Nearest Green and the Education of Jack Daniels

The old adage goes:  “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.”  So it goes with speculation on who taught Jack Daniels to make his famous Tennessee whiskey.  In past posts I have profiled two individuals that others have contended gave Daniels the secret of distilling.  Neither story is convincing.  Now comes Nearest Green, a former black slave, whose claim on being Daniel’s whiskey mentor seems to have the greatest validity, to the point of being recognized by the current distiller.  

In April 2014 I profiled Hop Lee.  According to a narrative in the Granville, Tennessee, local museum, Hop Lee, shown here as a mannequin in a display, taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey.  Lee’s having been part of the Jack Daniels operation almost certainly is apocryphal, however, since that distillery incorporated at Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1866.  At that time Hop still would have been a youngster.  Later Lee became thoroughly familiar with distilling and it is possible he was hired for a time at Jack Daniels distillery — but no real evidence.

The second claimant is a Pennsylvania woman named Mary Stout Jacocks.  Her method for making whiskey was a prize procession of distiller Billy Pearson, illustrated here. Billy was the ex-husband of Mary’s granddaughter.  Ostracized from South Carolina, Pearson, so the story goes, went to Tennessee with Mrs. Jacocks’ recipe were he is reputed to have sold it to Jack Daniel.  Pressed by Pearson’s descendants on the issue, a Daniels’ spokesman in 2003 issued this ambiguous reply: “’Mrs. Mary Stout [Jacocks] of Bucks County, PA, deserves to be warmly remembered for her early distilling skills back in the mid-1700s.”

Both claims fade when the subject turns to Nathan Green, known as “Uncle Nearest.”  Beginning life as a slave of a minister, grocer and distiller named Dan Call, Green got short shrift from the Daniels distillery for many years.  Preacher Call himself frequently has been given credit for Daniels’ whiskey.  Shown here with his family in front of his Lynchburg plantation house, Call was said to have seen promise in young Jack and taught him the whiskey trade. 

More recently that story has been seriously challenged. In June 2016, The New York Times published an article identifying Daniel’s instructor as Green.  The Times asserted that Uncle Nearest’s story had been known to historians and locals for decades, even as the distillery officially ignored it. In lieu of any known photograph of Green, his proponents have commissioned an artist to paint a likeness, shown here.

A 1967 newspaper article reputedly recreates a conversation when Call introduced the young Daniels to the slave, the preacher’s master distiller.  Call is quoted saying to Green, "I want [Jack] to become the world's best whiskey distiller — if he wants to be. You help me teach him.”   Nearest apparently was enthusiastic about the assignment.  He is known to have loved children, siring eleven of his own with wife Harriet, nine sons and two daughters.  When slavery ended at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Green family stayed with Call. 

A year later the now mature Jack Daniels opened his own distillery, employing two of Green’s son, George and Eli.  Speculation is that one of them is the black man shown here, sitting in a gathering of the distillery workforce.  Immediately next to him is Daniels wearing a white fedora and beard.  Yet another of Nearest’s sons, Edde, also was employed by Daniels. 

At least four of Nearest's grandchildren joined the Jack Daniel Distillery:  Ott, Charlie, Otis and Jesse Green. In all, seven generations of Nearest Green descendants have worked for the distillery.  Three direct descendants continued to work there in contemporary times.   As shown below, the larger distillery staff was an integrated group.

The success of Jack Daniels’ Tennessee whiskey was notable.  As the company letterhead shown here indicates, it was awarded gold medals for excellence at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, the World’ Fair in Liege, Belgium in 1905 and the Ghent International Exposition in 1913.  The brand’s cache’ with contemporary Americans has been signified by a recent auction of an early Daniels whiskey jug.  Shown here, it fetched in excess of $1,000.

The whiskey that Daniel’s originated now stretches toward a century and a half of success, a remarkable tradition.   As one author has written: “However, Green’s story — built on oral history and the thinnest of archival trails — may never be definitively proved.”  Nevertheless, Author Fawn Weaver has founded and helps finance the Nearest Green Foundation to commemorate the former slave at Lynchburg.  Green is celebrated with a museum, memorial park, and with college scholarships for his descendants.  The Foundation is funded by the sales of “Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey,” not made by Daniels, and the sales of Jack Daniel's official biography entitled, Jack Daniel's Legacy.

Since August 2017, the Brown-Forman Corporation that owns the Jack Daniel's Distillery and brand name officially recognized Green as Daniel's first head distiller, adding his story to their website.  In October 2017, the company also added a narrative about Nearest Green’s contributions to their distillery tours.  Nevertheless, It remains to be seen if these steps end speculation about who taught Jack Daniels to make whiskey.

Did Hop Lee Show Jack Daniels How to Make Whiskey?

Granville,  an unincorporated community in Jackson County,  Tennessee, offers little to suggest a visit.  Its welcome sign is in clear need of repair.  No reason to stop in town except the lure of its local history museum, the building shown here at left.  Among the exhibits stands a mannequin wearing a coat, tie, and straw hat posed between two metal containers meant to resemble a distillery.  The set also contains a canning jar in which to store “white lightening.”  A flyer tacked behind the diorama identifies the figure as “Hop Lee.”  It makes the claim that Lee was the man who taught the Jack Daniels distillery how to make whiskey.

