Appalachias Moonshine King

[Music] [Music] [Music] my name is Lewis Redmond and chances are you've probably never heard of me but during my lifetime I was the most famous Outlaw in America more famous than any of my contemporaries Billy the Kid Frank or Jesse James that's right I was known as the Appalachian moonshine King and here's my [Music] story I was born in the mountains of North Georgia in 1854 the youngest of three boys and along with my nine sisters and our parents we lived in a one room cabin with a sleeping L my Paul was just like all the other mountain men back in those days since there weren't any jobs he spent his days trying to raise enough food to keep his family fed but times were hard and before I was 2 years old Paul moved the family to Transylvania County North Carolina in an area called Middle Fork to be honest times weren't much better once we got there the mountain soil was still rocky and we had a hard time eing out of living Paul was nearly 65 years old by the time I was 10 and his body was so worn down from the harsh life of a mountaine that he could no longer do hard labor so he turned to making moonshine my M was half Cherokee and all I remember about her is that she was always sick and bedridden because of this this I never had any schooling and what little I knew about books I had to learn it on my own and one of my sisters taught me how to read right my brothers and I we did nearly all the farming and tended to the Animals by day and by night we helped him and our father steal it was about this time that the war between the states broke out Paul was too old to fight but both my teenage brothers enlisted me now I was too young to fight so I was left home to help out Paul on the farm and his blockade liquor business yet back then you didn't have to go far off to some foreign place to find a war because this conflict was everywhere every man in these Hills had signed up to fight and there were several Confederate camps close to our cabin I was always the Curious type and I spent much of my time hanging around these camps before long a few men began and paying me to take care of their Stills back home and keeping the camps supplied with a steady supply of liquor each fella had their own recipe for shine and I spent a whole year working their Steels every day learning which techniques work better than others even incorporating some of my father's Secrets eventually I set up my own steel and I began making my own unique blend one day I bought my special shine back to the camp for the soldiers it was an absolute hit everybody said it was the best they had ever tasted and for my efforts the men made me an honorary member of the company and began calling me major Lewis and this turned out to be a name that would stick with me throughout my life now you see way back in the mountains where we lived there wasn't much money and it was a long ways to where crops had to be hauled to sell them corn it grows easy enough on those Hillside Farms but getting it to a market now that's a different matter very likely the farm was in a valley and the only exit was a mountain path the corn would have to be carried over the mountain and a wagon would probably have to be hired to transport it this would eat all the value up in expenses by the time the corn reached the market but on the other hand a man could turn 10 bushels of corn into 20 gallons of whiskey and at a dollar a gallon the farmer would have enough money to buy all the little Necessities that he couldn't raise well yeah every man in these Hills knew that there was much more money to make if you simply turned your corn into blockade liquor and back then the revenue officers never got up our way we had heard about them but we had never seen them and as to making a little corn whiskey of course the people in this section they couldn't see any harm in it by 1865 the war ended but we never saw either of my brothers again turns out they' been killed in the war and in a twist of fate it was my apprenticeship in the Fine Art of making moonshine during the war that would become my full-time occupation for the next s years Paul and I perfected the craft to making good corn whiskey and I don't mean to brag but we never had any trouble in disposing of it we'd load up a wagon full and make deliveries down through Bry and gap on a regular schedule While most folks could get a dollar a gallon for their product we could get a dollar and a half and we couldn't keep it in stock Outlaws and preachers alike would line up with money in their hands and of course before long the revenuers got win of our operation and they raided our cabin I was able to make it out the back into the woods but Paul he was caught and put in prison for illegal manufacturing and back then prison wasn't a place for an old man so within a few months my father died and when Maul got the news she stopped eating and within a few months she was barely more than 80 lbs and just like that she died and my childhood was [Music] over [Music] after Maul and Paul died I took care of all my sisters by continuing the family shine business my best friend Amos and I became business partners and soon our liquor was the most profitable and sought after in North Carolina I was just 21 years old but I had 10 men working for me and our distribution reached all the way down in South Carolina and Northern Georgia and as far west as East Tennessee the government had tried multiple times to catch me over the past two years since they killed my paw and they put a $300 reward on my head but you see I had a habit of helping out my neighbors there was a widow up the street who was about to lose her Farm because of some unpaid taxes you could have knocked her over with a feather when I gave her $13 cash to pay the debt yet in full Joe Watkins was about to lose his meal and Frank Elroy almost lost his blacksmith shop for the same reason yet I paid all their taxes too I'd done this several times I just couldn't stand to see anyone lose everything they' ever worked for just to pad some politician's pocket with a tax they had simply invented out of thin air no sir I saw it as a breach of the god-given right to a man's individual liberty and I wasn't the only the one who felt this way all of us Hill folk