Max Klein, the “Estimable” Pittsburgh Whiskey Man

Who couldn’t tell who this blooming old stager is?

Easily known the phis of the major is!

With his Frenchified beard and his dignified look,

On the North side the major is known like a book.

With this doggerel verse, the author of “Pittburgers:  Sketched in Prose and Verse,” introduced Max Klein, the proprietor of a Pennsylvania wholesale liquor and import company.  Shown right, Klein was described thus by a contemporary: “…As estimable a man as ever tapped a barrel of Old Monongahela.” 

Max was born in the southern part of Rhenish Bavaria in 1843 and educated in German schools up to the age of 16.  In 1859, he came to the United States, entering through New York City.  From there he traveled to Cincinnati, a city where many German immigrants had settled.  Within a short time, likely seeking better opportunities, he decamped for Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he stayed until the Civil War broke out.

Apparently reluctant to cast his lot with the South,  Klein embarked to the northward on the Mississippi River steamer, “Emma,”  the last vessel to pass a Union blockade.  He disembarked in Keokuk, located in the extreme southeast corner of Iowa, the point where the Des Moines River meets the Mississippi.  In August 1861 he enlisted as a private in Company F of the First Iowa Voluntary Cavalry.   Klein must have had some personal resources or a sponsor because, unusual for a Union cavalry unit, members of the First Iowa provided their own horses and equipment.

Klein’s regiment was deployed on the Western front, spending time in Louisiana and Texas and seeing considerable action.  Klein’s abilities as a leader were recognized and he advanced through the ranks, discharged as a first lieutenant at Austin, Texas, having completed just short of five years in service.  (The title of “Major” likely was bestowed through Max’s post-war  leadership role in the Grand Army of the Republic.)  After the war Klein returned to Iowa and there married Henrietta Stern, born in Pennsylvania of parents originally from New York.

Even with his new familial responsibilities, the Major found it hard to settle down.  About 1869 he left Keokuk to spend a year in Cumberland, Maryland, where he may have been learning the whiskey trade.  By 1870 he had relocated to the Pittsburgh area, apparently working first as a clerk and then as a partner in a liquor dealership and import firm that became known as Klein, Stern & Company, located at 135 First Avenue.  Soon he opened his own establishment at 14 and 16 Wood Street in Pittsburgh.  The “Pittsburgers” poem purports to tell the story:

After the war this renowned Alleghenian

Looked for a trade he might turn an old penny in.

Idleness gave him a fit of the blues,

So he gave up his time to the selling of booze.

With the success of the Wood Street enterprise, Max moved in 1880 to more elegant quarters at 82 Federal Street in adjacent Allegheny.  Located opposite the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railway, this was a four story building with his name emblazoned both at the roof and above the street level sales office.  Klein’s attempts at retailing whiskey apparently were thwarted by local officials.  The poem declaims:

Business poured in till, with cruel asperity,

License dispensers attacked his prosperity,

Knocked out his license at retail to sell,

And threatening to stop his wholesaling as well.

Whatever the threat, Klein survived and was reported to be shipping liquor and wine extensively around the U.S.  An 1889 publication called the “Pittsburgh and Allegheny Illustrated Review,” reported, “Mr. Klein is distinguished among the wholesale liquor dealers of the two cities by reason of the volume of his business, the great extent and variety of his stock, and the marked superiority of his facilities for the prompt and satisfactory filling of orders…In this commodious, well-lighted and completely equipped establishment [he] carries a large stock….” 

Meanwhile Klein, now living in nearby Allegheny, was having a personal life,  The 1880 census found Max, 33, and Henrietta, 28, at home with three children, Leon, seven; Arthur, five; and Milton, nine months.  Max’s occupation was given as  “wholesale liquor dealer.”  There would be two more children, girls Edna May and Bertha “Birdie.”  Throughout this period Klein was prominent in G.A.R. activities. On Grand Army Day, October 5, 1886, he was chosen Commander of the Day, and headed the military procession in Pittsburgh.

