American Whiskey History

Locations for Walters properties.

While researching the Walters of Baltimore, I found I wanted to know exactly where the family was operating.

William T. Walters lived at 65 Mount Vernon Pl. (Today, that same address is 5 W. Mount Vernon Pl.) The Walters Museum, built by William and his son, Henry “Harry” Walters, was built directly behind his home, with its main entrance on Washington Place. Mount Vernon was a very prominent neighborhood where some of the wealthiest members of Baltimore society lived. It was called Mount Vernon after the monument to George Washington at its center, the oldest monument dedicated to him in the country. The monument is a column with a statue of Washington perched at its top. After returning to Baltimore from his escape to Europe during the Civil war, Walters purchased a property north of the city which would become known as “St. Mary’s”, an Italianate mansion which served as his summer residence. It was located north of the city near the site of Morgan State University today. The 130-acre property extended form Woodbourne Ave. north to Belvedere Ave. There, he raised imported waterfowl, chickens, cattle, and French Percherons, a breed of draft horse he helped to popularize in the United States. Today, some of the land was preserved to make Chinquapin Run Park.

We discussed the fact that William T. Walters began as a commission merchant in Baltimore on Commerce Wharf with Samuel Hazlehurst. Their warehouse had access to the railroad and the harbor. The wharf no longer exists as it once did, but it was essentially an extension of Commerce Street out into the harbor. Today, you’ll find Baltimore’s World Trade Center sitting in its place. The building you see in 1850s ads for W.T. Walters & Co., listed as 68 Exchange Place, was on Lombard street, about a block away from the harbor. “Exchange Place” was the center of maritime commerce in the city, bounded by Gay Street, Lombard Street, and Water Street. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in the fire of 1904 and no longer stands today.

Edwin Walters originally sourced whiskey from Henry Boecker whose distillery was at Hudson Street and 3rd Avenue in Canton. His Orient Distillery, which he purchased in the mid-1860s, was in also Canton (about 8 blocks south) at Clinton Street and 4th Avenue. I’ve included a map below to show what that location looks like today. Many references describe the purchase taking place much later, but they’re likely conflating the date Edwin bought out the wholesale liquor portion of W.T. Walters & Co. (1884) with the year he bought his own distillery (1866). After buying out the company, he changed its name to E.Walters & Co. The distillery at Clinton & 4th was known as the Canton Distillery until Walters began calling it the Orient Distillery after 1870. An interesting side note here is that the renaming coincides with the construction of the Globe Distillery at Clinton Street and 5th Avenue, one block away, by the Flack Brothers. Thomas J. Flack & Sons was a competing firm, but their large distillery did not survive the Whiskey Trust and was converted into a fertilizer plant after the buildings were sold off in 1892. Edwin Walters died in a tragic accident in 1897, and the Orient Distillery was sold to another party.

William and Edwin Walters of Baltimore, MD.

I always thought I’d written about the W.T. Walters and Edwin Walters at length in the past, but it seems I have not. Time to remedy this, I think.

My interest in the Walters of Baltimore began while researching several Somerset County, PA rye whiskey distilleries that were acquired by Edwin Walters during the 1890s, but there’s so much more great history behind the family! None of Edwin’s success would have been possible without the business savvy of William T. Walters, his elder brother of 14 years. If you’ve ever heard of (or visited) the Walters Museum in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, that’s this family! W.T. Walters and his son, Henry, built one of the most extensive art collections in the country during their lifetimes, then built a museum down the street from their family’s home/mansion to make it available to the public. Long before the Walters men earned their fame as liquor men (or art collectors) in Baltimore, however, their young lives had been shaped by their experiences in eastern Pennsylvania. Edwin’s acquisitions of Somerset County distilleries later in his life were not arbitrary! The Walters knew exactly the caliber of rye whiskeys they wanted to purchase for their Baltimore firm, and that knowledge was based on experience.

William Thompson Walters was born in Liverpool, Pennsylvania on May 23, 1819 to Henry and Jane Mitchell (Thompson) Walters. Liverpool sits on the west bank of the Susquehanna River in Perry County, about 15 miles north of the point where the Juniata River meets its mainstem (the Susquehanna). Liverpool was first settled in 1808, but it became a hub of commerce as soon as the Main Line Canal was completed as part of the Pennsylvania Canal System in 1829. Liverpool became an important base for canal boat builders, hotel investors, and all manner of businessmen looking to capitalize on the town’s booming canal trade. William’s father, Henry Walters, owned several canal boats which made daily trips from his warehouse in Harrisburg to both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By the mid-1830s, Henry had become an esteemed businessman and cashier of the Harrisburg Bank. (Liverpool is about 20 miles north of Harrisburg.) When William came of age, he was sent to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to become a civil engineer. After completing school, William returned to Liverpool, but by the time he was 22 years old, his father encouraged him to relocate to Baltimore and establish a commission business there. The decision was an important one because Baltimore had become THE market for commodity tradesmen by the early 19th century. (It should be said that historic accounts describing the Walters men as being from a “podunk town” with few prospects is inaccurate and unfairly downplay the importance of the family’s roots in Pennsylvania.)

