Tapsters, Temperance & Unions

Running through four centuries of Albany drinking is one thread: the license. Whoever decided who could tap a cask, who could carry it through the streets, and what each barrel owed the government held real power. That was true of Stuyvesant's excise farmer in the 1650s, of the city's Board of Excise in 1859, and of the political machine that, within months of legal beer's return in 1933, partly owned one of the city's breweries. Inference

The story of the breweries themselves is told in the chapters. This page is about everyone else.

Tapsters and beer carriers

In Dutch Beverwijck, the village that grew up around Fort Orange in the 1650s, the beer trade was split by law into separate jobs. Brewers brewed. Tapsters sold by the can or the mug in their houses. And licensed beer carriers moved the casks between them. A man was not supposed to do two of these at once.

The court enforced the split. On 11 May 1655 the brewer Pieter Bronck was "enjoined from tapping strong beer, for the reason that he brews the same," on pain of 25 guilders for a first offense, 50 for a second and "arbitrary correction" for a third. Solid¹ The same day, a man who asked to be made a beer carrier was turned down: the court said "the brewers' helpers thus far perform this work themselves and that for this reason it can not be taken away from them." Solid

By 1658 there was a licensed carrier, and moving beer without him was an offense in itself. That June "Flip, the brewer" was prosecuted because his servant had taken beer "without the help of the beer carrier" from the brewhouse into the cellar of a glazier who tapped on the side. The officer demanded 200 guilders and a two-year suspension; the court told the parties to settle. Solid² One early brewer was known around town simply as "Marten de bierkracker," which the translator Charles Gehring glosses as "beer carrier." Solid³

The tap houses were busy, rowdy places, and the court tried to cap what they could charge. In February 1653 innkeepers were limited to 9 stivers for a can of beer and 8 for a small measure of brandy, with a fine of 100 guilders for a first offense, double for a second and "arbitrary punishment" for a third. Solid⁴

Women behind the tap

Several of Beverwijck's tapsters were women. Maria Goossens was among the tapsters named in a 1655 order, and on 6 October 1656, with Stuyvesant himself presiding, Egbertje Egberts and Dirckje Harmens were each fined 300 guilders for selling beer to Native people. Solid⁵ The New York State Museum's "People of Colonial Albany" project profiles Egbertie Egberts as an inn or tavern keeper of the 1650s. Single source⁶

Up the Mohawk at Schenectady in 1672, Arent van Curler's widow, Antonia Slaghboom, was licensed to trade. It was "thought also that her license would stop the quarrels of the other two tapsters," one of whom was a man of Mohawk descent. Single source⁷ So far, though, no woman has been found named as a brewer in the translated Beverwijck minutes. Women poured; whether any of them brewed for sale is still an open question. Inference

The line from these women runs straight through Albany history. In the 1760s and '70s Martha Vernor kept "Widow Vernor's Tavern" in the first ward. Single source⁸ And in the 1903 city directory, roughly 21 of Albany's saloons were listed under women's names, among them Anastatia Dunn at 120 Broadway, Julia Kelly at 192 Orange and Catherine Wilson at 249 Green. Approximate⁹ Some were probably widows keeping a husband's license alive; one entry reads simply "Kelly Hugh Mrs." Inference

The tavern as town hall

Under the English, who took the colony in 1664, the line between brewing and tapping blurred. When two innkeepers asked the Albany court in 1677 to stop brewers retailing beer "by the small measure," the court said it could not forbid any inhabitant to do so. Solid¹⁰ Brewers and tavernkeepers began to tie their businesses together by marriage instead. In 1692 Agnietje Gansevoort, daughter of the brewer Harmen Harmanse Gansevoort, married the tavernkeeper Thomas Williams. His tap was supplied by the Gansevoort brewery, and by 1699 he was sheriff of Albany County. Single source¹¹

