Jerry Thomas was “King” of American Bartenders

 

Described as “a gentleman all ablaze with diamonds,” Jeremiah P. “Jerry” Thomas during his lifetime was a gold miner, (minor) Broadway impresario, art collector, inventor, gambler, reigning monarch of American bartenders, and the author of the nation’s first drinks recipe book.  Thomas’ “Bar-Tender’s Guide” published in 1862 during the Civil War, is still in print, available from multiple sources.

Thomas was born about 1830 in Sackets Harbor, New York, a town on Lake Ontario, not far from the Canadian border, the son of Jeremiah and Mary Morris Thomas.  Of his early life and education little is known.  At some point in the late 1830s or early 1840s, the family moved to New Haven, Connecticut.  By the age of 16, Thomas had quit school and, according to his obituary in the New York Herald “he began life as a New Haven barkeeper.”  As an apprentice in the craft, his duties would have included polishing the barware and sweeping the floor as he learn the craft of mixing cocktails.

Soon Thomas’ lifelong longed to see a wider world than New Haven.  He was hired on as an apprentice seaman on a ship to Cuba.  From there other maritime adventures beckoned including a wintry trip around Cape Horn to California.  There he jumped ship to join the throngs prospecting for gold.  His success as a miner has gone unrecorded but having been left some money by his father, he was briefly involved as an impresario of minstrel shows in San Francisco before resuming his career in bartending.

Now in his early 20s but still restless, Thomas moved back to the East Coast in 1851 and opened a saloon below P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, shown here. It was the first of four he would run in New York City during his peripatetic lifetime  He wore flashy jewelry and his solid silver bar tools and cups were embellished with gem stones.  Thomas began to display the showmanship as a bartender for which he became famous. He developed elaborate and flashy techniques of mixing cocktails, sometimes while juggling bottles, cups and mixers..  His signature drink, depicted here, was the “Blue Blazer,” a fiery concoction thrown from glass to glass. Thomas also has been credited with inventing the martini.

And he continued to travel.  After closing up his Big Apple establishment, during the next few years Thomas would preside as head bartender at posh hotels in Charleston S.C., Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, and San Francisco.  Those included The Planters House in St. Louis, below left, and the Occidental Hotel in Frisco, where he was paid $100 a week, at the time more than the salary of the U.S. Vice President.  

While in San Francisco, during the onset of the Civil War, Thomas finished his “Bar-Tender’s Guide,” alternatively called “How to Mix Drinks”  and “The Bon-Vivant’s Companion.” Shown here,  it was the first drinks book ever published in the United States.  In it Thomas put into print what heretofore had been an oral tradition of drink recipes as well as instructions on making cocktails of his own devising.  He recruited a good San Francisco artist to provide illustrations.

Thomas updated the guide twice to add drinks or refine existing ones, the last time 14 years later.  That edition included a recipe for the Tom and Jerry, a drink Thomas seemed to claim as his own:

“5 lbs sugar.”

“12 eggs”

“1/2 small glass of Jamaica rum”

“1/2 teaspoon cloves”

“1/2 teaspoon allspice”

 “Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and the yolks until they are thin as water, then mix together and add the spice and rum, thicken with sugar until the mixture attains the consistency of a light batter.”

“To deal out to customers:”

“Take a small bar glass, and to one tablespoonful of the above mixture, add one wine-glass of brandy, and fill the glass with boiling water, and grate a little nutmeg on top.”

“This drink is sometimes called Copenhagen and sometimes “Jerry Thomas.””

Since its publication, the book seemingly never has been out of print.  The covers of copies issued over ensuing years are on display throughout this post, including, shown here, the Guide as issued by Dover Publishing and currently available from Amazon Books.

The story might have ended in San Francisco with Thomas holding forth nightly to mesmerized fans while collecting his big weekly paycheck, but that would be underestimating Jerry.   Instead he was drawn to the boom town of Virginia City, Nevada, where the discovery of the  Comstock Load had spawned some 30,000 gold-hungry adventurers.  Perhaps drawn there by memories of his own early days “moiling for gold,” in 1863 Thomas went to work as bartender at the Delta Saloon.  Mark Twain, working for the local newspaper, commented that Thomas’ presence did much to elevate the tastes and drinking habits of the Comstock.

