Old-Time Breweries: Academic and Breweriana Historians

In the years between the Civil War and National Prohibition, Ohio brewed more beer than almost any other state. In 1880 it ranked third, behind only New York and Pennsylvania. Although by 1915 it had fallen to fifth place, it still brewed more beer than Anheuser-Busch’s home state of Missouri. But while Ohio’s breweries flourished, temperance and saloon cultures clashed in the Buckeye State, a result of a volatile mixture of “Yankee” and immigrant ethnicities. For instance, in 1872 when Cleveland authorities tried to impose Sunday closing of all businesses that sold alcohol, “the flag was hauled down to half-mast and wrapped in mourning” at Lied’s Garden, a favorite drinking place for German Americans.1 Historians have shown how Ohio played an important role in the temperance agitation from the 1870s to the 1930s. In 1874, Ohio villages and small towns constituted the stronghold of the women’s temperance crusade. Cleveland was the site of the national convention that organized the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874. The headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League of America was located at Westerville, near Columbus, and Akron was the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the mid-1980s academic historians published several well-known books that describe and analyze