How Jim Douglas Became a Kentucky Colonel

Two objectives are primary in the Kentucky tradition: To breed fast thoroughbred horses and to create good bourbon whiskey. James J. Douglas made his life work both pursuits and thereby was appointed a “Kentucky Colonel” and attained legendary status among his peers. How Douglas earned his title is the core of this vignette.

A Kentuckian through and through, James J. Douglas was born in 1846 to parents who themselves were native Kentuckians.  During his lifetime he would be known by several names:  Jim Douglas,  J.J. Douglas,  Colonel Douglas and occasionally as Douglass.  He was just 14 when the Civil War broke out and even though Kentuckians fought for both sides, there is no evidence of his participation and certainly not as an officer.  The rank of “Kentucky Colonel” was first formalized in 1813 to honor military heroes, but in the late 19th Century, administered by the governor, it became an honorary and ceremonial title for persons who had achieved distinction in other fields, particularly business.

The public record says little of Douglas’ early years.  It is documented that he settled in Louisville and he likely was engaged in the whiskey trade, a leading industry of that city.  In 1879 he married Ella K.,  a Kentucky-born woman.   There was a 12 year difference in their ages.  He was 33, she but 21.  There would be no children.

In 1886 after many years in apprenticeship to other whiskey men, Douglas struck out on his own.  He created a wholesale liquor business in Louisville and called his firm, J.J. Douglas  Co.  At first he was located at 135 Third Street but with success he soon needed more space and moved down the street to 148-150 Third Street.  When that space eventually proved to be too small, the company moved to 122 Second Street, its home for the next 13 years.   Although Douglas claimed to be a distiller, he more likely was a “rectifier,” that is, someone blending the whiskey from a variety of sources in Kentucky to achieve a smoothness and taste appealing to consumers.

The firm’s flagship brand was “Jim Douglas Whiskey.” As shown on the bottle here, the whiskey was openly advertised as a “blend.”  Jim Douglas was one of the few labels that he troubled to trademark with the federal government.   A key item of the trademark application was the circular band on the label with the name in the center and “rays radiating from said band.”   The company also used a number of other brand names for its liquors, including “Yosemite Pure Rye,” "Carlton,” "Douglas Gin,” "Eagle Elk,” "Glynn Valley,” "Meleager,” “Pastime Rye,” "Pewee,” "Salvator” and "Winetrop Club.”

Like other Louisville whiskey men,  Douglas was competing vigorously for the business of saloons, bars and restaurants to feature his liquor, as well as attempting to broaden his retail base.  An essential part of his merchandising strategy was to provide ample giveaway items.  Douglas seemed to have special flair for these gifts.  His advertising shot glass is a finely etched example,  with the script the same as his letterhead. He gave favored customers milk glass paperweights or celluloid pocket mirrors featuring a long tressed beauty displaying considerable bosom.  The slogan on the latter was: “A Whiskey That Is a Whiskey.”  More unusual were an ornate metal watch fob with a compass in the center and a cardboard baseball on which to calculate innings, outs and scores.   The scorecard was particularly appropriate for Louisville, the home of the Louisville Slugger bat company and a noted baseball town.

As his liquor dealership grew and prospered Douglas became very wealthy.  When asked his occupation by the census taker in 1900,  he replied, probably with tongue-in-cheek, “capitalist.”   Moreover, his interests were growing away from the liquor business and toward horse racing.  Called “an ardent racing fan,” in 1895 he developed and owned a trotting track known as the Douglas Park Racetrack.   Later the track expanded to thoroughbred racing and competed directly with Churchill Downs, eventually becoming the home of the renowned Kentucky Handicap race.  About this same time,  Douglas appears to  have turned over management and perhaps elements of ownership of J.J. Douglas & Co. to a Louisville resident named Jacob Bloch, born in Texas of French immigrant parents. 

In 1896 Douglas moved from Louisville to the nearby village of Middletown.  There he bought a 300-acre estate from the widow of a Louisville tobacco merchant who had established it as a horse farm.  As one account put it,  Douglas lived there “in elegant style.”  He also made improvements on the property, including building a stone waiting station along the inter-urban line to Louisville.

