Biography Jack Daniel

Jack Daniel's grandfather was among the first of those who sailed from the tiny harbor in Cardigan, Ceredigion, Wales to the New World in the United States in approximately 1807.^[1]

Daniel was born in Lynchburg, Tennessee, to Calaway Daniel (New Bern, North Carolina, 1800 – Lincoln County, Tennessee, 21 January 1863) and wife (married c. 1822) Lucinda Cook (Greenville, South Carolina, 1805 – Lincoln County, Tennessee, 27 January 1847), daughter of James Watson Cook (Maryland, 1776 – DeKalb County, Alabama, 1867) and wife Mary Riddle (North Carolina, 1783 – DeKalb County, 1876). ^[2] He was born in September, although seemingly no one knows the exact date. If the 1850 date is correct, then there is a contradiction with his mother's year of death (1847) and he may have become a licensed distiller at the age of 16, as the distillery claims a founding date of 1866. Other records list his birthdate as September 5, 1846, and in his 2004 biography Blood & Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel author Peter Krass maintains that land and deed records show the distillery was actually not founded until 1875. Daniel was one of thirteen children of Welsh descent.^[3] His paternal grandfather Joseph (Job) Daniel,^[4] born in England in 1756 and died in Franklin County, Tennessee in 1814, was originally from Wales; he came to America and married Elizabeth Callaway, who was born in Scotland in 1762 and also came to America, having died at Ridgeville, Moore County, Tennessee, in 1853.

Since Jack Daniel never married and did not have any children, he took his favorite nephew, Lem Motlow, under his wing. Motlow had a head for numbers and was soon doing all the distillery's bookkeeping. In 1907, due to failing health, Jack Daniel gave the distillery to his nephew. Jack later died from blood poisoning at Lynchburg in 1911.

The infection allegedly set up originally in a toe, which Daniel injured in kicking his safe in anger when he couldn't get it open early one morning at work — he had always had trouble remembering the combination. This incident was the subject of a marketing poster used on the London Underground in January 2006, with the line "Moral: Never go to work early." A common joke that is told during the tour of the distillery, is that all Jack had to do to cure his infection was to dip his toe in a glass of his own whiskey to clean it.