A city inventory of 1756 counted three innholders, three liquor sellers, two tavernkeepers, five "dram" shops and one meadhouse. Single source¹² Those houses did far more than pour. The most famous was Richard Cartwright's. Born in London around 1720, he was "early Albany's most notable innkeeper," and by the 1760s his tavern was called the King's Arms. It offered boarding and stabling, served as a post office, sold land and lottery tickets, and hosted Albany's first Masonic lodge, with Cartwright as master. Single source¹³ On 20 July 1772 the city gave Governor Tryon a public dinner "at Cartwright's Tavern." Solid¹⁴

Then the King's Arms became the cradle of a revolution against the king. The first public meeting of the Albany Committee of Correspondence, the city's revolutionary government, was held there, apparently on 24 January 1775. Solid The date rests on a single listing. Single source¹³ In 1775 and 1776 the Committee also met at Widow Vernor's. Single source⁸ Two taverns, one of them run by a widow, housed Albany's first republican government. Inference

Cartwright himself chose the other side. Munsell says that at the outbreak of the war the tavern's sign, "which bore the device of the king's arms, was forced off by a party, one night, and burnt in State street." Single source¹⁴ Cartwright refused the loyalty oaths and was banished in July 1778; revolutionaries beat him and vandalized his tavern and home, and he left for Canada with his family in four wagons. He died at Kingston, Ontario, in 1794. Single source¹³

Drink, Native people and the color line

The taverns' rules also drew lines around who could drink and who could celebrate. An early English city ordinance fined anyone who would "Give Sell or otherwise Dispose of any Rum brandy Spirits wine beer ale Syder or any other Strong Liquors whatsoever to any Indian" forty shillings, half to the informer. In 1706 the council also banned taking Native people's clothing, arms or ammunition in pawn "for Liquor or any thing Else." Solid¹⁶

A century later the target was Pinkster, the spring festival that in Albany had become closely tied to the city's Black community. Inference On 28 April 1811 the Common Council banned any "tent, booth or stall … for the purpose of vending any spirituous liquors, beer, mead or cider" on the days "commonly called pinkster," along with dancing and parading, under a $10 fine or jail. Solid¹⁶

Groggeries, saloons and beer gardens

The young republic's Albany was soaked. In 1809 one writer claimed the city had 265 taverns and retail spirit shops and that "in Albany one-fifth" of the people lived off the trade. A correspondent of the Gazette rebutted him with an actual count of licenses: 59 taverns, 74 petty groceries and 84 permits, or 202 licensees once double licenses were removed. Single source¹⁶ In 1830 a temperance committee counted 415 "taverns and groceries" for about 25,000 people, along with 500 "habitual drunkards" and 4,000 "tipplers." It was an advocacy count and probably slanted. Single source¹⁷

In August 1851 a committee of the Rechabites, a temperance order, went ward by ward and reported "744 groggeries in this city, where liquor is dealt out by the glass, being one groggery to about every 67 persons, including men, women and children." About 426 were licensed and "some 320" sold without one. The First Ward led with 108. Single source¹⁸ When the city's new Board of Excise first met in May 1859, Dr. B. P. Staats told it that "last year over 600 persons sold liquor in this city, and we have one rumseller for every twenty-five male inhabitants." The board set a license at $30. Solid¹⁹

The Raines Law and the "hotel" saloon

New York's Raines Law of 23 March 1896 barred Sunday drinking except in "hotels" with ten rooms that served food. It produced a crop of fake hotels and the notorious "brick sandwich," food served only to satisfy the law. Solid²⁰ Just outside the city, at Stop 33 on the Albany–Schenectady road, Ward Hennessy ran a "Raines Hotel." He was "a local politician of more than ordinary ability," and a 1943 Times-Union writer claimed that many state laws had been born in Hennessy's back room. Single source²¹ No count of Raines hotels inside the city itself has been found.

