Fawn Weaver established a scholarship to carry the torch of excellence surrounding Nearest Green.

As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Weaver is the CEO and co-founder of Uncle Nearest, a whiskey brand valued at over a billion dollars. The brand was born after she came across a 2016 New York Times article while traveling in Singapore. The article featured an image of Jack Daniel alongside a group of men, with Nathan “Nearest” Green—known as Uncle Nearest—positioned in a way that ensured he wouldn’t be overlooked.

In 1864, Green, who was enslaved, began teaching Daniel how to make whiskey in Tennessee. Daniel went on to sell whiskey throughout Lynchburg, TN, and the business formed into the popular brand Jack Daniel’s. Green’s role had been lost over time despite him being the master distiller at the Jack Daniel Distillery and the first African-American master distiller on record in U.S. history. As a whiskey maker,  research shows he became the wealthiest African American in Lynchburg, TN, after the Civil War.

“You have prohibition in Tennessee that lasted almost forty years. So that’s two generations where the only industry in Lynchburg, Tennessee was gone,” Weaver told AFROTECH™ at the Buffalo Soldiers Museum on Wednesday, February 5. “So the family dispersed to other parts of the country. As a part of that, so did this the significance, who they were when they were in Lynchburg, the wealth, the entrepreneurship, all the rest of that stuff. Some of it went with the families, and some of it didn’t.”

The Uncle Nearest brand exists to uphold and maintain his legacy. The Nearest Green Foundation, established before the launch of Uncle Nearest, now provides full-ride scholarships to Green’s descendants. This initiative has grown into a meaningful legacy, furthering the foundation’s commitment to honoring Green’s memory.

“Every check that I’ve written and I sent to a university, it further’s one of my cousins’ education. So, what Fawn did not tell you, and she never does, is that before the first bottle of Uncle Nearest’s premium whiskey went on the shelf, she and Keith, her husband [also co-founder in Uncle Nearest], decided about the foundation. It was established before the whiskey,” said Victoria Eady Butler, master blender for Uncle Nearest and the great-great-granddaughter of Nearest Green. “So when she’s talking about sacrifices, that was personal money that started that foundation. And now sales of the whiskey help fund it. That foundation takes me back every time to a spirit of gratitude because that’s not something she had to do, that’s something she wanted to do. And for that, I’m extremely grateful.”

The scholarship has led recipients to be supported at schools such as Texas A&M, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Kennesaw University, Auburn University, Enterprise State, and Clark Atlanta University.

“We have my cousins at Kennesaw University and LSU. We had one just graduate with top honors from Clark Atlanta. We’ve got one of my nieces who finished up her master’s degree in Louisiana now,” Butler explained. “She is working in her field of marketing.”

Weaver commented, “From a very early age, they know all I have to do is get into college. And if I get in, it’s paid for. So then they can begin working toward getting into whatever college in the world they want to early because they know what they don’t have to think about is the money.”

Based on its website, donors and proceeds from “Jack Daniel’s Legacy” will also support the scholarship.