Five Coffee Tins

By Bob Gariano

Last week an on-line auction site offered a set five antique coffee tins for sale and the bidding closed at $25.00 for the set. The tins were packages for after dinner gourmet coffee imported in 1870 by the Kasper & Durand Company and originally offered for sale through Montgomery Ward. Even though it had been more than a century since the coffee in the tins had been used, the delightful red and blue art deco graphics on the labels are still bright and legible.

Kasper & Durand was a prosperous Chicago grocery wholesaler founded by Henry and Charles Durand. The brothers initially had a grocery store in Chicago which they opened after migrating west from the family’s homestead in upstate New York. Two years later, in 1860 little brother, Calvin Durand, came west and joined his brothers in the business. They grew the enterprise into one of the leading wholesale food packers in the Midwest.

The early food merchants in the Chicago area soon discovered that they needed a more fluid and regular method to set commodity prices and secure supply contracts. Local commercial leaders joined together to found the Chicago Board of Trade. The exchange was established to provide a framework for this commodity trading. The CBOT remains one of the largest and oldest commodity exchanges in the world.

In spite of the burgeoning commercial activity on the country’s western frontier, there were storm clouds on the horizon. The outbreak of the Civil War interrupted the region’s prospects. In those days, much of the military effort of the nation was shouldered, not at the federal level, but by volunteer militias organized at the local and state level.

In 1862, members of the Chicago Board of Trade raised $15,000 in cash and mustered in 180 volunteers to form the Chicago Board of Trade Battery, a light artillery unit that would be assigned to serve with the Army of the Cumberland. Calvin Durand joined the unit when they were formed and saw action at major battles like Chickamauga and Stone River. In 1863, Durand wrote to his family, “I really wish…that I could return home to my kind friends again…Still, I believe that the people of this country are destined to be happier, freer, and more peaceful than ever before, because it will have freedom for its foundation.”

It was in one of these bitter engagements near Atlanta that Calvin Durand was captured. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner being shuttled between the Confederate prisons at Andersonville, Charleston, and Florence.

When he was released after the war, Durand returned home and rejoined the family business. He settled in Lake Forest where he and his wife, Sarah Gould Downs, would raise a family. The reconstruction of the south catalyzed an irenic period of economic expansion that benefited businesses across the north, perhaps none more than in the trading and distribution businesses around Chicago. Kasper & Durand became part of that prosperity.

In 1891 Calvin Durand was elected mayor of the City of Lake Forest. His was an active administration. In 1895 the first paved block road was installed in the city and the first Lake Forest policeman was hired. In that same year, an ordinance was passed that prohibited nude bathing in Lake Michigan within the city’s boundaries. More impressive, Calvin Durand pushed through the first ordinance that provided “the right to erect and maintain a telephone system” within the city.

In August 1911 Mrs. Durand died and was buried in the Lake Forest Cemetery. Nine weeks later, Calvin Durand died, apparently of heart failure, but according to his published obituary, “from grief over the death of his wife, nine weeks ago.” Both headstones are still standing and can be viewed in the city’s cemetery.

Five small coffee tins sold for $25.00 at auction this week. The tins are minor antiques, but they represent the labors and life of a business and civic pioneer who stepped forward and helped create our country, our city, and our modern way of life.

Bob Gariano is President of RGA, an executive search firm that recruits senior executives and board members for public and private companies. Bob can be reached at rgariano@robertgariano.com