When Thomas M. Morrissey died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1943, the local press provided him with a laudatory obituary that cited his contributions to civic advancement as well as his important local business interests, Mississippi River boats, and prize-winning cattle ranch. Nowhere was it mentioned that Morrissey got his start by selling liquor.
Shown here in maturity, Tom Morrissey was born in September 1874 in Killmacomma, Waterford County , Ireland, the son of Timothy and Mary Fitzgerald Morrissey. According to family members, when his mother died and his father was unable to raise the children, Tom was sent to the United States to live with an uncle in Vicksburg, apparently a saloonkeeper. Tom was given an elementary education at Saint Aloysius School run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. Relations with his uncle were not easy, however, and the youngster quit school, leaving Vicksburg to do farm labor in Kansas.
Indicating his entrepreneurial bent, Morrissey returned to Vicksburg in 1895 and at the age of 21 went into business for himself. Although his obituary failed anywhere to mention his beginnings in the liquor trade, indications are that he opened a drinking establishment at 355 Levee Street, overlooking the Mississippi. The photo below shows the Vicksburg waterfront as it looked in the early 1900s. The T.M. Morrissey Saloon can be seen just above the steamboat at right.
By 1906, Morrissey’s success was such that he opened a second location at 124 Levee Street, one he listed as a restaurant. He was advertising heavily in the Vicksburg city directory, featuring multiple vertical page ads that that advertised “T.M. Morrissey: Dealer in Wines, Liquors, Cigars & Tobacco.” He also was an agent for F.W. Cook, a brewing company in Evansville, Indiana.
As many saloonkeepers of his time, Morrissey soon recognized that selling whiskey in two gallon jugs was less labor intensive and more lucrative than hustling liquor drink by drink over the bar. There is no evidence that he was a “rectifier,” that is, blending and labeling his own brands of liquor. My guess is that Morrissey was buying whiskey by the barrel from Midwest distillers, shipping them to Vicksburg via the Mississippi River, decanting them directly into jugs with his name on them, and selling them to the public and other local saloons. Shown here are examples of his containers.
-%20L.jpg)
As he was building his business, Tom also was having a personal life. in November, 1899, at the age of 25 he married Josephine “Josie” Romano, born in Salerno Italy, the daughter of Andrea and Angelina Romano. The beautiful woman shown right, Josie was only 15 at the time of their nuptials, ten years younger than Tom. Perhaps as a present to her family, Morrissey built a third saloon on Levee Street, in the 1200 block. Called the Steamboat Exchange Saloon, in 1907 its operation was given to Josie’s brother, Sam Romano.
Neither Romano or Morrissey would be in the Vicksburg saloon trade much longer. For years prohibitionary forces had been growing stronger in Mississippi and in 1908 culminated in a statewide ban on making or selling alcohol. This ban was 12 years before National Prohibition. Unlike his fellow publicans, Morrissey is not on record commenting on the situation. He was busy calculating a new strategy, one that would launch him onto the Mississippi River.
Morrissey rented docking space on the Louisiana side of the Yazoo Canal, a channel that served as a border between states. He opened a floating bar and, as per the ad shown here, would go to the Mississippi side to pick up and return customers. So successful was this enterprise that Morrissey soon expanded by introducing gambling, a restaurant and entertainment. As his grandson, Jesse F. Jones III noted in 1943: “He literally had a monopoly on the sale of whiskey to the thirst citizens of Vicksburg and surrounding towns. He prospered, purchased the Louisiana property known as Desoto Island…and when a bridge was built across the Mississippi at Vicksburg he bought all of the land on the Louisiana side of the bridge thereby assuring himself of a continued monopoly on whiskey sales to Mississippi.”
Vickburg local artisan Victor Bobb observed: “One time Old Man Morrissey, he put him a boat (The Charles J. Miller, shown here) down there….He was right on the line between the two states. The Louisiana people would get after him, and he’d just move the width of the boat over to the Mississippi side of the line. And the Mississippi people would get after him then and he would move over just the width of the boat again! They claim they spent half a million dollars trying to figure out if he was in Louisiana or Mississippi.”
