Eugene N. Belt: “Shame and Scandal in the Family”

Yes, Eugene Belt was a Baltimore liquor dealer, but his “blue ribbon” background makes him seem like an unlikely centerpiece in an 1880’s scandal that commanded newspaper headlines from coast to coast for two years and involved beautiful women, two U.S. Congressmen, a messy divorce, perjured testimony, and dramatic acts by a former Confederate general.  You can’t make up stuff like this.

Belt was born in 1828 or 1830, depending on the census you read.  His parents were Thomas Walter Belt and Louisa Ann (Steeper) Belt.  His father was of English and his mother of German descent.   According to a contemporary biography, on both sides his ancestors were among early settlers of America.  His father’s people settled in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in 1647. The town of Beltsville took its name from the family.  Belt’s father was born in Baltimore and had a career as a merchant and banker and was accounted among the most prominent businessmen of his day.  He died in 1840 while Eugene was still a young boy.

The son was educated by private tutors in Baltimore and at an institute in Louisville, Kentucky, even then a hub of the whiskey industry.  After finishing his education he went to New Orleans to work in a mercantile house but returned to Baltimore after several years.  Belt tried his hand in the insurance and banking businesses in his home town but clearly was looking for something more lucrative.  In 1859 he joined with a Baltimore local named P.C. Martin to found a liquor business they called Martin, Belt & Co.  For reasons not fully explained, this enterprise was forced into liquidation two years later, reputedly because of the outbreak of the Civil War.  Like many Marylanders,  Belt may have been a Southern sympathizer.

The war years are a blank in Belt’s biography but in its aftermath, in 1868, he again entered the liquor business.  This time his partner was Bernard Cahn of Baltimore, a German Jewish immigrant who had come to the U.S. as a boy of 15 and had found considerable business success.   Like Belt, he had invested in the wine and spirits trade before the war and lost all his capital, perhaps as part of Martin, Belt & Co.  Both men were willing to try once more and created one of the most successful Baltimore liquor businesses called Cahn, Belt & Co.  From 1870 until 1904 their establishment was located at several addresses on Lombard Street.

Cahn, Belt featured number of brand names, including "Belt,” "C B & C", "Cartwrig,” "City of Baltimore Pure Rye,” "Crown of Baltimore,”, "Jim Hackler" “Little Straight,” "M C,”  "Original Martin,”  and "Roadster."  Another label was “Emery Grove.”  One speculation is that the name was an attempt to annoy the abstemious Methodists for whom Emory Grove was a camp-meeting site.  The company flagship label was “Maryland Club.” It was advertised widely with the slogan, “It tastes old because it is old.”  The partners also made it a feature of their giveaway items to favored saloon customers,  particularly with attractive back-of-the-bar bottles, garnished with a shamrock.  Probably to insure a steady supply of whiskey for their blends,  they purchased Baltimore’s Monticello Distillery and its “Monticello Rye” brand.  Cahn became president of the distillery.

Both the 1860 and 1870 censuses found Eugene living with his widowed mother, Louisa Ann, and his three unmarried sisters, Louisa, 35 years of age; Georgiana (“Nannie”), 32, and Emily, 27. Still a bachelor himself at age 42,  he was surrounded by women, including a female servant.  Increasingly wealthy from his liquor business,  Belt seems to have found his social outlet in joining and being active in a plethora of organizations, including the Maryland Historical Society, in which he was an officer, the Archeological Society,  Merchants’ Club, the Maryland Club and the Elk Ridge Fox Hunting Club.  He was a pillar of the Episcopal Church, attending Baltimore’s St. Luke’s.

Enter the “shame and scandal.” In 1884, now 54 years old and quite rich,  Belt was vacationing at a seaside resort when he encountered a considerably younger and very attractive blonde widow.  Her name was Mrs. Mary Alice Godfrey.   Later Belt told the press that he had met her “among people of character and respectability and never imagined that she was other than a pure and virtuous woman.”  Moreover,  he probably was impressed that she was the sister of Mrs. Benjamin Willis of New York City, the wife of a prominent U.S. congressmen.  Both sisters were beauties.  One commentator claimed that they had become the “rage” of the Washington society.   Belt fell in love with Mary Alice, quickly proposed marriage and they were wed in October, 1884, in Morristown, Pennsylvania.  They may have chosen a remote location because of apparent opposition to the nuptials from Eugene’s sisters and other female friends.