His estate, that came to be called “Douglas Place,” proved to be an excellent location to raise thoroughbreds.  His horse barns are shown here.  Douglas imported fine Irish stallions provide stud services.  Among them was a renowned racer named “Eothan.”  When Eothan died after siring such champions as “Requital”  and “Other Crack,”  his demise made headlines in the New York Times.  Douglas named his stables as the Eothan Stock Farm.  The annals of Kentucky horses are replete with his sale of thoroughbreds.  An example:  “Epilaska,” a chestnut filly foaled on April 4, 1904, “bred and consigned by J. J. Douglas.”  It was during this period that Douglas was designated a  “Kentucky Colonel” by the governor of the state.

Meanwhile, under the direction of Bloch, J.J. Douglas & Co., was continuing to thrive.  About 1905, the company moved to 224 Main Street,  on the periphery of Louisville’s famed “Whiskey Row.”  That was followed four years later to a location in the heart of that famed strip of whiskey distillers and dealers, shown here.   In 1915 the company underwent a corporate change.   It was incorporated, capitalized for $100,000,  and the name changed to Douglas, Edelman Distilling Company.  The incorporator was Jesse Bloch,  Jacob Bloch’s son.

Douglas lived to see the business change but died two years later in 1917 at the age of 71.  Shortly after, control of his racetrack was taken by rival Churchill Downs which operated the facility until 1958.  Douglas’ liquor dealership was terminated by National Prohibition in 1919.    After his death, his horse farm went through several owners,  his home eventually was demolished and the farm developed into a residential subdivision known to this day as “Douglass Hills.”   How the extra “s” evolved into his name is unclear.  Of  the several names by which he was known in his lifetime, I believe this Kentuckian who so successfully mixed whiskey and horses should be remembered as Kentucky Colonel Jim Douglas.

Ben Hollenbach’s Drive to Success

 Being a driver for a wholesale liquor dealer in the late 1800s was a highly difficult and taxing job.  Before the advent of the automobile, the driver was required to manage a team of horses hauling a large wagon filled with huge barrels of whiskey and heavy crates he usually loaded and unloaded by himself.  Benjamin F. Hollenbach was such a driver and he ultimately drove himself into the ownership of the Reading, Pennsylvania, company for which he toiled.

 

Born in January 1871 in Slatington, a small east central Pennsylvania town in Lehigh County, Hollenbach was the son of a Civil War veteran.  He was educated in the public schools of Slatington, likely a one-room school house.  We may speculate that he early had experience with the elaborate harnessing, driving and care of horses.  At an early age Ben ended his book learning to find work.  At the age of 17 in 1888 he arrived in Reading,  Pennsylvania.  There he was hired as a driver by George W. Hughes.  With a partner Hughes had started a wholesale liquor dealership in 1869,  located at 805 Penn Street, a major thoroughfare shown here in an early post card view.  He became the sole owner of the business in 1877.

Hughes obviously saw potential in the young Hollenbach as someone who handled his responsibilities with a maturity that belied his age.  Before long he brought the youth into the store as a clerk.  Two years later Hughes died and his son-in-law R. H. Jones took over management of the firm.  Not long after, however, Jones also died.   Hughes’ widow was left with a business to run and she turned to the trusted clerk.  Still in his early 20’s,  Ben Hollenbach took over running the firm.   For four years he managed the liquor dealership for the widow under Hughes name.  As the company prospered Ben saved his money and in 1900, with a partner,  he bought out the widow and became the co-owner and senior partner of the company.

His partner was Howard Dietrich,  a Reading druggist and businessman. One year older than Hollenbach, Dietrich was was from an established Pennsylvania family, married with five children, four sons and a daughter.  By this time Hollenbach also had married.  His wife was the former Carrie Sieger of Shoemakersville in Berks County.  They had one child, Florence, born in 1894.

The partners renamed the firm, Hollenbach, Dietrich & Co.  In buying the business they also acquired the Penn Street building.  It became the permanent home of the firm.  The two had advanced merchandising ideas for the times.  Barrels of whiskey, rum and brandy lined the walls and a customer could sample the goods before purchasing.  In those days one dollar would be enough buy a full gallon of decent whiskey.

