Alonzo Monroe with one of his original “A. Monroe” soda bottles, left, and his son Joseph’s bottle for “Humboldt Artesian Mineral Water” right. Photos via the Humboldt Historian.
My grandfather liked to tell stories. As a child, I visited Humboldt County with my parents, and
a full litany of family stories would
parade through the allotted time.
These stories generated an interest in
history, genealogy and “old things”
that has lasted my whole life.
With mostly the same few stories
told, the people in them became
both mythically larger than life and
insubstantial as ghosts. But an old
glass bottle, thick and aqua-colored,
with embossed letters spelling “Monroe,” was tangible and real. I became
curious about the story behind these
bottles.
It begins with my great-great-grandfather, Alonzo W. Monroe, or
A. Monroe as he was known in print.
An entrepreneur, he made money to
make more money. His enterprises
were many and varied. And most
came to a hard-luck end.
One enterprise that seemed successful was the Monroe House, a
three-story building on the southeast
corner of 2nd and E streets in Eureka, where Monroe operated a hotel, dining facility, and liquor shop,
and also rented out spaces to other
shopkeepers. Successful, that is, until January 3, 1876, when it burned
to the ground in a spectacular and
uninsured manner. His loss was estimated to be $50,000.
Undefeated, Monroe set sail to San
Francisco to raise money for a new
building. He came back with enough
money to begin rebuilding, this time
in brick. The conversations he had
and the men with whom he talked in
San Francisco are not recorded, but
one of them must have prompted
him to venture into the bottling of
soda waters. As a liquor dealer at the
beginning of the temperance movement, Monroe may well have considered that a venture which would
move him into the temperance market would be a wise investment.
Just seven weeks after the Monroe House fire, the Daily Humboldt
Times carried this prominent advertisement:
HUMBOLDT SODA WORKS!
A. Monroe & Co., Proprietors
Having secured at a great cost, the
necessary machinery, and secured
the sole right for this county of the
new patent soda bottle, we are now
prepared to manufacture first-class
SodaSarsparilla [sic]Champagne CiderBottle Ale & Porter, old stockSyrupsSarsparilla [sic]Lemon and Gum
Which will be sold by the Gallon
and warranted to be up to the Standard Weight, All orders for any of
the above articles can be left at the
wholesale liquor store of A. Monroe.
Patrons in the country supplied
immediately on notice.
A. Monroe & Co.
###
The new brick Monroe Building
opened in May 1876. During
the previous four months, Monroe
had been doing business at a temporary location two blocks away. In
the new building, Monroe located
his liquor store in one of the storefronts opening on E street, between
Humboldt County Bank and Opera
Alley. Along with the new sodas, he
supplied wines, liquors, and whiskies from Kentucky and Virginia,
and other beverages from E. Martin
& Co. of San Francisco.
Monroe had installed his new soda
bottling machinery at the Humboldt
Brewery, Messrs. Marhoffer and
Wenger, proprietors. In an 1876 article about the Humboldt Brewery, the
Daily Humboldt Standard found the
process of bottling the soda waters to
be worthy of a sideline:
The process of bottling the soda
water and sarsparilla [sic] is a
very interesting one, it being
done with Matthews’ Patent
Bottler, and the style of stopper
used is a decided improvement
on the old system of cork and
wire or string. The machine
used for washing the bottles is
an invention of recent date and
is a great saver of labor.
A specialty of the company was the
Monroe Champagne Cider. The recipe was secret — obtained like a franchise from someone back East. It was
said that the franchise was rare and
expensive, and once granted must
be kept secret. How Monroe became
the only purveyor of Champagne Cider on the West Coast under those
requirements remains a mystery. The
bubbly cider became the fashionable
drink for weddings, christenings and
other gala events among those in the
emerging temperance movement.
Just two years after launching the
bottling works, A. Monroe, age 58, began to have small strokes
that progressively robbed him of his
mental and physical abilities. Two of
his sons were enlisted to help with
the business. The oldest son, Joseph
Porter Monroe, and the third-born
son, young John Welton Monroe,
worked in the store as well as in the
bottling works. The business became
A. Monroe and Son under the management of Joseph P. in June 1878. At
about this time, the bottle works were
moved from the Humboldt Brewery
to Washington and A Streets. The
old Sanborn maps show a nice residence at this location, so it may have
been Joseph’s home, and the bottling
works were added to his property, or
vice versa.
A. Monroe died on March 20,
1882 at age 62. At this time,
there was a temporary cessation of
the soda bottling business.
Alonzo Monroe had not formally
filed a will, but a holographic will
was discovered and admitted to
probate April 22, 1882. The inventory taken included an undivided
one-half interest in the Soda Works,
value estimated to be $400.00. His
widow Anna was named executrix
and directed by the deceased to “collect the income of my said property;
and to sell such of my property as
may be unproductive and place the
proceeds at interest or otherwise invest them in productive property;
and to invest and reinvest my said
property and the proceeds thereof or
any portion thereof as circumstances may require.” She was to use the
income produced to educate the six
remaining minor children, John W., included. Joseph P. was said to have
previously received his share of the
estate — probably the other one-half
interest in the soda works.