Soon enough Belt came to regret his decision and, by his own admission, left his wife the following January.  Mary Alice filed for divorce in May 1885.  In his answer to her suit, he said he had found out to his horror that she had been connected with a well-known Washington, D.C., scandal known as the Congressman Acklen Affair.  Belt told the press, he had discovered additionally that she had lived “a life of infamy” and that he had been a victim of an abandoned woman.   Newspapers from coast to coast had a field day.  The New York Times made it front page.  A California paper headlined:  “Victim of a Wily Woman...A Prominent Merchant Insnared by a Sea-Side Demi-Monde.” (A demi-monde was a woman of dubious virtue.)

Welcker's Hotel

But the truth may have been otherwise.  Joseph Hayes Acklen, a wealthy sugar plantation owner and a congressman from Louisiana,  had taken Washington society by storm.  Shown here, the young bachelor was rich, eccentric and, perhaps signaled by his waxed mustache, a notorious womanizer.  He had courted Mrs. Godfrey, who was living in Arlington with her sister and congressman husband.  One evening at Washington’s highly prestigious Welcker’s hotel, Acklen reputedly forced himself on her.  The cries of Mary Alice were heard in the next room by a former highly decorated Confederate cavalry general named

Joseph Acklen

Thomas Rosser.  Rosser rushed to the damsel’s rescue but when the story got out, the local and national press had a field day of speculation.  Acklen later apologized to Mrs. Godfrey and proposed marriage.  She declined.

As for Belt’s other allegations that his wife had been a “loose woman” even before this incident, charges he made part of divorce proceedings, it subsequently was revealed that those giving damaging testimony had perjured themselves.  Who was behind these lies,  Belt himself, family members or others? That was never revealed.  Once more General Rosser came to the rescue, proving in criminal court of the District  of Columbia that one Benjamin Golly had falsely testified in the divorce suit brought by Belt.  Golly was convicted and Mary Alice was exonerated.   Throughout the entire affair Eugene Belt’s name was bruited nationwide by the press.

Gen. Thomas Rosser

When the dust cleared,  Belt went back to his usual pursuits,  running the liquor business and attending the meetings of his many memberships.   The 1900 census found him at age 70 and still listed as a “liquor merchant.”   His mother having died in 1881, he was living with two of his spinster sisters,  Louisa and Georgiana, in a large Baltimore house with four live-in servants.   I wonder if Belt ever thought about those weeks of marriage to the beautiful Mary Alice -- and regretted what he had done.

In 1901 Eugene Belt died.  In his will, probated in 1902, he left $1,000 to St. Luke’s Church. The Cahn, Belt Co. continued on another 18 years.  The firm moved to South Street about 1905 where it located until 1919.  Bernard Cahn died in 1906,  mourned by his wife and five children. He was hailed in the press as a highly successful businessman and philanthropist to Jewish and other charitable causes.  No breath of scandal there.  Members of the Cahn family managed the firm until its forced demise by National Prohibition.

Note:  The two ads for Maryland Club Rye are from a website maintained by the Ohio State University.  It is a good source of vintage advertising images.  

W.C. Peacock: The Whiskey Man Who “Built” Waikiki

The Moana Hotel, Early 20th Century

Today Waikiki Beach on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu is one of the most popular recreation areas in the world.   A British-born Honolulu saloonkeeper and liquor dealer named Walter Chamberlain (abbreviated to W.C.) Peacock more than a century ago saw the promise in a barren strip of land along the Pacific Ocean.  He built the Moana Hotel at Waikiki, still a landmark, and began a history of development that continues to this day.

Born in in 1858 in Lancaster, England,  Peacock, after a sojourn in New Zealand, arrived in the Territory of Hawaii about 1881.  In 1883 in Hawaii, he married Margaret, a women he had met in New Zealand.  They would have one child, a daughter.
 Not long after arriving, Peacock started a wholesale liquor business with a local named George Freeth at 23 Nuuanu Street. By 1890 Freeth had departed and the firm known as W.C. Peacock & Co. Ltd emerged, as shown on a porcelain bottle stopper.

