Mapleton borough

Stillhouse Hollow's Whiskey Days

Jack's Narrows on the Pennsylvania Railroad, photographed by Frederick Gutekunst about 1875Frederick Gutekunst, about 1875. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain

Did you know? Sometime in the latter half of the 1800s a man named John McComb built and operated a whiskey distillery in Stillhouse Hollow, in Jack's Narrows east of Mapleton. General McComb was the name he answered to. John H. Wharton was a foreman at the still for a number of years.

Mapleton's 1966 centennial book says the liquor was stored in barrels in a house that over the years was a dwelling, a tavern, a hotel and a bonded government storehouse for liquor. A government revenue agent sealed the whiskey. When it had aged enough, it was loaded on specially built rafts, poled across the river to the canal and shipped to market.

McComb was buried at Jackstown, with a great flat fossil stone placed over his grave. Years later his remains were dug up and buried again in a local cemetery.

Checked and confirmed. CONFIRMED 2026-10-30 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a verbatim passage and a script confirmed each passage is in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

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