Before long, Thomas pulled up stakes once again and returned to New York City initially working as the head bartender at the Metropolitan Hotel, shown here.  In 1866 he opened his own drinking establishment in Manhattan, on Broadway between 21st and 22nd streets.  Showing signs of settling down, Thomas married, had two daughters, and aggressively began to collect art.   This did not dim his flashy persona as a bon vivant, wearing kid gloves and sporting a gold  watch.

Always the gambler, in his later years Thomas began playing the stock market but made a series of disastrous investments.  To avoid bankruptcy he was forced to sell his successful saloon and auction off his considerable art collection.  Later recouping financially, Thomas opened another Manhattan bar that failed to be as popular as his previous location.

While still its proprietor, Thomas died of a stroke at his home at 63th Street and 9th Avenue on December 15, 1885.  He was 55.  His death occasioned obituaries around the country, particularly in the many cities in which he had worked.  The New York Times opined that he was the Big Apple’s best known barkeep and “was very popular among all classes.”  Thomas was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His gravestone is shown here.  

In March 2003, a tribute was held for Jerry Thomas at the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, where bartenders gathered to make many of the cocktails published in his ground-breaking books.  In a lifetime of travel and adventure Thomas had set a standard for his occupation to which many have aspired, but few have approached.

Note:  Although this vignette was derived from multiple sources, much of what we know about Jerry Thomas is derived from the book by David Wonderich entitled,  “Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar.”

Whiskey Men & Dodging Prohibition Laws

 

Foreword:  Below are brief tales of three liquor dealers, each facing “dry” laws and regulations affecting the profitability of their enterprises.  Each “whiskey man” took drastic steps to avoid the pressures of prohibition with results none of them would have anticipated.  

Faced with a dismal financial future, Herman Eggers in 1912 from his Louisville Kentucky liquor house hatched a scheme to sell his whiskey to customers in Kentucky counties that had adopted local prohibition.  He composed and sent a form letter to doctors and druggists in “dry” localities asking their help.  In the letter Eggers pointed out that for medicinal purposes Kentucky law allowed licensed doctors and druggists to receive whiskey shipments in five gallons or less.  Eggers explained:  “There are a number of people in your neighborhood who would like to receive goods but cannot order within the state as the laws prevent shipments….If you will permit those who order to have goods shipped to you, without expense to you, it will be an accommodation to both of us.”

Eggers assured his potential collaborators that his proposal was within Kentucky law and urged them to write him with the names of friends who might be interested in shipments.  As a reward for their trouble in handling his liquor, cooperating doctors and druggists would be given one free gallon of whiskey for every ten gallons he shipped.  “I do not know if this would be legal,”  Eggers acknowledged.  (It wasn’t.)

Among the physicians who received Eggers’ letter was Dr. Thomas C. Holloway, an eminent gynecologist of Lexington, Kentucky, a town that intermittently had gone dry.   Dr. Holloway was caustic in his response to Eggers:  “As I have no intention of engaging in the whiskey business, I do not see what right you had to presume I would be interested in your bootlegging proposition.”  The outraged physician went further by sending the exchange of letters to the Kentucky Medical Journal, the state’s leading journal for doctors and druggists.  They published it under the headline “Forum” on September 1, 1912.

With Eggers’ scheme exposed, its utility was gone.  Even if tempted initially, the “weaker elements” of the medical fraternity, to use Holloway’s term, likely found themselves walking away from Egger’s proposition once it was widely known to other doctors and likely revealed to law enforcement officials.  Moreover, Eggers had been exposed as someone willing to conspire to evade the law.

It must have seemed like the perfect scheme. With accomplices, Ralph Parilla, a Youngstown, Ohio, a liquor dealer restricted by WWI prohibitionary laws in 1919 planned to remove barrels of whiskey that he owned from a government-guarded warehouse under the pretext of exporting them to Canada.  He first would extract the whiskey, substitute water, and truck the barrels over the border. The whiskey he could bottle and sell. Then things went terribly, terribly awry.  

 At first the scheme seemed to go well.  With the help of two accomplices, Parilla brought the barrels from the warehouse to a farm he owned on the outskirts of Youngstown.  There they syphoned off the whiskey into smaller containers through small holes in the barrels that could be covered and concealed once the water had been substituted.  Then things began to unravel.