In addition to selling liquor at wholesale, Peacock also ran a string of saloons in Honolulu.  A trade token names three:  Pacific, Cosmopolitan, and Royal.  For the Royal Saloon in 1890 he designed and constructed a brick building at the corner of Merchant and Nuuanu Streets in Chinatown.  Peacock was taking advantage of an opportunity that arose when Merchant Street had been widened the previous year.  The building, shown here, was relatively modest by current standards, featuring white stucco pilasters, cornice and balustrade, and a another spot of stucco over the bricks of the upper walls.  The Englishman gave it windows and door bays along the street creating a feeling of spaciousness.  Still a Honolulu landmark, the Royal Building currently is occupied by an Irish pub.

Housed in his own building, Peacock’s liquor empire continued to expand although his customer base was confined to the islands.  He packaged his wines and liquors in glass bottles, both amber and clear.  They are avidly collected in Hawaii today.  He also sold gin in the characteristic “case” shape, as shown here.  Peacock’s nephew remembered working at the company filling gin bottles.   According to family lore:  “Peacock sold 3 grades of gin increasing in price.  Many bought the most expensive kind. However, in the back room all the gin came out of the same barrel.”

For a short time, W.C. and his brother, Corbert Peacock,  branched out into the farm implement business in Australia.  Directories in Melbourne from 1899 to 1901 record the existence of the W.C. Peacock & Bro. firm on Sturt Street South, making and selling rotary disc plows in a design that the brothers may have invented and on which they held a patent.  Likely financed by W.C., Corbert ran the company for three years and then abruptly returned to Hawaii where he opened a saloon and assisted in his brother's liquor business.

Meanwhile W.C. Peacock was piling up riches from sales of liquor, both from store and saloons.  Like many whiskey men of time he provided bar tokens to retail consumers and shot glasses, some with fancy gold rims, to favored saloon owners and barkeepers. One glass had the seal of Hawaii lithographed in the base.  Peacock built a mansion for himself on a spit of land on the eastern side of Oahu that looked out on the gently rolling surf of the Pacific.   As the 19th Century drew to a close, he also noted that more or more steamships were docking at Honolulu and the influx of tourists was increasing rapidly.  Moreover, there was a dearth of hotel accommodations at the beach.

Peacock created a new company, capitalized at $100,000, later increased to $150,000.  He called it the Moana Hotel Company Ltd. and planned a new hotel. For this effort he engaged the well known architect Oliver Trephagen to design it  and hired a local contractor for the construction.  Owning the land on which the hotel was to be built, he arranged for his own house to be moved further back from the beach to accommodate the large building.

A hotel history tells the story:  “The Moana Hotel officially opened on March 11, 1901 ushering a new era of tourism for the islands. Designed in the old colonial style architecture of the period, it had 75 rooms and was the costliest, most elaborate hotel building in the Hawaiian Islands at the time. Each room on the three upper floors had a bathroom and a telephone - innovations for hotels of the times. The hotel also had its own ice plant and electric generators. The first floor had a billiard parlor, saloon, main parlor, library, office and reception area.“Ionic columns supported an elegant port cochere at the entrance leading to a lobby embellished with intricate plaster detailing on the ceiling. The Moana, which means "broad expanse of ocean," lived up to its name with the crowning achievement of a rooftop observatory 120 feet off the ground, lit by more than 300 lamps. It accommodated receptions while offering 360-degree views of Waikiki, Diamond Head and the Pacific Ocean.  The hotel’s first guests in 1901 were a group of 114 Shriners hosted by the local Aloha Temple Shriners. They paid a costly $1.50 per night for their rooms."

Peacock took a strong interest in many aspects of the Moana.  He is said by family members personally to have planted the giant banyan tree that still spreads over the grounds. Because of the remoteness of Hawaii in those pre-airplane days, the Moana may not have been the immediate profit center Peacock anticipated.  Or he may not have liked the hotel business.  In any case, he sold the property in 1905 to Alexander Young, a prominent Honolulu entrepreneur with other Hawaiian hotel interests.

