Kentucky Catholics and Bourbon Whiskey

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2024

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first mass movement of Catholics within the new United States from the eastern seaboard across the Appalachian Mountains happened in the 1780s and 1790s. Sixty families, led by Basil Hayden, Sr., moved together from St. Mary City, Maryland, to what was then Kentucky County, Virginia. They settled near the growing city of Bardstown. Their hope was that since they moved in such a concentration, the Church would be compelled to establish a parish there and assign a permanent priest to minister to them. This scheme worked, as the first diocese west of the Appalachians was established in Bardstown in 1808. But something else was happening in Bardstown at the time these Catholic families moved to the region: the beginnings of bourbon whiskey. Local farmers had begun to make this corn-heavy spirit just a few years before Hayden and the Catholics arrived. The Catholic families, who also were mostly farmers, adopted this new type of whiskey and became good at making it. To this day many of the great bourbon makers still trace their roots to this influx of Catholic families: Jim Beam, Willett, Wathen, Medley, J.W. Dant, and others. The Hayden family hasn’t made bourbon for a long time, but the legacy of Basil Hayden, Sr. lives on in bourbons made today by the Jim Beam Company: Old Grandad and the series of Basil Hayden whiskeys they make.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic history made possible by listeners like you.
0:11.0	If you like our podcast, be sure to rate us and give us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
0:16.9	I'm Noelle Heister Crowe.
0:18.1	And I'm Tom Crow.
0:19.3	As longtime listeners know, we had to take a break
0:22.9	from podcasting while Tom completed his Montessori training. He's mostly finished with that now,
0:29.4	and we're so excited to get back into recording. And this episode is something we're particularly
0:35.3	excited to do. Yes. What we're doing here is re-recording about a topic that we covered previously.
0:41.3	We've learned more about this topic, and I think we've learned a lot more about putting these episodes together.
0:46.3	So redoing them is an opportunity to do them better.
0:49.3	We'll be re-recording a number of our back episodes in the months ahead,
0:53.3	as we work to get our
0:55.1	entire back catalog back online. So watch out for them. I look forward to going back through
1:00.6	a number of our topics. So let's get to today's story. Right. Today's topic, retold, is a story
1:07.7	about Catholics and spirits. Really, it's the foundation of the pilgrimage that we playfully call our
1:13.3	Spirit and Spirits Tour.
1:16.2	Yes.
1:17.0	The one spirit we're talking about is, of course, the Holy Spirit, meaning the work
1:21.4	the spirit did in the hearts and minds of certain Catholics.
1:24.5	And then the other spirit we're talking about is not a supernatural entity at all,
1:28.4	but rather that lovely American creation from the heart of horse racing and bluegrass,
1:35.1	bourbon whiskey. So we're talking about bourbon and about the Catholics who carved a community
	...

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