In the spring of 1881, Civil War veteran Mark Wainright Johnson was looking to distinguish his homemade moonshine from that of other local producers. He settled on adding a hand-painted mark to his bottles, a caricature of his best friend from his war days, Confederate Captain Eustace Horatio "Tipsy" Rutherford. The "Captain Eustace" character quickly became well known locally, but in a skull-and-crossbones sense. In fact, history suggests that Johnson’s easily-identified bottles helped keep his product from becoming a success.
When the Yellow Kid cartoons took fire in the New York newspaper world, whiskey and gun magnate Benjamin Temperance Donovan decided in 1896 to seek a similar cartoon mascot for his product lines. But commissions to numerous artists failed to create a mascot Donovan approved of. A backwoods hunting trip resulted in a chance nighttime meeting between Donovan and Johnson. Legend has it that over a bottle of Johnson’s moonshine a deal was reached that launched "Captain Eustace" brand whiskey and rifles, at the same time calling for the creation of Captain Eustace cartoons for publication in newspapers. Donovan said many times that he believed Captain Eustace’s slightly drunken but martial look would jibe well with both his distilling and gun making businesses.
At first, the association appeared to be a success on all fronts. But then the "captain’s curse", the terrible fate which seems to befall anything and anyone associated with the character, took hold. The rifles tended to jam and injure the person firing them, while the whiskey was exceptionally weak and the newspaper drawings were often inscrutable. It wasn’t long before the public began referring to the character as "Captain Useless". The name stuck.
Desperate to improve the image of both his products and his mascot, Donovan had Captain Useless changed from Confederate captain to U.S. Army captain. The makeover failed to save the guns or whiskey, leaving Donovan virtually penniless by December 1899. Only Johnson’s drawings remained viable, bringing in small sums of money from their publication in newspapers and magazines. Faced with no alternative, Donovan went to work for Johnson, helping market and even create the cartoons.
Next: A New Century
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