Making and Selling Whiskey at the Henry McKenna Distillery

Irish immigrant Henry McKenna established a mill and distillery at Fairfield in Nelson County in the early 1850s. In 1860 McKenna’s household included three Irish boarders, one of whom, Patrick Sweeney, became the distiller. McKenna began acquiring farmland in the 1850s and accumulated more than 1,000 acres, becoming a “strong farmer,” in the idiom of Ireland. McKenna milled grain and sold flour to local patrons as well as retailers in Bardstown and Louisville. His low-production distillery served a similar clientele. He maintained more than 350 customer accounts, selling flour, meal, and whiskey on credit. He bought farmers’ grains, wood, wool, and garden produce, crediting their accounts. Although his first still was handmade of poplar logs, McKenna improved and expanded his works, which by 1878 was mashing 200 bushels of grain per day. Some of his Irish employees, earning only a modest wage, supported the Fenian Brotherhood and sent donations to the “poor of Ireland.”