Jacob Spears & the Origin of Kentucky “Bourbon”

 For decades the controversy over who first called Kentucky whiskey “bourbon” has persisted without a definitive answer.  Despite conflicting views one individual has emerged as the the most likely candidate.  He is Jacob Spears (1854-1825).  Pennsylvania born, Revolutionary War soldier, early settler in Bourbon County, and pioneer  American distiller, Spears increasingly is being credited as the first to name his distilled product “bourbon.”  Whether or not the attribution is valid, Spears’s history of itself is well worth recounting.

Shown here in maturity, Spears was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, in January 1954, the son of Henry Speers and Regina Froman Speers (family members spelled their surname in several ways).  After fathering ten or eleven of his fourteen children in Virginia,  Henry sold his land and moved the family north to a new homestead on the Monongahela River in Southwest Pennsylvania, near the future town of Belle Vernon.  There Jacob grew up.  He may have had early experience with liquor, recorded by Surveyors Mason and Dixon as having met the youth in the mid-1760s working in a Pennsylvania tavern.

Spears, age 28, next is found as a private in the Pennsylvania militia during the Revolutionary War.  With other militia soldiers, Spears was deployed to garrison duty in Harrodsburg and vicinity, one of three white settlements in what would become Kentucky (carved from Virginia).  This area was prime farming country, with the Licking River providing a water route to the wider America.  Some records indicate Spears had been advanced to sergeant, but his gravestone marks him as a private.  The memorial also cites him as having been present at the 1881 Battle of Yorktown, but I can find no corroboration.

Spears also is recorded involved in a disastrous late-war conflict known as the Sandusky Expedition.  In May 1782 Colonel William Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, most of them from Pennsylvania, including Spears, deep into what now is Northern Ohio to destroy Indian villages that had been harassing white settlements. Getting wind of the expedition, the Indians and their British allies stationed in Detroit gathered to oppose them.

As depicted above a battle occurred on June 4 in which the Americans were badly outnumbered, taking refuge in a grove of trees that came to be known as “Battle Island.”  Surrounded and facing defeat the militiamen attempted to escape after dark.  The retreat became a rout and Crawford was separated from most of his men.  Captured, he was tortured by the Indians and burned at the stake. An estimated 70 militiamen were killed or executed. Miraculously, most of the force found their way through the thick forest back to safety in Pennsylvania.  Spears was among the survivors. 

Living in Western Pennsylvania with the Revolutionary War won, Spears well remembered his days in Kentucky country and the fertile lands around what would become Bourbon County, named for the French Royal House of Bourbon.

Spears seems particularly drawn by the proximity of the Licking River, the watershed for a major area of Kentucky, flowing north through miles of Kentucky countryside touching 23 of Kentucky’s 120 counties and ending at the Ohio River.  There a one way water route opened up a  significant part of the new Nation via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and onto the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1786 Spears had married a Pennsylvania woman named Elizabeth Kellar. Jacob was 32, Elizabeth, 21.  Their first three children, Rachel, Rebecca, and Solomon were born in Pennsylvania.  Although the historical record is silent, my surmise is that during this period Spears was involved in the liquor trade, running a tavern and possibly experimenting with distilling on the side.  Perhaps with the “Whiskey Rebellion” (1891-1894) brewing in his corner of Pennsylvania, the pioneer lands of Kentucky beckoned to him. Accordingly, Spears moved from Pennsylvania to a homestead near a settlement  that became Paris, Kentucky.

The move to Kentucky enhanced Spears’ opportunity at making whiskey.  He had ample land on which to grow grain, a source for water, and space for a distilling infrastructure.  The couple would have three more children in Kentucky, again giving them Old Testament names:  Noah, Abram, and Sarah.  Spears housed this growing family in a house some dubbed “The Stone Castle.”  Shown above as it looks today, the original Federal style structure was built for Spears in 1790 by Thomas Metcalfe, a future governor of Kentucky.  It has been expanded and altered over time.

