Page 9 - Discover Fall 2021
P. 9
“Shining” Ladies
of
The South
By Tim Ernandes
Moonshining is a Southern thing in most people’s While “Moonshiners” was fictional, Sutton was
minds, but it actually had its start in Pennsylvania, the real deal. He was the truth behind the legend.
during the Presidency of George Washington. Meanwhile, “Moonshiners” was its own story. The
Whiskey was the very first domestic product to be Virginia ABC Authority had lent its credibility to
taxed in the newly formed the show, much to their eventual
country, with proceeds chagrin, as it led viewers to assume
intended to pay for the that illegal moonshining was
debt incurred during the rampant in the Commonwealth,
Revolutionary War. This gave right under their very noses.
rise to the Whiskey Rebellion,
Rest assured that all of the stories
in which farmer-distillers
on the show are exactly that: just
tarred and feathered tax
stories, not actual events.
collectors and nearly resulted in
a civil war. Popcorn Sutton had quite a
few run-ins with the law over his
Later on, it was actually
illustrious, albeit infamous career.
done primarily in big cities.
He was caught more than once with
In Brooklyn, Irish immigrants
hundreds of gallons of his product
produced illegal whiskey in a
by law enforcement. The last time
waterfront neighborhood that
he was convicted, he was sentenced
nowadays is called Vinegar
to 18 months in prison, a lenient sentence in view of
Hill. There was a huge crackdown on these activities,
the fact that he had been diagnosed with cancer. At
but by the early 1900s, New York City was cranking
age 62, just prior to the scheduled start of his federal
out more moonshine than the entire South combined.
prison sentence, Sutton ended his own life by carbon
It was probably Prohibition that made moonshining
monoxide poisoning in order to avoid serving time in
more of a southern thing, since it’s easier to hide a still
jail.
in the woods than in your average city neighborhood.
As much as Popcorn Sutton was the stuff of
Mention the word “moonshine” to most people,
legends, in real life, considerably less attention was
and it conjures up images of the likes of Marvin
paid to some extremely successful moonshiners, all of
“Popcorn” Sutton. Sutton was literally a caricature
whom shared a common trait: They were women.
of himself, with the requisite bushy grey mountain
man beard, wearing overalls and a well-worn wide- That might seem far-fetched to the casual observer,
brimmed hat. He was a legend in moonshine lore, since moonshining had its heyday in the 1920s, a
mentioned numerous times on the Discovery Channel time during which women were not on an equal
show, “Moonshiners”. social plane with men. In fact, that was exactly the
www.discoversmithmountainlake.com 7