On January 1, 1841, William T. Walters partnered with Samuel Hazlehurst to form the commission merchant firm of Hazlehurst & Walters. Hazlehurst was 5 years older than William, and his family was well-established among Baltimore’s merchant class. The men acquired a warehouse on Commerce Street Wharf with access to both the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) and the inner harbor. This location was ideal because it placed them among Baltimore’s most influential traders. (These wharfs were at the innermost point of Baltimore’s “inner harbor”, where the National Aquarium sits today.) Hazlehurst also owned property in Garrison, northwest of the city, with direct access to the B&O Railroad. During the mid-to-late 1840s, the city’s bustling canal and harbor traffic led its wealthy traders to create an early form of Baltimore’s Corn & Flour Exchange on Bowley’s Wharf.

When Hazlehurst & Walters was founded, the city’s commission traders had been making independent transactions from their private offices, but by 1846, the famine in Ireland was creating wild speculation in grain, so the traders began meeting daily on Bowley’s Wharf (near the most prominent firms) to dictate prices and settle the market. This daily meeting became a ritual from which Baltimore’s Corn and Flour Exchange was formed. It was during this time of transition that Walters dissolved his partnership with Hazlehurst. Hazlehurst began investing in iron, but Walters chose to stay the course with grain. Now senior partner, Walters retained his old firm’s business and employees and found a new partner in Charles Harvey, forming Walters & Harvey in 1848. Walters’ firstborn son, Henry, was born the same year. In 1850, Walters struck out on his own, founding W.T. Walters & Co. at 11 Commerce Street. This transition into wholesale liquor would utilize his knowledge of the grain market and his experience as a commission merchant to become one of Baltimore’s most prominent liquor firms.

Edwin (“Ned”) Walters was 16 years old when his older brother formed W.T. Walters & Co. When he came of age, Edwin followed his brother to Baltimore and began work as a commission merchant on Bowley’s Wharf for a man named Samuel Hurlbut. Hurlbut specialized in trading sugar and molasses, so most of their business transactions involved shipments from New Orleans. It appears that Edwin spent most of his early years in New Orleans as a representative of Hurlbut’s firm. By 1858, however, he opted to join his brother and Joshua Penn McCay as junior partner for W.T. Walters & Co. (McCay had been an employee of William’s since 1844.) William’s business, while finding a great deal of success in the liquor industry, was never solely focused upon it. He knew that the distribution/transportation of his goods via railroads and steamships was the key to his financial future. He established steamship lines between Baltimore and Savannah and had been president of the Northern Central Railway, but with so much of his wealth tied to business with the South, the Civil War created a huge conflict of interest for him. When the war began to pose a threat to his interests (and his reputation), William left the country. While away in Europe, he began to collect a great deal of artwork- a collection so vast that it would cement his reputation in the United States as a curator of fine art…rather than a profiteer of his business dealings in the South. The decision to leave the country allowed Walters to simultaneously maintain his reputation while continuing to operate his business just as he had before the war.

More to come.

What was the West Penn Distilling Company and what happened to them?

West Penn Distilling Company was established just after Repeal by David H. Stern. Stern had been a near-beer distributor during Prohibition and managed an apartment hotel in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. He entered the liquor business immediately after Repeal as president of his own company based in New Kensington (18 miles NW of Pittsburgh). The West Penn Distilling Company was licensed to produce rectified liquors and specialized in whiskeys, rum, and gin. Their most popular product was “Winner Whiskey” which started off as a rye but quickly became a blended whiskey by 1935 as the company sought to expand distribution across the state. Unfortunately for D. Stern, that push to expand distribution came with an investigation from the state liquor control board.

