Is stillin in your family tree?

The long and storied history of distilled spirits.

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BTR Kentucky
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by BTR Kentucky »

One line of my family are Scottish Irish, they were all moonshiners that settled on land near me where the government kicked them all off their land back in the 60s. My granddad and great GG went to jail for moonshiners, got ratted on. Got other family members from same area that were moonshiners. The area was full of moonshiners
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Shine0n »

My grandad made his and I got to fetch all the water for him, that's all! On the west side of Charlotte North Carolina. Being 8 yo that's rough man. One night after a run he was drunker than hell and wanted to beat on everyone around and got my gramma pretty good, when he passed out in the bed she sewed him up in the sheets and damn near killed him with a cast iron griddle. Needless to say he never touched another one of us again. Lol sure do miss that mean little man though.
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BoisBlancBoy
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by BoisBlancBoy »

The only history I have or know of is from personal experience. I was 8-10 yrs old and walked into my Grandpas barn. He was sitting in front of a still and it was dripping away into a jar, not that I had ANY clue what was going on. Finally I asked him what he was doing and he told me to stick my finger in the jar and taste it. Of course I did and I about puked while trying to say how awful that was. I can remember him just belly roll laughing at me. One of those memories that have really stuck with me especially since he is no longer with us. But that memory was a big part of the reason I took up the hobby.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by dukethebeagle120 »

my great great uncle bootlegged rum and whiskey across the border
from quebec to vt across lake m.m. during prohibition with a steam boat.
my family ain`t drinkers but there`s a point on the lake named after them.
a hushed part of our family history.my father told me of it.
we didn`t produce but sounds like we were in transportation
its better to think like a fool but keep your mouth shut,then to open ur mouth and have it confirmed
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by craftsman »

As History in my family would have it, my grandmother was a moonshiner in upstate Pennsylvania. She was a very industrious woman that made whiskey and brandy at home. She had no problem with finding corn and she malted the corn because sugar was too expensive and hard to come by. She made Brandy from the wild berries and fruit she raised on the property.
The unique part of this story is during the prohibition, my grandfather was a Pennsylvania state policeman and assigned to the revenuers division that went around busting up stills. It was a horseback division that went into the mountains and hollers looking for moonshiners. My grandfather worked long hours and my grandmother told me he only made about $6.00-8.00 per week. After all it was during the height of the great depression.

Sometimes during the week, he would bring his police buddies home for lunch. My grandmother was a great baker that made cakes, bread, pastries and pies. She relayed to me that the baked goods smelled up the whole house and did an excellent job of hiding or masking her mash odors. She had an old wood-stove in the kitchen and she had a curtain that was on a frame on both sides of the stove that sat out a bit, but didn't look suspicious. Behind that curtain was her mash barrels. She had a pot still with a thump keg in the cellar that she disguised very well in the laundry area.

Now my grandfather used to get real nervous when he brought these fellows over, but grandmother was cool as a cucumber. She loved the way the fellows all ranted and raved about the fresh baked goods smell in her house and how great her baking tasted. She told me if they ever went into the kitchen and looked behind the curtain she was going to have problems.

What I found most interesting is she sold the moonshine whiskey and brandy out the back door and made more money from a few customers everyday than my grandfather ever made in month. My grandmother never drank, she claimed "she only tasted". The money helped pay bills and put shoes and clothes on my mother and her sisters and brother.

She told me this story in the 70's before she passed away. She also told me her recipes and how she made caramelized cherries to color and help flavor her whiskey. I was very fortunate. It is amazing to me that during the prohibition, she claimed more women than men had profitable moonshine stills. I like how the verbal tradition of history was passed down. I hope to share my experiences with my grand children, but only difference between me and the past is my legacy is a hobby and not my livelihood.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Truckinbutch »

:clap: Excellent story :thumbup: It was often that way where I live . Menfolk did the heavy labor and the women provided the 'butter and egg' money . They survived those times by everyone contributing what they could .
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by CaptMorgan »

I just found out that my grandad on mom's side made moonshine. I never met him as he died at 47 years old shortly after I was born. He was born in Slovakia, or whatever it was called then and moved to the states. I wish I knew what kind of still he made and what kind of mash he ran. I would have liked to gain some knowledge from him, too.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by frost021 »

