S O U R C E S  O F  I N F O R M A T I O N

(Excerpted from the book) BY CHET ZOELLER

My first sources of information were county histories. Generally these were informative but most did not give a great deal of information regarding my particular inquiry. In my research, I did determine that a few counties in the late 1880s had atlases prepared which showed a number of distilleries. Further, most of the larger towns in Kentucky had city directories published on a yearly basis. Louisville and Lexington, in particular, had directories going back to the early 1800s. Again, these were very helpful in pinpointing the dates when a distillery started, its location and its owners. These directories were also helpful in allowing me to determine the name changes that usually followed ownership changes.

One of my best sources of information was the Distilled Spirits Tax books found in the Kentucky Libraries and Archive located in Frankfort, Kentucky. These taxes started about 1880 and continued through Prohibition. Most of the information was written in hand and many of the records were extremely difficult to read, therefore I am sure a number of names have been misspelled as a result. These tax records would give the location, the name of the distillery or owner and the number of barrels being taxed. This source also gave some indication as to the size of the distillery and whether it was a brandy distillery, whiskey distillery or both.

The Sandborn Fire Insurance Maps were extremely helpful. These maps started in the 1880s and continued to the 1960s. On a periodic basis, perhaps every five to eight years, the Sandborn Company would visit a town and draw to scale, block by block, each building located therein. The company would describe whether the building was a residence or commercial building, and if commercial, what it was used for. Distilleries, having a propensity to burn, were of particular interest to this company. In fact, in 1894 and again in 1910, the company published editions solely devoted to distilleries. Some counties, such as Anderson County, were visited frequently by this company and therefore a great deal of information was learned from this source. Other counties were visited less frequently, so less information was available—however it was still possible in most cases to get a snapshot on a periodic basis as to who the owner was, how many bushels were mashed per day, how many warehouses there were, and the total warehouse capacity for each distillery.

The “Coyte Papers” located at the University of Louisville were a very helpful source. They are the results of the efforts of H. L. (Whit) Coyte of Paris, Kentucky. Mr. Coyte did a great deal of research regarding distilleries in Kentucky, however his work was never pubished. Sam Cecil relied heavily on this research for his book, The Evolution of the Bourbon Whiskey Industry In Kentucky. Mr. Coyte, in turn, seems to have gotten a great deal of his information from another wonderful source, The Wine & Spirits Bulletin. This publication can be found at the Louisville Free Public Library, and has recently been copied and rebound at the expense of the Brown Forman Company. This was a monthly publication produced for the wine and spirits trade during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The library’s collection spans the period from 1891 to 1915.

Other good sources of information were the Kentucky business directories and gazetteers. These publications were printed every few years and in most cases would give the name of the distillery as well as its location, and in a few cases the registered distillery number. These booklets were printed by several different publishers, which has certainly caused some confusion. In instances where the ownership of a particular distillery had recently changed, the location of that distillery might be given by one of several different nearby small communities. Therefore there may well be some duplications of a distillery because of these changes in ownership and different recordings of address.

There is one source that I could not find. The Internal Revenue Act of 1862 specifically gave the federal government the power to tax the distilleries. Each state was to be divided into districts and a local federal representative would assign a registered distillery number to each distillery and collect taxes. You would think it would be easy to find that list and thus obtain not only the number for each distillery, but its name, location and owner. But I have looked extensively for these lists. I contacted every branch of the federal government that I could possibly think would have been involved and many people tried to be of assistance, but all came to the same conclusion: that the federal government did not have these records or could not locate them. It appears that these records were collected in Louisville and probably were destroyed in the great flood of 1937 when the city was inundated. Someday, somewhere, perhaps someone will locate these records and we can complete our list of legal distilleries in Kentucky.