Louis Abel — Whiskey and the Missionary Position

Dictionaries generally define a “missionary” as “a person sent on a religious mission, especially one sent to promote Christianity in a foreign country.”  That had been my understanding until my research on Chicago liquor dealer Louis Abel took me to a court case in which the word “missionary” assumed a whole new meaning.

First, some background:  In 1918 Hiram Walker & Sons, a U.S. and Canadian distilling company and the maker of “Canadian Club Whiskey,” filed suit against Louis Abel, along with his brother Joseph, for infringement of trademark, simulation of labels and direct fraud in refilling Canadian Club emptied bottles with their “imitiation” Canadian whiskey.  Walker, shown here, was assiduous in taking to court any whiskey outfit that seemed to be infringing on his trademarks. 

Circuit Judge Baker, presiding in the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, obviously approached the case with a great deal of relish, providing his written opinion with a flair unusual for federal cases.  Baker was particularly intrigued by Abel’s “established sales methods” for promoting his liquor at the expense of the Walkers.  He noted that numerous men were employed by the Chicago liquor firm to go to saloons throughout the country and “puff” the house liquors, so that subsequently their salesmen and jobbers would find their way prepared for them.  “In the liquor world these puffers are called ‘missionaries,’” the judge asserted.

These so-called “missionaries” exclusively were men — women generally were not allowed in drinking establishments — who went from saloon to saloon to ask for an Abel labeled whiskey.  When told the saloon did not have it, they would raise a fuss, either ask the proprietor to get it or leave in a huff.  In a day or two Abel’s salesman would appear to take an order.  In other words, these missionaries were not asking for a reform of religious beliefs but for a switch in brands of booze.

Two of those whiskey emissaries were in the courtroom to testify for the Walkers.  They gave enthusiastic accounts of their success as missionaries to achieve “conversion” from Canadian Club to their client’s erzatz product.  Judge Baker was not impressed:  “…The testimonies of Missionaries Craig and Blake is discredited.  They in fact were not the such glowing successes as boosters as they pictured themselves….It is easy to see their tendency to exaggerate.  They might not hesitate to lie…”  Nonetheless, he found their testimony sufficiently credible to consider, given even more dubious accounts by other “…missionaries, salesmen, and bartenders, who testified….” on behalf of Abel and co-defendants.

In the final court document under “Words and Phrases,”  a new definition emerged:   “The term “missionaries,” as used in the liquor trade, applies to men employed to visit saloons throughout the country and puff liquors of a particular manufacture, so that salesmen of wholesalers and jobbers will find the way prepared for them.”

Judge Baker ruled that he found the testimony of two private detectives who testified against Abel more credible than the witnesses who spoke for the Chicago liquor dealer.  He found him guilty as charged and issued an order to cease his trespasses against Hiram Walker & Sons.  The judge did not assess monetary damages.

Louis Abel was the son of Henry and Ellen Abel, born in Baden, Germany, about 1864.  When he was just a child, his parent emigrated to the United States bringing their five sons with them.  The Abels settled in Chicago where the father found work in a lumber yard.  Although the eldest son, John, ultimately was employed as a baker, the second, Charles, became a whiskey dealer and saloonkeeper.  As soon as he had achieved some maturity, Louis left school and joined Charles in his establishment as a bartender.  

At some point Louis made a connection with a longtime Chicago liquor wholesaler named Samuel Myers who alleged his firm had been founded in 1847, although it first showed up in Windy City business directories in 1860.  Although Myers at times claimed to be a distiller, in reality he was a “rectifier,” compounding his own brands — one of them “Brown-Red Bourbon.” Samuels Myers & Co. initially was located at 276 Madison Avenue, moving a decade later to 268-270 Madison Avenue where it spent the next four decades.

How Abel hooked up with Myers is not clear but by 1904, Louis was advertising himself as “successor to Samuel Myers.”  Abel sold his whiskey in a series of stoneware jugs that carried a standard label that advertised:  “Louis Abel, successor to Samuel Myers & Co., Old Whiskies, established in 1847” and listing the same address as the Myers firm.  That address also showed up on an amber flask embossed with Abel’s name. 

