The Tragedies and Triumph of Jacob Schmidlapp

     

Few men have experienced the tragedies that during his lifetime beset Cincinnati liquor dealer and entrepreneur, Jacob Schmidlapp. Fewer still have been able to rise above their pain and sorrow to do so much for their fellow Americans in need and to advance the cause of world peace.

Jacob Godfrey Schmidlapp, right, was born in Piqua, Ohio, on September 7, 1849, the son of Adam and Sophia F. Haig Schmidlapp.  He received his education in the local public schools of Piqua, a city of some 20,000 in Miami County, in the southeastern quadrant of the state.  Perhaps seeing a lack of opportunity in his home town, not long after the end of the Civil War he launched his career working in a large Memphis department store called B. Lowenstein & Bros., shown below. Jacob worked as a cashier, likely in the liquor and cigars department.  After a year learning the trade, in May 1868 he opened his own cigar store in Memphis and, according to a biographer also “became interested in distilling enterprises.”

Schmidlapp as a Liquor Dealer. In the aftermath of the war Memphis struggled during Reconstruction.  The economy suffered; race riots ensued.  Yellow fever epidemics periodically engulfed the Tennessee river town as deaths and residents fleeing from the disease depopulated the city.  Assessing the situation, Jacob decided that Cincinnati, 80 miles directly south of Piqua, offered better opportunities.  He moved there about 1874 and opened a liquor store at 22 Vine Street.

Schmidlapp from the outset was a “rectifier,” that is blending his own whiskey on premises from liquor stocks likely purchased from Kentucky distillers across the Ohio River.  He was bottling them in glass with proprietary labels and selling them at retail.  His early brands included “Amazon,” “Ceres,” "Clifton Springs,” “Venus,” and “Live Oak.”  He appears to have trademarked only two of his brands,  Live Oak Bourbon and Live Oak Rye, registering those labels in 1876,1895 and 1907.  By 1885 his company had become Schmidlapp’s Live Oak Distillery.

Jacob had a flair for advertising and from early on was marketing his whiskeys to all parts of the country.  Shown above is an ad from the Pacific Wine and Spirits Review identifying his San Francisco outlet. At left is a 1900 ad that appeared in Buffalo newspapers.  He issued advertising shot glasses for Live Oak and other brands.  They would have been given to saloons, restaurants and hotel bars stocking his whiskeys.

Although Jacob actually would not own a distillery until 1889, he apparently had an assured supply of raw whiskey that encouraged him as the Live Oak Distillery to issue a blizzard of brands.  They included “Antelope,” “Applewood,” “Brookvale,” "C. T. Harvey,” "Clifton Club,” “Eastbourne,” "Fernvale", "Four Seasons,” "Good As Gold,” "Hard To Beat,” “Imperial," "King Lear,” "Lake Mills,” "Maple Grove,” "Old Todd,” “Palmetto,” "Pleasant Run,” ”Reindeer,” "Rock City,” "Runnymede Rye,” "Silver Star Rye,” "Southern Cross,” "St. James,” “Starbuck,” "Stone Ridge,” “Tiger,” "Tom Peck,” ”Village,” "Virginia Club,” and “Zebra.”

As a result of his strong business sense, Jacob’s profits from his liquor enterprise were substantial and allowed him with partners to acquire a distillery in Hamilton County not far from Cincinnati, shown below.  Established in 1849 the facility was located between the Mill Creek, the B&O Railroad, and the Miami-Erie Canal. It had a troubled past, in 1857 destroyed by fire and in 1872 shuttered by the government for non-payment of taxes.  Jacob and his partners bought the property in 1889, incorporating it as the Clifton Springs Distillery Co.  Eventually the property included a plant with a mashing capacity of 4,000 bushels of grain per day, a 100,000 bushel capacity grain elevator, three warehouses holding 35,000 barrels, and three drying silos producing 6,000 tons of feed annually.  As shown below it was a major operation.

