Franklin County, Virginia, is internationally famous for its moonshine heritage. The layers of history, intrigue and twists of fate led our writer down some equally twisty roads. July marks the 90th anniversary of the judge’s ruling in the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial — the longest criminal trial in Virginia history.
Photo and caption courtesy of Blue Ridge Institute and Museum.
When run in the blackpot style, the large submarine still eliminate[d] the need for mash barrels or boxes.
You’ll remember if you’ve heard Joan Baez sing “Copper Kettle.” It’s a beautiful song, Baez’s haunting soprano painting a romanticized picture of moonshiners at work:
Get you a copper kettle,
Get you a copper coil,
Cover with new-made corn mash,
And never more you’ll toil….
With Franklin County, Virginia, famously labeled “The Moonshine Capital of the World” and the setting of Matt Bondurant’s novel “The Wettest County in the World,” my curiosity about the place got the best of me. And so I set out in search of the who, what, when, where and most of all … the why of it all.
Why, from nearly its beginning, was Franklin County known for its fine corn whiskey and apple and peach brandy?
Why, during the 13 years of national Prohibition, did Franklin County continue to produce millions of gallons of liquor?
Why did major crime bosses run Franklin County ’shine west to Chicago speakeasies and northeast to major East Coast cities?
Photo from the Morris Stephenson collection, courtesy of the Blue Ridge Heritage Archive at Ferrum College.
The largest still ever destroyed in Franklin County, Virginia, was demolished in 1972.
Why did renowned American novelist Sherwood Anderson cover the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 for national publications and, a year after the trial, publish a novel (“Kit Brandon”) featuring one of the witnesses, Willie Carter Sharpe?
And why, even into the late 1990s, was the FBI still investigating Franklin County moonshining in what was called Operation Lightning Strike, the subject of stories in the Washington Post and The New York Times?
Yes, I wanted to know the facts … but more than that, I wanted to know the story.
So began a deep plunge into the history, heroes, lies and truths of moonshine in Franklin County, Virginia.
The research led me across the ocean, to the history of liquor production in the British Isles, and then to Jamestown, Virginia, in the early 1600s.
To the western and southern migration of German-Lutheran, Scots-Irish (Ulsterite) and English immigrants traveling down the Great Valley Road in the 18th century to the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
Photo from the Morris Stephenson collection, courtesy of the Blue Ridge Heritage Archive at Ferrum College.
The largest still ever destroyed in Franklin County, Virginia, was demolished in 1972.
To the long and fragmented history of whiskey taxes in America, starting in 1791 with Alexander Hamilton’s levy to support the struggling American government (resulting in the Whiskey Rebellion) and, 11 years later, Jefferson’s removal of the tax.
To 1862 Virginia, when alcohol taxes returned to support the Confederacy.
To the long-running Temperance Movement and the resulting Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment that encoded Prohibition in 1920. The Volstead Act and the Great Depression and the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
To skilled federal investigations and even more skilled evasions. The characters involved were notable — including a former World War I spy-turned-revenuer, several U.S. presidents, and General Robert E. Lee’s grand-nephew, Charles Carter Lee: Franklin County’s Commonwealth Attorney and one of only three defendants found innocent in the Great Moonshine Conspiracy trial.
A bit of Blue Ridge history is in order here. Farmers had been distilling alcohol for many decades before the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. But during Prohibition, which coincided with widespread industrialization in the South, making whiskey and brandy became a survival tactic. For many, it was a means of making money and holding onto their farms. Distilling their crops into whiskey and brandy made transportation much easier — and more profitable.
Prohibition meant that “mountain whiskey production had to be put under wraps, and thus it became wide open to corruption,” says Charles D. Thompson, Jr. in his book “Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World.” (Like most who have written about moonshine notoriety in Franklin County, Thompson has deep family roots there — his grandfather ran moonshine in order to buy his farm.)
In short, Thompson asserts, the pressure was on mountain distillers to make their liquor in hiding and find ways to transport it covertly to urban speakeasies to keep their families fed and clothed.
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Photo courtesy of Blue Ridge Heritage Archive of Ferrum College.
Moonshining was often a family operation.
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The Old National Highway in Franklin County was once a route for bootleggers.
