Whiskey Men & Family Feuds II

   

Foreword:  In this my second compilation of family feuds, I feel compelled to note that for every story of discord among families involved in making or selling whiskey, there are at least a dozen instances of families working together to achieve success.  Regrettably, circumstances sometimes can lead to internecine disputes.  In the three vignettes to follow, the individual causes might be abbreviated as “money, marriage, and murder.”  In truth, avarice might be seen as the root of all of them.

Edward Penton Middleton, whose graveyard bust is shown here, was an extremely wealthy man whose major source of funds came from selling whiskey and other alcoholic beverages in Philadelphia.  A man with an aggressive personality and accustomed to having his way, Middleton in 1864 split with his brother after 20 profitable years of running a liquor house. 

The separation was far from amicable.  Witnesses later would testify that the brothers not only argued but that George Middleton had threatened Edward with “personal violence” and the two had become permanently estranged.  George set up a liquor store of his own in direct competition with Edward.  When he died in 1886, Edward exacted his revenge.

Edward had never married and if he had died intestate his fortune would have been divided equally among his surviving three brothers and three sisters, each of whom might have expected a sixth of a substantial fortune.  But Middleton had made a will, kept in a safety deposit box at a local bank.  In court a bank executive testified that Edward had anticipated that his will would be controversial, telling him that the document would cause “a high old time after my death.”  In it Middleton gave substantial but not whopping amounts to five sisters and brothers.  George got nary a cent.  By far the largest bequest, equivalent to roughly $10 million today, went to a nephew, Charles D. Middleton, a paper hanger by occupation. 

George Middleton, backed by other siblings, upon the reading of Edward’s last will and testament immediately hollered fraud.  A jury trial ensued in Federal Court that lasted the greater part of five weeks as dozens of witnesses were heard.  Several testified to Edward Middleton’s special affection for his nephew, pointing out that he had paid for Charles’ support and education after the boy’s mother and father died, had financed his paper hanging business, and considered Charles “the only man in the family who took care of himself.”  After a lengthy instruction from the judge, the jury retired but quickly brought its verdict: The will was legitimate.  

Made a rich man overnight, Charles exited paper hanging.  The 1880 census gave the 42-year old heir’s occupation as “gentleman,” i.e. no longer needing to work for a living.  Charles now was living in a mansion home.  In addition to his wife and two children, his household included his mother, mother-in-law, and four live-in servants, including a chambermaid, cook, gardener and coachman.  Charles, as Uncle Edward had anticipated, knew how to take care of himself.

Established in America by early colonist John Bellows in 1635, the Bellows family became one of the country’s historic clans, a close knit group with a motto meaning “All from On High” and a crest of a disembodied hand pouring something into a goblet.  It ironically might have been whiskey, the liquid that led to the unfortunate unraveling of the family of Charles Bellows, who owned a well-known liquor house in New York City.  Bellows Monogram Rye was his flagship brand.

Marriage was key to the discord.  Charles and his first wife, Eliza Delano, had only one child, a son born in 1852 whom they named Charles after his father. Eliza proved to be of frail health and after only thirteen years of marriage, she died in April, 1861.  After waiting the obligatory year and few days after her death Charles married again.  This time his bride was Eliza’s older sister, Mary Ellen  That is when the family ties began to unravel.  Charles Jr., age 14, now was faced with a stepmother who also was his aunt.  Moreover, Charles and Mary would have three additional sons.  Charles Jr. may well have felt himself the “odd man out” of the family.

During a period when Bellows was suffering business reverses, Charles Jr., now grown, shown here, joined his father for a dozen years in rebuilding a successful liquor house.  Then Charles Sr. died in March 1890 at the age of 65, willing the business to his wife.  Tasked with managing the liquor house,  Charles Jr. after several months asked his stepmother to let him buy the store outright.  Mary Ellen refused.   By this time her sons were grown and had worked in the firm.  The mother wanted her boys to have the company.  In 1891 she assigned it to her sons, Arthur and Clarence, leaving out Charles Jr. out in the cold.