This Monroe Soda Water box is typical of early-day soda carriers, in which the bottles were stored upside down.
###
On November 1, 1884, Joseph P.
Monroe bought the undivided
one-half interest in Eureka Soda
Works from the estate for $1,000.00,
a nice increase in value. John W.,
who had been working for his father
in the actual manufacturing and bottling part of the business, continued
to work for his brother at the bottling
plant located at A and Washington
Streets in Eureka.
That location, just up the hill from
Flannigan and Brossman’s Bayside
Lumber Company mill, allowed the
addition of another product to the
inventory. The steam-powered mill,
needing water for its operation, had
drilled a well to a depth of 175 feet
in order to avoid salt water from the
bay. The artesian well they got was
more than adequate for their needs,
although the mineral content would
periodically clog the boilers.
At this time, people ingested mineral water as a cure for whatever
ailed them, a practice encouraged by
doctors. Joseph P. acquired the franchise to sell water from the mill’s well
and sold it under the name Humboldt Artesian Mineral Water. When a
the mill was running, its machinery
would pump the water uphill to the
bottling plant, but when the mill was
not running, any Monroe sons or
nephews who could be found were
conscripted to operate a pump at the
bottling plant.
For unknown reasons the brothers
went their separate ways. In 1887,
at the age of 24, John W. moved to Springville and established
a new business, the Eel River Valley
Soda Works on 12th Street. When
Springville became Fortuna, he took
the opportunity to change the name
to Monroe Bottling Works, Fortuna,
CA. John W. was known to have
had a good memory, and must have
worked at manufacturing the Champagne Cider for his father, for John
W. eventually became the exclusive
bottler of the popular Champagne
Cider. Neither Joseph nor any of the
other Monroes had the secret recipe,
leading one to wonder if John chose
not to share it, and if this had caused
a rift between the brothers.
###
Several things came together for
John W. when he moved to Fortuna. In February 1889, he married
Augusta Schumacher of Garberville,
and with the marriage came a connection to south-of-the-bay Humboldters and access to the thriving
apple orchards there. This led his
business into more apple-based
products such as vinegar, apple butter and jellies along with the Champagne Cider, fruit-flavored sodas,
nd sarsaparillas. The business
boomed. A plant that had originally
cost $3000 to construct and equip
had to be enlarged and expanded.
The Eel River Advance of May 30,
1896 reported that Bert Elliott had
been hired as a road representative
and was increasing sales through
Sonoma County and San Francisco.
John Butler of San Francisco had
made a specialty of advertising the products and was
handling about fifty dozen
cases a month. The Paciftc
Vinegar and Pickle works
of San Francisco used the
sweet and boiled cider in
their products. Ihe sweet
cider was shipped in bulk
as soon as it was made, so
as to be received before fermentation began.
These products proved
so popular in Humboldt
and elsewhere along the
west coast from Southern California
up into Oregon that John W. brought
his brother Charles Albee Monroe
into the business. Charles A. had
married Anna Doe of Ferndale in
August 1889 and moved there. To
keep up with demand, an auxiliary
to John’s plant was built in Arlynda,
and Charles was put in charge of it.
Business continued to boom. The
1897 asked farmers not to sell their
apple crop until talking to J.W. Monroe. He wanted one hundred tons of
apples for the cider business.
“This success brought in another
brother, Horace Perry Monroe, as
an assistant to Charles. Horace’s son
Perry grew up among the bottling
plants. Although he was too young
during the time spent there to remember much about the Arlynda plant, he was old enough to remember how his uncle John conducted
the Fortuna bottling works.
###
John W. may have inherited his
father’s talent for seeing an opportunity, but he also inherited the
impatience for the usual business
details — like bookkeeping. Perry
recalled how John carried the business around in his head, transacting
business on the basis of friendships
and recording scant details in a little black notebook stuck in his hip
pocket, with a stubby pencil from
his vest. Mornings he would amble
down the street in Fortuna and when
he would see one of the storekeepers
who carried his products, he would
have a conversation, such as:
“Sam, how are you doing? Let’s
see now—you must be about out of
that batch of soda I brought you last
week. I’d say you could use about 14
more.”
Sam would say, “OK.”
And John W. would pull out his
notebook and write, “Sam 14.”
That would be the extent of his business records. No one else looking
over the “records” would know what
Sam should get or if he should get 14
bottles or 14 cases.
When collection time came, John
W. would see Sam and say, “Sam, you
owe me ______.” Sam would take his
word for it and pay up.
Perry recalled that the cider had a
very smooth taste, but with a kick.