Schmidlapp as a Family Man. Despite his growing wealth, Jacob already had known great sorrow.  In 1877 he had married Emelie Balke, a local Cincinnati woman, the daughter of Charlotte and Julius Balke, a billiard table manufacturer. Emelie was 19 at the time of their wedding;  Jacob was 28.  Their first child, a son they called Julian, was born in September of the following year.  After seven months of winning the hearts of his parents, to their great sorrow, Julian died.

The 1880s, however, brought joy as in rapid succession four more children were born healthy, Emma in 1881, William in 1883, Charlotte in 1887, and Charles in 1888.  Then death came again.  Rudolph, a son born in September 1893 lived only five months before dying in January 1894.

By this time Jacob could afford to move his family into a large home in the East Walnut Hills area of Cincinnati, shown here.  He called the mansion, “Kirchheim,” after the town in Baden-Wurttemberg from whence his family had originated.  It was located on 49 acres overlooking the Ohio River.  Indicating the kind of wealth he had amassed selling whiskey, he purchased the mansion in 1895 for the equivalent today of $3.3 million and put more than $300,000 into remodeling.

The 1900 census found the family there, augmented by Jacob’s brother- and sister-in-law and their young son, and a live-in staff of six, including a housekeeper, governess, laundress, nurse, food server, and general servant.  Tragically missing were Jacob’s wife and daughter, Emma.

During February of the previous year, possibly to escape the Cincinnati winter months, Jacob had sent them off to enjoy the warmth of  California.  We can image the excitement of the 42-year-old Emelie and 19-year-old Emma as they traveled around the West, sending postcards back to Jacob and the children still in school.  Then came the awful news.  Both had been killed in a railroad accident.  Their bodies were returned to Cincinnati where they were buried in Spring Grove Cemetery at the Schmidlapp plot (Garden Lane, Sec. 29) next to Julien and Rudolph.  After 23 years of marriage Jacob, 51, was now a widower.  Remembered as a “loving and caring father,” he never remarried.

The fates had one more blow to deal Jacob. When his daughter, Charlotte, reached maturity, she yearned to travel in Europe, especially to see France and Germany.  Recalling what had befallen Emelie and Emma, the father likely hesitated but eventually acceded to the girl’s desires.  In the autumn of 1908, age 19, Charlotte departed from ship from New York for Europe, on the trip of her lifetime, likely landing in Le Havre.  Days later the message reached Jacob — she had been killed in an auto accident in France.  Her body was returned and laid beside her mother and three siblings.  For many fathers it might have been a blow from which there would be no recovery.  But not Jacob.

Schmidlapp as Banker and Beyond.  About 1890, with his profits from his liquor business, Jacob organized a group of local business men to found the Union Savings Bank and Trust Company, serving as its chairman and guiding light.  The bank met with almost immediate success, with its $500,000 in assets growing to $5 million, paying liberal dividends for most of its existence. Union Trust was accounted as one of the foremost financial institutions of the Midwest. Under Jacob’s leadership, in 1900 the bank erected the first tall building built in Cincinnati, shown here. 

Describing his occupation as”capitalist” to the census taker, Jacob could point to a dozen or more enterprises in which he was a director or trustee.  They included the American Surety Company, Equitable Life Insurance Society, The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Degnon Contracting Company, Degnon Realty and Improvement Company, Queens Place Realty Company, Electric Securities Corporation, Montana Power Company, Champion Fibre Company, Monitor Stove and Range Company, and the Export Storage Company.  He also sought to improve transit in Cincinnati by offering a plan for a tunnel to facilitate railroad and interurban rail access to downtown.

Schmidlapp as Philanthropist and Peace Advocate.  Jacob is best remembers in Cincinnati today, not as a liquor dealer or banker or wealthy business man, but as an outstanding philanthropist in city history.  Following the deaths of his wife and daughter and accelerated by Charlotte’s death, Jacob began giving away large portions of his millions.  He financed a “magnificent annex” to the Cincinnati Art Museum, built a dormitory for the Cincinnati College of Music, and created an institution for women’s education in the name of daughter Charlotte.  He also gave a library and memorial monument to Piqua, his home town.