I Love History and wish I had paid more attention when I was younger as I remember as a child in the 70's going to visit my great grand aunt and her husband that were in there late 70's at the time looking after my great grandmother that was in her late 90's And the sole reason to visit, was Dad had done off a new recipe and bring a pint of 70's% and wanted my great grand uncle to taste it then they would get into conversations of Rum Running when he was young and working for my great great grandfather ,during Prohibition, and then conversations would go, into the expulsions of the acadians... Dad started to show me a few things about stillin a few years before he passed after I had a bout with Drugs As he was a heavy drinker and never proofed down and kept things at 70 or higher %...and didn't want me following in the same footsteps that being said he only showed basics as everything and it all had to do patience...Then I found this forum and learned so much More Specially on Saftey... :D
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Truckinbutch »

frost021 wrote:I Love History and wish I had paid more attention when I was younger as I remember as a child in the 70's going to visit my great grand aunt and her husband that were in there late 70's at the time looking after my great grandmother that was in her late 90's And the sole reason to visit, was Dad had done off a new recipe and bring a pint of 70's% and wanted my great grand uncle to taste it then they would get into conversations of Rum Running when he was young and working for my great great grandfather ,during Prohibition, and then conversations would go, into the expulsions of the acadians... Dad started to show me a few things about stillin a few years before he passed after I had a bout with Drugs As he was a heavy drinker and never proofed down and kept things at 70 or higher %...and didn't want me following in the same footsteps that being said he only showed basics as everything and it all had to do patience...Then I found this forum and learned so much More Specially on Saftey... :D
It's not just you . Back when I thought my name was 'GET WOOD' I felt put upon . There is so much I could have learned first hand if I had been more mature in my thinking .
If you ain't the lead dog in the team , the scenery never changes . Ga Flatwoods made my avatar and I want to thank him for that .
Don't drink water , fish fornicate in it .
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by DBCFlash »

I remember hearing hushed stories about my uncle going to prison for moonshining way back when I was just a little boy, but nobody in the family would ever talk about it. I had forgotten all about it until I saw this very thread. I called my cousin, his grand-daughter and asked her about it. She came along way after and she had heard even less than I had, but she gave me her fathers number. I called him and he gave me the story as he remembered it. Seems my uncle was laid off from his job and the family needed money, so he gathered up some copper and built a still. He would run it in his old rickety barn and his customers would come to him to buy the hooch. Seems one day he decided to deliver a few jars and he got pulled over. No mercy from the local po-po.
I even got his old white lightening recipe. Very basic, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try. All except for the selling and the po-po part I mean...
Some men you jest cain't reach...
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by nuncaquite »

Beer brewers yes, distillers not that Im aware. The beer was rough. Supposedly drank the recipe from the old country. Really bad. We must have been kicked out of Germany for that skank.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Pikey »

What a great thread 8) - Sadly I have no heritage - I used to make wine while I was still at school, but my dad used to drink it when I was out :lol:

I never was able to distil until fairly recently when a friend and I made a contact in USA who gave us some of the rudiments of a still design and we experimented from there. That was after the old fella died and that is one of my regrets. It would have made his latter years so happy, not to have to scrimp for his "bottle a week" :(
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TDick
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by TDick »

[quote="nuncaquite"][/quote]
So glad you "poked" this thread. I'd never seen it before. And what's ironic is that I just sat down and turned on the dvr of "Moonshiners".
(DON'T say it! :oops: ) I record it so I can FF through some of the REALLY stupid parts.

My mom passed away earlier this year. Didn't know about my hobby but mentioned my Great Uncle had run a small still which she tasted as a little girl.
Didn't sound like he made it to sell but who knows.

Not to get too off topic but this seems the perfect place for it. About 2 years ago while taking care of my Mom, I got interested in genealogy.
I've ended up using WikiTree.com . It is a free source so I'm not soliciting.

Most other sites everyone creates their own personal family tree, and can use some entries fro others. The difference in Wikitree is that there is only one tree and everyone contributes to it. And it seems that, like here, most people there are more astute and know what they are doing. In fact they generally ask that you source your entries instead of just making entries and see what happens.

So as you enter the data you have on your people, you may discover that a distant relative has already created branches you didn't know about.
That also helps if you only know a little about your ancestors.

That's enough. I figure if you're reading this thread you're at least a little curious about your family. If you are, at least take a look at Wikitree.
This is a GREAT thread!
:)
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by zapata »

I do. For sure at least three generations, further back according to family legend, and pretty widespread. Most ran mostly family sized stills, but I have heard stories of a few distant relatives doing time for both production and transport from prohibition into maybe 70s or even early 80s. Grandpa was a farmer, but also worked at the general store, he was known as a safe source for bulk sugar. Mom has told me how their only family "vacations" piggy backed on delivering loads of sugar across the state. It was apparently a decent grey area hustle, LEO actively watched the sugar sources to find the shiners. First time I ever heard the word "snitch" was in reference to the fact he never would.
In fact, Mom's entire life even far removed from the family farm whenever she would hear a gunshot in the distance her first thought certainly wasn't fear, and it wasn't to wonder who got a deer, it was who had pissed the sheriff off enough he was out shootin holes in their still.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by nuncaquite »

We had a neighbor that was retired ATF. The kind of agent that probably sampled lots of shine, just to make sure he wasnt arresting the wrong man. He was really pretty good people.
Anyhow he had told a story about when he was first starting out and still enthusiastic. He was out on surveillance and had climbed a tree to get a better look. A bear came along that night and kept trying to shake him out of the tree. He could hardly see the bear, apparently the bear could see or hear him quite well. Every time he thought is was safe to leave, the bear would come back and shake the tree. He said wild boar had pestered him a few times while in a tree at night. But the bear was his last night time surveillance.

