Maryland Pure Rye

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Maryland Pure Rye

Unread postby EllenJ » Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:21 pm

I received a message the other day from a new member, Mike Maguire, whose grandfather was a distiller of Maryland rye whiskey before Prohibition. It's been awhile since we've updated our information about that area, and it's likely to be a while more before we do. Renewing our visits to the currently operating distilleries that offer tours is our next project, and it's about time -- some of those pages were written ten years ago!

Mike's message was not particularly private, and I felt the questions (and our replies, of course) might be of interest to others here. So I asked him if he minded my copying it to the public discussion areas and answering there so that we can share with the other members. He said that would be fine, so here it is.
Mike Maguire wrote:From: Mike Maguire
To: EllenJ
Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:28 pm
...something coming soon on Maryland Pure Rye. I'd be real interested on seeing whatever you have since my grandfather was a distiller with them. I'm not sure whether it was before or after Prohibition, but he did work in Baltimore before it, then moved to Pekin, IL to run a yeast plant around 1920 until it apparently failed. After Repeal he went back to distilling only to die in Baltimore in 1936. We know no details about the company itself.



Maryland Pure Rye isn't the earliest known brand of Maryland rye whiskey. That honor is currently given to Monumental Rye (1860) and Patapsco Rye (1867), both distilled by Charles H. Ross & Co at the Monumental Distillery. That was the OLD Monumental, located on O'Donnell Street in the area of Baltimore later occupied by the National Brewing Company and now being developed into a trendy mall site. There are a couple of small photos on our webpage about the OTHER, newer Monumental (later called Majestic), but I've attached a couple more here.

Most people who have more than a passing interest in the story of American whiskey are familiar with the great abyss that was National Prohibition. Certainly, that period represents a near-total break in the continuity of the alcohol beverage industry, as well as so many issues peripheral to it. But there is a tendency to forget that it was not the only one. For example, whiskey, with the exception of straight whiskey, vanished in America in the early part of the 20th century, years before Prohibition. Many of the whiskeys that existed at the time Prohibition went into effect in 1920 shared only their name with the brands that existed a decade earler.

In 1906, a long-anticipated event occurred that brought to an end many of Baltimore's most respectable producers of fine rye whiskey. That was passage of the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act which, among other things, required products labeled "Whiskey" to actually contain whiskey. It also set forth an extremely narrow legal definition of just what constituted "whiskey". So narrow, in fact, that many otherwise fine products found themselves in violation of its limits.

According to James Bready, beginning in the 1870s Monumental was also producing Maryland Pure Rye, but Robert Snyder's database doesn't list that as one of the Charles H. Ross brands. It's possible that it was distilled under contract at Monumental for another company. That wasn't uncommon for Maryland rye distillers (nor for those of Pennsylvania or Kentucky, for that matter). The idea of retail whiskey being the product of a distiller, rather than a wholesale liquor dealer is relatively modern. They are, in fact, two completely different kinds of enterprise. One ferments grain mash and produces alcohol, as a value-added material. The other bottles whiskey from a barrel, or contracts to have it bottled, and identifies it with a brand name which he owns. Each is separately licensed and taxed, and even today only the liquor dealer is allowed to sell the whiskey, and then only in bottles. That's one reason why you can't buy a full barrel from the distillery without having it bottled for retail sale. In the American whiskey industry (but not in other beverage alcohol industries) these two enterprises a usually operated by the same business entity. The retail customer makes no distinction between them, calling both "the distiller". It's not completely universal; Julian Van Winkle and Drew Kulsveen are notable exceptions with award-winning brands which are made with whiskey they do not themselves distill.

One reason for the exception is that both are also rectifiers (another separately licensed and taxed business entity). Until the vitriolic rhetoric that accompanied the PF&D hearings, "rectification" wasn't considered equivalent to "adulteration". In the beverage alcohol use of the word, rectification is the necessary and proper act of rendering raw distillate into a pleasant, drinkable finished product. Technically, simply aging whiskey in a wooden barrel is a form of rectification, but the term most commonly refers to more active modifications like mixing it with other whiskey or neutral spirits, adding flavors, colors, and so forth, even possibly re-distilling it. Most beverage alcohol products are made that way, including most whiskey except for single-malt whiskies from Scotland and other countries. Kulsveen and Van Winkle produce only straight whiskey, so they are rectifiers only in that they are creating their product using previously distilled and aged whiskey they've purchased from distillers.

Notice that I used the plural, "distillers". Of course, I couldn't guess where Julian and Drew actually select from, but from a brand owner's point of view, the source(s) of his raw material is no more relevant to his whiskey than would be which particular dairies provided the cream used to make Land'O'Lakes butter. The quality of either finished product results from the skill of the merchant, and one common way to ensure product consistency is to vat together cream (or whiskey, but FOR GAWDSAKE NOT BOTH!!) from a variety of sources and adjusting proportions as needed. The reputation attained by the rye whiskeys of Maryland by the late 1800s is an indication of how highly skilled they generally were.

