As an Irish immigrant boy of ten, John E. Cassidy found in America a promised land, rising from “butcher’s boy” to become a Massachusetts millionaire through his prosperous Boston liquor house. Cassidy’s journey to success and wealth, however, was plagued with tribulations and personal sorrows beyond any which he, or anyone else, might have anticipated.
Born in Fermanagh, Ireland, in May 1836, John was the son of Mary McGovern and Peter Cassidy. When he was about eight years old, Ireland suffered a period of starvation, disease and emigration that became known as the Great Famine. The potato crop, upon which a third of Ireland's population was dependent for food, was infected by a disease destroying the crop. Irish by the thousands left their homeland for the United States, many choosing to live in Massachusetts.
The Cassidys fetched up in Lowell, shown below about 1850. It was a city thriving as a major industrial center during the mid-19th century, attracting immigrant workers, including many Irish to its mills and factories. Peter Cassidy went to work as a laborer but died two years after arriving in America. Mary Cassidy, identified in the 1850 federal census — perhaps whimsically — only as “Mama,” was head of a household that included her six children and five boarders.
As the eldest son, John Cassidy likely went to work as early as possible but likely received some elementary education in the Massachusetts public school system, then accounted America’s best. His first recorded job was in a butcher shop, cleaning up and doing odd jobs. That occupation reputedly was followed by working as a stone cutter and then opening a grocery store in Lowell at No. 6 Lowell Street.
By that time Cassidy was married. In April 1859, in a Catholic ceremony, at the age of 23 he wed Mary Ann Haviland, 20. The couple would go on to have a family of four children, two daughters and two sons. The arrival of their first child, Mary Tracy, may have spurred Cassidy to leave Lowell and move 30 miles south to the Boston area where he was recorded as a “tradesman” and eventually opened a liquor business. The family resided in Watertown, a suburb ten miles from downtown Boston.
This period in Cassidy’s life encompassed the Civil War and there are some references to his having served in the Northern Army during the conflict. Helped by the researchers at the Watertown Historical Society (see below), I have been unable to confirm that service. By the time a draft was initiated, Cassidy was 27 years old, married with one child, and gainfully employed. No evidence so far has been found of his having enlisted or been drafted. One possibility is that, like my own (yes) grandfather, he participated in a “home guard” during the conflict.
Cassidy quite clearly had a excellent business mind and rapidly built the reputation of his liquor house, initally located at Boston’s No. 11 Central Wharf, on the waterfront, shown above. The proprietor was advertising as an importer of “brandy, wine, and gin” and “receiver of “Kentucky bourbon & rye whiskey.” Before long the need for more space occasioned a move to 50-52 Broad Street at the corner of Milk Street. It would become Cassidy’s permanent location.
As a merchant, Cassidy featured a blizzard of liquor brands, including "Atwoods Pure Alcohol,” “Beech Grove,” "Boat Club,” "Charles River,” "Chestnut Hill,” "Cumberland Club,”, "G.O. Taylor,” “Grave’s," "Grave's Maryland Malt,” "Hub Punch,” "Judges Favorite,” "Kentucky Union,” "Old Heritage,” "Old Neptune,” "Pine Hill,” "Pure Old Neptune,” "Salt Mash Bourbon,” "Ye Old Pilgrim Rum,” and “Old Kentucky Club House Whiskey.” Those labels included liquors obtained from other Boston dealers, like Chester Graves (see post of February 15, 2023). Cassidy’s flagship brands were “Machinaw Whiskey” and Machinaw Rye,” advertised on shot glasses given to wholesale and retail customers.
In addition, Cassidy was marketing other proprietary brands, trademarking “Old Neptune” and “Salt Marsh Bourbon” in 1875. He must not have felt the official stamp was worth the money and effort, however, and waited until 1906 when the trademark laws were strengthen by Congress to register “Mackinaw Rye,” “Pine Hill Whiskey” and “Old Pilgrim Rye.” These liquors likely would have been “rectified” at his Boston headquarters from barrels purchased from distillers and blended to achieved desired color, taste and smoothness.
Cassidy proved to be an excellent businessman, growing in wealth and prestige in the Boston area. Although it was not a showy mansion, he ensconced Mary Ann and his children in a comfortable three story house in Watertown. Shown above, it still stands at 227 North Beacon Street. The whiskey man’s primary investments were in land. A portion of an 1898 map of Watertown designates a number of parcels he owned. Among them was a pine-covered parcel along the Charles River where Cassidy established a saw mill and rapidly harvested the timber. Commented the Watertown Enterprise: “To those who see this property since the trees have been cut it is a great surprise as the entire landscape has been changed.”
