The Scholar’s Corner

c. 7000 BCE

Archaeochemical evidence supports production of a mixed fermented beverage by about 7000 BCE.

c. 6000 BCE

Chemical residue in a Georgian jar supports wine production around 6000 BCE.

c. 866 CE

By around 866, al-Kindi discussed distillation of date-palm wine in a work on perfume and distillations.

Mid-12th century

Arabic and Persian writing on distillation was translated into Latin at Salerno in the mid-twelfth century.

1494

A Scottish Exchequer entry records malt supplied to Friar John Cor to make aquavitae.

1513

Bordeaux notarial registers record a shipment of spirits to Picardie in 1513, followed by other small international shipments later in the decade.

1621

Tisquantum’s 1621 maize instruction is a located agricultural exchange.

c. 1620–1622

Thorpe’s December 19, 1620 letter describes a drink made from Indian corn but does not explicitly say it was distilled. A separately transmitted estate inventory lists an old copper still; equipment ownership does not establish the finished drink’s method or identity.

April–October 1648

In April 1648, Emanuel Downing wrote that he had sold a horse to buy a still and requested a German recipe for making strong water from unmalted rye meal. An October letter reported three months of distilling and local preference for the product.

Late 17th–early 18th centuries

Colonial New England rum production supported cooperage, ironwork, logging, shipping, and commercial distilling capacity that later formed part of the material environment of American grain-spirit production.

Revolutionary era–1790s

Domestic grain, disrupted molasses trade, price, policy, and national identity combined to favor whiskey over rum.

1791–1794

The federal whiskey excise became a focal point for wider disputes over representation, regional power, enforcement, and federalism.

July 16, 1794

At daybreak on July 16, 1794, about fifty armed men marched to federal excise supervisor John Neville’s house.

August 3, 1795

The August 3, 1795 treaty combined territorial cessions with written obligations and protections.

1797–1799

James Anderson's 1797 proposal became a purpose-built five-still distillery operating by spring 1798. Mount Vernon's 1799 ledger records more than eighty transactions totaling 10,942 gallons valued at $7,674; Hanson, Peter, Nat, Daniel, James, and Timothy performed the distilling labor under enslavement.

1799–2022 (documented episodes)

Complete 1799 Mount Vernon records identify James as an enslaved worker mostly employed at the distillery and separately record payment to enslaved distillery workers for holiday labor. Later histories document additional participation and uneven archival or public visibility, while Brown-Forman’s 2022 report names three Green descendants working at Jack Daniel Distillery. The period entry presents these as distinct, cited episodes rather than a national workforce estimate.

July 15, 1799

In a census dated July 15, 1799, George Washington identified James, about twenty-four, among the enslaved people whose labor he rented from Penelope French. Washington described James as a cradler and recorded that he had been employed mostly at the distillery.

December 25, 1799

The Mount Vernon cash ledger records a December 25, 1799 payment of $1.16 to enslaved workers at the distillery for labor performed during the holidays. The annual distillery account repeats the charge as cash paid at the Christmas holidays.

19th century

During the nineteenth century, American distilling shifted from cottage production toward factory systems.

After 1806

Following Adam Carpenter’s death in 1806, Catherine Spears Frye Carpenter used whiskey distilling as one source of income.

After 1806–1908 (documented episodes)

Named institutional records document Catherine Carpenter’s income-producing distilling after 1806 and Sanborn-map attribution of Greenbrier Distillery to Louisa Nelson from 1893 through 1908; the records also show why role-specific language matters.

1845–1880

From the first reported distillery enterprise in 1845 to the mature system described in 1880, Peoria linked corn, spirits production, river and rail transport, distillery swill, stockyards, and large livestock markets.

October 6, 1846

The dated departure records forced removal, not voluntary migration or the disappearance of all Myaamia people.

Mainly the 1850s; codified by 1862

Wondrich's synthesis places the uneven establishment of routine cocktail icing mainly in the 1850s. Primary evidence documents a commercially supplied iced cocktail preparation in 1855, while Jerry Thomas codified fine ice, shaking, and straining for a Whiskey Cocktail in 1862.

1862

Jerry Thomas’s 1862 bar manual specifies a Whiskey Cocktail made with fine ice, shaken, and strained into a wine-glass.

1862–1882

Federal excise taxation and bonded warehousing made regulated storage and tax-timed withdrawal structural parts of whiskey commerce; officials later linked longer bonding to fine-whiskey production.

