In days gone by, Pekin was the home of several alcohol distilleries, among which were the Star Distillery, the Crescent Distillery, and the Globe Distillery (which was a Herget family business venture). The Star, the Crescent, and the Globe were successively managed by one of Pekin’s late 19th-century business leaders, George Elbert “Ell” Emmitt (1853-1922).
The Ohio-born Ell Emmitt came from a family of distillers, his father Robert Emmitt operating a distillery in Peoria from 1856 to 1862 as well as another distillery in Ohio from 1862 to 1883. After learning the trade from his father, in 1882 Ell took a job as as manager of a distillery in Lexington, Kentucky. Then in 1888 he came to Pekin to become superintendent of the Star Distillery. Later he worked for the Crescent Distillery, and then in 1892 he supervised the construction of the Globe Distillery and became manager and yeast maker for the Globe.
George “Ell” Emmitt’s biography was included in “Portrait and Biographical Record of Tazewell and Mason Counties, Illinois” (1894), pages 558-559, as follows:
“GEORGE E. EMMITT. The Buckeye State has contributed to Illinois many estimable citizens, and none are more worthy of respect and esteem than the subject of this sketch, who is manager and yeast maker in the Globe Distillery at Pekin. He was born in Waverly, Ohio, June 17, 1853, and is the son of Robert Emmitt, who was a native of Pennsylvania, and who located with his parents in Ohio when quite young. The father was also a distiller, which business he carried on in Peoria, whither he had come in 1856. He remained here six years, and on his return to Ohio, carried on the same business in partnership with his brother, James Emmitt, until his decease, in 1883.
“Mrs. Eliza J. (Renode) Emmitt, the mother of our subject, was born in New York, and accompanied her parents on their removal to Ohio. They first located in Waverly, but afterwards moved to Chillicothe. Her father, Stephen Renode, was a cooper by trade and an early settler of Pittsfield, Ohio, where the declining years of his life were spent.
“George E., of this sketch, was educated in the public schools of the Buckeye State, and when reaching his sixteenth year was apprenticed to learn the distiller’s trade under the instruction of his father. He was thus employed for about ten years in Chillicothe and Waverly, and in 1882 went to Lexington, Ky., accepting a position as manager of a distillery in that city. Six years later he came to Pekin and was made Superintendent of the Star Distillery, later was with the Crescent and is now manager of the Globe Distillery. The building of the latter was erected in 1892 under the supervision of our subject, and was incorporated with a capital of $250,000. It employs about one hundred men and has a capacity of five thousand bushels of grain a day.
“While residing in Kentucky, in 1886, Mr. Emmitt was married to Maude McClure, who was a native of that state; she bore him two children, Minnie F. and George R. Socially, our subject is an Odd Fellow, belongs to the encampment and is connected with the Ancient Order of United Workmen. He has also been Assistant Adjutant of the Fourth Regiment, and is in politics a true-blue Republican. He keeps thoroughly abreast of the times in the improvements and progress made in his calling, is well informed on the current topics of the day, and converses with intelligence on all leading subjects.”
A few years after the publication of the above biographical sketch, George and his family moved to Harrison Township in Vigo County, Indiana, to work for a distillery there. The 1900 U.S. Census shows him working as a distiller in Harrison Township. He settled with his family in Terre Haute in that township, retiring there — and there he died at home of a cerebral hemorrhage on 4 Feb. 1922. He is buried in Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute.