Hollenbach and his partner also demonstrated considerable talent in marketing their whiskey brands.    As shown on a trade card here, they adopted as a trademark a keystone -- Pennsylvania being the Keystone State--emblazoned with a red star.  Advertising a long distance phone meant that the firm solicited mail orders.  They featured only two brands but marketed them vigorously.  One whiskey was named “Hodico,” an anagram of Hollenbach’s and Dietrich’s names. The firm’s other brand was “Social Rye”.   Its label featured a colorful scene of three gents sitting around a table drinking. As shown here, that whiskey could be purchased in both quarts and flasks.

Hollenbach, Dietrich were not distillers but blenders of whiskey to meet  standards of taste for their two brands.   Their raw product almost certainly came from the many distilleries that dotted the Pennsylvania landscape at that time.  Like many liquor dealers Hollenbach, Dietrich distributed multiple giveaway items to favored customers.  Shot glasses and jigger glasses were issued for Social Rye.  The slogan on the glasses -- “Pure and Old”-- was a nod to the national campaign for pure food and beverage that had its culmination in the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.  A more expensive gift item was the fancy paperweight shown below,  no doubt the product of a nearby Pennsylvania glass house.  For Hodico whiskey the partners issued a tip tray featuring a “Gibson Girl-like” figure with considerable bare bosom visible.  The slogan for this whiskey was “Every Drop a Pleasure.”

The partners also sold other brands of spirits beside their own.  Among them were several that claimed to have medicinal values. “Malakof Bitters,” was such a nostrum,  a product of a Belgian firm with offices in New York.  Often marketed as a remedy, it eventually was exposed as merely a “liquor compound” by U.S. Food and Drug officials.  Hollenbach, Dietrich also marketed “Duffy’s Pure Malt Whiskey,” another alcoholic product that masqueraded as medicine.

The company proved to be a highly prosperous enterprise.   A contemporary account  noted the following:   “The firm...does a large business, handling nothing but the finest wines and whiskies, and they are the proprietors of the well known ‘Social Rye,’ handled by the trade all over the country.”   Ben’s prosperity also brought his family a large and comfortable home at 125 South Eighth Street in Reading.

Hollenbach was also recognized throughout the community for his business acumen and his participation in numerous fraternal and social organizations.   His memberships included Reading Lodge No. 115 of the Elks Club, the Sons of Veterans, Fraternal Order of Eagle Knights of Pythias and the Knights of Malta.   He also was a member of The Supreme Council of the Royal Arcanum, commonly known simply as the Royal Arcanum,  a quasi-Masonic fraternal benefit society founded in 1877 in Boston.

Ben Hollenbach died in 1915 at the young age of 44.   His funeral was held at the Lutheran Church in Reading,  to which his family were adherents.   He was buried in a local cemetery with his widow, Carrie, and daughter,  Florence,  mourning beside his gravesite.  Upon Hollenbach’s death,  Howard Detrich became president of the company, bringing his eldest son, Claude, into the business as secretary of the corporation.   As National Prohibition loomed,  Detrich in 1918 converted the business into a drug store and operated it until he died in 1940.

Prohibition and the forced closing of a liquor dealership that dated back to 1869, however, could not erase the mark that Ben Hollenbach had made during his lifetime.  This small town boy had gone from hauling a horse-drawn liquor wagon to the pinnacle of business and social circles in Reading.  He had proved to be a driver with real drive.

Jose Gomes Serrao: Distilling in Paradise

       
As Jose Gomes Serrao grew up in St. Antonio, Fuchal, Maderia, Portugal, he clearly had no inkling that he would find fame and fortune on an “island Paradise” half a world away, a place 2,000 from the closest continent.  Nor knew that he would establish the only bonded distillery in the history of the Hawaiian Islands.

