Caldwell County MO Archives History .....SALOONS IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES IN HAMILTON 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 6:03 pm

SALOONS IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES IN HAMILTON
	Narrators:  Irving Harper and "Billy" McBrayer
  
     Both these narrators lived in these parts during the time mentioned.  Mr. 
McBrayer's father Sam McBrayer kept a saloon for a while.
     The earliest saloon keeper in Hamilton was Uncle Davy Buster whose life 
has been written up in a separate paper.  He belonged in the late 50s and 
early 60s.  His location was on Broadway on the south right of way, and no 
other saloon was ever kept there.  Charlie Manuel was another of the late 60s, 
he kept his saloon on the street north of the depot, the earliest Main street 
in Hamilton.  It is presumed from reports that these early places paid some 
sort of license.
     In the 70s, there were often three saloons at the same time here in 
Hamilton, and often a site would become an habitual saloon site altho under 
different owners.
     Charlie Stevenson, with Lee Cosgrove at the bar, kept one in the rear 
rooms of the Western (Goodman) Hotel on west side of North Main.  He was a 
popular saloon man.  Usually a saloon occupied the frame building south of the 
old elevator on Main street. The building was owned by Wm. Partin, but he 
never kept a saloon.  Tanner had his business there in the late 70s and called 
it the "Woodbine Saloon."
     Sam McBrayer who came the middle 70s, had a saloon business on north Main 
for a while, and kept a very orderly place as one might expect from that 
family.  Then there was a frame shack east of the old Hamilton House (Facing 
toward the depot).  This saloon was facetiously called "The Oasis" a slang but 
expressive term.  By this time, we know that dram shop licenses were granted 
by the county court to an applicant for six months with the applicant's 
petition signed by enough citizens of the town.  If sufficient opposition 
developed, the petition was refused.  The list of saloon petitioners was 
published in the paper by the temperance people, at their expense in order "to 
show 'em up."  Sometimes, a man would declare after seeing his name in print 
on such a petition that it was forged.  Perhaps it might be.
     After such a license was given, the saloon keeper opened up with green 
doors in front to shut off the inside sight.  These screens came to be a sign 
of a saloon.  Often such a license was combined with a billiard hall license 
to the same man the two concerns being in two connected rooms.
     The early saloon keeper was not necessarily a tough man here in 
Hamilton.  Charley Stevenson had hosts of friends and a big funeral.  Henry 
Bater in the 90s, went into the saloon business because the milling business 
had ruined his eyesight and many fine business men signed his petition who 
never had signed one before.
     It was the custom in early days, to let a man drink all that he could pay 
for and then when he became noisy or badly intoxicated, to put him out on the 
street.  It was reported that Lewis Clampitt was in such a condition the night 
he tried to drive home and was frozen to death (see interview concerning this).
     Even in the seventies, men and women were working to do away with the 
saloon in this town and there were times, when they had their way, and there 
would not be a single saloon in town; but that did not mean that there would 
not be whiskey sold here, for there were always drug stores which sold it on 
prescription (easy those days), and even yet one druggist of the seventies is 
mentioned as selling few drugs, but ---.  Under such conditions, the town 
suffered in a way, for the druggist did not pay the high license of a saloon 
or dram shop as they were legally termed.
     In the eighties, instead of a saloon, there flourished a gallons store in 
the old Davis store building (then owned by Mr. Rogers) where people could buy 
liquor by the gallon only.
     Interviews  1933-4.  
Addenda
     Mrs. Edmind Bater reminds the interviewer that on one occasion a revival 
was on in Hamilton and a party of the revival workers visited the saloon of 
her father-in-law, Henry Bater.  He received them courteously, let them talk 
and sing, and before they left, he proposed that they repeat the Lord's 
Prayer, and he himself led them.  He had been trained in a religious home and 
had not forgotten.
     John Prough, here in the middle 70s, says that the worst effect of the 
saloon appeared on election days when men advised their women folks to keep 
off the streets because of the large number of plain drunks.


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