He had a son my age, and took us both to see the Evidence Room/Safe before he retired. Most of it was boxed, some even in cans about the size of paint cans. (Dont know what the cans were about) He pointed out the stills, but at the time I couldnt make heads or tails of it. Mostly a darn arsenal of sawed off shot guns is what I remember.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by zapata »

Note to self: keep a bear suit in the stillhouse.
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Kareltje
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Kareltje »

No, at least not on my fathers side.
I am reading in Jess Carr's informal history of moonshining in America. Interesting, but a bit boring. These stories make it alive. Thanks! :clap:
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Reverend Newer »

My 70 year old mom sent me a sample of her latest craft beer run for Christmas. Her dad used to make a living by keeping bees, coon hunting (gambling on the dogs) plus a bit of shine sales.

Ah the good old days.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Appalachian spirits »

Long family history on moonshing going all the way back to my scotts ancestors. I remember listening to stories about revenue agents, stills and some of the "problems" that came with it when i was little. My grandpa was the last to run any as his three sons never did. (Until me). I even went up the holler and found one of the old still sites where they dug into the creekbank to make a seat. Some artifacts but nothing spectacular.
Here in appalachia shinin was as common place as going to church on sunday. Still is really
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by cariboux »

I haven't delved into my ancestry much, yet, but do know my kinfolk originated in Kentucky and all were (are) whisky sippers! Anyway, I've attached a really cool picture given to me by a good friend. His great-granddad and grandpa owned a cooperage and are in the pic.
Attachments
End of prohibition.
End of prohibition.
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Desolus
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Desolus »

I don't think that there is anyone on the planet who somewhere in the family tree doesn't have a distiller. As a species we have been at it for a long time. Since the inception of the idea of written history in fact, maybe even before then, no way to tell really.

Cultures with no written language and totally isolated from the rest of the world have discovered beer and in some rare cases distilling.

People are quite clever, and all mammals seem to seek ethanol.

I think my point here, and contribution to the discussion is that brewing is intrinsic to what it is to be human, and inebriation to what it is to be alive on this rock.
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by jonnys_spirit »

I looked into my family tree and it looks like a telephone pole. Ayup we been stillin.

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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Beerswimmer »

My grandfather was from a farm in Poland. He drank plum brandy, and told me about how his family made their own every year. He died before I ever had any interest in the craft, but I'd bet I'm not making as much as he was!
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Re: Is stillin in your family tree?

Post by Dan Call »

My family seat in the US is primarily Tennessee, starting in 1682, landed in Jersey from France in 1664, French Huguenots, which were some of the first protestants to give the one-fingered wave to the Catholic church in France. I am directly descended from "The Lord of Arles," but there were many other family members that held titles of nobility and were knights that rode with the king called "riders of the shield."

They got to what would become Tennessee and were able to get a homestead of enormous land holdings around Winchester, TN. They settled there because of the natural springs. The area is just outside Winchester, TN and extends to Monteagle and Tullahoma, which are just down the road from Lynchburg.

I'm also proud that my family donated 2,500 acres to help start Sewanee, the University of the South, a very distinguished small private college. There were family members who taught there was well, notably a relative that was also a Federal district judge for Tennessee. I want to point out that lest this sound like braggadocio, early families often made large land claims in those days. It wasn't necessarily the case of having a bunch of money as much as being able to hold on to what you claimed. If you showed due diligence and enforced your boundaries it would carry through and be a family wide endeavor. The TV show "Bonanza" is accurate in the depiction of the Ponderosa(which was fictional) and that the Cartwrights had "worked to keep it." There was a definite culture of "landed gentry" similar to England but several clicks more crude and lacking the titles, which is why the primary identities are ranches rather than titles. The "King Ranch" in Texas is a real-life Ponderosa that spans around a million acres and kept by the same family. That doesn't just mean avoiding your creditors but avoiding competing land owners and presumptive new land owners. Land wars in the post revolutionary period are not documented nearly as much as they could be.

During the Civil War, an ancestor entered the war as a surgeon at age 70 and died of pneumonia in Macon GA in 1864. But before he passed he had been promoted to Brigadier surgeon for Turney's Tennessee Regiment, a notable group that actually fought in the unsuccessful defense of Atlanta against W.T. Sherman's "scorched Earth" campaign. About the only thing left there now are some opulent mansions dating back to the early 1800's, but I have no ownership stake in the land of the mansions. It's very interesting family history.