Jacob is said to have been particularly proud of Washington Terrace, Walnut Hills, a development of more than 400 homes he built to house working class African-Americans, “in whose welfare he was deeply interested.”  Said an observer: “His model homes form the most outstanding effort along this line in the country.”  Jacob also was a trustee and contributor to Cincinnati’s McCall Colored Industrial School.

Jacob’s philanthropic works did not end with his death.  He did not leave his money to his two sons, William, a prominent Cincinnati attorney, and Charles, a New York City banker.  Having given most of his money away during his lifetime Jacob willed his residual estate, then amounting to about $1 million, to the Union Bank to create a charitable trust.  Roughly a quarter of that amount went to the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund, created to empower and advance young girls and women.  What started as a $250,000 fund has grown to almost $30 million in assets. It began by awarding interest-free loans to aid young women in pursuit of higher education and continues to finance scholarships for women.

Funds in the Schmidlapp Trust also go to other worthy causes in Cincinnati.  For example, in 2014 the bank’s trustees awarded $1.5 million to a charitable coalition dealing with 1) reducing preterm births in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by poor pregnancy results and infant mortality, 2)  strengthening health education systems for pregnant women, and 3) assisting children vulnerable to “toxic stress” from unfavorable home environments.

Jacob’s other concentration was on international peace and arbitration of conflicts.  He was a director of the Carnegie Peace Fund and treasurer of the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes. Noting the years he devoted to these causes, one biographer commented: “It is to such men that the world looks for leaders in the movement for peace…when all the races of the earth shall dwell in harmony.”

Active into the last days of his life, Jacob as peace advocate lived just long enough to see the end of World War I;  as a whiskey man he died just before the imposition of National Prohibition.  He passed away on December 18, 1919, in Cincinnati and was buried in the Schmidlapp plot next to Emelie and the other family members. 

The encomiums written about Jacob after his death were voluminous and full of praise.   I have chosen one to end this vignette about a truly extraordinary man who rose above the grief and pain of personal loss to assist his fellow human beings in need:  “Mr. Schmidlapp represented American manhood in the ideal — courage, honesty of purpose, simplicity and the power of preserving friendships. He has left a record after which the youth of America might well pattern their lives.”

Note:  This post was gathered from a variety of sources. Most useful were two short biographies, one written while Jacob was living, the other after he had died.  They were “Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912,” edited by Charles Frederic Goss, Clarke Publishing Co., Cincinnati & Chicago, 1912, and “The Historical Register,” edited by E.C. Hill, 1921.

William Brown: Black Saloonkeeper on the Comstock Lode

In 1862 two men who found themselves in Virginia City, Nevada, each made that Comstock Lode mining town the launching pad for his career.  One was Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, the Nation’s most famous author.  The other was William A.G. Brown, shown here, an African American saloonkeeper who languished in obscurity until Nevada archeologists excavated the site of his drinking establishment. 

Details of Brown’s life before arriving in Virginia City are scant.  Local records list his death there in April 1893 and give his age as 63.  This would put his birth at 1830 in Massachusetts and likely in or near Boston, the name he gave his saloon.  Although Brown was not born in slavery, his education would have been in segregated schools.  Although Boston was the first city in the U.S. to desegregate its public schools, that did not occur until 1855, when Brown was 25 years old. He likely attended one of the “Jim Crow” schools for at least the time it took to learn to read and write.

Given the sophistication that is attributed to Brown by archeologists who excavated his saloon, early in life he likely was employed as a busboy or waiter at a upscale restaurant or hotel.  His acquaintance with imported wines and liquors, his understanding of choice cuts of meat, even the confidence he exhibits in the portrait above, all bespeak a background in a fairly posh eating establishment.

Like Mark Twain, Brown was drawn to Virginia City by the promise of wealth.  As one author has put it:  “From around 1860 to the late 1870s, the Comstock's mining wealth captured international headlines and Virginia City developed a complex, cosmopolitan community, attracting immigrants from all over the globe. People from North, South, and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa came to the mining district, hoping to harness some of its globally renowned glitter of silver and gold.”  Virginia City was not a typical Wild West town.  It was highly urbanized, cosmopolitan and industrial, with a population that reached 25,000.

