Jack died in 1911 from
blood poisoning which started from an infection. The infection allegedly began in one of his toes, which Daniel injured one early morning at work by kicking his safe in anger when he could not get it open (he was said to always have had trouble remembering the combination).
[6]
Jack Daniel never married and did not have any children. However, he took his favorite nephew, Lem Motlow, under his wing. Lem was very skilled with numbers, and was soon doing all of the distillery's bookkeeping. In 1907, due to failing health, Jack Daniel gave the distillery to Motlow, who then bequeathed the distillery to his children, Robert, Reagor, Dan, Conner, and Mary, upon his death in 1947.
Tennessee passed a state-wide prohibition law in 1910, preventing the legal distillation of Jack Daniel's in the state, and as a result Lem Motlow moved the distillery to
St Louis, Missouri and
Birmingham, Alabama, though none of the production from these locations was ever sold due to quality problems.
[7] The introduction of
prohibition in 1920 (until 1933) through the
Eighteenth Amendment to the
Constitution stopped production in St Louis; production in
Alabama having been stopped earlier by that state's prohibition laws. All production then ceased. Even the
Twenty-first Amendment enactment in 1933 repealing federal prohibition did not allow production in Lynchburg to restart, as the Tennessee state prohibition laws were still in effect. Motlow, as a
Tennessee state senator, helped repeal these laws, allowing production to restart in 1938. The five-year gap between national repeal and Tennessee repeal was commemorated in 2008 with a gift pack of two bottles, one for the 75th anniversary of the end of prohibition and a second commemorating the 70th anniversary of the reopening of the distillery.
[8]
The
U.S. government banned the manufacture of whiskey during
World War II and a little beyond, from 1942 to 1946. Motlow resumed production of Jack Daniel's only in 1947 after good quality corn was again available.
[7]
When the company was later incorporated, it was incorporated as "Jack Daniel Distillery, Lem Motlow, Prop., Inc." This has allowed the company to continue to include Lem Motlow, who died in 1947, in its marketing, since mentioning him in the
advertising is technically just citing the full corporate name. Likewise, the advertisements continue to say that Lynchburg has only 361 people, though the
2000 census reports 5,740. This is allowable because the entire label was
trademarked in the early 1960s when this figure was the actual population cited by the
Census Bureau; changing the label would require applying for a new trademark or forfeiting trademark protection. However, the census population includes all of Moore County, as the
county and city governments are consolidated.
Moore County, where the Jack Daniel's distillery is located, is one of the state's many
dry counties. Therefore, while it is legal to distill the product within the county, it is illegal to purchase it there. However, a state law has provided one exception: a distillery may sell one commemorative product, regardless of county statutes.
[9] Jack Daniel's now sells
Gentleman Jack and
Jack Daniel's Single Barrel at the distillery's White Rabbit Bottle Shop.
