Isaac Weil Joined the Old World with the New

Isaac Weil, one of Minnesota’s leading pre-Prohibition whiskey dealers, spent much of a lifetime linking the Europe of his youth with his new homeland in the United States. In the process he occasioned a host of attractive artifacts advertising his alcoholic beverages.

Weil was born in 1847 and educated in what is now the Czech Republic. At the age of 19 in 1866 he emigrated to the United States. His first stop was a brief one in New York City. Moving to Chicago, he witnessed the great fire of 1871 and found a wife, Hannah Bachrach. It was in Chicago that Isaac and Hannah’s first children were born.

Minnesota beckoned as a new frontier. In 1879 the growing Weil family moved to Minneapolis. Soon after Isaac opened a downtown saloon at 210 Hennepin Avenue. His establishment featured a 50-foot back bar of ornate mirrors and elaborately carved wood. Whiskey sold for five cents a shot and 25 cents a half pint. For another nickel Isaac would give you a bar lunch.

Weil has been described as a large but gentle individual, well-liked by his customers and generous with his money. His abundant hair had turned white by the time he reached 26 and he sported a large bushy white mustache. He is shown above on a medallion struck for his 75th birthday.

The saloon proved very popular. The next year Isaac added an outlet for wholesale and retail liquor. In 1887 he christened his business Isaac Weil & Co. At the same time, however, he was constantly revisiting his Old World roots. For many years he went to Europe annually, taking one child along each time.

While there, Weil personally chose all the wines, liquors and liqueurs he would import to Minneapolis. He also visited potteries to choose whiskey nips. He admired the Old World craftsmanship with which these items were designed and produced. Among his destinations was the famous Schafer & Vader factory in Thuringen, Germany. From them, for example, he purchased the whimsical standing figure holding a syringe and “Weil” incised in the base. It is estimated that over his lifetime Isaac gave away 40 different small ceramic mini decanters. Among them were tea kettles and small jugs.

Weil enjoyed presenting these gifts to customers, particularly at the Christmas season. On a regular basis he also gave away tokens worth a nickel or dime that could be redeemed in trade at his bar or restaurant.  Early on, Weil adopted the slogan, seen on his containers, “Everything Drinkable,” signaling the wide range of beverages to be had in his establishment. Eventually, needing larger premises, he moved to 42-44 South Sixth St. in Minneapolis and later opened a second liquor store at 39-41 South Third St.

In 1905 Isaac took three of his five sons into the business, changing the name to Isaac Weil & Sons. Charles Weil became vice president and treasurer. Benjamin was secretary and Hermann served as a clerk until 1911 when he became a branch manager. The sons were still living at home with their folks in 1905 when their mother, Hannah, died.

Among other Old World traditions Isaac respected was his Jewish heritage. He adhered to the Reformed Hebrew tradition, serving many years as the president of Temple Israel in Minneapolis. He also was one of the founders of the Montefiore Reformed Cemetery there. A grandson has said of him: “Isaac owned a saloon and used the profits to support the synagogue and Jewish Community.”

Through the first two decades of the 1900s Weil continued at the helm of his liquor enterprises, working with his boys until Prohibition. Then his sons all went into other occupations. Isaac himself retired and died in 1925, age 78. He is buried in the Montfiore Cemetery next to Hannah and other family members.

With Repeal in 1934 Hermann Weil revived Isaac Weil & Sons Co., acting as president and treasurer. A younger brother, William, became manager. Located at 28 S. Sixth St., the establishment boasted a tunnel to the Radisson Hotel nearby that bellhops could access to buy liquor for guests even in harsh wintertime conditions. Starting anew amidst the Great Depression, the business survived only four years. In 1938 it disappeared from city directories and William went to work as a salesman for Schenley Distillers Corp.

“And so ended another of Minneapolis’ great liquor establishments,” declared Ron Feldhaus, whose “The Bottles, Brewiana and Advertising Jugs of Minnesota," Vol. II (1987), was the source of much of the information provided here. But this sad outcome does not tarnish the warm memories of Isaac Weil, a man who brought many good things, drinkable and otherwise, from Europe to America.

