Purity Above All

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

This is a story of a business whose success literally ran dry. In early 1900, downtown Elmira was abuzz. There were over 35,000 people living in the city and 54,000 in the county.

Water Street under water

While a year earlier, the city’s commercial area had flooded, the spring now saw the area recovering and prosperous. Business opportunities were growing. One business looking to expand into the area was Salzman & Siegelman, a wholesale wine and liquor store based out of Brooklyn, New York. Their Brooklyn store had been so successful that they’d been able to add stores in Albany, Amsterdam, Syracuse, and Troy. Now, in the spring of 1900, they were opening a sixth shop at 108 East Water Street in downtown Elmira.

The turn of the 20^th century saw a rise in the trend of drinking at home. It was a change from the past, when liquor and wine were mainly purchased and consumed in bars and saloons, often dark and smoky places. Leading up to the store’s May 5^th opening day, Salzman & Siegelman had been getting the store ready and advertising for weeks aiming to attract modern men and women interested in purchasing alcohol to drink at home. 

The Elmira store would be well stocked with the largest selection of wine and liquor in the area. It would carry the very best products and gladly refund customers if anything was found wanting. Because they’d learned from experience, they hired saleswomen to attract more women customers. Women, they found, were the primary customers when it came to purchasing liquor this way. Finally,  for an open and family-friendly atmosphere, the store’s walls and large shelves were painted white and well lit. Another draw was that for weeks ahead of its May opening, Salzman & Siegelman had been advertising that they would be giving every purchaser a souvenir card for a free quart bottle of Red Cross Port.

The man behind this business was thirty-year-old Morris Salzman. Salzman was born in Austria in 1870, and arrived in New York City at sixteen years old. He lived in the city’s Lower East Side, among other Jewish immigrants. He went to work in the growing liquor business, both making and selling whiskey. He adopted the motto Purity Above All and included it on everything he sold to promote the quality of his product. It must have worked, since his business boomed. By his early twenties, he had accumulated considerable wealth and expertise. He married Rose, another Austrian-American Jew, and the couple had three children. Around this time, he also went into business with Meyer Siegelman, forming the company Salzman & Siegelman.

The Salzman Family

Unfortunately, the new store’s May 5^th opening day in Elmira had a few hiccups. After weeks of whipped-up anticipation, several hundred customers lined the sidewalk hoping to gain admittance and receive their free port. By evening, the crowd had grown so large and impatient, the clerks were forced to limit customers in the shop to only 50 at a time. Four policemen were called in to restore order. By 10 pm, over 1,200 bottles of Red Cross Port had been given out, which still left hundreds more customers empty-handed. The store promised to honor their promise to any patrons who missed out.

Eventually things were resolved, and the store attempted other promotions and attractions. One that caught the attention of the newspaper was a window display of an eternally pouring bottle of Empire rye whiskey. It seemed to defy nature and intrigue passersby. Other promotions Salzman offered were shot glasses, whiskey jars, and bottles, complete with his purity motto.

Less than four years after their Elmira store opened, Salzman & Siegelman’s business partnership fractured. While the reasons are unknown, the two men filed injunctions against each other. Each ended up starting competing liquor stores, but not in Elmira. Here, the store became Salzman & Co. Its last business listing in the Elmira City Directories was 1919, the year before Prohibition started.

In 1920, Morris Salzman joined the Greenpoint National Bank briefly before leaving and starting his own company, Colonial Discount Company out of Brooklyn. It offered loans for automobiles, another growing field. Salzman died in Brooklyn at 61 years of age in 1930. The obituary described him as a philanthropist and banker, with no mention of his whiskey making-- not a surprise since the country was still under prohibition and dry.

Today, you can still find bottles and liquor jugs with the Salzman name and the purity motto on them. It’s interesting to note that unlike many other whiskey makers, Salzman was never cited by state or national authorities for adulterating his liquor or wines.