At the time of his arrival, Brown was about 32 years old.  Why did he choose to begin in Virginia City as a bootblack, a trade identified with youth — “shoeshine boys” — not usually grown men?  My guess is that he chose to start that way as way to scope out the possibilities the city might hold for a man of color.  In Boston African-Americans had been virtually excluded from the liquor business by the end of the nineteen century.  A shoeshine man by mixing with both blacks and whites could get an idea of what economic opportunities might be at hand.

By the time Brown arrived in Virginia City it may have boasted as many as one hundred saloons, but none for the black population of several hundred, who like William were drawn to the Comstock by the hope of a more prosperous life.  There he would meet Dr. W.H.C. Stephenson, born in Washington, D.C., and the first black doctor in Nevada; George Cottle, black owner of the successful Virginia City Union Hotel, and John Martin, a trustee of the local African Methodist Episcopal Church.  Those community leaders may have encouraged Brown to open what Twain in a newspaper column called “a popular resort for the colored population.”

By 1864 Brown had abandoned his shoeshine stand and opened the Boston Saloon on B Street, a site described as on “an upslope location along Virginia City’s mountainside setting and well beyond the center of town.”  African Americans in Virginia City did not reside in a distinct or designated community as did the Chinese population. Instead, blacks occupied homes in locations scattered throughout town, with the majority, as shown on the map here, residing above D Street on the city’s western side.

Little is known about the first Boston Saloon.  It likely was of wooden construction, rather plain and possibly with the false front common in Western towns.  It must have been a successful venture.  By 1866, Brown moved from B Street to a second address several blocks away at the southwest corner of D and Union Street. In effect, he had moved from “the sticks” to the center of Virginia City’s entertainment and red light district.  Although brothels were plentiful, the district also was the site of Virginia City’s prime opera houses, theaters, and a few respectable drinking establishments.

The birds-eye drawing here is the only known image of Brown’s second saloon, shown inside the red circle.  In her book “Boomtown Saloons:  Archeology and History in Virginia City,”  Archeologist Kelly J. Dixon describes Brown’s saloon as a long narrow building crowded by larger structures on each side with an alley in back: “The building was rectangular with long axis perpendicular to D Street. At the center of the Boston Saloon’s facade, two windows flanked a door.  An overhang or awning spanned the entire width of the facade.”  The building was constructed of wood.

Leveled by the Great Fire of 1875, the site of the saloon became a parking lot for the Bucket of Blood Saloon, one of Virginia City’s later tourist attractions.  The excavation by University of Nevada archeologist in 2001 unearthed thousand of artifacts that have produced a great deal of information about the Boston Saloon and its owner.  

They point to the entrepreneurship and sophistication of Saloonkeeper Brown.  For example, he was not relying on beer and local “rogut” whiskey to serve over his bar.  Shown here is a bottle of French champagne and a shard from a Gordon’s (English) gin found on the site.  Another fragment disclosed a soda water from Cantrell & Cochrane of England.  These imported items required cross-continent shipping and were pricey. 

Other finds included a bottle of Dr. Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters, perhaps the best selling American patent medicine of all times.  Like all bitters, the nostrum was heavily laced with alcohol and sold at many high end saloons to those who preferred “medicating” to drinking.  Also shown here is a bottle that looks familiar even today.  Then and now it held Tabasco sauce.  Brown’s saloon was the only archeological site in Virginia City to bear this bottle, a product introduced about 1869.  It suggests the proprietor was a trendsetter, early on using a condiment that ultimately would sweep the country.

The most definitive evidence of Brown’s good taste and elevated status was deduced from the animal bones found in the excavation.  Of the four local saloons studied, the Boston had the greatest abundance of beef and sheep bones from expensive cuts of meat.  Others abounded in the leavings from pork, a cheaper meat, associated with the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.  This suggests that many of Brown’s black customers were affluent enough to enjoy an upscale meal and that whites also frequented the Boston Saloon.