Born to Antonio Serrao and Maria Carlotta Neves in March, 1864, Jose, shown here at about age 30, clearly a very serious man, was educated in the schools of his native Portugal.   At the age of twenty,  possibly beckoned by relatives who were already in Hawaii working on the burgeoning sugar cane plantations,  he embarked aboard the ship Hankow,  arriving on the “Big Island” of Hawaii in July, 1883.  Initially he worked on a farm near Hanakua. Three years later Serrao moved to the capital, Hilo, to join two of his brothers and together they operated a grocery store on Waianuenue Avenue. The town is shown here as it looked before the turn of the century.  Note the two large volcanoes,  Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, that dominate the island.

Shortly after arriving in Hilo he met a young Portuguese immigrant girl who herself was a recent resident of Hawaii.   She was Emilia de Souza from San Migueal, who had come to the islands with her family.  She was 14 years younger than Jose.  Despite the age difference they soon married and begin a family.   The couple would eventually have five sons, Jose Jr., Louis, Antone, Alfred and Frank, and two daughters,  Emilia and Maria.

Meanwhile Serrao was demonstrating his business acumen.  He was hired to manage a local sugar mill and later bought a half interest in it.   After the mill was sold to other interests in 1889,  he struck out on his own and built a distillery on Hilo’s Kukuau Street.  The principal product was rum, made from the sugar cane grown on the island.  This was considered at the time a daring enterprise since the commerce of the islands largely was controlled by  descendants of missionaries, most of whom were opposed to alcoholic drinks.

Since up to that time all liquor had to be imported into Hawaii and was expensive,  Serrao’s rum sales were brisk. From the profits,  he imported two stone masons from Portugal to construct the only stone building of its kind in Hilo.  Shown right, it housed the retail and wholesale liquor business Jose called the Serrao Liquor Company,  located at the corner of Keawe and Shipman Street.   He also owned a drinking establishment on Shipman Street  he called the Union Saloon.  It was operated by his brother-in-law until the latter’s death.

In 1902 Serrao acquired 80 acres of homestead land in Kaumana,  not far from Hilo, on the slopes of Mauna Kea.  There he built a large house for his growing family and used other land to grow Isabella grapes to make Portuguese type wines.  By 1907 his vineyards were mature enough that he built and opened a second facility, known as Distillery No. 2, shown left.   There he made wine and also distilled other spirits with an emphasis on gin.   His billhead from that time proclaims his firm to be “Distillers, Wine Makers,  Wholesale Liquor Dealers.”

Shown here are two Serrao gin bottles.  Both are clear and embossed with the company name.   Like many early Hawaiian glass containers,  these bottles are highly sought by local  collectors.   For example, the larger case gin shown here recently sold for more than $1,200.   The second bottle adds “Ltd.” to the company name.

When Prohibition took effect in 1920, Serrao had 14,000 gallons of alcoholic beverages in bonded warehouses in New York City and in confinement areas under his house.   They were sealed by the Federal Revenue Service.  He never got his liquor back.  During the “dry” period Federal authorities are reported to have destroyed it all. He then turned his vineyards and and winery to producing a fermented grape juice with less than one-half of one percent alcohol and changed the name of the company to the “Serrao Grape Juice Factory.”  An ad from the early 1920s touted this product,  claiming the grapes had been “grown in cracks on volcanic rocks on a famous bird’s eye view elevation of Hilo, Hawaii.”

The loss of his liquor markets proved disastrous for Serrao, a calamity that  grape juice could not remedy.   Serrao’s company struggled through the 1920s and by the early 1930s his land and businesses were heavily mortgaged.   The 1930 census found him living with Emilia in their Kaumana residence.  Three sons, 18 and over, and a teenaged daughter were still at home. As the Depression deepened the Bank of Hawaii foreclosed on his property and in 1932 Serrao was forced to sell out.  At that point Jose, who was then 68 years old, went into retirement.

When Repeal was enacted only two years later,  Serrao’s sons, who had been working with him in the business, reopened the winery and liquor sales , calling it “Serrao Wine and Liquor Co.”  Initially under the management of Jose Jr.,  he later sold out to his brother, Alfred.  During World War II, with shipping restricted to war-related materials,  brandy necessary for Serrao’s distinctive Portuguese wine was unobtainable.  The company shut its doors for the last time.

