Transcript

THE OPENING (MYTH)

The year 1870, was a time of healing for a nation and reconstruction for the south, and it was the beginning of the gilded age which saw the rise of railroad and oil barons, and for Louisville, KY it a time of big post war population growth as the city stretched out its arms to hold its now over 100k inhabitants. Trade in tobacco, grain, and whiskey increased and Main Street — later known as Whiskey Row — resumed its growth as the hub for distribution of fine Kentucky Bourbon in the post war era. 

But for the first time, Bourbon was getting a bad name. It wasn’t because the distillers of the Inner Bluegrass Region had suddenly taken on bad business practices. It was more thanks to the rise of rectifying houses who churned out high proof grain spirits that were used to either dilute Bourbon or sold in lieu of the genuine article, with flavorings and other agents added to mimic Bourbon. It’s a practice that arose as whiskey distilling left the farm and became industrialized. More and more distillers were stepping away from selling direct to consumers and instead sold barrels to middlemen known as whiskey wholesalers. Once the barrel reached the wholesaler, anything could happen to that pure, genuine article. Reputable firms resold the barrels to saloons, grocers, and pharmacists unadulterated. But those that wanted to make some extra money might drain some of that Kentucky spirit from the barrel and then add water, cheap high proof grain spirits, chemicals, and colorants to stretch their profits.  

But for a young pharmaceutical salesman from Louisville, the flaws of the wholesaling system became too big to ignore. The doctors who depended on this young man to bring them quality and dependable whiskey for their patients were putting the blame on him.

It was then that young George Garvin Brown had an inspired thought. What if he went straight to the distilleries, cutting out the devious middleman and simply bottled the whiskey himself. Better yet, he could seal the bottles — and to prove he stood behind their quality, personally hand-sign each one. 

He signed contracts with three regional distilleries, Mattingly, Mellwood, and Atherton, set up an office on Louisville's Main Street and started batching the Bourbon, to help create consistency that would earn back the trust of his doctors and druggists. Borrowing the name of William Forrester, a well-known surgeon from the Union Army’s second infantry, George Garvin Brown made whiskey history by introducing Old Forester to market as the first bottled Bourbon. Or did he?

Welcome to Truth or Lore

INITIAL SETUP WHAT GOT ME COURIOUS ABOUT THIS MYTH

Like most whiskey fans, when I made my first journey along the Bourbon Trail in the summer of 2018, I was an open vessel willing to accept these claims as facts. And the Old Forester tour seemed to burst at the seams with claims. 

But it wasn’t long before the string of ‘firsts’ and conflicting stories I heard on the trail started to pile up. And my curious mind got me digging deeper into whatever documentation I could find to prove or disprove. 

In this series, Truth or Lore, I want to bring you into my process of challenging these stories so we can see if they hold up under the light of close scrutiny. The best way to get to the truth is to start with some baseline research. Who was George Garvin Brown, really? And when does Old Forester first appear and how?

FRAME HIS LIFE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

George Garvin Brown came into this world in 1846. His parents Mary Garvin and John Thompson Street Brown owned a small plantation with several enslaved workers, near the small village of Munfordville, where John was also a local merchant. Mary was John’s second wife, the first Elizabeth Creel brought three sons into the world including George’s much older half-brother J.T.S Brown. With an eye on getting their boy a strong education, they sent him to school in Louisville. George didn’t finish his schooling and instead opted to go into a trade. He went down to 416 Main Street and applied for a job at Wilson, Peter & Co, a wholesale druggist whose door proudly displayed its founding date — 1817. Back then, a drug store was more of an all purpose store, selling paints, oils, glass, tobacco, medicinal whiskey and perfume. His boss Arthur Peter, a junior partner in the business, saw something in George and put him to work as a clerk. 

At the same time, a budding entrepreneur named Henry Chambers, who had worked for the drug wholesale house of R.A. Robinson branched out on his own, buying another wholesale drug firm Lindenberger & Co at 328 Main Street in June of 1862. The business thrived and by the close of the war, Henry was able to upgrade to a fashionable new location across from the Louisville Hotel. Chambers would have great influence on young George and before long he left Wilson Peter, to work for Henry Chambers & Co as a wholesale pharmaceutical salesman. 

