Uncle Nearest: The Former Slave Who Taught Jack Daniels How to Make Whiskey

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After 30 gigabytes, service may be slowed. Receive a comparable iPhone model each year with an acceptable trade-in every year. Requires credit qualification and 36-month phone financing agreement. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports and from business to history and everything in between, including your story.

Send them to ouramericanstories.com. They're some of our favorites. And we've heard from Fawn Weaver on our show before. She told us her story of growing up the daughter of Motown Royalty, realizing that she didn't fit in wherever she was and then realizing that wasn't such a bad thing. You've also heard the story of Uncle Nearest's Whiskey, the Tennessee whiskey brand Fawn founded, named after the African-American man who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.

And now we're about to tell you the story of how Fawn came upon Nearest's story. And it all began with some trouble she was having with a business she'd invested in. After a frustrating time with the founders that I was backing, really, really, really frustrating.

We could not see eye to eye on how business should be done and how people should be treated. And after a really frustrating time, I decided I was going to do something that I almost never did, which is I went on vacation. And my husband is executive vice president, one of the executive vice presidents at Sony Pictures.

And he also sits on the board for the Motion Picture Association of America. Their Asian, I think it was their Asian council was having a meeting in Singapore. And at the very last minute, I said, you know what, babe? I'm going to come with you on that trip.

I know it's a work trip for you, but I just want to get away from what is going on. And we got to the hotel. In the morning, we were in the hotel lounge and I opened up the New York Times International Edition. And on the cover of the New York Times International Edition was the headline, Jack Daniel embraces a secret ingredient, help from a slave. And beneath that was a picture of Jack Daniel and his entire crew. And right next to him, to his right, was an African-American man. And the thing that a lot of people miss with that photo, but it's what drew me into that photo, is Jack Daniel was the big guy in the photo. It was his company. This was his crew, but he seeded the center position of the photo to an African-American man.

And at the time, no one knew who that African-American man was. And so I, you know, having five days with nothing to do, I decided to start diving in and digging in. And it's something, this actually isn't something that's new for me. I've never taken it this far where I dove into the rabbit hole and never came back out, but it's something that I enjoy doing on the Sabbath. So my husband and I observe the Sabbath 24 hours a week.

We do nothing work-related. And so what I like to do on my Sabbath and I have for decades is I go into my research rabbit hole. I'll find a topic. It could be something that pops up in my newsfeed. It could be something that I heard about earlier in the week while I was working and just didn't pause to dig into it. And I'll go back to it on the Sabbath. And so I had literally five days to do nothing, but to research this story of this African-American man.

And so I start digging in to this story. And the thing that was ironic is, we read the story that morning. We were both absolutely blown away that there was this thought that there was an African-American man that may have been at the beginning, at the start, at the founding of this iconic American brand. If you go around the world, there are very few brands that would be considered iconic American. I mean, even if you go with Jim Beam, for instance, who dates back to a similar date, but the company is now owned by Japanese.

And so when you're talking about iconic American brands, there's few things that say that quite like Jack Daniels. And so to see this African-American, the picture, the center position being seated to this man, and nobody knew who he was. It was said that they believed it was a man named Niers Green, but they didn't know. And then I went and I Googled the name Niers Green, which they had misspelled at the time, which we've now done the research and the spelling was definitely incorrect at that time, but we Googled Niers Green. And nothing came up except for this New York Times piece and then a regurgitation of the piece, which is to say that every newspaper around the world was reprinting, some of them not giving credit, some of them giving credit, but it was the exact same story over and over and over and over again. And so I thought, this is insane.

How do you have this African-American man at the center of this iconic American brand and nobody has any information on him? And so I did try to do digging, but literally nothing came up. And then I went back maybe about four hours later and to see, did I miss something the first time around? And then a Wikipedia page had popped up. Now the Wikipedia page didn't exist before. There wasn't a whole lot on it that wasn't a part of the New York Times piece, but it did reference a book called Jack Daniel's Legacy.

So I ordered Jack Daniel's Legacy and had it sent to my home. I ordered it on Amazon, had it sent to my home and I did whatever research I could do from the hotel room, but it really only lasted about a day or so because after that, there was nothing. It was the Wikipedia page. It was the New York Times piece and that was it. So I figured, well, when I get home, I'll read the book. It will probably not reference him by name. It'll probably refer to a colored man or a enslaved man or a slave or a Negro. That was my thought process of how it would be spoken about in the book because that's what is common. And so my thought was they're probably just putting two and two together that this African-American man is the same person that was in Jack Daniel's Legacy even though he's not mentioned by name.