Jose himself lived until August 1943, dying at the age of 79.   Some fifty years a resident of Hilo,  he was remembered for his business acumen and assistance to other island businessmen, many of whom were said to owe their start to his generosity.   An editorial in the local Hilo newspaper apparently summed up the feelings of many on the Big Island.  It wrote:  “God rest you, Joe Serrao,  you were a good man.”

Note:  This vignette would not have been possible without a history paper done at Hilo College in 1977 by a grandnephew of Jose Serrao, a student named Walter Serrao.   Only one copy is known to exist and is held by the University of Hawaii Library on Oahu.   Intrigued by the fact that a bonded distillery had once existed in the Hawaiian Islands,  I tracked down the document.  Librarian Mary Haraguchi was kind enough to scan it and send to me it electronically.  That paper provided most of the information found here and also was the source of the several grainy pictures.   Thanks to Walter Serrao and Ms. Haraguchi, this story of the enterprising immigrant who founded a distillery “in Paradise” was made possible.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Dreyfuss & Weil of Paducah: Gin and Sin

“Give me one more drink,
Of that Devil's Island Gin,
Give me one more drink,
Of that Devil's Island Gin,
I've been drunk once tonight,
And I want to get drunk again.”

(Excerpt from Devil’s Island Gin Blues, by Roosevelt “Honeydripper” Sykes)

In March 1905 a white teenager named Margaret Lear was on her way home from school in Shreveport, Louisiana.  As she passed through an African-American neighborhood,  she was brutally attacked and murdered.  Her accused assailant,  a black man named Coleman, allegedly was drunk on “cheap gin” he had bought at a local saloon.

The murder and its aftermath garnered national headlines. Three years later a prominent muckraking American journalist, Will Irwin, writing in Collier’s Weekly of May 16, 1908, used the incident to indict the saloon trade and in particular inexpensive gin that was being produced by Northern distilleries and, as Irwin saw it, “sold in the low dives of all the black belt from the Carolinas to Louisiana and Mississippi.” .

Irwin also blamed the names and advertising for brands of gin as  suggesting that they possessed the properties of aphrodisiacs. “The gin was cheap, its

 

labels bore lascivious suggestions and were decorated with highly indecent portraiture of white women.”  Implicit was Irwin's conclusion that this liquor was responsible for sexual aggression in Coleman and other blacks.  The journalist  singled out for special attention Devil’s Island Endurance Gin. In quart bottles, like the one shown here, it sold for $1.

Two of the brand’s early 1900s trade cards seem to bear out Irwin’s contentions.  The first shows a man peeking into a woman’s beach dressing room where it is not clear how much clothing she has on.  Opened,  she is seen wearing a bathing suit and seems little disturbed about being watched and says:  “Those fellows who drink that Devil’s Island Endurance Gin seem to have the very “devil’ in them.”  Note that from the shadows,  Satan is watching.  The second trade card shows a woman in the process of undressing, with scads of bosom showing.  She sees the devil in the mirror with a large bottle of gin.   The liquor is credited with giving “that good and funny feeling”  and other positive effects.  This gin clearly was being merchandised as a stimulant for something.

“Devil’s Island Endurance Gin” was a product of Dreyfuss, Weil & Co.  of Paducah, Kentucky, that registered the trade name in 1905. One of its ads boasted that Devil’s Island Endurance Gin was made from a secret European formula and that by its third year in production 7,619,410 bottles had been sold in the U.S.  In business from 1887 until 1918 and the coming of Prohibition,  the company was both a distiller and distributor of a wide number of liquor brands, chiefly whiskey.  It was located initially at 120 North Second Street and later the address changed to 115-117 North Second in Paducah.

The owner was Solomon "Sol" Dreyfuss assisted by his son Samuel H.  Among their liquor brands were “Eclipse Whiskey,” “Old Cold Spring Rye,” “A.M. Jones,”  “D & W Pride,’  “Eaton Valley,” “Fairfield,” “Merchant’s Club,” “Old Dixie,”  “Old Picket,” “Peter Cooper, “  “Red Devil,” “S.H. Rollins,” and “Big Three.”  The company trademarked several of these labels, in 1905 Eclipse and SH. Rollins and in 1906,  Old Cold Spring, Peter Cooper and Red Devil.  It also issued a racy trade card for Eclipse Whiskey showing dancing girls ogled by elderly gents.  The firm featured shot glasses,  at least two in red, for Eclipse and Old Cold Spring.