But 1870 would be a turning point for George. Toward the end of the previous year, Henry told him he was leaving the drug trade to join Darwin Kean in the wholesale grocery business. Henry recommended George to his old employer R.A. Robinson, but soon, word came from George’s half-brother J.T.S. Brown that he might have a much better opportunity up the street.

Now J.T.S. had taken a different path in starting his work life. Rather than going to school, he worked for his father at their Munfordville store. But in 1852, the town of Louisville was growing and the opportunity to become his own man was too strong to ignore. J.T.S. traveled 70 miles north, took odd jobs and in three years raised enough capital to partner with Joseph Allen as Allen, Brown & Co. grocers and commission merchants. When Allen retired in 1859, J.T.S. was soon on-his own, keeping up a modest liquor wholesale business until a fire blew his whiskey barrels sky high, gutting his block between 8th and 9th St on Main in July 1864. To his good fortune, his insurance covered the damage and he used the funds to build a new grocery and commission merchant store on the same block. When he heard his half brother had recently left his partnership with Henry Chambers, J.T.S. offered him part ownership in his store. And so, on May 14, 1870, J.T.S. Brown & Bro. — dealers in bacon, flour, grain, and pure copper whiskies — was born. 

BACK TO ME

So history tells us two things. First, the business that eventually became Brown-Forman didn’t start in 1870, it actually grew out of J.T.S. Brown’s already successful business. The second thing is, this was neither a distillery, nor a whiskey wholesaler. Instead it was a general commission merchant who sold whiskies as part of a larger stock of products.

So how long did it stay J.T.S. Brown and Bro. and when did the Old Forester brand appear?

Well, it seems Henry Chambers’ foray into the grocery business failed — not once, but twice. In need of a more stable partnership, he joined J.T.S. in April of 1873 to form Brown, Chambers & Co. 

But a year later, J.T.S. was done, ready to retire. So George and Henry carried on as Chambers, Brown & Co. For the next six years, the company went full force into promoting the liquor wholesale business Thanks to the railroad, the business had expanded to serve 17 states and territories. But by the end of 1880, Henry Chambers left the business and in his place would step Brown's Irish cousin, James Thompson, and long-time employee George Forman as partners and the firm was rebranded at Brown, Thompson & Co - the home of Pure Kentucky Whiskies, Brandies, and Wines. 

Now, to this point, I’ve not seen a single mention of the brand Old Forester in newspapers up to 1880. But then, under the name Brown & Thompson something changed.

GO BACK TO THE EVIDENCE

What appeared in the Dallas Daily Herald on June 29, 1881 was unusual for its time. While most whiskies told of their age, quality, style or origin, this first ad for Old Forester, chose a different focus - boasting: "Old Forester Bourbon, only bottled by us Brown, Thompson & Co. Recommended by leading physicians everywhere."

It wasn’t quite the sealed-bottle-with-signature claim we know today, but it does show something remarkable. In an age when bottling was expensive — and shipping glass bottles on shaky railroad cars from Louisville to Texas was risky — the effort speaks to a clear determination: to build confidence among doctors and patients seeking dependable medicinal whiskies.

Still, the fact that this first ad didn’t appear until a decade after the famed 1870 date — the one used in modern marketing — does raise some questions. 

Perhaps the product was sold directly to doctors and pharmacists, so there was no need for advertising. Or maybe George’s personal efforts were generating more than enough business on their own.

Whatever the case, the rest of the 1880s remained silent when it came to Old Forester advertising.

Then, in 1890, James Thompson saw an opportunity to purchase the Glenmore Distillery from the estate of the late R. Monarch. He left the firm to run that new venture with his sons.

Once again, J.T.S. Brown’s old business was being rebranded — and for all intents and purposes, for the final time — as it now carried the two names that would endure: Brown-Forman.

And it was under that new name, in March of 1896, that a lawsuit appeared in court records. Brown-Forman had filed a claim against L. Eppstein & Son of Denison, Texas, accusing the company of selling its own spirit under the name Old Forester.

