Peoria’s Woolners: Deals, Disaster & Discord

Worthy of a novel, the Hungarian-born five Woolner Brothers held sway among Peoria, Illinois, distillers for almost 45 years, amid a whirlwind of “deals” good and bad, fires and a horrific disaster, and discord among the siblings.  At the center of events was Samuel Woolner, shown here, best remembered as co-founder of the first Whiskey Trust.

The Woolners came from Szentendre (meaning St. Andrew), the Hungarian riverside town between Budapest and the Pilis-Visegrad Mountains shown below.  Their father, Solomon, is said to have been a distiller.  In order of their births, the brothers were Jacob (1829), Ignatius (1839), Adolph (1841), Samuel (1845) and Morris (1847).  Adolph is the first Woolner to be recorded in America, arriving about 1863 0r 1864.  He was followed soon after by Ignatius and Samuel. 

 

Initially the young men worked as itinerant salesmen.  Adolph made his way by selling housewares in Ohio.  Samuel’s biographer indicates that he too was a peddler of merchandise, a common profession for male Jewish immigrants.  With distilling being “in their blood,” and saving their money, the three brothers joined together in 1871 to purchase the Grove Distillery in Peoria, known in Federal records as Registered Distillery #24, 5th District. The brothers named their enterprise “Woolner  &  Company.”  Subsequently they were joined in America and whiskey-making by Jacob and Morris.

Beginning with the purchase of the Grove Distillery, the Woolners set out to dominate the vibrant and growing Peoria liquor industry.  Not long after their first acquisition, they also bought and expanded the Atlas Distillery (RD #20. 5th Dist.), later reputed to be the largest distillery in the world.  Over the years the family would be responsible for buying and selling multiple liquor manufacturing plants. 

The Woolners issued a “blizzard” of whiskey brands.  They included:  "Better Times,” "Canterbury Rye,” “Cronies,” “Donnybrook," “Eastland,” "Gilt Edge,” "Leetsdale Rye,” ”Mosswoods,” "Old Cronies Rye,” "Old Grove Pure Rye,” ”Old Measure,” "Rock Cave,” "Satin Finish Spirits,” “Sparland,” "W. B. Bourbon,” "Woolner's Dry Gin,” "Woolner's Excelsior,” "Woolner's S. M." and "Woolner's Satin Finish.”

With the five brothers all assuming management roles and Samuel emerging as their leader, Woolner holdings grew steadily, including the Peoria Grape Sugar works, financed with $100,000 in stock.  They also created the Union Distillery in Peoria and built a five story headquarters building at the corner of Adams and Fulton Streets in downtown Peoria, appropriately named The Woolner Building.  The reported worth of their firm grew to more than $5 million in today’s dollar, “an accumulation of a few brief years, through business energy and judicious management,” commented one observer.  Beginning as indigent immigrants attempting to make a living by peddling, the Woolners had emerged as a major force in American distilling.

Despite their personal success,  Adolph and Samuel became entranced by the idea of consolidating the liquor industry in Peoria and perhaps beyond.  There were just too many U.S. distilleries making too much whiskey for too small a market, depressing prices.  The Standard Oil Trust created in 1882 showed a potential way to control liquor production. Five years later a group of Peoria distillers came together to form the Distillers & Cattle Feeders Corp., an organization that became known as the first “Whiskey Trust.”  After the Trust formed in May of 1887, 65 distilleries joined, including 24 in Illinois. Peoria had 12—more than any other city in America.  Joseph Greenhut of Peoria was elected president, and the headquarters was located in the Illinois city.

From the outset Samuel was a major force in the attempt at a monopoly.  This became clear when Greenhut hired a Japanese scientist, Dr. Jokici Takamine, to develop a faster and cheaper method of fermentation, hoping to sell Trust whiskey at a price undercutting the competition. He entrusted this “hush-hush” project to the Woolners.  Takamine’s laboratory, under heavy security, was located in the malt house of the Woolner's Grove Distillery.  In 1894, their Manhattan Distillery in Peoria was converted to use Takamine’s process.  Shortly after the Japanese scientist’s equipment was installed, however, the building caught fire, a blaze of suspicious origin.  Some blamed the conflagration on malt manufacturers and their workers who prepared traditional distillery enzymes from barley malt.  They reputedly had expressed strong objections to Takamine’s method, fearing for their economic future.