In time, Klein opened a second outlet in Pittsburgh itself at 410 Market Street.  He sold whiskey at wholesale to saloons in stoneware jugs with his XX trademark on them.   For his sales to retailers, he packaged his liquor in quart and flask sizes.  Shown above is a Bear Creek amber flask with a label illustration of a bear in the woods holding a bottle.  Klein also bottled his whiskey in clear glass, including a flask that carried his name embossed on shoulder panels, a somewhat unusual feature.  Like many wholesaler/rectifiers, Klein featured multiple brands, including “Bear Creek,” “Duquesne,” “Peter Pan,” “Rockport Rye,” and “Silver Age.”  He appears to have trademarked only two, Silver Age in 1889 and Duquesne in 1891.  

Klein’s flagship brand appears to have been Silver Age, a rye whiskey of which Klein claimed to be the sole proprietor.  He emphasized the health-giving properties of this whiskey, warning in an 1891 newspaper ad that:  “It is in the spring that old and young alike are most susceptible to the hundreds of diseases that fill the atmosphere we breathe and lurk in the water we drink.”  His recommended response to these dangers was Silver Age Rye:  “This celebrated whiskey is a pure, reliable alcoholic stimulant, endorsed by prominent physicians as being superior to any other stimulant in the market, possessing the properties for medicinal use.”

Klein’s advertising for Silver Age included handing out sets of poker chips and shot glasses.  To special customers like saloons and restaurants, he also provided shot glasses advertising other brands. Many of them have elaborate etching, particularly a Bear Creek glass with an illustration of two bears and two bottles and a Rockport Rye glass with the Federal Street building reproduced on the back.  These were relatively expensive items to give away and testify to the financial success Klein was having.

In addition to whiskies, Klein was an extensive importer of wine from France, Germany, Italy and other wine producing countries of Europe. He also was reported to have kept a stock of champagnes, sauternes, ports, clarets, madieras, burgundies and sherries.  He handled French and English brandies, Hollands and Tom gins, Scotch and Irish whiskies, Bass ale, Guinness' Dublin porter, and a variety of cordials and liqueurs. The volume of his business required a force of twelve clerks and assistants.

As he aged and his sons reached maturity Klein took them into his business.  In 1904, as a sign of their ascendancy into management, he changed the name of the firm to Max Klein & Sons.  Three years later he died at the age of 65, leaving the reins of his firm to his sons.  A fitting tribute to him was penned earlier in the Pittsburgh and Allegheny Illustrated Review:  “In business he has established a gratifying and merited success as a consequence of his superior business abilities, his uniform promptness, and his fair treatment.”

Note:  To complete this vignette on Max Klein, it seems appropriate to include the caricature that accompanied the doggerel verse that opened this post and has been quoted here several times.

This post owes a great deal to the "Pre-pro Whiskey" website of Robin Williams, from whence come much of the information and some images.

Generous Gus Keller and Iowa’s “No Treat” Trick

As a collector of pre-Prohibition whiskey paperweights, including the one shown above, I was made aware of August “Gus” Keller, a saloonkeeper, liquor dealer, and beer distributor in Burlington, Iowa.  Although his life was not out of the ordinary, his generosity in giving things away clearly put him in conflict with a “no treat” trick concocted in his time by Iowa prohibitionists.

Born in Germany about 1864, Keller moved to the United States as a young man and settled in Burlington, a Mississippi River town immediately across from Illinois.  A panoramic scene shows it nestled below the river bluffs with the Mississippi at its doorstep.  Keller would live there for the rest of his life.  In 1890 he would wed Katherine Spitzmueller, sometimes given as “Kate” or  “Kittie.”  She was four years his junior and, like him, an immigrant from Germany.  The couple apparently were childless.

When Keller first established his liquor trade is not clear. A 1907 Burlington directory records him running a saloon at 213-215-217 S. Main Street, a major commercial avenue in Burlington.  He and Katherine were living above the business.  That was the address on a trade card he issued for “Gus Keller’s Liquor Emporium.”  He advertised his stock of imported and domestic liquors, German wines, and cigars.  His face appeared on the card, shown here, but has been overprinted by a bread company ad and blurred. 