But this method of making whiskey was among the practices the legislation banned (for whiskey, but interestingly not for dairy products). There were even more impossible limitations, to the point that, in 1909, President William H. Taft, citing the restrictions as "a perversion of the Pure Food Act", intervened to overrule those provisions. However, by that time most of America's favorite whiskeys had been removed from the market for three years or longer.

Unable to continue manufacturing, rectifying, and blending the product with which their customers were familiar, the companies had no choice but to salvage what they could from their products' reputation and sell the brand names to outfits large enough to be able to produce or purchase whiskey which fit the regulations. Not that such whiskey was necessarily better, you understand; In many cases the whiskey a customer now found in his bottle, although legally "pure", was a pale, flavorless substitute for the fine spirit that had once proudly worn that brand. There were (and remain) many suspicions concerning the motives of the Department of Agriculture's chief chemist (and primary PF&D lobbiest) Harvey W. Wiley and his personal connections with the Women's Christian Temperance Crusade, who supported any reduction in the number of alcohol products, as well as with the powerful straight whiskey producers who appreciated the monopoly granted them by law and were generous in their support of the law's sponsors and administrators.

The Monumental Distillery produced Maryland Pure Rye and others, at least some of which would have qualified to be labeled "whiskey" under the 1906 Act. They may have produced others that didn't. And they probably depended on sales made to merchants and rectifiers who had been driven out of business. According to Bready, Monumental was bought out by the Julius Kessler Company of Chicago, a huge outfit, controlling over 45 distilleries nationwide. They closed out most or all of the brands they had been producing and then used the brand Maryland Pure Rye Whiskey for all of their product.

Snyder confirms that there was a Kessler's Maryland Pure Rye. There was also a Monarch's Maryland Pure Rye
made in Owensboro, Kentucky, My Maryland Pure Rye, made by Sherbook in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Royal Crown Maryland Pure Rye, U.S. Patent registered in 1903 by Quirin & Duhaime, but I have no idea who they are. I could find no other references to just Maryland Pure Rye without a qualifier.

As far as I know, the brand did not survive Prohibition. It might have been re-created in the '30s by Schenley, Seagram's, or Frankfort Distillers, all of whom began spewing pre-pro-sounding brands out like crazy right after Repeal, although the word "Pure" would indicate it's a pre-Prohibition brand. Another big player in the early '30s was the American Distilling Company, which was based in Pekin. I don't know offhand whether they owned any Baltimore brands, or if they did business with any, but if your grandfather moved from Pekin to take a distilling job in Baltimore it might have been in connection with that.

Also, ever heard of a bourbon named OLD RIPPY, probably in either Baltimore or Long Island areas?

(see OLD RIPPY in the Bourbon Lore Discussion area)
Attachments
NatDistCo_1.jpg
O'Donnell Street, looking WEST
NatDistCo_1.jpg (511.65 KiB) Viewed 11612 times
NatDistCo_2.jpg
S. Conkling Street, looking NORTH
NatDistCo_2.jpg (466.66 KiB) Viewed 11614 times
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Unread postby Mike Maguire » Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:43 am

Thanks for the information. I looked up a WWI draft card for a son of my distiller uncle and he was employed in 1917 by Standard Distilling and Distributing Co. at 11th and O'Donnell Sts. I've seen this address given for Monumental Distillery as well as O'Donnell and Conkling. Unless they're the same location, the two distilleries would be only blocks apart. Prior to 1919, Highlandtown was outside the city and had numbered Sts. and Aves., After annexation these were given names. Looking at pre-1919 and current maps, Conkling should be the old 3rd St. and it appears that widening of old RR lines has erased 11th St.

So I guess my questions would be:

1. Since Julius Kessler was head of the Whiskey Trust, which included Standard D & D, could he have bought Monumental and then with break-up of the Trust have passed it on to Standard by 1917?

2. Did Kessler own any distilleries or yeast factories in Pekin pre-Prohibition?

3. Was the post-Prohibition American Distilling Co. of Pekin a descendant of a Kessler/ Whiskey Trust company? Is it the same company that makes Witch Hazel now?

Thanks again. My grandfather was the last of a long line of didtillers going back to Westmoreland Co. PA before and during the hiskey Rebellion.
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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Mar 01, 2008 8:15 pm

I don't have specific answers except to say that Pekin was a major distilling center in Illinois and virtually every Illinois distillery was eventually owned by the Trust.
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Unread postby EllenJ » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:23 am

Mike,

Those are pretty much the same questions I would enjoy seeing answers to myself. Thanks for letting us toss this out to the folks on this forum.