felt this way and we saw right through the Tyranny and while those Folks up there in those northern states might have been willing to give up their money to some fast talking elected King there was no shortage of mountain men who would resist all thievery that came calling in the name of the government needless to say not one man in North Carolina took the feds up on their $300 reward since folks around here considered me a hero and a modern day Robin Hood it was about this time Amos and I were hauling wagonload of shine in Transylvania County when suddenly a man stepped out on the trail in front of us with a pistol pointed at me major Lewis stop right where you are you're coming with me I got a warrant for your arrest The Stranger said I put my hands up and I tried to reason with him well what have I done to be arrested I asked you know why I'm here I'm a United States de Deputy Marshall and I know what's in that wagon I'm here for that reward and you're coming with me okay okay Deputy Marshall I'll come with you I'm unarmed sir you can put your pistol away and you have my word I won't resist nobody has more respect for the United States government than me seeing my apparent sincerity in my dark blue eyes the Lawman holstered his pistol but you see that was a mistake I quickly grabbed the One-Shot daringer pistol that Amos had sitting on the seat next to him and in a split second the deputy Marshall and I fired at the same time his bullet grazed the top of amos's head but mine went right through the windpipe of the officer's throat his eyes widened as he gasped for air and fell to his knees and in a few moments he was dead just like that I had killed a US Marshall and a 1,000 want it Dead or Alive reward was put on my head my face was plastered across newspapers all across America Folks up north called me an outlaw but folks around the South they called me a hero the federal government sent a small army to arrest me but I spent the next couple years hiding in the mountains of North and South Carolina I was constantly on the Move only stand in one place long enough to run off a couple hundred gallons of liquid gold and each time the law would discover our camp they'd be a day late and a dollar short finding only an abandoned steel and smoldering Embers from last night's campfire each place I went to additional men would join my posi and before you knew it I had nearly 30 men armed to the teeth standing with me against the illegal taxes of the government and several times we had skirmishes with the US Marshals each time a gun battle would erupt we overwhelmed them with our Superior knowledge of mountain Guerilla Warfare tactics we shot several lawmen and many times we turned the tables and hunted them going to their homes and robbing them of their confiscated tax dollars and turning around and giving their money and their horses to families in the community in Pickins County South Carolina we raided a local jail and freed every man who was being held for unpaid taxes one newspaper printed an article that said the trigger finger of Lewis Redmond's right hand is stronger than the arm of the law knowing that they couldn't tame the men of Appalachia in 1878 the government made an about face and suddenly said that they would no longer use violence to try and arrest Moonshiners and that they would just drop all charges if each man would simply register their liquor operations with the government and began paying taxes well nearly overnight there were 200 legal distilleries in South Carolina alone with men taking the government up on their offer not me and my men though you see the government didn't extend that offer to me it didn't matter though I vowed to never pay taxes and I continued make an untaxed liquor for the next few years but there was still that matter of the $1,000 bounty on my head and those lawmen tried and failed for the next 3 years to catch me until one night in the winter of 1881 the day started off usual enough I had an order for a wagon load of liquor to deliver and the deal was to make the exchange at an abandoned house in the woods at night Amos and I got there early in the day to scout out the surrounding woods and to make sure there was no trickery involved satisfied that the deal was legit we built a fire in the fireplace and decided to take a nap while we waited our feet were freezing cold from walking in the fresh snow outside so we took off our boots to let them soak up the heat from the fire and before long we were fast asleep just as a sun set four men burst through the door with pistols drawn turns out our buyer was an undercover US Marshall a pistol whipped Amos and it began kicking me relentlessly until they were able to use a long rope to tie our hands the Lawman took my coat and emptied my pockets stealing over $100 all right boys let's load him up and get him down to the Greenville jail one of the Marshall's men ordered can I at least put my boots on before we go I asked of course you can we wouldn't want you to catch cold now would we he replied as the officers laughed but you see as soon as he let go of that rope I rabbit punched him in the throat with my tied Fist and I broke towards the exit a bull rushed right through the other two men and slid out that door like I was greased into the dark woods I ran with nothing but my socks as a bullets cut down tree branches all around me now most men who found themselves standing in ankled deep snow at midnight with no shoes coat or hat and their hands tied would have done all they could to get as far away from that abandoned house as possible but I couldn't just leave my best friend and besides those government bastards had just stolen over $100 from me and a wagon full of my whiskey and within a few minutes I came across a small cabin and the owner recognized me from the newspaper and after I explained the circumstances he gladly gave me some dry socks boots a coat and his hat oh yeah and a double barrel 12 gauge shotgun with two pockets full of Buckshot it was nearly midnight now and I quickly set out for pickle Gap I knew the only Road out of those woods went right through skunk holler and straight into the Gap and by the time they made it there I was already locked and loaded waiting on them as the two wagons