Grocers as Whiskey Men

               

Foreword: Today only sixteen states allow grocery stores to sell distilled spirits, popularly known as “hard liquor.”  In the rest of the Nation such sales are strictly illegal. But it was not always the case.  Before National Prohibition (1920-1934), it was common for grocery stores to sell whiskey and other forms of liquor.  Booze usually was a major profit center for such establishments.  Some grocers even had their own “house” brands of whiskey, mixing them up and bottling them in a back room.   Following are vignettes of three pre-Prohibition grocers for whom alcohol was a major commodity.  

The Peebles Family fashioned a Cincinnati business that

not only advertised itself as the “largest distributor of pure food products in the Ohio Valley”  but also boasted of being “largest handlers of pure, ripe, old, mellow whiskies in the United States.”  True claims or not, the Joseph R. Peebles Sons Company epitomized how liquor sales meant profits and success for a pre-Prohibition grocery store.

Shown here, the founding father, Joseph R. Peebles, proved  to have a genius for the mercantile trade. He had an eye for “fancy” groceries, buying pricey English and French goods, fine foreign wines, and stocking an array of whiskeys and other liquors.  After his early death his son, Joseph S. Peebles, proved equally astute. As the business continued to grow, a need was felt for larger quarters and the company relocated to the ground floor of Cincinnati’s prestigious Pike’s Opera House.

The space created by this move allowed Peebles to market his own brands of whiskey, likely bought from Kentucky distillers by the barrel, blended, decanted into bottles and sold.  House brands included “Peebles Sweet Hickory” and “Peebles Old Cabinet.”  The liquor department is illustrated above.  The company also claimed to be authorized bottlers for “Mellwood" and “Normandy” whiskeys.  Those were premium brands from the Louisville-based Mellwood Distilling Company, owned by George Swearingen. [See my post on this organization, October 8, 2015.]  An illustration of Peebles’ wholesale operation prominently featured Mellwood Bourbon. 

Business was carried on under the Peebles name until 1931 when the economic pressures of the Great Depression are said to have forced its closing.  Said one observer:  “The ‘fancy groceries’ that Peebles was noted for became luxuries that few could afford….”  Just as important, I would contend, was the advent of National Prohibition that earlier cut off Peebles’ highly profitable trade in alcohol.  Whiskey and wine had been the company’s life blood; termination after 91 years in business may have been inevitable after alcohol sales were banned in 1920.

Seated in the photo above, I believe, is Adolph Moll, the old gentleman with a cap, surrounded by the elegant St. Louis grocery store he had established years earlier and worked hard to make successful.  Note the displays of potatoes, onions and other produce in the foreground and then the bottles of whiskey and wine that seem to climb every pillar in the store.  Moll knew that although bushels of veggies made money, liquor made him a lot more.

Following the Civil War, Moll in addition to his grocery opened a warehouse on North Seventh Street in St. Louis.   The facility gave him space for mixing his own batches of whiskey, using raw product gathered from a variety of Missouri and Kentucky distilleries.  Much of it was sold at wholesale in large ceramic jugs bearing his label. 

For his retail trade, Moll featured two proprietary whiskeys, “Old Bob Pepper,” and “Delmar Club Rye.”  He advertised Old Bob Pepper as aged four years and sold it for $2.00 a gallon.   For his Delmar Club label, Moll issued a shot glass that would have been given to saloons and restaurants carrying the brand.  Moll never bothered to trademark either whiskey. 

Known as the “Grocery King” of St. Louis,  Moll was hailed as an immigrant arriving with few resources who succeeded through intelligence and hard work.  “All who knew him say he earned every cent of his comfortable fortune and built up his business on business lines and not by speculation,” opined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Moll’s 1898 obituary.  The newspaper failed to mention that the much of that “comfortable fortune” could be attributed to alcohol.

In his 1905 book, “A History of the New California:  Its Resources and Its People,” author Leigh Hadley Irvine devoted two and one half pages to Thomas B. Hall, a highly successful Sacramento grocer and liquor dealer, whose civic accomplishments included forming a state military unit and serving as its commander, helping to write the Sacramento City Charter, and playing a key role in settling large tracts of California acreage to land-hungry farmers.