Saloons in 1903

The 1903 city directory lists roughly 290 saloons, on top of the retail liquor dealers. Approximate⁹ Broadway had the most, with about 37, followed by South Pearl (22), Green (21), Central Avenue (19) and Madison Avenue (14). Approximate South Pearl, Green and Madison ran through the South End, home to many of the city's Irish and German families. Inference By then the bartenders had their own union, Bartenders' Alliance No. 228, meeting at Red Men's Hall. Solid

Beer gardens and German halls

Lager came to Albany with German immigrants in the 1850s, and with it a different way of drinking: in singing societies, gymnastic halls and picnic groves rather than in stand-up groggeries. Albany's first German singing society, the Liederkranz, formed in 1849. Single source²² On 16 August 1852 the city saw the "First public procession of the Turn-Verein and Sing-Verein." Single source²³ By 1886 the Eintracht singing society had 38 active and 175 passive members, and the Apollo society, founded in 1884, sang German pieces in the Assembly Chamber of the new Capitol. Solid²⁴

The 1892 fire-insurance map shows Lang's Turn Hall on the block between Central and Washington avenues, among malt houses and a cooper's shop. Solid²⁵ The Hinckel brewery on Park Avenue had a "Saloon for Employees" on its own grounds. Solid²⁶ Albany's first German Day was held on 19 September 1904, and the next year's ended with a picnic at Dobler Park, a picnic ground linked to the Dobler brewery whose location has not yet been pinned down. Single source²³

That world did not survive the First World War. According to the history of Albany's German-American club, most German clubs folded under wartime anti-German pressure, and "1918 marked the end of the German influence in Albany." Single source

Machine-era bars

National Prohibition (see the Prohibition chapter) drove Albany's bars underground. William Kennedy's research names speakeasies such as Swifty Mead's, Big Charlie's in the South End, Mullen's, O'Malley's and the Rain-Bo Room of the Kenmore Hotel. Single source²⁷ When legal beer returned on 7 April 1933, the Democratic machine was waiting. By July 1933 Dan and Ed O'Connell partly owned the Hedrick brewery, and their nephew ran its beer distribution. Single source²⁸ In 1933 the state drinking age was 18. Solid²⁹

Counting the taps, 1705–1903

How many places could you buy a drink in Albany? Nobody kept a consistent count, so this chart gathers every count in our research. They don't all measure the same thing: some count licenses, some count every outlet including unlicensed ones, and the 1903 figure counts only saloon listings in a directory. Two are for the whole county, not just the city. Each kind has its own marker. Hover or tap a point for its source and confidence.

Read with care, the counts do tell a story. Relative to population, Albany's drinking places were thickest in the early 1800s, at somewhere near 17 to 19 licensees for every thousand residents. By 1851 there were roughly 8 licensed outlets per thousand, or nearly 15 counting the unlicensed ones. By 1903, saloon listings alone came to about 3 per thousand. Inference Some of that fall is real, and some of it is the changing yardstick. Inference

The population figures used here are federal census counts. Solid³¹ The State Commissioner of Excise's annual reports, which list every liquor-tax certificate by county after 1896, would fill the long gap after 1868. They have not yet been reached.

Who did the work

Enslaved draymen

The earliest direct record linking slavery and Albany beer is a city by-law of 1686:

"That noe Negroe or other Slave doe drive any carte within this Citty under the penaltye of Twenty Shillings to be paid by the owner of such slave for Each offence. Brewers drays or Carriages for Beer only excepted."Albany by-laws, 1686

Solid³² The exception only makes sense if enslaved Africans were already driving the brewers' drays, and the city wanted them to keep doing it. Inference Four years later the city ruled that no beer could "be carried from any Brewer, but by the said Porters appointed by us," and that no strong beer could reach a tapster "with out a ticket from ye said Collector." The old Dutch beer-carrier system had survived the English conquest. Solid³³

The brewing households held enslaved people for another century. Harme Gansevoort's Market Street complex was "served by numerous slaves," including Jan, a Pawnee captive who lived with the family for about ten years before Sir William Johnson ordered him sold in the West Indies. Single source³⁴ The brewer Bastian T. Visscher held two enslaved people in 1790, Solid³⁵ and General Peter Gansevoort, the family's last brewer, had four in 1800. Solid³⁶ James Boyd of the Arch Street brewery also held four in 1800. Solid

In 1793 a disastrous fire began in Leonard Gansevoort's stable. An enslaved man named Pomp was convicted of setting it, along with two enslaved women, Bet and Dean. A large crowd gathered for their execution in January 1794, but the three were reprieved; Pomp was hanged on 11 April 1794, and "his dying confessions were sold at No. 2 Pearl street." Solid¹⁸ Whether this Leonard, a lawyer of the next generation, had any part in the family brewery is unknown. Inference No record yet found names an enslaved worker inside an Albany brewery.

