Paul Jones Yearned for “The Old South”

                                

It should come as no surprise that Paul Jones (Jr.) one of America’s most famous whiskey men,  should be buried in a large mausoleum, pictured above, fashioned after a Southern pre-Civil War mansion in Louisville’s historic Cave Hill Cemetery.  A former Confederate soldier, Jones and the liquor business he founded constantly looked backward with deep nostalgia for “The Old South” of memory.

Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1840, into a affluent family, Jones, depicted here in middle age, knew the easy and bucolic life of Southern living as he was growing up, when plantation owners and their families were buffered from back-breaking toil and many tasks of everyday life by the existence of slavery.  Below is an illustration taken from an advertising booklet issued by the liquor firm he founded.  The caption reads “—When Paul Jones was young.”  It shows an elderly black man, certainly a slave, making his way up a road past slave shacks.  The picture creates a tranquil, nostalgic, antebellum mood.

The image is unrealistic. Tranquility would be a thing of the past for Paul Jones at age 21 with the outbreak of the Civil War.  His older brother, Warner, had helped form a Confederate company of infantry from Western Tennessee and was elected a captain in what became the 33rd Tennessee Regiment.  Paul Jones joined a Virginia regiment and received the rank of lieutenant. When General Sherman threatened Atlanta,  both Jones brothers’ units were ordered by General Lee to defend the Georgia city.  In the ensuing battle Warner was killed.

After the Southern surrender,  Paul Jones, according to one account,  “returned home to find his home in ruins and the family destitute.  His family’s wealth which before the war had been considerable had been invested in Confederate bonds and was gone.”  Paul Jr., joined by his father, subsequently relocated to Atlanta.  There the histories differ.  Some say the Joneses began producing whiskey and cigars; others that Paul Jr. went to work as a salesman for Rufus Rose, a Georgia distiller.  (See my post on Rose, September 30, 2011.)

This divergence is part of an ongoing and unresolved controversy about how the famous “Four Roses” brand got its name.  Seagram’s, the current owner of the label, has perpetuated myths by spinning a tale of Deep South romance:   “It began when Paul Jones, Jr., the founder of Four Roses Bourbon, became smitten by the beauty of a Southern belle. It is said that he sent a proposal to her, and she replied that if her answer were ‘Yes,’ she would wear a corsage of roses on her gown to the upcoming grand ball.  Paul Jones waited for her answer excitedly on that night of the grand ball…when she arrived in her beautiful gown, she wore a corsage of four red roses. He later named his Bourbon ‘Four Roses’ as a symbol of his devout passion for the lovely belle….”

This is pure romantic nonsense.  Paul Jones remained a bachelor for all of his days.  What can be documented is that Jones was successful in the liquor trade in Georgia and that when its state legislature passed a law banning alcohol sales, he relocated about 1884 to Louisville, Kentucky.  He quickly was able to obtain a prime location on Louisville’s “Whiskey Row” on Main Street where he began “rectifying” whiskey and selling at wholesale.  With the “Whiskey Trust” controlling the price of whiskey stocks, Jones soon looked for a distillery of his own.  The opportunity came when the J. G. Mattingly distillery ran into financial difficulties. This facility had been built by the Mattingly family in Louisville in 1874, located between High and Rudd Avenues and 39th and 40th Streets, and run successfully by them until 1889.  In September of that year they ceased operation and the distillery went up for auction.  Jones bought it for $125,000 — equivalent to about $3 million today.

For his money, according to insurance records, Jones obtained a mill and fermenting house, a boiler house, a distillery spirits building and a cattle barn.  The property also held five warehouses, all of them brick with slate or metal roofs.  With an assured supply of whiskey the Paul Jones Company was on its way to becoming one of America’s largest distilling organizations.  It used the brand names, “Paul Jones,” ”Four Roses,” "Jones Four Star,” "Old Cabinet,” "Old Cabinet Rye,” "Small Grain,” "West End,” and “Swastika,”  In those pre-Nazi days the swastika was an Native American good luck sign.   

