The rectifier's city: B. Trentman and the wholesale liquor houses

1861 — 1880s

Making, of a kind: After the canal era, the only liquor "making" the Fort Wayne directories will certify is rectifying — the wholesale trade that bought whiskey distilled elsewhere, blended it, flavored and colored it, and sold it under the house's own brands. The city's rectifier stands alone in the record. The directory of 1861–62 lists B. Trentman under the single heading "Liquors"; the Williams directory of 1864–65 refines the classification and gives him two headings to himself — "RECTIFIER: Trentman B." and "WINES AND LIQUORS: Trentman B." — the only name under the rectifier heading in the book. By the directories of 1875–76 and 1878 the house has become B. Trentman & Son — August C. Trentman joining his father — styled "Wholesale Grocers and Liquor Dealers" at 56 and 58 Calhoun Street. The Trentmans were in much else besides (flour mills, coffee and spice mills, crockery; the firm's wider fortunes belong to the Business section), and that is precisely the point: liquor in nineteenth-century Fort Wayne was one department of the great wholesale grocery houses, not a distilling industry.

The wholesale row: Around the rectifier stood the dealers, and the 1880 business directory preserves their shape. Lewis T. Bourie, of the old trading family, dealt in wholesale liquors at the corner of Clinton and Main, the directory crediting him with a start in the trade in 1828 — a liquor house older than the canal distillery's successors. Three wholesale houses traded under the Nathan name in 1880: Charles Nathan, wholesale dealer in wines and liquors at 8 Calhoun; Julius Nathan, wholesale liquor dealer at 49 East Berry; and Herman Nathan, wholesale liquor dealer at 89 West Berry. And John Christen's Fort Wayne Ale House, whose advertising and price lists the History Center holds, wholesaled ales and porters as health tonics alongside imported beers, wines and brandies by the dozen — its catalogue warning buyers to "Beware of all Imitation" and working out the logistics of bottle returns. Bottling, the last step of the trade, had its own house by 1880: F. Hake & Co., proprietors of a bottling works at Harrison and Water, putting up Cincinnati and Milwaukee lager, wines and cigars. Not one of these firms distilled. Fort Wayne in its great wholesale century imported its whiskey, blended some of it, bottled much of it, and sold all of it — a distribution city, not a distilling one.

Sources:

1. Fort Wayne city directories — 1861–62 (Trentman listed under "Liquors"; Trentman B. & Co. among the flour mills); 1864–65 (business classes "RECTIFIER — Trentman B" and "WINES AND LIQUORS — Trentman B," his the sole name under Rectifier); 1875–76 and 1878 ("B Trentman & Son (August C Trentman), Wholesale Grocers and Liquor Dealers 56 and 58 Calhoun").
2. Fort Wayne business directory of 1880 (Genealogy Trails transcription) — Lewis T. Bourie, wholesale liquors, corner of Clinton and Main, settled 1828; Charles Nathan, wholesale dealer in wines and liquors, 8 Calhoun; Julius Nathan, wholesale liquor dealer, 49 East Berry; Herman Nathan, wholesale liquor dealer, 89 West Berry; F. Hake & Co., bottling works, corner of Harrison and Water.
3. The History Center (Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society), Fort Wayne Ale House collection, published February 2026 — John Christen's wholesale house, its advertisement framing ale and porter as tonics, its price table of ales, porters, imported beers, wines and brandies, and its bottle-return policy.