Flaherty Brothers
Bangor, 1890
The Flaherty Brothers, Peter L. and Dennis E., set up a brewhouse in Peter’s American House Hotel in Bangor in 1890. It was located at 14 Haymarket Square, near Pickering Square. They were barely in business for a year. The brothers split up, with Dennis going into the retail clothing business. Peter renamed the business “Bangor City Soda Company” and moved to 35 Exchange Street. The original building no longer exists, torn down during Bangor’s urban renewal in the 1960s. In 1892, Peter dropped out of brewing altogether. Dennis died in February, 1894. Peter became a boarder at the Merchant’s Hotel in 1893, and then the St. James Hotel in 1895; henceforth, he disappears from the records.
Peter was born around 1866 and Dennis was born around 1868. Their parents, Peter L. Flaherty Sr. (a tailor, or “Taylor” as the census record in 1880 denotes) and Mary Flaherty immigrated to the United States from Ireland.
The Flaherty Brothers brewery was in Bangor’s Haymarket Square, pictured here in 1890 (Bangor Historical Society, Maine Memory Network).
The Flaherty Brothers brewed, briefly, in the American House Hotel in Bangor (Sanborn-Perris Map Co., 1889, Folger Library, University of Maine at Orono).
Locations are true to 19th-century street addresses, not current numbering.
Sources
Will Anderson, The Great State of Maine Beer Book (Portland: Anderson & Sons’ Publishing Co., 1996) 35.
Bangor City Directory, 1891-1895
U.S. Census, 1880