Visit the Still House
THE STILL HOUSE
Whiskey Distilling at Woodville
Behind the main house stands a smaller gable-roofed building. It is used as the gift store. The current building is actually a I949 replacement of a very similar looking one-story frame building that had a gable end door and sash window. The original was standing by at least 1819, when there is a record that it was being painted white. It had a stone foundation and a cellar with a separate covered entrance along the side of the building. According to family lore, this little building was used variously over the year as a family schoolhouse, wash house, smokehouse, and store house. It also is believed to have been used as the farm's still house. Casks, piping, both copper and wooden still, and 28 mash tubs are recorded in the 1835 Cowan estate inventory for the still house. Here, grain from the farm was distilled into whiskey – an important part of the family income. When cash was tight, as it often was, whiskey also was used to pay the farm's workmen and field hands.
1775
The Nevilles and Whiskey
Neville and his family had been in Pittsburgh only two years when he and his son, Presley, went east to serve in the Continental Army. Meanwhile, Neville’s 28 slaves built Woodville and Neville’s Bower Hill Manor and began planting and harvesting rye, which they then distilled into whiskey. After the Revolutionary War, the Nevilles returned to Pittsburgh and busied themselves in politics and society, occasionally venturing out from their house in Pittsburgh to Chartiers Creek to take in the country air and check on operations, including their enormous 500-gallon still.
1810
Washington’s Distillery
Washington’s Distillery was one of the largest distilleries in the nation at its time.
Distilleries were very common in early America. In the 1810 census, there were more than 3,600 distilleries operating in the state of Virginia alone. At its time, Washington’s Distillery was one of the largest whiskey distilleries in the country. It measured 75 x 30 feet (2,250 square feet) while the average distillery was about 20 x 40 feet (800 square feet). Washington’s Distillery operated five copper pot stills for 12 months a year. The average distillery used one or two stills and distilled for one month. In 1799, Washington’s Distillery produced almost 11,000 gallons of whiskey, valued at $7,500 (approximately $120,000 today). The average Virginia distillery produced about 650 gallons of whiskey per year, which was valued at about $460.
The distillery had five copper pot stills that held a total capacity of 616 gallons. We know that the three stills made by George McMunn, an Alexandria coppersmith, were 120, 116, and 110 gallons. We do not know how the remaining 270 gallons were divided between the final two stills. Fifty mash tubs were located at Washington’s Distillery in 1799. We think only about half were used at a time to mash or cook the grain. These tubs were large 120-gallon barrels made of oak. In Washington’s day, cooking the grain and fermenting the mash all happened in the same container. The boiler, where the hot water would have come from, held 210 gallons.