 

Keller’s advertising also made a great deal about his proximity to the railroad line — “One-half block North of Union Station.”  The station is shown  above.  He clearly was pointing up his ability to ship liquor and beer to other parts of Iowa and even points further away, using both rail and water transport.  This capability undoubtedly gained him a contract to be the agent for the Louis Obert Brewing Company in St. Louis, Missouri.  A serving tray, shown right, illustrated the brewery and its owner. This was a relatively short-lived enterprise, opening in 1900 and closing with National Prohibition.

Gus Keller was a generous publican.  In addition to the usual giveaway items featured in his trade, Keller gifted favored customers with the paperweight featured here.  Measuring three and one-half inches in diameter and weighing just under two pounds, this is a formidable piece of glass.  Near the base is a layer of colored lamp work half cones in a circle.  The top, in another layer read:  “Compliments of Gus Keller…Burlington, Iowa.”   Although the glasshouse maker of this extraordinary piece is unknown, it must have been a relatively expensive item.  

Keller would have been outraged by efforts of Iowa prohibitionists to outlaw the idea of a bartender or a fellow imbiber from “treating” someone to a free drink.  The Dry forces were strong in Iowa.  It had been one of the first states to outlaw selling alcohol.  In 1882 the state constitution was amended to read that: “No person shall manufacture for sale, or sell, or keep for sale, as a beverage any intoxicating liquor whatever, including ale, wine and beer.”

Although the amendment was repealed in 1894, making possible Keller’s saloon, Iowa’s prohibitionists never stopped trying to narrow the scope of alcohol sales.  A state legislator named Nye proposed a bill under which a saloonkeeper who furnished drinks to any person other than the one buying would be subject to a fine of up to $100 (equivalent to $2,500 today) and an automatic revocation of his business license. Such “no treat laws” were the darling of the Dry crowd nationally as one sly trick to reduce the consumption of alcohol and put pressure on saloons.  Similar laws already had been adopted in the states of Washington and Montana and in a number of local communities around the U.S.

Not only did the “no treat” law mean that Gus Keller could no longer pour out a drink “on the house” to a good customer, he could no longer allow a patron to buy someone else a drink.  To an open-handed man like Keller, this “no treat” must have seemed like a dirty trick indeed.  He was, however, spared the full flow of the prohibition tide in Iowa when he died in 1914, at the untimely age of 51.  His funeral services were held at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church and he was buried at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Burlington.  

The volume of Keller’s business can be gauged by the number of whiskey, wine and beer suppliers that made claims against his estate, roughly equivalent to $75,000 today.  Among them were bills from distilleries in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.  They included the Hamburger Co. of Pittsburgh and J.T.S. Brown Co. of Louisville. [See my posts on Hamburger, February 2012;  J.T.S. Brown, May 2012.]

The “no treat” and other prohibitionist tricks in Iowa were followed in 1916 by legislation statewide banning alcohol sales — a full four years before National Prohibition.  Gus Keller was spared that most vicious trick by passing away earlier.  His “treat” of an expensive giveaway paperweight remains to remind us of this generous Iowa whiskey man.   

The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Maysville Pogues

When I find a story of a family that has carried on a tradition of whiskey-making from 1876 down to the present day, it is inspirational.  The Pogues of Maysville, Kentucky, are such a family.  The Pogues’ many triumphs as distillers down through the years, however, are leavened by the knowledge of the cruel events that also have marked their history.

The founding father of the distilling dynasty was Henry Edgar Pogue I, shown right in maturity.  He was born in 1825 in Ashland, Boyd County, Kentucky, to William L. and Ann McCormick Pogue,  both of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian heritage.   Born in Kentucky,  William was a large landowner and successful lawyer in the eastern part of the state.   He was able to give Henry a good education and the boy showed early showed a talent for mathematics and mechanics. 

