John Morrin Made Whiskey Where Buffalo Roamed

In Kansas City during the late 1880s, liquor dealer John Morrin faced a dilemma.  Although his proprietary brands of whiskey sold well in Missouri and neighboring states, he was finding it difficult to get whiskey to blend as numerous dealers vied for supplies and the Whiskey Trust fought to dominate markets.  By looking 600 miles east, Morrin found a small distillery in a Kentucky village named for a buffalo wallow — bought it and prospered.

Morrin was born on a farm in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, to Patrick and Honora Graham Morrin, both natives of Ireland.  He received his elementary and secondary education in Pennsylvania, moving to Missouri when he was 18 as his family sought a larger farmstead.  Apparently with some training as a bookkeeper, he moved to Kansas City where in 1881 he appears in city directories keeping the books for W.C. Glass wholesale liquor dealers.

Morrin apparently showed a strong aptitude for the whiskey trade and in 1883 was advanced to traveling salesman for Glass.  By 1887 he was performing the same work for another local liquor firm, Martin, Perry & Company.  Before long Morrin decided to start his own liquor house in Kansas City.  About 1890, with associates E. T. Powers as vice president and George Beamish as secretary,  he opened Morrin, Powers & Company on Delaware Street in Kansas City, the major thoroughfare shown below.   Within four years he changed the firm’s name to Morrin, Powers Mercantile Company.  

From the outset Morrin demonstrated a flair for advertising his whiskey brands. They included "Fairmount Club,” "Grand Canyon,” “Palmetto,” and "Setter Pure Rye.”  He trademarked Grand Canyon in 1905 and Fairmont Club and Palmetto whiskies in 1906. Initially “King Bourbon” was his flagship brand, along with “Setter Pure Rye.”  Shown here is a serving tray made of porcelain that advertises both brands.  It was made in Carlsberg, Austria, by the Victorian pottery factory and was a fairly pricey item to be gifted to the saloons and restaurant carrying Morrin’s whiskey.

Both brands warranted his issuing saloon signs, shown above, featuring a lion  on a King Bourbon print and a Setter Rye wall hanging.  To his customers Morrin also gave away a picture of a nude model lying on a bearskin rug next to a pile of her discarded clothing.  Interestingly, this sign does not advertise any specific whiskey.

In apparent effort to move beyond selling his own proprietary brands, Morrin looked to one of Kentucky’s premier distillers, Col. E. J. Taylor Jr. of Frankfort, Kentucky [See post on Taylor. January 10, 2015].  Two of Taylor’s most popular brands were Carlisle and O.F.C whiskeys.   Morrin advertised both vigorously as: “The most perfectly distilled of any on the market and their purity recommends them as especially desirable for medical use.”  

In another ad shown above, Morrin made an effort to distinguish his liquor house from the many other dealers in Kansas City by a series of claims:  “We import more liquors than all other firms on the Missouri River.” “We own more Straight Whiskies than all other Liquor Firms in Kansas City.”  “We carry more insurance than all other wholesale liquor firms in Kansas City.”  Morrin also claimed a one year increase in business amounting to $100,000, several millions in todays dollar.

Morrin’s boasts did nothing to ameliorate the dilemma, he was facing.  Supplies for his house brands were becoming increasingly expensive and more and more difficult to secure. The Whiskey Trust was buying out distilleries and shutting many down in an effort to increase prices for liquor stocks.  Morrin looked for opportunities to buy his own distillery.  In 1890 he found it in a place in called Stamping Ground, Kentucky, population 331.

Both the location and the distillery bore histories.  The area had gained its name, Stamping Ground to memorialize the American bison (buffalo) that once roamed there.  Before being wiped out by hungry settlers, the animals were attracted to the site by salt licks, availability of spring water, “seeps” for wallowing, and a tasty clover species the locals called “buffalo clover.” 

