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AUDIT ROW #308 · SEARCHED 1850s–2026 · EXCISE, GAZETTEER, AND FEDERAL-PERMIT CLASSES
No distiller, rectifier, or liquor wholesaler seated in Walkerton stands in the records searched across the span 1850s to the present — and the search, not just its result, is printed here. The classes run were the ones that would hold such a firm if it existed: the county gazetteers' business listings across their runs; the town's directory record as banked; the federal distilled-spirits permit record's published forms; and the modern licensing record behind the craft test below. A rectifier (a wholesaler who blends and rebottles) is the likeliest miss in a small town's record — a one-room operation leaves directory traces only — and the negative is therefore stated at the strength of the classes named, not as metaphysics: in the records that document this town's trades, no one in Walkerton ever made, rectified, or wholesaled spirits. The town's whiskey was made in the county's cities and beyond, and arrived, like its beer, by rail and by agent. The margin men of the checklist's second half — the moonshiner and the bootlegger of record — stand where the crime leg put them, if anywhere, and are not re-dug here.