The Whiskey Rebellion and the Rebirth of Rye by Mark Meyer & Meredith Grelli

Author:Mark Meyer & Meredith Grelli [Meyer, Mark & Grelli, Meredith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9989041-6-0
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2017-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 2

A LOVE STORY

Seven years after the federal government quelled the Whiskey Rebellion, the United States electorate chose Thomas Jefferson as its third president based on his very popular platform of eliminating the whiskey tax. The promise of a whiskey-bathed frontier continued to pull the adventurous and the hopeful westward across the Alleghenies toward Pittsburgh.

One of the families to heed this call was a group of Philadelphia Mennonite farmers, the Overholts. It’s not clear exactly what motivated them to make the arduous trip west from Bucks County, Pennsylvania—perhaps it was the promise of fertile land, the booming whiskey industry, or the network of rivers in western Pennsylvania that could take products throughout the country and on to Europe.

Whatever the reason, according to K.R. Overholt Critchfield’s edited account of her family’s history, Henry and Anna Overholt packed up their family—thirty-two folks, including children, grandchildren, and in-laws—in a caravan of Conestoga wagons and set off across the state. They stopped in western Pennsylvania at Broad Ford, named by George Washington when he had surveyed the land firsthand. It was here, in 1803, that the Overholts decided they would make a life. And so it was here that Henry’s son, Abraham, grew into the father of American distilling over the next fifty years, creating Old Farm Pure Rye, the gold standard of American whiskey.

According to this same account, “Henry and his family built their homestead upon 150 acres and Henry thereupon stationed himself at the family loom, which was conveniently close to the family still.”

Abraham’s weaving and distilling responsibilities provided him with plenty of alone time. Perhaps more than the rest of his family, he had the time and quiet to think deeply about the whiskey he and his neighbors were producing. He recognized a ripe opportunity. America’s young government had not taxed any other industry in this manner, and it certainly hadn’t enlisted an army of 13,000 men to protect its stake in any other business.

Abraham, by several accounts, was known to be an exceptionally thoughtful man. The economics of whiskey, however, were clear to most farmers of the day. While grain sold for a few cents a bushel in the early 1800s, whiskey, which shipped more easily and was non-perishable, commanded a commendable dollar per gallon. Furthermore, Abraham and others in his community of German settlers spotted an opening in the market. The Scotch-Irish, the real trailblazers on the western frontier, were moving to Kentucky to get beyond the reach of federal tax collectors after the Whiskey Rebellion. This left land, infrastructure, and opportunity for the Germans who had come in their wake.

And so, in 1810, against the wishes of their local Mennonite Church, the Overholts began distilling rye whiskey in earnest. Initially distilling a modest three to four bushels of rye per day, the Overholts immediately expanded. By 1811, their farm housed two 150-gallon stills. In line with many other farms’ still capacities, Abraham continued distilling in this manner, steadily building his whiskey’s reputation until he inherited the farm in 1818.

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