Subsequently the Moana, with a number of additions over the years, became known as the “Grand Queen” of Honolulu hostelries. It also was the pivotal building that led to the massive development of Waikiki.  My parents stayed at the Moana in the 1950s and I visited regularly from 1970 until just recently.  It remains a marvelous destination after more than a century.

In 1909 Peacock, still young at 51, died.  He was buried in the Oahu Cemetery in a section known as the “Peacock Plot.” His mother, Margaret, age 82, three years later would join him in the grave.  Mother and son are memorialized on a joint headstone.  His wife, Margaret, returned to her native New Zealand after W.C.’s death.

Peacock's nephew took over management of the Peacock liquor interests. His time would be limited by the 1915 passage of territory-wide Prohibition in Hawaii.  The company was terminated as were W.C.'s and Corbet's saloons. In 1916 the Royal Building, which had been the center of Peacock’s empire, was leased to business interests.  Since Repeal the site has returned to being a bar and restaurant.

Although Peacock is gone from the Honolulu scene,  this far-sighted whiskey man is still celebrated for his pioneer work for the Hawaii tourist industry, the development of Waikiki and, above all, the magnificent Moana.  On the postcard view of Waikiki that follows, the Moana hotel is the first building on the left side of Kalakaua Avenue.  Find it and remember W.C. Peacock who made it all possible.

Note:  This is an amended version of the article occasioned by a thoughtful communication from a Peacock relative named Joe Hanke.  Drawing on family knowledge, he made it possible to correct  mistakes in the earlier version and to include additional information on the Peacocks.

Elijah R. Betterton: The Confederate Who Came Out a Winner

The Battle of Five Forks

The Battle of Five Forks, fought on April 1, 1865, was the last major clash of North and South in the Civil War.  Nine days later Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.  But for Elijah Betterman,  whose subsequent career as a Tennessee whiskey man brought wealth and prominence,  the war was far from over.  Captured at Five Forks he would spend months in a notorious Yankee prison camp.

Betterton was a native Virginian, born in Campbell County not far from Lynchburg,  to parents Thomas and Charlotte Betterton, both native born Virginians.  His father ran a grist mill and a small still on Hat Creek.  The 1860 census found Elijah, 14, living with his parents, an older sister and brother, and a younger sister at Naruna, an un-incorporated community located along a rail line.  At the age of 17 in 1962 Betterton enlisted in the Lynchburg Home Guard, a unit that already had seen hard fighting at First Manassas and Antietam.  It can be assumed that Elijah was engaged at Gettysburg with the Home Guard, which sustained heavy losses there.  In 1864, accord to military records, he joined the 11th Virginia Volunteer Infantry,  part of a Corps composed of one infantry and three cavalry divisions and commanded by Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett.

Recognizing the importance of the intersection of four major roads represented by Five Forks in central Virginia,  Lee ordered Pickett to hold it “at all hazards.”  Union Maj. Gen Phillip H. Sheridan’s attack overwhelmed the Confederate forces,  as shown here,  forcing Pickett to retreat.  Some have called the battle, “The Waterloo of the Confederacy.” The 11th Infantry lost heavily in men killed and captured.  Betterton was among the latter,  sent to Point Lookout, a prison camp on a narrow strip of land between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay.   It had a notorious reputation.   Thousands had died there of hunger and disease, guarded by hostile African-American troops.

Although the war officially ended in April, 1865,  Betterton was not released until late that year or early the next, spending months as a prisoner of war.  Upon his release he returned to Naruna and resumed the family business.  A descendant described the operation:  “A portion of the corn brought in by farmers was taken as a fee by the grist mill. There was no money. The corn was distilled in a pot still; no licenses were required; little whiskey was sold for cash but exchanged for food, meat, linsey woolen, etc. The whiskey was made faster than it sold or could be drunk.”

