Elijah Craig

The Reverend Elijah Craig was a Baptist minister, educator, agricultural capitalist and pioneer in western Virginia's Bourbon County, in what is now Kentucky. In 1789 he founded a distillery and started aging corn whiskey in charred white oak barrels. The efforts of Rev. Craig—known forevermore as the Father of Bourbon—and others led to the creation of an economy and a market for surplus grain for the newly colonized region.