Irish and German hands

By the mid-1800s the brewery workforce was made up largely of immigrants, and the trade split along ethnic lines. Albany's ale houses were run largely by English-, Scots- and Irish-descended owners; the lager breweries that appeared from the late 1850s were German. Inference The divide reached the national level. When the federal beer tax prompted the founding of the U.S. Brewers' Association in 1862, its proceedings were held in German for years, with English translation "out of consideration for the ale and porter brewers, most of whom spoke only English." Solid³⁷ Albany, the country's great ale city, sat on the English-speaking side of that room. Inference

The Irish side of Albany also ran a strong temperance current. The city had a Hibernian Temperance Society by 1832, a Catholic temperance society at St. Mary's from 1840, whose pledge was "for life", and huge crowds for the Irish "apostle of temperance," Father Theobald Mathew, in 1849 and 1851 (see below). Brewing and abstinence grew up in the same Irish neighborhoods. Inference

The work was dangerous. In March 1865 the brewer Charles U. Burt, 45, was killed when a coping stone fell on his head while he supervised repairs on Centre Street. Solid Two months later, on 6 May 1865, "the steam boiler in James Quinn's brewery in North Ferry street, exploded, by which two persons lost their lives." Solid³⁸ Quinn's brewery would become Quinn & Nolan, and then Beverwyck.

How many hands

The county history of 1886 gives the first firm-by-firm headcounts. Solid³⁹

A decade later the state factory inspector counted 50 men and 3 women at Hinckel's in 1897, 11 at Hedrick's and 8 at Kirchner's. Down the street from the breweries, the Kampf shovel-and-bung shop at Jefferson Street had 4 workers that year and 5 in 1899. Solid⁴⁰⁴¹

The unions

Albany's brewery workers organized in the 1880s, and they organized in two camps, ale and lager.

The ale and porter men came first. They "were first organized on September 6, 1886, as Local Assembly 8,546, K. of L.," a local of the Knights of Labor. Solid⁴² The German lager brewers followed: Lager Beer Brewers Union No. 15 was "organized April 3, 1887, at Eintracht Hall, South Pearl street, with the membership of nineteen, which gained to a membership of fifty in just two months." Its first president was Charles Moog, and dues began at 35 cents a month. Solid

"In the spring of 1887, Albany joined the ranks of organized brewery workers."Hermann Schlüter, 1910

The brewery workers' own historian, Hermann Schlüter, says that in Albany "not only the actual brewers, but also the beer-wagon drivers, were organized into one union. However, these two organizations soon split up." On 31 May 1887 Albany's brewery owners signed a contract fixing the working day at 11 hours in summer and 10 in winter, with wages of $12, $14 and $16 a week. Solid³⁷

A year later the brewers' pool in New York City locked out its union men and broke the union downstate. Schlüter still lists Albany among the few places where "advantages had been gained in the form of contracts." Solid The 1888 lockout was argued before the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, created in Albany in 1886. Solid³⁷ Albany had trouble of its own that spring: a city chronicle records a "Strike of Knights of Labor employees of breweries" on 5 May 1888, though no details have yet been found. Single source²³ In a book published that same year, the Dobler brewery boasted that "through his liberality Mr. Dobler has never experienced strikes." Single source⁴³

