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Antique 1910s Frankle Brothers Cigar Co. Draft-Advice Sheet, Youngstown, Ohio
Size: 9 1/2" x 6" ~ Unused, crisp printing; a touch more edge wear on some than others.
What It Is
This unused sheet is the notice The Frankle Brothers Co. of Youngstown sent customers when a draft had been drawn against their account. It opens "M ______, Dear Sir:," reads "We have this day drawn on you for ___ invoice ___," and closes "trusting you will honor same, appreciating your favors, we remain, Respectfully Yours, The Frankle Brothers Co., per ___" - every one of those blanks left unfilled on ours. Even the printed date line, "Youngstown, O. ___ 191__," leaves off its final digit, marking the whole print run for the 1910s. The picture across the top shows the firm's own four-story brick building on the corner of West Federal and Phelps Streets, storefront signs reading "Frankle Brothers, Wholesale, Cigar & Tobacconists," with wagons and a streetcar passing by. The sheet also carries "Established 1884," "Manufacturers and Jobbers of Cigars," and names M. Frankle as president and A. M. Frankle as vice president and secretary.
Two Brothers and a Cigar Business
Born in Austria-Hungary in 1867, Almon Max Frankle crossed to America at 14, peddling goods from a pack before he learned the cigar trade in a Youngstown shop and at a Cleveland factory. He struck out on his own in the cigar business in 1884 - the National Cigar History Museum remembers it as a three-man cigar factory and brokerage - brought his brother Mose in as partner a year later - Mose being the "M. Frankle, Pres." named on this sheet - and by 1892 the pair had moved into the very building pictured at the top, selling wholesale and retail across a hundred miles around Youngstown. Their cigar brands included REVELATION, ABBEY and MOMAX.
Longtime Youngstown residents tell it that the Frankles built real wealth on cigars during the city's steel boom, pulled back to a smaller storefront through the Depression, and eventually sold out to the Shagrin Brothers in the 1950s, with Anchor Cigar taking over after that in the '60s.
SPECIFICATIONS
- Issuer: The Frankle Brothers Co., Youngstown, Ohio
- Form: draft-advice notice, unused
- Established: 1884 (printed)
- Date range: printed for use in the 1910s
