The Hanleys: Murder and Mayhem in ‘Frisco

“Beer and whiskey were involved,” reported San Francisco’s Daily Alta newspaper about the shooting death of Daniel Hanley, founder of a liquor merchandising tradition carried on by his wife and son.  Nor, as will be seen, would Dan be the last family member to make the newspapers in an altercation in which a Hanley got the worst of it. 

The Hanley family story began in Mitchellstown, County Cork, Ireland, where Dan Hanley was born in 1837.   Unlike most communities in Ireland, Mitchellstown, shown above, was a planned town, located on the site of a medieval village that was torn down by a British lord to build a place of his own design, shown here.  It is likely that in Mitchellstown Hanley met Mary Sullivan, a woman eight years younger, whom he eventually would marry.

It is not clear when the couple emigrated to the United States.  Hanley first surfaced in San Francisco directories in 1863 working as a bartender at the Rotunda Saloon and living at 5 O’Farrell Street.  Before long, the Irish immigrant was listed owning a grocery store and liquor business, including a saloon.

In 1877, the Hanleys were living at 33 Eddy Street, likely above their establishment.  They had three children,  John about 5, James 3, and Molly, under one year.  Also living with them was John Hanley, Dan’s older brother.   According to an account in the San Francisco Bulletin, the Hanleys had fenced in some property to the objection of a neighboring land owner named Dennis Ryan.  The result was ongoing trouble between the two families.

In October 1877, during a raucous party at Ryan’s house, a dispute broke out between the two Irishman.  Both sides had firearms and shots were exchanged.  John Hanley was hit in the hand and Dan was shot through the right thigh.  Ryan and an accomplice were arrested on a charge of assault to murder.  After lingering for six months Dan, only 37 years old, died of blood poisoning and the charge against Ryan became manslaughter.  Asked about what fueled the fight, witnesses told the press:  “Beer and whiskey were involved.”

Left with three small children to raise, Mary Sullivan Hanley, shown right, proved to have “the right stuff.”  Without skipping a beat she took over management of the family grocery, liquor sales and the saloon.  At the outset brother-in-law John was available to help.  By the time her son John was seventeen, he was tasked with working in his mother’s enterprises, thereby learning the liquor trade.  A younger son, James, was able to go to law school, ultimately becoming a prominent San Francisco attorney and eventually its assistant district attorney.  

At some point during the early 1890s, the Hanleys apparently shut down their business and John, shown right,  went to work for a string of other San Francisco wine and liquor dealers.  He was recorded, for example, as secretary of the Golden Gate Champagne Co.  By 1896 he had settled in as the bookkeeper and secretary for the Joseph Melczer Co., located on Front Street.  Melczer was a Hungarian immigrant who had talent for wine and had built a prosperous San Francisco wine and liquor business.

While in this employment, John married.  His bride was Ella Cronin, born in California in 1877, the daughter of John and Ella Cronin.  Inexplicably, their wedding announcement in the San Francisco Call identified John as hailing from Nogales, Arizona, and said the couple would make their home in that state.  No evidence exists, however, that they ever left Frisco.  Their children, three sons and four daughters, all were born in California.

Hanley worked for Melczer & Company through 1904, and in 1905, the wealthy Melczer, with his wife Elizabeth, retired. Making an unrevealed financial arrangement with his former employer, Hanley took over the management of the wine and liquor house, soon changing its name to the Hanley Mercantile Company. The new owner wasted no time in issuing his own brands of whiskey. His flagship was “Hanley Rye,” shown here in two amber flasks, one with a label, the other as embossed in the glass.

Hanley’s timing might have been better. In 1906, the Great San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed Front Street, the avenue shown above in ruins.  In the conflagration, like many local whiskey men, John lost his entire stock of whiskey.   Undaunted, he opened again the very next year on Florida Street, advertising his liquor as “Good Goods."

Hanley Merchantile has been credited with a canny marketing move. In 1904 Oregon had enacted a “local option” law and a number of communities went dry. Meanwhile, San Franisco stayed predictably wet. Taking advantage of the Interstate Commerce Clause, Hanley advertised heavily in Oregon and did brisk business by mail order there, using the Southern Pacific Railroad to deliver the goods. 

Customers would send Hanley Merchantile five dollars and the company would send back four bottles of Hanley Rye or perhaps Ashborne Rye, a name I believe can be related back to the San Francisco fire. Everything sent to Oregon, naturally, came in a plain brown wrapper.

By 1909, John Hanley had settled into more permanent retail quarters on Eddy Street when a incident occurred that would unwillingly thrust him into the newspapers.  The San Francisco Call of May 8, 1909 headlined:  “Mrs. Elizabeth Melczer, Rich Society Woman, in a “Fistic” Role, Seeks Dividends from Mercantile Company and Pummels Its President; Pulls Hanley’s Hair and Puts Up a Good Fight.”

