PARROTTSVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL)- When people think of Appalachia, they often think of backwoods, but it was what was created in those hollers late at night that became a part of American history and southern culture.
“Those early settlers, very early on, they learned that this area, because of the pure water from the limestone geography, was a perfect place for distillation,” said Dr. Ron Roach with East Tennessee State University’s Dept. of Appalachian Studies.
The tradition of distilling made its way to America by Scottish and Irish immigrants.
“If you think about the birth of America, one of the first big challenges President Washington faced in 1790, through the rise of the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, the farmers were revolting against new taxes on whiskey, essentially. So it became a huge part of the early settlement of America and of southern Appalachia,” Roach said. “By 1771, we know that Evan Shelby, one of the early members of the settlements here, established a distillery on the Holston River in what is today Bristol. By the 1780s, people were using whiskey to pay taxes in this area. There wasn’t a lot of cash, but whiskey was an important commodity.”
There was a series of laws passed at the state and federal levels regarding distilling. In the early 1900s, there was a statewide ban before Prohibition took effect…