Originally constructed as a woolen mill, the building had been converted to a distillery by Robert Samuels.  Not a full time distiller, Samuels is said to have made a barrel of whiskey only occasionally and eventually was forced to dispose of the property at a sheriff’s sale in 1873.  A series of owners followed.  

The first was Kinzea Stone, shown here,  an entrepreneur with property holdings in nearby Georgetown,  Kentucky, and four other states.  Although Stone indicated an interest in producing and selling a whiskey commercially, other distractions intervened.  In 1882 he sold the distillery to the Crigler family of Cincinnati [See post on Crigler, January 10, 2012].  They began producing 15 gallons of whiskey a day under the name “Buffalo Springs.”  The company name became Mullins, Crigler & Company.  In time the Criglers departed and the name was changed once again to A. B. Mullins Company.

This was the distillery that John Morrin, in far off Kansas City, saw as an opportunity to break out of the dilemma of finding sufficient liquor to blend, bottle and merchandise.  In about 1890 he bought the plant, continuing to produce whiskey using the recipes from the Criglers.  Applying his talents as a salesman, according to whiskey historian Sam Cecil, Morrin’s distillery “soon made a wide reputation, particularly in the West.”  

Morrin’s two main brands were “Buffalo Springs,” a sour mash bourbon, and “Stamping Ground,” a rye whiskey  Other labels were “Buffalo Bourbon” and Scott County.”  By the mid-1890s, the Kansas City proprietor had increased distillery mashing capacity to 100 bushels a day and had four warehouses with capacity for aging 2,500 barrels.  Morrin issued a whetstone as a customer giveaway that emphasized the buffalo ties.

After almost a decade operating the Stamping Ground distillery, Morrin sold it to a Paris, Kentucky, partnership of Haynes & Trumble, whose company had been major customers for his whiskey  The reason for the sale may well have been the distance of the distillery from Kansas City.  A decade of constant travel between sites and the need for employee supervision from afar may have been wearing on Morrin and his family life.  

Like many young Irishmen, Morrin had married relatively late.  At 32 he wed Caroline, a woman just slightly younger, who apparently had been married earlier and brought two daughters, Juanita and Eulalia, to their union.  Morrin provided them with a large home in a fashionable neighborhood of Kansas City, shown here.  The household included one live-in maid.  

Despite the success of his Kansas City liquor house, Morrin could see his sales being curtailed by Prohibitionist pressures.  Missouri was safely “wet,” but one after another Western states were going “bone dry.”  Several years after selling the Buffalo Springs distillery, Morrin closed down his liquor business and retired to invest in other local enterprises.  Those included the Traders’ Bank of Kansas City and the city’s Racing and Fair Association.

Morrin lived long enough to see National Prohibition repealed, dying in 1934 at the age of 75.  He was buried in the Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery in nearby Holden, Missouri.  His memorial and gravestone are shown below.

 

After Repeal new ownership bought the the distillery and after a fire rebuilt it.  Shown below, as refurbished, the Stamping Grounds facility once again was turning out good whiskey.  In 1941 the property was purchased by Schenley who operated the plant for almost 20 years but shut it down in 1960.  Today all that remains of the distillery John Morrin put on the “whiskey map” is the old stone headquarters building. 

Note:  This post was created from a variety of sources.  Two primary references were “Bourbon in Kentucky, A History of Distilleries in Kentucky,” by Chester Zoeller, Butler Books, Louisville 2010, and “The Evolution of the Bourbon Whiskey Industry in Kentucky,” by Sam K. Cecil, Turner Publishing, Paducah KY, 2000.  Unfortunately I have been unable to find a picture of John Morrin to enchance this story but hope some alert reader may be able eventually to supply one.

The Edgar Kane Scandal — Booze and Bigamy in Brooklyn

While reporting on a lawsuit involving the estate of Edward Kane, a well known New York liquor dealer, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 19, 1909,  made this observation:  “Fiction has produced few stranger stories….”  While that may have been an exaggeration, the newspaper revealed a situation so bizarre that it might well have come from a novel.