For his ceramic jugs Abel turned to The Red Wing Potteries of Red Wing, Minnesota.  That company, founded by a German immigrant named John Paul, had become renowned for the quality of its salt-glazed, hand thrown, kiln-fired items and for the crisp lettering of its under-glazed labels. 

 

Abel’s jugs, in sizes from one to two gallons, indicate a preference for two-toned containers, with brown Albany slip tops and spout and plain stoneware bases.  Red Wing jugs likely were more expensive than other ceramics and today ceramic items of pre-Prohibition vintage from the pottery fetch fancy prices.

By 1911, Abel had moved from his earlier location to the southeastern corner of Market and Washington Streets,  near the Chicago intersection shown here.  That new address was added to the company Red Wing jugs.  Beginning about 1908, according to court records, Abel began to compound and sell “Canadian Type” whiskey, ostensibly similar in proof, color and flavor to Hiram Walker’s Canadian Club.  Missionaries and salesmen then were employed to boost and sell Abel's faux Canadian in bulk to retailers whom they knew would use it to refill Walker’s bottles, “the brand being practically unknown to and never called for by consumers,” according to Judge Baker.

This dubious and illegal practice apparently proved to be quite lucrative to Abel until the Walkers’ 1918 lawsuit.  Subsequent publicity about scheme, however, seemingly led to the firm’s demise.  The same year that Judge Baker accused it of “direct fraud,” the Louis Abel liquor house disappeared from Chicago business directories.  Seven years later Louis died and was buried in Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery.

Note:  This blog contains two other articles dealing with Hiram Walker’s court actions against trademark infringement.  On April 16, 2016, I posted on Walker bringing down Charles Klyman, another Chicago liquor dealer, and, on December 4, 2017, his less successful campaign against the Turner-Look Co. of Cincinnati.

Hiram Walker and Whiskey: A Foot in Two Countries

Foreword:  Hiram Walker is one of the best known names in American whiskey history whose distillery was not located in Kentucky, but rather in Michigan and Ontario, Canada.  Although I have done short bits on Walker in the past, when I decided to do a vignette my research took me to a website called “Robinson’s Library” that contained a succinct summary of Walker’s life.  As in the past when a prior write-up of a whiskey man is appropriate to this site, rather than duplicate it, my policy is to get permission to use it.  Scott Robinson, the intellectual force behind the library, has graciously consented.  His article follows:

Hiram Walker was born in Douglas, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1816, the son of Willis and Ruth Buffum Walker. He grew up on the family farm, attended the local schools, and moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1838. He married Mary Abigail Williams on October 5, 1846, and the couple eventually had five sons and two daughters.

After moving to Detroit, Walker tried his hand at several business ventures before finally finding success with the Walker Wholesale and Retail Store, about 1850. The store's primary business was groceries, but Walker began expanding the enterprise almost from the start. He began by distilling and selling his own vinegar, and then expanded his distilling business to including whiskey.  Then, knowing that the quality of his whiskey depended in large part on the quality of the grains used, he became involved in the grain-buying and -supplying business.

Move to Canada.  In 1855, Michigan passed a law forbidding the sale of liquor by anyone other than a druggist, and only for medicinal purposes. Although the law was never effectively enforced, Walker was concerned enough that he decided to locate his distillery elsewhere. Already familiar with the area around Windsor, Ontario, Canada, because of his grain business, the decision to move across the Detroit River was an easy one, and, in 1856, he purchased 468 acres east of Windsor. By 1859 the property boasted a distillery, steam-driven flour mill, vinegar factory, grocery store, and livestock yards. The latter business grew because the resourceful Walker used the grain leftover from the distilling operation to fatten his and neighbors' livestock.