Leaving from her mansion home in Palo Alto, shown here, the now Widow Melczar had gone with her attorney to Hanley’ office to collect dividends she said were due her from the liquor business.  The discussion deteriorated into an argument between the dowager and Hanley.  In the fracas, Elizabeth pulled Hanley’s hair yanking some of it out and chased him around his desk.  Hanley tried to protect himself with a chair that subsequently was broken. The eyeglasses of Mrs. Melczar’s attorney were broken in the melee. Hanley was forced to take cover under a table until the attorney could hustle the outraged female from the room.  The newspaper story the next day had all San Francisco laughing.

For a day or so, Hanley could not be found, clearly lying low until the buzz receded.  The Call ended its lengthy news account by reporting:  “According to Hanley’s friends,  Mrs. Melczer had business transactions with him, and expectations were that these would be settled within a few days.”  One can image John’s Irish mother, Mary, wishing she could have gotten in a few licks on the Widow Melczar.

Whether it was this event or the increasing momentum of Prohibition, by 1918 the Hanley Mercantile Co. was out of business. Congress had closed the loophole that Hanley  exploited. In addition, Oregon had gone totally dry in 1914 cutting off an important source of his revenues.   John Hanley went on to other pursuits.  When he registered for the World War One draft, he was working in a steel mill.  In subsequent census records he was recorded employed as a cashier for the railroad.

Mary Sullivan Hanley, continued to live in San Francisco all her life, dying in October 1924 at the age of 79.  Devoted to her Catholic religion, she was a member of the third order of St. Dominic.  Given a solemn requiem high mass at St. Charles Church on S. Van Ness Avenue, she was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, the burial town for San Francisco.  A widow for 44 years, Mary lies next to her late husband, Daniel, in Section H, Row 4, Plot 45.  In 1942 John died and joined his parents in Holy Cross Cemetery.  The Hanley cross-shaped monument is shown here.

Note:  Much of the material in this post earlier appeared in an article in “Placer Trails,” a publication of the Genealogical Society of Auburn, California.  Dated April 2014, it was written by Jacqui Marcella, whose Irish ancestors were from Mitchellstown and possibly related to the Hanleys.  

How James Hanley Landed in Rhode Island's “Hall of Fame”

Brought to America as a toddler aboard an Irish famine ship, by dint of personal exertion, not family name or inherited wealth, James Hanley in 2007 was judged worthy of inclusion in the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.  Beginning in the liquor trade, expanding to brewing and other enterprises, Hanley carved out a brilliant career as an entrepreneur and horseman — including owning the fastest thoroughbred pacer in America, one he allegedly fed whiskey to induce speed.

James was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, to Patrick and Brigid (Farnell) Hanley on September 7, 1841.  When he was five years old, at the peak of the Great Famine, the family, including his two brothers, took a ship across the Atlantic, settling in Providence, Rhode Island. While his father worked as a laborer, Hanley grew up, according to testimony, knowing “the hardships of toil and little of the school, but he had the gift of clear thinking and an ambition to know….”

At the beginning of the Civil War, at age 20, Hanley took his first step into commerce.  Transforming the family home at 131 Main Street into a saloon and retail store, he imported and sold a variety of whiskeys, other liquors, foreign and domestic wines, ales obtained from New York and Philadelphia, and cigars.  He employed a brother, Thomas, as a clerk.  A crudely made ceramic whiskey jug shown here has that address impressed in the clay.

The following year, on May 9, James married

Martha Josephine Cummings, born in Rhode Island of English immigrant parents.  He was 21, she was 20.  The couple would go on to have nine children, including two sons, Walter and George, who would join their father’s enterprises as they matured.  With his increasing prosperity, Hanley commissioned the construction of a large Victorian style home for his family in Providence. The house, shown here, still stands at 159 Prospect Avenue. 

In 1866, outgrowing the 131 Main Street location, Hanley relocated his business to 139 North Main, where he sold a variety of bourbon, rye and wheat whiskeys, as well as wines and liquors.  As the Providence agent, he also offered Burton’s India Pale and XXX Ales.  With the steady growth of business, Hanley moved to open several locations in town, eventually having the space to advertise sales of ale in “hogsheads, barrels, and half hogsheads”  and gravitate to wholesaling.  While continuing to assist James, his brother Thomas opened his own liquor store.

In 1870 the Hanley brothers created a formal partnership and with it a new company they called James Hanley & Bro, locating it at 341 High Street. They eventually moved to 32 Exchange Place, an address that later became 50 Exchange Place. In 1883, Thomas died and James erased the “& Bro.” from the firm name.  A Hanley cobalt labeled jug from that period 

exists.

 

Two years later, obviously seeing the need for a partner in his liquor house, Hanley took F. P. Hoye as a partner.  Of Irish heritage like James, Hoye earlier had been with the wholesale liquor house of Green & Company.  Hanley, Hoye & Co. vigorously advertised their ability to provide all of the most popular brands of Eastern ryes and Kentucky bourbon whiskeys. The partners featured Woodford Club Pure Rye as their flagship label, trademarking the whiskey in 1900 and featuring it on a pocket mirror.

