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.  His father found employment hauling iron ore.

When he reached employment age, John also went to work in a steel factory, employed as a “puddler,” a skilled workman engaged in the manufacture of high-grade iron.  During several years so employed, he apparently noted the propensity of his fellow workers for strong drink and decided that selling liquor was a less back-breaking and more lucrative way to make a living.  Moving to Johnstown in 1865, he opened a saloon at 184-186 Washington Street.  His younger brother, George, worked for him there as a bartender.  

Although Raab likely was oblivious of it, he and his family were living below a “ticking time bomb” in the shape of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River.  Completed in 1853, this gravel and earthen dam was 931 feet long, 72 feet high, 270 feet thick at the base and 10 feet wide at the top.  The dam diverted water from the river to supply the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, a series of waterways eventually connecting Philadelphia with Pittsburgh.  The water level behind the dam normally was maintained at 50 feet.

For 36 years the South Fork Dam served its purpose admirably.  During that period John Raab’s saloon proved to be highly  successful and he eventually extended his expanded his enterprise to include a wholesale business, supplying liquor to Johnstown’s saloons, restaurants and hotels.  He came to own the building on Washington Street, Johnstown’s main avenue.  One assumes Raab gave little thought to the South Fork  Dam some 14 miles distant.  

The spring of 1889, however, was abnormally wet.  Late in May the skies opened up with days of extremely heavy rains.  The South Fork Dam could not withstand the pressure of the water and on May 31, 1889, burst in one of the greatest disasters recorded in U.S. history.  At 3:10 p.m., the dam collapsed, sending up a a roar that could be heard for miles. A wall of water from Lake Conemaugh rushed forward at 40 miles per hour, sweeping away everything in its path.  No one in downstream Johnstown had any warning.

People in the path of the rushing flood waters often were crushed as their homes and other structures were swept away. Some in Johnstown were able to make it to the top floors of the few tall buildings in town.  Whirlpools brought down some of those taller buildings.  Among them was the Hulbert House, Johnstown’s leading hotel. Of 57 people inside only ten made it out alive.  The picture that opens this post captures a particularly horrendous event when a bridge downstream from the town caught much of the debris and then proceeded to catch fire.  Individuals who had survived by floating on top of the wreckage were burned to death.

Officially 2,209 people are recorded as having died in the catastrophe.  Among them was Raab’s brother, George, whose daughter Norma and son John also were swept away by the wall of water.  Another victim was an Elizabeth Raab, whose body was recovered at nearby Millville.  She also may have been a relative. Some have contended that many remains were never found, believing that the Johnstown flood claimed as many as 5,000 lives.  The pain of loss for John and other Raab family members must have been intense.

Bringing assistance from all over America and many foreign  countries, the disaster left a giant rebuilding effort.  Raab’s Washington Street headquarters had been swept away in the torrent.  A newspaper illustration, shown here may have caught some of the liquor dealer’s loss.  Note the whiskey barrel at left bottom.  Was the man shown stopped by armed guards there to loot it?

Clearing the debris from the site on Washington Street, Raab rebuilt at the same location.  Shown here, the building’s address subsequently was changed to 434 Washington Street.  The liquor house name became John Raab & Sons.  In 1860 Raab had married Elizabeth “Annie” Vomhoff, daughter of George Vomhoff.  The ceremony took place in the Vomhoff home officiated by the pastor of the local Lutheran Church. The couple is recorded as having 13 children over the next 20 years, although genealogical accounts differ sharply on details.  As they matured, two of Raab’s sons were employed in the liquor house, Henry J., born in 1863, and Charles V. in 1872.  

Shown here is a photograph of the interior of the Raabs’ new establishment.  Note the multiple barrels, each apparently labeled regarding the content.  The room was decorated by the large chandelier at the center.  My guess is that the individuals posing for the camera are employees, several likely are family  members.  Unable to find a photo of John Raab, I speculate that the gent in a vest is he.

 

Also difficult to find are artifacts that advertise the liquor house.  The exceptions are a shot glass and a cork screw.  Both would have been given to the saloons, restaurants and hotels carrying the liquor brands featured by the Raabs.  Neither were particularly expensive giveaway items.  Their shot glass, rather than being incised or enameled, is an over-print.  The label understandably has eroded over time. 

