Monday, August 06, 2018

Joseph Earl Dabney (1929–2015) – 'Mountain Spirits: A Chronicle of Corn Whiskey from King James' Ulster Plantation to America's Appalachians and the Moonshine Life' (1974)

2018 08 06 17 50 44

In 1974, Joseph Earl Dabney, an award-winning author, newspaperman and PR executive (who was also a member of Dunwoody Baptist Church in the state of Georgia) published this book. His biographical obituary is online here. He is one of those people who I now wish I had contact with when they were still alive.

I am reading my way through Mountain Spirits: A Chronicle of Corn Whiskey from King James' Ulster Plantation to America's Appalachians and the Moonshine Life. I'm not a teetotaller (until fairly recently the occasional cold cider would do the job for me; I now do some design work with two local distilleries) but I have found this book to be superb - Dabney was very well-informed on the history and culture of Ulster, and he uses the terms Ulster-Scots and Scotch-Irish throughout.

It's scholarly yet accessible. Philosophically you can tell that Dabney was taken by the craft of the distillers and the relentless individualism of the push to the frontier and the defiance of government - initially the British Crown but then also the punitive measures introduced by George Washington and Patrick Hamilton, who redrew the boundaries of Pennsylvania, making the Virginian frontiersmen subject to Pennsylvanian land payments literally overnight, and of course the 'whiskey tax’ the government introduced to raise funds for the new republic. Dabney also traversed rural communities to talk with the moonshiners of the older generation to record their stories. A second edition - More Mountain Spirits - was published in 1985.

Dabney authored a number of other successful titles, including food books Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine (1998) and The Food, Folklore, and Art of Lowcountry Cooking (2010). He won the Jack Daniel Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2005.

His obituary describes him as 'A devout Christian, Dabney was a member of Dunwoody Baptist Church where he enjoyed the Young at Heart seniors group and sang in the choir.' In a Northern Ireland context, this is quite unusual for somebody fascinated by whiskey! One of the figures the book refers to was a Baptist pastor, a Rev Elijah Craig who some say invented bourbon whiskey in 1789 (Wikipedia entry here). A brand exists today which was named after him.

As is so often the case, traditions shorthanded in America these days as geographically Irish, turn out to be predominantly culturally Scotch-Irish. Spirit distillation is one of those things, at least in its earliest days. It is important to retain these distinctives where possible, not to claim that the Scotch-Irish are superior to others, but to acknowledge their role in the overall story.

Mountain Spirits: A Chronicle of Corn Whiskey from King James' Ulster Plantation to America's Appalachians and the Moonshine Life - is a first-rate book. Highly recommended for a taste of the pioneering independent spirit.

"The Scotch-Irish proved their mettle. They were a new kind of pioneer, who brought strong convictions to America, including a love of whiskey and a love of liberty’ - page 41

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