Lauriston Durkee: Boston’s Blind Whiskey Man

There was a subtle irony in the motto used by the liquor house of Durkee, Davis & Drake. It read:  “Every time we drink, things look different.” Lauriston C. Durkee, one of the principals, was not looking.  He had gone blind years earlier but continued to be a major player in the whiskey trade of Boston.

This story of a sightless man in a business where seeing was an important part of success, began in 1840 when Durkee was born in the bucolic town of Montague, Mass., 95 miles east of Boston, the son of Jeremiah and Susan C. Durkee.   Born sighted, Lauriston was only three years old, when his mother died.  The 1850 census found the remaining family living in Montague.   The household contained Jeremiah, now 41 years old;  his second wife, Mahaley, 25;  their one-year-old child, his four sons from the first marriage, including Lauriston, and his diseased wife's mother. 

Durkee may be assumed to have had a basic education in the local Massachusetts school and, like many others, in his mid-teens to have sought employment.  He gravitated east toward Boston, settling in Somerville.  His choice of a city was an inspired one — Somerville was booming. Within a few years the population increased from 15,000 to 90,000.  Brickmaking had taken a hold in the area after the railroads first arrived and the city’s brickyards boomed through the 1860s. In the 1870s meatpacking displaced them as the primary industry in the Somerville, called by some "The Chicago of New England.”  

Recognizing the customer base for alcohol in a boom town, by 1865 Lauriston was recorded as a partner in a Somerville liquor house called “Burrows and Durkee.”  By 1869, Burrows had exited the scene and Durkee was listed as a sole proprietor of a saloon and liquor store.

In 1869 Lauriston married.  Unusual for those times, his wife, Martha L. Dane, was six years older than he, 34 years old at their marriage.  Born and raised in Massachusetts, she was from nearby Medford, the daughter of Herman and Hannah Dane.  The couple was married in Reading, Massachusetts.  There is no indication of children from their union.  Whether it was a desire for a wider market or the draw of a major city, by 1871 the couple had pulled up stakes in Somerville and moved to Boston.  

Durkee found success there, opening a liquor emporium at 99 Causeway and later a second outlet at 7 &1/2 Bowdoin Square, the area shown here.  In May 1873 his Causeway store was damaged when flames from an adjoining lumber mill spread to the building in which he was operating.  The fire caused $5,000 damage (equivalent today circa $125,000) but quickly was repaired.

Durkee operated both stores alone until about 1885 at the age of 45 when he was struck by blindness — the cause unexplained.  This misfortune and the additional burden it placed on his ability to effectively manage his business seemingly moved Durkee to merge his efforts with two Boston locals with credentials in the whiskey trade.  They were W. L. Davis, described as a resident of Boston from his boyhood and “thoroughly conversant with the business” and M. W. Drake who had twenty years experience working for a liquor house.  They called their firm “Durkee, Davis, and Drake, Liquors.”

Their headquarters at the intersection of Causeway and Lancaster Streets was a five story building, forty by fifty feet, located almost opposite the Boston & Lowell Railroad depot, shown here.  The first floor held the partners’ business offices, described as “elegantly furnished” where customers were received.  Upper floors were used to store their liquor supplies and imported wines and brandies.  Fifteen employees looked after a trade that was said to extend throughout New England.  Despite his blindness, Durkee had become a wealthy man.

To brand their company, the partners adopted a distinctive monogram of interlocking “D’s.”  They featured the mark on their advertising shot glasses, given to saloons and restaurants using their products.  The opposite side contained a favorite slogan:  “Every time we drink, things look different.”  Given Durkee’s blindness, this language seems ironic.  

Despite having ample space, the company does not appear to have “recified” (blended) whiskey and sold it under their own label.  Instead they sold “Owl” rye and bourbon, a brand name originating with another Boston whiskey man, John Walsh. [See my post on Walsh, August 30, 2016.]  An 1892 directory of Boston commerce commented that Durkee, Davis and Drake had sold thousands of cases of Owl Whiskey and “have yet to hear of an instance in which the goods did not give the best satisfaction.”  The same directory lauded the firm as one “whose success and enterprise have rapidly advanced them to general favor in business circles.”