Note:  The Weil ad above with the young girl holding flowers was sent to me in August 2018 by Carol Blood of Isanti, Minnesota, a town about 40 miles north of Minneapolis.  Two of these placards are decor in a large piece of furniture, possibly a desk, that Ms. Blood inherited from her mother-in-law.  We both believe that the piece likely once stood in Isaac Weil's Minneapolis offices.

Sidney Pritz: Cincinnati's Gift to Saloons

Pre-Prohibition whiskey merchandising used a number of strategies to vie for attention in a crowded marketplace. Some concentrated on ads, others on direct consumer contact. Others made saloons and their owners the target. Among the latter Sidney E. Pritz of Cincinnati was one of the most resourceful in the number and variety of customer giveaways. 

Born in 1869, Pritz is shown above in a caricature by Cincinnati Post cartoonist, Claude Shafer. His father, Solomon W. Pritz, an immigrant from Germany, had begun a whiskey business in 1875 with his brother-in-law, Isaac Strauss. Located initially at 58 W. Second St., in 1880 the company moved to 114 W. Second and within two years to 32-34 Main St. 

Early on, Strauss, Pritz & Co. were predominately rectifiers, mixing a range of whiskeys to taste and slapping as many as 26 different labels on the results. In 1883, however, apparently to insure a steady supply of distilled product, the founders became part owners and board members of the Commonwealth Distillery located in Fayette County, Kentucky. 

Sid Pritz was educated in Cincinnati public schools. Upon graduating from high school he immediately entered business with his father and uncle, becoming a junior member of their liquor business in 1894. Evidence is he never married, living much of his life with his sister in a Cincinnati suburb. With Sid’s ascension to the firm’s leadership, the business expanded significantly. After a brief move to 52 Main Street, the firm in 1899 relocated to 909-911 Sycamore, its home for the next 18 years. 

That same year the Commonwealth Distillery, which had joined the Kentucky “Whiskey Trust,” was shut down by that organization and the buildings later razed. With the Trust now providing the spirits, Strauss, Pritz concentrated on merchandising just a few brands. The company flagship was Lewis “66” Whiskey. Lewis “66” bottles that have survived include flask size, often amber with embossing. Sid Pritz put much of his energy and resources into selling this brand to saloonkeepers across the U.S.

 

Among the giveaways he featured were a Victorian glass lamp with “Lewis 66” on the shade, a back-of-the-bar decanter, tip trays and shot glasses. A saloonkeeper could receive a carnival glass plates for the bar with his name embossed. Another company brand, Roanoke Pure Rye, featured a wall clock for the drinking establishment. 

Meanwhile, in 1902 Sidney’s father passed away, preceded in death four years earlier by Isaac Strauss. Other family members filled in executive positions. In 1910, the firm incorporated. Sid, who already had been running the company for a number of years, was made president. He almost immediately bought a Kentucky distillery from the Whiskey Trust, apparently to insure a more secure supply of spirits. He named it the Spring Hill Distillery and supervised its operation until 1918. 

With the coming of Prohibition, the Strauss, Pritz facility became a furniture factory. The company itself was reduced to an office in Cincinnati’s Union Trust Building. Within few months, after 43 years in business, Strauss, Pritz was forced to close that office, bringing an end to a once thriving enterprise. Pritz’s subsequent career is shrouded in time. A contemporary account said that he had demonstrated “excellent executive and administrative ability, based on keen insight into business situations and their possibilities.” That being the case we must assume that, still a young man of 48, Sidney Pritz found other profitable opportunities to pursue outside the vanished (temporarily) liquor trade.

W.H. McBrayer: The Judge of Good Whiskey

William Harrison McBrayer, called Judge McBrayer for much of his life, is credited with being among the handful of Kentucky distillers who raised the quality and image of the state’s whiskey to international renown. One contemporary account says of his Cedar Creek brand: “It was the whiskey that made the crowned heads of Europe turn from Scotch to bourbon.”

