My ancestor, Jacob Shively, arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, on 7 March 1863, with a group of soldiers trying to rejoin their regiments after convalescing at home in Ohio. The next day, he wrote his wife about “the largest building I ever saw.” He described it as “200 feet long, 180 wide and 7 stories high.” He wrote from a perch “in the window of the 6thstory.” He noted that “the building is not finished, but has been used as a barracks ever since we took this place.”[1] John Overton Jr. had started the massive project (nicknamed Overton’s Folly) in 1859 and would eventually give it his wife’s maiden name, Maxwell.[2] Jacob Shively was writing his wife from the shell of what would become Nashville’s most famous and luxurious destination hotel, The Maxwell House Hotel. Like any self-respecting Union Soldier, Jacob surely sipped his coffee ration there with no idea that structure would be forever associated with coffee.
As Jacob was fighting a war, a young Kentucky boy named Joel Cheek was learning that farming wasn’t for him. Cheek came of age after the War and looked for his fortune in Nashville at 21, where he became a traveling wholesale grocery salesman primarily serving his home state of Kentucky. [3] Coffee was one of the products he was expected to sell. Cheek’s interest in coffee grew. By 1884, Cheek had a growing family and left the traveling salesman role for a settled life in Nashville, where he tried to capitalize on his increasing understanding of coffee. Though his “initial knowledge of coffee was minimal,” he learned much from a friend who “could tell the origins of coffee just by smelling the green, unroasted beans.”[4] Pendergrast observed that “by 1892” Cheek “believed he had found the perfect blend.”[5] He gave a twenty-pound sample to The Maxwell House purchaser who served it. When the hotel had served it all, they returned to their previous brand, only to receive customer complaints about the dip in quality. “From then on, the Maxwell House bought Cheek’s beans, granting his request to name the blend after the hotel following a six-month trial.”[6] The company began to grow. “He formed the Nashville Coffee & Manufacturing Co. in 1899. It was merged in 1901 into the Cheek-Neal Coffee Co.”[7]
By 1906, The Spice Mill, the leading coffee journal in the nation, highlighted Cheek in a headline article that trumpeted his “capable management” that increased demand “so rapidly that new facilities were installed to meet [demand] and the capital stock increased from $42,000 to $100,000, which sum has been considerably increased by substantial surplus earnings.” [8]
Cheek continued to expand his business, growing the Maxwell House brand into national prominence and building his name in the coffee business through his commitment to quality and mastery of advertising. Though probably apocryphal, Cheek’s appropriation of President Teddy Roosevelt’s praise of the coffee as “Good to the last drop!” rocketed the coffee into a household name that made all other brands play second fiddle for years to come.[9] Cheek had made a fortune by 1914 and moved his attention towards national and international coffee issues, becoming president of the National Coffee Roaster’s Association in 1922.[10] The Maxwell House Hotel burned to the ground on Christmas night of 1961, just over 100 years after my ancestor spent a couple of free nights in its unfinished shell. Were it not for Joel Cheek and his insistence on quality, excellence in advertising, and commitment to exceptional business practices, the phrase “Maxwell House” would be meaningless.
Bibliography
Johnson, Olivia. “Maxwell House, Good to Its Last Drop.” Houston History2016.
Paine, Ophelia. Tennessee Encyclopedia. Tennesseeencyclopedia.net Tennessee Historical Society, 2017. URL http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/maxwell-house-hotel/
Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds. 3rd Trade Paperback Edition ed. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Shively, Jacob. Letter to Mary Shively. Kevin Hostettler Personal Collection.
Ukers, Wiliam H. “Well-Known Coffee Roasters.” The Spice Mill, January, 1906.
Ukers, William H. All About Coffee. New York: The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, 1922.
[1]. Jacob Shively, Letter to Mary Shively, 8 March 1863, Kevin Hostettler Personal Collection.
[2]. Tennessee Encyclopedia, s.v. “Maxwell House Hotel,” accessed April 13, 2023, URL http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/maxwell-house-hotel/
[3]. William H. Ukers, All About Coffee (New York: The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, 1922), 509.
[4]. Olivia Johnson, “Maxwell House, Good to Its Last Drop,” Houston History, 2016, 22.
[5]. Mark Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds, 3rd Trade Paperback Edition ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 124.
[6]. Ibid.
[7]. Ukers, 509.
[8]. Wiliam H. Ukers, “Well-Known Coffee Roasters,” The Spice Mill, January, 1906, 14.
[9]. Pendergrast, 125.
[10]. Ukers (1922), 515.
A Thousand Thunders 
When I was a kid in Kansas there were constant competing commercials on TV for “Folger’s, the richest kind” vs. “Maxwell House, good to the last drop.” wb
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