In the meantime Hanley was building his reputation in Providence.  One memorial put it this way:  “…As he grew in years, knowledge of men and things and books came, and with it broadness of character and a business ability of wide and successful range.”   This range became evident in 1876 when, with a fellow Irishman named James P. Cooney, a local liquor dealer, Hanley began a career making beer.  Fast friends, the two James agreed to branch out from wholesaling whiskey and enter the brewing trade.   They found a existing property in nearby Pawtucket, Rhode Island, called the Merchants Brewing Company.  It became the Cooney & Hanley Brewery.

Three years later at the early age of 41, Cooney unexpectedly died.  Ownership of the brewery, one that eventually was relocated to Providence, became Hanley’s alone.

  

Extant are a number of artifacts for James Hanley & Co.  Among them is a serving tray advertising his “Peerless Ale” as “The Best Yet” and an early automobile as a 1901 calendar.   I am particularly fond of a saloon sign that advertises Hanley’s India Pale and Cream Ales.  It shows a frog on a lily pad lifting a glass of beer to a bulldog on the shore.

  

Hanley seems to have had a natural affinity for making beer.  With two partners in May 1883 he also incorporated the Rhode Island Brewing Co. with initial capital stock of $500,000.  He served as its president and treasurer.  He also was identified with the Providence Brewing. Company.

Hanley, like many Irish, was passionate about horse racing and was nationally known as the owner and trainer of successful thoroughbreds.  One of them, a pacer named Prince Alert, held the world record for running the half mile in 1.57 minutes.   Hanley issued a paperweight with a photo of the horse to mark the occasion. 

 

Not everyone was as impressed as Hanley.  While calling Prince Alert “a handsome bay gelding of more than ordinary interest,” a Chicago Tribune racing scribe went on to describe the pacer as a “hop horse,” one that did his best when he was under the influence of stimulants.  “…Horsemen are well aware that some of his best miles…have been paced with a jorum of coffee and whiskey taken just before the start.”  In those days apparently it was legal to administer that kind of toddy.

Horses also became the symbols for Hanley’s beer.  Before the Budweiser Clydesdales were even a thought for August Busch, Hanley had developed prize teams of horses.  His most famous team was “the Big Nine,” shown here on a postcard, a synchronized team of three by three by three roan Belgian horses, ranging in height from 17 to 19 hands.  The entire team weighed in at over ten tons and pulled a Hanley beer wagon.

But the Irishman’s reputation was built on more than liquor and beer.  Credited with “a business ability of a wide and successful range,” he also was a successful investor in real estate and other Rhode Island enterprises:  “…Although frequently importuned to accept positions in financial institutions, persistently refused until he became a member of the reorganization committee of the Union Trust Company, and later when that company sold to the National Exchange Bank, he became a director in the latter institution.”  

Hanley also became known for his generous treatment of his employees.  In 1907 when his brewery employed some 90 workers, state inspectors rated conditions in his factory highly.  He also became known as a benefactor of numerous charitable causes, including those connected with Irish-American welfare and the Catholic faith to which he adhered.

On August 22, 1912,  at the age of 71,  James Hanley died unexpectedly.  He had been a hands-on manager of his liquor and beer interests until the end.  With his children, grandchildren, other relatives, friends and business associates gathered by his graveside, Hanley was laid to rest at St. Francis Cemetery in Pawtucket.  His family erected a large granite monument to his memory and that of his wife, Martha, who had passed two years earlier.  According to business directories, the breweries and wholesale liquor house were carried forward into the 1920s by sons Walter and George Hanley.

During his 66 years in Providence, Hanley had risen from poverty to prominence in Rhode Island and done it as the state’s leading purveyor of spiritous beverages.  Said one memorial:  “The secret of his success was a combination of industry, clear business judgment and fairness toward those with whom he dealt.”  Those qualities, blended with the wealth from alcohol, ultimately earned James Hanley a place in the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

Note:  Unless otherwise indicated, the direct quotes here are from a memorial tribute to James Hanley adopted by the Irish American Historical Society on the occasion of his August 1912 death.

Additional Note:  Below in comments, Greg Theberge takes me to task for having quoted his material and used images in this article without asking permission or giving credit to him. After researching his concerns, I find that he is indeed correct that in this instance I failed on both counts and for that I profoundly apologize to him and his father.  Such definitely is not my practice and I am at a loss to explain how it happen in this instance. But that is not an excuse. The material and images in question came from a book by Edward J. and Gregory Theberge entitled "The History of the Brewing Industry in Rhode Island," a truly impressive volume -- well written and elegant typographically. It is available online at: https://www.scribd.com/document/196011962/Rhode-Island-Brewery-History