Henry W. Gillett: First to Rectify, First to Court — First to Jail?

Henry Wheeler Gillett is recorded as a Kansas man of “firsts” in several accounts.  According to the Leavenworth Daily Commercial of Dec. 31, 1871:  “Mr. Gillett rectified the first barrel of whiskey ever taken through that process in Kansas….”  Later he was reported to be the first liquor merchant in the state to be hauled into court in 1875 as a result of Prohibition pressures.   Finally, in 1891 Gillett was the first man sentenced to jail in what the Topeka Weekly Capital termed a “crusade against liquor dealers.”

Henry began life more than 1,000 miles from Kansas. The youngest of five children, he was born in 1832 in Clarksville, New York, the son of Anson W. and Olive Brown Gillett.  By the age of 19, he had left New York for Ohio, settling in Lucas County not far from Toledo.  There in 1851 he found a bride in Rebecca Rose Peters, an 18-year-old who had been born in Pennsylvania.  When they wed, she was living with a farm family near Waterville, Ohio, likely a nanny for a two-year-old.  Henry and Rebecca’s first child, Helen, would be born in Waterville in 1855.  Although I have been unable to find a record of his Ohio employment, my guess is that Gillett was engaged in mercantile pursuits, likely involving whiskey.                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                    By 1859 Gillett and his family were recorded living in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he had opened a small wholesale liquor house.  After the passage by Congress of the Kansas-Nebraska Act people began to stream into the newly-formed territory looking for farmland and other venues of opportunity.  Many of them were from Ohio and other Midwest states.  The territory soon would be known as “bleeding Kansas” because of clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces that roiled the population before and during the Civil War.  Leavenworth, just  few miles north of Kansas City, Missouri, was a particular hotbed of confrontation.

Despite the tumult, Gillett apparently found a ready market for whiskey.  Shown here is an 1865 ad for H. W. Gillett & Co., located at 54 Main Street, between Delware and Shawnee Streets in Leavenworth.  He billed his company as “Wholesale Dealers in Native and Imported Wines, Liquors, Cigars, etc, of the Very Best Quality.”  The illustration advertised fancy 1800 French brandy.  The Civil War proved to be a boon to Gillett’s sales.  According to a newspaper account:   “At some time during the war his annual sales amounted to considerable more than a quarter of a million dollars.”   That would be equivalent to more than $6 million today.

Initially Gillett took a local partner,  A. C. Wilder, a Union Army veteran who later represented Kansas in the U.S. Congress.   When Wilder departed from the firm, Gillett carried on successfully as a single proprietor and needing more space for his expanding operations moved in 1868 to 209 Delaware Avenue.  Shown here as it looks today, the building was said to be in one of the finest blocks in the city.   The structure offered plenty of room for Gillett to engage in the “recifying” his own whiskey,  that is, buying it in barrels, mixing and blending it for taste and color, and bottling it as his own proprietary labels.  Reputed to be the first ever in Kansas to undertake the process, Gillett remained a rectifier throughout his career in the liquor trade.  Said the Leavenworth newspaper:  “He has been very prosperous, deservedly so…”

This prosperity found itself demonstrated in the mansion Henry built at 319 North Broadway for his wife and family in 1867.  Known as the Gillett House, now on the National Register of Historic Places, the two story Italianate style home was the first of several in Leavenworth to feature cast iron decoration. Those features included ornate bracketed cornices with elaborate cast iron lintels.  The windows were embellished by fleur-de-lis crests.  Henry lived there with wife Rebecca Rose, their one daughter, and servants.

Even then the storm clouds of Prohibition were gathering over the Kansas.  Shown here is one of hundreds of “dry” town meetings, in a territory that rapidly became a national center of activity for the Temperance Movement.  Gillett was an early target of “dry” forces.  In 1875 after a Topeka resident named Haug placed an order for whiskey with him in Leavenworth, Henry was arrested under a law that forbid anyone from selling liquor “without taking out and having a license as grocer, dram shopkeeper, or tavern keeper.”  Gillett had no license in Topeka.  The Kansas Supreme Court reasoned, however, that the sale had taken place in Leavenworth and Gillett had a license there, ruling in his favor.  It was said to be the first instance of the Court intruding into Kansas liquor affairs.  Many such intrusions would follow.

