Appalachian History

Daddy got caught the first time in about 1916 or ’17. The law was paying informers to tell on people. They put his bail bond at fifty dollars. That was on a Friday, and we didn’t have any money, so the next morning Mama gets me to hitch up the mule and we loaded up the wagon with what whiskey we had left. Back then, Saturday was the big trade day downtown and the streets would be so busy you could hardly walk.

"We tied the wagon in front of the courthouse and just sat there all day, selling whiskey. Everybody knew what Mama was doing, so a lot of people who didn’t even drink would stop and buy some. "For medicine," they would say.

"On up in the morning a deputy came by and asked her what she thought she was doing.

"I’m gettin’ my man out of jail," she replied. Back then no one messed with Mama. "Anything else you want to know?" she asked the deputy.

"No ma’am," the deputy replied sheepishly, "but I reckon I’ll take a gallon if you got any left, my croup has been acting up lately."

They got their dad out of jail that day, but he didn’t stay free long. When his trial came up, he was sentenced to 12 months on the county farm. "Pickin’ peas," he called it.

"I was a pretty good size boy by then and with Daddy in jail it was up to me to run the business," the younger Brasemore recalls. "Before he got caught, Daddy had hid the worm (copper condensation coil) and I got a neighbor to build me a pot.

“It wasn’t but just a couple of weeks ‘til I was back in business. When I run off my first batch they said the sheriff thought my father had escaped."

"Nobody makes whiskey that good," the sheriff said, "except for old man Brasemore!"

“I hadn’t forgotten about the cur dog that had informed on Daddy, though. Giles was his name. Him and the deputy that arrested Daddy were big drinking buddies. This deputy lived out next to Chase Nursery and every Sunday like clockwork, those two would pitch a big drunk.

"Some of my cousins helped me and we took this old worn-out still, it only had a ten-gallon pot, and we set it up out back of his house in a brush patch. First thing Sunday morning we loaded it with mash and started cooking. If you have ever been around a still, you know you can’t hide the smell, and sure enough, on up in the morning the deputy gets a strong whiff and decides to investigate.

"Well, here we are, me and my cousins are hiding in the brush, and the deputy and Giles are stretched out in front of the still sipping free whiskey and acting like they are in hog heaven.

"Next thing you know, there’s this big ruckus and when the deputy opened his eyes, there was the sheriff pointing this big pistol at him," he relates.

"You and Giles are under arrest for making whiskey," the sheriff said.

Seems as if someone had sent the sheriff a note.

"Like I said, while Daddy was in jail I was running the business. One of the first things I did, after I got a little ahead, was to buy me a truck. Daddy wouldn’t have nothing to do with automobiles, he had worked with a mule all of his life. Well I was bound and determined to impress him, so the day he was to get out I took the truck and loaded it down with as much whiskey as I could put on it. It hadn't been picked up in a while and we had a sizable load.

"Daddy was sitting on the front porch when I pulled up..."

"Things didn’t work out the way I figured and the truck broke down a couple of miles from the house. I got the mule, hitched it to the truck and began to pull it on home.

"Daddy was sitting on the front porch when I pulled up in front of the house. He took a long look at that truck I had bought and then took an even longer look at his mule that was pulling it. Finally, after spitting out a long stream of tobacco juice, he asked me, ‘Well, what else can it do?’

"He never did like that truck. Every time I got stuck in mud or whatever, he was always there to tell me that with a mule it would not have happened."


Excerpt from “Making Whiskey,” by Tom Carney, Old Huntsville Magazine, 1992; profile of moonshiner Jim Brasemore, Madison County, AL; online at http://www.oldhuntsville.com/articles/Making Whiskey.php

"I sweated over my introduction, rewrote it ten times. When I had finished, this, in part, was the text:

"There were Alabama Bankheads in one or another of the houses of Congress for sixty consecutive years. My father was Speaker of the House for four years, served with that body for twenty-five. My grandfather, John, sat in the Senate for thirteen years. My Uncle John spent twelve years of his life in the Upper House. They all died in harness. I would be outraging their memories, I would be faithless to Alabama, did I not vote for Harry Truman. Yes, I’m for Harry Truman, the human being. By the same token I’m against Thomas E. Dewey, the mechanical man.

"Mr. Dewey is neat. Oh, so neat. And Mr. Dewey is tidy. Oh, so tidy. Just once I’d like to see him with his necktie knotted under his ear, his hair rumpled, a gravy stain on his vest, that synthetic smile wiped off his face. It seems a great pity to risk exposing Mr. Dewey to the smells and noises and ills of humanity. Far better to leave him in his cellophane wrapper, unsoiled by contact with the likes of you and me.