But according to a biographer who claimed to know him personally and signed his piece only as “T.M.G.,” Henry l “…abhorred labor and drudgery and his youth and early manhood were passed in the pursuit of pleasure.”  It was, the author contended, a period of lavish self-indulgence:  “Then his hair was as glossy and black as the raven’s wing;  his black eyes sparkled with intelligence and exuberant animal spirits; his swarthy complexion had the clearness which belong to vigorous health; his well-formed person presented the indications of endurance and strength; and his conversation was unusually vivacious.” 

At the age of 28 in 1853, Henry I married Frances Ann Wood, the twenty-year-old daughter of Dr. William Wood of Maysville.  In fairly rapid succession, the couple would have seven children.  Henry’s carefree days were over and as he approached the age of forty, according to T.M.G.: “…He found himself utterly impoverished, without a profession, or systematic business training or habits of industry;  and yet was made to realize that his individual exertions were the sole dependence of the woman who had trusted him and the children whom he loved.”

That apparently is about the time Henry I discovered a talent for making whiskey.  He went to work for O.H.P. Thomas who was operating a distillery he called the Old Time Distillery.  Thomas’ brands were “Old Time Sour Mash” and “Old Marysville Rye Club Whiskey.”  In time Pogue became chief distiller and in 1876 purchased the facility from Thomas.   Shown above, it subsequently it became Registered Distillery No. 3, located in the 7th District of Kentucky within the Maysville city limits.  At the time, 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.  

Pogue retained Thomas’ Old Time and Old Marysville Club brands and added a plethora of new ones, including "D.P.R. Rye" “Royal Club Rye,” "Old Pogue" Straight Bourbon, "Niagara Whisky," "Belle of Marysville,” "Old 56,” "Ace" Bourbon, “Oak Cabin” Bourbon, “John Alden Bourbon” “Good News” and "Lincoln Club.”   These were furnished with attractive labels, several shown below, and sold in both quart and flask sizes.

During the years that followed, the distillery prospered under Henry’s leadership.  His biographer lauded his untiring industry, dauntless energy, indomitable perseverance and sturdy manliness, adding:  “…He had become as careful and frugal as he had been negligent and prodigal….”   By 1900 the H.E. Pogue Distillery 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.”  Maryville was strategically located by water on the Ohio River and by rail on the Chesapeake and Ohio line.  Orders were being sent to Oklahoma, Arizona, and as far away as Japan.

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 plant machinery.  Biographer T.M.G. 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.”   Pogues’ death at 75 years old sent shockwaves through the community and devastated his family.

He already had turned over much of the management responsibility to his son, Henry II, shown right,  a scion who was well equipped to carry on the work his father had begun.  In time the son was producing up to 2,000 gallons of whiskey and carried a normal inventory of 15,000 barrels of aging whiskey.  Employment during peak periods reached 100 workers.  

Even before taking full control of the plant, Henry II had purchased a home for his family that became known as “The Pogue House.”  Shown here, it originally was built in 1845 by a local industrialist and one of the largest residences in Kentucky at the time.  The mansion sat on fifteen acres that included a sweeping ten mile vista of the Ohio River.  Pogue bought in it 1890 and immediately remodeled it to contemporary standards, including installing one of the first bathrooms in the county. 

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, shown right, who had worked in the distillery for several years, was then in military uniform. When World War One broke out, he had 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.  By this time the distillery mashing capacity had increased to 600 bushels a day and storage capacity to at least 27,000 barrels.

Less than one year later in 1919, National Prohibition arrived, prohibiting the sale of distilled spirits, including whiskey, except for medicinal purposes.  As might be expected, doctor-order prescriptions soared and Henry III, shown right,  was able to sell limited quantities of Pogue whiskey for medicinal use under the “Old Jordan” brand, aged to 18 years and 91 proof.  He also was able to purchase at “fire sale” prices two other distilleries.  The first in 1921 was the Greendale Distillery of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a plant that had produced “Spring Water” whiskey; the second in 1925 was the New England Distilling Co. of Covington, Kentucky, manufacturer of “Red Star” Rum, used as flavoring for tobacco products.

