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In the late 1700s and early 1800s all the components were in place for Augusta and Rockbridge to become the nation’s leading producers of whiskey.
The main cash crop was grain; the Scotch-Irish brought the skill of distilling with them from the Old World; and the American Revolution knocked the legs out from under the West Indies rum trade. In the next Augusta County Historical Society Stuart Speaker Series this Thursday, local historians Katharine Brown and Nancy Sorrells will discuss some of the information they have uncovered about local whiskey making in a program they are calling “The rise and fall of whiskey distilling in Augusta and Rockbridge Counties.”
Although it might be hard to believe today, there once was a time when distilling was second only to milling as the leading industry in Augusta County. Americans everywhere consumed enough liquor that it caught the attention of appalled foreign visitors, and Valley distillers helped quench that American thirst. Two hundred years ago, one in four estate inventories recorded at the Augusta County courthouse, for instance, included a still. Further, the profits from those stills helped build most of the early Presbyterian churches of the area and such prominent schools as Washington and Lee University. By the end of the 1800s, however, the distilling industry had been replaced in Augusta and Rockbridge by the cry of temperance.
Brown and Sorrells put together this program as an outgrowth of research they have done on the area Scotch-Irish heritage as well as the agricultural history of the Valley. They first gave this presentation in Northern Ireland in 2008, when the Old Bushmills Distillery was celebrating its 400th year of whiskey production in that country. Thursday’s talk kicks off the spring season of the popular Alexander H.H. Stuart Speaker Series.
The program will be held in the second floor lecture room of the Smith Center, in downtown Staunton. The program is free to historical society members and is $5 for non-members.
What: Augusta County Historical Society’s Stuart Speaker Series
When: Thursday, Feb. 4, 7 p.m.
Where: Smith Center for History and Art, 20 S. New St., Staunton
Program: Katharine Brown and Nancy Sorrells will present, “The rise and fall of whiskey distilling in Augusta and Rockbridge Counties.”
For more information: ACHS office 540.248.4151
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