In January 1935, there was an inquiry into the Internal Affairs and treasury departments in Pennsylvania’s State Government over the preferential awarding of licenses and liquor contracts from the state stores. Robert S. Gawthrop, who had been a Superior Court Judge, was chairman of the board in 1935, and was interviewed by a House Committee in February 1935. He emphasized his belief that the board should have interventions and be regularly purged of “political inclinations.” He rattled off so many names of politicians, public officials, and well-known people that the audience for the hearing “laughed uproariously.” Their laughter was not unfounded. Gawthrop revealed during his testimony that the secretary-elect of Internal Affairs, Thomas A. Logue, and state treasurer, Charles A. Waters, came into his office to ask that the board give another order for “Winner Whiskey” to the West Penn Distilling Co. so that the company might have more distribution in central Pennsylvania and not just in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Gawthrop suggested that Logue was acting “on behalf of a client.” The pay-to-play activity in Pennsylvania, which had been ongoing before and during Prohibition, was laid bare, but was clearly a running joke within Pennsylvania’s political circles. The While West Penn Distilling Co. advertised quite a lot in 1934 and 1935, “Winner Whiskey” does not appear in print advertising after that.

While one of the foundational purposes for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board was to keep politics separate from the influences of liquor money, it was immediately clear that that would never be the case. The charges against David Stern and his West Penn Distilling Co. were dropped, and Stern continued to do about $800,000 a year in business with the state over the next 5 years.
In 1936, David H. Stern bought the Fry & Mathias Distillery in Manor, Pennsylvania from John T. Butler for $200,000. While only a brief couple of years (1934-35) were spent selling whiskey and gin through the West Penn Distilling Co., David Stern could use his new address in Manor (20 miles south of New Kensington) as a new warehouse location for his new products. Stern’s political connections were helpful in selling these stocks. 18 of his new brands were listed as being produced by one of 2 companies: Fry & Mathias, Inc. and/or Monongahela Rye Liquors, Inc. Stern’s legal issues only grew more intense over the next several years, and by 1940 he was back in court again, this time being threatened with jailtime.

If you want to read more about D.H. Stern and the controversies associated with his ownership of Frye & Mathias, read more here- http://www.dramdevotees.com/another-historic-example-of-pennsylvanias-distilling-past/

Dried yeast…was sensational in 1943?

Fleishmann’s Fast Rising Dried Yeast was, indeed, a sensation in 1943 when their product was introduced to the American retail market, but dried yeast was nothing new. Packaged dried yeast with a long shelf life for the average citizen, though? That WAS new! During World War II, the U.S. government requested a dehydrated yeast that could be used to make bread on the battlefield, and Fleischmann's was happy to oblige. They created a “granulated, dry yeast that was more resilient to temperature and didn't require refrigeration”, but they were FAR from being the first company to market this product. They were, however, “on the US Treasury Department's rolodex” when a company was sought to provide this necessary product for the military. It’s good to know the right people (and to be associated with National Distillers after 1933)!😊

I’ve attached an article from 1822 that describes the process of drying yeast. This is certainly NOT the earliest example of a recipe for drying yeast, but it illustrates how common the practice was. Distillers have always known how to dry yeast. Generally speaking, distillers and yeast makers did not discuss how they dried their yeast strains because their yeast was used on a daily basis. Live, active yeasts were constantly cultured and propagated, so dried yeast was more of a safety measure than anything else. They always had a backup if an issue arose, but their Dona jug kept their mother yeast alive and well and in constant use. The use of dried yeast in distilleries didn’t become normalized until the 1980s. Whether or not the regular use of dried yeasts in modern whiskeys has altered the flavor profiles and quality of modern whiskeys is still a topic of debate.

# Fleischmannsyeast

Master Distillers existed. It is NOT a made up term! (I heard another person make this claim yesterday. It seems to be going around.)

A master distiller, just like a master carpenter or a master welder or any other master tradesman, was a teacher. He taught journeymen or apprentices in his distillery, and was an absolutely essential part of the industry. Distilling was a trade like any other, and excellence within that trade required maintenance through the master-apprentice relationship. Trades were passed on from generation to generation through hands-on instruction. Once a young distiller was trained, he could either go off and start his own distillery or look for work in an established whiskey distillery. And to be clear, rye whiskey distillers had their masters and bourbon distillers had theirs as well- the skill sets employed in making those very different spirits were THAT different.

Today, when people hear that a distiller required years of apprenticeship to find work in a respected house, we might be surprised to hear it, but that was absolutely the case. The idea that anyone can call themselves a master distiller today would be laughable to anyone that worked in the distilling industry before Prohibition. Honing a craft takes time and years of experience and taking on students requires real expertise. In this modern era of whiskey making, many people take a course or two and jump head first into the trade. This has created an atmosphere of adequacy, but not excellence. Try to imagine 200 years of uninterrupted distilling in the United States with thousands of tradesmen slowly developing the industry and perfecting their craft. 5, 6 or 7 generations of uninterrupted whiskey making. It's hard to do, I know, because we have only just begun rebuilding the whiskey industry to include diversity and competition. Competition drives excellence, but once excellence is achieved, it must be maintained...and that's where the masters come in. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to train under someone who could say that their family had been distilling for generations and was responsible for making a beloved whiskey brand? There's a reason that whiskey was named after men- Old Baker or Old Guckenheimer or Old Overholt...you wanted what the master distiller made. It wasn't the brand that made the whiskey back then (even if that is certainly the case today), it was the man behind the whiskey that made the brand.