Author Dixon is keen to differentiate Virginia City saloons from the “shoot em up” Western drinking establishments popularized by Hollywood.  The Territorial Enterprise reported only one incident at Brown’s Boston, occurring in August 1866.  Here is one retelling of the original story:  “A gunshot pierced the smoky air in the small, boomtown saloon. It came from the poker table, where all but one the players sprang to their feet. One of the players writhed on the floor as blood spilled from his leg. The shot was an accident, caused by a pistol falling from someone's lap and discharging when it hit the floor. Although his leg was sore for a while, the victim survived. Except for the man shot in the leg, who happened to be the only white man in the saloon at the moment, all the participants in this scene were of people of color.”

What is missing here is an emphasis on the fact that men around the card table, of whatever color,  were carry loaded firearms on their laps during a card game, an indication that any perceived cheating might result in gunplay — an outcome not too far from the movies.  In fact, Brown himself had a gun and knew how to use it.

That was documented by Ronald M. James in his book, The Roar and the Silence.  James relates that a woman identified as William Brown’s wife testified in court on his behalf after the saloonkeeper had shot and killed a fellow African-American named John Scott.  Court records indicate that for reasons unknown Scott was obsessed with attacking Brown at the Boston.  In response to his threats Brown repeatedly asked Scott to leave the saloon.  When his assailant refused, he pulled his gun, fired and killed him. Virginia City law enforcement apparently concluded the shooting was in self-defense and Brown was not charged with a crime.

The identity of Brown’s wife remains a mystery.  Some believe she was of the common law variety.  Author Dixon envisions her working at the Boston serving customers.  Others identify her with a well-known Virginia City prostitute.  Whoever she might have been, there do not appear to have been any children from the relationship. 

Whether it was the shooting incident or another cause, after eleven years in the saloon business, nine of them at the D and Union address, Brown sold the Boston in 1875 at the age of about 45 and retired with his profits.  By so doing he avoided the huge fire that same year that leveled the Boston and much of Virginia City. The saloon was not rebuilt.  Brown’s activities in ensuing years have gone unrecorded.  Apparently continuing to living in the Comstock, he died 18 years later, his place of interment unrecorded.

By this time Mark Twain was world famous as the author of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.”  He had left Virginia City and the Territorial Enterprise in 1864, crossing paths with William Brown for only about two years.  Yet they may have had an association.  Twain’s friends, including his newspaper editor, accused him of stealing a coat and boots and trading them to Brown for a bottle of whiskey, described as tasting “vile.”

While never achieving the fame of the author, Brown has more recently written his name in the history books as a pioneering African-American who ventured West and succeeded as an entrepreneur.  His achievements occurred even as Virginia City was going through economic cycles that led downward and the small black community often was subjected to indignities. Today a historical plaque at the Boston Saloon site, explains:  “Prejudicial laws and racism placed hurtful restrictions on the African-Americans of Nevada.”

Note:  This post was drawn from a variety of sources, the principal ones being Kelly J. Dixon’s 2005 book previously cited and “Archeology of the Boston Saloon,” published by ScholarWorks@UMass, Amherst, 2006.  A majority of the photos here also originally came from the Dixon book but also have been reproduced on other Internet sites.

E. B. Pond and His “Wet” Path to Frisco’s Mayor

Described by a biographer as a man of “active temperament and speculative turn,” Edward B. Pond, shown left, followed a career path that involved substantial twists and turns until he engaged in the liquor trade in San Francisco and was propelled into the job of that city’s mayor.  Accord to a biographer, despite the bitterness of politics in his day: “Mayor Pond’s name was unsmirched and in the midst of the frictions…he has without obsequiousness or compromise of his integrity, retained the confidence of all factions.”

Pond began life 2,860 miles from San Francisco, born December 7, 1833, in Jefferson County, New York.  He was the son of Massachusetts-born Abigail Russell and the Rev. Charles B. Pond, a Congregationalist minister, described as a “gentleman of liberal education and honorable repute.”  Edward had a distinguished heritage.  His Puritan ancestors had come from England a mere fifteen years after the Mayflower and a grandfather served as an officer in George Washington’s army.

