Ahead of her time 

Starting her adult life at only 15 with a marriage to a man more than twice her age, Mary Ann Murphy Dowling had no choice but to be tough. She possessed few homemaking skills, but because she worked in her father’s store, she already had a keen head for business. Her husband, John, adored her and promised to give her a life in Lawrenceburg far beyond her meager Irish immigrant upbringing. 

John was an up-and-comer in the late- 19th century bourbon industry, and he put Mary’s skills to use, treating her as an equal in his distillery business during a time when women were not welcome in a man’s world. When tragedy left Mary on her own to support herself and her family, she was told she had no business trying to run a company. But a business is what she had, one that she would not let fail but would grow into a fortune. 

Eric Goodman and Kaveh Zamanian believe Mary Dowling’s story has remained largely untold for too many years. Finding much of the published work about her to be inaccurate, research through family records and the help of a scant few remaining heirs, corroborated with news accounts of then current events, allowed them to piece together the fabric of Dowling’s character. Mother of Bourbon: The Greatest American Whiskey Story Never Told is the resulting historical fiction account of a woman decades ahead of her time. 

Goodman and Zamanian’s work not only sheds light on Dowling’s formidable influence in the spirits industry but on Prohibition and its effect on the country, both economically and socially. As distilleries were forced to stop production, workers were left unemployed with no way to provide for their families. And with spirits no longer available for legal purchase, bootlegging and smuggling were risky, but effective, sources of income. 

Government corruption was highly suspected as stores of high value whiskey were confiscated, mysteriously disappearing in “accidents” and “robberies” from their holding areas. Dowling’s own warehouses were subject to such activity, raising the question of whether she was being targeted for her prominence and success in a gentleman’s industry. 

Dowling never backed down, refusing to be bested even in the most trying of times and under family persecution. If she couldn’t produce whiskey in this country, she’d produce it in another one. In an unprecedented move, she packed up her equipment and relocated it just across the Mexican border where she was welcomed and celebrated as the Mother of Bourbon. 

Incidentally, to be called bourbon today, production must occur within the United States, a law passed in 1964 that led to the relabeling of Dowling’s then still thriving Mexico product. 

Mary Dowling’s 10,000-square-foot home, Dowling Hall, still stands today on Lawrenceburg’s Main Street. Her original 1914 doubler, part of the equipment once moved to Mexico, can be found on display at Vendome Copper in downtown Louisville. 

Co-author Kaveh Zamanian is a master whiskey maker in Louisville and founder of both Rabbit Hole and Mary Dowling Whiskey Companies. Find Mother of Bourbon (Post Hill Press, $30) on Amazon.