In addition to being a corridor for whiskey commerce, the Licking River was also an early conduit for and site of everything from British attacks on the Colonies during the Revolutionary War to Civil War battles involving Morgan’s Raiders.
NKU’s history department is partnering with Bourbon, Harrison, Pendleton, Campbell and Kenton counties and the City of Paris to research the history of the Spears Distillery and the Commonwealth’s original bourbon journey. Spears, whose distillery was located just outside Paris, Kentucky, is thought by The Hopewell Museum, the historical archive for Paris and Bourbon County, to have shipped his bourbon to market by flatboating the whiskey downstream on the Licking River, and then on to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to its final destination in New Orleans.
In his book, “Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey,” acclaimed author Fred Minnick noted that given “all the facts we have, Jacob Spears is bourbon’s most probable creator.”
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