The crack in the Bellows family was now irreparable.  Charles Jr., clearly disappointed and angry, set up his own wine and liquor establishment, opening at  42 Broad Street, immediately next door to the original Bellows establishment and in direct competition.  Subsequently Charles Jr. sued Arthur and Clarence claiming that his liquor enterprise was the successor to the firm of Charles Bellows and exclusively was entitled to the use of the name.  Moreover, he charged, the continued use of the founder’s name on his half-brothers’ business was a fraud on the public.  The presiding judge disagreed, ruling:  “There is no fraud practiced upon the public or the plaintiff.”  He then dismissed Charles Jr.’s suit and charged him court costs.

The Bellows family rift continued even unto death.  Both Arthur and Clarence are buried adjacent to their father, Charles, in the Bellows family plot. Charles Jr. is buried elsewhere, outside the family circle.

The third family feud made newspaper headlines from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to San Bernardino, California.   Across America people knew that two sons of Peter Dorsheimer, a former prominent Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liquor wholesaler, had been jailed, accused by a third son of having murdered their father and mother 14 years earlier while making it look like an accident.  Until then, the public face of the Dorsheimers was of a happy family of solid Pennsylvania stock, high achieving and affluent, civically and politically active, and strong adherents to the German Reformed Christian Church.  Whatever tensions roiled beneath the surface had gone unnoticed.  

On April 16, 1910, tragedy had struck the Dorsheimers.  Peter, shown here, and his wife were found dead in their bed, asphyxiated by illuminating gas from a fixture in their bedroom. The flame had been extinguished but the deadly gas continued to flow.  The decision of the coroner, backed by the sheriff, was accidental death.  The theory as was that an errant piece of clothing from one of the two had brushed against the jet, blowing out the flame, and the couple had not noticed.   

Fast forward 14 years:  Chester A. and Benjamin Dorsheimer, were arrested and jailed in Lancaster County on an allegation that they had murdered their mother and father on that April night as a way to get control of the lucrative liquor business.  The accuser was their brother, Frank, abetted by a sister, Lizzie. Shown here, Frank also found a sympathetic ear in a rural justice of the peace with the power to incarcerate. 

Shown here, the brothers (Chester left) spent seven days languishing in jail.  At last a county judge held a hearing that included evidence that the door to Peter and Anna’s bedroom had been locked from the inside, making it impossible for someone to slip in and blow out the gas jet while they were sleeping.  He ordered Benjamin and Chester immediately released, ending their ordeal.  In the process, however, the Dorsheimer family circle that once had looked so strong had been broken and likely irreparably so.

Note:  More complete stories of each of these families may be found on this blog at the following dates:  Middleton, January 13, 2019;  Bellows, December 8, 2019, and Dorsheimer, March 23, 1917.  My thanks to Lisa Dorsheimer Procaccini for the photos of her ancestors.  The first post on family feuds ran on December 21, 2019.

Whiskey Men and Murder

        

Foreword:  Although incidents of gunplay in pre-Prohibition saloons were fairly common and deaths too frequently were the result, those usually involved the Wild West where reckless males with few family ties were on the loose.  By contrast, the four incidents of murder involving whiskey men briefly recounted here all involve relationships — fathers, mothers, children.  Family ties have an emotional dimension that barroom shoot-outs lack.  While each of these stories differs significantly from the others, their common thread is…

Shown here is Julius Goldbaum as a young whiskey man who in his own time was accounted as an outstanding pioneer in making the Arizona Territory a viable place for settlement.  But first he had to overcome the trauma of the murder of his father, Marcus Goldbaum.  Marcus, a butcher by trade, was a restless man, moving his family from Denver to Arizona in 1861, never settling in one town very long.  By the early 1880s Marcus had moved to Benson, Arizona, a rail terminal about 45 miles south of Tucson.  There he expanded beyond butchering to dealing in beer and liquor.

Still Marcus was not content.  Catching gold fever, he turned over operating the businesses to his wife and set out prospecting in the nearby Whetstone Mountains.  As one writer has observed:  “It was a bad idea.”  Geronimo’s Apaches were on the warpath.  They raided Marcus’s mountain cabin, killed him, ransacked the place and took what they wanted.   A cavalry patrol found him days later but did not immediately recognize that the prospector was Marcus Goldbaum because he had been scalped.  An etching by the famous Western artist, Frederic Remington, in the book “On the Bloody Trail of Geronimo,” caught the scene.  The dead man was only 51.