Elijah also quickly married upon his return home.  His bride was Delilah, called “Lila.,” like her husband a native born Virginian.  He was 21, she was 20.  Before long they were joined by a boy child they named Thomas after Betterton’s father. With them was a 12-year-old domestic servant, a mulatto girl whose name was given to the census taker as Martha Betterton.  Too old to have been a child of Elijah’s, the relationship remains unexplained. Within several years Elijah had saved enough money to move his small family by train to Chattanooga, Tennessee.  There he opened a bar and a small wholesale liquor business.  A grandson has a copper barrel stencil dated 1870 that shows “E. R. Betterton & Co. Hand Made Sour Mash Polk County Corn Whiskey.”

According to family lore,  after 1880 Betterton decided to “become respectable,” getting  out of the liquor trade and going into the wholesale drug business in Dallas, Texas. He sold everything in Chattanooga except one small rental house and sent his trusted bookkeeper to Dallas to rent a building and lay in a stock of drugs. The bookkeeper carried the checkbook and was empowered to write checks for purchases. When Betterton, his wife and five children arrived the warehouse was filled with stock, no bills had been paid and the bookkeeper and $500,000 were gone. He was last heard of in Mexico.

His money gone,  Betterton, with his family in tow,  limped back into Chattanooga,  moved into the rental house and opened a small bar at 435 Market Street.  Within a year, he had found a partner in J. C. Martin, a local Tennessee resident, and opened up a new wholesale liquor business under the name E.R. Betterton & Co., as shown on the company letterhead and on two varieties of amber flasks.

As a result of initial success, about 1885 the partners had the resources to construct their own building  at 100 West Seventh Street.  During this period, although calling themselves distillers, they were buying whiskey from small local distilleries,  “rectifying” it and selling it as their own.  As with other outfits involved in the blending process,  Betterton and his partner found it difficult to assure a steady supply of product.   About 1895 they decided to open their own distillery, locating it on Signal Mountain Road near Valdeau, Tennessee.  They called it White Oak Distillery.  They hired a young but experienced distiller named Bill Tolley   to run the operation.

Unfortunately their first distillery, although it prospered, had no easy transportation access.  It was away from the Tennessee River and five miles from the nearest railroad.  As a result about 1899 Betterton and his partner built a second distillery on the south bank of the river just east of the Market Street bridge.  An illustration of this facility emphasizes its nearness to river and rail transport. 

E. R. Betterton & Co.’s flagship brand became White Oak Distillery Tennessee Whiskey.   It was sold in quart bottles and flasks with an elaborate label showing a pot still and bearing the Betterton company name.  The same design was also replicated on company giveaway items to favored customers, including shot glasses and highball glasses.  In time the firm also opened a outlet in Cincinnati,  shown here on another Betterton shot glass.   Betterton also took his son, Elijah (called “Lige”) Junior, into the firm  as his son rose to maturity.

In addition to selling his own whiskey brands, Betterton became an outlet for some of the best-selling brands in America, including “Duffy Pure Malt,”  “Cascade Whiskey,”  “Old Overholt,”  “Gibsons XXXX.” and  “Tannhaeuser Export Beer.”  If you were looking for a “sole agent,” the merchandising genius of Betterton’s firm would have strong appeal as would its access to markets in the Nation’s mid-South.

The Betterton family suffered a major loss when in 1910 Elijah’s wife, Delilah,  at the age of 63, at the family home died after a long illness, surrounded by her grieving family.  That personal loss was followed for Betterton several years later when in 1913 Tennessee voted statewide Prohibition.  Distilleries were still allowed but could only sell out of state.
In effect Tennessee was try to eat its cake and have it too.  Elijah and his collaborators were too canny to comply.  That year they decided to close out the distillery and the wholesale liquor operation. 

Lige Betterton and a partner then opened a wholesale house under the name “E. R. Betterton”  in Rossville, Georgia,  just over the Tennessee state line.  His Chattanooga liquor stocks were sent there.   For a time, it was legal for the Bettertons to ship whiskey from Rossville back to thirsty Tennessee customers by express freight and even parcel post.  As a result, by 1917 most of the family’s stock in the Tennessee warehouses and at the distillery had been exhausted.  