Although Gillett won his case, the experience may have suggested to him the wisdom of an occupational change.  By 1877, he had taken on two new partners, Robert Armstrong and E. F. Kellogg. They changed the company name to “Gillett, Armstrong & Kellogg.”  By the following year his name was erased from the firm entirely, as he sold out to the pair.  Two letterheads shown here reflect this transition.  By that time Henry was involved in a range of other pursuits.  Among them he was an investor and director of the Kansas Central Railroad Co.  Its objective was to build a railroad and telegraph line to the Kansas-Colorado border, more than 400 miles west.  He also was a director of the State Penitentiary in Leavenworth and had an interest in a corporation known as the Kansas Manufacturing Company.

Meanwhile the firm Gillett had founded and sold would prove to have a short remaining life span.  By 1880 Kansas voters had approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting all manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors” throughout the state.  The liquor house was forced to shut down.   Whiskey continued to flow in Kansas, however, as the courts made it virtually impossible to punish offenders.  Called “jointists,” saloonkeepers and liquor dealers operated openly.  To be convicted a specific defendant had to be named, with proof of at least two sales documented with the time, place and witnesses.  But evidence was inadmissible from anyone, called a ”spotter,” who engaged in a sale just to obtain an arrest.  

Here the record on Henry Gillett becomes hazy.  Some accounts suggest that he might have lost much of his wealth during the 1880s.  The Kansas Central Railroad stumbled financially and went bankrupt.  Gillett sold his mansion home in 1890. Was he obliged to by economic necessity?  Did he then re-engage in the liquor trade?  Some evidence exists that he did.  Annual cash sales for the average Kansas jointist were estimated at $885,600 (equiv. to $21 million today).  Proceeds like that would have been tempting.   Moreover, liquor supplies were easily accessible from neighboring “wet” Missouri.

In July 1891 the Topeka Weekly Capital ran an article datelined Atchison, Kansas, headlined “Harrassing the Jointists.”  It described a crusade by local officials against liquor dealers.  One jointist had eluded the sheriff and headed for Nebraska.  Another had stolen all the papers involved in the case and fled to parts unknown.  Not so fortunate was a liquor dealer named Henry Gillett who had been fined $200 and sentenced to jail for two months.  Was this our Henry Gillett?  I can find no other in Kansas who fits the name and profile.  Given the loose application of the “dry” laws, another “first” for Henry seems possible.  

A year later, in April 1892, Gillett died.  He was 60 years old.  The cause given at the time was “dropsy,” the swelling of soft tissues due to the accumulation of excess water, often a sign of congestive heart failure.  He was interred at Mount Muncie Cemetery in Leavenworth County, shown here, a burial grounds for which he once had served as a director. 

During his lifetime, Gillett was credited with at least two whiskey “firsts” in Kansas — rectifying and court appearance.

Was he also the first to go to jail because of liquor?   I would rather remember Gillett as he was characterized in a Leavenworth newspaper article: “…He is one of our most popular and estimable citizens.”

Isaac Obey Sold Whiskey in Tall Timber Country

The pattern is a fairly familiar one.  An individual emigrates to the United States looking for a better life, finding initial employment laboring in mines or on the railroad or in the lumber industry.  Then, seeing his fellow workers spending heavily for whiskey, he decides that his true future lies with selling liquor.  That is the story of Isaac Obey of Bay City, Michigan.

Isaac was born in Montreal, Canada, about 1851 into a French-speaking family.  As soon as he reached sixteen, an age when many boys struck out to find their fortune, he headed for the United States, settling in Bay City, Michigan, about 1868.  Incorporated in 1865, Bay City had grown up adjacent to Lake Huron because of its strategic location on a deep water port adjacent to relatively untapped forest lands.  Rapid economic growth was taking place during this period, with lumbering, milling and shipbuilding thriving.  Arriving when he did, Obey found ready employment in a lumber mill.  A early map of the city above shows the many sawmills along the Saginaw River.

