Subject: moonshiner

Culture: Appalachian mountain folk / "hillbilly"

Setting: family feuds, moonshining, Appalachia 1880s-1940s

Event Photos

Primary Sources

* Nelson 1995 p30

"American moonshiners, at least in popular stories and historical texts, have led Jekyll-Hyde existences, sometimes heroes, sometimes criminals, sometimes cartoons. They have been unschooled and highly skilled, tending apparatus that range from tiny, handmade copper still deep in the backwoods, to modern, swimming-pool-sized behemoths in the middle of cities. But in spite of their surprising persistence and amazing ingenuity, their reputation as a whole has ebbed and flowed.

"At various times and places, particularly in the deep South during the last century, moonshiners were held in high esteem, 'representatives of a stubborn individualism that appeals to Americans' resentment of government interference in their lives,' Wilbur Miller wrote in Revenuers & Moonshiners: Enforcing Federal Liquor Law in the Mountain South, 1865-1900. Part of the popular support for still-tenders was based on a virulent dislike of federal authority and federal tax, a sentiment dating back to pre-Revolutionary days. Part of it was simply local and family tradition: grandfathers had run small stills, carefully producing high-quality liquor in which they justly took pride."

Secondary Sources

Field Notes