Betterton did not let the collapse of his liquor interests deter him.  In 1914 he formed the Betterton & England Shoe Company.  The firm claimed to be footwear wholesalers.  Ever the entrepreneur, about 1917 at  the age of 71, Elijah bought out his partner and re-incorporated.  His shoe company was closed out in the economic

Forest Hill Cemetery

downturn of 1921-1922.  Another cause may have been Elijah’s own death.  He passed away in May of 1922 and was buried next to Delilah at the Forest Hill Cemetery near Chattanooga.  In the future his son and namesake,  Elijah Junior, would be elected mayor (1947) of Chattanooga, the town Elijah Senior had adopted as his own.  This Confederate prisoner of war and his family had come a long way.

Notes:  On an Internet site,  George Wallace, the grandson of Elijah R. Betterton,  has provided insights into the life and activities of his grandfather.  Material in this post has relied in part on the information Wallace provided in a short article written about his family.

August Thiel Was a “Rectifier” and Proud of It

During the latter part of the 19th Century and extending into the 20th, a struggle  occurred between the distillers of “straight” bourbon and rye whiskeys and those liquor dealers who were buying raw whiskeys, blending them to taste, and selling them under hundreds of brand names.   Known as “rectifiers,”  many of those whiskey men tried to hide their activities claiming to be distillers or using other subterfuges.  Not Boston’s August Thiel. He was a rectifier and proud to be one.

In September, 1903, Thiel wrote an open letter that appeared in a national liquor industry trade magazine.  It was written to the Columbus Laboratories of Chicago.  In it he said:   “Having successfully completed a correspondence course at your academy,  will say that previous to becoming one of your students, I was engaged in compounding and rectifying for a number of years and therefore know the value of the 

instruction I received from you.”  He went on to say that he would recommend the course to anyone who wanted to know the compounding and rectifying business and  “the producing of fine blends, bitters, cordials, etc.”

By making such a bold statement he was putting both feet  into the controversy.  Three years later with the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws,  a number of Kentucky bourbon distillers attempted to declare all rectified products “imitation whiskey”  and told stories of adulterated and dangerous products.   They had powerful allies.  Dr. Wiley, the head of the agency charged with carrying out the new pure food laws agreed.  So did the U.S. Attorney General.  A special Presidential Commission was established to investigate the matter and  came down firmly against the rectifiers.

Of course, August Thiel, born in Russia,  knew nothing of this struggle when he emigrated to the United States at the age of about 19.  He appears to have settled almost immediately in Boston.  Within three years of arriving he married his wife, Augusta, and established their residence on Charles Street.  They soon had their first child, Frank.  Thiel’s occupation at the time of the 1900 census was recorded “salesman-dry goods.”  Early in the ensuing decade, he entered into the liquor business and was so listed in the 1910 census.

Thiel opened his own liquor establishment,  calling it August Thiel & Co.  Eventually it was located at 543-545 Atlantic Avenue, as shown here.  The firm, his logo proclaimed, was “importers, distillers agents and wholesalers.”  He also ran a wine cellar from Atlantic Avenue.  Visitors were invited to “come right down into the basement “ to see the array of 126 casks of whiskey and wine stored there and to place their orders.  Located one block from the railroad station and three from the city wharf, Thiel’s firm presumably with ease could ship to other parts of the Northeast.

At the same time Thiel was pursuing his strong financial interest in, and may have owned,  an organization known as Glenbrook Distilling.  Located at 45 Hanover Street in Boston, Glenbrook, despite its name, did not make it a secret that it was not a true distiller but a compounder and rectifier.  It provided Thiel with the whiskey to issue a blizzard of brands.  They included:  "Adam Good,” "Anamoose Malt,” "Ataco,” "Blue Label,”"Bond Valley,” "Crown Malt.”, "Deer Creek," "Elkin,” "Emerson,” "Empire,” "Franklin,” "Glendisco,” "Kingston Bourbon,” "Medfield,” "O. L. Taylor,” "Park Club,” "Pullman,” "Thiel's Canadian Type,” "Thiel's Choice,” "Thiel's Home Whiskey,” "Thiel's Old Champion,” "Thiel's Pride,” "Thiel's Private Stock," “Thiel's Reserve,” and "Thiel's Straight.” 