Edward was the fifth of nine children from his parents marriage.  When he was only eight years old, his mother died at age 39, possibly of the effects of childbirth, along with a newborn daughter. The Rev. Pond, faced with raising six minor children, married five months later.  His bride was Katherine Whipple, a sister of his first wife.

Although his father was financially able to give him a college preparatory education, Edward’s interests lay in a different direction.  The 1850 federal census when he was 16 lists Pond’s occupation as “saddler,” someone making or repairing saddles.  By 21 he had caught “gold rush fever” and in 1854, five years after the strike at Sutter’s Mill, Pond saddled up and started from New York for California.  Interrupted by winter snows in the Rockies he laid up until spring in Salt Lake City, arriving on the West Coast in 1855, settling in Butte County in north central California.

How much prospecting for gold Pond attempted is unclear. By 1858 he was deeply engaged in the livestock business, traveling to Texas, buying cattle there and driving them across mountains and plains back to Butte County.  Having made considerable profit from this enterprise, Pond opened a general store in the new town of Chico in Butte County, counted among the first of its residents.  There it is likely he had his first experience selling liquor.

Pond also found a wife in Chico.  She was Sarah McNeill, born in Ohio of Scotch and German ancestry.  Edward was 25; although the records are variable, Sarah may have been as young as 16. They are accounted the first couple to be married in Chico.  Sarah has been described as a “cultured lady” and Edward’s “helpmate through intervening years.”  They would have three children, two boys and a girl.

After six years of operating his Chico store and evidently gaining considerable wealth, Pond once again was restless.  Packing up Sarah and their firstborn, Catherine, he headed back East.  There ensued two years of what Pond himself described as having “cruised about.”  Seemingly tiring of the gypsy life and with a second baby on the way, California called to him again.  Accompanied by his family, he returned to the West Coast, settling in San Francisco.  For a time the Ponds lived in the Russ House, shown above, a first-class hotel in the city’s financial district.

In 1868, partnering with two locals, Frank B. Reynolds and Samuel More, Pond opened a wholesale and retail liquor house at 325 Front Street in San Francisco. Reynolds had been an employee of Hosmer, Goewey & Co. and Nudd, Lord & Co., both liquor stores that recently had gone out of business.  The 1870 census contains financial data indicating that Pond’s investment in the enterprise made him the majority owner. 

Under this management team, Pond, Reynolds & Company prospered, eventually outgrowing its quarters and prompting a move to 212 California Street.  Although firm evidence is lacking, the firm may not have marketed its own brands but imported well-known whiskeys from the East and Midwest.  Among the most evident of those was its offering G. O. Blake, a Kentucky whiskey that had a coast to coast reputation for quality [See my post on Blake, January 3, 2012].  Not only were Pond, Reynolds selling the brand, they were marketing it in their own embossed glass bottles.  Seen here in varying shades of amber, those bottles today avidly are sought by collectors.

The liquor business flourished, developing a clientele up and down the West Coast.   Pond, however, increasingly was becoming involved in other enterprises.  He was a director and later president of the San Francisco Savings Union, a large local bank; a director of the Sun Insurance Company, and an investor in other local businesses.  Still restless at the age of 43,  after eight years at the helm of Pond, Reynolds Co. Edward sold out and semi-retired.  In today’s dollar his net worth was estimated in the range of $2.1 million.

Said to have had a lifelong interest in politics, in 1882 Pond sought election on the Democratic ticket to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Since 1856 the City and County of San Francisco has been a consolidated city-county,  simultaneously a charter city and charter county with a single government.  As a result, the county board of supervisors also acted as the city council and the mayor was also the county executive.

Pond was elected to the Board, apparently served with diligence, and was re-elected in 1884.  In the Fall of 1886, leaving his supervisor’s seat, he ran for mayor as a Democrat and was elected “not on strict party lines, but a large and complimentary vote from all parties,” says his biographer.  Pond took up residency in the Mayor’s office in San Francisco’s extravagant city hall, shown above.  Two years later was a presidential election year, one bitterly fought between incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. The Republican won. It had no effect on Pond who easily was re-elected.

