Follow Us
Like Us
Historical records matching Jack Daniel
view all 15
Immediate Family
-
mother -
-
brother -
sister
-
brother
-
sister
-
sister
-
sister
-
brother -
brother
-
sister
-
stepmother
About Jack Daniel
Newton "Jack" Daniel (September 5, 1846 – October 10, 1911) was an American distiller and the founder of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery.
Daniel was the youngest of ten children born to Calaway and Lucinda (née Cook) Daniel. Jack Daniel's paternal grandparents immigrated to America in the late 18th century. His grandfather Joseph “Job” Daniel was born in Wales, while his grandmother, Elizabeth Calaway, was born in Scotland. He was of Welsh, English, Scots-Irish and Scottish descent.
His mother died shortly after his birth, most likely due to complications from the childbirth. He was the youngest of his parents' 10 children, and on June 26, 1851, his father remarried and then had another three children with his stepmother Matilda Vanzant.
Jack Daniel's grandfather was among the first of those who sailed from the tiny harbor in Cardigan, Ceredigion, Wales to the New World in the United States in approximately 1807.
Daniel was born in Lynchburg, Tennessee, to Calaway Daniel (New Bern, North Carolina, 1800 – Lincoln County, Tennessee, 21 January 1863) and wife (married c. 1822) Lucinda Cook (Greenville, South Carolina, 1805 – Lincoln County, Tennessee, 27 January 1847), daughter of James Watson Cook (Maryland, 1776 – DeKalb County, Alabama, 1867) and wife Mary Riddle (North Carolina, 1783 – DeKalb County, 1876). He was born in September, although seemingly no one knows the exact date. If the 1850 date is correct,then there is a contradiction with his mother's year of death (1847) and he may have become a licensed distiller at the age of 16, as the distillery claims a founding date of 1866. Other records list his birthdate as September 5, 1846, and in his 2004 biography Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel author Peter Krass maintains that land and deed records show the distillery was actually not founded until 1875. Daniel was one of thirteen children of Welsh descent. His paternal grandfather Joseph (Job) Daniel, born in England in 1756 and died in Franklin County, Tennessee in 1814, was originally from Wales; he came to America and married Elizabeth Callaway, who was born in Scotland in 1762 and also came to America, having died at Ridgeville, Moore County, Tennessee, in 1853.
The infection allegedly set up originally in a toe, which Daniel injured in kicking his safe in anger when he couldn't get it open early one morning at work — he had always had trouble remembering the combination. This incident was the subject of a marketing poster used on the London Underground in January 2006, with the line "Moral: Never go to work early." A common joke that is told during the tour of the distillery, is that all Jack had to do to cure his infection was to dip his toe in a glass of his own whiskey to clean it.
Jack Daniel left home at an early age and was raised by a family friend named Dan Call.
Now Mr. Call was a Lutheran minister, but also owned a whiskey still just outside of Lynchburg. It was here where young Jack learned about making whiskey.
In 1892, Jack Daniel created the Silver Cornet Band to draw crowds to the Lynchburg Square and his two saloons – the White Rabbit and the Red Dog. He ordered all of the instruments – including, of course, cornets – from the Sears and Roebuck catalog for less than $300 and had Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 painted on the side of the drum. The thirteen “musicians” who made up the band weren’t technically musicians at all – they were townspeople from Lynchburg. Despite their lack of experience, the band was good – and known and loved throughout the region. Mr. Jack’s Silver Cornet Band even played the campaign swings of presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Robert Love Taylor. The band disbanded when World War I began and the men of Lynchburg volunteered for service. Even though their music came to an end, their story lives on.
Jack Daniel never married and did not have any children, he took his favorite nephew, Lem Motlow, under his wing. Motlow had a head for numbers and was soon doing all the distillery's bookkeeping. In 1907, due to failing health, Jack Daniel gave the distillery to his nephew. Jack later died from blood poisoning at Lynchburg in 1911.
view all
Jack Daniel's Timeline
| 1847 |
September 5, 1847
|
Lynchburg, Moore, Tennessee, United States
|
|
| 1911 |
October 10, 1911
Age 64
|
Lynchburg, Tennessee, United States
|
|
| ???? |
Jack Daniels
|
||
| ???? |
Lynchburg, Buried in Lynchburg City Cemetery, Tennessee, United States
|