Thiel’s flagship brands, however, were “Glenbrook Maryland Rye” and “Glenbrook Whiskey.”  He made no secret of the fact that Glenbrook was a blend.  It was described  that way in his advertising and on giveaways such as the shot glass shown here.   The glass proclaims “blended and bottled by the Glenbrook Distilling.”  No claim was made for distilling.   Rather, Glenbrook’s supplies of raw whiskey were being drawn from actual distilleries in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. 

Thiel was generous with his giveaways to favored customers, usually saloons and other drinking establishments serving his liquor.  Among the most fancy shot glasses was one that advertised Thiel’s Home Whiskey,  showing a structure that very much looks like a church.  Thiel seems to have made it a practice, and uncommon honesty, to list “blend” on his compounded and rectified products, as displayed on this shot glass and a back of the bar bottle for his Glendisco Rum.

As Thiel was building his Boston liquor trade, down in the Nation’s Capital, the fight over  whiskey was coming to a head.  With most of his officials favoring branding anything other than straight whiskey as an “imitation,” and requiring it to be so labeled,  the President of the United States, William Howard Taft, was called on in 1910 to make the final decision.  Taft, who weighed more than 300 pounds,  knew the taste of whiskey and hailed from Cincinnati, one of the centers of whiskey rectifying in America.  He proclaimed that it was a century old tradition that all liquor distilled from grain was known as whiskey, despite the details of its manufacture.  Based on that notion, both straight and blended products passed the legitimacy test posed by the Pure Food and Drug Laws.   With that one decision, which still stands today, the idea of “imitation whiskey” became obsolete.

Thiel and his colleagues in the compounding and rectifying business had won an astounding victory.  Before August had much time to celebrate, however, a fire broke out in his Atlantic Avenue facility.    The result of an alcohol explosion on July 12, 1911,  losses estimated at  more than $63,000 were sustained.  Thiel was able to repair that damage and move on but waiting down the road was National Prohibition.   It forced him to shut down both his facilities, a business that the local press cited had gross earnings of $500,000 annually, 20 times that in today’s dollar.

But Thiel, still only 49 years old, and his oldest son, Frank, who had been working with him in the liquor business, did not let this setback deter them.   By this time the family had moved to a community south of Boston called Canton.  There they began to manufacture paper boxes in a factory near the Canton railroad station at a start-up cost of approximately $50,000.

A contemporary newspaper chronicled their efforts:

In the beginning it was difficult to find competent help and it was a struggle to meet the orders. As time went by an efficient superintendent was found and a training program made his employees some of the best in the industry. He paid his help a fair wage and provided good working conditions. Before long they were making eighteen to twenty thousand boxes a day. The business needed more space so they purchased one of the larger buildings of the old Morse factory complex from Canton Heel Company. Shortly after, the entire operation was moved into the building on Pequit Street.

This period of prosperity was not to last.  During the early morning hours of March 17, 1925, the Thiels’ box factory caught fire and was destroyed.  Despite the efforts of many area firefighters,  nothing was saved and only four walls remained to mark the ruin.  A month later the Thiels, who already had surmounted one fire,  announced to the public that they would not rebuild.

With that, August Thiel slipped out of the public record and into history.   Here he can be remembered as a champion of the whiskey rectifying industry who, by his honesty in advertising, may well have helped tip the scales against the stigma of “imitation whiskey,” and thereby set the standard for the future and our own time.

For Simon Binswanger Fame Came with “Famo”

Although Binswanger is an unusual name,  it also is a famous name.  Otto Ludwig Binswanger was a psychiatrist and neurologist who came from a noted family of European  physicians and has a mental disease named for him.  While it is uncertain where Simon  Binswanger, right, comes in that distinguished family tree, he clearly made his fame, albeit more modest,  from “Famo,” the name of his flagship Kentucky bourbon.

Although Binswanger family roots were in Germany, from whence both his father, Henry, and mother, Lena, had emigrated, Simon was born in 1857 in Richmond, Missouri, where Henry was employed as a traveling salesman.   After attending local schools and achieving the rudiments of a business education, Simon went to work as a bookkeeper for a local firm, likely a liquor dealership.   The 1880 census found him, age 23, living at home in St. Joseph, Missouri, with his parents and four younger siblings,  among them a brother,  Samuel,  age 21.