Despite his handicap, throughout this period, Durkee also was operating a retail liquor dealership on his own in a one and one-half story building at 259 Friend Street in Boston.  In addition, he had bought a small farm on the Connecticut River in Northfield, Massachusetts, and settled his half-brother, Oscar, and Oscar’s wife, Nettie, on the property.  As Durkee aged and his health declined, he spent increasing time in a highly picturesque landscape on the farm.

In August 1894, after being blind almost a decade, Lauriston Durkee died at the relatively young age of 53.  After a Masonic ritual funeral he was buried on a tiny family graveyard on his farm, now an undeveloped unit of the Connecticut River Greenway Park.  A single large granite monument, shown here, facing upriver, memorializes Lauriston, Oscar and Nettie.  Though surrounded by woods, with underbrush heavy with barberry and briars, the plot itself has been kept clear. Someone cares for it.  Durkee’s wife, Martha, is not buried there.

Durkee had accrued a substantial estate from his liquor business and in his will left a generous bequest for a home to provide affordable room and board for elderly women without other means of support.  A committee of local residents used the money to buy a large Victorian home at 24 Church St. in Greenfield, Mass., shown here.  When the home was sold in 2015 it was reported  that the housing program initiated with Durkee’s money had helped hundreds of women and other homeless through the years. 

With Lauriston’s death, the liquor house became Davis & Drake, with one fewer “D” in the monogram.  Apparently Durkee’s sighted partners were not as canny at business as he was.  In January 1900 came the news that Davis & Drake, characterized as one of the largest liquor firms in Boston, had filed for bankruptcy.  Its liabilities were placed at $93,105 and assets at $18,328.  Among the firm’s creditors was Paris, Allen & Company of New York, the force behind one manifestation of the Whiskey Trust.

Note:  Although the information in this post is from multiple sources, key information about the Durkee, Davis and Drake Co. came from the 1892 publication “Boston: Its Commerce, Finance and Literature” from the A. F. Parsons Publishing Co., New York.

Boston’s Irish John Walsh Did Apply — And Flourished

Throughout the years of the Potato Famine, nearly a million Irish arrived in the United States, often to face hostility.  The roughest welcome of all was in Boston, Massachusetts, with a population of about 115,000.  In 1847, the first big year of the Famine emigration, that city was inundated with 37,000 Irish Catholics immigrants — and they kept coming.  The result was “No Irish Need Apply” signs posted in shop windows and plant gates.   John H. Walsh likely saw such signs when he arrived on these shores as a youth but ignored them, applying himself in the whiskey trade and creating for himself and his family a flourishing business that lasted some 35 years.

Walsh was born in County Tipperary about 1841, just as the potato famine was beginning.  Although we have no photo, a passport application indicates he had a light complexion, blue eyes and a red beard.  Most notable, he stood over six feet, quite tall at time when the average height of a Harvard graduate was five feet, seven inches.  He arrived in America in 1865 at the age of 24, possibly having waited until the Civil War had ended.  Immigrant Irish frequently found themselves marshaled into military ranks.

Walsh’s early years in America are lost in the mists of time, but he appears to have apprenticed with a Boston wholesale liquor house, learning the trade, saving his money, and biding his time to strike out on his own.  He first surfaced in Boston business directories about 1878 as a liquor dealer and the proprietor of a boarding residence called “Centennial House.”  The 1880 Census disclosed the population of that establishment.  In addition to Walsh himself, listed as a “liquor dealer,” were his wife, Nancy, running the household, and two sons, James J., age 13, and William, age 11, both in school.  Nancy was aided by a staff of two, one of them John’s sister, Katie Walsh.   Among occupations of the eight boarders were two other liquor dealers, Richard Barry and Michael Kelly, and a barkeeper, Dennis Brown.  It would not have been unusual if these men were working for Walsh;  boarding with one’s employer was common in the time.

