Elijah Craig Bourbon

June 14, 1789:

Whiskey distilled from maize is first produced by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig. It is named Bourbon because Rev Craig lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky.
In approximately 1789, Craig founded a distillery. This last enterprise led to his subsequent dubious reputation as the inventor of bourbon whiskey. Craig has sometimes been claimed to have been the first to age the distillation in charred oak casks, "a process that gives the bourbon its reddish color and unique taste."
When he built it, Craig's distillery was in the territory of the original Fayette County. The location later became part of Woodford County in 1789, and then Scott County in 1792. It was never in Bourbon County, as some have claimed. However, both Fayette County and Bourbon County were named in honor of the noted Revolutionary War Gen. Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette of the French nobility and its royal House of Bourbon.
As American whiskey authority Charles Kendrick Cowdery has observed, "By the time Bourbon County was formed in 1785, there were dozens if not hundreds of small farmer-distillers making whiskey throughout the region… Ultimately, most of the corn-based whiskey made west of the Alleghenies was called 'bourbon', to distinguish it from the rye-based whiskies that predominated in the East." Cowdery and some other historians assert that no actual historical evidence exists to indicate that Craig's whiskey was unique in its time or that he practiced charring of the aging barrels, and that the first known publication potentially alluding to Craig as the inventor of bourbon was not published until 1874 (and includes only a brief entry in a densely-packed list without actually mentioning Craig himself or pointing to any evidence, and without any elaboration as to what was claimed to distinguish the product as the first bourbon). In fact, it has been stated that considerable evidence exists to indicate that "Elijah was making exactly the same kind of whiskey that most of his contempararies were making" and that Craig's reputation as the inventor of bourbon is simply a "charming legend".

I like charming legends.