Three years later Binswanger moved north 140 miles to Omaha, Nebraska, where he partnered with a man named Solomon Ehrman to open a liquor dealership at 1109 Farnham Street.  They called their establishment  “Ehrman and Binswanger.”  Evidently business in Omaha was not what they expected and three years later they closed shop there and moved the considerable distance back to St. Joseph, a town that called itself “The City Worthwhile.” There they opened a liquor store at 208 Edmond Street, a main commercial avenue, shown here on a 1905 postcard.

The partners appeared to have fared well in St. Joseph for the next six years,  but split up in 1892 or 1893, with Binswanger staying at the Edmond Street address and Ehrman moving on to quarters on North Third Street.   The cause of the breakup is unclear but for the next 19 years the former partners were competitors for the drinking public of St. Joseph until Ehrman died in 1913,  reportedly as the result of “cirrhosis of the liver." His business closed abruptly.

Binswanger never looked back and moved briskly to create his own series of brands.  How and why he selected the name “Famo” for his flagship label is undisclosed.  He merchandised it as “hand made, sour mash, Kentucky bourbon” and gave it a fancy label, shown most dramatically on the shot glass that opened this article.  The flaming red color and scrolls and curlicues on the Famo lettering are particularly notable.

The source of Binswanger’s whiskey was a distillery,  known as #18 in the 20th District of Kentucky and operated by Silas Rosenfeld.  This plant, also known as the Rock Springs Distillery, had been built about 1870 two miles west of the Daviess County Courthouse on the banks of the Ohio River.  It had a mashing capacity of 1,500 bushels a day when Rosenfeld took over the operation and was well situated to provide Binswanger’s whiskey.

About 1900 Simon took his brother, Samuel, into the business as a partner and changed the company name to Simon Binswanger & Bro.  He advertised his firm as a “wholesale liquor company.”  With their business expanding, in 1904 Binswangers moved their operation to larger quarters, locating the business at 109-111 South Second Street.

In addition to his Famo Whiskey,  Binswanger featured a range of other brands, including “Blue Valley,”  “Hambeltonian,” “Imperial Club,” Kentucky Run,” “Melvin Pure Malt,” “Paradise Club Rye,”  “Rockford,” “Uncle Abe,” “Village Belle,” and “Suburban Rye.”  He trademarked Famo and Blue Valley in 1905 and Melvin Pure Malt and Suburban Rye in 1906.  He never bothered to register the other whiskeys with the federal government, suggesting that they were less important brands. With labels bearing the distinctive Famo design, the company bottled that whiskey in both clear  glass quarts and pint flasks,  some of the latter with a fancy ribbing on the container.  Another featured brand, Suburban Rye, could be obtained in both clear quarts and in amber flasks.  A detail of the later, shown here, highlights the company embossing.

As he established himself in business,  Simon found time to marry.  In 1885, at the age of 28, he wed Yetta Westheimer,  seven years his junior.  Yetta was a native-born Missourian, whose parents both had been born in the state.  The 1990 census found them living with two young sons,  Melvin and Lester, on Sylvanie Street in St. Joseph.  His mother Lena was living next door with two of his brothers.  The census listed him as “merchant - liquor.” As his sons grew to maturity Binswanger took them into the business to learn the whiskey trade.   The 1920 census found both Melvin and Lester listed as working with their father whose occupation was given as “liquor merchant.” Both sons were still at home, apparently bachelors. 

By 1920, however, Binswanger and his liquor business effectively had been shut down by National Prohibition.  At that point Simon was of retirement age and there is no record to show he subsequently entered on a new occupation.   In 1928, six years before Repeal,  Simon Binswanger died in St. Joseph mourned by his sons and widow, Yetta.  Surrounded by his small family, he was buried in the Jewish Adath Joseph Cemetery in Buchanan County, near St. Joseph.  Throughout his life he had been interested in Jewish religious and charitable causes. The family plinth and his adjacent gravestone are shown here.   After the end of Prohibition, the family did not revive the business or any of the brands Simon Binswanger had featured.  Nonetheless, he is remembered today for the Famo whiskey he made famous.