Obey labored in the timber trade four years, saving his money and biding his time.  Early on he recognized the buying power represented by his fellow workers.  A photograph from a single Bay City mill suggests the numbers involved.  Although the workers were not getting as rich as the Michigan lumber barons, a significant portion of their wages was going for strong drink.

In 1872, Obey made his move, opening a saloon and liquor store at the corner of Water and Twenty-third Street.  His enterprise appears quickly to have been a success and in 1878 he moved to larger quarters at the corner of Washington and Third Streets, dealing both in liquor and cigars.  He also was reported running a livery business.  About the same time he married Emma, a woman who had been born in Michigan of Canadian immigrant parents.   The 1880 census found them living in Bay City with three daughters, Adelia (aka “Delia”) age 3;  Blanch, 2; and Agnes, four months.  Later two sons would follow.

Obey’s liquor house continued to flourish at its Third Street address.  A photograph apparently taken in the 1890s, shows a display of barrels in front of the store.  According to a sign someone (Isaac himself?) is holding, the total amount of whiskey on display is a whopping 5,056 gallons.   Obey’s saloon and liquor store also appears to have held a bowling alley.  

The 1890s were a period of entrepreneurial expansion for Obey. The 1891 Bay City directory lists him as operating a second “wholesale and retail liquors” store at 408 Fifth Avenue with a partner named Almedee M. Shilaire (also given as Amedec M. Shillaire).  The partners also were engaged in a bottling facility at 1112 Washington Avenue.  By 1895, Obey had left his Third Street address for a new location on Saginaw Street, the avenue shown here. The 1897 Bay City directory recorded Isaac operating both the saloon at 408 Fifth Avenue and a second drinking establishment with Shilaire at 104 Third Street. 

In 1898, Isaac’s wife of 22 years, Emma, died.  With her husband and children gathered around her gravesite, she was interred in Bay City’s St. Patrick’s Cemetery.  The family seems to have been highly cohesive.  The 1910 census found the widower Obey living at  813 Saginaw Street with his daughters, Delia, now married to Napoleon Casault, and Blanch, and his 21-year-old son, Athanasius.  Both the young man and Casault were working for Obey in his liquor business.

  

In time Obey took his eldest boy into management and changed the company name to Obey & Son.  In addition to selling his whiskey by the barrel, Obey was retailing it in ceramic jugs.  As shown here, these were containers with Albany slip tops and Bristol glaze bodies with at least two varieties of underglaze labels.

Obey continued his ventures into the realm of spirits.  A 1904 directory listed him as the co-proprietor of the California Wine House, located at 406-408 Fifth Avenue in partnership with John B. Duchaine, a firm known as Obey & Duchaine.  Meanwhile he remained at 813 Saginaw as the principal of Obey & Sons.  The new name reflected that both of his boys, Athanasius and Victor, now were involved in the business. 

Isaac Obey died at the age of 61 in 1914 and was buried next to his wife at St. Patrick’s Cemetery.  Their gravestones are shown here.  Although his sons continued to guide the enterprises he had created, the forces of Prohibition, led by Detroit automaker Henry Ford, were pressing Michigan to become the first Northern industrial state to go “dry.”  In 1917 they succeeded and Obey family businesses associated with alcohol were shut down.

During Isaac’s lifetime a History of Bay County (1883) said of him:  “Mr. Obey does a good business and stands well as a citizen.”   It might have added that this French-Canadian immigrant with a strong entrepreneurial spirit had helped Bay City grow from a sawdust-blown village into a thriving city approaching 32,000 residents, albeit one with lots of whiskey flowing.

Thomas Oates and Packaging with Style

Sometimes a pre-Prohibition whiskey man is remembered by future generations, not for what he contributed to society,  but by collectors for the unusual bottles or jugs in which he packaged his liquor.   So it is with Thomas J. Oates, an Irish immigrant who issued several distinctive whiskey jugs from his 104th Street headquarters in Manhattan.

