Kentucky Catholics and Bourbon Whiskey

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.