Jones advertised from coast to coast including a giant lighted sign in New York’s Madison Square.  The Paul Jones brand quickly found a national audience, packaged in glass bottles from quarts down to mini size.  He often merchandised with “Old South” themes, including  images he put on saloon signs and bar trays.  Conjuring up a number of stereotypes about African-Americans, one showed a black mammy with a slice of watermelon and a black man with a bottle of Paul Jones whiskey.  In the center is a boy torn between the two treats.  It is entitled “The Temptation of St. Anthony,”  a reference to a Medieval saint who was tempted by demons in the desert.  Another rural image used in merchandising Paul Jones whiskey was of a grinning farmer pouring himself a glass. Used on saloon signs, it also graced shot glasses and back-of-the-bar bottles.

Throughout this period Jones was expanding his operations, taking over an adjacent building in which paper labels for bottles were stocked and stored. Curiously,  Sanborn insurance maps show no areas set aside for offices in either structure.  It has been suggested that Jones, living a presumably Spartan bachelor life, conducted all his business in the hotel room in which he resided for years.  It was at the Galt House, just down the street from the Paul Jones Company.

As his business thrived, Jones made investments in Louisville, becoming a director and vice president of the American National Bank and president of the Louisville Fair and Driving Association.  Throughout the early 1900s Jones suffered from a kidney ailment known as “Bright’s Disease” and died of its complications in 1905.  He left money in his will for the building of the Southern mansion mausoleum shown at the top of this post.

After Paul’s death, Warner Jones’ son with other family members carried on the company.  During National Prohibition in 1922 they bought the Frankfort Distillery, one of the few outfits that had been granted the right to sell “medicinal” whiskey during the dry period.  That purchase kept their brands alive and when Repeal came the family added a third Louisville based distillery to supply them with spirits.  The Joneses continuing fixation with the Old South was evident in a brochure they issued in 1934 that talks lovingly about “…The plunk of the banjo and the melancholy throatiness of some Afric chant drifting from a whitewashed log-cabin across damasked tobacco-patch….”  Accompanying illustrations carried the same theme of black slaves happy to be serving white men.

In 1943, the family sold its liquor interests to Seagrams, a Canadian company that maintained the nostalgic (and sometimes racist) images that had characterized Paul Jones advertising for generations.  An 1940's ad shows a happy black waiter and his fractured English.  The Paul Jones brand eventually disappeared from liquor store shelves, although Four Roses has survived.  Meanwhile, the original Paul Jones lies alone in his massive mausoleum, possibly dreaming still of his Old South.

Addendum:  In 2020 I was contacted by Atty. Saunders "Sandy" Jones about an oil portrait of Paul Jones that had come down through the Jones family to his 96-year-old father.  He graciously has sent me a photo of the picture which I am delighted to added to this post -- and thank him very much for the opportunity.  It appears to me that it may be the basis for the pen sketch of Paul Jones that opens this vignette.  Readers can decide for themselves.

  

The Quirin Brothers and “Geniune” Whiskey in New Hampshire

In 1908 the New Hampshire Board of Health decided to test the content of alcoholic beverages being sold in the state.  Of 301 samples taken and tested by its chemists 244 were allegedly whiskey, including a number of bottles collected from the shelves of a Manchester liquor store run by the Quirin brothers, Eugene and Joseph.  The results were sobering.

The findings of the study supported the contention of a doctor who had reported to federal authorities more than a decade earlier that within New Hampshire “almost all the whiskey and some drugs are adulterated.”  The Board of Health asserted that less than 10% of the whiskeys tested could be classed as “straight” or, in the opinion of Dr. Irving Watson, its director, truly “genuine.”  The other whiskeys were termed either partially or totally “artificial,” among them all the samples obtained from Quirin Brothers.

The brothers had been born in Alsace-Lorraine, France;  Joseph in 1854 and Eugene, shown above, in 1865.  According to census data, both had come to the United States as young men -- Joseph in 1873, Eugene in 1883.  They settled in Manchester, a city with a large and sometimes discriminated-against French-Canadian population.   Eugene was the first of the Quirins to enter the public record, listed in 1892 as a grocer on Manchester’s Main Street at the corner of Marion.  With a partner named Duhaime by 1897 he also was the proprietor of a wholesale and retail liquor store located at 129 & 135 Merrimack.