Walkerville Barrelhouse

Birth of a Brand. In Walker's day, distillers sold their products in unmarked barrels, but Walker set a precedent by putting his product in bottles that bore the brand name "Walker's Club Whisky." As his whiskey gained popularity, Walker's U.S. competitors became increasingly nervous and, in 1880, succeeded in getting legislation passed that made it mandatory for the country of origin to be stated on the label. Walker complied with the law by simply renaming his whiskey "Canadian Club." And, thanks to the popularity of Canadian Club, Canada enacted laws governing what can and cannot be legally called Canadian whiskey, with the majority of those laws being based on Walker's whiskey-making process.

Walkerville. In 1861, Hiram Walker moved his family across the Detroit River into a large frame-house, the Cottage, in order to be closer to his operations. In 1864, with all his projects doing well, he returned to Detroit, where he lived for the remainder of his life.
While building his business enterprises, Walker also built a community. Known interchangeably as Walkerville and Walkertown, by 1867 the settlement contained the distillery, a hotel, a store, and “several tenements built by Walker and Co. for the convenience of their employees, which number from eighty to one hundred.” On March 1, 1869, the Canadian government officially recognized Walkerville as a post-office village.

Walkerville Bottling Room

By the early 1880's Walkerville had a population of 600 people, who lived in homes built and owned by Hiram Walker. They worked in Walker-owned industries, drank water pumped through pipes laid by him, received police and fire protection at his expense, and could attend the church built by him (named St. Mary’s in memory of his wife, who had died in 1872). In the absence of a commercial bank, Walker’s employees could deposit their savings in the private Walker bank.

Distillery Headquarters

On January 29, 1890, a petition was forwarded to the Ontario legislature requesting Walkerville’s incorporation as a town and citing the significant contributions of the Walker family to the development of the settlement. The act of incorporation was passed on April 7, and Hiram Alexis Walker, a nephew of the founder, became the first mayor. After incorporation, Edward Chandler Walker, Hiram’s eldest son, made his home there in a large mansion, Willistead, and so the Walker influence continued in local matters. Walkerville was annexed into the City of Windsor in 1935.

Distillery Executive Dining Room

Other Enterprises:  In 1880, Walker leased the ferry Essex from the Jenking Brothers shipyard just below Walkerville and built docking facilities on both sides of the river. Originally established for Walker's convenience, the enterprise became the Walkerville and Detroit Ferry Company in 1888, with Hiram and his sons as its executive officers, and remained in operation until 1942.

Walker also turned his entrepreneurial talents to the task of railway building. The Lake Erie, Essex and Detroit River Railway was incorporated in 1885. By the spring of 1889 the line had been completed as far as Leamington, and in 1901 the railway reached its eastern terminus, St Thomas. The Lake Erie and Detroit River Railway, as it was known then, had become an important line. Many rural people patronized the railway company’s excursions to Detroit and nearby Belle Isle, utilizing Walker’s ferry service in the process. The railway also gave impetus to a new industry -- the shipment of fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish from southern Essex to Detroit and Windsor.

The construction of the railway was followed by the establishment in Walkerville of a large number of industries, among them the Detroit drug firm of Parke, Davis and Company, the Globe Furniture Company, the Walkerville Malleable Iron Company, the Ontario Basket Company, and the Milner-Walker Wagon Works, the forerunner of the Ford Motor Company of Canada. Additional industries moved into the village before the turn of the century, creating an impressive industrial complex along Walker Road.

Walker’s interests in Walkerville failed to absorb all of his energy, and he remained equally active as an entrepreneur in Detroit after his return there in 1864. His name was associated with such enterprises as the Detroit Car Works, the Detroit Transit Railway, the National Bank of Detroit, the Michigan Land and Immigration Company, and the Hamtramck Iron Works. He also owned extensive real estate, including important parcels of land in the central business district, and was a prominent shareholder in the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, a Republican newspaper.