McBrayer was born in Anderson County, Kentucky, in 1821, one of 11 children from a pioneer family. His grandfather had been early settler in the Bluegrass State. His father was a farmer and politician, who probably ran a small still on his land. Educated in Anderson County schools, McBrayer early showed a talent for business. At the age of 18 he joined two of his brothers in their general store at Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, and eventually bought them out. He ran the store for the next 30 years while also raising and selling cattle.

McBrayer also was buying land. Sometime in the mid-1840s he purchased a site for a distillery on the land owned by a freed slave named Uncle Dave. Dave’s former owners, having no heirs, had willed him their farm and land. He sold acreage to McBrayer along a picturesque winding stream called Cedar Creek. A label from the whiskey showed a romanticized view of the location.

Initially the operation was small, described as a “primitive little log hut.” McBrayer had other things to occupy his mind. In 1848 he married Henrietta Davies of Anderson County, six years his junior. It is said that when Kentucky troops left for the Mexican War, Henrietta was chosen as “Anderson's Fairest Daughter” to present them a flag that had been made by the young women of the county. McBrayer also had politics in mind. When Kentucky became a state in 1851 he was elected as the first judge of Anderson County, a title he carried with him the rest of his life.

That same year, tragedy struck. Henrietta, only three years his bride, died. She is buried in the McBrayer Cemetery near Lawrenceburg. While the Judge must have been grief stricken, he continued to pursue a political career. In 1856 he ran for and was elected to the Kentucky State Senate serving the next four years. The same year he married again, this time to Henrietta's first cousin whose name was Mary Elizabeth Wallace. They would have one child, a daughter.

During this same period the Judge began to give serious attention to the little distillery he had operated on Cedar Creek. He greatly expanded the facility, constructing a new frame building to hold the still, three ironclad warehouses with metal roofs and a number of outbuildings. The photograph above shows the site.

With this expansion McBrayer concentrated on making a high quality whiskey and marketing it widely. According to legend, Wife Mary urged him to call the brand after the nearby stream. Thus, In 1861 Cedar Brook brand is first recorded as being used in commerce. Its growth over the following years was swift, aided by winning first prize and a gold medal for whiskey at the Philadephia Centennial Exposition of 1876.  The Judge and Mary moved into one of Lawrenceburg’s largest houses, shown below, located on the town’s Main Street. [See note below.]

The growing fame of his whiskey allowed McBrayer to make an agreement with H. M. Levy of the James Levy & Bro. firm in Cincinnati, to have exclusive rights to merchandise Cedar Brook nationwide. With help of the Levy organization both the brand and W.H. McBrayer became synonymous worldwide with the best Kentucky bourbons.

After more than 30 years at the helm of his distillery, McBrayer, at age 67, died. Among the accolades accorded him was this: "Judge McBrayer was endowed with a noble mind, a clear, far-seeing brain and a strong, generous heart. Whether as a Judge on the bench, as a Legislator in the State Senate, as a merchant, a cattle dealer, or as a distiller, he put forth the best there was in him - it was ever his own and desire to treat everyone fairly and do justice to everybody."

With his death, however, came an intra-family struggle. In McBrayer’s will the distillery was passed to his grandchildren. His daughter had married another distiller, Daniel Lawson (D.L.) Moore. She bore him three children, Mary, Wallace and William, before she died, leaving Moore a widower. The ninth clause of the Judge’s will stated that his heirs could run the distillery in his name for three years after his death, "after which time I desire that my name be entirely stricken from the business.”

This unusual request probably stemmed from the fact that the McBrayer had been an elder in the Presbyterian Church, which frowned on drinking, and a personal tee-totaler. His widow Mary also appears to have developed strong objections to alcohol. Moore, as manager of the distillery and co-executor of the Judge’s will with the widow, attempted to nullify the clause. He argued that the McBrayer name was worth at least $200,000 to the Judge's grandchildren (millions today). Nonetheless, Mary took him to court.

