Henry, the Half-Century Wolff of Kentucky Whiskey

When Henry Wolff died in April 1906, Louisville newspaper obituaries speculated that he was the city’s oldest active whiskey dealer, having created his Wolff Distilling Company almost 50 years earlier and having continuously engaged in the trade until the time of his death at age 76.  Throughout his long career Wolff was famous for promoting and selling the best whiskeys Kentucky offered.

Wolff was born in July 1830 in Saverne, a town in the French province of Alsace.  his family may have had some wealth because his education reputedly was studying under tutors provided by his parents.  Of an independent character, as soon as he was able he left home for the bright lights of Paris where he lived until the age of 24.

At that time he came to the United States, landing at New Orleans in the fall of 1854.  He remained in that French city only through the winter, going north to Louisville the following spring.  His younger brother, Joseph, was already there and, indicating some family money, owned a hotel at 620-622 West Market St.  According to an 1891 history of Louisville, the hotel at 35 rooms was one of the city’s finest.  Henry went to work there.

The Wolff Hotel boasted multiple dining areas as well as a billiards room and what was known as a “sample room.”  The latter operated operated like a “bistro” or saloon within the hotel walls, where liquor sales were primary, whether imbibed over the bar or carried home.  The profit-making potential of liquor became clear to the brothers.  They sold the hotel and in 1858 set up a wholesale liquor house they called the Wolff Distilling Company, located in a four story building at 66 West Market Street, shown here.  

From the beginning the brothers concentrated on selling Kentucky whiskeys, as indicated on a trade card below.  They also took as their trademarked symbol the image of an animal that one supposes is a wolf.   With a distinctly un-canine look to its face, however, it looks like a cross between a dog and a sheep.

As a possible indication of friction between the brothers, in 1867 after nine years in business — successful ones from all accounts — Henry left Wolff Distilling Co. and brother Joseph, and partnered with Francis Xavier Schimpeler, another whiskey merchant with ties to West Market St. [See my post on the Schimpelers February 2017].  

That relationship seems to have terminated in during the early 1870s.  At that point the Frenchman struck out on his own as Henry Wolff “Importer and Dealer in Foreign & Domestic Wines & Liquors,” as shown below on a billhead.  By 1880 he had moved his establishment to 244 West Market Street between Sixth and Seventh Streets.

Meanwhile Henry about 1865 had married.  His wife was Louisa E. Flinchback, a native born Kentuckian whose parents, Karl Louis and Elizabeth Flinchback, were immigrants from Germany.  She was twelve years younger than her husband.  Their first child, a boy, died in infancy.  Subsequently the couple had a boy, William Edward, and two girls, Lillie Belle and Amelia.  Wolff provided his family with a spacious home at 1417 South Third Street in Louisville, shown here.  Now in a historical district, the house is unique for the angling of windows on the north and south sides to bring additional light into the house and for terra-cotta decorations above the windows on the first and second floors.

Although he had been managing the Wolff Distilling Company successfully after his brother’s departure, Joseph by in 1880 found his health deteriorating and Henry was persuaded to return to the firm they had co-founded. With Joseph’s death in November of that year, Henry Wolff became the sole proprietor.

  

In 1882 he moved the organization to 638-640 West Market Street.  A Louisville business history described those quarters:  “The building, utilized for storage and general business purposes, is a commodious, substantial brick structure, 20 by 125 feet in area, and was built in 1875.  It is three stories in height and admirably arranged for all purposes of the business.”  The article emphasized  that Wolff specialized in quality Kentucky whiskeys, including his own proprietary brand, “Non-Pareil Whiskey,” a product of the Spring Hill Distillery Company. 

That distillery was located on the west side of the Kentucky River on the Cincinnati and Lexington railroad line, not far from the Franklin County Court House.  Wolff did not claim to own the distillery which was the property of John Cochran & Co., but gave that facility credit for the liquor. According to reports, he also was promoting aged bourbon, sour mash and rye whiskeys of “all the most noted” distilleries in Nelson County.  He also was drawing whiskey from the Pleasure Hill Park Distillery located in Jefferson County.

Wolff packaged his wholesale whiskey in stoneware jugs of varying sizes and shapes, varying from “ginger jar” to cylinders, and with a variety of labels.  Under his management through the 1880s and into the 1890s, the Wolff Distilling Co. did a thriving and expanding business.  Not primarily a mail order house, the company customer base was concentrated in serving the saloons and restaurants of the Louisville area, with Wolff’s advertising concentrated on that market.

Even as he aged, Wolff continued at the helm of his company, as one publication put it, “well and favorably known in business and social circles.”    While still managing the Wolff Distilling Company in his seventies, Henry developed kidney problems but continued to work. The Louisville Courier Journal, citing his nearly half-century in business, hailed Wolff as “probably the oldest wholesale whiskey dealer in Louisville.” 

In April 1906 at the age of 75 Wolff succumbed to kidney failure, known as in that time as “Bright’s Disease.”  He was buried in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery where many of the best known names in Kentucky distilling are interred.  Among the mourners were his widow, Louisa, and their three children.  With Henry’s death the Wolff Distilling Company disappeared from Louisville directories.

William Perkins: Looking for Gold, Found It in Minnesota

William L. Perkins was an Easterner, born in Oxford, New York, in 1929 and raised in New York City.  At the age of 20  he decided that “The Big Apple” was not a place to make his fortune.  Instead he headed for California and the Gold Rush in 1849, taking the perilous trip “sailing before the mast,” as one biographer put it,  around South America and north to to San Francisco.  Although there is no evidence of his striking gold, Perkins stayed in California for 21 years, likely working in the mercantile trades.