On 8 June 1888 the lager brewers were one of the five unions that founded the Albany Central Federation of Labor, alongside the printers, cigarmakers, bakers and bricklayers. Solid The ale workers reorganized on 5 January 1897 as Local 129 of the United Brewery Workmen; the next year it claimed 100 members and jurisdiction over "every ale brewery in the City of Albany." The lager local had 73 members, and all five of its officers were German-born. One, William C. Schmitt, lived at 24 Jefferson Street. Solid⁴²

By 1903 the city directory listed a full set of beer-trade locals: Solid⁹

Read as a whole, the roster shows the split was ethnic as well as technical. The ale local's officers had English and Irish names and met at the Labor Temple; the lager and bottling locals had German officers, and the bottlers met at Liederkranz Hall, named for a German singing society. Inference The bottlers' secretary lived at 165 Jefferson Street, a few doors from the Bung Factory. Single source The owners organized too: an Albany Brewers Association was formed in 1902. Single source⁴⁵

The tax man

Excise farmers and a tapsters' revolt

New Netherland taxed beer at the tap, and it did so by farming: the right to collect the excise was auctioned to the highest bidder, who then squeezed the tapsters for what he could. For November 1657 to October 1658, the farmer at Fort Orange, Beverwijck, Rensselaerswyck, Catskill and Esopus could collect 4 guilders per tun of domestic beer, 6 guilders per tun of "oversea or foreign beer," and 16 guilders per hogshead of French or Rhenish wine, paying the Company quarterly in wampum. Solid³⁸ No burgher or tapster could take in strong beer without a permit from the farmer, and brewers were warned not to deliver until they saw one. Solid⁴⁶ Even beer paid as wages was taxed: in 1658 the farmer went after a man who had a half-barrel of beer brought home "without permit." He said "he earned it with his fellow workers." Solid²

Brewers sat on the bench that had to enforce all this, and they didn't like it. In December 1652 two magistrates who were also brewers, Rutger Jacobsz and Volckert Jansz, objected to publishing Stuyvesant's ordinance on the tapsters' excise. Solid⁴

In 1655–56 the quarrel turned into a standoff. Three Fort Orange tapsters refused to have their casks gauged. The Company's commissary, Johan de Deckere, lured one of them, Pieter Adriaensz, nicknamed "Soogemackelyck," to his house and arrested him. The sloop to take him away wasn't ready, so, De Deckere reported, "I made him sleep in my bed and by my side." Solid Left overnight with three soldiers and De Deckere's enslaved African servant, the prisoner "was suffered in their presence to run away," and took refuge in the house of the patroon's director, Jan Baptist van Rensselaer. Solid⁴⁷ The other tapsters armed themselves, and when De Deckere came with a posse they pointed at Van Rensselaer and answered:

"There sits the Lord, he will answer for me."The Fort Orange tapsters, 1656

Solid¹⁴ The court called "the matter about the disobedient tapsters … the most scandalous; some being willing rather to fight to the last drop of blood." Solid⁴⁷ Underneath it was a fight over jurisdiction between the Company and the patroon, carried on through the tap houses: the patroon protected "his" tapsters from the Company's tax. Inference

Licenses under the English

The English kept the excise and added licensing. In 1676 the governor's council ordered that all strong beer brewed for sale in Albany and Rensselaerswyck "shall pay equall to the tappers accyse." Solid¹⁰ In 1684 the court required every brewer in Albany County to hold a license and post a £100 bond not to sell to Native people and a £20 bond to pay the excise. Solid⁴⁸

An early city ordinance warned that "no person shall sell strong Liquor by Retaile without Lycence, upon pain and penalty of forfeiting ye summe of £5." Solid⁴⁹ For October 1705 to October 1706 the list of "Retailers of Strong Liquors of the Citty & County of alby" ran to 38 persons. Solid¹⁶

Sometimes the city simply took its taxes in beer. In August 1695, to pay city charges, the council resolved that the county should buy enough grain "to brew 3 pypes of table Beer," and that two sitting councilmen, the brewers Benoni van Corlaer and Albert Ryckman, should brew it. Munsell indexed the entry "Beer, brewed to pay taxes." Solid⁵⁰