"Mr. Dewey is trim and neat and tidy, but is he human? I have my doubts. I have no doubts about Harry Truman. He's been through the wringer. And by the wringer I mean that 80th Congress. That 80th Congress which ignored his passionate pleas for veterans' housing, for curbs on inflation, for legislation to aid and comfort the great mass of our population.

"Mr. Truman has made errors, even as you and I. Mr. Dewey makes few errors. Why does Mr. Dewey make few errors? Because, to borrow a phrase from baseball, he plays his position on a dime. He ignores fielding chances unless the ball is hit right at him. He's a stationary shortstop. Not so Harry Truman. Like all winning players he tries for everything. He ranges far to his right. He ranges far to his left (Careful there, Tallulah!) He races back for Texas Leaguers. He races in for slow rollers. Truman is a team player. Dewey is playing for the averages. Harry Truman doesn't duck any issues.

"What is Mr. Dewey for? Well, he has come out for one thing that, by his standards of caution, is revolutionary. Again and again he has said that he is for unity. Will all the candidates for disunity please stand?

"Come, come, Mr. Dewey. Act like a grown-up. The next thing we know you'll be endorsing matrimony, the metal zipper and the dial telephone. If Mr. Dewey has any genius it lies in his ability to avoid expressing an opinion on any controversial subject. Mr. Dewey is the great neutral. Harry Truman is the great partisan---the partisan of our troubled millions.

"In my lifetime I've enjoyed many thrills. I'm about to enjoy the greatest one. For now I have the distinguished honor to present to you the President of these United States."


---excerpt from Tallulah: My Autobiography, 1952, Reprint, Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 2004.


Huntsville, Alabama-born actress Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (1902-1968) was a staunch Democrat and campaigned for Harry Truman's reelection in 1948.



Tallulah+Bankhead Alabama+politicians Huntsville+AL appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Men of advanced age are apt to think of the Good Old Days only in retrospect, but as a matter of fact, there is no comparison between the conveniences of life now, and those we enjoyed in 1860.

[Back then] the Tennessee River afforded the only means of ingress and egress for a large section of North Alabama, except by crude dirt roads and horse-drawn vehicles. The highway, then known as the 'big road,' was the main artery of commerce from the livestock and fruit growing section of Tennessee and Kentucky to the cotton belt of Alabama and Georgia. This highway led directly from Huntsville to Deposit Ferry.

Large droves of mules, and swine, were driven through the country and crossed the river at Deposit. Facilities for handling large bodies of stock were crude and primitive. Boats were pulled across with oars, and 20 or 25 head of mules made a load. Traders had arranged with farmers along the road to provide food and troughs for mules and horses, and lodging for the drovers. These farms were about a day's march apart, and were known as mule stands.

Where crops were growing, the road was fenced in, making a lane that was of great assistance to the drovers in keeping their mules from straying while waiting for the final load. Hogs were usually fed in the road and they were generally fat, showed little disposition to stray away, but would promptly tumble down as soon as they were fed. One such stand was located about four miles from the river, and another some thirty miles further south, at the foot of Sand Mountain. This road and ferry were kept in use until about 1890, when the county established a free ferry at Guntersville, when the business at Deposit gradually shifted to the free ferry.

The ferry was not free to non-residents, but the old road was always bad, and was worked by the old plan of ten days work for each able bodied man along the route. It was never a satisfactory method, and the road grew steadily worse, until with recent years, the ferry at Deposit has been discontinued. Late in the last century, the long projected railroad from Gadsden to Guntersville was completed and the people of the valley began to think that they had arrived at the zenith of modern progress. Telegraph lines followed the railroad, and it really was a great step forward. Soon thereafter the telephone came, and we knew that our section would be heard from.

After the telephone came the automobile, which was received with many misgivings. It was really a torture to ride in a car on the roads that we had. At first, it was expected that only rich people could afford to own a car, and grumbling was loud and persistent about keeping roads in order for a chosen few. Teams were frightened and many accidents made the auto very unpopular, until the model 'T' put them in reach of all.

Original caption reads: Around 1928, the old Guntersville Ferry is seen crossing the Tennessee River where the Whitesburg Bridge is now located.

Then went up a shout for improved roads, and the shout was heard and road building began on a small scale with county means. This was so satisfactory that bond issues began for road building. The impulse reached the state and adjoining states, and the result is that every man who has sufficient credit now owns a car. Travel has increased from a distance, and cars may be seen now in any town, with tags from Canada to Florida.

The steam ferry at Guntersville has become inadequate, so that now a splendid bridge, the George S. Houston Bridge, spans the Tennessee River at Guntersville. The road from Guntersville south is hard surfaced and the trip that required a day in former years, may now be made in two hours.


source: "The Good Old Days in Marshall County," by C.G. Fennell, The Alabama Historical Quarterly, Vol. 01, No. 02, Summer Issue 1930.