In my genealogical research the relatively small Daniel family were relative newcomers compared to some others. My family owned many servants, which included both a tannery and distilling operations, although never a commercial operation, rather, an informal network of exchange as currency by the gallon, taxes were avoided. But this was nothing unique at all. Every farm had a still, and it was almost always ran by servants. We know the river the tannery and still was located on but not the exact location, but it was an ongoing operation, as most other larger farms did.

I have found many family names in the area that circulated in the some of the same social circles that Jasper Newton Daniel would have been mostly on the fringes of. His family and background, and the fact that he was an orphan put him in struggling status,
although he family were respected as farmers and his brothers had served honorably in the Civil War. Usually any caucasians that engaged in distilling were either building a business or just running it for short term money. But even as a teenager Jack was
industrious, he would run barrels of whiskey on two or three day wagon trips to Huntsville, AL, a very dangerous undertaking that
he performed frequently in order to get his business off the ground. He was always very motivated.

Interesting story, the charcoal filtering had been in use long before Jasper Newton Daniel used it. In fact it was known as the "Lincoln County Process" and had been originated in the East TN area in that same county by servants and was widely accepted as standard practice. The Lynchburg outfit would have us believe they invented it, but far from it. The purpose is a little different as well.

Interesting note on distilling efficiency and prices:

I gallon of white corn whiskey sold for $3.00 per gallon. Prior to the Civil War the price was 40 cents per gallon.
1 gallon of aged Kentucky bourbon sold for $3.75.


I bushel of corn was gauged out to 56 pounds.

Here's the kicker, the requirement for Jack's district was more stringent that most others:
They had to get 3 gallons of whiskey from one bushel of corn, this was monitored and if they couldn't make it they were not allowed
to buy corn as a business. 3 gallons of finished whiskey from 56 pounds of corn is pretty efficient.

More critically, this 3 gallon result had to be acheived in 3 days or less. Many of Jack's competitors were shut down during this time
period and the man responsible was on the take from the large distillers from Nashville trying to eliminate competition.

When Jack was in charge of his operation, up until the early 1900's, he capped capacity at 300 gallons of whiskey per day, to
go into barrels and set to age. This was likely the "golden age" of Jack Daniel whiskey in terms of taste. The corn back then
was not genetically optimized for proteins so likely had more starch, most likely in order to make that much whiskey from 56 pounds.

The "hair of the dog" as it was referred to back then was the next day condition after drinking the noxious whiskey of those days. The running the distillate over burnt sugar maple was specifically intended to reduce the hangover, and it was found to take a bit of the edge off. I personally have never really found that to be true, especially in the case of Jack Daniel whiskey.

Another story concerning the origin of JD's "Old No. 7." Due to the high number of whiskey distillers in the East Tennessee area they were divided into districts for taxation. Daniel and his colleagues were enraged when a redistricting was done in 1876 and put Daniel and Call in a less advantageous tax and grain allotment situation. He had also worked hard to develop quality. Previously he had been in district 4 distillery #7. After the consolidation of two districts he was in district 5 and his distillery number was now 16. Apparently the higher number, he thought, made him look like a Johnny come lately, and more importantly he had a very good reputation for quality, not quantity, in the old system. It's worth pointing out that even in his native district in Tennesse, and there were many, Jack Daniel's operation for far from the largest, about mid pack. It's also worth noting that the Beam family, even when Daniel was a kid, were considered the unqualified royalty of the whiskey industry. It wasn't until much later that he had a sizable operation, around the early 1900's, which was likely his peak time as a distiller and a businessman. This is also the time when the whiskey itself won gold medals at World Exhibitions. This put him on the map forever and if you look on the black or green label bottles the imprint of the gold medals are still on the bottles. Anyway, interesting story.

I have spent quite a bit of time in that area, it's beautiful.

More recently, I am related to more Tennessee people, several of which were personally busted by Buford Pusser, one more than a few occasions. When I was a teenager hunting in McNairy county on several occasions were could come up on an old still site deep in the woods. I can't even count the number of times that has happened. There's always tell tale evidence even though you rarely see a boiler or coil, just derelict barrels, in some cases car and truck radiators, large wooden fermentation vats, but that's about it. Some of those locations are used for meth these days, but that's another story.

Buford Pusser was a legend in those parts and his arch enemy was the "Dixie Mafia," a large informal criminal network the went all the way into Indiana and extended to the Gulf Coast in Gulf Port, MS. At one time a large, violent criminal network that made illicit whiskey well into the 70's, as well as many other criminal activities. The whole culture surrounding "Walking Tall" is true in places, but the larger story is quite lurid, way beyond anything the movie represents. The first two movies are about the subject. The recent one it total BS and is about shoot-em-up.
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