Morrissey’s vessels became part of a fleet of steamboats plying the Big River from New Orleans to Memphis. Among them were The Ben Hur, The J. H. Menge, The S.B. Duncan, The Falls City, and The Rosalie M. Morrissey’s flagship was the Belle of the Bend. Shown below, that steamer once brought President Theodore Roosevelt to Vicksburg for the hunt that gave the world the Teddy Bear. During the flood of 1913 Morrissey’s boats did rescue work bringing many families and their possessions out of the high water areas. Up and down the river he bore the honorary title of Commodore but he was better known by the populace as “Captain Tom.”
As his shipping enterprise grew, Morrissey, perhaps also reflecting his youth in Kansas, invested in farm land. His Eagle Lake plantation was 6,700 acres of good bottom land located beside an 18 mile lake that had been a bend in the Mississippi River until it changed its course. There he raised prize cattle, said to be “one of his prides.” Four other plantations were devoted solely to cotton. He took personal control of those farms, often leaving for them at dawn and returning at nightfall. It is said that he always carried a pistol with him in the car.
Morrissey’s obituary emphasized his attention to family: "He was a devoted husband and a loving father and enjoyed home life.” Shown here, the Morrissey home was a large rambling structure built by slaves in 1831 as one story and gradually expanded over several owners to the house shown here. Originally designed in a Greek Revival Style, the house later was remodeled with Italianate features. For all of Morrisey’s success, his and Josephine’s personal lives had been marked by all too frequent sorrow. Their marriage produced ten children over a period of 26 years, one son, Michael, and nine daughters. Of those, three girls died in infancy: Mary at two in 1905; Alice, within a year, in 1922; and Antoinette, within a year, in 1926.
In later years, Morrissey stayed closer to Vicksburg with his enterprises. The 1935 Vicksburg city directory provided insights into his multi-faceted activities. At 60 years old “Captain Tom” was listed as the president of a wholesale beverages company; president of the Morrissey Line, a river freight service; general manager of Morrissey Storage Garage, Inc., and vice president of Morrissey Construction Co., headed by his son, Michael. To this litany, his obituary added “real estate and banking interests.”
Widely recognized as an economic and, according to family members, political force in Vicksburg, Morrissey continued to direct the fortunes of his business empire until his death at 68. After what was described as “a short illness,” he died at home on Sunday, March 28, 1943. He was extolled in the local press: “He was a loyal friend and his word was his bond. He was most happy when aiding and assisting others along life's roadway.Through his kindness and generosity many have benefited.”
While giving the family time to assemble for his funeral, Morrissey’s wake at the family home lasted three days. Jesse Jones described the scene: “What was particularly noteworthy was the day the Blacks attended his wake. This was the segregated South and they all came on one day. I remember looking out the window upstairs in the Big House and seeing them in their best dress coming to say good bye to Captain Tom. My sister Nina has the registry that they signed. Since many were illiterate there are lots of X's in the book. There are also lots of nicknames that he had given them over the years, Son Ab, Dusty, Shortstuff, Little Bit, Peter Rabbit, etc.”
The funeral for Captain Tom is said to have been one of the largest in Vicksburg’s history. There were 46 honorary pallbearers, a number that included U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo and Vicksburg Mayor J.C. Hamillton. Following a solemn procession from the Morrissey home to St. Paul’s Catholic Church, a Requiem Mass was offered. Interment was at Cedar Hill Cemetery. Josephine would join him there 23 years later. The Morrissey monument and graves are shown below.
A cast-off pre-teen Irish boy, sent to live with an unwelcoming relative in a strange Southern city in the aftermath of the Civil War, Tom Morrissey blossomed in that environment and died a self-made millionaire. Although ignored in his obituaries, for a quarter century until National Prohibition arrived in 1920, Captain Tom ran saloons and sold liquor; his business empire was built on alcohol.
Addendum: Not long after this vignette was posted the article that follows became available. Dated July 29, 1803, it makes clear some of the reasons Morrissey was so popular in the black community. It describes how he traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, to provide an alibi and free a black man scheduled to be hanged the next day for a murder he did not commit.
Note: This post would not have been possible without the instigation and assistance of Kelly Stevens, the great granddaughter of Tom Morrissey. She provided information and the majority of the images. Other prime sources were the Morrissey obituary in the Vicksburg newspaper of March 29, 1943 and a memorial article by grandson Jesse Jones III in the Waterways Journal of April 10, 1943. The extended comment on Captain Tom’s floating saloon is from the book, “Local Color: A Sense of Place in Folk Art” by William Ferris, Anchor Books, 1982.
No comments:
Post a Comment