Leman Beecher Hotchkiss

"Peppermint oil production in western New York began in the 1810s following the introduction of peppermint roots by the peddler Archibald Burnett. By the time the Ranneys had begun settling in Phelps, many of their former neighbors were already living in the area, raising peppermint, distilling it, and shipping the oil to Ashfield for the peddler trade, and to Boston and New York City for use in medicines, confections, and cordials. But this is not the history of peppermint remembered by contemporary western New Yorkers. The story of peppermint in Phelps and Lyons has been retold to put the western New York region and the Hotchkiss brothers at the center, often by writing out anything that happened before New York’s peppermint kings ascended their thrones.

A 1903 newspaper article, for example, described Hiram Hotchkiss as merely a small-time storekeeper in 1841 to emphasize the way his fortunes grew when he “discovered” peppermint oil, and it included an account of Yankee peddler “Jim” Burnett dickering with Phelps farmers over small quantities of oil.[1] The 1903 account became a key source for a charming but inaccurate article published in Yankee Magazine in 1957, and it is still typical of the error-filled storytelling perpetuated in commemorative celebrations such as Lyons’s annual “Peppermint Days” and interpretive materials at Lyons’s H. G. Hotchkiss Museum and the Museum of Wayne County History. Local accounts not only give Hotchkiss undue credit for developing the New York peppermint oil business, they understate his prominence in regional business before his entry into the essential oil trade. Local histories of Phelps and Lyons, New York, uncritically build on these accounts, giving credit to the Hotchkiss brothers as the originators and first kings of the peppermint oil business. In fact, Hiram and Leman Hotchkiss originated little but rather were important innovators who created one of America’s first globally recognized brands and changed the way essential oils were marketed.

The Hotchkiss brothers were sons of a western New York merchant named Leman Hotchkiss and his wife, Chloe Gilbert, who had arrived in Phelps in 1811, about the same time as peppermint. Like the Ranneys, the Hotchkiss family was a widely distributed clan, whose first home in America had been in southern Connecticut, near New Haven. Leman Hotchkiss had moved to Phelps from Oneida Castle, about eighty-five miles to the east. Leman’s brothers William and Calvin had also migrated to western New York about the same time, becoming a Niagara County judge and a wealthy landowner, respectively, in Lewiston, near Niagara Falls. Twenty-six-year-old Leman opened a gristmill on Flint Creek, which he named the Eagle Mill after noticing a bald eagle perched on its roof. The Eagle Mill prospered, and Leman opened a general store that became the region’s largest, reputedly doing more than a hundred thousand dollars in annual business in the early 1810s.[2]

In 1816, Leman opened a second store, in Lyons, about ten miles north of Phelps, and then opened a third store, in nearby Newark, in 1822, sending his twelve-year-old son, Hiram, to work there as clerk while he trained his younger son, Leman Beecher, at the Phelps store. When the elder Leman died unexpectedly in 1826, his two sons took over the family businesses, while their mother, Chloe, and their uncle William managed Leman’s substantial estate. Chloe and William retained control of the estate well into the 1830s, long after Hiram and Leman B. had reached majority. The Hotchkiss brothers probably received their first exposure to litigation and to trading in distressed assets while watching the ongoing administration of their father’s complicated estate.[3]

The brothers learned the milling and mercantile trades well. By 1829, eighteen-year-old Hiram, his sixteen-year-old brother Leman, and their cousin William T. Hotchkiss, were partners in a general store and owned two mills in Phelps and a third mill in Seneca Falls. The combined capacity of the Hotchkiss mills was more than five hundred barrels of flour daily.[4] The opening of the Erie Canal, completed in 1825, provided the Hotchkiss mills with a ready market for flour in New York City. The Hotchkisses partnered with fellow western New Yorkers at the prominent Manhattan brokerage firm of Dows and Cary.

Hiram’s brother, Leman, remained in Phelps, where he married Lucretia Oaks in 1844 and began raising three children with her before her death in 1855. After losing his wife, Leman tried unsuccessfully to scale back his activities as part of the partnership with Hiram and to focus more on his own business and less on supporting his brother’s. Leman and Hiram officially ended their partnership in the essential oils business in 1855, but their business interactions only became more complicated." https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/peppermintkings/chapter/prize-meda...