Finally, "Jake" was Jamaica Ginger --- a cheap patent medicine with high alcohol content that could be diluted, rebottled and consumed (or sold). Needless to say, it was popular during Prohibition. It also was wild stuff and could result in permanent neurological damage if consumed indiscriminately.
So when William McKinley Weller provided jake as liquid refreshment at a farm sale in Cedar Township during the fall of 1925, a brawl resulted, he was arrested and ended up in the Lucas County Jail and as the focal point of the following report in The Chariton Leader of Nov. 10, 1925:
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A man with the distinguished name of McKinley Weller, from Monroe County, is to pay the penalty for not accepting prohibition as an inviolable law and was sentenced to jail for six months by Judge E.S. Wells on Saturday, and on top of this has been assessed a fine of $800. This probably will amount to a 14 months residence in Lucas County's jail.
He was charged with the offense of bringing the jake to the Roy Long sale in Cedar township, near Haydock, a short time since. This was distributed and was the means of creating much disturbance at that time. In fact, the new wine was uncorked from old bottles and an orgy is said to have resulted.
When Monroe county jake comes in contact with Lucas county appetites, something is bound to break loose which is neither well nor weller.
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McKinley was 23 at the time of his arrest and something of a drifter, although Chariton remained home base and his parents, William A. and Cyle May (Carmack) Weller are buried here. I have no idea how long he actually remained in jail.
He was living in Washington by the time World War II broke out, still single, and served from there although nearly 40. During 1956, age 54, he married a widow, Eva (Krenz) Powers, and they were living at Camas, Washington, when he died at the age of 57 on Jan. 25, 1960. He is buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.
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