The Board of Excise

The 19th-century city licensed through a Board of Excise, and it made money. Between 1858 and 1864 Albany County took in $137,028.63 in license fees, while paying a special constable $1,820.50 to report violations. Solid In November 1863 the federal collector counted 1,013 liquor dealers in the city and county. Solid By 1868 the county was granting 640 licenses a year, but enforcement had collapsed into a tangle of lawsuits. On 6 January 1869 the supervisors agreed to settle every excise judgment for 25 cents on the dollar and asked the legislature to hand licensing to the police. Solid³⁹

The war tax and the bunghole stamp

The federal government came for beer in the Civil War. "Congress at Washington decreed, July 1, 1862, that in order to help meet the expenses of the war each barrel of beer was to pay a war tax of one dollar." The brewers lobbied it down to 60 cents for March 1863 to April 1864, and the tax prompted the founding of the U.S. Brewers' Association that November. Solid³⁷

The way it was collected matters to this website. Schlüter explains that "a stamp is placed over the bunghole in such a manner that it has to be destroyed when the barrel is opened." Solid The bung, the wooden stopper that sealed every keg, became the point where the government checked that its tax had been paid. Inference The Bung Factory at 186 Jefferson Street, which made bungs for Albany's brewers, stands at the end of that line.

Temperance capital

If Albany was an ale city, it was also, for a generation, the headquarters of the war on drink. On 2 April 1829 "a meeting of citizens friendly to temperance was called to form a state temperance society. It was held at the Capitol, and Reuben H. Walworth chosen president." Solid¹⁷ The New York State Temperance Society held its first anniversary in the Assembly chamber, and on New Year's Day 1830, "in consequence of the temperance movement many houses served coffee to their guests instead of liquors, for the first time." Solid

By 1832 Albany had 14 temperance societies with 4,164 members, in a city of about 26,000. The First Ward society alone had 1,227 members under Erastus Corning; there were also a Hibernian Temperance Society with 123 members, an African Temperance Society with 192, and canal workers', apprentices' and furriers' societies. Solid¹⁵ The organizers noted that of the 336 Albanians over ten who died in the cholera year of 1832, "but two were members of temperance societies." Solid

Edward Delavan

The movement's engine was Edward C. Delavan. He helped found the state society in 1829 and later chaired its publishing committee. Solid⁵¹⁵² He had made his fortune as a wholesale wine merchant in New York City; by 1860 he was worth about $625,000. He paid for more than 36 million anti-liquor tracts, handed out 150,000 copies of colored lithographs of drunkards' stomachs, and in 1846 mailed an anti-liquor leaflet to every household in the state. Single source⁵³

Unlike many temperance men, Delavan attacked beer and wine as well as spirits, and that put him on a collision course with Albany's brewers. On 12 February 1835 the Albany Evening Journal printed his charge that John Taylor's malt house at State and Lark streets used water from a pond full of filth and dead animals. Eight maltsters sued, with damages laid at $300,000 in all; Taylor's own suit claimed $74,000. Solid⁵⁴ Only Taylor's case went to trial. It opened on 21 April 1840, ran six days and heard seventy witnesses, and the verdict was "FOR THE DEFENDANT, WITH COSTS." The other suits were never prosecuted. Solid³⁹ The full story is in the ale chapter.

The British traveler J. S. Buckingham, in Albany in 1838, gave the city its title:

"One of the causes, if not the principal cause, of the general temperance of the people of Albany, is the influence exerted by the operations of the New York State Temperance Society, of which this has for many years past been the head-quarters."J. S. Buckingham, 1838

Solid¹⁷ Buckingham also mocked the "absurd, and selfish war of the rich against ardent spirits, which are drank chiefly by the poor, while indulging the free use of wine, beer and cider." Solid

Pledges and processions

In January 1842 the reformed drunkard John H. W. Hawkins came to lecture. On the day he arrived, his diary says, "Governor William H. Seward, of New York, with many other distinguished gentlemen, signed the total-abstinence pledge." Solid⁵⁵ On 4 July 1842 "the wives and children of the Washingtonian temperance societies formed a procession, with banners and badges, and marched to the National Garden on Broadway." Solid A Sons of Temperance division was founded in 1844 under the name "Delavan Division." Solid³⁹