When a lower court agreed with her, Moore appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court. The judges there were more sympathetic, apparently well acquainted with McBrayer’s Cedar Brook. While their opinion suggested that the quality of the whiskey had suffered with the Judge’s death, they agreed with Moore that he had never intended to disadvantage his beloved grandchildren. The McBrayer name stuck.

Earlier, in 1900, Moore had sold the business to the Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Company, one of the expressions of the monopolistic Whiskey Trust. He continued to manage the facility and the Trust continued to exploit the reputation of McBrayer Cedar Brook. Thus many of the brand’s trade cards, ads and artifacts, represented here, were issued after the Judge’s death and up until National Prohibition.

Nevertheless, the reputation McBrayer built, not only for Cedar Brook but for the quality of good Kentucky whiskey generally, puts him squarely in the panoply of those early distillers who earned a worldwide market for their products. After his death McBrayer's name was used by other whiskey makers to bespeak quality. Truly, W.H. was the judge of good whiskey.

Note:  Earlier I had identified another house as the McBrayers, but have been corrected by Harold Peach, a researcher into the distilling elites of Lawrenceburg.  He graciously has provided this photo of the former McBrayer home, taken in 2017.  And I thank him for the correction.  Descendants recently have revived the brand and given me a taste of bourbon worthy of the name McBrayer.

Rufus Put the Rose in "Four Roses"

When the definitive history of American distilling is written,  Rufus Mathewson Rose -- whose company gave rise to the familiar “Four Roses” brand whiskey -- will deserve considerable attention. Not the least of his accomplishments were his early use of aggressive advertising and the range of stoneware jugs in which he marketed his products.

Rufus Rose, shown here in maturity, was born in 1836, a Connecticut Yankee with a Puritan pedigree. While studying medicine in New York, he traveled in 1853 to Hawkinsville, Georgia, to help out temporarily in his uncle’s drugstore. He liked the place and the work. In 1858 he moved to Dixie for good and in 1860 opened his own drugstore in Hawkinsville. That same year he married a local girl, Susan Wilcox of Wilcox County.

Sympathetic to the Southern cause in the Civil War, Rose closed his business early in the conflict and despite his medical background enlisted as a foot soldier. In late 1861 he was reassigned by the Confederacy to be a pharmacist and sent to work in Virginia. There his health failed and he was honorably discharged in 1862.

He then relocated to Macon, Ga., where he opened a laboratory to produce medicines for the Southern cause. Rose’s health eventually was restored, the enterprise proved successful, and he was honored by being named a captain in the Georgia reserves by the Governor. In 1864 his first wife, Susan, died. The next year he married again, to Katherine Fleming of Pulaski County, Ga. They eventually had two children, Randolph and Laura.

After the Civil War, Rose relocated to Atlanta where about 1867 he organized a whiskey producing enterprise he called “House of Rose.” His knowledge of the chemistry of distilling and business acumen were rewarded with rapid success. He built a large distillery on Stillhouse Road in nearby Vinings and established a retail store for selling whiskey in the downtown Atlanta.

According to one contemporary account, this transplanted Yankee became “very successful, winning a prominent place among Atlanta’s enterprising citizens.”  By 1870 as “R.M. Rose Co. Distillers,” Rufus was advertising his products heavily in the Atlanta and other Southern newspapers, touting such blended rye and corn liquor products as “Rose’s Atlanta Spirit Rye,” “Rose’s Mountain Dew, “ “Blue Ridge Whiskey,” “New Sweet Mash,” “Old Reserve Stock” and “Special Old Corn.”

Rose loved being a distiller and had little time for the anti-liquor folks who proclaimed whiskey “the demon’s drink.” He advertised his whiskeys as “...the purest, safest drink you could buy” and claimed that “when used in moderation, its effect on the human system is wholesome and beneficial....”