The artifact that principally has captured collectors is an elaborate transfer-printed jug that describes a scene in a mountain setting, presumably in Ireland since the picture is surrounded in shamrocks.  A stream rushes by on the right side, flowing under a bridge on which a horse-drawn wagon has passed on its trek to a building of stone and wood that houses a distillery.  The name of Oates’ whiskey, “Old Mountain Dew” stands on top.

I have isolated the distillery in order better to read the signs.  The taller building at left reads:  “Old Mountain Dew Distillery, Established 1865, Thomas Oates & Co.”   The the roof of the lower structure reads “Thomas Oates & Co, Sales Room, No. 224 East 224th St., New York.” Oates may have had to redesign this label over time.  

A second almost identical jug differs in minor design changes.  The one shown left, for example, has quite different looking trees surrounding the distillery.  Both jugs on the back have the same message:  “Thos. Oates & Co., Established 1865, New York.”

A third version is a ceramic that is tapered at the sides and is slightly smaller than the first two shown here.  It has a transferred label multi-color label that has been adapted to this shape and thus has slightly different proportions.

  

A side view shows the cluster of clovers and a shamrock that Oates claimed as a trademark.  It was a useless gesture, however, since he failed to register the symbol and name with the Federal Patent and Trademark Office.  Two other Mountain Dew whiskeys were on the market at the time, one from the Mountain Distilling Company of Cincinnati and “Mountain Dew Corn” from the Wolff Distilling Company of Louisville, Kentucky.

Oates jugs have no pottery marks on the base and might have been manufactured for the New Yorker in Scotland or England where potteries had developed the art of elaborate transfer printing on pottery, including in multi-colors.   Two or three American ceramics companies had mastered those techniques but my assessment is that the jugs above probably were made in the Old World.

That is where Oates himself hailed from.  He was born in Ireland in September 1864, although records differ slightly, and came to the United States in 1874, according to census data.  At that point he would have been 10 years old so almost certainly arrived with other family members.  Upon being processed at Ellis Island, he never after strayed far from New York, New York.

My surmise is that after receiving some education in this country, he early went to work in one of the many liquor emporiums dotting the Manhattan landscape.  Oates’ jugs claim the establishment date for his firm as 1865, just one year after his birth and nine years before his arrival on these shores.  It was not unusual, however, for a whiskey dealer to claim such if he had bought an existing firm with an earlier date of origin.  Assuming this was the path taken by Oates, establishing exact dates for Thomas Oates & Co. is difficult.  

Moreover, despite the bucolic country scene suggested by his jugs, Oates was creating his whiskey in a five story building in Manhattan.  He was a “rectifier,” that is buying raw product from distillers, then blending it and adding other ingredients in order to achieve a certain taste and color.  Located at 224 104th Street, the building is shown here as it looks today.  A Mexican market now operates where once Oates sold Mountain Dew and other liquors.  He and his family lived next door at No. 225.  

Thomas married about 1894, when he was 30 years old.  His wife was Mary Broderick, the daughter of Irish immigrants and born in New York City.  At the time of their marriage, Mary appears to have been only 17.  The 1900 Census found the couple living in Manhattan with two children, Evelyn age 4 and Thomas age 2.  Living with them was an Edmund Oates, age 14, recorded by the census taker as Oates’ son.  Since Edmund was too old to be Mary’s son, his origins are not clear.  By the time of the 1905 New York State census, the Oates family had added two more children, Marion and James.

In the 1900 and later census records, Oates’ occupation was listed as “liquor dealer.”  New York City directories first listed his firm in 1902.  In 1903 the fire department was called to his wine and liquor store to put out a fire, damage undisclosed.  By 1911, Oates had moved his residence to 172 104th Street, still not far way from his business.  At that time it was common for liquor dealers to live in the vicinity of their stores, the better to keep an eye on things.

As shown above, Oates also designed a second jug for his Mountain Dew brand whiskey.  This one featured a centrally located Shamrock and the errant claim that it had been trademarked.  Given the quality of the transfer printing and a limit of two colors, this ceramic likely was made in the U.S.A.   He also put his whiskey into glass bottles.  A “coffin” flask is shown here bearing his name and other information in the embossing.  Originally this bottle would have had a paper label.  

