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Column: Oxford, alcohol battle as old as city’s first tavern

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By David M. Fahey, Contributed Writer 2:04 PM Friday, November 12, 2010

Alcohol has been part of Oxford’s history since its first tavern opened in 1816. The local fight against intoxicating drink is almost as old.

Miami University’s first president, Robert Hamilton Bishop, worried that drink would corrupt his students. In 1834 he announced plans for a book that he never had the time to write. The History of Retailing Ardent Spirits in the Village of Oxford, State of Ohio, was to have described three generations of “Groceries and Tavern Keepers” and would have provided biographies of a “few of the most distinguished Young and Old Men, who have been ruined for all time, and in all probability for Eternity ... by frequenting the Groceries and Bar-rooms.” Teetotalers and saloons shared the village. The Sons of Temperance and the Good Templars (both a white lodge and a black lodge) flourished. Most saloonkeepers were German or Irish Catholic immigrants. In 1868 George Meyers from Germany opened the Junction House saloon near the railroad depot.

Less than a year after Miami University temporarily closed its doors in 1873, Oxford’s most dramatic fight between alcohol and teetotalism occurred. In the Women’s Temperance Crusade, groups of women visited saloons to pray, read scripture and sing hymns in hope of persuading saloonkeepers to look for other livelihoods. Most Crusaders were white native-born or British-born Protestants. Many came from well-off families, such as Elizabeth McCullough, whose daughters later provided money that helped fund McCullough-Hyde hospital.

In the first stage of the Oxford Crusade, the Crusaders confronted mostly polite saloonkeepers who often knew some of the women, including schoolteachers of their own children.

In contrast, the second phase of the Crusade resulted in violence. After all the old saloons closed, Jimmy Hannon opened a new one. He punched and kicked male allies of the Crusaders and even roughed up several of the women. Oxford men were outraged. On one Saturday night “leading church-members grabbed their repeaters with a determination not to be mistaken.” Hannon’s lack of self-control led to the closing of his saloon, but those who wanted drink did not remain thirsty as old saloons quietly reopened. By the end of 1874 the Crusade was only a memory.

The local temperance movement, however, remained strong. In 1877 it supported the “Murphy” movement by collecting total-abstinence pledges. In 1886 an Oxford chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was organized, followed by a Loyal Temperance Legion for children, a Band of Hope Cadets for teenage boys, and a Young W.C.T.U. In 1888 village council adopted a prohibition ordinance but repealed it three years later. In 1902, when villagers voted on a local referendum to close the saloons, wets defeated drys by a two-vote margin. Temperance reformers struck back in 1905 when they passed a two-year prohibition experiment that became permanent in 1907.

National Prohibition went into effect in 1920, when the Volstead Act interpreted the Eighteenth Amendment as banning production and sale of drinks more than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. Moonshiners, bootleggers and occasional violence and intimidation accompanied prohibition. According to a former mayor, there were “so many bootleggers in Oxford that they had to wear badges to keep them from soliciting one another.” In response to crackdowns, bootleggers shot out the front window of another mayor’s home in 1930.

By the 1930s most regarded prohibition as a failure, and the Great Depression made governments desperate for revenue. In 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt found a way to bring back beer and tax it while the country went through the laborious process of repealing national prohibition. Congress changed the definition of intoxicating drinks to those that were more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight (about 4 percent by volume). In states that agreed to the change, including Ohio, 3.2 beer quickly became available.

In November 1933, when the repeal of state prohibition was on the ballot, districts that voted against repeal could eliminate 3.2 beer. The enfranchisement of women supposedly had made the dry vote invincible in Oxford, but Oxford Twp. (including Oxford village) narrowly supported repeal. This meant that local businesses could continue to sell 3.2 beer (defined as not intoxicating). Oxford’s 1907 legislation kept out stronger drinks.

For many years Miami University students boasted or complained that Oxford was America’s 3.2 beer capital, but that changed in the 1970s. Early in the decade, the voting age was lowered to 18. In 1975, with college students voting, Oxford approved a state liquor store and carry-out sales of wine and 6 percent beer. A 1979 referendum, confined to two precincts of mostly student housing and commercial buildings, authorized the sale of stronger alcoholic beverages by the glass, and 3.2 beer disappeared.

In recent years, a distinctive feature of Oxford’s drinking scene has been Green Beer Day. This all-day drinking party, encouraged by local bar owners, has thrived despite university opposition. It was a by-product of a 1970s change in the university calendar that placed St. Patrick’s Day in the middle of spring break when students were out of town. Although the drinking age was raised to 21 in 1987, Oxford has witnessed an increase in the number of alcohol permits for bars and restaurants, and any lingering temperance inclinations seem to have disappeared.

David M. Fahey is a Miami University Professor Emeritus of History and author of a forthcoming book, The Women’s Temperance Crusade in Oxford, Ohio. This is the 21st in a series of Bicentennial articles provided by the Smith Library of Regional History.

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