Alcohol and Drinking History in America: A Chronology

Temperance Movement Calls for Abstinence

1830s.

• Most temperance organizations became convinced that the only way to prevent alcohol abuse was to prevent all consumption of alcohol; that is, to impose prohibition.¹
• Wines were first produced in Missouri.²
• Vineyards were first planted along the Ohio River in what is now West Virginia.³
• The first commercially cultivated vines in Alabama were planted and the state had a flourishing wine industry before Prohibition.⁴

1830. The average person in the U.S. aged 15 or older drank over seven gallons of absolute alcohol each year (resulting from an average of 9 1/2 gallons of spirits, 1/2 gallon of wine, and 27 gallons of beer), a quantity about three times the current rate.⁶

1831. There were state temperance societies in every state except Alabama, Illinois, Maine, and Missouri.⁷ However, every state had local societies.

1832.

• ”In July 1832, Congress passed a law that totally banned alcohol in the Indian country.”⁸
• Temperance societies had been established in all but three states by 1832.⁹

1833.

• California’s first commercial winery was started by Jean-Luis Vignes. He was the first to import European vines and the first to export California wines.¹⁰
• There were about five thousand temperance groups in the country with a combined membership of over 1,250,000 members.¹¹

1834.

• The Brotherhood Winery in New York State began commercial production and would become the oldest winery in continuous operation in the U.S.¹²
• A series of stringent laws were passed by Congress prohibiting the sale of alcohol to Native Americans, although they were virtually impossible to enforce because of the remoteness of much of the country.¹³

1835. The American Temperance Union, established eleven years earlier, had created 8,000 local auxiliaries.¹⁴

1836.

• The American Temperance Union published the Journal of the American Temperance Union for adults and Youth's Temperance Advocate for young people. It published a variety of books, reports, pamphlets and other materials promoting the temperance movement.¹⁵
• Arkansas passed legislation enabling counties and municipalities to establish prohibition, which many chose to do.¹⁶

1838.

• Maine passed its Fifteen Gallon Law designed to reduce the availability of distilled spirits by making that amount the minimum legal purchase quantity.¹⁷
• Tennessee made it a misdemeanor to sell alcoholic beverages in taverns or stores.¹⁸
• Trapper Gorge Yount planted a few Mission vines near his log cabin, about two miles north of present-day Yountville in Napa County, to make wine for his personal use.¹⁹
• A number of temperance newspapers were being published:

The Journal of the American Temperance Union
The Temperance Gazette
Temperance Journal
The Temperance Herald (Providence, RI)
The Temperance Star
The Temperance Recorder (Albany, NY)
The Temperance Reporter
The Temperance Recorder (Philadelphia, PA)
The Standard
TheTemperance Herald (Baltimore, MD)
The Western Temperance Journal
The temperance Herald (Jackson, MI)
The Temperance Advocate
The Temperance Herald (Alton, IL)²⁰

1840s.

• The first commercial wine successfully produced in the U.S. was made of Catawba grapes by Nicholas Longworth in Cincinnati, Ohio.²¹
• The famous Agostin Haraszthy planted a vineyard in Wisconsin before moving to California.²²
• The Sons of Temperance was an organization of men who promoted temperance and mutual support. It spread rapidly throughout the country during the 1840s.²³

1840.

• ²⁴The average per capita consumption of pure alcohol plunged to 3.1 from 7.1 gallons ten years earlier in 1830.²⁵
• About 140 commercial breweries were operating in the U.S., with at least one in each of the 13 original colonies. Their combined output was about 200,000 barrels per year.²⁶
• North Carolina was the largest wine producing state in the country.²⁷

1841. The Martha Washington temperance societies for women were begun and strengthened the Washingtonian temperance movement.²⁸

1842.

• The Sons of Temperance was founded.²⁹
• The Order of Rechabites, a temperance group, was organized.³⁰

1843. The first prohibition law went into effect in the territory of Oregon.³¹

1844. Lager beer was first produced in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Fortman and Company brewery.³²

1845.

• The average per capita consumption of pure alcohol dropped to 1.8 from 3.1 from only five years earlier in 1840.³³
• The Templars of Honor and Temperance was established. This secret fraternal order has always promoted, and continues to promote, complete abstinence from all alcoholic beverages. It is now known in Scandinavia as Tempel Riddare Orden.³⁴
• New York State enacted a law prohibiting the public sale of alcohol.³⁵
• “By 1847, there were over 600 acres (9,240 hectares) of vineyards on the banks of the Mississippi, supplying no fewer than 40 wineries in Nauvoo” [Illinois].³⁶
• Brigham Young ordered vineyards to be planted and a winery to be built in Utah.³⁷
• New York State repealed its law against the public sale of alcohol, earlier passed in 1845.³⁸

1846. Maine enacted prohibition.³⁹

1847. Lager beer became increasingly popular and a lager brewery was established in Chicago.⁴⁰

1848. Oregon’s 1843 prohibition law was repealed.⁴¹

1849.

• Father Matthew arrived from Ireland and began his nation-wide abstinence pledge crusade. He was honored with a banquet at the White House.⁴²
• A brewery in San Francisco became the first in California.⁴³

1850s. Wines were being commercially produced in Tennessee from terraced vineyards.⁴⁴

1850.