Edward was not born “Kane,” generally considered of British or Irish origin. His birth surname was “Kohn” and he had been born in Germany about 1826.  He told the 1880 census taker his birthplace was “prison.”  Kane’s childhood days are lost in the mists of history but much of his extraordinary life upon arriving in the United States can be documented, including a surrounding cast of characters, several bearing the name Kane.

By the time Edward Kane arrived on these shores in 1865, he was 39 years old and  married.  His wife was Julia Bertha Kane.  Their only recorded child, a boy, was born in the U.S. in 1854.  He was Henry E. Kane, a son who figures in this story.  Granted citizenship in August, 1873, the Kanes settled in Brooklyn.  For unknown reasons, possibly related to her husband’s conduct, Julia left him in the mid-1870s and returned to Germany. She did not return to America until after Kane’s death.  There was no indication of a formal divorce.

Meanwhile Edward Kane was making his mark as a “whiskey man.”  From his main headquarters at 24 Union Street in Brooklyn, he rapidly expanded his outlets.  “From one liquor store to another and another, and finally he had a chain of them in Brooklyn and Manhattan.”   Kane advertised extensively by issuing trade cards featuring youngsters, often with their pets, with an advertisement on the reverse as a “Importer, Rectifier [blender], Wine and Liquor Merchant,”  Early cards, shown below listed two stores in Brooklyn, and one each in New York City, Jersey City, and Tompkinsville, Staten Island, a total of five.

Several years later the number of Kane’s liquor outlets had grown significantly as detailed on the reverse of the trade cards below,  Now there were eight liquor stores, four in Brooklyn, and one each in Manhattan, Jersey City and Staten Island, and a distant location in Stoney Brook, Long Island.  As before, Kane chose to advertise his stores through depictions of winsome youngsters on trade cards.

The Stoney Brook Grist Mill, founded about 1751 some 60 miles from Brooklyn, marked a new departure for Kane, although once again he chose child images on trade cards to advertise.  The rear of the two cards below describes the entrepreneur’s plan for the property designed to provide flour — “purer, sweeter, and more healthful than patent process can ever be” — and “delivery of all kinds of Grain and Feed in the market.”

In this way, Kane introduced his purchase of Stoney Brook Grist Mill, shown below as it looks today as a heritage site, adding:  “Having recently purchased the Stoney Brook Mill property and added new and improved machinery to do first class work and meet the requirements of the public, and being aware that success depends on the quality of the project as well as honest and just treatment, I extend a special invitation to the public to give me a trial, feeling assured of giving full satisfaction in price, quality, and business management.”  The opening of this mill may have been the high water mark of Edward Kane’s entrepreneurship.

As he entered middle-age, Kane’s attention increasingly seemed to focus on his personal life.  He had become enamored with a young woman named Annie Rose Gilzinger, born 1863 in Kingston, New York, the daughter of Margaret and Lewis Gilzinger. a wagon maker.  Annie Rose was about 37 years younger than her lover but they became a devoted couple, living together, despite Kane’s seeming lack of a divorce from Julia Bertha.  They had at least one child together, a girl, whom they named “Mamie.”  Legally adopted by Edward, she took his name and would play a part in the long roll-out of the family scandal.

With many stores to manage and now the distraction of his unusual family life, Kane recognized that he needed help.  Enter Henry D. Schwab, shown here, who first went to work as a bookkeeper at L. Kane & Company.  Proving to be a highly able employee, Schwab eventially was raised by Kane to a full partnership in the liquor empire he had created, sharing the complicated management burden.

Moreover, with advancing age Kane’s health began to falter.  While Annie Rose continued to care for him in his infirmities, their conjugal relationship ended after several years, as reported in her obituary, an article that openly recounted the liaison with the liquor dealer.  That account also reveals that while still caring for Kane, Annie Rose married another man.  His name was Simon Strauss, listed in Annie Rose’s obituary as the father of her next four children, namely Samuel, Carol, Edward, and Frances.  The official birth record for Samuel, however, lists Edward Kane as his father.  

