P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company

This page deals with a brand of beer. For information about the publisher, see Ballantine Books.

Ballantine was an American brewery, founded by Peter Ballantine who was born in Scotland in 1781. It is best known for Ballantine Ale, a pale ale that is one of the oldest brands of beer in the United States. At its peak, Ballantine, was the 4th largest brewer in the United States.

Corporate history

Ballantine era

The company was founded in 1840 in Newark, New Jersey by Peter Ballantine (1781-1883), who emigrated from Scotland. The company was originally incorporated as the Patterson & Ballantine Brewing Company. Ballantine rented an old brewing site which had dated back to 1805. Around 1850 Ballantine bought out his partner and purchased land near the Passaic River to brew his ale. His three sons joined the business and in 1857 the company was renamed P. Ballantine and Sons. The name would be used for the next 115 years, until the company closed its brewery. By 1879 it had become sixth largest brewery in the US, almost twice as large as Anheuser-Busch. Ballantine added a second brewery location, also in Newark, in order to brew lager beer to fill out the company product line. Peter Ballantine died in 1883 and his eldest son had died just a few months earlier. His second oldest son then controled the company until his own death from cancer in 1895. The last son died in 1905 and the company was taken over by George Griswold Frelinghuysen, the company's vice-president, who was married to Peter Ballantine's granddaughter.

Frelinghuysen era

George Griswold Frelinghuysen (1851-1936) was the son of Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen and Matilda Elizabeth Griswold. He graduated from Rutgers College in 1870, received his Bachelor of Laws from Columbia University Law School in 1872, and was admitted to the New Jersey and New York bars in 1872 and 1876 respectively. George married Sara Linen Ballantine on April 26, 1881. Sara was the granddaughter of Peter Ballantine, the company founder. George and Sara had two children together: Peter Hood Ballantine Frelinghuysen I (1882-?) who married Adaline Havemeyer (1884-?); and Matilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen (1887-?). He started his career as a patent lawyer, eventually working for and becoming President of Ballantine at the death of the last Ballantine son in 1905. George died in 1935 and the George Griswold Frelinghuysen Arboretum is named for him.

Decline

In the 1960s the company went into decline. The breweries were closed and the beers were produced by a number of different outsourced companies, beginning with Rhode Island's Falstaff.

Brand name sold

As of 2005, the Ballantine Ale brand name is owned and marketed by the Pabst Brewing Company, which in turn outsources the brewing to the Miller Brewing Company.

Ballantine in popular culture

Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham was reputed to have "borrowed" the design of Ballantine's three-ring logo for his representative symbol on Led Zeppelin IV
Some statisticians refer to Venn diagrams as Ballentines (note spelling) because the beer cans label looks like a Venn diagram.
The abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning said of gallery owner Leo Castelli, that "he could sell anything. He could even sell beer cans." The artist Jasper Johns heard of this statement, and produced a series of castings in bronze of Ballantine Ale cans, with labels painted on, under the title Painted Bronze.

Sources

Kennedy, Peter, "Ballentine: A Graphical Aid for Econometrics," Australian Economics Papers, v. 20, 1981, pp. 414-416.

External links