The H. E. Pogue Distillery ended its operations as a bonded storage warehouse for the government in 1926 when pilferage of whiskey from such facilities prompted the government to require that all remaining barrels be sent a Louisville warehouse under consolidated government supervision.  The plant then shut down for the next eight years.   With Repeal in 1934, Henry III became a consultant for those attempting to restart distilleries.  For his family business, he took a different approach in 1935.  As the Pogue Distillery website tells it:  “Still troubled by the early deaths of his father and grandfather, Pogue III did not want to reopen the Pogue distillery and instead negotiated the sale of the distillery to Rose of Chicago….”

While keeping the H.E. Pogue Distillery name intact, the Rose Company renovated the plant, including constructing three new warehouses holding 10,000 barrels each.  In 1945, Rose sold the distillery to the Schenley Corp. where it  produced alcohol for defense purposes.  After operating it for a few years, Schenley closed the facility for good in 1952.   

But distilling is in the blood of the family.  In 2004 the fifth and sixth generations of Pogues, direct descendants of Henry Pogue I, II, and III, including Henry IV and Henry V, returned to the whiskey business.  At first out-sourcing production,  the family has opened a new Old Pogue Distillery in Maysville and is producing a premium nine-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, said to be fashioned from an original Pogue recipe.  

The company website proclaims:  “As one of Kentucky’s oldest whiskey families, the Pogue family is pleased to offer products never changed or cheapened in character and has never compromised quality for quantity.”  While some hyperbole may be involved here, the nation’s bourbon drinkers are clearly benefited by the re-entry of the Pogues into distilling.  One of the new brands is called “Five Fathers,”  a rye whiskey.  The label, shown below, pictures all five Henry Pogues, a silent but entirely fitting tribute to the triumphs — and tragedies — of this extraordinary Kentucky family.

Note:  The Pogue photographs and liquor labels are taken from the Old Pogue Distillery website, www.oldpogue.com/products.  The site contains additional information about the history of these Kentucky distillers and their company.

Mrs. Mary Moll: Selling Whiskey with “Wonderful Business Tact”

 In 1902, the Pennsburg, Pennsylvania “Town and Country” newspaper, under the headline “Woman Successfully Conducts Liquor Business,”  made the following comment:  “The history connected with this lady's business career is most interesting. Mrs. Moll, when she took possession of the business, had many obstacles to overcome but, being a woman of wonderful business tact, she bravely fought the many unpleasant features connected with the business and successfully built up a trade far superior to any in this country.”   That was Mary Moll, one of a handful of American women who pursued the whiskey trade for an extended period and found success.

Mary Moll’s story begins in the 1880s when Nathaniel B. Moll began a liquor business near Green Lane, a tiny hamlet in the northern regions of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.  Shown above, despite its rural appearance, Green Lane was a reasonable location for a liquor dealership. It had road and rail access to markets, including the nearby Philadelphia metropolitan area.  

Nathaniel was a native Pennsylvanian, born about 1834.  My surmise is that early on he worked in agriculture, perhaps pursuing the tradition of the farmer-distiller, so common in that day.  His first wife was Sarah, like him a Pennsylvanian by birth. They married when he was about 26 and she was 20.  In quick succession, they had three daughters,  Alice, Mary Agnes, and Sarah.  Perhaps as a result of childbirth, Sarah died in February, 1866, age 25 years, one month and twelve days.

Perhaps looking for a mother for his three young girls,  Nathaniel married a second time.  This bride was Mary.  She too was a native Pennsylvanian, born in 1848, and twelve years younger than her husband.  Perhaps they had met through the Friedens Union Church, shown here.  The Friedens Church had been organized in 1858 by German-speaking Christians living in Montgomery County.  It was a “union” church, serving both Lutheran and German Reformed congregations.  Unlike some Protestant denominations, neither group frowned on the consumption of alcohol.  

The 1880 federal census found the couple living in Green Lane together. Mary’s occupation was given as “keeping house; Nathaniel’s as “liquor dealer.”  He carried on the business successfully for more than another decade, along the way bringing his wife increasingly into the business.  Out of his prosperity in the liquor business he built his family a splendid five story house.  It is shown here with, I believe, the Molls’ three grown daughters on the balcony at left and Mary, the stepmother, at right.  