Cassidy had an plan for the timbers. They would be part of a steamboat he would build on property he owned adjacent to the river. As townsfolk watched in awe, the outlines of the first — and only — steamship ever constructed in Watertown began to take shape along a tributary leading to the Charles River. In In a bow to his resident city Cassidy named it the S.S. Watertown. Shown below in an artist’s painting of the scene, the steamship was launched on July 30, 1890, as the thousands of locals looked on to applaud the achievement.
The S.S. Watertown, was 134 feet long, about 21 feet at its greatest width, and built to haul as much as 400 tons. During its short lifespan, the ship principally was used for excursion trips from Boston to nearby ports during the summertime and hauled goods from Boston to Lynn, Massachusetts, the rest of the year. Barely two years after its launching, in September 1892 as the ship was headed to Lynn loaded with groceries, furniture and other merchandise, a fire broke out — ushering in the first of Cassidy’s travails.
As the fire spread, the captain wisely beached the ship to allow the passengers and crew to wade or swim to shore. Unfortunately, one woman, afraid to jump, was thrown overboard by her husband to save her from the flames, dashed her head on the ship’s propellor and was killed. The fire consumed the entire cargo and left the vessel a smoking hull. Towed to Cassidy’s shipyard in April 1893 the S.S. Watertown was bought by a coal dealer planning to restore it. The shipyard never built another.
The year 1893 also ushered in a series of legal problems for Cassidy as the Boston-centered Metropolitan Sewerage Commission, exercising “eminent domain,” seized a strip of Cassidy’s land twenty feet wide and totaling 50,000 square feet to construct an underground sewer. Claiming damages for the value of the strip, as well as compensation for the effects of the seizure on his adjoining land, the liquor dealer was forced to launch expensive litigation that dragged on without resolution for almost a decade.
The resulting drain on his resources, estimated at millions of dollars, eventually resulted in Cassidy being threatened with bankruptcy, a story important enough to make New York Times headlines. His financial troubles sent a shock through Watertown and environs. Strongly supporting the liquor dealer, the Watertown Enterprise told the story behind Cassidy’s plight. While he had large debts and 115 creditors, only two were pressing him into bankruptcy. The most notorious was the American Distributing Company, known an arm of the “Whiskey Trust,” a liquor combine with a penchant for using dynamite and other underhanded means for forcing its competition to sell out to it. The other claimant was a whiskey brokerage allied with the Trust, holding only a small fraction of the debt.
With no other creditors willing to join their effort, the two ended their campaign to bring Cassidy down. The Enterprise concluded its defense of Cassidy with this commendation: “His many personal and business friends will rejoice that this trying time for him is over and that he is now in condition to reach again that ultimate success in business which his character and ability so deeply merit.”
In an 1898 Watertown city directory amid the loom fixers, tanners and cabinet makers, Cassidy was listed simply as “gentleman.” A 1904 ad shows Cassidy fully back in stride. Still operating from his Broad Street-Milk Street headquarters, he was advertising “Old Pilgrim Rum,’ “Crown Gin” and “Fine Kentucky Whiskies.” His son, William, was working with him and the company name had been adjusted to John E. Cassidy & Son.
Cassidy’s most enduring sorrows, however, seemed endless. Within the space of 17 years, 1890-1907, he would experience the deaths of his wife and three of his four children. Mary Tracy, the couple’s first child, born in 1860 a year after the couple was married, died in 1890, only 30 years old. In March 1889, Cassidy’s eldest son, John Junior, died. He was only 27. In April of the same year, Cassidy’s wife, Mary Haviland, also passed away. She was 67. Nine years later, son and partner William J. followed in death. He also was only 27. Shown here, at the Watertown cemetery of the family’s Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church, Cassidy erected a memorial dedicated to his three children, shown here, — each taken away in the bloom of their young adulthood.
At the time of the 1910 census, Cassidy, now 73, was living with his daughter, Katherine, her husband Peter Palmer, their five children, and a servant girl. He was recorded in the census as a liquor merchant, indicating continued management of his Broad Street business. He died on December 8, 1911 at the age of 75. His funeral was held at the Church of Our Lady in nearby Newton, Massachusetts, reported to have drawn a large attendance. Cassidy’s obituary in the Watertown Enterprise hailed him “for more than 50 years as one of Boston’s most respected merchants.”
Notes: This post was made possible by the assistance of two specialists of the Watertown, Massachusetts, Historical Society, Joyce Kelly and David Russo. Ms Kelly was responsible for researching the newspaper files on John Cassidy held by the Society and providing them to me quickly after my initial inquiry to their organization. Mr. Russo is the author of a detailed article on Cassidy’s steam ship that was published in the April 2012 Historical Society newsletter, “The Town Crier.” Available online, the article provides a detailed account of the ship’s history. My gratitude to both for their help. They demonstrate once again the value of local history organizations.
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