Meanwhile, Samuel was busy working to add new properties to the Trust.  Apparently approaching the proprietors as if he was buying their distilleries for the Woolner interests, he was able to engineer the sales of the Star, Crescent, Central, and Nebraska distilleries, deals worth some $25 million in today’s dollar. 

Samuel’s commissions from these transactions were alleged to reached into the hundreds of thousands. Now very wealthy, he became prominent in the Illinois banking world as director and vice president of the German-American National Bank and a major stockholder in several Chicago banks.

Samuel was able to move his family into a Peoria showpiece mansion home, shown here.  He is said to have served in every office of the Peoria Board of Trade and as a Republican was elected to the Peoria Common Council for eight two-year terms.  Hailed for his philanthropy, Samuel was president of the Cleveland Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites, a director of an orphan asylum, and a contributor to many non-Jewish causes.  An 1890 biography in a Peoria compendium said of this Woolner:  “While shrewd in business transactions, he is honorable in his dealings, interested n the upbuilding of the city and its advancement as an educational center, and he, therefore, enjoys an excellent reputation and has many warm personal friends.”

The past, however, had not been 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 pledged to rebuild.  Amidst 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.  A man identified as Max Woolner, likely a nephew, was killed instantly.  Ignatius, 41, the brother who likely was supervising the operation, was badly burned and died that night.

Samuel’s reaction to this tragedy has gone unrecorded.  As time went by, the Whiskey Trust for which he had exerted so much effort began to unravel.  The organization was plagued with a reputation for violence, lack of promised remuneration to member distillers, and a flawed business plan.  On April 10, 1898, the Chicago Tribune headlined “GREENHUT IN FOR IT…Is Charged with “Absorbing” $225,000 Whisky Funds…First Suit Is Begun.”  Samuel as a Trust officer was sued as a Greenhut co-defendant.  Accused of having wrongly diverted money from distillery purchases, Woolner fought back.  The Tribune opined that Samuel “has his war paint on and having withdrawn from…[the Trust]…is arranging to start a fight” against his accusers.

In resigning Samuel was aligning himself with several large rebel Illinois distillers and smaller independents who had brought the suit.  By making common cause with the accusers, he apparently was able to avoid further legal troubles.  The Hungarian immigrant was still enamored with the idea of a whiskey monopoly, however, and when a new Trust formed out of the rubble of the old one, he joined.

This led to what one newspaper headlined:  “Brothers at War.”  Apparently registering his objection to the first Whiskey Trust, Jacob Woolner had left the family firm in 1887 and set up on his own, building and operating the Union Brewery in Peoria.  In December 1898, Jacob announced that he was re-entering the distilling business by purchasing the Great Eastern distillery and upgrading it as an independent competitor against the new manifestation of the Trust. “It is understood that Samuel Woolner was placed in a very peculiar position by his elder brother’s unexpected announcement…,”  one newspaper suggested.

Samuel told reporters he had been given a vice presidency and a salary in the new combine in return for a promise that neither he nor any of his brothers would compete:  “Sam stated that he represented the entire Woolner interest and that if he were taken care of no trouble need be feared from any of the family.”  In retaliating against his brother, Sam now called in deeds and mortgages against Jacob equivalent to $573,000 today.  Exactly how this battle of the brothers was resolved, I have been unable to discover.

Jacob died in 1909, followed by Samuel in 1911. Alolph had preceded them in 1891.  This left the youngest brother Morris to guide the family fortunes.  When Prohibition was enacted, the company was sold to US Food Products, a company formed from the remnants of the second Trust that ultimately became the National Distillers Products Company. 

At least four of the Woolner brothers, including Samuel and Jacob, and members of their families, are interred in Peoria’s Springdale Cemetery and Mausoleum. Despite the disasters and disputes that fractured the Woolner family in life they have reunited in death.

Note:  This vignette has been gathered from a variety of sources, some cited in the text.  Of particular help was an undated article by Bernie Drake, past president of the Peoria Historical Society.  The two cartoons are from a Japanese comic book. Two previous posts on this website have dealt with other principals involved in the Peoria Whiskey Trust:  Jokici Takamine, August 5, 2018, and Joseph Greenhut, September 23, 2019.