Jack Daniel

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title: "Jack Daniel" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["american-drink-distillers", "american-people-of-welsh-descent", "american-people-of-scottish-descent", "american-people-of-scotch-irish-descent", "1840s-births", "1911-deaths", "infectious-disease-deaths-in-tennessee", "deaths-from-sepsis-in-the-united-states", "people-from-lynchburg,-tennessee", "whisky-distillers", "baptists-from-tennessee", "19th-century-baptists", "19th-century-american-businesspeople"] description: "American distiller (1849–1911)" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Daniel" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American distiller (1849–1911) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

Field	Value
name	Jack Daniel
image	Jackdaniel.jpg
birth_name	Jasper Newton Daniel
birth_date	1849
birth_place	Lynchburg, Tennessee, U.S.
death_date
death_place	Lynchburg, Tennessee, U.S.
occupation	Distiller
years_active	c. 1865–1911
known_for	Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey
website
relatives	Lem Motlow (nephew)
J. Reagor Motlow (great-nephew)
::

| name = Jack Daniel | image = Jackdaniel.jpg | birth_name = Jasper Newton Daniel | birth_date = 1849 | birth_place = Lynchburg, Tennessee, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = Lynchburg, Tennessee, U.S. | occupation = Distiller | years_active = c. 1865–1911 | known_for = Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey | website = | relatives = Lem Motlow (nephew) J. Reagor Motlow (great-nephew) Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel ( 1849 – October 9, 1911) was an American distiller and businessman, best known as the founder of the Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery.

Early life

Daniel was the youngest of ten children born to Calaway and Lucinda Matilda (née Cook) Daniel. His paternal grandparents emigrated to the United States in the late 18th century.

Daniel's date of birth is unknown, with various sources placing it in 1846, 1849 and 1850. According to one source, he was born in January 1849, in or around Lynchburg, Tennessee. 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 tombstones have left Daniel's date of birth in question. On June 26, 1851, his father remarried and had another three children with Matilda Vanzant, but would later die after catching pneumonia while serving in the Confederate States Army.

Daniel was raised in the Primitive Baptist church. The company that now owns the distillery claims that Jack Daniel's 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 not founded until 1875.

According to company histories, sometime in the 1850s, when Daniel was a boy, he went to work for a preacher, grocer, and distiller named Dan Call. The preacher, as the stories went, was a busy man, and when he saw promise in young Jack, he taught him how to run his whiskey still. However, on the company's 150th anniversary in 2016, the company started to tell a different story, that Daniel did not learn distilling from Call, but from a man named Nearest Green (sometimes spelled "Nearis") – one of Call's slaves.

Personal life

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/JacksSafe.jpg" caption="Daniel's safe"] ::

Daniel never married and did not have children. However, he took his nephews under his wing, one of whom was Lemuel "Lem" Motlow. was skilled with numbers and was soon doing all of the distillery's bookkeeping.

Early in November 1893, Jack Daniel's farm outside of Lynchburg was the site of a mass murder perpetrated by a large group of mounted night riders from throughout the region, who hanged four black citizens – Ned Waggoner, his son Will and daughter Mary, and his son-in-law Sam Motlow – from a tree. The four were rumored to have been involved in a series of barn-burnings in the area; no clue was offered as to the identities of the perpetrators.

Distillery and health

In 1907, due to failing health, Daniel gave the distillery over to Motlow and another one of his nephews. Motlow died in 1947.

Daniel died from blood poisoning in Lynchburg on October 9, 1911. However, Daniel's modern biographer has asserted that the story is not true, offering evidence that Daniel raged on the safe a few years before dying of unrelated gangrene.

His death is featured in the Spike TV series 1000 Ways To Die. (Episode: Bringing In The Dead).

References

References

1. He was of [[Ulster Scots people. Scots-Irish]], [[Scottish people. Scottish]], and [[Welsh people. Wiley]], April 29, 2004 (page 7: "after he was born in 1849" (the 1900 census for Lynchburg, Moore Co., TN shows "Jack Daniel" as having been born in August 1851, in residence with his sister Bettie Connor and her husband and nephew Jack D. Mittlow.); page 19: "By the time Jack was born in January 1849"; page 76: "They named their company simply Daniel & Call, the partnership effective November 27, 1875 – a date to be celebrated, for it officially marks a great whiskey legend's entry into the business as the owner of a distillery."; page 78: "November 1875, the month Jack and Dan formed their partnership"; page 210: "Jack Daniel welcomed the end on October 9, 1911").
2. (May 20, 2004). "''Blood and Whiskey: Jack Daniel''".
3. [http://www.jackdaniels.com/ Jack Daniel's official website], [[Brown–Forman Corporation]].
4. Risen, Clay. (June 25, 2016). "Jack Daniel's Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave". [[The New York Times]].
5. (July 21, 2017). "Ex-slave who trained Jack Daniel gets new recognition". [[USA Today]].
6. [https://www.newspapers.com/article/albany-weekly-herald-more-mob-law-tenne/166735103/ "More Mob Law: Tennessee Whitecaps Do a Wholesale Hanging: Colored People Swing,"] [Albany, Oregon] ''Weekly Herald-Disseminator,'' Nov. 9, 1893, p. 1.
7. "Lem Motlow". Jack Daniel's official website.

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