After the death of his wife, Elizabeth earlier that year, in December 1896 John Raab’s own health began to fail.  He continued as usual at the liquor house.  While working there late in one evening he was overcome with severe stomach pains.  Taken home, he declined overnight despite medical attention and died the following morning.  His funeral was held in the family home, officiated by the pastor of the German Lutheran Church.  Raab was buried in Johnstown’s Grand View Cemetery next to Elizabeth.

The liquor house that John Raab had built — and rebuilt — continued for 22 years under the leadership of Henry and Charles Raab, later employing other family members.   By that time the Great Flood of 1889 was only a memory.   Now a new catastrophe called National Prohibition had inundated an entire Nation.   After more than a half century the liquor house John Raab created and nurtured was forced to shut its doors.

Note:  The story of John Raab recommended itself to me because he sustained both personal and business losses in the Johnstown Flood of 1889, yet rebounded to rebuild his business and provide a future for his family.  Raab’s newspaper obituaries contributed personal information.  I am hopeful a descendent will have a picture of John Raab to add to this post.

The Blocks of Cincinnati and the “Whiskey Trust”

 Apparently operating both outside and inside the monopolistic efforts in the distilling, blending and marketing of whiskey referred to as “The Whiskey Trust,” the Block brothers survived for more than three decades in Cincinnati bearing the innocuous title of the Standard Distilling Company.  Although the efforts at a whiskey cartel have never been systematically documented, the Blocks’ story offers insights into this late Nineteenth Century American phenomenon.

Standard Distilling was founded about 1886 by brothers Jacob and Simon Block.  The elder by some eight years, Jacob was the president; Simon was secretary-treasurer.  Their parents were German immigrants who settled at first in New York City where Jacob was born in 1850.  For reasons unknown, their father, Joseph Block, during the following decade moved the family to Macon, Georgia where Simon was born in 1858.  From there the brothers found their way north to Cincinnati where about 1885 they opened a liquor house at 13 West Pearl Street.  It was the first of five addresses their company would have over the next 33 years in that city.

The Blocks’ liquor house featured a healthy list of brands, including:  "Ben My Chree,” "Bluefield Rye,” "Day and Night,” “Delicacy,” “Gladiator,” "Hanover Rye,” "Lick Run,” "McBride’s,” “Metropolis,” "Royal Reserve,” "Sweet Caporal,” “Weldon,” and "Yea Yea.”  The brothers’ trademarking of these labels was irregular.  They registered Lick Run with the government in 1897 and then waited until 1905 to register Weldon.  In 1906, after Congress strengthened trademark laws, they trademarked Day and Night, Delicacy, Gladiator, McBrides, Metropolis, and Sweet Caporal.

The Blocks’ favorite way of advertising appears to have been though shot glasses.  These would have been presented to wholesale customer such as saloons, restaurants and hotels as standard practice and to retail customers at special holidays.  Examples are found throughout this post.

Two court cases indicate the Block’s interactions with the forces of the Whiskey Trust.  In 1899, the Blocks filed suit in federal court against another liquor house that called itself the “Standard Distilling and Distributing Company,” a name almost identical to their own firm.  This organization is widely believed to be a remnant of an earlier Peoria-based effort at a whiskey monopoly that was known for its strong-armed tactics, including use of dynamite to coerce participation.

  

After collapsing from financial and legal problems in 1885, the cartel morphed into three organizations, of which Standard Distilling and Distributing (aka S.D. Co.) was one.  Two original Trust leaders, Joseph Greenhut and Julius Kessler, have been identified as involved. [See posts,Sep. 23, 2019 and Dec. 17, 2019.]  Registered in New Jersey and headquartered in Chicago, this outfit also had offices in Cincinnati, in direct competition with the Blocks.  The brothers brought suit over the similarity of names.

