Book Review: Before Prohibition....

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Book Review: Before Prohibition....

Unread postby bourbonv » Tue Mar 26, 2013 3:44 pm

Before Prohibition: Distilleries in Nelson County Kentucky, 1880-1920, By Dixie Hibbs. New Hope, Ky.: St. Martin de Porres Print Shop, 2012. Contents, Forward, Illustrated, 74 pp. $25.00

Dixie Hibbs is a local historian with a national reputation for producing fine histories of Nelson County and Bardstown, Ky. In this book she has once again delivered a product of high quality and great historical interest. The book combines the articles about distilleries in an 1896 issue of the Nelson County Record with Sanborn Insurance Maps and other historical maps of the region to look at the distilleries in Nelson County, sort of. She can not resist throwing in a couple of distilleries that were mentioned in the paper that were not in Nelson County and for that the reader should be pleased. The book reprints the actual article so that the reader will know what was written about the distillery in 1896 and then shows from one to three, full color reproductions from the Sanborn maps from either 1886, 1894 and 1910. To top it off there are several maps of Nelson County from about the same period that show distillery property so the reader will understand exactly were these distilleries were located. This is an excellent source of historical knowledge and the one regret is the author only gives about a paragraph or two of information about what happened to the distillery after prohibition. It would have been nice if she had written more about each distillery.

The book itself is a paperback and surprisingly inexpensive for what it is. It has many old photographs of the distilleries and their workers that add great interest to the historian. The real prize is the Sanborn maps. First of all many of the maps are fairly large so the book had to be printed so that the maps could be folded out. Next, the maps are in full color. This is important as different building materials were indicated by color on the map, so a brick structure in in red and wooden structures are in yellow. This was done to indicate such things as fire hazards or weather resistance for insurance companies, but it helps the researcher get better idea of what structures looked like when they no longer exist.

The book is an excellent addition to any bourbon library. It is well written and beautifully designed.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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