The Short Version
A name, a definition, and an invention are three different things. Drew Hannush reports finding “Lincoln County process” in an 1896 newspaper, but that reference did not explain the process. His later examples show how advertising attached a more specific meaning to the name. None of those dates, by itself, identifies an inventor.
Reference and Locators
Drew Hannush, The Lost History of Tennessee Whiskey: Heroes, Villains, and Legends from a Whiskey Story Time Forgot (Travel Fuels Life LLC, 2023), displayed ebook p. 102; supplied PDF sheet 117. The surrounding discussion is on sheets 116–118. This supplied capture has gaps and ends before the book’s reference apparatus, so it cannot support a complete-source verification claim.
Drew Hannush, Whiskey Lore: Volume One: The Real Stories Behind the Biggest Myths and Legends (Travel Fuels Life LLC, 2025), chapter 5, “The Lincoln County Process,” subsection “The Rise of the Process,” supplied PDF sheets 92–93; endnotes 51–54 on sheet 331. The screen’s reading-progress numbers are not verified print page numbers. These are two books by the same author, not two independent confirmations.
Four Dates, Different Evidence
The following sequence summarizes Hannush’s account. The original newspaper pages have not been independently inspected for this reader.
- 1896 — a phrase without a definition. Hannush identifies a Robertson County feature in Louisville’s Courier-Journal as the earliest use he found. That is a statement about his search, not proof that no earlier example exists.
- 1905 — the phrase in an advertisement. He points to an E. R. Betterton & Co. advertisement for Old White Oak whiskey. The wording, as he reports it, still does not specify the production steps.
- 1952 — a capitalized advertising name. Hannush describes an advertisement selling Jack Daniel’s under the “Old Lincoln County Process” name. The advertisement did not explain the process. Capital letters are evidence of presentation, not proof of a standardized method.
- 1954 — an explicit charcoal description. His next example describes leaching whiskey through sugar-maple charcoal. It supplies a clearer description in that advertisement; it does not date the invention of charcoal treatment.
What the Evidence Can Carry
The useful lesson is to separate the history of the name from the history of the practice. An old phrase can acquire a more specific meaning over time. We should not automatically project the later description onto every earlier use.
Hannush’s 2023 statement about not finding nineteenth-century producer or merchant usage also needs its original scope. It cannot be turned into “the phrase never appeared in the nineteenth century”: his own positive example is an 1896 newspaper article.
For readers tracing his references, the 2025 book’s endnotes identify:
- “Robertson County, Tennessee and Its Capital,” The Courier-Journal, April 19, 1896, p. 26 (note 51).
- E. R. Betterton & Co. advertisement, The Chattanooga News, November 21, 1905, p. 10 (note 52).
- Jack Daniel’s advertisement, Springfield Leader and Press, October 24, 1952, p. 5 (note 53).
- Jack Daniel’s advertisement, Albuquerque Journal, February 13, 1954, p. 14 (note 54).
These are bibliographic leads cited by Hannush. Listing them here does not convert them into independently verified primary evidence.
Try the Evidence Test
An advertisement uses a process name but gives no recipe or production steps. Can you use it to date the name, define the method, or identify the inventor?
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Myths, Memory, and Uncertainty