The process of transporting the whiskey from the warehouse had raised suspicions and was communicated to Fred Counts, a federal agent for prohibition enforcement.  Counts spent 24 hours gathering evidence and the next day went looking for Parilla, fingered by others as the “mastermind.”  On the farm Counts found the empty barrels, caught up with Parilla, arrested him and took him to jail.  

The gambit proved costly to Parilla who immediately forfeited a $30,000 bond to the Feds. He also was required to post $10,000 personal bond to get out of jail, the sum total equivalent to $1 million today.  On trial in federal court, Parilla and his co-conspirators were found guilty but appealed the decision on technical grounds to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court proved equally unsympathetic and upheld their convictions and fines. 

In September 1920, Harry Sands, a federal agent in charge of enforcing National Prohibition laws, announced that a raid on a Perth Amboy, New Jersey, warehouse had yielded the largest stash of bootleg liquor ever seized by authorities anywhere in America.  Among those arrested was a 46-year-old local liquor dealer, accused of overseeing transport and sale of the illicit booze.  Shown left, he  was Sigmund “Sig” Spitzer.

With co-conspirator Frank Gold, Spitzer formed a warehousing firm owning a large storage facility in Perth Amboy.  Working by night with employees they filled it with cases and barrels of whiskey and other alcohol.  If anyone got too inquisitive they were told the stash was for “medicinal purposes,” since liquor could still be sold with a prescription in drug stores.  Connecting with bootleggers in Trenton, New Jersey, Spitzer and Gold hatched an elaborate scheme to bribe key Prohibition agents to overlook liquor supplies identified by a placard “of a certain type” that would be pasted on barrels and cases.  The Feds were on to the game, however, and watching the warehouse closely, one step ahead of the bootleggers.

On September 20, 1920, Spitzer, overseeing activities in Gold’s warehouse, supervised as 250 cases and 25 barrels of whiskey were loaded on a truck and dispatched to Trenton.  Confederates were waiting there to take the liquor to a shadowy purchaser in Philadelphia, a man known only as Mr. Bond.  Bond, as it was soon discovered, was Harry Sands, the top Prohibition enforcement agent on the East Coast.  In Philadelphia the Trenton bootleggers were promptly arrested.

At the same time federal agents swooped down on the Perth Amboy warehouse where they confiscated an additional 962 cases and 118 barrels, amounting to 10,756 gallons of whiskey worth an estimated $162,150, equivalent to more than$2 million today.  It was the biggest bust of a bootlegging scheme in the country, according to Sands.  Spitzer, identified as secretary-treasurer of the warehouse company, was arrested with Gold and others and held on $5,000 bond.  The record does not disclose the ultimate disposition but I assume Spitzer and his colleagues went to jail.

*****

Oldtimers will remember “The Shadow” radio drama and his intonation of the same mantra each episode: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.  Crime does not pay.”  That was a lesson Eggers, Parilla and Spitzer learned the hard way.

Note:  More complete posts on each of these “whiskey men” may be found elsewhere on this website:  Herman Eggers, October 20, 2018; Ralph Parilla, May 26, 2016; and Sig Spitzer, October 24, 2020.

Celebrating One Thousand Posts

 When I began this blog in April 2011, little did it occur to me that in just over a decade the number of entries would reach the 1,000 mark.  My research on whiskey had convinced me that the American liquor trade prior to National Prohibition in 1920 was virtually unexplored territory.  I decided that a blog devoted to the stories of the men (and a few pioneering women) working as distillers, whiskey dealers, saloonkeepers, bartenders, etc., were needed to shed light on almost forgotten segment of American history.

It is extremely gratifying that so many people have agreed.  Since its inception this website as has attracted more than 1,333,000 “hits” from all over the world.  Some 2,570 respondents have contributed comments.  Those messages include observations from descendants, inquiries about whiskey artifacts and values, and factual corrections.  I attempt to answer each communication and make changes as needed.  The blog also has attracted 376 “followers.”  Those are individuals who receive immediate notification when a new item is posted.  I am extremely grateful to them for their loyalty.

Five Posts of Uncommon Interest

In looking back at the 999 posts that have gone before, several stand out.  A highly important “whiskey man,” Judge W. H. McBrayer, was an early profile on October 2, 2011.  Over the years, this very early post has attracted 5,556 “hits.”  More important, McBrayer’s story led me to do posts on his son-in-law, his “master” distiller and his liquor broker — all stories worth telling.

