J. T. S. Brown

John Thompson Street, Jr. (JTS) was born in Louisville in October of 1829. In 1847, he met a friend named Joseph Allen at school. They soon left school and entered into a partnership running a wholesale liquor business. About that same time JTS met and fell in love with a local girl named Emily Graham, who was from a wealthy Tobacco family. John and Emily got married in 1856 and had eight children, including six boys and two girls. In 1857, JTS bought out Joseph’s shares and at that point, gained full control of the company.

John’s occupations included a liquor merchant, the Postmaster of Louisville and a Confederate Officer in the U. S. Civil War. During that war, the company he owned grew substantially and accumulated a great deal of wealth by selling liquor to the troops, under the supervision of his half-brother George Garvin Brown, who was seventeen years younger than JTS.

George, with some help from a financier, relocated the company to Main Street in Louisville on Whiskey Row in 1863. George was asked to become a partner, and the name of the company changed to “J. T. S. Brown and Brother.”

After the war ended, from 1865 to 1874, the brothers produced or blended the following brands: Mellowood Bourbon, Atherton Bourbon, and Sidroc Bourbon. In 1874, the partnership between JTS and George was dissolved over a disagreement related to the quality of their products. George favored a higher quality, higher-priced bourbon while J. T. S. came down on the side of generating more money and catering to a wider customer base by selling a cheaper, less potent bourbon. George eventually moved out and created his own company.

As J. T.S.’s boys grew up into adulthood, they started working at the company. Graham Brown (the oldest) started first. He was followed by Davis Brown and J. T. S. Brown, III. The name of the company was changed to J. T. S. Brown and Sons. Graham would later leave the firm to head to college and then venture out on his own, he was succeeded by his two youngest brothers, Creel Brown and Hewitt Brown. They opened a second location on Whiskey Row, which served as both its warehouse and bottling operations.

The business was bursting at the seams, and they needed to find a way to keep up with the demand. At that time, they bought the old run-down McBrayer Distillery on the Salt River in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky (which is where the Wild Turkey Distillery stands today). At this plant, the sons of J. T. S. Brown thrived in their production. Their flagship brand was named after a newspaper editor turned Confederate General George D. Prentice. He was a lightning rod for rallying around the Southern cause and had a Confederate ship named after him.. The brand, the Old Prentice was their best seller, but the Brown boys also made the brands called J. T. S. Brown, Old Lebanon Club, and Vine Spring Malt. The Old Prentice brand and its iconic ship’s bell became so popular that the Browns became the first distiller to imprint their logo on rocks glasses and shot glasses.

In 1904, the boys’ mother, Emily Brown, passed away at the age of 65. Their father, J. T. S. Brown, Jr., died less than a year later in 1905 after being hit by a streetcar in Louisville on the way home at the age of 74. After their parents’ deaths, the Brown boys continued their very successful whiskey company. Some years later and after prohibition, the Gould Brothers bought the distillery from the Ripy family and renamed it the J. T. S. Distillery. That name remained until 1971, when Austin Nichols & Company bought the distillery and renamed it the Wild Turkey Distillery.