Foreword: This is the second installment in the eight generation story of the Samuels family involvement in the making of Kentucky bourbon. It begins following the deaths in 1898 of Taylor W. Samuels who had guided the fortunes of the family distillery for almost a half century, and his son, William I. Samuels, the heir apparent . This episode begins with William’s son, Leslie, taking charge of the Deatsville distillery.
Shown here in maturity, Leslie B. Samuels was born in Bardstown, Kentucky, in January 1872, to William and Emma Dorcas Samuels. As part of a successful distilling family, the parents were able to afford a college education for their son. Reputation to have a high IQ, Leslie repaid their faith by graduating at the top of his class from Richmond College (now University) in the Virginia capitol.
After completing his education Leslie returned to Bardstown and under the tutelage of his grandfather and father, learned the craft and trade of making and selling whiskey. With their deaths at the age of 26 he became the General Manager and Plant Superintendent of what was known as the Deatsville “T. W. Samuels & Son Distillery.”
Leslie was a faithful conservator of the family heritage. The brand continued to be T. W. Samuels Whiskey, a name that the company registered with the Federal Patent and Trademark Office in 1905. The label was anchored by the picture of the Kentucky colonel, shown with a shot glass of whiskey in his outstretched hand. Shown here on a pint flask, the label advertises this bourbon as “rich and mellow, aged in wood.”
Conscious of the marketing efforts of the competition, Leslie was issuing advertising items to be gifted to the dealers and distributors handling the distillery products. The glasses contained themes like “hand made” and “old style,” emphasizing the longevity of the original recipe. It was a message commonly used throughout the distilling industry.
Leslie’s tenure at the head of the Samuels distillery was not destined to be an easy one. In 1909 a fire, the bane of distillers., broke out at the Deatsville facility. The distillery and and six warehouses containing the entire stock of more than 9,000 barrels were destroyed. The result was ruinous for the Samuels. Leslie lacked the funds to rebuild the distillery and sought financial help in returning to making whiskey. The Star Distilling Company of Cincinnati stepped into the breach.
Founded about 1887, that company was listed by the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce as operated by Max and Simon Hirsch. While they claimed to be “controllers of Old Oscar Pepper” distillery and blenders of “1863 Chesterfield Rye,” the Hirsches apparently did not own any distillery outright. Stepping into the Samuels story, they purchased the controlling interest and financed the rebuilding of the distillery. Leslie remained as a minority stockholder and was retained as General Manager, charged with the rebuilding project. Back in operation by 1911, the distillery, still under the Samuels name, continued to serve a slowly shrinking market for spirits until completely shut down by National Prohibition in 1920.
During the 14 “dry” years, Leslie Samuels, like other former whiskey men, bought an automobile dealership in Bardstown and was elected the town mayor. When his mayoralty term ended he was named by the governor of Kentucky as State Highway Commissioner. In that role as one observer commented: “It was Samuels who was directly responsible for creating a local road network that flowed in and out of [Bardstown] to the rest of the state like a spider’s web.” The presumption is that Leslie was thinking forward to the demise of Prohibition and transporting whiskey.
Not waiting for actual Repeal, Leslie in 1933 wisely began to plan for reorganizing the company in concert with the owners and for rebuilding the distillery. The Block Corporation of Cincinnati now became the majority owner with Robert L. Block as president. Still general manager, Leslie was raised to vice president. Shown below, he located the new distillery immediately on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad line. The facility boasted six new warehouses each with the space to hold 19,000 barrels of whiskey, an astounding capacity. Leslie even assisted in build a new depot on the L&N Railroad where distillery supplies easily could be received and whiskey dispatched.
Unfortunately, Leslie had little time to enjoy managing this state of the art distillery. In February, 1936, he died at the age of 64 and was buried in Bardstown City Cemetery where many of his relatives already were interred. Now it was the turn of Taylor William “Bill” Samuels Senior to step out from behind of his father’s large shadow and to carry on the family distilling heritage.
Although working at the distillery as he was growing up, Bill Senior trained as an engineer at the Speed Engineering School in Louisville. While having no formal training as a distiller or businessman, he knew his way around the plant and his name was Samuels. With Robert Block’s assent Bill took over as General Manager. He also had inherited his father’s minority share in the business.