July 1, 1862 (effective August 1)

Congress imposed a twenty-cent-per-gallon federal excise on distilled spirits, effective August 1, while allowing duty to remain deferred until sale or removal from warehouse.

July 20, 1868

Section 15 required a distiller-provided warehouse approved as a bonded warehouse of the United States, under revenue control, with tax paid before withdrawal.

Late 19th century

Competition from rectifiers helped bourbon producers articulate and defend ideas of authentic product identity.

1872

Isaac and Bernard Bernheim established their wholesale whiskey business in Paducah in 1872. This is the firm's founding date, not a settled date for the introduction of I. W. Harper.

1872–mid-20th century

Named Catholic and Jewish entrepreneurs and family networks participated in distinct whiskey roles—production, brand ownership, capital formation, wholesaling, medicinal supply, and distribution—without sharing one uniform motive.

1880

The Census Office connected Peoria’s nationally prominent spirits output to corn, river and rail transport, distillery swill, stockyards, and large-scale livestock handling.

1880–1920

National Prohibition emerged through an institutional sequence spanning state constitutional precedents, organized national pressure, congressional and state constitutional action, temporary wartime restrictions, federal implementing legislation, and the beginning of enforcement.

November 1880

Kansas voters ratified a state constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, effective May 1, 1881.

April 3, 1882

Commissioner Green B. Raum wrote that extending the bonded period to three years had given 'quite a stimulus' to the manufacture of fine whiskies.

1893–1908

Four reproduced Sanborn sheets label the operating Greenbrier Distillery under the business style “Louisa Nelson as Chas. Nelson.”

May 24, 1893

A statewide Anti-Saloon League formed in Oberlin, Ohio, creating an organizational model for coordinated, issue-focused prohibition campaigning.

December 18, 1895

State leagues joined in Washington, D.C., to establish the National Anti-Saloon League.

1897

The 1897 Bottled-in-Bond regime tied a consumer-facing designation to production standards and federally supervised custody.

Early 20th century

American whiskey labels increasingly became enforceable representations of category, contents, provenance, and producer.

1906

The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act intensified product-identity regulation without resolving every dispute over what could be called whiskey.

1909–1937

Tennessee's 1909 manufacture ban displaced Jack Daniel distilling operations to St. Louis and Birmingham. The state ban outlasted national Prohibition; distilling resumed in Lynchburg after Tennessee repealed the ban in 1937.

1909

The 1909 Taft decision preserved whiskey status for straight and blended products while requiring meaningful type disclosure.

1909–1937

The manufacture ban enacted in 1909 took effect January 1, 1910. The Jack Daniel case documents changing production locations, corporate and warehouse interests, and a 1937 return; it is not a universal pathway for Tennessee firms.

February 4, 1909

Tennessee’s legislature passed Chapter 10 of the Acts of 1909 over the governor’s veto, creating a statewide ban on manufacturing intoxicating liquor for sale.

July 1, 1909

Chapter 1 completed Tennessee’s four-mile-law system and took effect July 1, 1909, making beverage sales unlawful statewide in the court’s account.

January 1, 1910

Tennessee’s Chapter 10 ban on manufacturing intoxicating liquor for sale became effective, subject to a narrow exception for at least 188-proof alcohol made for specified nonbeverage purposes.

May 25, 1911

Agreed facts later published in Motlow v. State record Lem Motlow producing 375 gallons of 100-proof whiskey for sale at the Jack Daniel’s distillery; Tennessee’s high court affirmed the resulting conviction.

December 18, 1917

After the House passed a modified prohibition resolution on December 17, Congress submitted the Eighteenth Amendment to the states on December 18, 1917.

1918

Naval Captain William H. Stayton established the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment in 1918.

1918–1933

Organized Repeal developed through national opposition groups, women-led mobilization and party realignment, Depression-era economic arguments, a successful presidential campaign, a deliberately chosen state-convention mechanism, and the decisive ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment.

November 21, 1918

Congress enacted the Wartime Prohibition Act shortly after the Armistice, establishing temporary restrictions that would take effect in 1919.

January 16, 1919

Nebraska supplied the thirty-sixth state ratification required for the Eighteenth Amendment on January 16, 1919.

June 30, 1919

The Wartime Prohibition Act’s restrictions on beverage alcohol took effect on June 30, 1919.

