David Beam
“The Innovator”
The founder of the Beam “Bourbon Dynasty,” Jacob Beam, and his wife, Mary, had 12 children with eight boys and four girls. David Beam was the third son and fifth oldest child. David was born in 1802 in the newly formed Commonwealth of Kentucky in what was then Washington County. The three oldest of Jacob’s sons continued on in the Bourbon trade: Jacob Beam, Jr. (1787-1844), John Beam (1798-1834), and David Beam (1802-1854), but it was his son David Beam who helped him most in the business of whiskey production, storage, marketing and selling.
David Beam was quite intelligent and picked up a lot of information from the industrial revolution going on around him. His father named him the distillery's “Manager” in 1820, and he expanded the distillery from a modest family business into a relatively large factory, naming it the “Old Tub Distillery.” He also had them transition from Pot Stills to Column stills, becoming one of the first companies to exclusively use column stills as early as 1820. At the age of 20 in 1822, just two years after expansion, Jacob turned over the ownership of the distillery and the business to David.
In 1824, David married Elizabeth Settle and they subsequently had nine children; Joseph B. Beam (1825-1916), Jacob L. Beam (1826-1902), Martha Beam (1831), David M. Beam (1833-1913), Sarah M. Beam (1835), John H. “Jack” Beam (1839-1915), Issac Beam (1837-1904), Nancy E. Beam (1941) and George W. Beam (1843-1920). During the 1830’s David started employing steamboats to transport their whiskey to major river cities throughout the Midwest, including Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, Nashville, Memphis, and as far south as New Orleans. Throughout the 1840s, David used the power of railroad trains to sell Old Tub Bourbon to many major and medium cities throughout the Midwest, Northeast, and expanding across the eastern half of the United States. After his wife Elizabeth died in 1841, David remarried a woman named Elizabeth Cheatham and had two more children, William P. Beam (1848-1933) and Emily Beam (1849-1938).
Three of David’s four sons went on to become Master Distillers. Joseph B. Beam, David M. Beam, and John H “Jack” Beam. Third son David M. would continue the family’s business and go on to become president of the “Old Tub Distillery.”
The oldest of David’s sons was Joseph M. Beam, born in 1825. He and his wife, Mary Ellen, had fourteen children and at least two of his sons continued the family legacy of making Bourbon. The older of the two was Minor Case Beam, who worked at several distilleries before buying an interest in the F.M. Head Distillery in southern Nelson County, which was eventually renamed the M.C. Beam Distillery in his honor. In 1910, he sold his plant to the distillery, which began making Yellowstone Bourbon at that facility. Guy Beam worked at several Kentucky distilleries before and after Prohibition and was instrumental in the growth of Old Crow and Old Grand-Dad bourbons. During Prohibition, he moved to Canada and worked at the Canadian Club distillery.
The youngest son of David Beam to go into the Bourbon trade was John H "Jack" Beam, born in 1839. He was 14 years younger than his oldest sibling.
Jack left the “Old Tub Distillery” after working at his father's distillery for eight years from age twelve to twenty-one. At the age of 21, he ventured out on his own and built a plant near Bardstown in 1860. That endeavor was successful for many years, but he lost financial control of it during the bank panic of 1880. Yet he stayed on as the “Master Distiller” until his death in 1915, at the age of 75.
The name of Jack’s distillery, and the name of the whiskey they made there, was Early Times. Eventually, that brand was acquired by Brown-Forman. When Brown-Forman built a new distillery in 1955, in the Louisville suburb of Shively, Kentucky, they named it after what was by then the world’s best-selling whiskey brand. Early Times continues to be a top 20 selling whiskey throughout the world.
Old Tub is the original Bourbon recipe which was that the Beam Family made under the guidance of David Beam who named the brand after their old distillery. It was “Bottled-in-Bond” at 100 proof.
The first Four iterations of Hardin’s Creek: Colonel James B. Beam; Jacob’s Well; the Boston Batch and the Clermont Batch. Hardin’s Creek is the first place in Kentucky that Jacob Beam and his son David Beam settled and after moving from Frederick, Maryland and began distilling Whiskey in 1795.
Contributed by Colonel Craig Duncan, Columbia, Tennessee