Take a tour of region’s Whiskey Rebellion sites
There still are seats left on a bus that on Sunday will go back more than 200 years in time to tours southwestern Pennsylvania sites that figured big in the Whiskey Rebellion.
That’s the 1794 insurrection by frontier farmers who thought their new federal government was unfairly taxing them on the whiskey they made from the rye they grew.
Washington, Pa.’s David Bradford House, home to a rebel leader and now a National Historic Landmark and museum, is sponsoring this first-ever trip. It starts there at 9 a.m. with a tour and a period-appropriate breakfast snack.
Then, the bus heads out and makes stops at Woodville Plantation in Collier and the Oliver Miller Homestead in South Park, where tourgoers will see an original still and learn about these landmarks’ roles in post-Revolutionary War history. Your guide will be
Woodville’s Rob Windhorst.
(Spoiler alert: Oliver Miller was killed in the first shots fired in the rebellion, before protesters reacted by burning down Bower Hill, the nearby home of Gen. John Neville. Bower Hill was part of Mr. Neville’s Woodville Plantation. Mr. Neville, a tax collector who at least had shots fired over his head, got word to George Washington, who led troops west to quell the unrest.)
The cost of the tour, which includes a buffet lunch at the South Park Clubhouse and wraps up back at the Bradford House by 4 p.m., is $75. Get tickets at www.bradfordhouse.org/events.
Will there be any rye whiskey served? “There is not, purposefully . ... This is an educational tour,” says Bradford House Executive Director Tracie Liberatore. But she knows people, such as Ellen Hough at Liberty Pole Spirits in Washington, Pa.
So maybe there will be whiskey for Ms. Liberatore’s second tour in September.