Dayton Beer

Carl Schnell's brewery in Piqua, circa 1900. Source: Piqua Public Library. © 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney The 18th Amendment poised America for Prohibition 100 years ago. But prohibition was old news for Ohio by then. The drive to ban beer and booze swept the state a decade earlier. On Feb. 26, 1908, The Ohio legislature passed the Rose Law , introduced by Ohio Sen. Isaiah Rose (1843-1916.) The Republican from Marietta was a farmer, a Civil War veteran and the great-great-great grandfather of singer Kelly Clarkson . More to the point, he was a champion of the temperance movement, and his namesake bill allowed voters to petition their counties for special elections to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages. In the ensuing months a majority of Ohio counties voted to go “dry.” Dayton Daily News , April 29, 1909, page 3 Tabulations showed rural voters tended to favor going dry while city-dwellers tended to want to stay “wet.” For example, a large urban core in Dayton kept ...

Advertisement in March 22, 1919 Dayton Daily News for sale of Schwind brewery plant. © Copyright 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney No big headlines heralded the news a century ago this week, but an ad in the March 22, 1919 Dayton Daily News signaled the end of an era in Dayton brewing history: The Schwind brewery plant—once known as the Dayton View Brewery—was up for sale.  Prohibition was coming, and Dayton's brewing industry was going.    I learned about the Dayton View Brewery in research for my upcoming book Dayton Beer: A History of Brewing in the Miami Valley . The brewery's story is more than a story about beer, brewing and business. It's a story about a brewer, his legacy and the impact it had on Dayton. What follows isn't an excerpt from my book, but a brief retelling of some of the facts I dug up in my research. Some of the graphics here aren't in my book because of their poor reproduction quality. For half a century, the Dayton View Brew...

© Copyright 2019 Timothy R. Gaffney On October 7, 1861, an advertisement appeared in the Springfield Republic over the name M. W. Vorce. “Springfield Brewery!” its headline trumpeted. What followed was a notice to settle claims against the estate of the brewery’s deceased owner, S. A. Vorce. But the ad made it clear the brewery wasn’t closing: “I am now prepared to pay cash prices for Barley and Rye,” it announced, adding, “I keep constantly on hand, and for sale, a pure article of Ale and Beer, also Barley and Rye Malt and Hops.” In a male-dominated society, anyone spotting that ad—then, or more than a century and a half later, as I did last year at the Clark County Historical Society —might assume M. W. Vorce was the deceased owner’s brother or son. But the title after the name gave it away: “Executrix.” M. W. Vorce’s first name was Martha. She was Silas A. Vorce’s widow, and she was one of several Miami Valley women who became brewery proprietors or the president...