Maybe He Bought It with Beer

Was Breckenridge, Colorado, named for local settler Thomas Breckenridge or for Vice President John C. Breckinridge?

[Robin] Theobald’s contention ... is that the town was indeed named after Thomas Breckenridge, then changed to “Breckinridge” when it was decided that taking the name of the vice president would enhance the possibility of getting a post office, then renamed yet again when the residents decided they didn’t want their town to be named after a member of the Confederate party.

The only hole left by such a hypothesis is, why would the town originally be named after such an insignificant settler? Thomas Breckenridge wasn’t known to be important for any reason more than the next guy.

Theobald’s response was vintage history mystery.

“The guy coulda bought a round for the house, and they decided to name the town after him,” he said. “It doesn’t mean he had to be the leader of the pack to have it named after him. Maybe he saved someone’s life and they wanted to honor him. Who knows?” [Link]

Beer Is In His Blood

Seventeen-year-old Adolphus August Busch V—scion of the Anheuser-Busch family— was arrested Wednesday for drinking one of his family's beverages.

The report said the underage group was drinking Natural Light beer when police arrived.

Busch is a grandson of the late August A. "Gussie" Busch Jr., but his parents do not work for the brewery. [Link]

Brew-haha

An advertisement for Stella Artois included the phrase, "A family dedicated to brewing for six centuries." This claim is true only when read through beer goggles.

Artois is no longer a family-owned brand. But readers were likely to interpret the claim as 'one family of common ancestry had been involved in the brewing of Stella Artois for six centuries', the [Advertising Standards Authority] ruled.

It told InBev to remove the claim.

InBev said the advert's aim had been to emphasise the 'continuity of tradition and care' found in the Artois family of beers. It had not meant to suggest that one family of 'common ancestry' had brewed the beers for six centuries. [Link]

A Bourbon Dynasty

If Fred Noe ever forgets his ancestry, he can just head down to the liquor store and buy a bottle of bourbon. He's the seventh member of his family to have his portrait displayed on bottles of Jim Beam.

Noe, 50, who is assuming the role as Jim Beam’s distiller, became choked with emotion when he saw his portrait next to that of his father’s, longtime master distiller Booker Noe, who died in 2004.

“This is a huge honor,” said Noe, whose family traces its Kentucky whiskey heritage to 1795, when family patriarch Jacob Beam set up a frontier still.

Jacob Beam is atop the family tree portrayed on the label, with Booker and Fred Noe at the bottom. [Link]

Granny's Speakeasy Finally Busted

Slovakian immigrants Stephen and Mary Mrlak opened the Turf Exchange hotel and bar in Binghamton, New York, two years before Prohibition began. A discovery made recently behind the hotel reveals that, after Stephen's death in 1922, Mary continued peddling illicit booze through a secret passageway.

"Granny always told me if we hadn't sold liquor, we'd have lost the place," said Bob Barcay, 45, from Fort Collins, Colo. Barcay is Mary Mrlak's great-grandson.

The hidden rooms below the parking lot contained wooden kegs, bottles and an elaborate pulley system left to decay since Prohibition was lifted and the rooms were sealed. A team from the Public Archaeology Facility at Binghamton University began an excavation Thursday of the hidden chamber.

"I've been sitting here over the years wondering if anybody would find it," said Norah Barcay, 86, of Colorado Springs, Colo., who is the granddaughter of Mary Mrlak. [Link]

The Truth Is Sometimes Ugly

A writer for Iceland Review Online found that she descends from a Viking named Bjálfi—which means "idiot" in modern Icelandic—through his colorful grandson Egill Skallagrímsson.

Most of the Vikings of the sagas were heroes - beautiful, generous, well-built men, who always did the right thing but got caught up in the web of fate and died in a tragic way.

My ancestor, Egill, was not like this. In Egils Saga, Egill is described as remarkably ugly and dangerously violent. At the age of seven he killed his playmate in a hockey game. Unlike most other Vikings in the sagas, Egill had trouble finding a girl to marry because of his looks. On top of it all, Egill had a big problem with alcohol. (Ironically, the biggest brewery in Iceland is named after him). [Link]

Christmas Cheer and the Barons of Beer

Collect a whole set of Brad and Lynn Craig's Christmas cards and you'll have a history of Wisconsin beer-making.

For more than a decade, the Muskego couple have been mailing Christmas cards to their friends, bearing a photo of themselves next to the headstone of some great early Wisconsin beer baron or another.

Last year's card -- the 12th in the series -- captured the Craigs at the Madison gravesite of Peter Fauerbach (1831-1886), patriarch of the near-east-side brewery that bore his name until it went out of business in 1966. [Link]

We're Born to Booze

Steven Johnson's new book The Ghost Map takes as its subject an 1854 cholera epidemic in London. Turns out, the key to surviving such an outbreak may have been popping into the pub for a pint or two. Or thirty.

Ghost Map ... contains surprising historical nuggets: Did you know, for instance, that because citizens who drank alcohol rather than water were less likely to fall ill, "most of the world's population today is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their tolerance for alcohol"? [Link]

As of 2004, the Czechs were the most tolerant people on earth.

Still and All, a Nice Tombstone

Virginia Hooks decided to honor her late husband by memorializing his part-time job.

So she put a picture of a whiskey still and a pair of moonshiners on Billy Joe Hooks' grave marker near Golden Pond, the tiny Trigg County community dubbed "Moonshine Capital of the World."

One of the moonshiners is Hooks, who died in 2004. He was 72.

"He made a little moonshine, but not enough to amount to anything," his widow said. "But he loved the history of it." [Link]

Paul Revere Drank Here

The Freedom Trail in Boston hits all the historic hotspots, but attendance on the walking tours tends to drop off in the winter months. Business is booming, though, since organizers introduced the Historic Pub Crawl.

Visitors are led by a guide in 18th-century costume, who informs them of the importance of taverns in fomenting the American Revolution. At each stop, they get 3-ounce beers and hot food to keep their historical curiosity piqued.

Dominic Rebelo, 28, went on the crawl with his in-laws on a cold, rainy night last month.

"I'm actually a history buff, and who doesn't like libations?" asked Rebelo, a paralegal in Boston. "I figured the combination of the two was a win-win." [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

If You've Got the Time, We've Got the Ahnentafel

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

In champagne of families, some are on beer budget

Posted: Aug. 20, 2005

Ashley Clausen, 15, stood on the front steps of the mansion that her great-great-great grandfather Frederick J. Miller built and told me she's proud of her heritage but hesitates to tell people she is a sixth-generation descendant of the beer baron.

"They say, 'Are you like rich?' And I'm like no," said Ashley, of the Cleveland area.

And, sorry, but she can't get you any free beer, either.

She is one of more than 100 descendants of Miller who assembled in Milwaukee last week for a family reunion timed to coincide with the Miller Brewing Co.'s 150th anniversary celebration.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]