Outbuildings, shown above, apparently provided Spears with sufficient infrastructure to accomplish his distilling and ability to store the resulting barrels for aging.  How the distilling process was accomplished is not apparent but the organization of the warehouse was described in 1917 by Journalist Wayne Cottingham who grew up in Bourbon County:  “The racks for holding the barrels were gone but the large timbers which had held them were in place. A door elevated in the wall was used for unloading directly from wagons onto a floor built about four feet above the ground. The old rope windlass employed in raising the barrels to the wooden loft was usable. The age of the loft was shown by the rough timbers sixteen or eighteen inches in diameter, hewn only on two sides.”  The building is said to have held 2,500 barrels of aging whiskey.

Beginning sometime in the 1790s, Spears began a major distilling operation and developed a local reputation for the quality of his whiskey.  As the 19th Century dawned and his production exceeded local demand, he hatched the idea of sending it by water to sell in other parts of the new Nation.  The Licking River would be his highway to the outside world.  The map shown here documents the long and tortuous route via the Licking to the Ohio River.  A modern observer has noted:  “The 1810 Bourbon County Census relays that Bourbon County had 128 distilleries and produced over 146,000 gallons of whiskey and Jacob Spears was at the epicenter of the production…The Licking and Ohio Rivers played an integral part in Mr. Spears success as a businessman.”  Below: The confluence of the Licking and the Ohio.

Barrels of Spears’ whiskey were carried north by flatboat poled with the current, the ultimate destination being New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.  It was a oneway trip for the boats dependent as they were on the currents to propel them. Once in The Big Easy, the craft were unloaded and broken up for their wood.  The flatboat men would walk back to their homes.  That chore most often fell to Spear’s adult son, Noah, who is said to have made 13 trips to New Orleans and walked back to Bourbon County with a money bag strapped to his body. Noah used the Natchez Trace trail, below, traversing Indian country where robberies were common.  Spears allowed son Abram to go along when he reached 16.

Spears is believed to have demonstrated uncommon marketing savvy in selling his whiskey in New Orleans, apparently branding it in a way to make it distinct on the city market.  He recognized that New Orleans was a “hyper-French” city.  Bourbon County was named after the French Royal dynasty to which many residents would have had at least some measure of fealty.  Spears seemingly calculated that by marketing his whiskey there as “bourbon,” he could strike a note of recognition among the Cajun populace.  Noah’s 13 visits attests to his father’s success.

Spears later years were marked by relative affluence, surrounded by adult family members, and grandchildren.  Each of his three sons were involved in the distillery, allowing him time to be involved in the local and national politics of the day.  A measure of Spears’ standing is indicated by a February 1799 meeting to nominate representatives to the Constitutional Convention that was held in his home.

In February 1825 Jacob Spears died and was buried in a plot on a site behind his house.  He was 74 years old. His elaborate gravestone, below, told the story of his Revolutionary War service and names his six children.  The farm and distillery became the property of the eldest son, Solomon, who sold them before dying in 1830, only five years after his father.  

Below is a picture of the Spears house and distillery as they look today.  The site, although credited as holding the oldest distillery building extant in Kentucky, is privately owned and not on the Kentucky Bourbon trail.  A historical marker noting Spear’s distillery is located a mile from the site.

Meanwhile the debate on who first attached “bourbon “ to Kentucky whiskey raged on for years.  In his 2016 book “Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey,”  Author Fred Minnick painstakingly goes through a list of seven Kentucky distillers who have been suggested as the “father” of bourbon and anoints Jacob Spears.  I believe his assessment is accurate and generally accepted in Kentucky and elsewhere. 

Notes:  This post was researched from a wide number of sources.  Major ones are referenced in the text.  The Ancestry website was another with data on Spears and his family.  Additionally, Fred Minnick has written:  “As an author, you hope that one day your words can positively influence another person. The more I dug into Jacob Spears’ past, the more I realized how important he was to our beloved spirit.  And I’m honored that this research toil has led to a magnificent new chapter in whiskey.”  I think Spears would agree.