Frederick Douglass in Elmira

 By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

 

During his lifetime, Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818-February 20, 1895) was arguably the most famous Black man in America, if not the world. He was an ardent abolitionist, civil rights advocate, orator, author, and statesman. Douglass went on a series of speaking tours across the United States and Europe from the 1840s through the 1890s. As it turns out, he also spoke in Elmira. Multiple times.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland. He escaped to freedom in 1838. By the 1840s, he was traveling across the Northeast, speaking on the evils of slavery and the need for abolition. From 1845 to 1847, he toured the British Isles, lecturing and fundraising for the abolitionist cause. Upon returning to the United States, Douglass settled in upstate New York where he began publishing the abolitionist newspaper The North Star in Rochester while continuing to speak around the Northeast. After the Civil War and the end of slavery, Douglass pivoted to speaking about issues including civil rights for Blacks and women. From 1886 to 1887, he toured Europe, visiting the British Isles again as well as France, Italy, Egypt and Greece before returning to the United States.

Douglass first came to Elmira in the 1840s. During a visit in 1840, he inspired the establishment of an AME Zion church which now bears his name. In 1848, he came along with an African-born man named Ward who had been kidnapped into slavery in America. The two of them spoke of their experiences of slavery and the cause of abolition at a small school-room on Carroll Street to a crowd of 50 or so Blacks and a handful of whites. Robert Morris McDowell, then a lad of 14, described the two men’s speeches as “stirring, eloquent and pathetic.” The event seems to have been part of a larger speaking and fundraising tour as they apparently spoke again the following day in Corning. 

Frederick Douglass, ca. 1840s

 

After the Civil War, Douglass had multiple speaking engagements in Elmira. This time, however, he wasn’t drawing tiny crowds in dinky little school-rooms, he was selling out the Elmira Opera House. He spoke here twice in 1872. The first time was on February 23^rd when he spoke at the Opera House in support of the proposed annexation of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic). The newspaper reported that he was staying at the home of Charles Langdon, the son of Douglass’s old friend and abolitionist ally, Jervis Langdon. Douglass was back in Elmira on October 1^st when he spoke at the Republican meeting being held in downtown Elmira as part of the New York State Fair.

Douglass returned to Elmira on July 17, 1873, to participate in a Grand Celebration of the Civil Rights Bill. The celebration was sponsored and planned by the Colored Citizens of Elmira. The day kicked off with a church service, followed by a parade featuring (in order) officers of the Elmira police department, the LaFrance Cornet Band, Taylor Guards of Williamsport (colored), Excelsior Cornet Band of Williamsport (also colored), a company of colored Elmira soldiers with drum corps, a bunch of kids with flags, and carriages with day’s speakers and public officials, including Douglass himself. The parade ended in Hoffman Grove (now Grove Park), where Mr. William H. Lester of Dryden read the 15^th Amendment and Civil Rights bill, and John W. Jones and William Johnson both spoke. After a break for dinner, Douglass gave a speech at the Opera House on the topic of Civil Rights which the newspaper described as “sound, practical discourse, lit up with many brilliant passages of rhetoric and abounding with eloquent expressions such as Mr. Douglass has long been noted for.” The day was capped by a dance party at Holden Hall and a festival at the AME Zion church. 

Frederick Douglass, 1876

 

Douglass’s last speaking engagement in Elmira was for a similar event on August 3, 1880. This Emancipation Day Celebration commemorated the passage of Great Britain’s Slavery Abolition Law in August 1833, as well as America’s own Emancipation Proclamation. Black folks came to Elmira from a hundred miles around to participate in the festivities. The event was kicked off by a parade from Dickinson Street in the heart of Elmira’s Black community to Grove Park. The parade featured the LaFrance Band, the Palmer Guards of Syracuse, Black Civil War veterans, carriages with various notables, young ladies representing each of the states, the Rescue Hook & Ladder Company of Norwich, the colored Horseheads Hose Company, Elmira Colored Y.M.C.A. band, and members of the colored Masonic lodge. At the park, there was a program of music and prayer followed by a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by William H. Lester of Dryden and a speech by Douglass. A feast was served at the AME Zion church in the evening followed by a grand ball at the Armory. The Elmira Daily Advertiser pronounced Douglass’s speech to be an “able and eloquent production, and every way worthy of the great reputation of its distinguished author” in a front-page article the following morning. 

Grove Park, ca. 1900

 Just think, if you had been born in a different era, you might have been able to hear Frederick Douglass, world-famous orator and activist, speak right here in Elmira. Not once. Not twice. Multiple times. Kind of wild when you think about it.