October 28, 1919

Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto and enacted the National Prohibition Act, commonly called the Volstead Act, on October 28, 1919.

National Prohibition era

Legal medicinal whiskey operated through a regulated supply chain of bonded inventory and authorized production, permitted physicians, pharmacists, prescriptions, controlled records, packaging, quantity limits, and replenishment allotments.

1920s–1950s

Prohibition removed legal production capacity and shifted stocks and brands through restricted medicinal channels. Repeal did not restore the earlier landscape: licensing, plant restart, inventory finance, aging, distribution, and acquisitions advantaged firms able to operate at scale.

1920–1933

National Prohibition did not create organized crime, but the illegal alcohol market enlarged criminal opportunity while mass enforcement flooded federal courts, accelerated plea-based case processing, expanded prison administration, and shaped enduring search-and-seizure doctrine.

1920–post-Repeal

Prohibition destroyed capacity and altered competition and consumption in ways that survived Repeal.

January 17, 1920

The Eighteenth Amendment became operative and legal enforcement of National Prohibition began on January 17, 1920.

November 23, 1921

A supplemental act limited medicinal prescriptions to spirituous and vinous liquor, capped the alcohol that could be supplied to a patient within ten days, and generally limited physicians to one hundred prescription blanks per ninety days absent an approved extraordinary reason.

June 26, 1923

Lem Motlow, T. A. Heffernan, and Harry L. Dahlman sold all stock in the St. Louis-based Jack Daniel Distilling Company to Don H. Robinson and transferred warehouse certificates for its stored whiskey.

May 1929

After leaving the Republican Party to fight for Repeal, Pauline Morton Sabin founded the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform in May 1929.

January 22, 1930

Prohibition Commissioner James M. Doran reported manufacturing allotments to eleven named concentration warehousemen that were distillers or successors to distillers, on a basis of approximately 2,000,000 gallons or 40,000 barrels.

1932

Franklin D. Roosevelt made ending Prohibition part of his successful 1932 presidential campaign amid Depression-era interest in legal liquor tax revenue.

December 5, 1932

Representative Henry T. Rainey introduced H.J. Res. 480 with a state-convention ratification provision; the measure failed to reach the required two-thirds House vote.

1933–mid-20th century

Bourbon recovered more strongly than rye after Repeal because producers and regions rebuilt under unequal conditions.

1933–1941

Repeal resumed legal production but did not restore the pre-1920 industry; rebuilding occurred with fewer firms, lost stocks and skills, new controls, and unequal access to capital.

February 15, 1933

Senator Joseph T. Robinson restored Rainey’s state-convention ratification provision to the Senate repeal resolution.

February 16, 1933

The Senate approved the repeal amendment proposal after restoration of the state-convention ratification provision.

February 20, 1933

The House approved the repeal resolution 289 to 121 and Congress submitted the proposed Twenty-first Amendment for ratification by conventions in three-fourths of the states.

March 22, 1933

Congress and President Roosevelt approved a limited legal opening for specified fermented beverages containing no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight.

April 7, 1933

The Cullen–Harrison Act’s limited exemption for specified fermented beverages took effect fifteen days after enactment.

December 4, 1933

Roosevelt established FACA under the National Industrial Recovery Act to coordinate alcohol control and administer codes, agreements, licenses, and rules.

December 5, 1933

Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment while preserving state authority over importation contrary to state law.

1935

According to Max Shapira, people with pre-Prohibition distilling knowledge approached the Shapira brothers for startup capital; the family invested about $18,000 in 1935 and bought out the partners less than two years later.

August 29, 1935

The FAA Act created the Federal Alcohol Administration within Treasury and provided for replacement of the earlier FACA structure.

March 1, 1938

Federal Regulations No. 5 made charred new oak storage part of the type definition for bourbon and several related American whiskies produced on or after March 1, 1938.

1941–1945

Federal wartime controls redirected substantial American beverage-distillery capacity toward high-proof industrial alcohol.

January 15, 1942

General Preference Order M-69 took effect, directing covered distilling equipment capable of producing spirits at 190 proof or higher from corn or other grain toward that production for wartime needs.

February 20, 1942

M-69 Supplementary Order No. 3 took immediate effect, barring beverage use of covered 190-proof-or-higher grain-alcohol production capacity and directing that capacity to industrial and specified wartime uses.

October 8, 1942

By this date, production of most distilled spirits for beverage purposes had been discontinued; the Bureau of Internal Revenue specifically excepted brandy and rum.

