Mrs. Fannie Ebert Geiger the 90-Year-Old Citizen Tells of the First Beer Delivered on Handcar
Many interesting stories have been narrated about the early days of Ironton, and the founder of the city since this series of “I Knew John Campbell” started. The most interesting thus far is the one told by Mrs. Fannie Geiger, who was 90 on her birthday last January 28th.
Mrs. Geiger came to Ironton with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Leo Ebert, when she was but three years of age, and no other living citizen remembers as much of Ironton and the way of life during the early days of the city.
The Eberts was 56 days on the Atlantic Ocean crossing on a sailing vessel from Würzburg, Germany and came direct to Ironton where they had friends, upon arriving in New York. Friends had written Mr. Ebert about the great opportunities here for a brewery and being an expert in that art in the old country, he took advantage of his opportunity here, and by hard work, soon became one of Ironton’s leaders, and shared with the city in all his financial success. Page after page in the newspaper files from 1865 until the turn of the 20th century, tell of the civic spirit of Mr. Leo Ebert, and later of his son, Otto, who took over the business.
Mrs. Geiger’s first recollection of Ironton was at the close of the Civil War when she was a child six years old. She recalls standing in front of the Buckeye House on Lawrence Street when boatloads of soldiers got off at the landing returning to their homes.
She remembers running the business section of the town barefooted. One of her daily chores at the noon hour was to run to the post office to get her father’s mail. The post office was on Center Street near the river, what now would be the back of the Underselling Store. Her father always gave the children a half-dime for getting the mail, and sometimes, if a letter was there from Germany, he would make it a whole dime. Mrs. Geiger and her sisters were always ready to run to the post office when they came home for dinner from school.
The first Ebert Brewery was built on the hill near the Iron Railroad Bridge at Storms Creek. The location was selected because of a fine spring as good water was needed to make good beer. She recalls that it took a lot of water to wash the empty beer kegs, and that spring water was not used for this purpose, but water from Storms creek. This water was conveyed to the brewery from the creek by a windlass operated by an old white mule.
However, that wasn’t all the odd things connected with the first Ebert brewery. The beer was delivered downtown to the beer parlors via hand car on the Iron Railway, Mr. Campbell, the owner of the railroad gave Mr. Ebert permission to operate a private hand car at certain hours of the day when it was not time for a train, and four kegs of beer were placed on the hand-car, and taken to Second and Railroad streets, where they were rolled to the Ironton House, or other places to be sold.
As soon as Mr. Ebert proved himself a brewmaster, it was easy to get friends to join with him in the erection of a larger brewery on the corner of Seventh and Railroad streets. At one time, the Eagle Brewery had a big bottling plant on the west side of Seventh street just below St. Lawrence school, and there was a tunnel under Seventh street from this bottling plant to the main building on the east side of Seventh.
One of the big problems of the brewers in the early days was to provide their own ice. The Ebert Brewery manufactured the first ice made in Ironton, but previous to this, all winter long, the big job was freezing and cutting ice and storage for summer use. Many big warehouses were filled with ice in the wintertime, packed in sawdust, for summer use.
Many stories have been printed about the old Cory, Ebert, and other ice ponds, but until Mrs. Geiger, explained, most readers wondered how severe the winters had to be to freeze such thick ice. The secret was that after the first freeze, new water was poured on top of the ice, and soon as it froze more water was placed on top of that until the ice was a foot thick.
It took many freezes starting at the bottom and working up before the ice was ready to cut and store. The same old white mule and windlass were used to flood the ponds for freezing the ice. The ice was not pure and was used only in the summer for cooling purposes.
Mrs. Geiger’s recollections of her father’s business clear and instructive, as they are, are only a part of her many recollections. She remembers skating many times on Cory’s Pond when Miss Emma Campbell, better known as “Kit” was there. Miss Campbell was considered a daughter of a wealthy man at that time, and she was very popular with young men, some of the younger girls referred to her as “Kiss Me Quick.”
Mrs. Geiger first went to school on Front Street near Buckhorn where German was taught in the morning, and English in the afternoons. Her parents spoke German more often at the home than English, and she had to learn both languages. She also attended school in a room over the Cronacher meat shop on Fourth and Lawrence and for a while attended classes on the second floor of the Second Ward hose house at Fourth and Buckhorn. Later she went to Lawrence Street school.
She recalls Andy Rauck as one of her teachers, and some of the boys in her classes at that time were George Roetting, who became a banker, Charles Cronacher, the butcher’s son, and the bad boy John “Dip” Mittlehouser, long remembered as a city fireman, and in more recent years the man who enjoyed dressing up as Santa Claus.
The big thing she remembers most about Dip was that he always knew about when he was due a whipping, and always placed his cap in the seat of his pants and hollowed so everyone within a block of the school knew he was getting licked.
Miss Henrietta Schweninger, of West Ironton, who is the same age as Mrs. Geiger attended the same school and perhaps recalls many of the incidents related in these paragraphs. Mr. Leo Ebert played in the brass band, and each week it was his daughter’s duty to shine his horn. The musical instrument was always ready for us, as the band often was called on short notice, and to keep the horn bright, Mrs. Geiger and her sisters used vinegar and salt to make it shine.
The day Woodland Cemetery was dedicated, Mrs. Geiger remembers how hard it rained, and how wet her clothes got. She went to the opening with the family, her father playing in the brass band. They took a boat at Lawrence Street and got off in Coal Grove then called Petersburg and marched to the back gate of the cemetery. Before the program was over, a storm came up, and there was no shelter but the trees, and everybody got wet, and rode home on the boat in wet clothes.
The best story told by the 90-year young lady is the time her sister took sick, and she ran to the doctor. Dr. Arnold, the father of Emil Arnold, a druggist, who will be remembered by many readers, lived in the row of brick apartments on north Third street between Lawrence and Buckhorn streets, which were fine buildings 80 years ago. Remember, there were no telephones to call a doctor then, and no bicycles to ride to get there in a hurry.
Mrs. Geiger, a child rushed into Dr. Arnold’s office crying and all out of breath and exclaimed her sister was dying. The doctor grabbed his satchel and started for the Ebert home. Meanwhile, Mrs. Geiger says that she had washed her black stockings and hung them on the front door knob to dry, and when she and the doctor arrived, he observed the stocking on the door, and said, “We are too late, the undertaker has already hung the crepe on the front door.”
Perhaps someday, the Centennial reporter will again visit with Mrs. Geiger and she will recall more amusing incidents of the days when men wore stove pipe hats, women big bustles, and the steam locomotives had smoke stacks bigger than rain barrels, and everybody seemed to enjoy life as much as they do today with all the modern things like motion pictures, radio, and automobiles, which were not dreamed of when she was old enough to have her first sweetheart.
GEORGE P. MAHL
George P. Mahl, 1047 north Fifth street, retired contractor, remembers John Campbell, his tall walking cane, his big horse, and everything.
Mr. Mahl went to work early in life at the nail mill. His parents lived in West Ironton, and like all the other prominent families in West Ironton raised hogs for their own use. One of George’s jobs once a week or oftener was to take a wheelbarrow and go to the Ebert Brewery, where they sold mash at 10 cents a tub. This was excellent food for hogs. In going to the brewer, he usually passed the Campbell home at Fifth and Lawrence.
Mr. Mahl and his brother Charley, now a resident of West Ironton, engaged in the contracting business many years ago and built some of the best streets, finest sidewalks, and most dependable sewers in the city today.
In recent years Mr. Mahl has been interested in building and loan associations. He was very active in building the Beechwood Stadium.
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