James Maurice Thompson arrived in this world on September 9, 1844, in the modest hamlet of Fairfield, Indiana, nestled within Franklin County, where his father served as a Baptist minister. The boy who would grow into one of the most versatile literary figures of the late nineteenth century spent his earliest years in the rustic Midwestern landscape, breathing in the simple rhythms of frontier life. Yet destiny had m…
“It is medicine, it is cheer, recreation, a return to the authentic standard, this draught of what my distant ancestors drank, from morning till night, all the days of their lives.”