In September 1891, Nathaniel died and was buried in the Frieden Church Cemetery.  His grave marker is shown here.  Some wives might have looked to sell her husband’s business to the first bidder.  Not so Mary.  She set out not only to run the liquor dealership, but also to expand it.   

With the Moll girls now grown, Mary was free to travel.  Her first instinct was to go on the road as a “drummer,”  and give customers and potential customers her personal attention to make sales.  The strategy worked and she was credited with ultimately tripling the business.   After three years, however, Mary tired of traveling.  Looking at the costs-benefits she concluded she could build her trade more effectively by staying home.  She advertised widely that she had no agents or traveling men, and never went out herself.  By cutting sales expenses and paying no commissions, she contended, she could pass the savings on to her customers.  According to the local press:  “She now sells her liquors 50 cents a gallon cheaper than when on the road.”

Mrs. Moll did not skimp on things she though were essential to her marketing efforts.  Shown below is a clear flask that has her name embossed on it, an added expense for a bottle.  She also issued trade cards that depicted a bucolic rural environment, with a stream and a herd of sheep in the background.  It likely replicated scenes around Green Lane.  These were given out to customers with her advertising on the back.

Mary also believed in selling high grade liquor.  According to press accounts, in 1901 she received a shipment of five barrels of whiskey reputed to be twenty years old.  After sampling it, she found the quality high and immediately ordered twenty-five more barrels.  The product was Pennsylvania rye, made in 1881 that had been sent on a ocean journey to Bremen, Germany in 1894.  Not only was the trip — salt air and the rolling motion of the ship — claimed to increase whiskey quality, the move also avoided some federal taxes.  Her shipment remained in Germany for six years and then returned by sea to the United States.  The local paper reported: “Of the five barrels received by Mrs. Moll when first filled each contained 44 1/2 gallons. When Mrs. Moll received them the barrels contained from 14 to 20 gallons a piece.”  The result was reputed to be among the choicest and rarest liquors.

By this time, according to the press, Mary Moll was selling three hundred barrels of whiskey a year.  Although not a rectifier, that is a dealer mixing and blending her own brands, she was decanting the barrels into her own embossed glass containers, shown here.  That number of barrels would have resulted in 53,400 quarts of whiskey to be sold.  Her offerings were almost entirely Pennsylvania distilled rye.  A 1900 news story said she had just received in the past two weeks, 211 barrels, “of very pure rye whiskey that was made at three of the best distilleries in the State.”  Because she had contracted for this output, the story indicated, she had paid $6,803.32 in federal revenues on those barrels, equivalent to about $170,000 today.  

Mrs. Moll’s access to rail lines was a major advantage.  Her barrels of whiskey were shipped to her in large lots,  reputedly saving her money and allowing her to undersell competitors.   She also was able to market her whiskey by rail in crate lots to customers in other parts of Pennsylvania and on the East Coast.  The press reported that representatives of the Star Union Railroad Company had visited her at her home and tried to get her to agree to ship her whiskeys exclusively over their line.  Her business meant something.

Mary Moll died in Green Lane in 1910 while still running her liquor business. She was 64.  That appears to have been the end of the Moll company, there being no one else to take over for her.  She was buried in the Friedens Union Church Cemetery, not far from the burial places of Nathaniel Moll and his first wife, Sarah.  Her grave marker is shown here.

Fred Minnick has written an interesting book on “Whiskey Women,” detailing the effects that women, past and present, have had on the American liquor trade.  Somehow, he overlooked Mary Moll in his otherwise comprehensive treatment of the subject.   It was a significant oversight.  As one Pennsylvania news outlet commented in 1901:  Mrs. Moll is considered to be the most successful liquor dealer in the vicinity,”

J.C. Wilmerding Went from Riches to Rags to Riches

 A secondary school in San Francisco is named for J.C. Wilmerding, a philanthropist who left his affluent New York home at the age of sixteen to make his fortune in the West.  He initially found only poverty but despite his lack of education, his intelligence and energy in the liquor trade ultimately brought him fame, fortune, and the resources to help other young men.