approached I son loaded both barrels of Buckshot on them and complete chaos broke out as they returned fire wildly since they didn't know what direction I was located I reloaded and then unloaded two more barrels of hot lead on them drivers whipped the horses and they fled into the night I didn't have a horse so I ran beside the road trying to keep up with them I could hear several men hollering and it was clear that somebody had been hit they stopped at the first house they came across and tried desperately to get medical attention for the wounded men and in the confusion Amos was able to escape and dart into the woods several more gunshots into random directions and the voices of men yelling where is he did you see him which way did he go and in that moment I knew Amos had escaped so I fired into the air to let him know my location and in just a few minutes we were reunited and on the run [Music] again I just couldn't get my mind right knowing that my $100 was a laying in that law Man's Pocket so a few days later I regrouped in my posy of a dozen men surrounded the US Marshall's house who' led the attack on me Amos and we shot every window out of his house until he finally came out and surrendered turns out he had deposited my money into his bank account so I took his wife hostage right to the bank teller and I had her cash me a check in my name for $125 and I stole his best horse for my trouble after that we took possession of my wagon load of moonshine I tipped my hat to the misses and we were home on the run again so you see major Lewis Redmond had embarrassed the US federal government for a solid 8 years he had killed one US Marshal and wounded several more in addition many more were killed during the gun battles with Redmond and his men newspapers across the country credited major Lewis with all of their deaths and his Legend continued to grow he was literally the most wanted man in America during the lifetimes of Frank and Jesse James and Billy the Kid and by now the federal government was Furious and they sent an army of IRS agents and soldiers to capture him they combed the mountains of East Tennessee North and South Carolina and the mountains of North Georgia until finally they had a tip on his whereabouts in Liberty South Carolina 24 men surrounded the cabin and demanded that Redmond and Amos surrender Amos stepped out the front door at the same time as major Lewis stepped out the back and both men opened fire Redman managed to escape into the woods but Amos his pistol misfired on the first shot and the US Marshal shot him down three times before he dropped to the ground a dead man the walls continued to close in on Redmond as he ran for another 2 years by 1881 he had built a small cabin next to the little Tennessee River located just outside of Bryson City where the floodwaters of the Fontana Lake Dam are it was here that major Lewis Redmond made his last defiant stand against the US government IRS revenuers and US Marshals had camped outside his cabin all night long waiting for the fugitive to step out on his porch when Daybreak came major Lewis heard his dogs barking so he walked out his front door when he suddenly heard the words it's all over Redmond there's an army of men and it's just you surrender or you you'll be dead where you stand and in that moment the most notorious Moonshiner who had led a band of Outlaws among the mountains just as free as the air that nourished him yelled out I'll Never Surrender to Men Who fire at my back and he began to raise his shotgun in rebellion and an army of men open fire upon Him ripping almost two dozen holes in Redman's overcoat and sending Six Bullets clean through his body mortally wounded The Outlaw broken ran for one last time but he only made it 150 yard before collapsing to the ground waging tongues quickly spread the word that America's Most Wanted Man was dead and the New York Times ran a story on his death on the front page of its newspaper yet what they didn't know was that Lewis didn't in fact die you see the Lawman picked up his bullet riddled body out of the woods and they placed it on the kitchen table in his cabin they quickly sent for a city doctor but instead an old mountain woman who the locals called a granny woman arrived to Redmond's house with little more than some plants roots and some oils that she had concocted and somehow she saved his life Redmond was tried and convicted on 12 counts of illegal moonshining conspiracy and assault charges strangely though he avoided the murder charge of killing the US Marshall because back then a Lawman could only apprehend a criminal if he was in physical possession of the judge judges warrant which it turns out the US Marshall didn't have in his pocket when Redmond shot him major Lewis pled guilty to all charges and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison yet at the same time most of America loved him and viewed Lewis as a hero so much so that after serving Less Than 3 years the president of the United States Chester Arthur pardon major Lewis Redmond the most ironic part of this story is that even the US government recognized that the outlaw who had defied them so defiantly and ran the most successful illegal moonshine operation in American history made some mighty fine moonshine and indeed it was some good stuff so good that the government that had once tried so hard to kill him hired Redmond and made him the overseer of their Federal distillery in South Carolina where major Lewis R Redmond's Special Blend became the most popular Whiskey In America and this time it was legal and now you know the rest of the story on appalachia's moonshine King let me know what you think about this story in the comments below and be sure to hit the like And subscribe button for more true stories on app palach's [Music] p

Channel: The Appalachian Storyteller

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Keywords: moonshine history, moonshiner, moonshine king, appalachia, appalachian history, appalachian trail, Georgia history, North Carolina history, South Carolina history, Major lewis redmond, major lewis r. redmond, lewis redmond, appalachian, the appalachian storyteller

Id: PZxn7g0wwQk

Length: 22min 27sec (1347 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023