GREEN AND ROASTED COFFEE BUSINESS IN THE UNITED STATES Page 9

Many of the pioneers in the coffee roasting business of this country were men who came from the British Isles and Germany. A notable figure from the latter country was Benedickt Fischer, who knew coffee in Germany before coming to New York in his nineteenth year. He started at 323–329 Greenwich Street, near Duane Street, in 1859. His first roaster was a primitive affair built under the E.J. Hyde patent by the Coffee Roaster & Mill Manufacturing Co. of Philadelphia. It was turned by hand by Fischer and his helper. This was about 1862. In 1864, the business required larger quarters, and was removed to the corner of Duane and Greenwich Streets. A new plant was erected at the corner of Beach and Greenwich Streets in 1894, and the present plant was erected at the corner of Franklin and Greenwich Streets in 1906. Upon the death of Benedickt Fischer in 1903, the business passed under the control of William H. Fischer, son of Benedickt, and Benedickt's son-in-law, Charles E. Diefenthaler, for many years associated with the house. At present, the company is a corporation, with C.E. Diefenthaler, president; T.F. Diefenthaler, vice-president and treasurer; and T.O. Budenbach, secretary.

Bowie Dash, a commanding figure in the New York green coffee trade, founded the Holland Coffee Co., roasters, in 1885. He placed H. Bartow in charge. Mr. Dash himself was never active in the affairs of the company. J. Bowie Dash, son of Bowie Dash, entered the Holland Coffee Co. as a boy. Bowie Dash died in 1894. Mr. Bartow left The Holland Coffee Co. in 1897 and J. Bowie Dash became president. He sold the company in 1917 to S.B. Morrison, who consolidated it with his Esperanza Coffee Co. The business is still conducted as the Holland Coffee Co., with Mr. Morrison as president, at 162 Front Street.

George Fisher was a well known coffee roaster of the sixties. He began in the old Hope Mills, 71 Fulton Street, and, at the age of thirty, entered into partnership with D.C. Ripley, establishing the Hudson Mills. The firm became Sanger, Beers & Fisher in 1868; Mr. Fisher retired in 1882; and died in 1896.

Peter Haulenbeek began work as delivery boy in a grocery store. He entered the coffee business in the sixties in the employ of Wright Gillies, and went into the wholesale coffee-roasting trade under his own name at 170 Duane Street in 1876. His son, John W. Haulenbeek, Sr., came into his father's business in 1887. Peter Haulenbeek died January 15, 1894, and the firm name was changed to John W. Haulenbeek & Co. The business remained in the same building up to 1916, when it was moved to its present location at 393 Greenwich Street. John W. Haulenbeek, Jr., of the third generation, is now active in the business.

A leading figure in the sixties was James Brown, who started as an engineer, rose to a partnership, and retired after the Civil War, a wealthy man. He was a partner with Thomas Reid in the old Globe Mills. He was also associated with B. Fischer in the firm of Fischer, Kirby & Brown, and established the firm of Brown & Scott in Duane Street, where Peter Haulenbeek succeeded to the business. Afterward, he continued in the firms of Brown & Jones and Bisland & Brown, and died in 1898.

Van Loan, Maguire & Gaffney was a formidable combination in the coffee-roasting business in its day. Thomas Van Loan was for thirty years a partner in the firm of W.J. Stitt & Co. (William J. Stitt was in business at 173 Washington Street in the fifties). Joseph Maguire was a practical spice grinder. Hugh Gaffney was with Brown & Scott until the firm retired in 1879, and for ten years thereafter he traveled for B. Fischer & Co. Then he became a member of the firm of Benedict & Gaffney. Ill health caused his temporary retirement; but he returned to the business in 1897 when he organized the firm of Van Loan, Maguire & Gaffney. Joseph Maguire died in 1904.

Thomas Van Loan, New York

Mr. Gaffney died on March 20, 1912, and the name of the business was changed to Van Loan & Co., with Thomas Van Loan as the head of the business, under which name and management it still continues at 64 North Moore Street.

O'Donohue is a well known name in the development of both the green and roasted coffee trade of New York City. John O'Donohue was a leader in the green coffee business in 1830. It was John O'Donohue's Sons in 1873. John B. O'Donohue, son of Peter O'Donohue and grandson of the original John, after leaving John O'Donohue's Sons, formed a partnership with Robert C. Stewart (the present head of R.C. Stewart & Co.) to engage in the green coffee jobbing business as O'Donohue & Stewart. This partnership was dissolved in 1893. For a few years, John O'Donohue was associated with the coffee-roasting firm of Wing Bros. & Hart. About 1898, he formed the O'Donohue Coffee Co. at 284 Front Street. In 1910, this was consolidated with the Potter Coffee Co. and Bennett, Sloan & Co. to form the Potter, Sloan, O'Donohue Co. The firm dissolved in 1915. Ellis M. Potter came to New York from the Potter-Parlin Spice Mills in Cincinnati. Mr. O'Donohue died in 1918.

In the seventies Frederick Akers was proprietor of the oldest and best known trade roasting establishment in New York. The plant was known as the Atlas Mills, and was at 17 Jay Street. Mr. Akers died in 1901. The same year, William J. Morrison and Walter B. Boinest, former employees of Akers, formed a partnership to carry on the same kind of business at 413 Greenwich Street. It is still at that address under the name of Morrison & Boinest Co.

Col. William P. Roome, a Chesterfieldian figure among New York coffee roasters, came into the trade in 1876, when he established the firm of William P. Roome & Co., with T.L. Vickers as partner. In the Civil War that had preceded, young Roome (he was then nineteen) had distinguished himself as a conspicuous hero of the Sixth Army Corps, having entered the service as a second lieutenant in the Sixty-fifth New York Volunteers.