Father Mathew came in 1849 and again in 1851. At his meeting of 19 September 1851, Mrs. Susannah C. Maguire "signed pledge numbered 6,100,990," by his count of pledges taken worldwide. Solid³⁹ From 1848 to 1852 a "S. Meyers" published The Telegraph and Temperance Journal in Albany. Solid This was very probably Stephen Myers, the city's Underground Railroad leader. Inference

The petition, the law and the acquittal

On 21 January 1853 a delegation of the Women's State Temperance Convention was allowed into the Assembly chamber to present memorials "signed by 28,000 persons, for the abolition of the sale of liquors." Solid¹⁶ That summer the Assembly defeated the temperance bill 56 to 54. Solid In April 1854, according to one city chronicle, "Opponents of temperance reform call out the governor and he is addressed by the editor of the Freie Blatter," the German paper, "following which a serious riot ensues." Single source²³ It came days after Governor Horatio Seymour vetoed that year's prohibition bill, so the crowd was probably cheering the veto. Inference

In 1855 the drys won. On 10 April "the Delavan House was splendidly illuminated, on the occasion of the passage of the temperance bill." Solid³⁹ "An Act to Prevent Intemperance, Pauperism and Crime" took effect on 4 July 1855. Solid Three days later "the first complaint under the new liquor law was made against the proprietor of the City Hotel." Solid⁵⁶ The test case was against William Landon, owner of the leading hotel in the capital, charged with serving two guests French brandy on 6 July. An Albany jury acquitted him on 21 July 1855, and in March 1856 the Court of Appeals struck the whole law down in Wynehamer v. People. Solid⁵⁷ That Landon's hotel was the City Hotel is an inference from the matching dates. Inference

An Albany auxiliary of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized in 1873. Solid³⁹

Wet votes in a dry Capitol

National Prohibition was ratified in Albany's own Capitol, over the votes of Albany's own legislators. On 23 January 1919 the Assembly ratified the Eighteenth Amendment 81 to 66; among the eleven Republicans who broke ranks against their party's caucus were Assemblymen Malone and Welsh of Albany. Solid⁵⁹ On 29 January the Senate followed, 27 to 24, and Senator Henry M. Sage of Albany was one of two Republicans who "bolted the caucus" and voted no. Solid⁶⁰ Sage had said he was "as much opposed to this Federal amendment as any man in this room." Solid⁶¹

Four weeks later the Anti-Saloon League held its state convention in Albany. Its superintendent, William H. Anderson, accused German brewers of being "willing to jeopardize the American nation in order to save beer." Solid⁶² The breweries didn't all go quietly: in January 1921 federal agents sealed the Hedrick plant "for alleged making of beer containing more than one-half of 1 per cent. alcohol." Solid⁶³ The full story of the dry years is in the Prohibition chapter.

Temperance vs. Tap

Two centuries of push and pull, side by side. Temperance and the law on the left, the tap and the trade on the right. Use the buttons to show one side only.

Sources for each entry are cited in the text above. The 1925 raid: ⁶⁴. The 1849 figure: ⁶⁵.

Brewers in power

From the first Dutch bench to the 20th-century machine, Albany's brewers held office. Sometimes they sold beer to the very government they sat in.