Guntersville+AL Huntsville+AL Guntersville+Ferry appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

On a cold day in March 1881, three masked men on horseback, brandishing revolvers, held up an army paymaster on the banks of the Tennessee River near Muscle Shoals, AL. The paymaster was on his way with the payroll to pay the construction workers digging a canal near Muscle Shoals.

The masked men kidnapped the unlucky paymaster and took him into the woods where they relieved him of the payroll, his horse, and even his gold pocket watch he’d inherited from his deceased father. They then released him to a long walk home and disappeared into the dark woods, over $5000 richer.

Making his way north to Kentucky, Bill Ryan rode into the tiny crossroads of White’s Creek Tennessee, a few miles north of Nashville, and took refuge in a saloon from a gathering thunderstorm. A few shots of whiskey later, he was drunk and disorderly and running his mouth about being an “outlaw against state, county, and the United States Government!”

One local barfly had the temerity to question his outlaw credentials and Ryan pulled his pistols and made a scene. At gunpoint, he extracted an apology for the offense, but his luck, and ultimately that of the James Gang, had finally run out. The bartender just happened to be an off-duty Sheriff’s deputy.

After a vigorous scuffle, Ryan was disarmed and under arrest. He was carried off to the Nashville jail where his identity was soon revealed, and he was asked to explain how he came into possession of a large portion of that army payroll.

Huntsville Courthouse, where Frank James was tried, circa 1900.

Jesse James, and his brother Frank, were soon implicated in the robbery and warrants were issued for their arrest.

Within a year, Jesse would be dead, shot in the back of the head by Bob Ford in an attempt to earn clemency from the government for his own crimes and collect a hefty reward offered by the governor of Missouri.

During the following year, Bill Ryan would be sentenced to a long prison term, Frank would surrender to the Missouri authorities, the rest would scatter, and the infamous James Gang would be retired for good.

With Frank now in custody, it was time for him to face justice. A Huntsville grand jury indicted Frank and he was charged with armed robbery and brought to Huntsville to stand trial.

By this time, the James Gang’s exploits were already the stuff of legend. A whole entertainment industry had been built around their adventures. Dime stores across America carried pulp novels and magazines that thrilled their readers with the gang’s daring exploits.

Frank James received a celebrity trial. A large cheering crowd greeted his train as it arrived at the Huntsville depot. Newspaper reporters from far and wide descended on what was then the tiny town of Huntsville, filled the hotels and boarding houses, and filed sensational reports on the latest developments in the case.

On April 17, 1884, the trial began. Frank entered the courtroom accompanied by his wife, young son, and an all-star legal team headed by veteran Huntsville lawyer, Leroy Pope Walker who also happened to be the former Secretary of War for the Confederacy. The prosecution was headed up by the formidable William H. Smith, US Attorney and a former governor of Alabama during Reconstruction.

The two lead attorneys sparred and jousted in front of a jury made up largely of Civil War veterans. Leroy Pope Walker well understood his jury. He emphasized in his opening statement that Frank had also fought for the Cause, having served with the Missouri irregulars under William Clarke Quantrill during the closing days of the war.

Governor Smith countered with the facts of the case. He brought out witnesses who identified Frank as one of the robbers. Under withering cross examination, Walker got each to recant their claim. As his case looked increasingly lost, Governor Smith saved his ace in the hole for last.

James Andrew Liddel had been a loyal member of the James Gang for many years. He was the one who discovered Ryan had been arrested and even helped Frank and Jesse make their getaway. But Liddel had a weakness for women.

Sometime after they fled Nashville, Liddel became involved with an attractive widow who had also caught the eye of Woodson Hite, a cousin of the James brothers. An argument over money turned violent and Liddel shot Woodson Hite to death.

Liddel was subsequently captured by the law and, realizing the fix he was now in, decided to cooperate with the authorities. Governor Smith made him his star witness against Frank, his former comrade and employer.

Frank James shortly after his acquital.

Liddel surely regretted his decision to come to Huntsville, for Leroy Pope Walker saved his most brutal cross examination for the government’s star witness. Liddel was portrayed as a liar and career criminal, who was destroying the character and reputation of an upright man like Frank, so he could avoid going to the gallows for murder.

Governor Smith could see his case slipping away. He tried on redirect to reestablish some of Liddel’s credibility, but in the end it did no good. After a parade of witnesses by the defense who swore that they saw Frank in Nashville on the day of the robbery and a brilliant final summation by Leroy Pope Walker, the jury reached its verdict.

Frank James was acquitted of all charges. He walked out of that Huntsville courthouse a free man. It had been the trial of the century.


