James Bell’s Alcohol Fueled Paterson’s Growth

Often this website has told the story of remarkable “whiskey men” who have played pivotal roles in the growth and development of their home towns.  None has been more important to his community than James Bell of Paterson, New Jersey.

Shown right, Bell was born in 1835 in County Down, Northern Ireland, where his family owned a linen factory.  Although details are scant about his boyhood, it might be surmised that James was a younger son and not likely to inherit the business.  Being of an adventurous spirit he determined at the age of 19 to immigrate to America.  His steamer was shipwrecked off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island.  Emerging unhurt, Bell immediately proceeded to Boston and found employment in the rubber business.

After six years in that trade and saving his money, in 1860 Bell relocated 330 miles southwest to Paterson, New Jersey, and opened a wholesale and retail wine and liquor business.  Identified as “The James Bell Company,” the proprietor located it initially at the corner of Progress & Congress Streets.  After several years of success at that location, needing considerably more space, he moved in 1889 to Market Street, financing the large three story structure shown here. It became known as the Bell Building. 

This additional space allowed Bell to expand his wholesale liquor business by selling whiskey in large ceramic jugs to establishments that sold it by the drink across the bar.  The Paterson business directory in 1880 listed 140 liquor dealers in the city, then with a population just over 50,000.  Bell was only one of six dealers selling at wholesale.  Bell advertised as the sole agent for the Mellwood Distillery of Kentucky and for the rye and bourbon brands of the Gaff Distillery of Aurora, Illinois. [See my post on Gaff, July 8, 2018]. Bell also featured two proprietary whiskeys, “Kentucky Darling” and “Kentucky Nectar.”  Those brands came in both rye and bourbon. 

An article in a local publication gushed that Bell was providing “productions of the most noted distillers of the country,” adding: “He also makes a specialty of supplying hotels, saloons, private families, and druggists with a pure, unadulterated article of liquors, and has gained a standard reputation for reliability not surpassed by any other dealer in the city.”  The Northern Irish immigrant also was finding liquor sales extremely lucrative.

 For his retail trade Bell sold his alcoholic products in glass  bottles, in sizes ranging from half-pints to pints and quarts.  Those had labels identifying his  brands as well as embossing on the containers that emphasized the 1860 founding date.  The half pints contained the words “full measure” and the pints and quarts “honest.”  As shown here, these bottles came clear and various shades of amber, blue and purple.

In the meantime, James found a wife.  She was Jane Waddell, sometimes known as “Jennie,” also an immigrant from Northern Ireland. The couple would have two children over their married life, Henry born in 1862 and George in 1866. The 1870 federal census found the couple living in the Third Ward of Paterson.  Asked to provide figures on his assets by the census, Bell estimated them at $90,000, equivalent to almost $2 million today.  Before long he would buy the Hilliard Mansion, shown here, for the family home in Paterson.

Bell’s liquor-fueled wealth also allowed him to become active in the development of Paterson’s neighborhoods and industries, as well as modernizing transportation and other public services.   Among the whiskey dealer’s contributions:

• In 1866 Bell organized a land improvement company in the Riverside district of Paterson with the purpose of developing that section of the city.  The syndicate under his leadership induced the New Jersey Midlands Railroad — later the New York, Susquehanna & Western — to lay its tracks through Patterson by buying a $15,500 stake in the line and donating land for the tracks.

• When Riverside Land Improvement dissolved in 1872, Bell claimed one-fourth of the property owned by the company, amounting to some 1,000 lots.  Of them Bell donated an estimated 90 to bring new industries to Paterson, sometimes erecting the manufacturing facilities.  His investments included silk mills and a plant that wove tapestries.

• According to a biographer:  “He had large interests in the Passaic and Orange oil companies and in the Excelsior and Empire oil companies, the latter being the first companies of their kind organized in the country.”

• Bell obtained the charter and organized People’s Gas Light Co. of Paterson, credited with reducing the price of gas to consumers from $3.80 to $1.50 per thousand units.  He also helped form the Paterson & Little Falls horse trolley company, improving transit to and from that nearby New Jersey town.  Wrote a another biographer:  “He takes a leading position among the foremost in the advancement of every enterprise that has for its object the general benefit of all classes of the citizens….”

  

Bell continued to run his liquor establishment and maintain civic involvement up to his death at the age of 59 in December 1894.  He was buried in Section 11, Lot 9, in Paterson’s Cedar Lawn Cemetery.  James Bell’s life personified that of many “whiskey men” who used their wealth for the civic and economic advancement of their cities. The fruits of his enterprise continued to be enjoyed for decades as Paterson tripled in size from Bell’s day to ours. 

Note:  This post has relied heavily on two biographical articles written during James Bell’s lifetime, that were reprinted without dates or other attribution on the website of the New Jersey Bottle Forum, March 7, 2013. Some of the images found here are also from that source.