LOOKBACK: Moonshine center of legal battle over Ramsey dance hall
100 years ago, cottage owners along Cedar River fought off controversial lease agreement at Paddy’s Point above dam
Paddy was poisoned by “moonshine whiskey.”
That’s the excuse Patrick “Paddy” Walsh gave a century ago for why he signed a lease allowing two men to build a dance pavilion in his woods along the Cedar River near Ramsey Dam. “Moonshine” refers to strong alcohol made illegally.
This agreement ignited a legal fight in 1921 led by seven Austin businessmen — including Ben Hormel, Lafayette French and George Hirsh — who, two months earlier, announced plans to lease a hilly, riverside stretch of Walsh’s farm for up to 12 summer cottage sites overlooking Ramsey Mill Pond upstream of the dam.
This was a “summer resort colony at Ramsey” for cottage owners, the Herald wrote, to “seek relief from the hot weather by spending their evenings at Paddy’s Grove” or Paddy’s Point or Ramsey Point.
As Austinites didn’t travel far in the early 1900s for getaways, families were drawn to Ramsey Mill Pond, including a camping area across the river from Paddy’s Point. This became Ramsey Recreation Park then Ramsey Golf Course and today is public flood land.
“With a little judicious boosting, Ramsey Lake could be made quite an attractive summer resort,” a Ramsey camper in 1911 told the Herald, adding the “beautiful surroundings of woods and water” are “more than ordinary and railroad facilities perfect.”
Given this, cottage owners were surprised in June 1921 to see Edwin Struck and Henry Carlitz at Paddy’s Point starting a dance platform at least 100 square feet in size. Walsh had promised cottage owners he wouldn’t allow a dance pavilion there.
They offered to reimburse the men for their costs if they surrendered the lease signed June 3 with Walsh, age 80, but the duo refused.
Concerns stemmed from a “wave of ‘jazz’ that has swept the country” that would attract immoral behavior and people from Austin with moonshine to a location three miles north of Austin that’s now in the city. The pavilion would be in a wooded area with poor lighting and no police protection.
With cottage owners angry, Walsh moved to annul the lease.
In court filings, Walsh claimed Carlitz and Struck offered him moonshine after claiming they only would build a soft-drink stand. He “took a drink, he became poisoned, sick and dizzy,” causing him to become unable to understand the agreement.
Cottage owners — who were spending much money to beautify their Ramsey properties — also filed for a court injunction halting construction.
They claimed alcohol would be served illegally there and the “lawless, leud and immoral element will flock to and congregate at the public bowery dance hall, and that it will constitute a menace to the morals of all the young girls of the city of Austin and vicinity.”
Hirsh, a downtown clothing retailer, joined fellow cottage owners in raising nearly $1,600 to fight the dance hall. Hirsh was between terms (1918–1920, 1922–1924) as the mayor of Austin, where a city ordinance recently started regulating and putting police control over public dances.
The court granted an injunction restraining Struck and Carlitz from building a “bowery” dance hall — an open structure with a roof for large groups.
Struck and Carlitz filed a countersuit for damage to their reputation, denying allegations. An attorney who created their lease claimed he saw no moonshine when Walsh signed the lease.
On July 11, cottage owners settled out of court, reimbursing Struck and Carlitz for expenses in exchange for nixing the lease.
“Were it not for the quick action of these men, the development of Ramsey along the Cedar River might have been considerably different — all because of ‘moonshine whiskey,” the Herald wrote in a 1956 Austin centennial edition.
During the next year, however, vandals caused trouble at Paddy’s Point. In late 1922, six cottage owners offered a reward for the arrest of vandals who used an ax to smash door panels and cut small trees as well as hurled dishes through windows and at the floor. For the Banfield family, it was their cottage’s third vandalism.
In 1927, about 30 men, women and children — called “gypsies,” “wanderers” and “undesirable neighbors” — were ordered by the sheriff to leave Paddy’s Point, where they were paying $1 daily to Walsh. They allegedly violated state law by reading palms and doing fortune telling.
When Walsh died in 1929 at age 85, the Herald wrote about the pioneer settler known as “Paddy” to hundreds of friends.
“Young and old knew him better by that name than any other. He answered to it in those days of railroading when the grading was being made for the rails to bring the first train into Austin.”
Walsh emigrated at 29 from Ireland in the 1870s with his mother to the village of Ramsey until 1885 when he and his wife moved to a nearby farm. Known for helping others, “Paddy” was the name “he bore when he broke the virgin soil of Mower County.”
“He came from the school of hard work,” the Herald wrote. “And through it all, he was called by the good old name of Paddy.”