Some of his popularity may have come from his financial prowess. Upon taking office Pond inherited a city debt of $520,000, which was substantial for the time. He discovered that the gas and water companies had not been paying their share of taxes. He negotiated a settlement and turned the deficit into a surplus.   At the same time Pond did not always get along with the Board of Supervisors, regularly vetoing their legislative acts.  Known as the “Solid Nine,” the supervisors just as regularly overrode his vetoes.

During the period in which he served in political office, Pond and his family resided in a mansion home at 1019 California Street. Shown here, its size and unusual architecture, including a cupola on the roof, made it stand out in the neighborhood.  As politicians must, the Ponds entertained frequently with Sarah said to preside with “great grace” over the home.  The 1880 federal census recorded the Pond family residing there.  The boys, Edward and Samuel, were in school.  Daughter Catherine had died years earlier.   Also living with the family was Sarah’s sister and two servants, sisters from Ireland.

One of Mayor Pond’s speeches, made during an 1890 celebration of the 40th anniversary of California becoming a state, has survived the years.  Pond might have been talking about his own experience coming to the West Coast:  “Remember that what you are today our Pioneers were forty years ago —young, full of spirit and adventure.  The flower of the youth in every state, they dared the dangers of the stormy cape and of the desert plains, beset with lurking foes.  An army of valiant spirits…they came to carve out homes from the wilderness and to form a state.”

Pond himself had one more adventure awaiting — an 1890 run for Governor of California.  At the California Democratic State Convention, San Francisco political  boss Christopher Buckley backed Mayor Pond and he defeated William D. English of Oakland for the nomination. In the general election, Pond lost to Republican Henry Markham.  That appeared to end the whisky man’s political ambitions.

Pond, shown here approaching 60, retired from active business, preferring to watch over his investments from a one room office at 318 Pine Street.  He called himself,  “a capitalist” on the Federal census, a term that has a somewhat different meaning than today.  Then it meant someone who was an investor, today perhaps a “venture capitalist.”  The 1910 census found Edward and Sarah living alone in a posh hotel in downtown San Francisco. They had been married 48 years.

That same year Pond died at the age of 76.  He was buried in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery where a monument was erected to mark the family plot.  Sarah joined him there eleven years later.  The whiskey man’s obituary appeared alongside that of Mark Twain in the San Francisco Call.  That was fitting:  Both men as youths had followed their spirit of adventure with courage and conviction:  Twain to literary fame and greatness;  Pond to wealth and leadership of a major Western city.

Note:  The information for this post has been gathered from a variety of sources.  Principal among them was the volume, San Francisco’s Representative Men, Volume 1, published by the San Francisco Journal of Commerce Publishing Co., dated 1891, no author(s) given.  An additional important source was an unsigned obituary posted on the website depicting Pond’s grave.  Thanks go to Richard Siri for his permission to use images of bottles from his collection.

Whiskey Men Who Died in Auto Accidents

Foreword:   As a police reporter on an Ohio daily newspaper years ago I was regularly on the site of automobile accidents.  Often drinking was involved and occasionally there was a fatality.  As a result I can understand it might be thought ironic by some people that liquor dealers themselves have been killed in car crashes.  Presented here are vignettes of three such whiskey men who under very different circumstances lost their lives in motor vehicles. 

In an 1866 letter, Mark Twain called Sacramento the “City of Saloons,” claiming they were so numerous that: “You can just shut your eyes, march into the first door you come to and call for a drink, and the chances are that you will get it.”  George Wissemann ran one of those establishments and also sold whiskey to others saloons with significant  success — until his untimely end.  

A 20-year-old immigrant from Germany, Wissemann spent three years in an Ohio quarry digging rocks before heading to California where he found employment in a Sacramento saloon.  Showing a real talent for the whiskey trade, he eventually owned a prosperous liquor house and a number of saloons.  Financial success brought him social recognition as a leading member of the local Masons and Elks Lodge.  Shown here, Wissemann was an active Republican, engaged in both local and state politics although never seeking office himself. 