William P. Roome & Co. first engaged in the importation of tea, but they added coffee to the business in 1889. Col. Roome disposed of it in 1903 to assume charge of the tea and coffee department of the Acker, Merrall & Condit Company, a position which he still holds.

Frederick A. Cauchois, another picturesque figure among New York coffee roasters, entered the trade as a clerk in the New York office of Chase & Sanborn in 1875. After further tutelage under Frank Williams in the coffee brokerage business, he bought the old Fulton Mills (Colgate Gilbert & Co., 1848), in Fulton Street, where he did some of the most original advertising for coffee that the trade has seen. His Private Estate coffee in little burlap bags, his donkey train that carried the bags of green coffee through the streets of the metropolis, his system of delivering fresh coffee daily to the grocery trade, and his Japanese paper filter device to insure the proper making of the coffee, made him famous. He brought something of the spirit of the old English coffee house to America, and incorporated it in Keen's Chop House in New York. He died in 1918.

The business of Russell & Co. was founded by Robert S. Russell & Frank Smith at 107 Water Street in 1875. In 1895, S.L. Davis, one of the present owners, formerly with Merrit & Ronaldson, became a partner. In 1900, Frank C. Russell, son of the senior member, was admitted to a partnership; and upon the death of his father in 1904, he and Mr. Davis became owners of the business.

Ross W. Weir, who, in addition to being a successful New York coffee roaster, has also attained prominence as president of the National Coffee Roasters Association and chairman of the Joint Coffee Trade Publicity Committee, handling the million dollar coffee advertising campaign, was born in New York in 1859, the son of J.B. Weir, one of the pioneer forty-niners, who at one time was engaged in the export commission business in San Francisco.

Mr. Weir began his business career as a general utility boy in the jobbing grocery house of S.H. Williamson, 36 Broadway, New York, in 1875. Then he was a clerk for Park & Tilford, office man with Arbuckle Bros, and with Geo. C. Chase & Co., tea importers, for two years, afterward being admitted to a junior partnership. In 1886, the firm of Ross W. Weir & Co. was formed to engage in the roasting of coffee and importing and jobbing of teas at 105 Front Street. In 1887, the business was removed to 58–60 Front Street. When the corporation of Ross W. Weir, Inc. was formed in 1915 to take over the business of E.J. Gillies & Co. Inc., Mr. Weir became president and treasurer of the combined organization.

Col. William P. Roome, New York

Pioneer Wholesale Coffee Roasters

A reference to other pioneers in the wholesale coffee-roasting trade may not be amiss here, even though it involves a repetition of some names that have been given special mention in the case of New York. In the list that follows are included the most prominent firms and the best known names that helped make roasted coffee history in the United States in the nineteenth century, particularly from 1845 to 1900:

New York. The most prominent firms in the business in New York in the sixties were: Thomas Reid & Co., Globe Mills; Geo. A. Merwin & Co.; Levi Rowley, Star Mills; A.B. Thorn; Fischer & Lehmann, later Fischer & Thurber, and Fischer, Kirby & Brown; Knickerbocker & Cooke; A.D. Thurber; Wm. J. Stitt & Co.; Samuel Wilde's Sons.

In the seventies, in addition to most of the above list, there were: Pupke & Reid; Arbuckle Bros.; Edward A. Phelps, Jr.; Bonnett, Schenck & Earle; Fischer & Lansing; J.G. Worth; Jackson & Co.; Charles Conway; Neidlinger & Schmidt; James L. Arcularius; S.M. Beard, Sons & Co.; H.K. Thurber & Co.; Wright Gillies & Bro.; Bennett & Becker; Great American Tea Co.; Brown & Scott.

Between 1876 and 1900 the following well known names appeared in the trade: Frederick Akers; Eppens-Smith Co., afterward Eppens, Smith & Wiemann Co., and later Eppens Smith Co.; B. Fischer & Co.; R.P. McBride; Fitzpatrick & Case, afterward A.C. Fitzpatrick & Co.; Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.; Loudon & Johnson; Edwin Scott; Peter Haulenbeek, afterward Haulenbeek & Mitchell, and Haulenbeek Roasting & Milling Co.; Joseph Stiner & Co.; Austin, Nichols & Co.; Bennett, Sloan & Co.; Gillies Coffee Co.; Benedict & Gaffney, afterward Van Loan, Maguire & Gaffney; Ross W. Weir & Co.; Union Pacific Tea Co.; Hillis Plantation Co.; Edwin J. Gillies & Co.; Jones Bros.; Holland Coffee Co.; Samuel Crooks & Co.; Benedict & Thomas.

PIONEER COFFEE ROASTERS OF THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN UNITED STATES

1—W.F. McLaughlin, Chicago; 2—J.G. Flint, Milwaukee; 3—Frank J. Geiger, Indianapolis; 4—Samuel Mahood, Pittsburgh; 5—Henry A. Stephens, Cleveland; 6—W.H. Harrison, Cincinnati; 7—Albert A. Sprague, Chicago; 8—D.Y. Harrison, Cincinnati; 9—William Grossman, Milwaukee; 10—Edward Canby, Dayton; 11—Thomas J. Boardman, Hartford; 12—Francis Widlar, Cleveland; 13—O.W. Pierce, Sr., Lafayette. Ind.; 14—A.M. Thomson Chicago; 15—Samuel Young, Pittsburgh; 16—Alvin M. Woolson, Toledo; 17—Martin Hayward, Boston; 18—George C. Wright, Boston; 19—William Boardman, Hartford; 20—James S. Sanborn, Boston; 21—James Heekin, Cincinnati; 22—James F. Dwinell, Boston; 23—Caleb Chase, Boston