Who was James J. Dunn?

After Prohibition came to an end, there remained a handful of master distillers able and willing to operate America’s whiskey distilleries. 13+ years was a very long time for an experienced distiller to sit and wait for the industry to come back online! (A distiller in their mid-50s or 60s in 1917 when America’s stills went silent would have been in their 70s or 80s by December 1933!) I’ve written about several of the experienced distillers who lived to see the end of Prohibition, but it’s very difficult to pin down just who was distilling what at which distillery after Repeal (after 1933)! American whiskey history tends to focus on who owned our favorite distilleries, not on who was actually making the whiskey- So, when we talk about the large distilleries responsible for making our favorite legacy brands, we tend to gloss over the men in charge of the still houses. Today, I’d like to focus on James J. Dunn, the man who took on the management of two of Pennsylvania’s most iconic rye whiskey distilleries after Repeal.

Old distilleries with many decades (sometimes over a century!) of distilling tradition were assigned new management by their new owners after 1933. The men that filled these new positions were often placed in charge of distilleries they had no experience operating, so the products whose production they would oversee were understandably altered. Many of these new managers were not hired for their distilling experience, but for their experience managing industrial plants. The priorities of companies like National Distillers and Schenley were focused on efficiency and improved production strategies, so the managers they hired to run their distilleries were often engineers from other lines of work.

It should be said that the industry after Prohibition was less interested in preserving the historic character of a distillery’s whiskeys than it was in producing as much whiskey as it could to fulfill demand. Pennsylvania’s Overholt Distillery at Broad Ford in Fayette County and the Large Distillery in Allegheny County were owned by New York interests associated with National Distillers since 1930, but the complete buyout was not finalized until December 1933. The general manager in charge of both facilities before that buyout was Robert Clifford Berry. The superintendent managing the day-to-day operations under Berry was a man named James J. Dunn. (See image of Dunn filling the first barrel of Large whiskey in November 1933.)

Berry resigned in 1935 due to his failing health and the growing demands to ramp up production placed upon him by the new owners. He had been manager at Broad Ford and Large since February 1927, but his job was passed to William P. Phillips by the plants’ new owners. W.P. Phillips had been with National Distillers for 16 years and was assistant to the vice president in charge of operations for the company when he took the job. Previously, he handled similar work for the U.S. Industrial Corporation and had been superintendent for National Distillers plant at Carthage, Ohio. Phillips also handled rehabilitation of the old Gaines/Hermitage Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky for National Distillers after they purchased that property in 1929, so he was a good candidate for the position. In 1937, after two years handling operations in Western Pennsylvania, he was promoted from manager in PA to regional manager (production staff) of National Distillers Products Corporation, and his job in PA was passed to James J. Dunn.

James Joseph Dunn was not what one might imagine if asked to describe a “master distiller”. Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1892, his father (of the same name) was a police officer, and his mother, Catherine (Casey) Dunn was a housekeeper. During Prohibition, Dunn worked as a construction engineer for a power plant in West Virginia. His role as construction superintendent for the company Sanderson & Porter had him overseeing numerous power development construction projects throughout the Eastern U.S. and Canada. If the name Sanderson & Porter sounds familiar, that’s because the company was co-founded by Seton Porter, president of National Distillers, in 1894! J.J. Dunn’s roles as a construction engineer for Sanderson & Porter were not associated with the distillation of whiskey, but they cultivated a great deal of experience in industrial development. Perhaps more importantly, his years as an employee of Seton Porter earned the trust of his boss, who had become the president of National Distillers. The plants at Broad Ford and Large, Pennsylvania underwent millions of dollars in construction upgrades during the 1930s, and James J. Dunn was present for all of it. He may not have been a master distiller, or at least not a “master distiller” in the way we usually imagine one to be, but Dunn was the man tasked with the job.

There is no doubt that J.J. Dunn employed very capable men that were able to handle the work of distilling rye whiskey! Anyone that has tasted the rye whiskeys manufactured at the Large and Overholt plants during the 1930s and 40s can certainly attest to that! New projects to expand the facility at Broad Ford in 1940 involved construction of a new bottling plant and warehouse which doubled its capacity, costing National Distillers more than a quarter of a million dollars. Dunn brought his daughter, Idabell Catherine Harr, on to work for him as secretary/stenographer, and hired his son-in-law, Clinton Bayard Harr, to oversee yeast making for the plant.

