I am a homebrewer and historian, and naturally my love of beer and history came together. As a transplant to Wilmington I became interested in what the beer history was like for the city I lived in and did some light googling. There wasn't much except for mentions of Front Street Brewery and Azalea Coast Brewery. I started looking in old newspapers and began saving clippings of ads for imported beer until I ran across an ad placed by a man named Jethro Thain, which announced the opening of a brewery in 1847. For a time I thought this was the first brewery in the city, and began researching all I could about Thain. I've since found that another brewery claims the title of first in Wilmington, but that's for another post. For the inaugural post on this blog I am including an edited version of an article on Thain's brewery first posted in Encore Magazine and then in Carolina Brew Scene, since it is the story where all of my research into beer, brewing, alcohol, ordinaries, etc. in Southeastern NC began.
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| Tri-Weekly Commercial, December 14, 1847 |
In February of 1848 you could go down to the Wholesale and Retail Grocery owned by J. Boland on South Water Street, three doors down from Market, and buy “Rectified Whiskey, Northern Gin, Domestic Brandy, New England Rum, and Very Superior Old Monongahela Whiskey.” Or you could casually stroll two blocks over to Front and Orange streets and see Jethro Thain, the only brewer in town, about purchasing some of his cream and amber ale. Mr. Thain began selling what would now be considered craft beer in December of 1847, taking out ads in the Tri-Weekly Commercial, a Wilmington newspaper, to “respectfully inform the citizens” of his new undertaking. Thain endeavored to tap a market attempted only once before in Wilmington nearly thirty years earlier, in 1807, by Henry Gunnisson, whose brewery appears to have been short lived. Tragically for Mr. Thain, and perhaps unfortunately for Wilmington, another one of the city’s earliest breweries also wouldn’t last.
Originally from Nova Scotia, Jethro Thain moved to New York City from Nantucket Island, Massachusetts in his early twenties. He married his first wife in Brooklyn, New York at the age of 21 and began to raise a family. In 1838 Thain took advantage of an opportunity, partnering with Adam Collins to lease the High Street Brewery in Newark, New Jersey from Thomas Morton. Newark’s oldest brewery at the time, the facility covered nearly an entire city block and became the Ballantine & Sons brewery. His experience running this brewery almost certainly prepared him to open his own in Wilmington, a town he previously visited with his brother aboard a ship they owned together. Family legend asserts that a shipboard accident led to one of Thain's legs being broken, which necessitated putting in to port at Wilmington.
Thain moved to Wilmington in 1842, after the death of his first wife. Coinciding with his arrival in Wilmington, possibly before, he married Caroline Hutchings, another native New Yorker. His first appearance in Wilmington’s newspapers is through a lading bill in the Tri-Weekly Commercial for a ship arriving in Wilmington. The schooner R. W. Brown sailing from New York brought cargo for Jethro Thain in the spring of 1847. Again on July 31 the Tri-Weekly Commercial announced that merchandise had arrived for Thain. These ships may have carried the equipment, mash and lauter tuns, boiling kettle, and fermentation tanks he would need to begin his brewing operation. However, Thain also worked as a cooper, or barrel maker, and may have built his own fermentation tanks. Soon after these deliveries, on September 8, 1847, the Wilmington Chronicle announced, “Mr. Jethro Thain is putting up a Brewery in this town, for the manufacture of Ale, Beer &c.” Perhaps Thain saw an opening in the market for a locally brewed beer since merchants and wholesalers imported nearly all of the beer consumed in Wilmington. Thain set up shop at his cooperage on the Northwest corner of the intersection of Front and Orange streets, a location now closest to Lula's and The Little Dipper.
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| The diary of Nicholas Schenck, held at UNCW, describes Wilmington in the years prior to the American Civil War. This image places "Thane's" Cooperage at the upper center, labeled "10." |
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| Wilmington Chronicle, September 8, 1847 |
By December Thain had ads running in the Tri-Weekly Commercial selling cream and amber ale, brewers yeast, and animal feed. On the same page as ads for choice Christmas presents, oranges and bananas, molasses, cider, sugar, timber, naval stores, soap, butter, and cheese, as well as slaves and overseers, Thain offered a beverage comparable to today’s craft beers. Indeed it may have been that Thain had a slave working in his brewery. In June,1849 the New Hanover County Jail announced the arrest of Patsey, an enslaved woman hired out to Thain in January of that year. In August, 1848 Thain ran an ad in the Tri Weekly Commercial looking for a servant to "do the cooking and washing of a small family." Perhaps Patsey had been hired to fill this role. The ad lists the location of the family at Front and Orange, indicating the family lived at the site of Thain's brewery and cooperage.
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| Tri-Weekly Commercial, December 14, 1847 |
Some items sold by Jethro Thain are remarkably similar to today’s craft breweries. The beer of course is an obvious match. However, the spent grain, sugars already extracted and converted to ethanol, which Thain advertised to farmers as feed, is still sold or given to local farmers today. One modern difference is the sale of yeast. Thain sought to sell the abundance of yeast grown while fermenting each batch of beer to bakers. With his hand potentially in so many markets it is not unreasonable to assume that Thain’s brewery affected the lives of many of Wilmington’s citizens. In fact forty years later, when an Elizabeth City brewery claimed the status as North Carolina’s first brewery, several of Wilmington’s older citizens wrote to the Wilmington Morning Star with memories of Thain’s “freshly brewed beer.” However, it would seem that larger breweries which exported their beers to Wilmington might have crowded out Thain’s product. Merchant William Neff as well as wholesaler Howard and Peden’s carried porter, stout, pale ale, and scotch ale brewed in New York and Philadelphia, cities better known than Wilmington for their beer.
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| Tri-Weekly Commercial, January 18, 1849 |
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| Tri-Weekly Commercial, January 18, 1849 |
Jethro Thain’s brewery and his life in Wilmington came to a heartrending end when on April 7, 1848 Mary Thain, Jethro’s fourteen month old daughter, succumbed to Scarlet Fever. The bacterial infection, which usually results from strep throat, presents itself as a bright red rash on the face, neck, and chest and killed many children before the use of antibiotics. The last ad in the Tri-Weekly Commercial for Thain’s cream and amber ale ran on January 16, 1849, just three months before his daughter’s death. It would seem that the closing of his brewery and the death of his daughter caused Thain to move away from Wilmington. By October, 1849 one A. Morgan began operating out of "the shop lately occupied by Mr. Thain." The next time Thain is mentioned in a newspaper is perhaps even more devastating. Nearly a year after his daughter’s death, in March, 1850, the Wilmington Chronicle carried another death notice, “At Williamsburg, N.Y., on the 12th ult., Mrs. Caroline Thain, wife of Mr. Jethro Thain, late of this town, aged about 35 years.” It would appear from census records that Caroline Thain died giving birth to another daughter, Carrie, named after her mother. Thain lived out the rest of his life as a successful farmer and cooper in Smithfield, North Carolina.
It has been said that history repeats itself but I don’t believe that is true. I’d prefer to quote Mark Twain saying, “history never repeats itself, but the kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” Almost certainly the brewers of today’s craft beer scene began their breweries with dreams similar to Jethro Thain’s. With a growing market for craft beer across the city, state, and nation they will fill a demand for locally brewed ales and lagers. As a lover of beer, I hope that this renaissance in craft brewing now found in Wilmington will be a much happier rhyme to the attempt by Jethro Thain.
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