Jellis (sometimes given as Jillis) Clute Wilmerding was born in Moscow (now Leicester), a village in western New York in 1833.  He would be known throughout his life as “Clute.” His father was Henry Augustus Wilmerding, a well-off commission merchant and auctioneer with a reputation as “enterprising in business, of unquestioned integrity, and a very affable and pleasant gentleman.”  His mother was Nancy Clute who bore Augustus four children.

Clute’s life changed forever when he was 13 years old.  His mother, with whom he was very close, died and two years later his father married again, this time to Harriet Kellogg.  Henry Augustus would have six more children by this second wife.  Whether Clute did not get along with his stepmother or other reasons stemming from the changed situation at home, he determined to end his education early and seek his fortune in the West.  In 1850, when he was barely sixteen, he borrowed $5,000 from his father, and with his cousins, Edward and Felix Tracy, chartered a schooner, the Samuel M. Fox.  Built in a Manhattan shipyard, it was a brand new vessel.  The young adventurers filled it with merchandise, their goal California where the “Gold Rush” was at its height.

Wilmerding’s New York passport application for the trip contained no photograph but the document provided a physical description of the young man.  Clute was five feet, eight inches, tall, likely almost fully grown. His Dutch ancestry was evident.  He had blue eyes and brown hair.  His face was described as oval, with a high forehead, a “stout” nose, a large mouth, a round chin and an overall florid complexion.  Further identifying him was a scar on his right temple and a crippled hand.

With his cousins, Wilmerding sailed on the schooner from New York City, around Cape Horn, and reached San Francisco in September, 1849.  They pitched a tent on a beach about the spot where the Bank of California now stands at California and Sansome Streets and began to sell their wares.  The enterprise not successful, however, and Clute found himself virtually penniless far from home and owing his father a large sum of money.  In addition he had caught the gold fever sweeping the state and for the next year went prospecting.  That too failed to pan out and he returned to San Francisco determined to get a job and earn enough money to repay his father.  By dint of hard work over ensuing months he succeeded in paying off that debt.

Then his fortunes brightened.  As a 1928 biography tells it: “In addition to the amount which he had paid his father, he had saved a few thousand dollars and intended to go back to the mines and start a store. He missed the boat, which was to have taken him to Sacramento, and as there was but one boat a week, he was going back from the wharf to his lodging wondering what he would do next, when he chanced to meet a Mr. Fargo, whom he knew slightly and who offered him a position as a salesman.”  What this account leaves out is that Fargo & Company was a liquor business.

The firm had been founded in San Francisco about 1865 by Earl and Jerome Fargo,  located at 214-216 Front Street.   Wilmerding was an immediate success in the whiskey trade.  Within a few years he was given an interest in the Fargo enterprise.  He was joined as a co-worker by Calvin W. Kellogg, possibly a relative of his mother.  About 1860, Wilmerding and Kellogg bought the firm, ultimately changing the name to Wilmerding, Kellogg & Company.

The company featured a limited number of brands.  One of them, “Days of 49.” was illustrated by a giveaway saloon sign with an attractive Western scene featuring Indians, cowboys and cattle.  It may have reminded Wilmerding of his own arrival in California that year.  A second label was a riff on his partner’s name showing up as “Kellogg,” “Kellogg’s,” and “Kellogg’s AA.”  He trademarked those brands in 1906.

Kellogg AA Old Bourbon was the flagship whiskey. Likely a blend and not bourbon, it sold with a striking gold and red label in quarts and flasks.  Under the paper label the bottle was embossed with the company name , the brand name, and San Francisco.  The Kellogg bottle also boasted a fancy silver cork closure held in place by a foil wrapper.  Like many local whiskey outfits, Wilmerding, Kellogg also gave away etched shot glasses with advertising.  