A Federal district judge, dismissing objections by Trust officials found for the Block brothers, in effect agreeing that: “The incorporators of the defendant corporation, before its organization, knew of the existence and character of the complainants’ business, and the trade-name under which it was being carried on; and, notwithstanding its attention has since been called to the injury which it has done to the complainants’ business, it refuses to desist from the use of the name so wrongfully used.”  Although the Blocks were upheld, subsequent legal action failed to achieve a name change.

Apparently deciding “if you can’t lick ‘em, join 'em,” the Blocks in 1898 agreed that they would continue to distill whiskey at a distillery they controlled but that all plain spirits or alcohol for their rectifying (blending) activities would be purchased from S.D. Co. The Trust strategy was to tie a liquor house to the cartel and limit its production in an effort to create shortages. Shortages in turn would inflate whiskey prices to the consumer.  In exchange S.D. Co. contracted to pay the Blocks $1,000 a month for the ensuing five years.  In today’s dollar that deal would be worth $1.9 million.  

For the first few months, S.D.Co. payments flowed into the Blocks, but stopped totally in July 1899.  Breech of contract by a cartel was a regular practice when market conditions changed and no longer advantaged the organization.  The Blocks sued in a Cincinnati court for damages of $10,000 plus interest. S.D.Co.’s rebuttal was astounding.  The  defense claimed that the contract was in violation of state law in Kentucky and thus was void.  The judge pointed out, however, that the contact had been made in Ohio between two Ohio companies and Ohio had no such laws.  He awarded the Blocks their requested damages.  Appealed to the Cincinnati Superior Court, the judgment was affirmed and additional court costs levied on S.D. Co.

Jacob continued as the president of Standard Distilling until about 1900 when at the age of 50 he retired and Simon became its chief executive.  The Federal census that year found both living in a still-standing spacious home at 2351 Park Avenue in Cincinnati.  Jacob had never married but Simon had a wife, Jessie, and three youngsters, Ralph, 10, Helen, 9;  and Margaret, 4.  There were two household servants.  Simon’s leadership of Standard Distilling proved as successful as his brother and by 1912 son Ralph had been added to the staff as a clerk.

Throughout the early 20th Century, the attempts at a Whiskey Trust began to wane and exertions by existing “wannabe” cartels gradually became less aggressive.  For the Blocks monopolies no longer were a major concern.  Now Prohibition was.   When Ohio adopted statewide prohibition in January 1919, Simon was forced to shut the doors on their liquor house after more than three decades.

Jacob died in 1829 at the age of 79.  Simon lived to be 75, dying in 1933 — just in time to see National Prohibition coming to an end.  The brothers are buried in adjacent graves in Cincinnati’s Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery.  Although their  jousting with elements of the Whiskey Trust was not unique, their story illuminates a small part of the murky and largely untold history of the attempt to monopolize whiskey making and sales in America.

Note:  This post largely is derived from the two court cases cited here as well as from genealogy sites.  Shot glasses are largely from Robin Preston's "pre-pro" site. 

 

Whiskey Men Killed in Distillery Accidents

 

Foreword:  Pre-Prohibition distilleries were dangerous places.  Machinery often lacked safety guards, heavy barrels rolled about, buildings were ramshackle with dangerous upper floors, fires were a constant threat, and explosions all too frequent.  This website has recorded many distillery worker deaths.  But even the owners were not immune from danger.  This post chronicles four “whiskey men” who perished within their own premises.

Kentuckian Henry E. Pogue had a talent for making whiskey.  About 1865 he went to work at the Old Time Distillery in Maysville. Pogue later became chief distiller and in 1876 purchased the facility.   Shown here, the distillery had a mashing capacity of 300 bushels per day, and there were three bonded warehouses with capacity for storing more than 10,000 barrels.  By 1900 the H.E. Pogue Distillery, below, was producing fifty barrels of whiskey daily and as one newspaper account put it:  “It is said by those who know that there is no better distillery in Kentucky.”  

Then tragedy struck.  On a Friday morning in November 1900, Henry Pogue I was making his rounds in the distillery when he became immeshed in machinery.  A biographer vividly told the rest of the story:  “…In the twinkling of eye, death struck him, the immortal soul had fled, and what had been a stalwart, hopeful and successful man, had become a quivering mass of crushed bones and mangled, bleeding flesh.”   Pogue’s death sent shockwaves through the community and devastated his family.  