When Oates finally shut down his enterprise is unclear. He died in 1914 at the age of 70 and with him, apparently, his liquor house and Mountain Dew as a whiskey brand. The coming of National Prohibition in 1919 would have terminated the business in any case.  What is left to us today and for the future is a series of extraordinary Oates-created whiskey containers.

Milwaukee’s Duo Dudenhoefers

              

Jacob and Joseph Dudenhoefer, relatives separated in age by at least 20 years, both fetched up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the pre-Prohibition era to sell liquor, beer and wine.  When Jacob faltered and died, Joseph emerged to keep the Dudenhoefer name fresh before the public.  Each of them left behind ample artifacts by which to be remembered.

Jacob was the elder, born in 1842 in Alsheim, a village in Hesse Darmstadt, Germany, the son of Conrad and Clara (Matern) Dudenhoefer.   Joseph was born two decades later in 1862.  Jacob’s father was a wealthy farmer who owned a large estate with an extensive vineyard where his sons regularly were employed as field hands.  Possibly wearying of farming life, Jacob left home in his teen years and went to Berlin where he was engaged in the dry goods trade for three years before entering the wholesale wine business there until he was about 27 years old.

Seeking a better life in America, Jacob emigrated in 1869 and settled in Milwaukee, a city with a large German-speaking population.  He initially found work as a traveling salesman for the L. Fuldner Company, liquor and wines.  Founded in 1862 this firm was a major wholesale house located in the 100 block of Reed Street on Milwaukee’s South Side.  

Meanwhile Jacob was having a personal life.  In 1873  at the age of 31 he married Catherine Lohagen, a woman eight years his junior.  She was the daughter of a prosperous German distiller and brewer who had come to the Wisconsin in 1847 and owned a large farm south of Milwaukee.  The couple would have five children, four daughters and a son who died in childhood.

Jacob stayed with Fuldner for about a dozen years before striking out on his own in 1880.  Incorporated under the name the Jacob Dudenhoefer Company, this wholesale liquor establishment also was located on the South Side, specifically Grove Street (later South Fifth St.).  He was “rectifying” whiskey, that is, buying raw product, mixing and blending it, and bottling it under his own labels.  

Among Dudenhoefer’s proprietary brands — none of them trademarked during his lifetime — were “Bonfield,” “Elmbrook Sour Mash,” “Elmbrook Rye,” "Hunting & Fishing Club Rye,” "Night Hawk,” and “Yellow Springs,”  He also featured a line of medicinal bitters called  “G. V. G. Germania.”  He was up front that the tonic contained 30 percent alcohol — 60 proof.  

According to a contemporary observer of Dudenhoefer’s trade:  “…From the beginning it grew very rapidly until at the present time it is one of the largest places of business in the city.”  An illustration of his capacious wine cellar bears out that claim.  He also likely was running a saloon in conjunction with his sales, a clue provided by a bar token good for five cents on a beer.

Part of Jacob’s popularity stemmed from his generosity with advertising items given to favored customers among saloons and restaurants. These principally were shot glasses advertising Dudenhoefer brands like Hunting and Fishing Club and Bonfield Rye.  Jacob also was active in the community as a member of the Old Settlers Club, the Milwaukee Music Club, the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and the Deutscher Club.  In politics he was an ardent Democrat but never sought office for himself. 

Enter Joseph Dudenhoefer, Jacob’s younger (by two decades) kinsman, identified as a nephew. [See comment below.] When Joseph turned 16, perhaps with financial help from Jacob, he emigrated and found his way to Milwaukee.  During approximately the next 15 years Joseph was learning the liquor business, working for Jacob or another German liquor wholesaler.

Joseph also had time for a personal life.  In 1893 he married Barbara Thelen, who also had been born in Germany and emigrated to the U.S. with her family.  The 1900 census found the young couple living in Milwaukee’s Eighth Ward with two children, Joseph, 3, and Elsa, 1.  Living with them was Barbara’s mother and two teenagers named Thelen, likely Barbara’s siblings.  Joseph’s occupation was given as “wholesale liquor dealer.”