After clerking in a Sacramento grocery for seven years,  Hall with a partner co-founded a store known as Hall, Luhrs & Company.  As shown here on a trade card, the firm specialized in ham and rye — not rye bread, but rye whiskey.  In 1882 Hall and his partner bought out an existing dealership and made liquor a major element in their business.   They used the brand names, “Derby Brand,”  “Double Stamp,” Old Log Cabin,” and “Pride of the West.”  Their flagship was “Snow Flake Whiskey,” advertised as Kentucky bourbon with the claim:  “Unrivaled for purity, mellowness and bouquet.”  

Bottle collectors know Hall, Luhrs & Co. as a prolific distributor of whiskey, with at least five embossed round quart bottles, several mini-cylinders and at least one pumpkinseed flask.  As many wholesale liquor dealers did, Hall, Luhrs also issued advertising shot glasses as giveaway items to saloons and other establishments carrying their brands of liquor.

Hall, Luhrs first location was at the corner of Third and K Streets in Sacramento, but by 1883 increased business volume required larger quarters.  As a result the following year the company moved into a spacious building on Second Street, shown here.  It was specifically erected for the partners and occupied under a longterm lease.  The Sacramento Daily Union described the facilities in glowing terms under the headline “A Splendid New Structure for the Firm of Hall, Luhrs & Co.”   

The prosperity of the company allowed Hall to embark on a series of community  betterment activities for which he became widely known in Sacramento and throughout California.  With the coming of National Prohibition, Hall, Luhrs Co. was forced to shut down its liquor sales.  Snowflake Whiskey as a brand disappeared and was not revived after Repeal.  The grocery company survived until 1928.  

Note:  These three grocers/whiskey men have been profiled in longer posts on this blog:  Joseph Peebles, August 6, 2019;  Adolph Moll, September 11, 2016; and Thomas Hall, May 1, 2015.

Whiskey Men Who Helped Build Cities

Foreword:  In the course of writing some 625 posts devoted to the distillers, liquor dealers, saloonkeepers and others from the past, I have been impressed by how often they have used the profits from their activities to the benefit of the communities, both large and small, in which they lived.  From time to time I will be highlighting those contributions, joining the stories of three or four whiskey men who exemplify this characteristic.  This post celebrates three who helped to create major cities through their personal exertions, investments and philanthropy.  

Philip Engs, whose liquor business survived more than 100 years, recognized the requirements of a burgeoning, pre-industrial New York City and answered with his time and money to fight fires, provide for public health care, educate poor children, and house the destitute.  The picture right is based on a portrait given posthumously by his family to the City of New York to honor Engs, truly a “first responder” to the needs of his fellow New Yorkers.

Born into a merchant family in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1789 , Engs arrived in New York City as a young man, showing his civic spirit by immediately becoming a volunteer firefighter.  Within a few years he established his own wholesale liquor trade that from the start was highly successful and profitable.  Meanwhile the population of New York City had grown to 122,000 with virtually no social services for the poor.  With increasing wealth and influence, in December 1817 Engs was among what he called “a number of philanthropic gentlemen” who met on the problem.  Out of those discussions came several initiatives including creation of an alms house to provide shelter for the indigent, a medical dispensary, and free public schools.  Philip Engs would play a pivotal role in each of those efforts.

In 1934, after serving at two terms as an elected “assistant alderman” in New York’s 14th Ward, Engs was named one of five Commissioners of the Alms House.  The commissioners supervised those sanctuaries and brought general relief services to poor people living outside them.  The commissioners also had responsibilities for indigent medical care and those duties may have propelled Engs into still another civic effort.

The Northern Dispensary, shown here still standing, was erected in Greenwich Village just off Christopher Street in 1831 for the purpose of providing medical and hospital care for the poor.  The dispensary was designed to serve the 40,000 people living between Spring and 21st Streets and from Broadway to the Hudson River.  A dispensary annual report of 1832 listed 3,296 patients, many treated right in their own homes.  In 1834, Engs was named Commissioner of Supplies for the dispensary, responsible for providing it with necessary medicines and other materiel. 