With the support of organized nighttime transportation networks and extensive bribes (“granny fees”) collected by local law officials, the moonshiners did just that. The numbers are astonishing: It’s estimated that between 1930 and 1935, Franklin County still operators and their business partners sold a volume of illegal whiskey that would have generated $5,500,000 in excise taxes at the 1920 tax rate (the equivalent of $120 million 2024 dollars). And during the same five years, more than a million five-gallon whiskey storage cans were sold in Franklin County — along with 37 tons of yeast (nine times what the city of Richmond used in the same time period) and 16,920 pounds of sugar.
Something had to happen.
In January, 1934, Colonel Thomas Bailey arrived in Franklin County. A member of the Alcohol Tax Unit, Bailey was a World War I hero who had been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his work as a spy. For over a year, he worked undercover to reveal the ingenious web of the moonshine trade. And his focus wasn’t on “cobwebs” (small distillers up in the hills). Bailey was bent on finding the ringleaders of the highly profitable moonshine pyramid.
Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Richards, Deputy Sheriff and treasurer of the Moonshine Conspiracy, was murdered before his testimony.
Here is Thompson’s summary account of Bailey’s work: “Posing as a buyer of homemade alcohol, Bailey ate meals with and befriended bootleggers, hung out in backroom bars, recorded the names of rumrunners and studied their roots. People cooperated even after learning he was an investigator. He offered them legal immunity in exchange for information about the big fish, the men at the top.”
Bailey’s strategy worked. In his 40-page report, titled “United States vs. Charles Carter Lee, et al,” he boldly reported this:
“There exists in Franklin County…an organization which extends its scope into the surrounding counties, which has for its purpose the manufacture, transportation, sale, and possession of non-tax paid liquors and the protection of members of this organization by the Commonwealth Attorney’s office of Franklin County, Virginia, the sheriff’s office, state prohibition officer, and certain men who either now are or formerly were federal agents engaged in the enforcement of liquor laws.”
The “organization” was legally classified as a conspiracy: “when two or more persons join together and form an agreement to violate the law, and then act on that agreement.”
Charles Carter Lee, grand-nephew of Robert E. Lee, Franklin County’s Commonwealth Attorney who was found innocent in the Conspiracy Trial.
Here’s what that conspiracy looked like in Franklin County. The players included merchants, politicians, sheriffs and their deputies, state and federal Prohibition officers … and, Bailey charged, the County’s Commonwealth Attorney, Carter Lee.
The major distillers (who were known as “the big fellows”) and law enforcement collected protection fees from small still operators, promising that their stills would be safe from destruction. The resulting batches of moonshine were collected on the big fellows’ farms, and then run to urban areas and the coalfields, where the stuff sold fast and high. The majority of the money was kept by the bosses, the cobweb moonshiners themselves making little for their labor.
Thompson writes: “In a region with a rich history of liquor making that offered few opportunities for economic advancement, and facing pressure from leading community members, many in Franklin County turned to the conspiracy out of financial necessity. But they often found little luck turning a profit, risking much for little reward.”
After Bailey’s investigative report went public, it was only a matter of time before charges were filed … and the Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 was underway.
A special grand jury convened in October, 1934, in Harrisonburg, a safe distance from Franklin County; three months later, they returned indictments on 34 individuals and one corporation. Seven of the indicted pleaded guilty; seven chose not to contest the charges. In addition, 55 “non-conspiratorial participants” were listed but not indicted.
An astonishing 68 “overt acts” were listed — and six of them involved Commonwealth Attorney Carter Lee.
Worthy of note: The primary witness called to testify before the grand jury never arrived in Harrisonburg. Deputy Sheriff Thomas Jefferson Richards was gunned down 17 days prior to his scheduled court appearance. As designated treasurer of the moonshine conspiracy, Jeff Richards was in a dangerous position, with those above him knowing that he could reveal a great deal about the illegal workings in Franklin County. It became clear several years later, in the trial of Richards’ alleged murderers, that Richards had decided he was going to tell what he knew — that “he was going to cooperate with the investigators.” His life, he told friends, “wasn’t worth a thread.”
The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial jury, 1935.
The night of his murder, Richards was ordered to transport a prisoner, Jim Smith, from Callaway to the county jail in Rocky Mount. Richards’ partner, Edgar Beckett (a former Prohibition officer), had opted out of the trip at the last minute, pleading illness. Richards then allegedly contacted Commonwealth Attorney Carter Lee and asked if the prisoner transport could be done the next morning. Lee said no — that the prisoner (who’d been arrested for a petty local theft) had to be locked up that night.