When, after a long decline, Kane died on December 11, 1897, newspaper reports suggested suicide.  The Brooklyn Eagle said:  “…There was a possibility he died of carbolic acid poisoning. Self-administered.”  The prospect that Kane took his own life also was suggested when he registered his will just a week before his death.

Kane left his estate solely to his daughter Mamie and named her mother, now Annie Strauss, as the administrator.  In Annie’s petition filed with the court, Kane’s wealth, mostly real estate, was valued at $60,000, equivalent to more than $2 million today.  Indicating a severe decline of Kane’s fortunes near the end of his life, most of that value was “encumbered by mortgage, taxes, and other liens, which amount, in the aggregate, [is] about the value of the…real property.”  The net value of the liquor baron’s bequest to Annie and family was about $10,000.

Edward’s son,  Henry E. Kane, on behalf of himself and his mother,  Bertha,  still married to Kane, initally made an effort to contest the will.  The effort drew Bertha back to the United States after decades in Germany.  For several  years Henry had played an important but subordinate role in the operation of the Kane liquor empire, apparently responsible for managing several liquor stores.  The whiskey jug shown here bears his name.  Henry at some point seemingly disappointed his father who turned to Henry Schwab as his partner.  Together they bought out Henry’s interests.  Although Kane’s son and wife initially challenged his will, the many encumbrances to be dealt with and relatively small remaining bequest may have discouraged their efforts and the pair ultimately withdrew their suit.

Henry Schwab came to the fore.  With Annie as the administratrix of the estate, Schwab quickly was able to reach a settlement and bought the deceased Kane’s share of the business.  The former bookkeeper pointed to his personally having paid off $50,000 in company debts earlier as Kane’s health had faltered.  After his death Schwab assumed all liabilities, freeing up the estate from financial claims and greatly increased the financial benefit to Mamie and Annie. When Simon Strauss died a year after Kane, Annie married again and bore her second husband three more children.

None of the details of Edward Kane’s conjugal adventures might have come to light had it not been for Mamie.  After almost a decade had passed, now as Mrs. Mamie M. Ague, she cast an envious eye on Henry Schwab who had pulled the Kane company out of debt and apparently was prospering.  She claimed that her father’s former business partner, had experienced an altogether too rapid rise in wealth after her father’s death and challenged the earlier settlement of Kane’s estate.  Mamie demanded an new accounting, her expectation apparently further payout from Schwab.  Her petition provided steamy details of her father’s love life previously unknown by the public, including his bigamous relationship with her mother, Annie. The story raised eyebrows all over New York that a well known wealthy businessman had put a former mistress in charge of his estate.  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle speculated:  “Many of the facts alleged by the plaintiff are found in the papers and indicate that the trial will be a mighty interesting one.” 

As it turned out, despite the scandalous details, the trial turned out to be a rather

humdrum affair.  Schwab argued that Mamie’s suit was an unwarranted attack on his reputation.  With his own funds he had freed the bequest from outside claims, thus making more of Kane’s money available to Mamie, her siblings, and her mother.  Instead of gratitude, he now faced legal action. Clearly unimpressed with the case presented by Mamie’s lawyers, the judge ruled in favor of the liquor dealer.  Mrs. Ague got nothing and paid court costs.

Schwab subsequently made his own reputation in Brooklyn business circles. To the company list of offerings, he added and copyrighted his own brand of bitters, called “Dr. K’s Stomach Bitters.”  With the growing threat of National Prohibition, however, the bookkeeper cum proprietor eventually shut the doors on E. Kane & Company after more than a half century of operation.

Today visitors to Stony Brook, New York, can arrange for a tour of the restored Kane Grist Mill given by the local heritage organization.  The tour also includes the viewing of Long Island’s very first vineyard and a docent’s recitation of “the scandalous story of Edward Kane.” But, of course, that is a story you already know.

