PBS Show About a Civil War Tragedy Has a Whiskey Connection

 

The E. J. Curley Distillery, later known as Kentucky River, was on the site of Camp Nelson, a Civil War Union Army base.

Last night, PBS broadcast an episode of its “Secrets of the Dead” series entitled “The Civil War’s Lost Massacre.” Although the documentary doesn't explore it, the story takes place in Kentucky so, naturally, there is a whiskey connection. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Here is the show synopsis from PBS: 

Originally a supply depot for Union forces in Kentucky, Camp Nelson became the site where 10,000 Black soldiers trained in the Civil War. But in the war’s last months, these soldiers were attacked by bitter Southerners. Their remains have never been found, and a team is dedicated to finding them to memorialize their service and heroism. "Secrets of the Dead: The Civil War’s Lost Massacre" is a production of Wide Awake Films for The WNET Group and Kentucky Educational Television.

Now for the whiskey part.

In addition to being a recruitment and training center for Black troops, Camp Nelson was a massive, 4,000-acre, fortified supply depot and troop encampment. The Union Army used it to stage an invasion of eastern Tennessee. It is on the Kentucky River, upstream from Frankfort, in Jessamine County near Nicholasville, about 15 miles south of Lexington.

This part of the river is flanked by steep limestone bluffs that make crossing difficult. The site for Camp Nelson was selected in part because of a natural ford there, at the mouth of Hickman Creek. That's where Edmund (E. J.) Curley built his distillery.

Curley was an Irish immigrant from Massachusetts. He may have spent time at Camp Nelson during the war as a civilian contractor. One of his partners in the distillery venture, Dwight Aiken, had been a captain in the Commissary Department.

Curley named his distillery after Boone’s Knoll, a well-known local landmark. Boone's Knoll is typical of the round-topped hills known as knolls or knobs. The early 20th century Kentucky watercolorist, Paul Sawyier, painted many landscapes there, including at least one showing the famous hill from the mouth of Hickman Creek. 

Because of the ford, Curley and Aiken were able to build parts of the distillery on both sides of the river. It was quite a place. Unlike most Kentucky distilleries, which were ramshackle affairs, Boone’s Knoll was beautifully constructed with limestone walls and hardwood timber beams. 

Curley’s main brands were Boone’s Knoll and Blue Grass. They made bourbon, rye, and other spirits. Successful at first, by the late 1880s the company was struggling. In January of 1888, the bookkeeper shot and killed the plant’s resident U.S. Treasury agent. A year later, the company’s assets were seized for non-payment of taxes and other debts. Curley was done. He sold everything to the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co., the Kentucky arm of the notorious Whiskey Trust.

The Trust’s purpose was to limit production throughout the industry to keep prices and profits high. It bought many distilleries only to close them, but not Boone’s Knoll. It continued to operate under the E. J. Curley name. It only closed at Prohibition. 

Because of the fine buildings and spectacular views of the Kentucky River palisades, the distillery was converted into a resort hotel during Prohibition, where whiskey might be obtained if you knew how to ask.

After Prohibition it became a distillery again, owned by members of the Hawkins family and others. They called it Kentucky River. The Hawkins were involved in several distilleries in nearby Anderson County on both sides of Prohibition, including the distillery now known as Four Roses. They eventually lost financial control of Kentucky River but stayed on as employees.

Founding families yielding control, with some family members remaining as employees, is a recurring pattern in the story of American whiskey. 

Following Prohibition and the shortages of World War II, most distilleries thrived during the post-war boom. Kentucky River did okay. It did well enough to build six new, modern maturation warehouses on high ground about a mile north of the distillery. In 1959, Kentucky River changed hands again, this time acquired by a huge conglomerate known as Norton Simon Incorporated, which gave it a famous if incongruous name: Canada Dry.

Somerset Importers, which in the structure of Norton Simon was Canada Dry’s parent, was started by Joseph Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy, to import scotch and gin from the United Kingdom immediately after Prohibition’s end. In the late 1950s, in anticipation of his son’s presidential run, Kennedy sold anything that might be considered disreputable, including Somerset and the Hialeah racetrack.

In the mid-1960s, the post-war boom began to slow. Many businesses didn’t adjust fast enough and overproduced, an especially critical error for whiskey makers because of the long aging cycle. Canada Dry overproduced. As if that weren’t bad enough, its brands were not especially popular, and its whiskey was not very good.

By the end of the decade, Norton Simon knew it had a problem. They weren’t alone. Another distillery with a problem was Louisville's Stitzel-Weller, unsettled following the death of its owner, Pappy Van Winkle. Norton Simon decided to buy Stitzel and blow out the excess Canada Dry inventory in Stitzel’s popular Cabin Still brand. In 1972, the combined company became Old Fitzgerald Kentucky River.

The Camp Nelson distillery never made whiskey again. There was a fire and as the warehouses emptied out, the six new ones on high ground by the highway were leased to Seagram’s. Everything else was abandoned. Those warehouses are now owned and used by Wild Turkey. Together they hold about 120,000 barrels. As you drive south on US-27, the Wild Turkey warehouses are on the right and the national cemetery is on the left.

The E. J. Curley brand was revived in 2021, and its owners hope to restore the Camp Nelson facility.

The area around Camp Nelson is scenic. The Kentucky River palisades are beautiful. Nearby attractions include the Camp Nelson National Monument and National Cemetery, the Curley distillery ruins, a state park, and the Jim Beam Nature Preserve. The preserve is a Nature Conservancy property created in 1995 to celebrate Beam’s bicentennial. Suntory continues to donate funds for maintenance and general care of the 115-acre preserve, which is open to the public.