Irwin’s linking of Devil’s Island Endurance Gin and the Lear murder caught the attention of one of America most prominent industrialists and millionaires, Henry Ford.  A notorious anti-Semite, Ford did a ghost-written weekly column for a newspaper he owned, called the Dearborn Independent.   On the assumption that Dreyfuss and Weil were Jewish,  he used the article to rail against liquor trade for selling the “products of Jewish poisoned liquor factories.”  The Jewish people, he more than implied, were responsible for lawless actions of the Negro race.  One derogatory racial stereotype thereby became the occasion for another.

As for Coleman,  guilty or not, he was nearly killed by a white lynch mob and the Louisiana militia had to be called out to protect him.  Within nine days after the crime, according to newspaper  reports, he was tried in a Shreveport court, found guilty, and  “legally” executed.  The New York Times reported that the Governor of Louisiana was expected to be in attendance at the hanging.  Another stanza of Syke’s lyrics for Devil’s Island Gin Blues goes like this:

Oh, you learn tomorrow,
'Bout a month ago,
You'll learn tomorrow night,
'Bout a month ago,
Couple bottles of mo' gin,
Mama, Lordy, an’ I had to go.

  

Two George Jacksons Struck Gold in Colorado

There are two notable George Jacksons in Colorado history.  One is famous for starting the state’s gold rush when he discovered rich placer deposits on the south fork of Clear Creek.  The other George Jackson, the subject of this post, earned his reputation striking gold as a successful liquor dealer and merchant in Pueblo, Colorado.

George A. Jackson’s discovery of gold occurred early in 1859.  It was followed by other strikes nearby, including a second miner finding the “mother lode” of the Colorado Rockies.  Those events resulted in thousands of prospectors from around the world descending on Clear Creek Canyon.  Many of them could not get their wagons and supplies into the site and set up camp at the mouth of the canyon.  When a group of Eastern miners arrived at the camp later that year, they decided to settle there, laid out a town, and named it Golden City, a name later changed to just plain Golden.

Meanwhile our George Jackson was growing up in New Brunswick.  Born in 1851, he was the son of Scottish immigrants to Canada, although census records indicate his father actually had been born in Portugal.  In 1877 at the age of 26 Jackson emigrated to the United States.  His first years in America may have been spent in Nebraska, if census data are correct.  In 1882 he decided his fortunes lay further West and he headed to Colorado, settling in Pueblo.


At the time Jackson arrived, Pueblo was booming.  The  city was a rail hub with an immense train yard located below the bluff along the Arkansas River.  By 1886 it had become known for its steel mills and was a regional smelting center.   Shown here in 1890, the city at that point boasted a population of 30,000 and was home to thousands of steel and railroad workers as well as employees in adjunct industries.  

Our canny Canadian early saw an opportunity to enter into a range of businesses,  including at various times sales of carriages, farm implements, agricultural products, and hardware.   Jackson’s main pursuit and the major source of his gold, however,  was alcoholic beverages. The workers and their bosses in Pueblo and surrounding regions were a thirsty lot.  Thus was created “Geo. Jackson, Importer, Co.”  Jackson located his store at 317 Union Avenue.  This was the main commercial hub of the city and his store there apparently hummed with activity.

The jugs in which he contained his whiskey were numerous, with several varieties shown above.   They include Bristol glaze containers, some with large cobalt lettering and others with the label barely intelligible.   He also employed two-tone “shoulder” jugs, both with inked and underglazed printed labels.   These jugs, most of them gallon sized, held whiskey.  His whiskey was sold at retail from Jackson’s Union Avenue store, as well as wholesaled to bars and saloons.   Jackson bought the raw product from distilleries in Kentucky and elsewhere, easily shipped to him by rail.  He perhaps did a bit of “rectifying” and sold the blends under his own labels.