That same year Engs was named one of the Commissioners for Common Schools.  Those were neighborhood schools for the children of families not able to pay for a private eduction. Engs also recognized the need for professionalized fire services in New York.  Accordingly he became a driving force behind a paid fire department, as one observer ironically put it, “sweeping away the romantic past.”  It was established by the New York Legislature in 1865.  As New York grew to the metropolis of today, Philip Engs, while continuing to operate his liquor house, had played a pivotal role at a critical point in the city’s history.

Born in County Sligo, Ireland, the five Casey brothers — Lawrence, Timothy, Andrew, Patrick and James — had arrived sequentially from Ireland, but with the financial push given to them by their liquor business, together they played an important role in the commercial development of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The first to arrive about 1870 were Lawrence and Timothy who after a brief period working for others in the liquor trade struck out on their own and found almost immediate success, eventually occupying a four story building in downtown Scranton.  They soon were joined by their three younger siblings from Ireland, all of them in various ways involved with Casey Brothers Wholesale and Retail Liquors.  Still very young, Lawrence and Timothy died in the mid-1880s, leaving their brothers Andrew and Patrick Casey to pilot the firm.  

Bank Building

Their interests expanded considerably beyond the liquor trade.  In addition to being involved in the management of Casey Brothers,  Andrew was treasurer and Patrick secretary of the Casey & Kelly Brewing Company,  a brewery that they founded.   Andrew  was a member of the Scranton Board of Trade and a director of the Merchants and Mechanics Bank.  Patrick helped finance start-up of the Scranton Traction Company,  Consumers’ Ice Company and  Scranton Illuminating, Heat, and Power Company.   The brothers also had substantial real estate holdings in Scranton and on one prime site downtown determined to erect a hotel.

Opening in  January 1911, the eleven story Casey Grand boasted 250 rooms and was the largest hotel in northwestern Pennsylvania.  Citing its modernity and luxurious decor, one Scranton newspaper noted:  “The Hotel Casey stands today completed, an imposing monument to the courage of two men, Andrew J. and Patrick J. Casey, who, with their own resources reared at the corner of Lackawanna and Adams avenue, one of the most magnificent hotels in the country.”  

Thomas B. Hall, was a highly successful Sacramento grocer and whiskey dealer, whose civic accomplishments included helping frame the city charter,  playing a pivotal role in settling large tracts of California land with colonist farmers, and serving as a commander of a unit of state militia.  Hall’s accomplished life, however, came close to ending before it began when a ship carrying him, a newborn, and his parents wrecked off Santa Barbara in 1854, with considerable loss of life. Fortunately for Sacramento, Hall’s family was among those saved. 

While still in his teens, Thomas chose the grocery business and by the age of 23 owned his own store.   Although Hall sold whiskey in his grocery, in 1882 he and a partner bought out an existing liquor dealership and made whiskey a major element in the business.   Hall used the brand names, “Derby Brand,”  Double Stamp,” “Old Log Cabin,” “Pride of the West.”  His flagship was “Snow Flake Whiskey.”   Profits allowed Hall to move the company into a more spacious and elegant building, built to his own design.

Now owning the largest wholesale grocery and liquor house in Sacramento, Hall turned his attention to other interests.  He was one of the organizers of the Mount Shasta Mineral Springs Company of Siskiyou County and a founder of the Orangevale Colonization Project, a venture that settled large tracts of California agricultural land with farm families.  Hall frequently was tapped for public service, serving as a framer of the city charter and on Sacramento committees dealing with public works and business development.  

Hall also promoted local sports.  In 1889 the entrepreneur sponsored Snowflake Park in Sacramento, named after the firm’s flagship whiskey brand.  The park was the city’s primary baseball venue for at least a decade.  Hall also served as the captain of a California militia unit that he helped organize.

Although the advent of National Prohibition caused Hall to shut down his liquor sales,  profits from the grocery business continued to fuel his enterprises and earned Thomas Hall numerous accolades for his life of community service — a life that almost ended before it began.

Note:  More complete biographies of these three men can be found in prior posts on this blog.  They are:  Philip Engs,  January 7, 2017;  The Caseys, November 1, 2013; and Thomas Hall, May 1, 2015.