The Broad Ford and Large distilleries employed hundreds of men and women. The management of the two plants was no small task, but J.J. Dunn was certainly up to the job. He remained in Pennsylvania until 1942 when he received a promotion- this time to the position that had previously been held by William P. Phillips. He was appointed resident manager of National Distillers Production Corporation! His new role would move him to Louisville, where he would oversee 5 distillery locations- Sunnybrook & J.B. Wathen Distilleries in Louisville, the Old Grand Dad Distillery in Frankfort, the BlueGrass Distillery (Head & Beam), and the Bardstown Distillery (Clear Spring/Beam/Pebbleford). He also oversaw bottling operations for the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company’s huge new bottling plant. In July 1948, James J. Dunn, a man from St. Louis who spent 17 years in Pennsylvania and 6 (so far) in Louisville, was made a Kentucky Colonel.

James Joseph Dunn died on March 16, 1954 of heart failure. Dunn’s legacy is an important one. His contributions to the distilling industry, in both Pennsylvania making rye whiskey and in Kentucky making bourbon whiskey, as well the contributions he made to the city of Louisville, should not be forgotten. From managing distillery output during the Second World War to flood wall advocacy to management of taxes and zoning for the distillers of Kentucky, James Dunn was a significant figure. The man to fill his role as regional manager for National Distillers after his death in 1954 was J.E. “Chappie” Bland. Bland, a native Kentuckian, had been with National Distillers since the company was formed in 1924. Chappie is a personal favorite character of mine from KY Bourbon history, and you can read more about him in an old post I wrote several years ago-

(https://www.facebook.com/AmericanWhiskeyHistory/posts/pfbid02S5nQ6yqC1M2sEqctSfGTMRFjynx5M44ZXUxAjaVybeBGQWgm65qPcnT3P8FFBdiwl)

The Sazerac Cocktail was originally made with Maryland rye.

The recipe below is from Stanley Clisby Arthur’s “Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix ‘Em,” published in 1937. It explains the history of the Sazerac and how Thomas H. Handy began making them with rye instead of cognac in 1870. His rye of choice? Maryland Club Rye.

Maryland Club Rye was distributed by Cahn, Belt & Co. in Baltimore. The company was founded in 1868 by Bernard Cahn and Eugene N. Belt. It was a rectifying and distributing wholesale business with offices in Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, and New Orleans. It would have been Cahn, Belt & Co.’s New Orleans’ office that sold Maryland Club Rye to T.H. Handy and the Sazerac House. By 1886, the Baltimore-based brand was officially patented, and by 1891, it was almost certainly distilled by Monticello Distillery in Baltimore if it hadn’t already been. Cahn, Belt & Co. were able to purchase the distillery after the death of its founder, Malcolm Crichton. It makes sense that they would have used the whiskey from their own distillery to fill their bottles, but it’s hard to be certain because the company owned stock in several Baltimore distilleries. Maryland Club Rye was renowned for its purity, excellence and elite status among southern rye drinkers.

I must add here that I have NEVER seen any reference or proof to suggest that Maryland Rye Whiskey was any different than Pennsylvanian rye whiskey. The constant repetition of modern whiskey experts that “Maryland rye whiskey was made with rye and corn,” from what I’ve seen, has no basis in fact. Pennsylvania and Maryland’s distillers historically used corn in their rye mashes when it suited them, but it was avoided by distillers that prided themselves in making “pure rye whiskey” and “medicinal rye whiskey.” The industry understood that “pure rye” meant just that. Even after Prohibition, independent distillers in Maryland pushed the notion that their whiskeys were not what the government allowed rye to be, but what Maryland distillers allowed rye to be! And that was all rye or almost all rye mashbills- with small percentages of barley malt- and NO CORN. Corn was associated with bourbon and with rectified/compounded whiskeys, and Maryland distillers did not want that association. Many liquor firms were licensed for rectification, using aged “pure ryes” as a base spirit and diluting them with neutral grain spirits made from corn, but that was not the rye that made Maryland rye whiskey famous. Baltimore, like every other major city, had many independent liquor firms with many grades and prices for the liquors they rectified, bottled, and sold to the public, but the major brands with stellar reputations (like Maryland Club Rye) would not have bottled anything but the best, all rye or almost all rye whiskeys. The 51% rye mashbill was a post-Prohibition invention of the largest companies with little incentive or need to compete with rye whiskey producers anymore.