Note:  This post has been crafted from a range of sources.  Important among them were news stories from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of April 7, 1908 and February 18, 1909, and  the obituary of Annie Rose Gilzinger reprinted on ancestry.com.  I have been unable to find a photo of Kane or identify his burial site.  Am hopeful that an alert reader will help fill in those details.

Saloon Cards, Risqué and Profane

In the days before National Prohibition when women, at least respectable women, were barred from saloons, proprietors felt free to distribute cards advertising their establishments that often included “double entrendre” messages, often provided in verse.  Shown here are six such offerings from watering holes across America and reaching into Mexico.

The first example comes from Becker’s Saloon in Reno, Nevada, a place where one might get a limburger cheese sandwich and a beer for 15 cents.  It was located in the Becker Building on Commercial Row in Reno and held the saloon, a restaurant and a card playing center.  Its trade card depicted a comely woman with a monkey shaking hands with a farm boy and reads:

The boys all like Mary, and

Like her monkey too,

And when they play so 

Nice with it, what can Mary do?

This saloon card was one of a series of six about Mary and her “monkey.” The next card shows Mary swimming with the animal and the verse is:

Mary went in swimming and 

She took her little pet

A wave hit her in the “good 

Old supper time…” and she

Got her monkey wet.

The 1911 city directory of Springfield, Illinois, lists almost three full pages of saloons, indicating that the competition for customers among them must have been fierce.  That may explain the number of trade cards from that city that carried suggestive poetry.   Zimmerman & Co. called its place The "Budweiser," a designation that suggests a “tied” saloon, that is, one that served only a single kind of beer in return for financial support from a brewer.  Its “poem” read:

With fond regret I now remember,

Those happy days of youthful fun,

When all my limbs were lithe and limber, 

Did I say all?  Yes all but one.

Those glorious days have ceased forever,

The happy days of youthful fun,

All limbs are daily growing stiffer

Did I say all?  Yes all but one.

Another saloon was the Sullivan Bar on Springfield’s North Sixth Street.  But Sullivan was not there.  Instead the proprietor was another Irishman named William Greenhalgh.  Noting that Sullivan’s “thirst parlor” also had “rooms in connection” a question arises about what additional activities might have been going on there.  The verse on the card back side may give a clue:

Tis said that in these days of progress and push,

That ONE bird in the hand is worth TWO in the bush;

But the summer girl says, if birdie will stand,

ONE bird in her bush is worth TWO in her hand.

William J. Cordier, the cravated chap shown here was proprietor of the Schlitz Forum & Cafe, another “tied” saloon, just down the street from Sullivan’s in Springfield.  Cordier felt the poetic urge to issue two risqué’ cards.  One of them contains eight suggestive quatrains, of which the following are two:

Here’s to the girl that dresses in the sailor hat,

Pink shirtwaist and white cravat,

Patent leather shoes and blue parasol,

And a little brown spot that pays for them all.

Here’s to the girl that dresses in black,

She alway looks neat and never looks slack,

But when she kisses, she kisses so sweet,

She makes things stand that have no feet.

Cordier also issued a second card that featured a story in verse about a fly that intrudes into a grocery store and, after defecating on a piece of ham, proceeds to elude the storekeeper and then:

When he had done his deadly work

He flew right over to the lady clerk

And up her leg he took a stroll

And took bath in her hole.

Proprieties deteriorate further in subsequent stanzas until the fly meets an untimely — and unseemly — death. 

Tommy Sookiasian, an Armenian, was proprietor of a saloon in Juarez, Mexico, a short distance over the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas.  He issued a trade card that, while ostensibly involving cattle and their tails is meant to remind us of the deterioration in the male organ of generation as the years take their toll.  Tommy ran a bar and cafe featuring a mostly fish menu and was a wholesale liquor dealer.

Contemplating the unusual name of “The Humorist Saloon,” perhaps it was the proprietor,  T. E. Tobin,  depicted on the trade card, who fancied himself a funny man.  His St. Louis watering hole seems never to have closed, being open ”day and night.”  His rhyme on the reverse while not having sexual overtones, was laced with profanity, as exemplified in the stanza that follows:

Beer is a beverage,

That works upon the mind;

It makes men and women talk,

When they are not inclined.

