Family Financial Security: An Origin Story

In a way, whiskey played a direct role in fostering my family’s financial security.

Hello there, Talking About Money Community, I’m wishing you wealth.  💰

In this post I am going to tell you the origin story of how my father’s family first achieved its financial stability.  While not a wealthy family by any stretch of the imagination, my father did grow up rich in family ties.  He was raised down the road from his grandparents, and he grew up around more than a dozen aunts and uncles and fifty cousins.  I can’t even imagine what Sunday dinners at my great-grandparents’ house must have looked like.  Decades later as a child spending my summer vacations among these people who kind of looked like me, as far as I could tell the members of my father’s family supported and appreciated one another. 

The origin story of my family’s financial security came from my dear grandmother, Jewell, who recited it into a tape recorder while we sat at her kitchen table one summer day in 1998.  At the time I was collecting family stories for posterity and the story of Jewell’s grandparents, Jim and Lizzie, was the farthest back that she could remember, and it was the first story that she told. 

This is what she said:

James “Jim” Polk Johnson and Rachael Elizabeth “Lizzie” Rainey met on a hot and humid day in 1875.  They were both young adults – teenagers, really – working as a farmhand (Jim) and a maid (Lizzie) for a farmer and landowner in the tiny crossroads of Eli, Kentucky.  Their quick romance led to marriage a year later and ultimately to a family with 10 children (8 of whom made it to adulthood).  Five were daughters and three were sons.

It was the 1890’s and Kentucky was still trying to re-establish itself after the Civil War.  My great-great-grandfather – a Baptist and therefore a teetotaler – found a way to support his family in working for himself as a distiller.  While your first thought certainly jumps to moonshiners, those sneaky fellows who made their hooch under the cover of darkness and sold it on the black market, this was not the case for Jim.  He ran an above-board licensed business and had the tax payments to prove it.

Jim grew a field of corn to convert to whiskey, and he and his three teenage sons worked on the family business.  Lizzie worked the business too.  When the men were out in the field, Lizzie ran the sales operation from the house – greeting customers, selling whiskey, and taking money.

A forward-thinking woman of her time, Lizzie never knew what calamity might be around the bend.  She knew she needed to be prepared for whatever life threw her way.  In the whiskey business, Lizzie saw an opportunity and seized it.  When small sales came in, Lizzie put all the money in the till.  But when large sales were made, Lizzie skimmed a little off the top and hid it in a pouch that she tucked away in the straw tick mattress that she and Jim slept on every night.

Days melted one into another, and the sales of whiskey ebbed and flowed.  On some days a single bill was tucked into the pouch.  On busier days Lizzie would be running back and forth to her bedroom, hastily shoving loose bills into the straw in between the sounds of customers knocking at her door.  And all the while she never said a word.

By the time that Jim turned 50, he was getting tired of growing corn and making whiskey.  He had been working as a distiller for over a decade by this point.  His three sons had grown up, gotten married, and moved out to begin lives of their own.  Once their youngest daughter left home, he and Lizzie would once again on their own to make their way in the world.

Early one evening as the sun began to set, after a long day of back-breaking work, Jim slumped on the front porch and looked out over the apple orchard.  He said wistfully to Lizzie, “I’m done with selling whiskey, and I want to buy a farm closer to town.  I wished I had saved some of that money that we made over the years, but I’ve spent it all.”

Lizzie walked out onto the porch and stood beside him, staring out over the apple trees and drying her hands on her apron.  She took a deep breath.  “Jim,” she said, “there is something that I need to tell you.”

She proceeded to confess her scheme of siphoning bills off the top of whiskey sales over the past decade.

Jim sat up straight, more excited than dismayed to hear her confession.  “What did you do with it?”

Lizzie replied, “It’s in the straw tick where we sleep every night.” 

She followed Jim as he ran to the bedroom and tore the sheets from the bed.  He plunged his hand into the straw and pulled out a dollar.  And then another.  And then another.  They proceeded to empty out the contents of their straw tick mattress onto the floor and picked out dollar bills until they were all counted.  While I don’t exactly know how much was there, my grandmother reported that it was quite a bit of money for the time.

Lizzie’s secretive actions over the years led to the beginning of financial stability for my family.

Jim and Lizzie took the savings and bought a 100-acre farm and house that straddled the rural highway that cuts through Eli, Kentucky.  My great-great-grandparents lived out the rest of their years there, Jim sitting on their porch, whittling cedar, and stopping all the passers-by for the news of the day.  He was known to invite both friends and strangers to dine with him and Lizzie for the midday meal, which kept Lizzie on her toes.  Jim was nothing if not a friendly fellow.

Lizzie set up housekeeping in their new house.  The home was but 100 yards away from where her son, also called Jim, was raising a family of his own, including my grandmother, Jewell.  Every day as a girl, Jewell traipsed across the lawn to Lizzie’s house to perch on a chair in her kitchen, watch her cook, and listen to her stories.

Like the one about how Jim and Lizzie bought their farm.

Those same 100 acres that Jim and Lizzie were able to buy with the money that Lizzie saved from their whiskey sales have been passed down the generations and are still in my family today, over 100 years later.  I’ve been there so many times – for canning parties and fish fries and music concerts – and this land provides a sense of stability and continuity that would never have happened if Lizzie had not thought to start saving money and the family had continued to rent.

Today the farm is owned by my father’s cousin, who retired back to Eli after 40 years of working construction and living “away.”  His name, in beautiful continuity, is Jimmy Johnson.  He’s content to be home now, back at the crossroads where he and my father grew up.  Sometimes he sits on his front porch and waves to passers-by driving on the rural highway that bisects the family land. 

The moral of this story is to give the women that you work with full access to all the knowledge, skills, and resources that you have to provide.  You never know when they will take what you have to offer and build a more secure financial future for themselves and their families, for now and for generations to come.

What do you say…?

Do you know the origin story of how your family came to financial stability, or instability?

How does what you know about your family inform how you treat your clients?

Share your thoughts with this insightful and supportive (and did I mention good-looking?) community, either in the Comments below or on LinkedIn.  Thanks, stay safe, and be well.