Francis, Richard “Dick”

(1827–1888), was a Washington, DC, bartender known for his long service at one of that city’s most beloved old watering holes and his many friendships with members of the United States’ governing class. Francis was born to free black parents in Surry County, Virginia. When he was twenty-one, he began working at Andrew Hancock’s saloon, a quaint, curio-filled establishment on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. He would remain there for thirty-six years, most of them as head bartender.

Among the regular customers with whom Francis was, as the Washington Post noted in his obituary, “on terms of friendly intimacy” were such major political figures of the late antebellum years as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. Indeed, that same obituary posited that Francis “had probably known more of the men famous in American history and had had a better opportunity of observing them” than any person of his race in the country.

Of course, Francis wouldn’t have met all of those celebrities if his characteristic humor and courtly manners weren’t accompanied by superior skills as a mixologist. Under his administration, the bar at Hancock’s became famous for its strictly-according-to-Hoyle Mint Julep, its Flowerpot Punch (an elaborately garnished single-serving punch), its sugar-rimmed Hell and Blazes Cocktail, its Hot Buttered Rum, and a few other specialties. See Mint Julep; punch;, hot buttered rum. Add the excellent fried chicken dinner served in the back room, and the loyalty of Francis’s customers is easily understood.

In 1885, Francis left Hancock’s when one of his regulars, a senator, secured him the management of the Senate’s bar and restaurant. He died three years later, leaving behind a more than modest fortune earned through his extensive and canny investments in Washington real estate. Although Francis apparently never learned to read or write, his son, John R. Francis, became a medical doctor and an educator and a pioneer of the civil rights movement. Hancock’s soldiered on until 1914, when Prohibitionist fervor cost it its liquor license. See Prohibition, Temperance in America. The quaint little building it occupied was demolished in 1931.

“A Famous Bartender Dead.” Washington Post, November 6, 1888, p2.

Washington Post, August 16, 1931.

By: David Wondrich