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.