Then the picture becomes less clear.  In March 1901 Jacob Dudenhoefer died, his burial place not identified.  His firm under his name, however, would be maintained for the next 17 years.  But no evidence exists that it was Joseph who was leading it.  By 1901 he had started his own liquor house, locating it initially at 367-369 Eleventh Street on the South Side and calling it Joseph Dudenhoefer Company.

Joseph had his own proprietary labels, including ”Blue River,” "Pater Oschwald,” "Tara's Hall,” “Rolling Fork,” and “Sunny Castle Rye,” the last being his flagship brand.  He also featured a medicinal called “Sunny Castle Stomach Bitters.”  It sold for $1.00 a bottle and a small wine glassful was to be taken four times a day.   One observer has commented on name of the tonic: “Of the many bitters names, this has to be one of the ‘warmest’ and more positive names that is meant to remind us of our home, family and roots.” Joseph Dudenhoefer’s bottles and advertising artifacts are seen throughout this post.

Joseph would know a tragedy of home and family in 1904 when his wife, Barbara, died at only 31 years of age, leaving him with three small children.  She was buried in Block 19, Section B, Row 94 of Milwaukee’s Calvary Cemetery while her husband and friends mourned her passing.  After waiting an appropriate length of time and likely wanting a mother for his children, Joseph remarried.  Her name was Magdaline, known as “Lena.”

With the coming of National Prohibition, Jacob’s former firm shut down, but Joseph, according to business directories, attempted to continue by selling “sacramental wine.”  When that proved to be less than profitable, he switched to real estate.  With the coming of Repeal in 1933, Joseph wasted little time in returning to liquor and wines.  One of his post-Prohibition ads touted “Dudenhoefer American May Wine,” saying:  “Few wines have as old or as distinguished  history as May Wine.  The recipe we use in making this wine has been in the family for four generations.”  

Joseph’s story ended when he died in April 1959 in Cudahy, a Milwaukee suburb. He had been retired for some years.  His second wife, Lena, had preceded him in death in 1930.  Both are buried at Calvary Cemetery adjacent to Joseph’s first wife, Barbara.  Joseph’s passing ended an era when Dudenhoefer was a prominent name in Milwaukee’s liquor trade.  The artifacts issued by both Jacob and Joseph insure that name is continuing to be remembered.

Note:  The relationship between Jacob and Joseph has not been firmly established.  Some writers speculate brother, others nephew, still others, a son.  None are definitive.  I am hopeful that a Dudenhoefer relative will be in touch with me to clear up the relationship.  

Judge Roy Bean Dispensed Justice and Whiskey

One of the true legendary characters of the Old West was Judge Roy Bean, often called the “only justice west of the Pecos,” shown here.  Much has been written about Bean and he has been the subject of motion pictures and television programs — most of the depictions fanciful.  What is not exaggerated was his lifelong occupation running saloons, including the one in Langtry, Texas, where he held court.

Bean was born in the Kentucky hills of Shelby County and christened Fauntelroy or Phantly Roy, names he early jettisoned in favor of just plain Roy sometime before 1835.  About the age of 15 he left home with his brother, Sam, to drive a team of oxen in a wagon train wending from Missouri to New Mexico.  In 1851 Roy showed up in California where his oldest brother, Joshua Bean, lived.  Josh, a political figure in Southern California, ran The Headquarters Saloon in San Gabriel and he put Roy to work there as a barkeep.

In November 1852 Josh was murdered while riding to his saloon and Roy, still in his teens, took over its management.  After getting in trouble with local authorities in San Gabriel, he later left for Mesilla, New Mexico, where brother Sam had parlayed his wagon train earnings into owning a combination store, restaurant, saloon, hotel and gambling parlor.  He put Roy to work in the establishment. In 1861, Sam and Roy were described as “dealers in merchandise and liquors and had a fine billiard table.”

When Bean found out that 3,000 workers were building the Southern Pacific railroad through a region where the Pecos River meets the Rio Grande, he left California for Texas.  By now an experienced saloon operator, Roy knew that those workers would be making good wages and spending much of it on booze, so he bought a stock of liquor and headed for the camp.  In 1882 he opened a tent saloon three miles west of the Pecos.  A postcard indicates the rugged nature of the country.