November 1, 1942

The amended M-69 regime took effect for high wines, expressly barring beverage use or allocation of grain spirits below 190 proof produced on or after November 1 unless the War Production Board specifically authorized it.

August 1944

A temporary August production holiday allowed beverage alcohol to be made for the first time since the October 1942 industry cessation.

September 27, 1944

According to OPA's quarterly report, the Emergency Court of Appeals rejected Foster & Co.'s challenge after standardized dollar-and-cent ceilings reduced the previously approved maximum price for its new packaged-whiskey brand.

January 1945

A second temporary wartime production holiday released alcohol-manufacturing facilities for beverage-alcohol production during January 1945.

July–October 1945

A July release was followed by narrow, grain- and plant-specific production windows. WFO 141 authorized registered distilleries to use non-corn grain August 1–6 and qualifying industrial alcohol plants August 1–3; an official retrospective account reports additional shorter releases through October.

August 1–6, 1945

War Food Order 141 allows registered distilleries to produce beverage spirits from non-corn grain during August 1–6, while qualifying industrial alcohol plants receive a shorter August 1–3 window.

August 31, 1945

War Production Board Priorities Regulation 31 revoked Order M-69, Distilled Spirits, effective August 31, 1945.

September 1, 1945–November 30, 1946

Beginning September 1, 1945, the Agriculture Department prohibited grain use for beverage spirits without authorization and administered the postwar allocation framework. Fixed total-use controls ended December 1, 1946, though narrower grain restrictions remained.

December 1, 1946–late October 1947

After Agriculture ended its authorization and fixed-total-use quota regime on December 1, 1946, distillers operated without total-use production quotas until a voluntary grain-conservation shutdown began in late October 1947.

Fiscal year 1947

Four large companies accounted for just under half of spirits production but approximately three-quarters of bottled-whiskey marketing, according to a 1948 Senate account.

Late October–December 24, 1947 (official accounts differ by one day)

The distilling industry paused production for roughly two months as part of national grain-conservation efforts, before negotiations for a continuing voluntary program broke down.

December 31, 1947–January 31, 1948

A one-month Department of Agriculture order imposed plant-specific grain quotas on beverage distillers, prohibited wheat, required reports, and published each eligible plant's allocation.

January 31, 1948

When the one-month allocation authority expired before Congress extended it, Truman urged distillers to keep the January quotas and wheat prohibition voluntarily.

1950s–1970s

Vodka and other lighter-tasting spirits gained favor while American whiskey producers lowered proofs and pursued lighter product responses during a severe category contraction.

1953

Maker’s Mark dates Margie Samuels’s creation of the brand name and bottle design to 1953; KDA also credits her with bread-based grain testing, label, lettering, and later wax identity.

1953–1958

Margie Samuels participated in bread-based grain testing in 1953 and created Maker’s Mark’s name and core package identity; the first finished and hand-dipped bottle followed in 1958.

1958

Maker’s Mark’s company chronology states that the first bottle was finished and hand-dipped in 1958; a federal opinion independently records use of the dripping red wax since 1958.

1964

Congress recognized bourbon as a distinctive product of the United States in 1964.

January 26, 1968

Treasury rejected proposals to loosen the traditional proof and cooperage rules for American whiskey types and instead published a distinct light-whisky standard for higher-proof domestic whisky aged in used or uncharred new oak.

1980s–early 2000s

American whiskey’s late-twentieth-century revival connected premium products to a broader quality-drink and connoisseur culture.

1984

Blanton’s entered the U.S. market in 1984 as a deliberately positioned premium single-barrel bourbon.

1990–2020

From 1990 through 2020, small U.S. distilling expanded rapidly and spread across many states and regions.

Early 2000s

Renewed rye demand depleted mature stocks faster than producers could replace them. Existing mature inventory held by contract distillers helped new brands enter while newly distilled rye still required years of aging.

By the early 2010s

By the early 2010s, Kentucky bourbon tourism linked distillery visits, sensory education, architecture, hospitality, transportation, and urban tasting venues into a regional interpretive network.

2022

Brown-Forman’s 2022 annual report identified Jerome Vance, Debbie Staples, and Jackie Hardin as direct descendants of Nathan “Nearest” Green working at the Jack Daniel Distillery. The report also framed the Green family’s connection as multigenerational and described institutional commemoration and advancement programs.