By 1905, Duhaime had departed and Eugene was joined by brother Joseph in a liquor enterprise they called Quirin Bros., located at 85-89 Manchester Street.  In addition to selling well known brands like “Paul Jones Whiskey,” “Pepper Rye,” “Hunter Rye,” and “Old Baker,”  they marketed their own brand of whiskey, liquor they likely mixed up in a back room.  They sold it in large ceramic jugs both to local saloons and to retail customers.  The Quirins also sold wines, some of them in embossed blob-top bottles, as shown here.

Meanwhile, each of the brothers had wed.  Joseph in 1875 was the first. His wife was Mary Jane, a native of New Hampshire, who was barely out of her teens when they married.  Eugene was married in 1895 to Marie, who like himself was of French parentage and born in France.  The 1910 census found these Quirins with four children in their home, three boys and a girl, ages 14 to 3. 

Eugene Quirin appears to have been the more dynamic of the brothers.  He rapidly became a prominent businessman in Manchester with an import business and travel agency in addition to his grocery and liquor enterprises.  A member of a variety of social clubs, he also gained a reputation for his local philanthropic efforts.  Active in politics, Eugene was elected as a delegate to the 1904 Republican convention in Chicago. In addition, the younger Quirin was becoming increasingly wealthy.   As an expression of his rise, in 1906 he and Marie bought land on the west side of Manchester, a highly fashionable area of that day, and built an imposing Queen Ann style house, shown here as it currently looks.  Although Joseph was less prominent as a businessman, he appears to have been involved in operating a Manchester shoe store.

Given the Quirins standing in the community, the verdict of the Board of Health that they were not selling genuine whiskey must have come as exceedingly disturbing news.  The judgment came down particularly hard on the liquor the brothers were selling under their own name in the large jugs.  The Board of Health report branded it as an “imitation,” and “completely artificial,”  maintaining it contained no whiskey whatsoever, although it might have such ingredients as burnt sugar, “beading oil” and tap water.  

In what might have been the cruelest cut of all, the Quirins' brand additionally was traduced as being low in alcohol.

Moreover, “Green Valley Club” and “Royal Crown Old Rye” from the brothers’ shelves were cited for being misbranded because they were blends masquerading as straight,” i.e. “genuine” whiskeys.  Even when blends were identified properly the Board of Health took a dim view.  The label of Paul Jones Whiskey obtained from the Quirins was pictured in the report and shown above.  Although the bottle correctly identified its contents, the report still was critical:  “Not infrequently the conspicuous addition of the little word “blend” is made to serve as a license for, and in extension of, the boldest misstatements upon the face of the label."

Although there is no evidence of fines being levied on the Quirins or other negative effects from the state report, unexplained stresses eventually would end their partnership and each brother went his own way.  The 1914 Manchester business directory listed Eugene as now established under his own name as an “Importer & Wholesale Liquors”  with a store adjacent to his Main Street grocery.   Meanwhile Joseph remained at the old Manchester Street address  and was advertising as “successor to Quirin Brothers.”  He primarily emphasized his establishment as importing wines and brandies and advertised only a single whiskey, “Rosemount.”  That brand was not one singled out by the Board of Health report nor was “Old Home Week Whiskey” for which Joseph issued a shot glass, shown here.

Although both Quirins ultimately were shut down by National Prohibition, they might have had “the last laugh” on New Hampshire authorities. Shown here is a photo taken at a Manchester philanthropic organization designed to aid French-Canadian immigrants.  Eugene Quirin stands second from left.  The man sitting behind the table draped with an American flag is the President of the United States, William Howard Taft.  It was Taft who ultimately settled the issue of the authenticity of whiskey.  Against the recommendations of his staff and a presidential commission, in 1909 he unilaterally decreed that blended whiskeys should be considered just as genuine as straight — a decision that has stood to this day.  Had Eugene Quirin been whispering into the President’s ear?