Bean’s establishment did a brisk business as did other saloons in the camp, giving rise to unrest and lawlessness.  The railroad requested that the Texas Rangers bring order to the site and a ranger detachment was sent.  Their commander reported:  “There is the worst lot of toughs, gamblers, robbers and pickpockets collected here I ever saw.”  Compounding the problem was a lack of any court of justice within 200 miles.  The Rangers put out a call for the appointment of a justice of the peace for the area.   Roy Bean answered and was appointed.

He was, to say the least, an unusual choice, known as a gambler and a drunk, but he had the confidence of the Texas Rangers and that was enough.  As the  railroad work ended, business at the worker camp dried up, but a depot had been established 15 miles west and a town was growing up around it called Langtry.  Railroad executives let Bean built a saloon on railroad property just behind the station.

As shown above, it was from the front porch of the saloon that Bean dispensed justice.  Note that he is sitting on a barrel, wearing a sombrero, under signs that proclaim him “Judge Roy Bean Notary Public - Justice of the Peace - Law West of the Pecos.”  The men on horseback at left are said to include a prisoner on trial and his captors.  

Another sign, “The Jersey Lilly,” represented Bean’s obsession with Lillie Langtry, a British actress who had been the mistress of Prince Edward, later the King of England.  Born on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands, she was known worldwide by that name.  Bean always bragged that he would bring her to town to perform.  Married with children, he built a home for his family across the street from the saloon, calling it the “Opera House” and contending it was a concert hall for Langtry’s appearance.

In 1896 Judge Bean’s original saloon, one with living quarters in the rear, burned.  A replica of the interior shows the rough-hewn nature of the interior that would be subject to fire.  Bean immediately saw to the construction of a smaller replacement.  A replica of the bar area on display at the Whitehead Memorial Museum in Del Rio, Texas, purports to show a grizzled Bean serving drinks to a cowboy and a miner.  Above his head is a book, likely a replica of the outmoded compendium of Texas laws on which he reputedly based his legal decisions.  The two bottles on the bar bear little resemblance to what might have been there.  For example, the handed jug is a miniature that no respecting barkeep let alone Roy Bean would display.

As the judge’s business flourished, sometimes by intimidating the accused into buying drinks for the house, he opened a second saloon in a town about seventy miles from Langtry in a Texas town called Sanderson.  The San Antonio Daily Express opined:  “Roy Bean has opened a fine saloon in Sanderson…where he has the finest of liquor and cigars…Passengers by rail will do well to call ahead for themselves, at either place, Langtry or Sanderson.”  Bean’s saloon at the latter location did not endure.  A rival saloonkeeper had an employee pour kerosene into Bean’s whiskey barrel.  Knowing he could not control the situation there as he could in Langtry, Bean shut up his place and left.

As a result of his colorful career, many stories have grown up around Judge Bean.  Some have called him a “hanging judge.”  Others aver that over his career in office he never hanged anyone, arranging for the condemned to escape.  Some dismiss him only as foul-mouth bully, drunk and gambler, as in the photo of him (center, white beard) playing cards.  Others counter that he was a generous benefactor, using the fines he levied and even some of the profits of his saloon to buy medicine for the sick and poor of Langtry.  

Roy Bean died in March, 1903, after a heavy drinking spree in Del Rio, returning to Langtry in the morning and passing away that night.  Some say he feared that developments in Texas meant that the Old West of his ascendancy was disappearing and the times were passing him by.  Today Judge Bean lies buried on the grounds of the Whitehead Museum.  Buried next to him is a son, Sam Bean.  A kind of memorial was provided by Lionstone Distilleries Ltd. in 1973 when it issued a figural whiskey ceramic of Judge Bean.

Shown below is the way Bean’s saloon, restored as a tourist attraction, looked in 2005.   About a year after Roy’s death, Lillie Langtry, traveling by rail, did indeed stop in Langtry, Texas, while making appearances in America.  She had heard of the judge’s devotion and asked for him.  Instead, she had to be satisfied with seeing his saloon, one that still bore her “Jersey Lilly” name.