One thing about the mythology of American Whiskey that constantly intrigues me is the near-dismissal by historians of its Swiss/German roots. Instead, we seem to find references only to Scots/Irish influences. No matter that so many of the seminal names are such as Oberholtzer, Stauffer, Fretz, Boehm, Dillinger, Myer, Hamburger, Schenley, Faust, Guckenheim, and so forth (no Lipmans, I'm afraid; at least not yet), and that a clear line can be drawn through William Penn, to the German Palatinate (Rhineland) area and the Swiss/Bohemian/Alsacian religious refugees who first settled there. The early emigrees to Westmoreland County (and to Virginia and what would become Bourbon County, Kentucky) were largely Pennsylvania Deutsch (i.e., Swiss Anabaptists, Bretheren, and Reformed Lutheran) as well, but there were some important exceptions. Among those were the Dants and the Ripys in Kentucky and Sam Thompson and John Gibson in western Pennsylvania. As an Irishman, was your grandfather's family associated with either of those?
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Unread postby cowdery » Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:39 pm

Add to those very correct observations the fact that the Scots-Irish were not nearly as numerous as the Germans who immigrated.

Gee, you wouldn't say American history is overly anglo-centric, would you?
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Unread postby gillmang » Tue Mar 04, 2008 8:35 am

I think the fact of later distillers having a name suggesting a particular ethnic origin, even in the early 1800's, is not that relevant since by then the distilling tradition and use of certain grains (or pre-dominant grains in certain regions) was well-established.

For example, Samuel M'Harry, whose name is clearly of Scots or Scots-Irish origin (author of an early distilling text), accepts the conventions of using corn and rye - by 1809 - and does not speculate on the origins of the styles of whiskey he adumbrated - he takes them as a given.

In Quebec, to take a latter day example in the food area, lots of French-speakers eat, and some make, bagels and smoked meat (the latter a kind of corned beef or pastrami), but it is almost forgotten today, certainly by younger generations, that these foods were introduced by Jewish immigrants within the last 100 years. The origin is soon lost and the foods become Canadianised...

That said, I would have though the names Penn and Schenley were not Germanic in origin. One of Maryland's leading distillers in the 1900's was Frank Wight, which strikes me as an English name. Melvale sounds English, the people behind Melrose surely were Anglo-Saxon Americans, and so on. But it doesn't really matter.

But I take the overall point which is that at its origin, American distilling was heavily influenced by people of Palatinate and other Germanic origin -I think there can be no question of that. And John, to my knowledge you were the first to make that interesting and important observation.

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Unread postby cowdery » Wed Mar 05, 2008 3:47 am

Never underestimate the effect of having Germany as an enemy in two great wars on the suppression of German-American history and culture. Not an external suppression so much as a deliberate effort on the part of German-Americans to assimilate as thoroughly as possible.

I'm speaking to a large extent of my own people.
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Unread postby Mike Maguire » Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:05 pm

While my family is mainly Irish and to a lesser extent Scots-Irish (not to be confused with anglo-saxon), the distilling branch were Houghs (pron. Huff). The first came over in 1683 and was a close friend of Wm. Penn and a Quaker, but by the 1740's they had moved first to Western Md. and then by 1779 my branch had moved to Westmoreland Co., Pa. where many generations were farmers and distillers, including the first who was involved in the Whiskey Rebellion While coming from England, the Houghs were only there for about 60 years, originating in Flanders and the present Netherlands.
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Unread postby TNbourbon » Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:23 pm

Mike Maguire wrote:...The first came over in 1683 and was a close friend of Wm. Penn and a Quaker...


Would this be the Richard Hough -- arrived on the Endeavour -- who was eulogized by Penn at his funeral, and died accidentally by drowning (crossing the Delaware, if I recall correctly)? If so, it's small-world time -- he's back there somewhere in my lineage, too.
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Unread postby Mike Maguire » Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:53 pm

Yep. Same family. If you're interested in some source material on the family there's a HOUGH GENEOLOGY from 1932 and an update on line by that author's son. I have both. If interested, let me know and we can communicate directly. You from the stay-behind Bucks Co. side or the Westmoreland branch?
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Unread postby EllenJ » Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:07 pm

cowdery wrote:Never underestimate the effect of having Germany as an enemy in two great wars on the suppression of German-American history and culture. Not an external suppression so much as a deliberate effort on the part of German-Americans to assimilate as thoroughly as possible...

Very well-said, sir. And I would certainly not be the first to offer that the Volstead Act (directed much more toward the brewing industry than at distillers) owed as much to anti-German sentiments as to pro-temperance.

Mike Maguire and TNbourbon wrote:___ While coming from England, the Houghs were only there for about 60 years, originating in Flanders and the present Netherlands.
___ Would this be the Richard Hough... If so, it's small-world time -- he's back there somewhere in my lineage, too.
___ Yep. Same family.

Well, gentlemen, I have to say that I've certainly enjoyed watching your mutual cousin Julianne the past couple years on Dancing With The Stars
:naughty: (never mind that she's only about a year older than my granddaughter)
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