Years ago I was working on a project about Kentucky bourbon history, and I happened to stumble across two very unusual sentences in the course of my research: “Miss Marcella McKenna took an active part in the operations of the McKenna distillery from 1933 until the plant was sold in 1941. Since that time she has been associated in the Radio Industry.” The passage was found on page 1854 of A sesqui-centennial history of Kentucky, published in 1945, which details the economic history of the Commonwealth of Kentucky up until that point.

This came at the end of a few paragraphs about Stafford E. McKenna, who ran his family-owned Henry McKenna Distillery until his death in 1935. I became obsessed with learning more about Marcella McKenna, who had clearly made enough of an impact on her family business to warrant a mention.

Unfortunately, women who work in male-dominated industries often are dismissed as a footnote. Intent on making sure Marcella McKenna would not suffer this same fate, I requested her archives from the University of Kentucky Library and set to work reading through some 9000 pages to learn more. I never discovered exactly what happened to her after she left the family business, but the papers painted perhaps the most clear picture I’ve ever gotten about how distillery business was conducted during Prohibition, as well as the integral role women played in Kentucky’s distilling history.

The Founding of the McKenna Brand

Marcella McKenna’s father, Stafford, inherited the business along with his two brothers in 1893. According to bourbon historian Michael Veach, the brand was created by Irish immigrant Henry McKenna after emigrating to Kentucky in 1838. “McKenna owned a flour mill in Fairfield, Kentucky,” wrote Veach. “In 1855 he started… a small distillery making less than a barrel a day, and it is said McKenna placed an emphasis on quality over quantity in making whiskey.” 

The brand continued to grow and stayed in the family during Prohibition. Stafford and James McKenna reopened the distillery after Repeal, and Pappy Van Winkle was briefly their vice president of sales while they were getting back on their feet. Today, Heaven Hill owns the Henry McKenna brand.

Important Women to the McKenna Brand

The Marcella McKenna Distillery Collection shows that Stafford’s wife and Marcella’s mother, Mary, was a full partner in the business prior to Prohibition—so the records actually show two women involved with the family business. A deposition for the United States Patent Office dated December 31, 1934 outlines the history of the brand, including its ownership structure, twice naming Marcella’s mother as a full owner/partner in the family business. In the 1933 reincorporation papers after Repeal, Mary McKenna was still a full owner and partner in the brand, presumably until her death in 1937.

The Marcella McKenna papers also show that she was deeply involved in the business of running the McKenna Distillery and brand. There are letters addressed to various stockholders and business interests, as well as letters to her from Stitzel-Weller and James B. Beam Distilling. In one letter to stockholders dated September 20, 1941, Marcella is appointed as proxy to handle the distillery’s business, which would go on to create the McKenna Liquidation Company which was tasked with dissolving all the assets of the McKenna Distilling Company. Records show that Julian P. Van Winkle was the majority shareholder with 2240 shares.

Marcella McKenna primarily handled the liquidation of the family business, as evidenced by letters she wrote and received from creditors like cork manufacturers, government filings, and shareholder letters denoting she was personally spot-checking warehouses for inventory. There was even a somewhat cheeky letter between attorneys during the liquidation stating that if one attorney was not satisfied with the files sent, Marcella would “ransack” the office.

The Evolution of Prohibition-Era Business Practices

There is an interesting exchange between Julian P. Van Winkle and Marcella McKenna in which they were trying to find documented proof that Stitzel-Weller’s predecessor, A. Ph. Stitzel, did not actually own the McKenna brand during Prohibition, but rather was a contracted distributor. This was important during liquidation because the person selling the brand and its assets—Marcella—needed to be able to prove she actually owned them.

During Prohibition, only eight licenses to sell medicinal whiskey were allotted by the government, and just six companies applied for and received the permits—American Medicinal Spirits (which later became National Distillers), Schenley Distilleries, James Thompson and Brother (which later became Glenmore Distillery), Frankfort Distillery (which was owned by Paul Jones, who also founded and owned Four Roses), Brown-Forman, and A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery (which later became Stitzel-Weller).

There has been some confusion in the modern era about how brands like McKenna continued to be sold during Prohibition if only six companies were allowed to operate, but the McKenna papers provide some insight. When Prohibition began, there were no substantial rules in place to govern how exactly medicinal spirits would be produced and sold. For at least the first few years, existing beverage alcohol businesses had to apply for permits to sell their spirits as medicinal spirits with a requirement to file for permission for each sale. It also appears that each pharmacy had to file similar paperwork to receive a shipment. As you can imagine, that would have created a massive paperwork requirement for distilleries, pharmacies, and regulating bodies, so the warehouse consolidation act, which came a few years into Prohibition, was meant to streamline that process. 

The Marcella McKenna papers give us a glimpse of just how much paperwork was involved in this ill-fated scheme—train manifests, drugstore order forms, druggist permits, tax liability relief forms, affidavits of theft, transfer forms between distilleries, and more. Once warehouse consolidation took place about halfway through Prohibition, beverage alcohol businesses could sell their remaining stocks and franchise naming rights to sell their brands as medicinal whiskey to a central location, paying a fee for bottling and distribution. Original brands were never allowed to distill, however, and only one “distiller’s holiday” was permitted during Prohibition for those six license holders to distill additional whiskey to replenish their medicinal stocks.

Winding Down The Family Business After Prohibition

The McKenna Distilling Company briefly returned to distilling after Prohibition ended, but by 1941 Marcella would consolidate the family business. During this time, the attorneys handling the legal side of the consolidation demanded proof that Stitzel-Weller did not, in fact, own the rights to the McKenna brand that its predecessor had sold throughout Prohibition.

After several letters back and forth between Marcella McKenna and Julian P. Van Winkle, a letter dated May 17, 1928 seems to have finally been discovered by Van Winkle showing plainly that the McKenna brand was free to do business with other entities—interestingly naming W.L. Weller, which the proprietors had also been involved with prior to the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery (much like today, businesses back then would often re-incorporate with the same owners in different positions for various reasons).

After poring over these 9000 pages, what stood out most to me were the details about how the beverage alcohol industry operated during Prohibition, and documented proof that women played an integral role in the operations of these businesses. I’ve never heard Marcella McKenna’s name mentioned before during discussions about Kentucky bourbon history, or even McKenna brand history. It was a chance occurrence that I happened to uncover this reference while searching for something else. I am convinced that there are other women involved in the history of Kentucky bourbon whose stories have yet to be uncovered.