Moonshine

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Clinch Mountain Press
P.O. Box 117
Emory, Virginia 24327
(276) 944-5355
clinchmtn@gmail.com

Tales from the Moonshine Trade
by Kathy Shearer

Softcover, 6" x 9", 240 pages
Oral histories and over 100 fine old pictures
Index of names
ISBN 978-097247656-0
Clinch Mountain Press 2011
$15.00

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"A farm don't make no money.
Grow corn and get money in a jar!"
Margie Hayes Lawson, Brushy Ridge, Dickenson County, Virginia

Unlike the comic strip characters Snuffy Smith and Moonshine McSwine, moonshiners worked hard to put food on the table during the Depression. Nearly every secluded hollow in Far Southwest Virginia harbored a still where men, children, and even some women labored and watched out for the law.

This was a part of their heritage, going back to a time before whiskey was taxed, and distilling was a normal part of the farmstead activities.

Tales From the Moonshine Trade includes a wealth of pictures and stories from all the counties of Far Southwest Virginia, many of them humorous, and some tragic.

A Scott County still. From left: "Wild Bill" Daugherty, Henk Addington, and Hugh Jack Addington. Mel Dixon is standing behind with his foot on the furnace. The other two men are unidentified.

Moonshiner James Hayes provided for his large family by selling his whiskey to the Clinchfield Coal Corp. officials and doctors in Dante, in Russell County.