Under Bill Seniior’s leadership the distillery featured thee brands: T. W. Samuels Bottled in Bond with a black label, T. W. Samuels Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky at 90 proof with a red label and Old Deatsville Whiskey. The whiskeys proved highly popular with strong markets in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana and as far afield as Dallas and Houston, Texas, and the West Coast. The Deatsville Distillery prospered until business was disrupted by the onset of World War II.
Bill Senior ran the distillery until 1943 when President Roosevelt ordered all distilleries not capable of making industrial alcohol for the war effort be closed to save grain reserves. Block wanted to sell the distillery and brands rather than shut down. Bill Sr. disageed but his efforts at obtaining financing failed. He was forced to sell the generations-old family business to the Foster Trading Corporation of New York, which changed the distillery name to Country Distillers As a result, the Samuels name disappear from the facility and the product.
Bill Senior promptly joined the war effort, serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy for the next three years and returning to Bardstown intending to run a farm. But bourbon was in his blood. Before long he began talking about creating a new whiskey recipe more suited to contemporary taste that had gravitated toward Canadian whiskey. He had proposed this to his father but Leslie was adamant about sticking with the original recipe.
In his quest for a recipe Bill Senior turned to friends he had made in the liquor trade, asking them for yeast samples, all of which, ingeniously, his wife Margie, shown here, baked into seven loafs of bread wwith a variety of grains. The Samuel family blind-tested the loafs, made comments and the “pater familias” made the final selection. He chose a corn base with soft winter wheat replacing rye. At that point he is said to have made a ceremony of setting fire to the Samuels’ 170-year old recipe.
Now Bill Senior needed a distillery to make it. Looking beyond Bardstown and avoiding the crowded field in Louisville, in 1953 he bought a 200-acre property near the the village of Loretto, Kentucky, in Marion County. It held a small rundown facility known as the Burks Spring Distillery. Founded in the the 1880s, shut down during Prohibition, and revived at Repeal, this distillery had operated under a long series of owners until Bill Senior bought it in 1953. Initially called the Star Hill Distillery Company and with the Samuels label sold away, the family searched for a new name. Thus was Maker’s Mark Distillery born, a brand that would take the whiskey trade by storm and spawn further generations of Samuels distillers.
In February 1954 Bill Senior distilled his first 19 barrel batch of this “new recipe” whiskey, then waiting five years while the barrels were aging. Meanwhile Margie Samuel was playing an essential role. In addition to baking the “test” loafs, she had considerable skills in the design field. The shape of the bottle, look of the label, the signature red wax topper and even the name, Maker’s Mark, were her doing. She also was the mother and grandmother of the next two generations of Samuels.
With Bill Senior’s retirement, his son Bill Samuels Junior took over. The father is said to have admonished the son: Don’t Screw up the whiskey. Shown below left, Bill Junior did not, establishing a reputation in the industry for his showmanship and taking Maker’s Mark to the pinnacle of Kentucky bourbon. Just Just prior to his retirement, Bill Junior, age 70, made his mark on the family legacy in 2010 with the introduction of Maker's 46, the company's first new brand in over 50 years. He was succeeded by his son, Rob Samuels, below right, as general manager.
For the past 43 years, however, the Samuels family have not owned the distillery or the brand. As the global whiskey industry has contracted, ownership has passed several times. In 1981, while continuing to manage the properties, the Samuels sold to Hiram Walker & Sons. That company was acquired by the British distillery giant Allied Domecq in 1987. When Allied-Domecq was bought by Pernod Ricard of France in 2005, the Maker's Mark brand was sold to the Deerfield, Illinois–based Fortune Brands. Fortune Brands split in 2011, with its alcoholic beverage business becoming Beam Inc.
Here — for the time being— ends the eight generation Samuels distilling saga. Stay tuned. If history is any predictor, the story is not finished as the family continues to figure as a force in the Nation’s distilling history.
Notes: This post and the one preceding have been taken from a rich trove of available Internet and other materials about the Samuels dynasty. The ancestral home, shown here, has been maintained as a hotel with displays that pay homage to their whiskey legacy. I suppose it also a place where from time to time one can sip a Maker’s Mark and remember this remarkable distilling family.
Addendum: This post marks a milestone for this website a result of having exceeded 1,700,000 total views since its inception in 2011. It is now averaging well more than 1,000 “hits” per day worldwide. My thanks to those viewers who find, as I do, the pre-1920 American liquor industry a rich source of stories, some heartening, others not so. In total, it is a segment of history that enhances our understanding of the Nation’s past.
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