It was in California that Perkins met Sarah Peabody. They married in 1859 and their union produced three children,  Mabel V.,  William L. and Lena A.  Meanwhile, Sarah’s brother, George Peabody, with a partner named Maurice Lyons, had established a small liquor store in St, Paul, Minnesota.   Peabody, Lyons & Co.
was lightly capitalized at the outset  and located in a small (20 by 40 feet) two-story stone building on St. Paul’s Third Street.  As the business met with success the quarters were expanded by adding another forty feet.

In 1872, likely because of the declining health of Sarah, the Perkins family pulled up stakes in California and moved to St. Paul.  This time they were able to make the trip by train.  By that time the first transcontinental railroad had been built across the western half of America and onto the East.  The lines stretched 1,776 miles.  Their route took the Perkins family to Chicago and then north to Minnesota.  Although the trip took more than a week, it was much shorter than the 100-plus days required for sailing  "round the Horn."

Once in St. Paul Perkins bought out Peabody’s interest in the liquor dealership and became part of the management.  He proved to have a flair for the whiskey trade and his contacts in California apparently provided an advantage with that state’s wine and brandy makers.  Operating now as Perkins, Lyons & Co., the business continued to flourish.  Needing more room and a better address, the partners moved to 319 Robert Street, about the year 1900.  It is the St. Paul thoroughfare shown above.  This store occupied a much larger building, one 25 by 150 feet and four stories tall.

According to a contemporary publication the new quarters allowed the partners to keep “as compete and full stock as can be found in any city in the West.”  The account continued: "Messrs. Perkins, Lyons and Company carry from fifteen hundred to three thousand barrels in bond, of different ages, all for the purpose of keeping their stock in St. Paul always up to the standard. The firm of Perkins, Lyons and company keep all the time three salesmen on the road, and port of the time four, who visit pretty much every town in northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Dakota territory, monthly; their sales amounting to from $250,000 to $300,000 yearly, requiring a capital of about $100,000, now, to do the business, thus showing quite an increase in this particular line of business during the last twenty years in St. Paul."

About 1886, Maurice Lyons bowed out of the firm, selling his interest to Perkins.  The change in management was reflected in a change of name.  The enterprise subsequently became known as W. L. Perkins & Co.   The firm’s flagship brand was “Old Red Still,”  as shown here with its characteristic red and black label.   Perkins provided his customers with a variety of bottle shapes and sizes for Old Red Still, including back of the bar bottles.  Another major Perkins brand was “Non-Pareil.”  He registered the name in 1907
and was allowed its use, even though the brand earlier had been registered by a New York company.  He also issued a back of the back decanter for Non-Pareil Whiskey, as well as the five cent token shown below.

My personal favorite among Perkins’ glassware is a small decanter with a bulbous base and flaring mouth.  It was made expressly for use on passenger trains.  As shown here, it bore a paper collar that said “Made Expressly for the Dining Car Service of.....By W. L. Perkins & Co, St. Paul, Minn.”  A blank was left in the middle of the label for the railroad to add its name or logo.  My assumption is that it held a quantity  of whiskey or wine.

As William L. Perkins, Jr.,  reached maturity,  his father brought him into the firm.  Junior had been born in San Francisco but had achieved his education in the Midwest, boarding at the Shattuck Military School in Faribault, Minnesota, and later attending Griswold College in Davenport, Iowa, both institutions affiliated with the Episcopal Church.  Junior finished his education about 1887 and went to work for his father learning the whiskey trade. Upon the boy reaching the age of 23 and showing promise as a businessman, Perkins in 1991 made him a full partner.  With his future assured, the son shortly after got married in St. Paul to Leocaldio Ryan. (Her first name in Spanish means “numerology.”)

Father and son continued to expand their business during the 1900s.  A 1907 publication reported that they now were marketing their liquor over a wide territory in the Northwest and employed seven traveling salesmen who were constantly on the road.  Their mercantile staff had similarly expanded to twenty-two employees working at the Robert Street facility and at a branch office in Minneapolis.  The Perkins firm boasted it had been designated as the Northwestern agents for Old Crow and one of five national representatives of the John Gibson line of whiskeys.

Father and son Perkins also were gaining attention for their civic and social activities.  Both were members of Masonic orders,  identified as Republicans (though said to be voting independent in local elections) and active Episcopalians.  In addition Junior was a member of the St. Paul Lodge No. 59 of the Elks,  the Commercial Club and the Jobbers Union. These whiskey men had, as one author put it, “gained place prominent among the representative merchants and wholesale dealers of Minnesota.”

Along the way the family knew sorrow.  Sarah Peabody Perkins, wife and mother, died about 1892.  The effort to find a more healthful climate for her in the clear air of Minnesota had failed and her condition gradually had deteriorated.  Although mourning her loss, her survivors continued to operate their wholesale liquor business.  In St. Paul directories William was listed president and treasurer, Junior as corporate secretary.   In 1919 with business curtailed as a result of the advent of National Prohibition,  the W. L. Perkins Company moved to 339 E. Seventh Street,  its final address.  It closed shortly after, never to reopen.

Note:  Two principal sources provided the information for this vignette on William Perkins and his family: 1) THE BOOK OF MINNESOTANS; a Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the State of Minnesota. 1907. By: Albert N. Marquis, and 2) A History of Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul, 1826-1917, by George E. Warner.  That the Perkinses figured in both is additional testimony to the reputation father and son had achieved, finding gold, not in California, but in Minnesota. Three bottle illustrations are from the Ron Feldhaus book, Bottles, Breweriana and Advertising Jugs of Minnesota, 1850-1920.



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