Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel ( January 1849 – October 9, 1911)
was an American
distiller
Distillation, or classical distillation, is the process of separating the components or substances from a liquid mixture by using selective boiling and condensation, usually inside an apparatus known as a still. Dry distillation is the heating ...
and businessman, best known as the founder of the
Jack Daniel's
Jack Daniel's is a brand of Tennessee whiskey. It is produced in Lynchburg, Tennessee, by the Jack Daniel Distillery, which has been owned by the Brown–Forman Corporation since 1956.
Packaged in square bottles, Jack Daniel's "Black Label" ...
Tennessee whiskey
Tennessee whiskey is straight whiskey produced in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Although it has been legally defined as a bourbon whiskey in some international trade agreements, most current producers of Tennessee whiskey disclaim references to ...
distillery.
Early life
Daniel was the youngest of ten children born to Calaway and Lucinda Matilda (née Cook) Daniel.
He was of
Scots-Irish,
Scottish, and
Welsh descent; his grandfather, Joseph "Job" Daniel, was born in Wales, while his grandmother, Elizabeth Calaway, was born in Scotland.
[Krass, Peter]
''Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel''
Wiley, April 29, 2004 (page 7: "after he was born in 1849" (the 1900 census for Lynchburg, Moore Co., TN shows "Jack Daniel" as having been born in August 1851, in residence with his sister Bettie Connor and her husband and nephew Jack D. Mittlow.); page 19: "By the time Jack was born in January 1849"; page 76: "They named their company simply Daniel & Call, the partnership effective November 27, 1875 – a date to be celebrated, for it officially marks a great whiskey legend's entry into the business as the owner of a distillery."; page 78: "November 1875, the month Jack and Dan formed their partnership"; page 210: "Jack Daniel welcomed the end on October 9, 1911"). His paternal grandparents emigrated to the United States in the late 18th century.
Daniel's date of birth is unknown. According to one source, he was born in January 1849, in or around
Lynchburg, Tennessee.
A town fire had destroyed the courthouse records, and, because his mother died shortly after his birth, most likely due to complications from childbirth,
conflicting dates on his and his mother's tombstones have left Daniel's date of birth in question. On June 26, 1851, his father remarried and had another three children with Matilda Vanzant.
Daniel was raised in the
Primitive Baptist
Primitive Baptists – also known as Hard Shell Baptists, Foot Washing Baptists or Old School Baptists – are conservative Baptists adhering to a degree of Calvinist beliefs who coalesced out of the controversy among Baptists in the early 19th c ...
church.
The
company that now owns the distillery claims that
Jack Daniel's
Jack Daniel's is a brand of Tennessee whiskey. It is produced in Lynchburg, Tennessee, by the Jack Daniel Distillery, which has been owned by the Brown–Forman Corporation since 1956.
Packaged in square bottles, Jack Daniel's "Black Label" ...
was first licensed in 1866.
[Jack Daniel's official website]
Brown–Forman Corporation. However, in the 2004 biography ''Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel'',
author
An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states:
"''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
Peter Krass maintains that land and deed records show that the distillery was actually not founded until 1875.
According to company histories, sometime in the 1850s, when Daniel was a boy, he went to work for a preacher, grocer, and distiller named Dan Call. The preacher, as the stories went, was a busy man, and when he saw promise in young Jack, he taught him how to run his whiskey still.
However, on June 25, 2016, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported the company's view that Daniel did not learn distilling from Call, but from a man named
Nearest Green (misspelled as "Nearis" in the 1880 census)
—one of Call's slaves.
Personal life
Daniel never married and did not have children. However, he took his nephews under his wing, one of whom was
Lemuel "Lem" Motlow.
Motlow, a son of Jack's sister Finetta,
was skilled with numbers and was soon doing all of the distillery's bookkeeping.
Distillery and health
In 1907, due to failing health, Daniel gave the distillery over to Motlow and another one of his nephews.
Motlow soon bought out the other nephew and went on to operate the business off and on for about 40 years (interrupted by
Prohibition at the state level in three states starting in Tennessee in 1910 and then at the federal level from 1920 to 1933 and at the state level again until 1938, and then again between 1942 and 1946 when the U.S. government banned the manufacture of whiskey due to
World War II).
Motlow died in 1947.
Daniel died from
blood poisoning
Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is follo ...
in Lynchburg on October 9, 1911.
An oft-told
tall tale
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some tall tales are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories ("the fish that got away") such as, "That fish was so big, why I tell ya', it n ...
is that the infection began in one of his toes, which Daniel injured one morning at work by kicking his safe in anger when he could not get it open (he was said to always have had trouble remembering the combination).
However, Daniel's modern biographer has asserted that the story is not true, offering evidence that Daniel raged on the safe a few years before dying of unrelated gangrene.
See also
*
Outline of whisky
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to whisky:
Whisky (also spelled whiskey) is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Daniel, Jack
American drink distillers
American people of Welsh descent
American people of Scottish descent
American people of Scotch-Irish descent
1849 births
1911 deaths
Infectious disease deaths in Tennessee
Deaths from sepsis
People from Lynchburg, Tennessee
Drink distillers
Baptists from Tennessee
19th-century Baptists
19th-century American businesspeople