Rutger Jacobsz, a Beverwijck brewer, sat as a magistrate in the 1650s; his family's stained-glass window, with mash tubs and paddles in the crest, hung in the 1656 Dutch church. Solid⁶⁶ Albert Janse Ryckman, "perhaps the most prominent Albany brewmaster of the late seventeenth century," was an alderman from 1686 and mayor of Albany in 1702–03, and in 1736 still called himself an "Albany county brewer." Solid⁶⁷ Leendert Gansevoort was alderman for the third ward from 1734 to 1739 and "on a number of occasions … delivered beer for the city government." Single source⁶⁸ His son Johannes, who took over the brewery in 1762 by the State Museum's account, was an assistant alderman and in 1766 signed the Albany Sons of Liberty constitution. Solid⁶⁹

The ale age had its mayor in John Taylor, the era's biggest brewer, who served one term in 1848–49. His 1863 obituary claimed he had been "several times elected," but the official list shows one term. Solid⁷⁰ George I. Amsdell sat as a Ninth Ward alderman around 1862–63. Solid³⁹

The partners of Quinn & Nolan, later the Beverwyck brewery, went further. Terence J. Quinn, who brewed with his father James, served on the Common Council in 1869–72 and in the Assembly in 1873, and went to Congress in March 1877. He died in office in June 1878. Solid⁷¹ His partner, Michael N. Nolan, born in County Carlow, became mayor in 1878, Albany's first Irish and first Catholic mayor, and from 1881 to 1883 sat in Congress at the same time. Solid⁷² His mayoralty ended badly. Dr. John Swinburne contested the 1882 election, alleging bribery and ballot-stuffing, and after more than a year of litigation Nolan resigned on 24 June 1883. Single source⁷³

Then came the machine. By July 1933, TIME reported, the political bosses Dan and Ed O'Connell partly owned the Hedrick brewery, and their nephew John J. "Butch" O'Connell Jr., who had been in charge of its beer distribution, was kidnapped and held for a $250,000 ransom demand. Single source²⁸

The strip below puts the offices side by side. Each bar is a term in office; tap or select one for details.

Cat soup and leather breeches

Albany ale had nicknames, not all of them kind. In an 1841 account of the reformed drunkard John Hawkins: "Albany ale, or 'cat soup,' as it was termed, was a favorite beverage, to which he was particularly partial. He would sometimes begin with this, when at a public house; call for a pint tumbler, and, while reading a newspaper, drink a little at a time, till it was drained." Solid⁷⁴ The cat may come from the pond-water scandal: the 1840 broadside about the trial shows a man drowning cats beside the malt house. Inference

A temperance paper of the same year glossed "O.K." as "Oil of Karrion, or Albany Ale," and a ladies' magazine of 1840 sneered at "the porter-house drunkard who blurts blasphemy over his mug of Albany ale." Single source⁷⁵

The jokes were old. Writing in 1858 about the Gansevoort brewery that had stood at Broadway and Maiden Lane, Joel Munsell recorded:

"It was a pleasantry with the old people of those times, to say that when the brewer wanted to give a special flavor to a choice brewing, he would wash his old leather breeches in it; showing that the slanders against Albany brewers and Albany ale is not a new thing but of considerable antiquity."Joel Munsell, Annals of Albany, 1858

Solid¹⁷ Munsell adds that "many a barrel of good beer, made of wheat," had been brewed on that spot, that the brewery was torn down in 1807, and that as late as 1833, when the dome of Stanwix Hall went up on the site, old Dutch Albanians called it "old Harme Gansevoort's brew kettle turned upside down." Solid

The Melville connection

Herman Melville's mother was a Gansevoort, and the brewers Leendert, Johannes and General Peter Gansevoort were his ancestors; General Peter was his grandfather. Solid His uncles Peter and Herman Gansevoort built Stanwix Hall in 1833 on the old brewery lot at Broadway and Maiden Lane, and the young Melville used it as his Albany base. Single source But the link is family and buildings only. A full-text search of nine of his books, including Redburn, Moby-Dick and Pierre, found no mention of Albany ale or Albany beer. Solid

Still unknown

• Whether any woman brewed for sale in Dutch Beverwijck.
• The names of enslaved people who worked inside Albany's breweries.
• What happened in the May 1888 Albany brewery strike, and whether any later strike took place.
• How many Raines-law hotels and saloons Albany had between 1896 and 1917. The State Excise Commissioner's reports should say.
• When and how the O'Connells bought into Hedrick, and which brother held the shares.
• What the "De Luxe Brewery" raided in 1925 really was.