A few hours later, both Deputy Richards and prisoner Smith were killed near the Antioch Church of the Brethren, the car and their bodies riddled with bullets and buckshot.
The full moonshine conspiracy trial was scheduled to begin in Roanoke on April 22, 1935, giving the Defense just 48 days to prepare after the grand jury indictments in Harrisonburg. More than 200 witnesses would testify over 49 days — the longest criminal trial in Virginia history.
As he sent the jury to deliberation, Judge John Paul made it clear that the trial wasn’t about whether millions of gallons of moonshine had been illegally produced. The jury’s job was to decide “who’d profited from the sales ... and how.”
The outcome? On July 1, 1935, after three days of deliberation, the jury found 20 defendants guilty. The remaining three — Commonwealth Attorney Carter Lee and two deputy sheriffs — were found not guilty.
Although the jail sentences and levied fines were light, it’s widely accepted that the organization that had controlled the county for six years was finished.
Not surprisingly, two additional trials resulted from the conspiracy trial. In 1936, 24 people were indicted for jury tampering in the conspiracy trial; 22 of them were convicted and imprisoned. The following year, two West Virginia brothers, Hubbard and Paul Duling, went to trial for the murder of Jeff Richards. (Both were found guilty and sent to prison; 10 years later, they were paroled after two local men confessed to the murder.)
Photo courtesy of the Blue Ridge Heritage Archive of Ferrum College.
Joel Quinn and his family pose at their mountain still near Endicott, Franklin County, circa 1930.
And what happened to the men who were found guilty in the Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial? After serving their time and paying their fines, the convicted conspirators went back to their lives in Franklin County, a fair number of them continuing to illegally manufacture and distribute untaxed liquor.
It bears repeating that hard life in the mountains drove people to moonshining. While Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs provided income to many Americans, few in Franklin County felt the benefit of programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Public Administration (WPA).
“In that tough economic and political climate, moonshine makers were considered affectionately as both rebels and survivors,” Thompson writes. “[I]n the absence of roads, schools, and jobs, people had used their skills to invent an economy from scratch, without outside help.”
It wasn’t until 2015 that Franklin County Distilleries in Boones Mill became the county’s first legally licensed distillery, quickly followed by Twin Creeks Distillery in downtown Rocky Mount.
(Twin Creeks is owned by Chris Prillaman, the great-grandson of one of the “big fellows” of the conspiracy, James Walter “Peg” Hatcher. Peg Hatcher came home from prison, learned to play the fiddle — the same one that his great-grandson now plays — and was recorded by Smithsonian/Library of Congress documentarians.)
It’s a long and detailed story, the Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy, and much has been written about it. If you’re interested in digging deeper, see sidebar at left.
The Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy and the resulting historic trial is a Virginia mountain story that runs long and deep, and it’s been told in myriad ways from many perspectives (see sidebar). It’s worth visiting Franklin County (and nearby Floyd and Patrick counties) to discover it yourself. The Mountain Spirit Trail is in the works, the Moonshine Capital Heritage Foundation is creating a visitors center in Rocky Mount and the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum in Ferrum has the largest collection of memorabilia in America.
However you feel about moonshine and bootlegging, the final paragraph of Thomas’ book will leave you with a new understanding of what it all meant a century ago in these mountains. (And quite likely a whole new list of questions.)
Now I know that Grandpa risked his life to buy his land. He was shot at because people were trying to stop him from what some called illicit money. I also now know that the lawmen running after him were possibly part of the problem…[but] Clifford Thompson kept driving and his tires did not blow. He got married, moved onto a good farm and paid for it, and raised a family in Franklin County who were well fed and clothed. I was born a generation later, and Grandpa and I would grow close over the years, and in the last month of his life we would drive up Shooting Creek together to Floyd, go out on a dance floor at the general store, and flatfoot to a tune that a band member said was simply called “Corn,” as far as the singer knew. It was about the kind of corn people drink—the kind of spirits that just men made and lived from.
Copper Kettle
Get you a copper kettle,
Get you a copper coil,
Cover with new-made cornmash
and never more you’ll toil.