Like other liquor dealers of his time, Jackson also merchandised beer.  About a hundred miles  up the road in Golden, in 1873 German immigrants Adolph Coors with a partner had established a major brewery. In 1880 Coors bought out his partner and became the sole owner. In those days many brewers sold their product in large barrels and allowed it to be bottled at the site of retail sales.  Jackson won the exclusive contract to be the Coors agent in Pueblo and surrounding counties.  In the 1900 census,  he gave his occupation as “brewer,”  although his brew arrived by railroad from Golden.

As a bottler he was able to order up embossed glass containers to meet his merchandising needs.  Most of them are trademarked “Geo. Jackson Agt”  with a pictorial monogram.  Shown here are three of Jackson’’s “Coors Golden Beer” bottles.   The first is a smaller “pony” blown in a mold with an applied lip.  The second is a quart in a champagne shape with a blob top.  The third is a quart that features a metallic label and a closure known as a Baltimore loop.    Jackson almost certainly personally chose the design of these bottles.

But it was not all work for the Scots immigrant.  At the somewhat advanced age of 44 and already a successful businessman in 1885 he married a considerably younger woman.  She was Annie, 26, born in Illinois with her mother an Ohioan and her father an Irish immigrant.  The 1900 census found the couple living in a house on 1032 Lake Avenue in Pueblo.   Living with them at the time was George’s aged mother, Lavina, and his 36-year-old brother, Harry.  The census materials gave no indication of children. 

Through this period and into 1900s,  Jackson’s several enterprises were thriving. Pueblo was called “the Jewel of Colorado.”  Union Street continued to be a lively retail avenue, plied by trolleys and an occasional motor car.  A 1910 post card shows the prosperous street as Jackson must have seen it. As nearby states voted to ban alcohol,  he watched mail order sales dwindle but Colorado and Pueblo stayed “wet.”   On February 21, 1914, age 63, Jackson died of unspecified causes.  It is not clear if his business continued  during the six years before National Prohibition would have shut it down permanently.

In the summer of 1921 Pueblo itself was to receive a devastating blow.  Although the populace felt themselves safe from flooding by the Arkansas River, a massive storm unleashed its fury on the area and the reservoirs along the river gave way. Exact numbers were not kept, but it is speculated that hundreds were killed. Union Avenue, shown here after the  deluge,  was inundated under 10 feet of water.  Rail cars and bloated horses floated past once prosperous storefronts. The entire commercial district of Pueblo was wiped out.  Out of necessity, the city moved its business district north to Main Street. Low lying Union Avenue, shown here after the flood, was left largely in its ruined and abandoned state until restored in the 1980s.

George Jackson would surely have mourned loss of his familiar haunts.  But he could rest easy knowing that he had made his mark as a leading whiskey man in the State of Colorado, thereby mining his own kind of gold.

Simon Jung Gave Milwaukee His Best Shots

Once upon a time in Milwaukee there lived a liquor dealer who loved shot glasses and produced them in prodigious numbers to advertise his whiskey brands.  In so doing, it can be said he gave the people of that Wisconsin city his best shots. The dealer’s name was Simon Jung.

It is likely that growing up in his native Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jung knew nothing about American whiskey or how it was measured out behind the bar.  Census data does not record his date of immigration to the United States.  When he arrived, probably in the 1870s, he may have had relatives in Milwaukee where he settled.  Sometime in the early 1880s,  Simon married a woman seven years his junior.  Her name was Adelheid Breslauer and she had been born in Germany and when young emigrated with other family members to Milwaukee.

The Breslauers were themselves liquor dealers with the establishment in 1883 of a retail liquor store on East Water Street,  later moved to  242-244 Broadway.   Simon Jung may have served an apprenticeship with his father-in-law, A. Breslauer,  at the Water Street address but within several years opened his own wholesale liquor dealership, located initially at 425 Chestnut St. on Milwaukee’s East Side.  It apparently was an amicable move,  likely funded by his father-in-law since A. Breslauer was listed as Jung’s partner for one year.


