Page 8 - Robeson Living Winter 2020

Perquimans County in his will dated September 25, 1775 made imposed excise taxes on whiskey in an effort to fund the Union
bequest to wife Dorothy the plantation where I now live, with army. The taxes were kept in place by the Reconstruction gov-
Copper Still and at her death to son Josiah. In 1724 Major ernment who discovered re-building the nation was just as ex-
George Parker left his large copper still to be shared by sons pensive as fighting to keep it together. North Carolina Sena-
George, Henry and Phillip. tor Zebulon Vance campaigned against revenue laws in 1876,
terming the revenue agents as “red-legged grasshoppers.” Be-
While not in Robeson County this will has a Robeson County cause of the revenuers, Vance complained, “The time has come
connection. John Harrell was the 3rd great grandfather of John when an honest man can’t take an honest drink without having
Carmichael Harrell who was married to Elizabeth Biggs and a gang of revenue officers after him.”
lived in St Pauls. John Harrell left “I give and bequeath the use
of my Copper Still, to my four Sons, only, that they shall still The reason for comparing the tax collector to the Red-legged
all their Mother’s Liquor during her life, and after her Decease, Grasshopper is because the grasshopper flies as part of a swarm
I give the said still to be equally divided between my said four and when a swarm lands on a field of crops, it can decimate the
sons & their heirs”. field leaving the farmer with nothing to harvest.

The making of the moonshine is not illegal it is selling without In 1894 Congress increased the whiskey tax to $1.10 per gal-
paying taxes. The government misses out on the revenue and lon. They intended for this to increase their revenue but in fact
this has led to the long battle between the moonshiners and the opposite happened. More distillers found that the only way to
Revenuers. profit was to sell illegally. The government estimated that be-
tween 5 and 10 million gallons of illegal liquor were produced
The government first began taxing moonshine in 1791. Most of and sold annually in and around 1896.
the distillers of the time were farmers who lived in remote ar-
eas where it was difficult to get their grain to market. To make In this area of the North Carolina, we see moonshining as a
use of their excess grain it was distilled. The “Whiskey Boys” family tradition, a skill or trade passed on from father to son.
of Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina By 1916 North Carolina was officially a “dry” state, this meant
protested the tax, sometimes violently. that moonshining and bootlegging was becoming big business.
The swamps of Robeson County served as a wonderful hiding
The violence turned to armed rebellion in 1794. One tax col- place for stills. They were also found in barns, chicken coops,
lector had his head shaved, his horse stolen and was then tarred or underground rooms like my great grandfather Tyner’s that
and feathered. President Washington responded by ordering was in room under the barn. I have even heard a rumor that one
with a sizable militia into the countryside to arrest and detain still was on a raft so that it could move around on the Lumber
the unruly rabble. The whisky tax was repealed in 1803. River to stay out of sight.
At the beginning of the Civil War the Federal Government re-
A few of the hundreds of still raids in the early decades of the
1900s:

In July 1918 Sherriff Robert E Lewis and Rural Policeman
A.H. Prevatte captured a dandy 12-gallon copper still a couple
of miles above Lumberton. It was near the operator’s house in
a ditch and a large supply of beer was found in the house.

Federal prohibition agents and Rural Policeman W.A. Smith in
May 1922 found a copper whiskey still in the smokehouse of a
well-known farmer near Lumberton.

In July 1918 Sherriff Robert E Lewis and Rural Policeman
A.H. Prevatte captured a dandy 12-gallon copper still a couple
of miles above Lumberton. It was near the operator’s house in
a ditch and a large supply of beer was found in the house.

A 1921 raid near the Harper’s Ferry Bridge found a still and
four barrels of beer all that were destroyed but the operators
escaped.

In February 1929 a raid was made on a tobacco barn in Britts
township found five men in the barn with the liquor just start-
Page 7 Zebulon Vance Robeson Living ~ Winter 2020