Moving to Tucson, Julius opened a saloon and liquor dealership, shown here.  From that beginning, he began to “rectify” (blend) his own brands of whiskey.  His success was immediate and he became one of Tucson’s wealthiest men.  Civic minded, he also was a volunteer fireman and elected to the Tucson City Council. Goldbaum was singled out for praise in an 1891 book that focussed on men “Who Have Made the Territory.”  Despite his father’s killing — or perhaps in part because of it — Julius stayed to make Arizona a desirable place to live. 

It is not clear when Dan and Mary (Sullivan) Hanley emigrated from Ireland to the United States.  Hanley first surfaced in San Francisco directories in 1863 working as a bartender at the Rotunda Saloon.  Before long he owned a grocery store and liquor business, including his own saloon.  Also living with the couple and their three young children 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 landowner 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 wine were involved.”  Hanley’s grave is shown here.

Left with three children to raise, Mary Hanley, shown right, proved to have “the right stuff.”  Overcoming her grief she took over management of the family grocery, liquor store and saloon, running them for more than a decade.  As her son, John, reached maturity, he was tasked with working in his mother’s enterprises and learned the liquor trade, pursuing it for much of his life. 

When his father August died in 1905, William Krogman was well prepared to take over the operation of the family’s distillery in Tell City, Indiana.  He likely was unprepared, however, for subsequent events.   In 1911 a Tell City man named Joseph Wiegand was feuding with his neighbors next door, the Drury family.  According to press accounts, the problem was “some little difference about chickens.”  Mrs. Drury was standing in the yard of her home one day when Wiegand came around the corner of the house and shot her dead. Convicted of murder, Wiegand, apparently because of advanced age, escaped the gallows and was given a prison sentence.  

Left with five minor children and no one to care for them, the bereaved husband sued Krogman, characterized as a “wealthy man,” for $10,000 in damages (equivalent to $250,000 today).  Drury charged that his wife’s slayer had been drunk on liquor sold him by the distiller.  After legal maneuverings that lasted almost two years, a jury awarded Drury $2,500 in “blood money.”  He rejected that result as too little and filed for a new trial, this time suing in the name of his motherless children.  This second time around, after a venue change to an Indiana county where Mrs. Drury had once resided, a sympathetic jury increased the award to $7,000.  A local newspaper headline read:  “Heavy Judgment Rendered Against William Krogman.” 

Krogman’s problems were just beginning.  As prohibitionary forces closed in on the production and sale of alcohol in the Midwest, his whiskey markets slowly dried up along with profits.  Finally, in 1920 the advent of National Prohibition caused the distillery his father had founded 57 years earlier to shut down completely.

This murder story made newspaper headlines from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to San Bernardino, California.   Across America people knew that two sons of Peter Dorsheimer, a prominent Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liquor wholesaler, had been jailed, accused by a third son of having murdered their father and mother 14 years earlier in their home, shown here, while making it look like an accident.   Until then, the public face of the Dorsheimers was of a happy family of solid Pennsylvania stock, high achieving and affluent, civically and politically active, and strong adherents to the German Reformed Christian Church.  Whatever tensions roiled beneath the surface had gone unnoticed. 

 On April 16, 1910, tragedy had struck the Dorsheimers.  The parents were found dead in their bed, asphyxiated by illuminating gas from a fixture in their bedroom. The flame had been extinguished but the deadly gas continued to flow.  The decision of the coroner, backed by the sheriff, was accidental death, as noted on Peter's death certificate shown here.  The theory as was that an errant piece of clothing from one of the two had brushed against the jet, blowing out the flame, and the couple had not noticed. 

Fast forward 14 years:  Benjamin and Chester Dorsheimer were arrested and jailed in Lancaster County on an allegation that they had murdered their mother and father on that April night as a way to get control of the lucrative liquor business.  The accuser was their brother, Frank, abetted by a sister, Lizzie. Frank also found a sympathetic ear in a rural justice of the peace with the power to incarcerate.

The brothers spent seven days languishing in jail.  At last a county judge held a hearing that included evidence that the door to Peter and Anna’s bedroom had been locked from the inside, making it impossible for someone to slip in and blow out the gas jet while they were sleeping.  He ordered Benjamin and Chester immediately released, ending their ordeal.  In the process, however, the Dorsheimer family circle that once had looked so strong had been broken and likely irreparably so.