The idea of Brigham Young, a leader of the Mormon people, as a “whiskey man” seemed farfetched until my research found that Young for at least three years was in charge of all liquor sales in Utah.  The story also involved commentaries from Mark Twain and Sir Richard Burton.  Since running on August 18, 2016, that post has attracted some 10,874 views.

The name Len Motlow is a familiar name to many whiskey aficionados because as a relative of Jack Daniels he inherited the distillery and help build it to the international brand it is today.  Few people, however, know that Motlow once was arrested for murdering a railroad conductor.  He escaped punishment by playing “a race card” at his trial because the only witness was a black porter.  That story, running on March 26, 2019, has attracted 3,981 hits.

Christopher Hilbert

It is unusual when an existing post attracts more than a dozen or so watchers in a single day.  Thus it was with astonishment this past August that an entry of January 17, 2022, recorded 2,444 views in one day.  The subject was the Hilbert Brothers, two liquor dealers in San Francisco.  They were beneficiaries of a criminal enterprise by local politicians to extort money from saloonkeepers and dealers, a scam that made national headlines when exposed.  The sheer number of viewings in a single day suggests that other websites were tapping into the post but I have yet to find them.

That mystery brings me to the unfathomable question of the apparent popularity of my post on Otto Wagner’s liquor business in Tiffin, Ohio, that ran on December 6, 2013. It was devoted to the extraordinary variety of designs for the whiskey jugs issued by Wagner, shown here.  To date the post has garnered 21,688 look-ins, far and away the highest response of the other 998.  Even if every man, woman and child in Tiffin tapped into the story, the number would be 5,000 fewer than the “hits” actually recorded.  My efforts to unravel this mystery have been unavailing. 

Some Reflections at 1,000

Looking back on the many stories that have been told on this website about “whiskey men” of the pre-National Prohibition era, a few conclusions  become evident:

1. The prevalence of immigrants.  Although I have not made a count, my instinct is that more than half of the people featured on this blog were either immigrants to the United States or the children of immigrants.  The liquor trade, unlike other occupations, was not exclusionary about those within its ranks.

2.  Religion was important.  Roman Catholics and Jews dominated the numbers making and selling alcohol, along with some Episcopalians and Lutherans.None of those religious groups officially banned alcohol use.  Many in the liquor trade were generous to their church or synagogue.

3.  Contributions to their communities. In instance after instance, the contributions both in money and time made by whiskey men to civic betterment, public welfare, and general education were hugely important to the developmentof their cities, towns, counties and states.  Often their obituaries omitted that their financial resources had come from liquor profits.

4.  The role of women.  Virtually all the women profiled on this blog inherited their whiskey businesses from husbands who often pre-deceased them by many years.  Some widows ignored strong pressure to sell out.  Many women guided their enterprises to levels of success beyond the legacy of their late spouses.

5.  Legal strategies to avoid prohibition.  The pre-1920 liquor trade proved to be creative in finding ways to avoid the prohibitionary laws and regulations that  were being enacted almost daily somewhere in America through “local option” or statewide auspices.  Strategies like mail order sales, “whiskey trains,” and relocation from “dry” areas to “wet” kept many a distillery and liquor dealer afloat for years.

6.  Illegal strategies after National Prohibition.  With passage of the Volstead Act virtually all the remaining distilleries and liquor firms simply shut down.  A few, however, decided to cheat.  Almost all those “amateur” attempts failed as alert Federal authorities swooped down.  Successful bootlegging subsequently was the province of organized crime.

7.  Post-prohibition occupations.  After the liquor trade was closed to them many practitioners were still young enough to want second careers and had the assets to make it happen. Because the automotive age was just beginning many gravitated there, selling cars, car parts, or garage services.  Others went into real estate and banking.   A few chose farming.

Going Forward

At 87 years old I recognize that my ability to take this website through another decade is an unlikely prospect.  I am also faced with the reality that finding new good stories is becoming more and more difficult.  For every whiskey man I choose to write about, my research effort rejects six or seven that do not meet my criteria for reader interest.  That said, I will continue as long as possible to post every four days.  Should a paucity of subjects occur, I will lengthen the time between posts and move on.

 

Abe Lincoln and Whiskey Drinkin’

The cartoon below purporting to show Abraham Lincoln mixing up a bourbon cocktail is a modern take on an old story about the 16th President of the United States as a young man — accused of having running a saloon in New Salem, Illinois.  It was a charge Lincoln denied, but one that has been repeated down through the years, buttressed by alleged “documents.”  The story is complicated and, to my mind at least, inconclusive.