Rose was a prime customer of many Georgia potters of his time. Howell’s Mills, a pottery center close to Vinings, produced a wide variety of articles for the distillery, large jugs for providing whiskey wholesale to taverns and saloons and smaller containers for direct sales to the public. These stoneware jugs described a broad range of appearance, from beehive shapes and “scratch” jugs to shoulder jugs with overglaze labels. Some had the traditional brown top and beige body, others were covered entirely with brown Albany slip or white Bristol glaze. 

Sometime after 1900  Rose moved to fancier jugs with an underglaze transfer that says “Rose Distiller” and the drawing of a single large rose. Variations on this jug are those most frequently depicted in books and magazines but all Rose ceramics currently are collected, particularly on a regional basis.

Despite whiskey distilling being a major Southern industry, states below the Mason-Dixon line were prominent among those experimenting with prohibition laws. When Atlanta briefly went “dry” in 1885 Rose moved his offices from his beloved city for two years until it legalized liquor again. During this period Rose also opened an operation in Jacksonville, Florida.

His confidence in being able to continue operations seems expressed in his building a mansion in 1901 for $9,000 on Peachtree Street, then the neighborhood of Atlanta’s elite. Following the fashion of the time, the architecture of the home is Queen Anne-style but it was placed on a narrow lot that gave it a townhouse look. Nonetheless, the Rose mansion was included in the 1903 “Art Works of Atlanta.” The house still stands today and recently was up for sale.

After only a few years in his fancy new home, Rose must have been devastated when the State Legislature voted all of Georgia dry in 1907. He shut down the distillery in Vinings and the Atlanta retail outlet. Then R.M. Rose Distillers moved lock, stock and barrels to Chattanooga, Tennessee.  A shot glass from that period marks the move.

Rufus, however, was devoted to Atlanta and refused to go. Resigning as president, he turned over the business to son Randolph and devoted his time to his thriving Atlanta real estate interests. Rufus died at his home on Peachtree Street in 1910 at the age of 74.

His funeral, held at his home, was a major event. An Atlanta newspaper reported: “The funeral was one of the largest in point of attendance ever held in Atlanta for a private citizen, the entire first floor of the large resident and the front lawn proving altogether inadequate to accommodate the hosts of friends who gathered to pay the last sad tributes to one who has played an important part in the upbuilding of Atlanta, even though he at all times refused absolutely to permit his name to be used for any public office.” His grave was marked with a sign of his service in the Confederate Army.

A late achievement may also have been Rose’s most lasting. About 1906, according to accounts, he came up with the special blend that he called “Four Roses.” But it was only after Rose Distillery was transplanted to Chattanooga that the name became a synonym for American whiskey throughout the U.S. and eventually the world. By 1914 Four Roses was a national best-selling bourbon.

Almost from the beginning the origin of the Four Roses name has been in dispute. One ad claimed Rufus named the whiskey after his four daughters; but he had only one. Family members believe the four Roses were Rufus himself, son Randolph, brother Origen, and Origen’s son. Another story ties the name to Rose at one time having run four retail establishments. But other records fail to document that number of retail outlets.

Whatever the origins of its most famous brand, the Rose Distillery, relocated in Chattanooga, had little time left. In 1910 Tennessee enacted statewide liquor prohibition. Possibly in frustration, Randolph Rose sold the Four Roses brand name to a whiskey entrepreneur named Paul Jones. Jones moved to Frankfort in still “wet” Kentucky, founded his own distillery, and there built a strong national reputation for the Four Roses name. Eventually the Four Roses brand was purchased by the Seagram Company of Canada which continued to market the bourbon but mainly for export.

Meanwhile, Rufus Rose probably lies happy in the grave knowing that his family name became synonymous with good American whiskey and has been perpetuated around the world.

Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly?

The Phil. G. Kelly Company first appears in Richmond directories in 1905. It had ten years of outstanding success, becoming the leading liquor dealer in the capital city of the Virginia Commonwealth. But just who was Philip Kelly? My research has yield virtually nothing about the man behind the business. Moreover a 2011 article about the company in the Richmond Times-Dispatch fails to provide any personal details. 

