Background
His grandfather Joseph "Job" Daniel was born in Wales, while his grandmother, Elizabeth Calaway, was born in Scotland. According to one source, Daniel was born in January 1849, in or around Lynchburg, Tennessee.
His grandfather Joseph "Job" Daniel was born in Wales, while his grandmother, Elizabeth Calaway, was born in Scotland. According to one source, Daniel was born in January 1849, in or around Lynchburg, Tennessee.
Daniel was the youngest of ten children born to Calaway and Lucinda (née Cook) Daniel. He was of Welsh, Scots-Irish and Scottish descent. A town fire had destroyed the courthouse records, and, because his mother died shortly after his birth, most likely due to complications from childbirth, conflicting dates on his and his mother"s headstones have left his date of birth in question.
The company that now owns the distillery claims that it was first licensed in 1866.
However, in the 2004 biography Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel author Peter Krass maintains that land and deed records show that the distillery was actually not founded until 1875. Daniel never married and did not have any children.
Motlow, a son of Jack"s sister, Finetta, was skilled with numbers, and was soon doing all of the distillery"s bookkeeping. Motlow soon bought out the other nephew and went on to operate the distillery for about forty years (interrupted between 1942 and 1946 when the United States government banned the manufacture of whiskey due to World World War II).
He died in 1947. Daniel died from blood poisoning in Lynchburg in 1911.
An oft-told tall tale is that the infection began in one of his toes, which Daniel injured one early morning at work by kicking his safe in anger when he could not get it open (he was said to always have had trouble remembering the combination). However, Daniel"s modern biographer has asserted that the story is not true.