Benjamin F. Mattingly
There are no known actual photographs of Benjamin F. Mattingly. Above is an AI-generated image of how he might have looked in about 1880 based on known facts about his life.
“The Bourbon Pioneer of Bardstown”
Benjamin F. Mattingly was born into Kentucky’s distilling aristocracy in 1828. His grandfather, John Graves Mattingly, built distilleries all over Kentucky in the mid-1800s, laying the groundwork for a multi-generational legacy in bourbon craftsmanship. Billowing copper stills and wooden fermenters would have felt as familiar to young Ben as the rolling limestone hills around Bardstown.
Growing up in Louisville, Ben belonged to a family that treated bourbon-making as both a tradition and a calling. His upbringing was shaped by barrels aging in warehouses, the scent of fermenting mash, and reverent stories of pioneers like Elijah Craig and Evan Williams. Family lodges likely echoed with tales of invention and rivalry in Kentucky’s early whiskey era.
It seems then that Ben Mattingly’s destiny was intertwined with bourbon lineage. To no one’s surprise, in 1864, he married Catherine Willett, daughter of the distinguished Willett family of Kentucky bourbon fame. The Willetts and Mattinglys were two of the most respected names in the region’s distilling world, so their alliance blended not only two families but two legacies. Catherine came from the family that owned Franke & Willett Distillery, located at Morton’s Spring in Nelson County, just south of Bardstown. By marrying her, Ben became deeply embedded in the operations at Morton’s Spring, effectively uniting two lines of bourbon near-royalty. Though Ben and Catherine eventually had 11 children, several of them did not survive to adulthood, and there is no evidence that any of those who did were ever involved in distilling.
Around 1874, Ben began working at Morton’s Spring alongside his brother-in-law, Thomas S. Moore, another heir by marriage to the Willett family. In 1876, ownership was transferred to Mattingly and Moore, and in 1879, they built a new distillery on 80 acres in Bardstown—later known as Mattingly & Moore Distillery, the predecessor to today’s Barton/1792 Distillery.
From 1879, Ben F. Mattingly and Tom Moore ran the distillery together, overseeing production, barrels, and branding. In 1881, however, Mattingly, by then 53 and quite wealthy, sold the distillery to investors; Moore continued the business until reacquiring it solely and consolidating his operations. The distillery survived Prohibition, changed ownership several more times, eventually becoming Barton Distillery, and in 2009, part of the behemoth Sazerac company of spirits. Ben Mattingly’s influence has continued forward and remains in the distillery’s DNA; his mash bills, his water source at Morton’s Spring, and his reputation for craftsmanship. Though he stepped away long before the branding under “1792,” his foundational role shaped every barrel the facility produces. Ben Mattingly’s legacy lives on, and the respected 1792 Bourbon brand rests on lands he helped develop, records he maintained, and heritage he shared with Moore and the Willetts. Barton 1792 now occupies more than 50 buildings, including aging rickhouses that store thousands of barrels, and is the world’s seventh largest distillery.
Benjamin F. Mattingly exemplifies a certain 19th-century distiller ethos: quiet, deliberate, rooted in tradition, and while he may never appear on bourbon show posters, his fingerprints are everywhere in the limestone spring water, in mash bills, in rickhouse racks, and in the legacy of Barton 1792. His marriage to Catherine Willett united two bourbon dynasties, a testament to vision, partnership, and ancient craft that endures to this day.
Sources:
Bourbon Sphere, bourbonsphere.com, February 2015
The Whiskey Reviewer, “Touring Barton 1792”, Richard Thomas, December 2016
Contributed by Tracy McLemore, Fairview, Tennessee
