"Wet" Enterprise: Selected Saloons of the Old West

Charles Serasio Found Gold and Early Death in Lead In September,1919, when Charles Serasio died at only 49 years of age from tuberculosis, the Lead (South Dakota) Daily Call newspaper cited him as a respected and popular resident of the the city.    The obituary did not mention the odyssey that brought Serasio to Lead and a premature death — nor addressed his success as a local saloonkeeper. Serasio was born in 1870 in San Giorgio, Italy, shown above.  For years the climate and natural beauty on the Mediterranean made the town a strong magnet for tourists and it flourished.  Two eruptions from nearby Mount Vesuvius in 1855, however, severely damaged the economy and triggered a gradual emigration of the populace overseas in search of employment.  Among them were members of the extensive Serasio family (Charles himself was one of ten children) many of whom came to the United States. After a period in his youth living with relatives in France, Sera...

Dan Breen and the Wild Side of Life in Texas      Born in a small Ohio town into a family of modest resources, Daniel “Dan” Breen, shown here, figuratively “followed the telegraph lines” west to San Antonio, Texas, where he prospered as a saloonkeeper in particularly violent times. Breen’s 1866 birthplace was Ada, Ohio, a quiet community about 70 miles south of Toledo, a town whose claim to fame is having the shortest name in Ohio.  Dan’s parents were Daniel Breen and Johanna Buckley.   Their 1864 marriage license was unusual since it was applied for by Johanna’s father, Jeremiah, and initially his name was inked in as the groom.   The couple would go on to produce eleven children of whom Daniel Jr. was the second.  The 1880 census listed his father as a railroad worker and “crippled.” One asset Ada boasted was the presence of a post-elementary educational institution called the Northwestern Ohio Normal School, now Ohio Northern Un...

A.D.M. Cooper: Rembrandt of the Western Saloon Foreword:    It may seem strange to anoint a artist as a whiskey man but A.D.M. Cooper deserves recognition as America’s star painter of saloon signs.  For many years of his life he spent extraordinary amounts of time in the drinking establishments of the West, principally providing back-of-the-bar nudes to appreciative proprietors. Picture an artist, who during his lifetime could command  more than $60,000 (equivalent to $1.2 million today) for a single piece of artwork, using his talent to cage drinks from saloon owners across the West in return for painting pictures of scantily clad women, art meant for display behind the bar.  That would be A.D.M. Cooper, the unsurpassed “Rembrandt” of the saloon nude, shown right Ashey David Middleton Cooper was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1856.  He was the son of David M. Cooper, a respected physician and Fannie O’Fallon Cooper,  grandniece of ...

J.W. Swart and His Arizona "Bar Room" Violence swirled like dust in a windstorm around Jacob W. Swart’s “Bar Room” in Charleston, Arizona Territory.    Located six miles from infamous Tombstone, Arizona, site of the “Gunfight at the OK Corral,” Swart’s watering hole was a favorite hangout of gunslingers and outlaws.    His distant relative   (see below) believes that the man standing in the doorway of the saloon wearing a white hat is Swart. The name is Dutch, derived from the word for “black” and the family settled on American soil in New York State during the 1700s.  Jacob likely was born in 1823 in Dryden, Tompkins County, the eldest child of Elizabeth (nee Winnie) and John Duffie Swart. Census data variously recorded the father’s occupation as laborer or “shingle weaver,” that is, working in a wood mill making shingles for houses. When Jacob, the eldest child, was just an infant, the family moved to Albany where a brother and two sis...