During the first of the seven famous debates between Lincoln and Steven O. Douglas, the Illinois senator, himself a heavy drinker, seemingly set the saloon story in motion.  Douglas told the assembled crowd that when the future President first arrived in the village:  “He could ruin more liquor than all the boys in town together.”  He also charged that Lincoln had run a “grocery,” in those days a term indicating a store in which whiskey, brandy, rum and wine were sold by the jug, and often by the drink. 

Whiskey historian Michael Veach recounts a story reported first in the Wine & Spirits Bulletin of August 1, 1901, that described an alleged incident from a Lincoln-Douglas debate:  “Douglas said that he had met Mr. Lincoln before at his tavern. Lincoln replies that he does indeed remember the incident and that “It is true that the first time I saw Judge Douglas I was selling whiskey by the drink. I was on the inside of the bar and the Judge was on the outside. I was busy selling, he was busy buying.”   

Although I am skeptical about the authenticity of the exchange, certain facts seem clear.  Lincoln with a friend named William Berry opened a store in the New Salem village, a community long abandoned that has been recreated as a historical site commemorating Lincoln.  Among the recreated buildings is the Lincoln-Berry store, described as selling “dry goods.”

An account reporting that the store also was selling liquor surfaced in an 1899 biography, “Abraham Lincoln:  The Man of the People” by Norman Hapgood.  An unfounded claim by an alleged former employer, it reads:  "I [Daniel Green Burner] clerked in the [Barry-Lincoln] store through the winter of 1833-34 up to the 1st of March. While I was there they had nothing for sale but liquors. They may have had some groceries before that, but I am certain they had none then. I used to sell whiskey over their counter at 6¢ a glass—and charged it too.”   Despite Burner’s claim being unsupported, it frequently has been reprinted.

Burner’s account also appears on a widely distributed “broadside.” shown here, that contains a reproduction of “Abraham Lincoln’s Liquor License and Bond.” That document describes the issuance on 6 March 1833 to Lincoln and Berry of a one year license to keep a tavern in the Town of New Salem, attested to by Charles E. Oppel, clerk of Sangamon County, Illinois, and dated April 25, 1908. 

In an atmosphere of using any weapon at hand to combat the rising tide of prohibitionary sentiments in America, the purported “Lincoln license” was given wide distribution.  Clarke Distilling of Peoria took a full page ad in newspapers nationwide to publicize the document.  It added a picture of Lincoln and purported to show the interior of the “tavern,” below, despite the actual building having disappeared

Experts do not believe the document is authentic.  Writing for the Digital Records Library of Illinois History, Dr. Neil Gale, after consulting with other Lincoln historians and weighing the evidence concludes:  “…We are inclined to look upon this whole tavern license transaction as it is now so widely publicized as a forgery.”

Dr. Gale quotes extensively from Lincoln’s remarks in the first debate with Douglas:   "When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented, it provokes him—at least, I find it so with myself; but when the misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse him….The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a 'grocery keeper.' I don't know as it would be a great sin, if I had been, but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.”

Lincoln followed up this remark in his speech at Charleston, Illinois, during the debate on September 18, 1858, by giving the definition of a forgery:  "What is a forgery? It is the bringing forward something in writing or in print purporting to be of certain effect when it is altogether untrue.”

Nothing of this controversy deterred the Nation’s pre-Prohibition liquor dealers from selling whiskey by using Lincoln face and name.  Baltimore’s Dumbarton Liquor Company featured its “Old Honest Abe” brands of rye and bourbon.  Herman Toser whose Milwaukee liquor dealership lasted 47 years featured a label entitled “Old Abe.”  In more recent times, McCormick whiskey created a figural flask of a young Lincoln.  Up to the moment is a line of Lincoln bourbon, rye, and amber whiskeys being issued by the Boundary Oak Distillery of Hardin County, Kentucky.   Shown here is a special memorial whiskey that recently sold to a Lincoln descendant at a charity auction for $25,550.

Notes:  This post was derived from a range of sources, of which the principal ones were the aforementioned article by Dr. Neil Gale and an online article by Amy Williams entitled “What Would Abe Lincoln Drink?”