So that was my thought process. So I ordered the book, but I certainly wasn't expecting much from the book itself. And when we come back, we'll hear more from Fawn Weaver, the story of Uncle Nearest after these messages. This is Our American Stories. Here at Our American Stories, we bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith, and love, stories from a great and beautiful country that need to be told.

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That's BoostInfinite.com. And we're back with our American stories and the story of how Fawn Weaver discovered the story of the African-American man who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey, Nathan Uncle Nearest Green. While in Singapore, Fawn read a New York Times article that talked about Uncle Nearest, but didn't say much about who he was. When we last left off, she had had the biography of Jack Daniel sent to her home in the States while she was halfway around the world.

Let's return to Fawn's story. And then a few days later, we finished in Singapore and we went on what was meant to be a two-day, just kind of an add-on vacation to I believe it was Kuala Lumpur. And we went there, we checked into the hotel, we had a beautiful day. And then the next day we went to a spa and we're not big spa people. It's not really what we do, but every now and again we'll go on vacation.

And so Keith wasn't participating. I went into the spa and did a massage and I think a facial or something. And when I come out, I'm expecting to go back to go just pay for it and then charge it to the room and then go back to the room. But I come out and Keith is in the lobby.

And to know my husband is to know he loves me so much, but he would not be sitting in the lobby of a spa unless there was something that was needed. And so he looks at me and I walk over to him and I could see concern in his eye. And so I walk over and he takes my hand and he says, babe, we need to pray. Come sit with me. And so we sit and I said, what are we praying about?

And he said, Brittany has been in a motorcycle accident and it doesn't look good. Now, Brittany is my niece who is as much a daughter as she was my niece. We don't have any children.

We've not been able to have children. We've been, now we're moving into our 17th year of marriage. And so she is very much so that baby girl, I was there from the very beginning. I was telling someone the other day that she was so funny as a little girl because anytime I would go to the restroom, she'd follow me into the restroom.

And I don't know what the fast, and I go, Brittany, can I just go to the bathroom? And she'd say, sure, but she'd never leave. I don't know if it was me going into another room and she not being able to see me. I don't know what it was, but she is just my baby girl. And so when he said it, I immediately began to cry. And we tried to pray for about a second.

And I said, I can't, I can't, give me your phone. And I looked at the text that my sister sent and I responded to the text and I said, tell Brittany that she cannot leave me, whisper in her ear that I am on my way, she cannot leave me, I will be right there. She has to hang on. And my sister texted me back within 30 seconds and said, I'm sorry, sis, she's gone. A driver hit her head on. They were turning and the sun was blocking, was glaring on the glass and the driver never saw my niece and floored it while making a left.

So she had, she had not a chance. And my world absolutely shattered. And so we both cried quite a bit to a place where the people in the spa, the managers of the spa came over because obviously we were disturbed and obviously we were disturbing what is otherwise a very peaceful experience for people and we recognize that. So we went outside and just, I mean, we could not get ourselves together.

And finally, we were able to pull it together enough to be able to walk back into our hotel room and got to our hotel room. And again, just absolutely lost it. And I probably say, I don't know, you know how you cry until there's literally no more tears left.

You see this in kids, in kids where they'll just pour down tears and tears and then they're still yelling but there's no tears coming down because they've literally cried all the tears out. And that happened to Keith and I. And Keith, he turns to me and he says, what would Brittany have us do in this moment? And Britt had just been at our house a couple of weeks before she had just celebrated her birthday. And she was at our home and I don't believe in regrets. I do believe in lessons. And it was a huge lesson for me because as she sat in the kitchen with my husband for hours talking about me and I listened to her say Fawn has always been a mom to me and to tell him different stories and different things and ways I've impacted her life.

And meanwhile, I'm responding to emails and doing what is important, if you will. And she left that night on her motorcycle but earlier in the afternoon, we had been all been hanging out and having Don Julio 1942. And so he turns to me and he said, what would Brittany have us do?

He said she'd have us go raise a glass of 1942. And so we left out of the room to go to the hotel bar to try to find 1942. And on our way out, we were passing through the outside area where there's a pool. And I remember Keith walking on a step before me and I being on the step right above. And we had to pause momentarily because hundreds of white butterflies began circling the lower portion of our legs. We literally could not move because they were just circling. I've never seen that before.

I've never seen it since. And they circled us for a couple of minutes and then took off. And we looked at each other and said, Brittany has just landed. And we went to the hotel bar.

We had our 1942. We cried some more. And we got on a plane, 5 o'clock the next morning, the first plane that was going out.

And we arrived back. And as soon as I get back to Los Angeles, I go into full party planning mode. I knew Brittany would not want a funeral. She would want for people to feel as though her homegoing ceremony was the best time that they've had. She would want people to enjoy it.

