Born sometime in 1840s, and one of 13 children, Jasper Newton (aka 'Jack') Daniel was orphaned in the American Civil War and, despising his stepmother, ran away from home to be taken up by a local preacher and moonshine maker. On receving an inheritance from his father, Jack Daniels founded a legal distillery 1875. In 1884 Daniel purchased the hollow and land where the Jack Daniel distillery is now
located.
Tennessee passed a statewide prohibition law in 1910, effectively barring the legal distillation of Jack Daniel's within the state. Daniel died a year later from blood poisoning and his nephew Lemuel Motlow went on to run the business for the next 40 years. While the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933 repealed prohibition at the federal level, state prohibition laws (including Tennessee's) remained in effect, thus preventing the Lynchburg distillery from reopening. The law in Tennessee was eventually repealed, (an effort led by Motlow himself, who had become a state senator), and production was restarted in 1938.
The Jack Daniel's distillery ceased operations again from 1942 to 1946 when the U.S. government banned the manufacture of whiskey due to World War II.
Despite being the location of a major operational distillery, Jack Daniel's home county of Moore is a dry county, so the product is not available for purchase at stores or restaurants. However, a state law has provided one exception: a distillery may sell one commemorative product, regardless of county statutes Jack Daniel's now sells Gentleman Jack, Jack Daniel's Single Barrel, the original No. 7 blend (in a commemorative bottle), and a seasonal blend (on rotation) at the distillery's White Rabbit Bottle Shop.
The company was sold to the Brown-Forman Corporation in 1956. The Jack Daniel's Distillery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.Show more