It works like a figure,

And works without a rule,

And make people think they are smart

When they are a G—D—d Fool.

This is just a small sample of the artistic achievements contributed to the American poetic lexicon by the Nation’s saloonkeepers.   Their works seldom receive attention, particularly in literary (as opposed to drinking) circles.  I am happy to remedy that omission here.

Labels:  Risque' saloon cards

Posted by Jack Sullivan at 12:46 PM

Labels: Becker’ Saloon Reno, Humorist Saloon St. Louis, risque' saloon cards, Saloon poetry, Springfield Illinois saloons

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Ed Brinkman: Asst. Bookkeeper to Boss & Beyond

Edward H. Brinkman (Brinkmann), who apparently jettisoned the Germanic “n” at the end of his name during World War One, spent most of his working life employed by the Union Distilling Company, rising from bookkeeper’s assistant to president of the Cincinnati distillery and liquor house. Demonstrating unique staying power, Brinkman’s imprimatur continued to appear on whiskey even during the years of National Prohibition.

Born in August 1871 in Cincinnati, Brinkman was the son of German immigrants.  His father Christian Frederick Brinkmann had emigrated to the United States in 1855 from Germany at age 19 and settled in Cincinnati, a very Germanic city where he worked as a tailor.  Ten years later he met and married another German immigrant, Anna Warneke.   Edward was born six years later.  Educated in Cincinnati schools, known for their quality throughout Ohio, the boy apparently demonstrated a flair for mathematics.

Before reaching 21 Brinkman was hired as assistant bookkeeper at the Union Distilling Company, a Cincinnati liquor house that had been founded about 1884,

headed by president George Gerke, another German immigrant. Beginning at the lowest rung in the company hierarchy, young Brinkman apparently proved to be an able bookkeeper, working closely with George Dieterle. the compay secretary and treasurer, and gaining his confidence.  

In 1895, Brinkman became a member of the Dieterle family, marrying Augusta Dieterle, George’s sister.  Both 24 years old, the couple would go on to have one child, Anna Hilda.  The marriage signaled Brinkman’s steady move up the promotion ladder.  In a 1894 directory he was listed as a “clerk” at Union Distillery.  By the early 1900s, Brinkman had been raised to vice president. In 1914 the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce reported a shake-up in the distillery hierarchy.  Edward Brinkman, former bookkeeper, now was recorded as president of Union Distilling.  

The company clearly had found a foothold in the booming and crowded Cincinnati liquor trade, adopting the slogan, “None Better.”  Company brands approached thirty.  They included:  “Anchor,” “Azax,” “Biltmore,” "Bob Pepper,”  “Bucktail,” "Bull Run,” “Camelia,” "Dave Crockett,” "Davy Crockett,” “Dexter,” "Diamond Mills Rye,” "King Rex,” “Lenox,” "Lone Star,” “Mayflower,” "Middle Brook,” "Old Club House,” "Old Eagle,” "Old Glory,” "Old Gold Metal,” "Old Silver Medal,” "Old Yacht Club,” "Smoky Hollow,” "Southern Bouquet,” “Tippecanoe,” “Union,” “Universal,” and “Zeno.”

Under Brinkman’s leadership Union Distilling trademarked 15 of those brands.  Beginning slowly in 1905, following Congressional strengthening of trademark laws, he registered Tippecanoe and Zeno.   Despite the cost of hiring lawyers and artists to prepare government applications, the company followed in 1906 to add ten more brand names to the registered list.  Following years saw Biltmore trademarked in 1907, Anchor in 1908 and Azax in 1909.

On its letterhead, Union Distilling featured three brands, Old Glory, its flagship label, along with Lenox and Tippecanoe.  As shown below, Old Glory, while carrying the Union Distilling imprint was given two labels that different in details.  At left is one in which the Stars and Stripes are evident and it is twilight.  At right the flag is not evident and a sun has been added. 