It was what Brittany would have loved. And so for two weeks straight, I poured myself into planning every piece of this party with her mom and her dad and my siblings. And after it was over, we go back home. Now I have to actually deal with the fact that she was gone.

For two weeks, I didn't have to deal with it because I was in party planning mode. And we get back home. And I pick up a package that is on my desk. And it's an Amazon package. Now Keith will tell you there were 20 Amazon packages on my desk.

But the package I'm referring to was Jack Daniel's Legacy. And I open it up. And I go to the living room.

I sit on the living room. And at the time, our living room, like it does here in Tennessee, it had floor-to-ceiling windows. And I remember starting to read this book and expecting not much. I mean, again, maybe for it to mention a Negro or a black person or a slave, but never for it to actually say Nearest Green. And very early on in the pages, Jack Daniel, as a young boy, is introduced to what the book refers to as a coal-black Negro. And he's introduced to him by a person that they are both working for. Nearest Green was a rented slave on this man's property. And Jack Daniel had come to work as a chore boy. And you're listening to Fawn Weaver and the connections in her life, the loss of her beloved Brittany, and how that served as a pivot point in her life.

She's drawing down on this book. She's been waiting to read, when we come back, more of this remarkable story, Fawn Weaver's story, Discovering Uncle Nearest, here on Our American Stories. Following last year's amazing turnout, the Black Effect Podcast Network and Nissan are helping HBCU scholars jumpstart their futures by throwing another thrill of possibility summit. The summit is an opportunity to network with peers and professionals and gain career knowledge from leaders in the industries of science, technology, engineering, art, and math, also known as STEAM. To kick it off, Nissan is giving 50 scholars who major in STEAM disciplines the opportunity for an all-expenses-paid trip to Nashville, Tennessee, this year's summit location. This is a remarkable opportunity to be mentored by some of auto, tech, and podcasting's brightest minds.

Current HBCU scholars majoring in STEAM disciplines can enter by submitting their answers to three simple questions as a 90-second video or in writing. Enter now for the opportunity to win an all-expenses-paid trip to the Thrill of Possibility Summit, an incredible weekend of professional development, music, and celebrating Black culture in Nashville, Tennessee, brought to you by Nissan. Success is a journey. You're in the driver's seat.

For official rules and information, visit blackeffect.com slash Nissan. On Heart of the Game, we're talking with some of the most successful families in sports to learn what's really making them tick, from staying healthy to fostering strong family bonds. We'll hear from athletes such as Kurt Warner on what lessons are being passed down to a new generation of athletes. There is a level when we play that we feel we're invincible. You feel like it's not going to happen to you, but then anytime it does, whether it's you suffering an injury or teammates suffering a traumatic injury, that's what stops you in your tracks. And it makes you go, okay, we're not invincible. And it becomes more personal. It's a part of the process to have to work through those things, you know, and understand the risks that go into it and understand the rewards or the love for the sport.

Listen to Heart of the Game every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who always have the latest tech gizmo before everyone else. Now you could be one of those people without even trying. And when people ask you, is that the latest iPhone? You could just be all cool about it and say, oh yeah, I mean, I get the latest one every year.

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Requires credit qualification and 36-month phone financing agreement. And we're back with our American stories and the conclusion of Fawn Weaver's story on how she discovered Nathan Nearest Green's story, the African-American man who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey. After losing her niece, Fawn needed to decompress and decided to do so with Jack Daniel's biography.

So Jack is for, you know, those who do not know, Jack was the 10th child and his mother died when he was four months old. So he was wet nursed by the neighbor. He was a little kid, a runt, if you will.

He never grew to be more than five foot two, even as an adult. And so if you think about him as a kid, he's not a great farm hand. He moved to that property when he was somewhere between seven and eight years old, and eight years old, as a chore boy.

And that means anything from going to get water from the well for the family, milking cows, feeding the hogs, you know, whatever you had to do, dealing with the slop. It was not glamorous in the least bit, but the book says that he was fascinated by whatever was going on on this property where you had the mules and wagons shuffling in and out of there, but no one would ever take him to go see what was happening on the other side of the property. And the reason is the person who they were both working for, both Niers Green and Jack Daniel, was a preacher and a distiller. And he married a teetotaler and he had a church on his property. So 338 acres on one end of the property was his home. On another end of the property was his church. And on another end of the property, if you're looking at it as a triangle, was his distillery. So he kept his three worlds separate, his family, his distillery, and his church.