Now, the fact that this lawsuit surfaced in the same state where Old Forester first appeared in print a decade and a half earlier is interesting — but what’s even more revealing is Brown-Forman’s claim that they had been using the name for over twenty years.

It’s not a specific date, but it places the brand’s origins somewhere in the mid-1870s.

Then, an ad in the Louisville Herald in 1905 described Old Forester as “the highest-priced whiskey — made for thirty years,” again pointing toward a brand that likely emerged in that same period.

ME AGAIN

When we look back on the company’s history, that shift from commission merchant to whiskey wholesaler coincides with the arrival of Henry Chambers in 1873. To me, Chambers’ background and reputation in medicinal whiskey sales looks to have laid the groundwork for this idea of a sealed bottle of whiskey.

Yet, in future marketing, it’s always George Garvin Brown’s name associated with the signatures on the bottles — and Chambers is never mentioned.

That Chambers and J.T.S. Brown’s early role in the company has been ignored in modern marketing, leads me to a good bit of skepticism around that 1870 claim. But unfortunately, there just isn’t enough counter information available to give any real definitive argument against it.

But perhaps we’re spending too much time focusing on the wrong thing. The real question is, was Old Forester the First Bottled Bourbon? 

Maybe rather than trying to prove Old Forester’s 1870 claim, we instead need to see if someone beat them to the punch. And my general whiskey research does show precedent for this line of thinking, thanks to something I discovered while researching my book The Lost History of Tennessee Whiskey.

When it comes to whiskey history, Kentucky almost always takes center stage — thanks to Bourbon’s dominance since Prohibition.

But Tennessee, too, has a long and storied whiskey tradition stretching back nearly 250 years.

One of the earliest distilling dynasties there, the Woodard family, led by family patriarch Thomas Woodard, was producing whiskey as far back as the 1790s north of Nashville, in what is now Robertson County.

Judge John Woodard, the great-grandson of Thomas Woodard, had avoided the family business and instead served as a member of the Tennessee Legislature, until the fateful day in 1867 when he received news in Nashville of his father Thomas Jr.’s death.  He said goodbye to his colleagues and returned home to take over his father’s Silver Spring Distillery. A man of great industry, the Judge also started a whiskey wholesale business in Springfield called Moore, Woodard & Co.

A couple of decades ago, one of the Judge’s descendants — Tennessee historian Kay Baker Gaston — was sorting through old family papers when she uncovered something remarkable.

Records showed that Moore, Woodard & Co. had bottled and sold twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of Silver Spring whiskey between November 1868 and May 1869. This wasn’t sold as Bourbon, so it doesn’t exactly knock down Old Forester’s claim, but it does show not only was someone bottling whiskey before Old Forester, they weren’t buying it through a third party. So what about Kentucky, was there someone being overlooked in the years before 1870? 

There were. One was a family grocer and liquor dealer from Frankfort, L. Tobin, who advertised “eight-year-old Bourbon Whiskey — the best in the country” — by the bottle. The year — 1865, five years before Old Forester’s claim.

Another firm was found right in George Garvin Brown’s own backyard.  A whiskey wholesaler called Mitchell & Dean, located in the same block where Brown-Forman later operated, advertised in 1863 that they had beer barrels filled with pure old Bourbon — and an additional fifty dozen bottles available for sale.

The fact is, in the mid 19th century, most customers brought their own ceramic jugs or glass flasks to be filled, merchants likely kept a few bottles or decanters on hand if a customer requested one. 

But these were not the same style 750ml bottles we think of today. Back then, glass was hand-blown into molds, and the size of the bottle was limited by a person’s lung capacity, so bottles rarely exceeded a quart and varied widely in shape and size. And that human labor made bottles expensive, so buying whiskey in a bottle would likely cost extra — and most likely, you’d bring it back for refills, sealed only with a simple cork. 

The idea of a merchant having more than a few bottles on hand already filled would have been quite unique for the time. 

ME AGAIN

So, understanding how wholesalers generally worked with bottles during this time period shows us that there was nothing unique about bottling a Bourbon, but what was unique was the claim of sealing the bottle and signing it. 

But while that would have been an interesting boast, there’s one problem with it.