Later Life:  Walker’s many businesses initially operated under the corporate umbrella of Hiram Walker and Sons, comprising Hiram and his sons, Edward Chandler, Franklin Hiram, and James Harrington. In 1890, however, it was decided to separate the interests and to that end the several individual companies were incorporated separately. Hiram Walker and Sons Limited continued to be associated with the manufacturing and marketing of distillery products, while most of Walker’s Canadian real-estate holdings were placed under the Walkerville Land and Building Company, and the utilities installed by the Walkers during the early years of the town’s development went under the Walkerville Gas and Water Company Limited.

In 1895, in declining health, Walker retired from his various business interests and transferred his holdings to his three sons. He died in Detroit on January 12, 1899. His sons and grandsons ran Hiram Walker and Sons until 1926, when Harry C. Hatch bought it for $14 million.

Afterword:  Again thanks to Scott Robinson for the use of his material on Hiram Walker.  For additional information on this giant of the whiskey industry, my post on Charles Klyman,  April 2016,  deals in part with Walker’s relentless legal pursuit of those who would dare to violate his trademarks.

Chicago’s Charles Klyman: The Defrauder Defrauded

Call it poetic justice when someone who defrauds the public is himself defrauded by a member of that same public.  So it was with Charles Klyman, a Chicago liquor dealer, who regularly was selling brand-name liquor that, in fact, he had concocted in the back room of his establishment.  Klyman was taken in by a slick-talking 21-year-old with a bundle of phony checks in his back pocket.  That flimflam, however, was only the beginning of Klyman’s problems. 

 

Charles Klyman was born in Illinois in July 1860.  His father had come from New Hampshire; his mother was a French Canadian.  He first entered the public record at the age of 28 in 1888 when he began a wholesale liquor company in Chicago at 232 East Kinzie Street.  After struggling along at that location for five years, he changed the name of his company to “The Dr. Ancker Bitters Company,” advertising as “manufacturers and bottlers of fine cordials, bitters blended, whiskies, gins & brandies.”

The Dr. Ancker name and the picture of the anchor on Klyman’s letterhead suggest reasons for the change.  Bitters, although highly alcoholic, were not taxed as much as liquor since they were considered to have medicinal benefits.  One nostrum that had gained a national customer base was Dr. Dunlap’s  Anchor Bitters.  Although their label presentations differed, a casual buyer might mistake Dr. Ancker’s bitters with Dr. Dunlap’s bitters, the label shown left.  Given Klyman’s predilections, that likely was his intention.  

Klyman had been doing business as Dr. Ancker for two years when he was defrauded.  A young man named Clarence Mayer came to Chicago from New York with a woman in tow described as an “actress” and settled in rooms on Dearborn Street.  The scion of a retired wealthy New York manufacturer, Mayer had been a traveling salesman for a wholesale liquor dealer.  Approaching Klyman, whom he likely knew, Mayer bought $50 worth of merchandise and proffered a $100 check, the balance going to Mayer in cash.

The Chicago liquor dealer was cautious.  He took both the check and Mayer to the Lincoln National Bank where the cashier pronounced the check good and accepted it.  When it  subsequently was sent forward to New York, however, the check was declared a forgery and worthless.  Out his liquor and $50 in cash, Klyman went looking for Mayer.

When he found the young man, rather than calling the police, Klyman inveigled him into coming to a judge’s office where he intended to swear out an arrest warrant.  When Mayer figured out the plan, he bolted, was chased down the street by bystanders, captured and turned over to Klyman who vowed to take him to a nearby police station.  Somehow the pair never got there as Mayer “sweet talked” his release from Klyman’s clutches.

By this time, however, the young man’s checks were bouncing all over Chicago. It did not take the local cops much time to find him.  In Mayer’s room, along with the actress, they found a pile of certified checks ready to be signed.  Mayer was charged with forgery and jailed.  It is unlikely that Klyman ever got his money or his merchandise back.