And his family and his church basically issued an ultimatum. And so Dan Call decided that he was going to leave the distillery business, but the distillery never stopped operating on his property. And it never stopped operating under a man by the name of Niers Green. So in the book, Jack Daniel is introduced to this coal black Negro by the preacher saying, he is the best whiskey maker I know of. Now in this book, the reason why that's important is he says verbatim, this is Uncle Niers, he is the best whiskey maker I know of. It's important because there were 16 other distilleries in a four mile radius.

So the question became, why was he the best? And why did the preacher want for him to teach Jack everything he knew about his way of making whiskey? And it was because the way that Niers Green made whiskey was what we now know as Tennessee whiskey. But I'm sitting in my home in Los Angeles reading this, and from the very early portion of the book, you see over and over again, Niers Green, Uncle Niers, Eli Green, which was his son, George Green, which was another son, you see them mentioned over and over and over and over again in a biography that is not that big. And Niers and his boys are mentioned more times than Jack's own family. So I'm reading this and I am falling in love with two characters, which was completely unexpected for me. I'm falling in love with the Uncle Niers character, but also the Jack Daniel character and who they both were and what they represented in this remarkable time.

So I'm sitting on my couch and just completely engrossed in this story. And you've got to remember that not only are you got to remember that not only have I just lost my niece and just my world is wrecked, but this is now happening in July of 2016. So if you remember what was happening at that time, our country was being divided by race.

We had a political, both sides of the aisle, both Republicans and Democrats were using race as a wedge. And not very many people had hope at that moment. And I was looking for hope in terms of trying to escape what I was dealing with and grieving for my niece.

But in this book, I'm finding a different kind of hope because of the situation we're in in America at that time. So I'm reading this and I remember telling my husband when he walked in, I said, babe, I really like this guy. And he's like, who?

And I said, Jack Daniel. And he was so confused by this because he didn't know what I was reading. And so I start telling him about the book and the fact that Nearest has mentioned over and over and over and over again. And I remember when I looked up from the book at that moment, I remember right in front of me where the window was seeing a white butterfly, a single white butterfly just kind of fluttering back and forth, back and forth. And it took me back to those white butterflies that circled our legs. And I remember looking at that and saying, hey, Brit, but not thinking very much of it.

Again, this is, I think when you lose someone, you begin looking for hope in any and every thing. And I remember looking and saying, hey, Brit, and going back to reading and just loving this story. And I got so engrossed in the book and it's not that long of a book, but I got so engrossed in the book and because I think still trying to escape, trying to look for hope.

And I remember taking the book with me in the kitchen and still kind of reading while I was, I didn't know what I was doing, maybe making tea or something, but I'm still reading and doing something else. And I look up and in the window is a single white butterfly going back and forth, back and forth. And I go into my office a little later in the day, I pick the book back up, I start reading it some more and here comes that white butterfly again. And I began to associate the white butterfly with my niece. And I began to associate the niece with this book. And my love for this book and this story became interwoven with my love for my niece. And I can't explain it other than to say, I had to tell the story of Nears Green and Jack Daniel in a way that I believed the story was lived.

And I believed my niece was directing it from heaven. It's the only way that I can explain it. And as crazy as it sounds, because if we go back, we're talking about a brand, right? That normally when you're talking about a whiskey brand, you're not talking about butterflies, you're not talking about butterflies in heaven. But that is what was the origin of my interest. I can tell you that I had absolutely no plans to go in the whiskey business.

I'm a child of two teetotalers. The last place I would have been putting my money was whiskey and yet I began looking at the story and diving into the story and wanting to know more and more and more and more. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. And it became very clear to me that the only way I was going to really learn as much about the story as I felt like my heart was being pulled to learn was to actually travel to Lynchburg, Tennessee to interview the descendant, the only descendant that that New York Times article had referenced a man by the name of Claude E.D. at the time was 91 years old. And so I set my heart on going to interview him and had decided what I wanted to do for my 40th birthday was to research the story of Near Screen.

On the outside looking in, it would make no sense to me whatsoever being in it. It made all the sense in the world because that book and that story was providing me hope that I needed in that moment and I didn't want it to stop. And that hope, well, it led Fawn Weaver down a wild path from buying the house at the Dan Call Farm to meeting with her descendants who told her that the best way to honor Near's memory was a bottle with Near's name on it. And by the way, that bottle has been the most awarded in New American whiskey in American history.

Fawn Weaver's story, Uncle Near's story and the Jack Daniel's story here on Our American Stories. ABC Thursdays, The Bachelor is entering its golden era with the premiere of The Golden Bachelor. For the first time in The Bachelor franchise history, 72 year old Gary Turner is setting out to prove it's never too late to fall in love again. Millions are swooning over The Golden Bachelor. The LA Times raves, the series is a love story years in the making.

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