Human interest is evident in each of these stories.  All of these murders — including the one alleged — involved families.  Fathers killed, leaving children to be raised;  a mother murdered, leaving a father with minor children, and adult children accusing each other over the deaths of their parents.  These are tragedies with implications well beyond shootouts inside a Western saloon.

Note:  More complete vignettes on these whiskey men are available on this blog:  Julius Goldbaum, March 2, 2017;  the Hanleys, May 5, 2018;  William Krogman, December 6, 2014; and the Dorsheimers, March 26, 2017.

Death and Discord Among the Dorsheimers of Lancaster

Peter Dorsheimer

The story made newspaper headlines from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to San Bernardino, California.   Across America people knew that two sons of Peter Dorsheimer, a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liquor wholesaler, had been jailed, accused by another sibling of having murdered their father and mother 14 years earlier while making it look like an accident.   Until then, the public face of the Dorsheimers was of a happy family of solid Pennsylvania stock, high achieving and affluent, civically and politically active, and strong adherents to the German Reform Christian Church.  Whatever tensions roiled beneath the surface went unnoticed.

Peter Dorsheimer was born in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, in July 1840, the son of a well-to-do farmer, also named Peter, and his wife, Anna, a woman who came from a wealthy German manufacturing family.  In May 1860, for unknown reasons, the family pulled up stakes in their homeland, sailed from Le Havre and landed in New York.  From there the family made its way to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where many of their co-religionists already lived.  Initially the young Dorsheimer obtained employment on an area farm where he worked for five years, saved his money, and bought the Shemdown House Hotel in Lancaster.   Soon tiring of the hospitality trade apparently, Peter then devoted his ample energies and strong entrepreneurial bent toward real estate development, buying land and erecting houses on them.  Often he had 80 to 100 men in his employ.

Dorsheimer had married early, not long after his arrival in the U.S.  His bride was Anna E. Stauffer, a German immigrant herself from Berne on the Rhine.  From their marriage twelve children were born and, unusual for the times all reached adulthood.  In order of birth they were Daniel, Frank, Ada, Harry, George, Mary, John, Elizabeth called “Lizzie,” Benjamin, Martin, Garfield and Chester also called “Arthur.”  As his boys grew, Peter set them up in Pennsylvania businesses, but interestingly, most away from Lancaster.  He financed John and Martin in a real estate development business in Philadelphia;  Frank and George with a carriage building factory in Coatsville,  and Daniel and Harry in a similar enterprise in Gap.  The two girls also had relocated, Lizzie to Reading and Mary to Newark, New Jersey.  Benjamin was still at home working for his father.

In 1887, Dorsheimer exited other business interests in favor of opening a wholesale liquor house in Lancaster.  Under the name “C. A., Dorsheimer” he located his business at 150-152 East King Street, the busy commercial avenue shown below and called by a biographer, “a fine location.”

Peter’s storefront stretched almost 33 feet and was 96 feet in depth.  He stocked it with bottles and jugs of liquor, including well-known  brands. The building is shown left as it looks today.  For his wholesale customers he packaged whiskey in ceramic jugs with a cobalt logo.  For retail sales he often bottled his whiskey in honey amber flasks and quarts.   Many had a paper label in the form of a fish.  It read:  “You may fish all you want. You can't catch anything better for the money than you can at Dorsheimer's Old Wine & Liquor Store.”

We have a description of Peter as he looked at this time, taken from an 1885 passport application.  He was six feet in height, tall for that time, had dark brown hair that was turning gray. He had no facial hair and a small growth at the front of his right ear.  By 1903 he had made ten trips to Europe, purchasing Rhine wines, Holland gin, French brandies, and Scotch and Irish whiskey.  

The liquor dealer became a well-known figure in Lancaster as businessman and automobile enthusiast.  In a 1901 parade of cars, according to a biographer:  “No man in the parade was saluted oftener than Peter Dorsheimer for no man is better known and liked.”  He and Anna were active and respected members of St. Paul’s Reformed Church in Lancaster.  They lived in a three and one-half story home at 444 East King Street not far from the store, the building shown here as it looks today.