But Klyman’s troubles were just beginning.  In cahoots with at least two other Chicago wholesalers he was putting counterfeit labels of well-known brands on bottles, their contents cooked up on site, and then selling them to retail outlets.  Law officers had tumbled to the scheme when a few downtown Chicago stores were found selling name brand liquor at cut-rate prices.  

A coordinated raid on three premises in February 1897 yielded the evidence.  The Chicago Tribune reported that on the second floor of the Kinzie Street establishment run by Klyman, authorities caught men and women “operatives” filling bottles of Angostura bitters, as well as other brands.  “Old labels were being washed off Angostura bottles and fifty clean and empty bottles of the same shape of Angostura were standing in a row, ready for filling,”  The raiders also found cases of bottles awaiting shipping.

The Tribune reported that fraudulent caps and packages for Hennessy French cognac also were discovered.  A company watermark of the James Hennessy Co. was copied poorly, it said, as were the labels for Martell French brandy, the latter facsimiles so poor “as to look like a palpable fraud to any used to the goods….”  Legitimate labels for Angostura and Hennessy are shown here.  The raid was not without its humorous aspects when one of the investigators began to rummage in a package that he thought might contain labels.  When one of the women claimed that the parcel held her under clothing, the probing stopped.

Although Klyman and the others faced criminal charges in Illinois, it is unlikely that the French distilleries brought suit.  Trademark laws still were relatively weak and seeking legal recourse in the U.S. often was futile.  Angostura was made in Trinidad and did not seek trademark protection in the U.S. until 1907.  A major exception was Hiram Walker & Sons of Canada.  That distiller was especially aggressive in insuring that counterfeiting or tampering with his primary brand, Canadian Club, was hazardous to anyone who tried.  Walker, shown here, had detectives regularly patrol retail outlets looking for frauds on his brands.  It may have been their sleuthing that tipped off the Chicago authorities and occasioned the raid.

Among the bottles and labels seized from Klyman were some bearing faux Canadian Club identification.  Hiram went hard after the Chicago whiskey man and literally brought him to his knees.   As a result of a plea agreement Klyman was forced to write out “A Confession” shown below. Dated June 3, 1898, it appeared in Chicago newspapers and in selected periodicals, such as the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record.  In his confession Klyman pleaded that “my wife has appealed to you to take into consideration her unhappy position and that of our young children.”

 To summarize his confession:  Klyman accepted the two conditions Walker demanded:  1) That “in the public interest” he would plead guilty under the Illinois Trademark Act and take his punishment, and 2) that he would never, never again be “a party to the imitation of any goods whatever, whether yours or those of others.”  By this abject admission of wrongdoing Klyman apparently warded off further legal action by Walker that likely would have bankrupted him.

As a local businessman garnering any respect, however, Klyman clearly was finished.  He and his family traded the wind, rain, and shame of Chicago for the cold, snow and virtual anonymity of Buffalo, New York.  His occupation in the 1900 census in Buffalo was given as “liquor dealer.”  A city directory of the same year listed him as a “distiller.”  Klyman had re-emerged, seemingly working once again at the liquor trade.  

In Buffalo the Klyman family was recorded living at the Fillmore Hotel, shown here.  This hostelry had once been the Buffalo home of Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States, a man often listed among the least of the country’s chief executives.  By 1900, Fillmore’s mansion had become a residential hotel and it was there that Klyman and his family had fetched up. 

Klyman’s attempt to insert himself into the crowded liquor scene in Buffalo apparently did not go well.  The next time he showed up in city directories was 1912 when his occupation was given as “commercial traveler,” possibly working as a salesman for one of the many Buffalo wholesale whiskey dealers.  By this time the Klyman family had moved from the Fillmore Hotel to 99 Elmwood Avenue, an apartment in a commercial district.

At this point Charles Klyman faded into the mists of time.  I cannot find any record of his death or burial site.  His story continues to intrigue me, particularly one point of curiosity:  Was the merchandise Klyman sold to the forger Clarence Mayer his fraudulent liquor?  Could this be a case of a defrauded fraud defrauding his defrauder?  The mind reels.