About this time, as well, Simon and Adelheid started their family.  Son Frederick, known as Fred for most of his life,  was born in 1883.   A second son,  Edward, would be born six years later.  After the departure of A. Breslauer from his dealership,  Simon added Michael Weiner as a partner.  In 1897 S. Jung & Company moved from Broadway to three addresses on East Water Street    Shown here in a postcard view circa 1909, Water Street was home to a number of retail and wholesale liquor houses.

In 1906 the company occupied a new building at 236 North Water, possibly built to Jung’s specifications.  According to a contemporary account, the premises consisted of a four-story building with a basement,  30 by 150 feet.  It was equipped with an elevator and allowed the storage of a large amount of stock that included imported liquors from Scotland, Ireland, Holland, France, England,  and the Caribbean.  The company also sold wines from California and Ohio, and  house labels, including “Grape Brandy & Rock and Rye,”  a beverage Simon officially trademarked in 1908.


Most important to S. Jung & Co. were sales of American whiskey.  Jung brought it from the major producing states of the time, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Kentucky. Doubtless he also had a blending operation in his building since he featured several of his own brands.  They included “Homer Club,” “Ole Bull,” and “Underhill,”  the latter which he trademarked in 1906.  His flagship brand was “Mountain King,”  In his 1905 trademark application for this whiskey Jung reserved the name and a label design that entailed,  as he wrote,  “a  scene composed of a group of mountains and on the top of one is a mountain goat.”

By employing salesmen to travel throughout the Midwest, Jung was able to build a customer base for his brands that, to paraphrase a contemporary account, “broadly radiated.”  Not only was he selling liquor in Wisconsin but also in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan.  To keep saloons and retail outlets coming back for their products, most liquor wholesalers featured giveaways to favored customers.  Jung was no exception.  As noted earlier, he loved shot glasses and gave away a wide variety.

The most elaborate was one of four extant shot glasses advertising Mountain King rye.   Although it is not marked,  this shot glass, shown top right, has been identified by experts as the work of George Troug, an Italian-born artist in glass who found his way to Cumberland, Maryland, and its thriving glass industry.  in 1892 he opened the Maryland Glass Etching Works where he produced the premier images found on many American shot glasses.  Jung, with his passion for shots,  sought out Troug’s artistry 

   

Although the Mountain King glass below it lacks similar elaboration, the fluted sides and gothic letters for the message give it a distinction beyond the ordinary.   Although the last Mountain King shot is plain, the letter was done through a soft etch process and is a thin walled item. The same can be said for the final three Jung-produced shot glasses, two issued for Homer Club Rye and one for Ole Bull Bourbon.  Although they are largely without decoration and feature plain lettering, they were a quality giveaway and prominently advertised his whiskeys.   In short,  Jung consistently gave customers his “best shot.”

Jung’s success did not go unnoticed in the Milwaukee business community.  An 1896 publication called “Milwaukee:  Half Century of Progress,” featured the firm and its founder with a laudatory article.   It credited Jung with building public trust of liquors by selling pure and unadulterated products.  It also noted that Simon was a prominent member of the Milwaukee Manufacturers and Merchants Association and an adherent of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization.

As Prohibition forces slowly strangled the Midwest markets for Jung’s whiskey, his business began to suffer.   Throughout the region, town after town, county after county, went “dry” under local option.  In 1916, with strong backing from 

Henry Ford,  Michigan voted a total ban on sales of alcohol.  By 1918, Jung recognized the bleak future and shut the doors of his business.  He never lived to see Repeal.  In 1921 he died at age 71.   He was buried in Milwaukee’s Greenwood Cemetery as his widow, Adelheid, and bachelor sons,  Fred and Edward, stood by his gravesite in the cemetery’s section 3, block 9, lot  6.   They all would join him there eventually, Adelheid in 1931.

The building that housed S. Jung & Company still stands along Water Street.  After the company closed, it lay empty for a time.  Then in 1922, Valentine Blatz, of the Milwaukee brewery family,  moved a candy company to the site.  In 1928 it became headquarters for the Columbia Knitting Company.   Shown here in recent photograph, the building that Jung first occpied currently is home to a supply house for cat medicine with condos on the upper floors.  On the National Register of Historical Buildings,  the structure is a stop on the walking tour of Milwaukee’s Near East Side.