By 1903 some Dorsheimer sons gravitated to other pursuits and the daughters had wed.  Daniel was running a hotel at Parkersburg, assisted by Benjamin.  John was in the cigar trade in Boston.  Frank had split with brother George and each was running his own carriage manufactory.  Harry was building carriages in Parkersburg.  Mary had married and was living in New York City and “Lizzie” was in Reading with her husband.  Garfield worked at the Slaymaker lock works in Lancaster and Chester/Arthur was assisting his father in the liquor trade.  Enthused a biographer:  “This is surely a remarkable family record, seldom equalled, a family circle complete and unbroken.”  In the light of later events, this statement seems highly ironic.

As he aged, Peter Dorsheimer turned over the liquor business to his sons, principally it appears to Chester/Arthur and Benjamin.  Living with Anna and unmarried daughter, Ada, for outside observers the parents seemed like an elderly couple living out their “golden years” surrounded by their successful children and with ample grandchildren to pamper.  Then on April 16, 1910, tragedy struck.  The couple were found dead in their bed, asphyxiated by illuminating gas from a fixture in their bedroom in which the flame had been extinguished but the deadly gas continued to flow.  The decision of the coroner, backed by the sheriff, was accidental death. as noted on Peter's death certificate below. 

The theory as was that an errant piece of clothing from one of the two had brushed against the jet, blowing out the flame, and the couple had not noticed.  There were no other theories of how the Dorsheimers had died.  Peter and Anna were buried together in Lancaster Cemetery, their gravestones shown here.

Fast forward 14 years to headlines from coast to coast:  Benjamin and Chester/Arthur Dorsheimer had been jailed in Lancaster County on suspicion that they had murdered their mother and father on that April night as they slept peacefully.  The accuser was their brother, Frank Dorsheimer.  

Why had it taken 14 years to come forward?  Considerable time was required to line up witnesses, he responded.  The brothers under suspicion said Frank was a religious “fanatic,” and claimed he was basing his charges on messages received from the spirit world.  Shown here, Frank denied that accusation and countered that Chester/Arthur had confessed to him:  “He said, ‘I guess you would like to send me to the electric chair, wouldn’t you.’  He said ‘…Well if I did do it, it was a slick job and I got away with it.’”

Only one official to whom Frank brought the story thought it believable enough.  He was Squire Diller, a justice of the peace in Gap with the power to arrest and incarcerate.  Diller explained that it was not because he was convinced of the brothers’ guilt but because it was his duty to hold court whenever a probability of a crime was shown. During the hearings that followed, George Dorsheimer defended his brothers saying that many family members were dubious about the arrests and Diller’s actions.  “There is not one iota of evidence against these defendants,” he testified. “The only evidence is by a rattle-brained brother concerning an alleged confession….”

Nevertheless, Frank Dorsheimer’s charges were supported by another sibling, Lizzie — now Mrs. Elizabeth Pennypacker of 59th Street, Philadelphia.  She testified that shortly before the funeral she had attempted to examine the bodies for marks of violence but had been prevented from doing so by the undertaker.  “I have always had suspicions as to the cause of death…,” she said and noted that she had raised the issue with both Benjamin and Chester Arthur.  Although they had denied any knowledge of the event, she had harbored doubts over the years.  All this made juicy headlines in the nation’s newspapers.  The brothers languished in the Gap jail for seven days while their lawyers sought their release from the court in Lancaster. They are shown below, Chester/Arthur on the left.

  

At last a country court judge listened to the evidence, including the fact that the door to Peter and Anna’s bedroom had been locked from the inside, making it impossible for someone to slip in and blow out the gas jet while they were sleeping.  He ordered the brothers immediately released from jail.  That appears to have ended the ordeal of Benjamin and Chester/Arthur.  In the process, however, the Dorsheimer family circle that once had looked so strong had, indeed, been broken and likely irreparably so.

Note:  As an indication of the media and public interest in the Dorsheimer case, the quotations above were gleaned from the Lebanon PA Daily News, Warren PA Tribune, Delaware County PA Daily Times, and the Franklin PA News Herald, as well as  Bridgeport NJ and San Bernadino papers. The Dorsheimer family photos seen in this post are a late and much appreciated addition through the courtesy of Lisa Dorsheimer Procaccini, Peter's great granddaughter.