During this period of Brinkman’s ascendancy, Union Distilling was growing steadily.  In an open letter to customers dated November 1, 1910, the company announced that it had purchased “…The entire stock of  bonded whiskies and other liquors, the brands, copyrights and trade name of the Diamond Distilleries Company, of this city.”  The letterhead listed six brands, Old Glory, Lenox, and Tippecanoe, adding the Diamond labels, King Rex, Middlebrook and Diamond Mills Rye.  The letter also references Union Distilling “rebuilding” a distillery — and presumably warehouses —and promising that the company soon would begin full operations.

My assumption is that Brinkman and his colleagues had purchased an interest in and refurbished a plant that after several prior identities became known as the Latonia Distillery, built shortly after the end of the Civil War. It was located four miles south of Cincinnati, at the juncture of the Louisville Short Line & Kentucky Central Railroads near Latonia Station.  Insurance underwriter records of 1892 indicate that the distillery was brick with a metal or slate roof. The property included a cattle shed, a “whopping” 23 bonded warehouses and one free warehouse, all of constructed of brick with metal or slate roofs. The warehouses were listed according to the various aliases used by liquor houses owning their alcoholic contents.  Union Distilling claimed two warehouses, designated “I” and “W.”  Those structures apparently allowed the company to declare the entire distillery as its own, as shown below.

In 1903 the Cincinnati papers announced that Edgemont Springs Distilling Co. was being absorbed into Brinkman’s Union Distillling. Its founder Christopher Sandheger had sold out [See my post on Sandheger, Nov 6, 2013.]  According to the press notice, the value of Union Distilling had been increased from $300,000 to $750,000.  As a result of the acquisition, it was reported, Union Distilling had moved more firmly into production of whiskey as well as marketing it.  It was issuing back-of-the-bar bottles to saloon customers.

At that point Brinkman and Union Distilling renamed its slice of the Latonia facility as “The Edgemont Springs Distillery Company.”  Government documents record that “Edw. H. Brinkman” representing Edgemont, added and subtracted whiskey from Latonia warehouses twice in 1901, again in 1903 and 1904.  By the next decade Brinkman had reverted to using Union Distilling as the entity involved in the transactions.  His last activity was recorded in 1920 as National Prohibition was taking hold.

The 14 years of “dry” were not to be the end of Ed Brinkman as a Cincinnati “Bourbon Baron.”  Despite National Prohibition, for a time he was allowed to hold and sell liquor that had been distilled earlier.  His role was providing liquor to the few privileged dealers licensed by the government to market “medicinal” whiskey.  Shown below is a 1931 bottle of “Schenley’s Aged Medicinal Whiskey” at 100 proof, “bottled in bond” and touted as “recommended by physicians and surgeons.”  The label on the back credits Brinkman for the whiskey produced in 1917 and bottled in 1931 by Schenley.

Brinkman had  other suitors for his whiskey stocks. Shown below is a pint bottle of “Silver Grove” straight bourbon from the Geo. T. Stagg Co. of Frankfort, Kentucky. [See my post on Stagg, April 30, 2016].  The rear label credits Brinkman as the distiller and identifies the distillery as Ohio #2 (apparently Latonia).  When those liquor supplies were exhausted Brinkman turned his attention to producing industrial alcohol.

In 1938 at the age of 67, Edward Brinkman died and was buried in Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery.  As he aged the Cincinnati native could look back on a lomg career and note his humble beginning as an assistant bookkeeper and his step-by-step ascendancy to the top of a prominent and respected liquor company.  Ironically, his rapid rise had coincided with the fall of the industry.

 

Note:  This post has been written from a comparatively meager number of sources.   It also lacks a photo or description of this “whiskey man.”  I am hopeful that a descendant will help fill in the gaps about Edward Brinkman and Union Distilling, and correct any errors in the narrative.