Nathan “Nearest” Green was the master distiller for the whiskey operations for Dan Call in the mid-1800s in Lynchburg, Tenn., where a young Jack Daniel got his training in the business.
Green’s place in the whiskey tradition of Tennessee was highlighted in a 2016 story by New York Times journalist Clay Risen. A photo of distillery workers with the story showed Nearest sitting right next to Daniel.
Best-selling author Fawn Weaver (Happy Wives Club and The Argument-Free Marriage) was on an international business trip with her husband when she read the story. “The idea that there were positive stories out there of whites’ and blacks’ working side by side, through and beyond the Civil War, resonated with me,” Weaver said. “I liked the story of Jack Daniel, but Nearest Green’s story and the community at large really stayed with me.”
When he was growing up, Daniel did chores for his neighbor, Call, and he took an interest in distilling. Call instructed Green to teach Daniel everything he knew, and in the 1967 official biography of Daniel, titled “Jack Daniel’s Legacy,” Call described Green as “the best whiskey maker that I know.”
“It was on the Call farm that young Jack became one of the world’s most famous pupils and Uncle Nearest, the greatest teacher in the fine art of distilling Tennessee whiskey,” Weaver said.
Call would later hand over the still to Daniel, and Weaver has uncovered documents showing that the Daniel and Green families worked together for decades, including original paychecks from Daniel’s descendants to several of Green’s children and grandchildren, some of whom still work in the whiskey industry to this day.
Weaver and her husband purchased the old 313-acre Call farm, where the original Jack Daniel’s Distillery was located, where Green taught Daniel the craft of making fine Tennessee whiskey and was the master distiller for Jack Daniel’s until at least 1881.
The two-room dogtrot cabin where Green lived during the Civil War and the Greek Revival home where Call and Daniel once lived are being rebuilt by the same construction team that was used to restore Daniel’s original office and other historic buildings around Lynchburg.
A beautification project is near completion in the 2-acre area surrounding the original spring where the water for early bottles of Old No. 7 can still be seen pouring gallons of water out 24 hours a day.
The Nearest Green Foundation was created to ensure that, once his story has been told, it will never again be forgotten. Already in the works are artifacts being placed on permanent loan to the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; plans for a museum in Lynchburg dedicated to the history of Tennessee whiskey; the renaming of a street to Nearest Green Way; the Nearest Green Memorial Park in Lynchburg; a book scheduled for completion this year; an improvement project at Highview Cemetery in Lynchburg, where Green is believed to have been buried; and a scholarship fund to benefit his direct descendants. The scholarship’s first recipients are Matthew McGilberry and Marcus Butler, both attending college this fall.
To correct the record, Weaver has written a new foreword and preface for Jack Daniel’s official biography, “Jack Daniel’s Legacy,” which will be republished by Grant Sidney Publishing on July 31in honor of the 50th anniversary of its original release. Weaver worked with reporter and author Ben Green’s heirs to republish the book, with proceeds going to the Nearest Green Legacy Scholarship fund.