You’ll just lay there by the juniper,
While the moon is bright,
Watch them jugs a’fillin’
In the pale moonlight…
Build you a fire with hickory,
Hickory and ash and oak
Don’t use no green or rotten wood,
They’ll get you by the smoke.
You’ll just lay there by the juniper,
While the moon is bright,
Watch them jugs a’fillin’
In the pale moonlight.
My daddy he made whiskey,
My granddaddy did, too,
And I ain’t paid no whiskey tax,
Since 1792…
You’ll just lay there by the juniper,
While the moon is bright,
Watch them jugs a’fillin,
In the pale moonlight.
—Albert Frank Beddoe (1953)
Herwood Anderson: An Eye for Willie Sharpe?
Seven years after his groundbreaking story collection “Winesburg, Ohio” was published to critical acclaim, Sherwood Anderson moved to the mountains of southwest Virginia. His coverage of Roanoke’s Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy Trial ran nationally, most memorably in the December 2, 1935 issue of Liberty magazine.
Anderson’s Liberty story is notable on several fronts, one being his attention to the staggering statistics of moonshine production in the county: “Purchases of commodities useful to illicit liquor makers as follows: Sugar, 33,839,109 pounds; corn meal, 13,307,477 pounds; rye meal, 2,408,308 pounds; malt, 1,018,420 pounds; hops, 30,366 pounds; and miscellaneous grain products, 15,276,071 pounds….that would account for some 3,501,115 gallons of moon liquor pouring down out of this one mountain county.”
The other is his extensive coverage of Willie Carter Sharpe’s testimony. The “Queen of the Roanoke rum runners” who’d already served time in a West Virginia prison, Sharpe told stories often and well. Anderson described her as “a rather handsome black-haired woman of thirty [with] a passion for automobiles.” He included a story whispered by a nearby trial attendee: “ ‘I saw her go right through the main street of our town and there was a federal car after her. They were banging away trying to shoot down her tires, and she was driving at seventy-five miles per hour.’ ”
Whether the rumors of Anderson being in love with Willie Carter Sharpe are true, we’ll never know. But his stories about her are worth reading.
Want to Know More?
It’s a long and detailed story, the Great Franklin County Moonshine Conspiracy, and much has been written about it. If you’re interested in digging deeper, here are a few resources.
- The late T. Keister Greer, who lived and practiced law in Franklin County, wrote a 900-page account of the conspiracy trial (including the two later trials mentioned above). “The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935” is based on newspaper reports and grand jury transcripts — because the official trial transcript mysteriously disappeared in the 1950s. Despite offering a $1,000 reward in Roanoke and Franklin County newspapers, Greer was unable to recover the missing transcript. His book is a scrupulously researched primary resource for anyone interested in the legal intricacies and personalities of the Great Moonshine Conspiracy.
- Charles D. Thompson Jr.’s 2011 “Spirits of Just Men” takes a different approach, emphasizing multilayered economic necessity as the driver of moonshining in Franklin County. Thompson — curriculum and education director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke — has done his homework well, and his book includes both factual data and family truths.
- Similarly, Zane Reeb’s 100-page “Crime, Change, and Power in Franklin County, Virginia,” published in the July 9, 2024 edition of The Yale Historical Review, is an impressive blend of family lore, academic research and geopolitical truths life in the Virginia mountains.
- “Franklin County’s Famous 1935 Moonshine Conspiracy: Complete Daily Newspaper Accounts” (2016) includes Sherwood Anderson’s Liberty magazine story, as well as coverage of all 49 days of the Roanoke trial in The Roanoke Times.
- Philip Andrew Gibbs’ 2023 “Murder and Mountain Justice in the Moonshine Capital of the World” focuses on the backstory details of liquor distilling and families in Franklin County.
The Conspiracy has also been told fictionally, with Matt Bondurant’s gritty “The Wettest County in the World” the best-known and the basis of the 2012 movie “Lawless.” It, too, is a story told through ancestral eyes, focused on Bondurant’s grandfather and great uncles’ moonshine work. And Franklin County rumrunner Willie Carter Sharpe is the model for the main character in both Jeannette Walls’ “Hang the Moon” (2023) and Sherwood Anderson’s “Kit Brandon” (1936). Keister Greer’s widow, Ibby Greer, also wrote a novel about Franklin County moonshining: “Moonshine Corner, Keys to Rocky Mount.”
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2025 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!