The firm initially was located at the corner of 17th and Franklin Streets. A 1909 ad gives its next address as 1413 East Main St. and shows a three story building with the slogan “The House that Treats You Right.” Other ads of that time claim the Kelly enterprise as “importers, distillers and distributors of fine liquors.” It is doubtful that Kelly actually was a distiller. More likely he was a “rectifier,” that is, an operation that bought raw liquor from distillers, mixed and bottled it, slapped on a label, and sold it to the public. 

The sign on the Kelly building claimed “distributors of straight whiskies.” The company also boasted that it handled only “straight goods...the pure food kind.” That too may have been disingenuous. Real distillers were seeking to have the government enforce the Pure Food and Drug Act against rectifiers on the grounds that they made only “artificial” whiskey. Kelly Co. clearly was retaliating by claiming its whiskeys were “straight” and the pure food kind. 

Kelly featured more than a dozen brands of whiskey, of which only one -- its flagship label, Westover Rye -- was registered with a federal trademark (1905). Among other Kelly brands were Huron River, Tidewater, Money’s Worth and Climax Whiskey, Maryland Belle, Bankers Rye, Miss Tempting Rye, Old Tiverton Rye, Kelly’s Special Reserve, Virginia Queen Corn, El Maize Corn, Blue Ridge, and Donald Kenny Malt Whiskey. 

Kelly bottles, jugs and giveaways have been popular with collectors in Virginia and elsewhere. For example, a fairly ordinary looking miniature pinch bottle of Kelly’s Bankers Rye, shown below, sold on eBay in October 2006 for $357. More recently, a Miss Tempting Rye advertising hand mirror, two inches in diameter, with pictures of birthstones on the back brought $103.50. 

Part of the Kelly mystique may be the prominence of its name on its whiskey containers. The firm embossed many of its glass bottles and flasks prominently with its name and often added decoration. Kelly ceramic jugs appear in more than a dozen variations. My particular favorite is a blue and white miniature jug, shown here. 

Early in the 1900’s Phil. G. Kelly bought out a competing whiskey merchandiser, the E.A. Saunder’s Sons Co., that had been active in the Richmond liquor trade since 1885. In buying his rival Kelly added Saunder’s brands to its own. Those included Casey’s Malt Whiskey, Old Bob Burton Rye, Old Fulcher Va. Mt. Rye, Old Bumgardner Va. Mt. Rye, and Possum Hollow Corn. 

Strong in the mail order business, Kelly promised to send its goods in neat, plain packages “with no marks to indicate contents.” Kelly’s Special Reserve, for example, shipped in one, two or three gallon jugs packed inside a wooden case. That jug, his ad claimed, is “the safest and most up-to-date package. It’s a beauty and you will say so when you see it.” Another Kelly slogan was “The Prompt Mail Order House.” 

Despite energetic efforts and business success, temperance forces rapidly were closing on Kelly. In 1913 the U.S. Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act that forbid any mail order sales of liquor into dry states. Most of Virginia voted itself dry in September of 1914, but Richmond rejected the idea. Under a local option provision.  Kelly’s mail order business was severely affected. In 1915, the firm moved to 427-431 N. 18th St. for its final year. 

After Virginia went dry Kelly pulled up his operation and moved it to Baltimore. A corkscrew, shown here, bears his name and indicates a location at Baltimore and Howard Streets in that city. Kelly does not appear to have prospered in Maryland and his firm disappeared with National Prohibition. 

There is an old British music hall song called: “Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly?” Part of the chorus goes: “Has anybody here seen Kelly?K-E-double-L-Y. Has anybody here seen Kelly? Find him if you can!” Despite singular efforts to locate Phil. G, the man behind the business remains elusive. He operated for a just single decade in Richmond but managed over that brief time to become a whiskey kingpin whose legacy is in myriad jugs, bottles, and giveaways. Just who Kelly was as a person, however, remains shrouded in time.