During this period, Wilmerding was increasingly recognized as a leading business and community leader, his success attributed by a biographer to his “genial and sympathetic nature.”  He is was accounted one of the most influential members of famous but controversial 1856 San Francisco Committee of Vigilance. These were groups of leading citizens who banded together to fight lawlessness and corruption in the Western tradition.  Together with an earlier committee,  these vigilantes were responsible for hanging eight presumed criminals and forcing a number of corrupt officials to resign.  In operation for only three months, the committee issued numbered medallions, shown here, to its members like Wilmerding.  Note the “All-Seeing Eye,” connoting vigilance.

Wilmerding also was active in more benign organizations.  The 1871-1872 records of the Society of California Pioneers listed him as one of its directors.  He was active in The Mercantile Library, the Academy of Sciences, a member of the Pacific Union Club of San Francisco and, with periodic visits there, of New York’s Union Club.  At the Republican National Convention of 1880 he was a California delegate.

In 1877 Calvin Kellogg departed the company.  Wilmerding continued to run the liquor business by himself for the next nineteen years, but for a time is recorded as having a silent partner named John Haviland.  Wilmerding introduced a new whiskey to the line of liquors, calling it “Larry’s Rye Whiskey.”  Shown here is a labeled quart bottle, front and back.  Embossed on the front is “32 ounces,”  emphasizing a full quart.  The back is embossed with the elaborate company logo and “Larry’s Whiskey.” One writer has speculated that this brand may not have been a good seller since it was never trademarked.

Clute Wilmerding never married but amassed a considerable fortune from his whiskey trade, as well as from important banking interests.   His generosity to a range of San Francisco charities was well known, many of them to assist children, in whom he is said to have had a special interest.  His contributions ranged from the Protestant Orphan Asylum, to the Hospital for Children, to the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association.  But his dream was to create a school “to teach boys trades, fitting them them to make a living with their hands, with little study and plenty of work.”

Some have traced Wilmerding’s passion for a vocational school back to having left home so early, with no opportunity to acquire a trade.  It has been suggested he felt the lack of one when he recalled his own grinding poverty in San Francisco as his early attempts to earn a living largely failed.  One biographer has speculated:  “Perhaps his early hardships in California, coming on him so suddenly, made him look with greater fondness of his interrupted boyhood.” 

As his health deteriorated in 1893, Wilmerding made elaborate legal arrangements to provide money for a educational institution that would be called  “The Wilmerding School of Industrial Arts” by willing it to the Regents of the University of California who were to create the school.  For the purpose, he left $400,000, the equivalent of $10 million today.  In February 1884, Wilmerding died.  

After his death the California Board, respecting his wishes, established the Wilmerding School, beginning its operations in buildings located next to the California School of Mechanical Arts, also known as the Lick School after its founder.  Over time the Wilmerding School merged with the Lick School and later with a training school for girls.  The main building is shown above as it looked in the 1930s.  Today it is known as the Lick-Wilmerding School and considered a prestige educational institution from which many students go on to college.

After Wilmerding’s passing, his company was bought by Louis Loewe.   Loewe had been part of a San Francisco liquor dealership known as Loewe Bros. that apparently had terminated operations the previous year.  Given the prestige associated with the founder’s name, the new owner called the revamped business the Wilmerding, Loewe Company and continued its popular whiskey brands.  This firm moved several times, once as the result of the San Francisco earthquake and fire.  National Prohibition forced it to close in 1919.

In death, Wilmerding’s left San Francisco, the city where he had made his fortune.  His body was carried back by train to New York and Trinity Cemetery where members of his family were interred.  Earlier he had donated $10,000 to be used for maintaining and improving that graveyard, with an emphasis on preserving the burial place of his beloved mother, Nancy.  J.C. is buried adjacent to her, his father, and other family members.  Wilmerding’s “riches to rags to riches” life had come full circle.

Note:  Much has been written about the philanthropic efforts of Jellis Clute Wilmerding.  Virtually all of the articles, each praising his generosity, omit any reference to the source of his money — the whiskey trade.  It is as if the money dropped out of the sky on him, so sensitive has been the subject.  I hope this post will assist in correcting the record of Wilmerding’s life.

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