• The U.S. concluded a treaty with King Kamehameha III of Hawaii permitting the importation and sale of liquor on his islands.⁴⁵
• The Bernhard Stroh brewery was established in Detroit, Michigan.⁴⁶

1851-1900. “The latter half of the nineteenth century became the golden age of the saloon.”⁴⁷

1851. Maine enacted the first state-wide prohibition against the production and sale of alcohol.⁴⁸
1852.

• The Woman’s New York State Temperance Society was founded by Susan B. Anthony and Mary C. Vaughn, former Daughters of Temperance members, who had been prevented from speaking at the Sons of Temperance convention in Albany in 1852 because of their gender.⁴⁹
• Anheuser-Busch had begun operations by 1852.⁵⁰
• Thirteen states adopted prohibition between 1852 and 1855.⁵¹

1853. Michigan enacted prohibition.⁵²

1854.

• Timothy Shay Arthur’s novel, Ten Nights in A Bar Room, was published and soon became the second most popular novel (after Uncle Tom’s Cabin) of the mid-nineteenth century. In 1861 it was dramatized in five acts and the play, along with the book, promoted the temperance movement.⁵³
• There was such a negative reaction in New York City to the state’s prohibition law that the mayor refused to have it enforced.⁵⁴

1856. Maine repealed it pioneering prohibition law, which was passed in 1851.⁵⁵

1857. California wine pioneer Agoston Haraszthy built the Buena Vista winery. It grew to 6,000 acres and had offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and London and produced award-winning wines.⁵⁶

1858. The Illustrated London News reported that “Sparkling Catawba, of the pure, unadulterated juice of the Catawba grape, transcends the Champagne of France.”⁵⁷

1859. The Rocky Mountain Brewery was the first in Colorado.⁵⁸

1860s. The first winery in the state of Washington was established near Walla Walla.⁵⁹

1860.

• Ohio was the center of wine production in the New World and one-third of all the vines in the U.S. were in Ohio, which had twice the acreage of California.⁶¹
• Patent No. 27,615 was granted to M.L. Byrn of New York, N.Y. for a corkscrew.⁶²
• There were 1,138 legal stills operating in the U.S. producing 88 million gallons of distilled spirits per year.⁶³
• Aging whiskey in charred oak barrels began.⁶⁴

1862.

• To help finance the Civil War, the federal government imposed a license fee of twenty dollars on retail liquor dealers, a tax of a dollar a barrel on beer, and twenty cents a gallon on distilled spirits.⁶⁵
• Birth of William E. Johnson, better known as "Pussyfoot Johnson," who became a leader of the Anti-Saloon League. He developed some of the tactics used in that powerful organization. For example, he wrote to wet leaders, claiming to be a brewer and asked them for advice on how to defeat temperance activists. He then published the incriminating letters he received and enjoyed bragging about this and his many other his other acts of dishonesty. By the time of his death in 1945, Pussyfoot Johnson was a household name in the U.S.⁶⁶

1863.

• In the Confederacy, prohibition was imposed because of the new country’s severe shortage of grains needed for the war effort. The black-market price for whiskey was, in 1863, about $35 per gallon, compared to about 25 cents for the same amount at the end of 1860, just before the war began.
• Phylloxera vastatrix, a grape vine parasite spread from the U.S., where native vines were resistant, to England. From there it spread to Bordeaux two years later and migrated all over Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. In the 1870s it spread across French vineyards at the rate of about 40 miles per year and devastated wine production. The infestation threatened to destroy the entire European wine industry. American rootstock later saved the wine industry throughout the rest of the world.⁶⁷

1864. Anstie's limit (Anstie's rule or Anstie's alcohol limit) refers to the amount of alcohol that Francis E. Anstie, M.D., (1833-1874) believed, on the basis of his research, could be consumed daily with no ill effects. It is 1.5 ounces of pure ethanol, equivalent to two and one-half standard drinks of beer, wine or distilled spirits.⁶⁸

Post-1865. After the American Civil War (1861-1865) beer replaced whiskey as preferred beverage of working men.⁶⁹

1865.

• Brewer Mathew Vassar established Vassar College, the first privately endowed college for women in the country.⁷⁰
• The National Temperance Society and Publishing House was established. It printed over a billion pages of temperance materials within it first six decades.⁷¹

1866. The first brewery in the Territory of Arizona was established in Tucson by Levin and Company.⁷²

1867. The 3,700 breweries in the country produced six million gallons of beer.⁷³

1868. “By 1868, Illinois was producing 225,000 gallons (852,000 liters) [of wine] a year, which was very nearly as much as New York.”⁷⁴

1869.

• The Prohibition Party was formed. It is the oldest “third party” in the US and has nominated a candidate for president of the US in every election since 1872.⁷⁵
• Birth of Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, who became the de facto leader of the Anti-Saloon League and wielded awesome power, as described by one historian: “Wayne B. Wheeler controlled six congresses, dictated to two presidents of the United States, directed legislation in most of the States of the Union, picked the candidates for the more important elective and federal offices, held the balance of power in both Republican and Democratic parties, distributed more patronage than any dozen other men, supervised a federal bureau from outside without official authority, and was recognized by friend and foe alike as the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States “ (Steuart, p. 11).⁷⁶
• A vineyard of 100 acres was planted in Iowa and produced 30,000 gallons a year before disease and Prohibition destroyed it.⁷⁷