By 1880 Walsh was firmly ensconced in selling liquor from his headquarters in Haymarket Square, an historic former mercantile center in Boston. Opened in 1845, the square, shown above, was a well-known location from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th, when the buildings around it were demolished to make way for government offices. 

John H. Walsh & Company advertised widely in Boston newspapers, offering themselves as “importers and wholesalers.”  Proof of the owner’s wholesale merchandising, likely to Boston area saloons and restaurants, is in the large ceramic jug shown here, holding a gallon of whiskey.  For his retail trade and back of the bar, Walsh featured a long necked attractive amber-hued glass container.  It was embossed in bold letters with the company name and on the base “Boston.”

The Irish immigrant also marketed several proprietary brands of rye whiskey, including “Walsh’s,” trademarked by the owner in 1894, and “Sphinx,” “Owl,” “Kernwood,” and “Ashworth.”   Evidence is that Walsh was rectifying this liquor, that is, blending raw whiskeys in a back room to achieve particular taste, smoothness and color.  

Walsh's flagship brand appears to have been Sphinx Rye, its labels depicting a Egyptian background replete with pyramids and the limestone statue of the Sphinx of Egypt, a reclining creature with a lion’s body and a human head.  Even Walsh’s bottle stoppers contained the Sphinx image.

Even as John Walsh was flourishing at the liquor trade, the condition of the Irish in Boston was improving as their numbers became a political force.   As late as 1867, however, an anti-Irish, anti-Catholic candidate captured the Democratic nomination and was elected the city’s mayor.  The first Irish mayor of Boston, with many others to come after, would not be elected until 1885.  The “No Irish Need Apply” signs began to disappear.  

John Walsh lived long enough to see these changes in Boston and contributed to his adopted country in several ways.  He was heavily involved in local politics, serving as a member of the Democratic City Committee and the State Central Committee and also helped organize the Irish Athletic Club of Boston. Another accomplishment was establishing the Centennial House hotel in Allston, Maine.  He died in 1888. 

By that time, Walsh’s eldest son, James was approaching 30 years old and had worked with his father in John H. Walsh & Co., for a decade.  While keeping the name of the liquor house constant, James brought new vigor and ideas to the firm.  As an example, he trademarked both Sphinx and Owl Ryes and appears to have opened a second outlet at 14 Cross Street in Boston.  He also was advertising an alcoholic tonic called “Walsh’s Rock, Rye and Gentian.”

James Walsh also issued a number of shot glasses advertising his proprietary brands of whiskey.   These items would have been given to special customers, including saloonkeepers and bartenders using Walsh’s liquor in their establishments.  The detailed etching on these glasses, both the sphinx and the owl, render them of particular interest.  

These glasses also would have been relatively more expensive to produce than the average shot.  For his retail customers James provided a delightful pocket lucky piece.  It incorporated a 1901 Indian head penny rampant on a four leaf clover and the motto “It is pure whiskey.”

In his personal life, James had known tragedy.  The 1900 census found him living as a widower in Boston’s Ward 25, caring for a four year old son, John H., named for the grandfather.  By the 1910 census, this Walsh had married again, a woman whose first name was Ellen.  John H. was now 14 and no other children were recorded.  James’ 1910 occupation was given as “Owner - Liquor Business.”

How much longer James would have run the liquor business founded by his father is unclear.  I can find no Boston business directory entry for John H. Walsh & Co., after 1913.  Even so, the firm the Irish immigrant had founded as early as 1878 had survived at least 35 years.  With men like John Walsh applying their talents in Boston, the Irish had come a long way over that span — and would go further still. In 1913 the mayor of Boston was John F. (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald, the grandfather of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. 

Note:  This vignette unfortunately lacks details on John Walsh’s early life in Ireland and his occupational history from 1865 to 1878.  The material on James Walsh also is sketchy.  I am hope a relative who has done genealogical work on these Walshes will see the post and help me fill in the blanks and correct any wrong assumptions I may have made.

Note 2:  In 2018 Peter Samuelson, a noted collector from the Northeast of labeled whiskeys, was kind enough to send me the striking labels of Walsh's Sphinx whiskey.  I was able to add them above and appreciate his sending them to me.