The whiskey wasn’t their own — it was sourced from outside distilleries. Now, George Garvin Brown certainly carried a stellar reputation — at one point even being awarded a loving cup for repaying all of his creditors after a tobacco firm he was an investor in went bankrupt.

But even with that kind of integrity, you still had to trust that no one had tampered with the whiskey as it traveled from the third-party distilleries to the wholesaler in barrels.

So sealed or not, questions could still be raised 

Was there ever a whiskey that was sealed, signed, and controlled from still to bottle similar to Judge Woodard’s Silver Spring Tennessee Whiskey?

For that answer, we head to Buffalo, New York — and an advertisement that appeared in the Buffalo Express newspaper, front and center, above the fold, on September 27th, 1860. The striking black ad with white letters stood in stark contrast to the surrounding text. It proclaimed: “Established in 1839 — Dealers in Pure Liquor — S.T. Suit Kentucky Salt River Bourbon Whisky Distilleries.”

But look just below that bold block, and the trailing copy gives us the real story.  

“We recommend it with all confidence to those who use it for medicinal purposes. The distilleries, being the oldest in Kentucky, and the brand well known for its purity throughout the United States, requires no twenty-five dollar chemist’s certificate or bogus analysis to guarantee its purity.” 

“We have secured…the pure article in bottles of the Kentucky Salt River Bourbon Whisky Distilleries, which are the oldest and most extensive in the state. It is put up by the distiller himself, with his name on each bottle, and comes to us direct from the distilleries.” 

“When you purchase, be sure to look for Mr. S.T. Suit’s, the distillers name.”

So who is this Samuel Taylor Suit and why haven’t we heard of him? The young man, born in Bladensburg Maryland in 1832, grew up an innkeepers son and after working in a dry goods store in Washington DC made his way out west.  was definitely a salesman. The claim that he was selling whiskey from the oldest distilleries in Kentucky is a little over the top. Other ads suggest he had whiskey from "no fewer than 18 distilleries" filling his five story warehouse in Louisville. It sounds like he sourced some of the whiskey, but he also owned the Salt River Distillery. Is it possible the same “distiller” was working at 18 distilleries, hand signing every bottle at the source? Or was this a bit of salesmanship and in reality, the bottles were being signed at the Louisville warehouse. Well, unfortunately uncertainty is the price we pay for lack of documentation during the 19th century - and in fact, it is much the same reason we can't firm up the sealed and bottled 1870 claim of Old Forester. 

So why don't we remember this apparently nationally known distillery and this remarkable boast of quality? Well, thanks to that pesky war between the states, the Salt River Distillery was seized by Rebels in 1862. While the stores of liquor admittedly had been moved to the Louisville warehouse, it wouldn't be long before S.T. Suit got out of the business. However, his whiskey did live on for a while, being sold by the Walker Brothers out of Salt Lake City in 1873, this time in brown bottles that were embossed with ST Suit's Walker Brothers Sole Agents KY Bourbon.

https://fohbcvirtualmuseum.org/galleries/spirits/s-t-suits-ky-bourbon/

So while it may be possible that Old Forester was bottling and sealing its Bourbon as early as 1870 — if the ads from S.T. Suit and Hegeman & Co. out of New York City can be believed — they beat Old Forester to the punch by a decade or more, and even one-upped them by having some whiskey controlled from still to bottle.

And that’s the danger of declaring firsts in whiskey history. All it takes is one forgotten name stepping out of the shadows to upset the apple cart.

So while 1870 might still be a valid date for Old Forester’s launching of their own sealed and bottled whiskey, at the very least, thanks to S.T. Suit, it no longer holds the crown for being the first.

The statement that Old Forester was the first bottled Bourbon… is lore.

Whiskey Lore is a production of Travel Fuels Life LLC

Production, stories, and research by Drew Hannush

I hope you enjoyed today’s pilot episode of a proposed new series called Truth or Lore. If you want me to create a series off of this concept, let me know you enjoyed it by joining the Whiskey Lore Speakeasy, it is your support that will this independent podcaster continue bringing you great whiskey history. Just head to patreon.com/whiskeylore.

Thanks for growing your whisky knowledge along with me, and until next time, cheers and slainte mhath.

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