He already had turned over many management responsibilities to his son, Henry Pogue II, shown right,  an heir who was well equipped to carry on the work his father had begun.  Eventually this Pogue enhanced production to 2,000 gallons of whiskey daily and carried a normal inventory of 15,000 barrels being aged. Employment during peak periods reached 100 workers.   Then, improbably, tragedy struck again.  Henry II was working at the distillery in 1918 when he too was killed in an industrial accident.  He was only 60 years of age. 

His son, Henry Pogue III, who had worked in the distillery, was then in military uniform. When World War One broke out, he enlisted and was in Europe when news came of his father’s unfortunate death.  Released from service, Henry III returned home at the age of 24 to take the reins of distillery management — but only for a year until shut down by National Prohibition.  He later sold out.

Worthy of a novel, the Hungarian-born five Woolner Brothers — Jacob, Ignatius, Adolph, Samuel and Morris — held sway among Peoria, Illinois, distillers for almost 45 years. Their history, however, was not without trauma.  In the spring of 1881, the Woolners’ main distillery burned.  Most of the buildings were destroyed; as shown below, only the still house stood after the blaze.  The brothers immediately began to rebuild.  

Amid the rubble the Woolners found that two tubs of fermented mash had been left virtually untouched.  After slight repairs to the tubs it was decided to run the contents through a repaired still: “…The boilers were cleaned and refitted, the pumps rigged, and the distillation commenced.”  It was a terrible mistake.

As the Chicago Tribune told the story: “Without a moment’s warning, a loud explosion was heard, the gigantic tub swayed and careened over, and a rush of steam escaped from the lower chamber, carrying everything before it.  Men were picked up and hurled, scalded and parboiled, from twenty to forty feet away, and ruthlessly bruised with falling bricks and timbers.”  Of eighteen men injured in the blast thirteen died, many painfully. 

Ignatius Woolner, 41, the brother who likely was supervising the operation, was badly burned and died that night.  In addition to his grieving brothers, Ignatius left his widow, Rosalie and three children, Adolph, 20; Sopha, 14, and Hanna 9.  He was interred in Peoria’s Springdale Cemetery in a plot where other Woolner brothers also now are buried.  

One of the first  children to be born of Jewish parents in Oregon,  Solomon “Sol” Blumauer rose to prominence in Portland as a whiskey dealer,  businessman, pillar of Judaism,  community leader and automotive pioneer,  only to suffer a tragic and somewhat mysterious death at the age of 66. He is shown here at the wheel of an early automobile.

In 1899 Blumauer bought into the whiskey trade, becoming a partner in a company subsequently called Blumauer & Hoch, destined to become the largest wholesale liquor house in Oregon.  With the coming of National Prohibition, the canny Blumauer successfully switched to popular soft drinks.  Even as he got older he continued to be at the head of the company, directing its activities with what contemporaries termed “decisiveness, initiative and keen sagacity.” 

On February 23, 1928, a tragic event occurred.  Blumauer’s demise was described in one Portland newspaper: “At about eleven o'clock he had gone up to the second floor of the firm's warehouse and office building at Nos. 428-430 Flanders street, and his disappearance was not noted until the arrival of a man shortly before one o'clock to keep an appointment with him.  Search was then begun and carried forward on all three floors before suggestion was made that he might have fainted and slipped into the shaft. Falling forward, Mr. Blumauer is believed to have slipped through the narrow opening and plunged to the bottom of the shaft.”   

Thus ended the extraordinary career of Sol Blumauer at the age of 66.   How and why he might have fallen into the elevator shaft was never thoroughly explored.  It was accepted as an accident and nothing more.  He was buried in the family plot in Portland’s Beth Israel Cemetery.  His passing was mourned by many in the Portland community who had known him as a benefactor and leader.  Regrettably, Sol never lived to see the end of National Prohibition that might have launched him once again into the whiskey trade at which he had been so successful.

Note:  Longer posts on each of these whiskey men may be found on this website:  The Pogues, November 1, 2015;  the Woolners, July 8, 2021, and Sol Blumauer,  June 12, 2012.