Hop Lee?  Who the hell was Hop Lee?  You can search the Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey sites at length and never find a mention of his name.  Nevertheless, Lee was a Tennessee native and worthy of attention for his accomplishments as a whiskey man.  What he may or may not have done for the Daniels folks is almost extraneous to his story.

Lee was born Hopkins Turney Lee in November 1846 in Putnam County, Tennessee, and grew up in a house that his father, John Milton Lee, had built in the mid-1800s adjacent to Martin’s Creek Road west of Cookeville, the county seat.   John Lee was a native Tennessean who about the age of 25 in 1829 married a woman five years his junior named Sara, also a native Tennessean.  They had eight children of whom Hop was the seventh.

The youngster knew tragedy early in life . When he was only nine years old his father was murdered, possibly right in front of his eyes.  John Lee’s slaying occurred in 1864 during the Civil War.  Tennessee had been a major battleground in Western regions of the conflict, with Jackson County a conflicted area.  As Union and Confederate forces contended over the Tennessee countryside,  lawlessness grew and bands of “home guards,” actually little more than bandits, roamed the hills.  When a gang descended on John Lee and his family demanding money,  the father refused to give it to them and was murdered.  That left Sarah to raise several minor children, including Hop.

For the next few years the record is scanty about Hop Lee.  According to the Granville Museum display, at some point he moved to that locality where he set about making whiskey.   His having been part of the Jack Daniels operation may be apocryphal, however, since that distillery incorporated at Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1866 when Hop still would have been a youngster.  There is no question that later he became thoroughly familiar with distilling and it is possible he was hired for a time at Jack Daniels and trained workers such as those whimsically shown here on a saloon sign.

About the age of 25 Hop Lee married.  His bride was Sarah Jane, also a native of Tennessee.  They had five children over their wedded life, all born in Tennessee.  Hop appears to have engaged in several enterprises, not all successful.  In 1897 in an open letter to a local newspaper in Paris, Tennessee,  more than 100 miles from Jackson County, he announced that because of “dull business” after six years in the retail trade in Paris he was selling out at below cost and urged the citizenry to come and buy something.  “...I am sorry to leave, but I can’t make a living here and I am compelled to move away.”

His plea about not making a living may have been somewhat disingenuous.  Three years later the U.S. Census found him living with his wife and two minor children in Putnam County.  Two servants were in the household. He gave his occupation as “farmer” but he clearly was heavily involved in the whiskey trade with a retail outlet in Nashville.  His store was located on Broadway, a principal commercial avenue shown here in the late 1880s. Lee was a whiskey wholesaler selling his product in ceramic jugs of several sizes.  He also sold at retail and featured proprietary brands such as “Hop’s White Corn,” merchandised as “Wild Cat Kind.”  That was the slogan affixed to a giveaway mini jug he passed along to favored customers.  Shown here, it  featured the name he had given his facilities -- “Hoptown.”

Tennessee passed a statewide prohibition law in 1910, effectively barring the legal distillation of whiskey within the state. The Jack Daniels Co. challenged the law, obviously with Hop Lee’s concurrence, in a test case that eventually worked its way up to the Tennessee Supreme Court. When the court upheld the law as constitutional it meant the end of both Jack Daniels’ and Hop Lee’s liquor businesses.  By this time, however, Hop had made the most of his years in the whiskey trade and was deemed a wealthy man.  In 1907 he became a director of a new local financial institution, the Baxter Bank & Trust Company, with deposits of $272,000 in today’s dollar.

The 1920 census found Hop, now 64 years old, living on his farm, a widower, because Sarah Jane had died several years earlier.   Living with him was his son, Benton, Benton’s wife, and two grandchildren.  One of them was named Hop T. Lee Jr.  The family had a live-in cook.  Once again Hop gave his occupation as “farmer.”  He died six years later in Jackson County and was buried in cemetery just a stone’s throw from the home he had known as a youth.  According to the family,  Hop Lee, as “the most prosperous resident” of the graveyard, was accorded the largest tombstone, shown here, and the cemetery officially became known as the Hop T. Lee Cemetery.

In 1946 the house Hop’s father had built a century earlier burned. It was rebuilt but then abandoned and the family cemetery was allowed to fall into disrepair.  In the 1990s descendants were wading through the weeds surrounding the derelict structure when one stumbled over a headstone.  They determined to put the cemetery back in working order and since 1998 it has been restored.  Hop Lee’s headstone can be seen at left.

So far this post has not addressed the issue posed in the title.  Well, perhaps Hop Lee did not teach the Jack Daniels folks how to make whiskey.  There is no corroborating evidence for the claims of the Granville Museum.  Lee has been accorded at least two honors, however, that many other whiskey men have failed to achieve.  First, he has a mannequin of himself and a museum display about his distillery.  Second, he has a Tennessee cemetery named for him.  Considering those memorials who needs Jack Daniels?