Wissemann was a member of the Canvasback Gun Club, about 12 miles from Sacramento.  In early November 1909 he decided to ride out to the club with his son for some duck shooting.  His wife Mary advised against it, worried that their son was ill;  George thought the fresh air would do the boy good.  They hitched up the horse and buggy and set off.  Wissemann is shown here with a team of horses in front of his establishment.

As they approached the gun club, a friend who may just have bought his first automobile, urged them to leave the buggy and join him in the motor car.  The driver lost control somewhere on or near the club grounds and crashed, throwing both Wissemanns out of the vehicle.  George may have been killed instantly.   His body, badly bruised and cut, was taken to the club headquarters where, at the age of 52, he formally was declared to be dead.  George Jr. was rendered comatose for several days but recovered.  

Call it the ultimate irony: A saloonkeeper killed by a drunken driver. Sadly, that was the fate of Martin Lynch of Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee, shown left, a man who owned two saloons in that dual-state city and was the source of regionally popular whiskey brands. He first surfaced with his own establishment about 1908, at age 31 owning and operating a saloon on Bristol’s Front Street, the first of several.  

Lynch also became a “rectifier,” that is, blending raw whiskeys and perhaps other ingredients in back room in order to achieve desired taste, color and smoothness.  He bottled this liquor under his own labels and marketed it regionally through mail order sales. Among Lynch brands were “Green Spring Corn,” “Blue Diamond Corn,” and “Parkwood,” the last sold as a bourbon but likely was a blend.  His flagship brand was “Cherokee Corn.”

When Virginia went “dry” in 1916, with profits from his liquor trade, Lynch purchased a large farm just off U.S. 11 where he produced dairy and beef cattle, opening a market in Bristol.  The photo right of Martin as a proud grandparent may have been taken only shortly before his death. In August 1953, Lynch, now about 75 years old, was driving onto the highway near his farm when he was struck by a speeding automobile.  Rushed to Bristol Memorial Hospital, he was declared dead, the cause a “concussion of the brain.” The other driver was found to be intoxicated.  

A Southerner whose life revolved around the “deep water” of the Gulf of Mexico, Harry Hoyle was a successful liquor merchant, who persisted in selling liquor in the face of prohibitionary forces that forced him from Mississippi to Louisiana.  In New Orleans Hoyle found tolerance and success for his whiskey trade but suffered an untimely fate that ultimately orphaned his children.  

By 1910, Hoyle was recorded in New Orleans business directories operating saloons and liquor stores at 326 Magazine and 174 Rampart Streets and an outlet in Slidell, Louisiana, from which he was sending liquor legally by railway express back to his old customers in Mississippi.  His flagship brand was "Deep Water Route Whiskey." He also bought a major share of the National Brewery of New Orleans and became a director.

Events would soon change everything for Hoyle and his family.  In mid-February 1914, after attending a party where alcohol likely was served, Harry with three friends was taking what the press called an after-midnight “joy ride” on the Chef Menteur Road along a New Orleans bayou.  Hoyle was in the rear “rumble seat” when the car went out of control, hit the incline of the canal and turned over.  Although others were only slightly injured in the crash, Hoyle was killed. 

According to a press account:  “The men who had been extricated managed to draw the body of Harry Hoyle out from under the machine.  As they pulled it out the head fell loosely about the shoulders and they feared the worse….It is the opinion of the medical authorities that he died instantly when the heavy back of the machine pinned his neck to the ground.”   The whiskey man was only 34 years old.  

The newspapers noted Hoyle left six children, all under 14 years old.  Moreover,  his widow was pregnant with twins, born the June after her husband died.  Tragedy followed tragedy.   In mid-January 1919, one of the twins died.  Four days later the baby girl was followed in death by her mother, leaving the Hoyle children orphaned, the youngest only two.  An email from Hoyle’s great-granddaughter indicates that the surviving seven children were taken into the homes of aunts and uncles who raised them.

Note:  These incidents were drawn from more extensive biographies of each of the men that previously have appeared on this blog:  George Wissemann, July 18, 2016;  John Lynch, October 12, 2015; and Harry Hoyle, June 26, 2019.