Source: http://huntsville.about.com/od/people/ss/frankjames.htm (originally reprinted from Old Huntsville Magazine)



Frank+James James+Gang Huntsville+AL appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

Alabama’s oldest Baptist congregation will be 200 years old this year. Or not, depending on who you ask.  Elder John Nicholson led the first worship on October 2, 1808 at the home of James Deaton in Killingsworth Cove (now part of Huntsville.) And for 170 of those 200 years the congregants who’ve adhered to the tenets of the original Flint River Baptist Church of Christ (the “Primitive” Baptists) have been at odds with more modernized, or “Missionary” Baptists.

The church today known as Flint River Primitive Baptist Church for many years maintained close organizational ties with nearby Enon Baptist Church.  Formed in June 1809, Enon was initially to be known as the ‘West Fork of the Flint Baptist Church.’ At their second meeting, they decided the name was too cumbersome and renamed themselves 'Enon.'

But in 1838 the Flint River association declared non-fellowship with the modern missionary movement, its societies, auxiliaries and supporters (Enon topped the list). Those congregations that embraced new church practices such as mission boards, Sunday Schools, and musical instruments in the church became “New School” or “Missionary” Baptist. Flint River Baptist Church continued in the simplicity of New Testament worship, thus being called “Old School” or “Primitive” Baptist.

By 1840 Flint River withdrew all fellowship from Enon, which in 1893 changed its name to the ‘First Baptist Church of Huntsville, Alabama, a Missionary Baptist Church’, for advocating a perversion of the articles of faith.

The two churches tangled again in 1908, the centennial year of Flint River Church. The missionary Baptists planned a celebration claiming the years 1808 – 1908 as their anniversary dates. They sent out a leaflet in which they stated correctly that Flint River Church was constituted in 1808, but also stating that it ---meaning the Primitive congregation--- had been out of existence for many years!

First Baptist Church of Huntsville building, built 1895, on the corner of Clinton and Gallatin Streets.

“When Flint River Church saw this report she was justly offended,” huffs The history of Flint river Church/Flint River Association 1808-1955 “because she was reported dead, when she was yet alive, and had a continuous existence ever since her first organization and because a people who differed from her and opposed her in almost every particular claimed her as their ancestor and proposed to celebrate her organization in a manner that was highly offensive to her."

"Any attempt by the Missionaries to celebrate this year,” stated Flint River Church clerk B. B. Lawler in Primitive Baptist magazine, “is like a man wanting to celebrate his golden wedding when he has been married twenty years to one woman and thirty years to another one."

Both churches remain active today.  The First Baptist Church of Huntsville makes no mention of the 1908 centennial ruckus on their website.
 
Sources: www.archives.state.al.us/markers/imadison.html
www.flintriverpbc.org
www.fbchsv.org/aboutfbc/history.html
www.essentialbaptistprinciples.org/ebp_published_articles/baptist_history_misrepresented.htm


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Confederate Memorial Day is May 10. On May 12, 1909 the 4th Ohio Cavalry Association returned the Rifle Scouts' Civil War battle flag to the state of Alabama at the Elk's Theater in Huntsville. Note the presence of Tallulah B. Bankhead --not the famous actress, who was 7 years old at the time, but rather her mother.

Captain John R. Pitts of the 4th Ohio Cavalry Association presented the flag to Mrs. Charles G. Brown of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The following individuals are pictured: Mayor T. W. Smith of Huntsville; James Quinton (4th Ohio); Mrs. Virginia Clay-Clopton (UDC); Mrs. Helen Plaine (UDC); Joseph H. Goddard (4th Ohio); L. C. Bramkamp (4th Ohio); T. C. Lindsey (4th Ohio); W. W. Shoemaker (4th Ohio); William H. Henry (4th Ohio); Mrs. A. W. Newsom (UDC); Mrs. Charles G. Brown (UDC); Mrs. Cornelia Branch Stone (UDC); Mrs. Andrew J. Dowdell (UDC); Captain John R. Pitts (4th Ohio); Mrs. Thomas W. Palmer (UDC); Mrs. Bennett B. Ross (UDC); Mrs. Leopold Bashinski (UDC); Mrs. Tallulah B. Bankhead (UDC); Mrs. Clarence M. Tardy (UDC); Thomas Osborn (4th Ohio); M. H. Richardson (4th Ohio); C. N. Vaught (UCV); James R. Johnson; Mrs. Ellen P. Bryce (UDC); Mrs. Asa S. Rountree (UDC); Mrs. L. T. Pride (UDC).

4th+Ohio+Cavalry+Association United+Daughters+of+the+Confederacy Huntsville+AL civil+war+veteran