The cider vinegar was full of pulp,
unlike our grocery store vinegars,
and no housewife wanted to cook
without it.
John W. kept manufacturing records like he did his orders — the formulas for his sodas and the Champagne Cider were in his head. He
died suddenly on November 6, 1902
at the age of forty, leaving a wife and
six children to mourn him. Along
with loss of a brother, the Monroe
boys mourned the loss of the lucrative formula for Champagne Cider.
By May 1903, Peter Delaney, proprietor of City Soda Works in Eureka
and a primary competitor to Joseph,
bought a part interest in the Fortuna
business. Delaney stayed in Eureka
to operate City Soda Works, and left
the day-to-day workings of the Fortuna plant to Horace P. One has to
wonder why Joseph did not buy this
share of his brother’s business. The
company John built was no longer
identified with the Monroe brand.
Delaney changed the name to the
Eel River Valley Bottling Works. The
Arlynda plant was dismantled and
moved to add to the Fortuna operation. But by 1907, Horace P. had given up the botthng business in favor
of real estate and the law.
The Ferndale Mechanical Shop was purchased in 1904 by Monroe Cider Vinegar Co. It was originally built in 1894 by Oluf Andreasen, pictured above at far right, with his two children.
Charles A. missed the work, or
maybe the dependable income of the
Arlynda cider works. In 1904, he began again under the name of Monroe
Cider and Vinegar Company, Ferndale. He did not have the formula
for the Champagne Cider, but he
could still supply the sweet and hard
ciders, vinegar and apple butter. The
company purchased the Mechanical
Building on North Main Street and
installed bottling equipment.
Another brother, Alonzo Judson
Monroe, a lawyer in Eureka, drew up
the incorporation papers for the new
plant. They needed capital stock of
$25,000. This was sold in shares of
$10 each. The first offering of stock
had raised $8,500 through the sales
of fifty shares each to seventeen individuals: James Giacomini, H.C.
Blum, G.M. Brice, R.D. Boynton,
A.H. Kausen, lames Mullady, loseph
Russ, D.A. Francis, Maurice Nielson,
CA. Monroe, L.P. Branstetter, lohn
Mullady, Henry McDonough, Ira
King, Frank Peters, Theodore Rasmussen, and Ben Marolf. The stated
purpose of the corporation was written to cover aimost any viable business idea that might occur to the
Monroe brothers. Charles A. was
both stockholder and manager.
###
All this time, in Eureka, Joseph
P. continued his successful run
with sodas and mineral water. His
plant moved to the 200 block of D
Street. With a shrewd bit of marketing, his Humboldt Artesian Mineral
Water became famous.
It happened that he sent several
cases of said Mineral Water to Chicago, just to “keep the Humboldters
healthy” while they promoted their
fair county at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. The indefatigable Mrs.
R. F. Herrick took as many items as
she could to showcase Humboldt
County at a booth there. And she
probably entered any of the things
she could in the competitions at the
fair. Humboldt Mineral Water took
first prize, causing “an exuberance of
joy seldom awakened in the human
breast by a beverage of such mild
qualities.” Not to be left behind, the
California Midwinter International
Exposition of 1893-94 awarded the
water a gold medal. It, too, acquired
a San Francisco distributor, Stephen
Jackson, at No. 40 Tliird Street.
An analysis of the water by Prof W.
D. Johnston of Cooper Medical College gave these results in grains per
imperial gallon:
Sodium Chloride: 32.01 Calcium Carbonate: 16.37 Magnesium: 10.37Sodium: 2.45 Silica: 1.32Alumina: .20Iron
Oxide: .06
and three not always included in the literature—Sulphates,
Organic Matter, and Carbonic Acid.
The lemon, orange and strawberry
sodas, the sarsaparilla, and the lemonade manufactured by Joseph P. all
contained the famous water.
By 1914, it seems like the energy of
the remaining Monroes had waned.
Charles sold his Ferndale building
to Central Creamery Company and
moved his whole cider and vinegar
company to Eureka, to the E Street
dock, a short distance from Joseph
P’.s bottling works. Now that the two
brothers were within blocks of one
another, one can’t help wondering
why the two brothers didn’t join in a
partnership. By 1911, the City Directory no longer had them listed. Joseph P. moved his bottling operation
to F Street near Humboldt Street and
ran the business out of his home address for the final eleven years.
###
The year 1922 ended the era of
the bottling Monroes. Joseph P.
Monroe died on February 6, 1922,
leaving his son to sell the remaining
stock. The lawyer for the family did
not even finish the business of the
estate for the family. Alonzo J. Monroe died June 14, 1922. Charles A.
Monroe died November 5, 1922.
A. Monroe’s final business venture
had proved to be something of a success, though he wasn’t there to enjoy
it: it lasted for 46 years through
his sons.
###
The story above was originally printed in the Fall 2009 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.
