Whiskey Rebellion Loses One More

Legendary mountain moonshiner Popcorn Sutton died at his home in Cocke County, Tennessee of natural causes, a family member says. He was 62. Sutton managed to escape spending 18 months in prison after federal agents found some stills and hundreds of gallons of moonshine in a Haywood County storage shed last summer. He’d pled guilty to the charges, was sentenced this past January and was supposed to report to a federal prison in Kentucky.

Chalk one last mark on the board for the Whiskey Rebellion vs. The Revenoo’ers, as rumors abound that his death may not have been so ‘natural’ after all…

As ‘Moonshine’s’ daughter wrote in her book, “Daddy Moonshine”,

“It isn’t surprising that Popcorn has attracted so much attention. His slippery craft and his old-timey antics appeal to something in our collective past. His overalls can be seen as the blue denim flag of old pick-up trucks and cork-plugged clay jugs. His colorless hat is the nod of a gentleman, his beard the badge of a wild man. His high reedy voice carries the echoes of banjos and fiddles. His stealth and focus speak volumes for the cunning and moxie of who he is: a Smokey Mountain moonshine master.”

Public schools don’t spend much time on the Whiskey Rebellion generally, though it was one of our new nation’s first insurrections, beginning when our first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, convinced Congress to impose new taxes on distilled spirits and carriages in 1791. The tax was inherently unfair by taxing small producers a third more than big producers, a particular burden on producers in the western frontier areas where whiskey was a tradable commodity. Civil protests on the frontier soon became armed rebellion, so President Washington decided to make an example of western Pennsylvania and assembled a militia. They marched west out of Harrisburg – with Washington himself in the lead – but found no sign of the rebels. Eventually fines were imposed, people were jailed, victory was declared, and folks started worrying about other things.

The suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania served to encourage distillers in Kentucky and Tennessee, which remained outside federal control for some years. These areas and portions of North and South Carolina began producing and selling on the sly, and moonshining remained a regional art form in some people’s books. For instance, did you know that NASCAR has roots in the Rebellion?

At any rate, our hats are off to perhaps one of the last notorious moonshiners from our mountainous region. Here’s to you, Popcorn! May there be banjos and fiddles in heaven.

Links:

Legendary Moonshiner Dies
Moonshiner Popcorn Sutton Dead
Popcorn Sutton
Wiki: Whiskey Rebellion
Whiskey Rebellion
Friendship Hill National Historical Site

Experience a ‘Gilded Age’ Christmas

…and Visit the North Pole!

Erin Brethauer,
Asheville Citizen-Times

The economic news has been getting progressively worse and worse through the fall, politicians tell us we’re in for hard times, something the resourceful people of North Carolina are quite accustomed to. In the mountainous west of the state – designated in the best of times as an officially “depressed region” – the #1 source of income is tourism and our tremendous natural beauty in all seasons still draws millions of appreciative visitors from all over the world.

One of the most famous of the WNC attractions is America’s only genuine castle, the beautiful Biltmore Estate, once home to George Vanderbuilt and his wife Edith Stuyvesant Dresser, the estate continues the tradition of holiday festivities begun by the Vanderbuilts on Christmas Eve of 1895. With 4 acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 34 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces, there’s plenty to decorate in the ornate style of the estate’s roots in America’s “Gilded Age.”

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Big Tom: Legend and Reality

When my brother and I were children, we got to spend a couple of weeks every summer visiting our grandparents and aunt in Eastern Kentucky. They lived in town, but our aunt was a social worker who often traveled into the hollows and onto mountaintops to check on her clients, many of whom lived so far back in the woods there wasn’t an actual road into the homestead. Instead, there was often a mule path we’d follow, sometimes with fine limestone cliffs she’d let us climb just for fun. We learned about the plants, the animals, and had great fun helping at harvest, then got to sit at the crude picnic tables in these homestead yards and listen to the stories of the old folks.

A frequent topic for those old men was a legendary mountain man named Big Tom Wilson. He became a hero to my brother and I, and we often played in the woods pretending we were Big Tom-like mountain folk, seeking deer trails or following bear hollows through the rhododendrons to the mountain peaks, blazing trails and knowing everything about everything these abundant mountains have to offer.

Decades later my own family moved here to Western North Carolina where Big Tom is more than just a legend – he was a real man who played a significant role in the history of this region. He’s still got descendants here, I taught one of them in junior high a few years ago.

Big Tom was born Thomas David Wilson in 1825. He got his nickname by being a lanky six foot two in a time when most men were much smaller in stature. They say he killed 114 bears in his lifetime, and he knew the Black Mountains (the Seven Black Brothers) better than anyone alive. He married Niagra (Polly) Ray in 1852 and they lived in a 2-room cabin on the upper Cane River while he earned a living as a gameskeeper for a hunting preserve, as a farmer, hunter, fisherman and a mountain guide. It was as a guide that he played his strongest role in the history of the region.

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Wreck Diving: Battle of the Atlantic

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] reported this week that it will lead a research expedition through July 26 to study the wrecks of three German U-boats sunk in 1942 off the North Carolina coast during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic. The battle was not just the longest engagement in the ‘Great War’, it was also the most important.

North Carolina’s rich military history includes this great battle for control of the Atlantic shipping lanes linking Great Britain, the United States and Canada, which allowed the Allies to take the ground and air war to Europe and the heartland of Germany itself.

The NOAA expedition is part of a larger, multi-year project to survey a number of historically significant shipwrecks during WW-II, including British naval vessels and merchant marine ships. Partners in the expedition will be the Minerals Management Service, the National Park Service, the State of North Carolina, East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute.

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On Memorial Day: NC’s Rich Military History

I’m a bit of a military history buff, got it from my father. Though he spent 27 years serving the country in the U.S. Navy and participated in both WW-II and Korea, he never wanted to talk much about his own experiences. He was big on Civil War history – we often spent our summer vacations touring battlefields from Gettysburg to Wilderness-Fredricksburg-Chancelorsville, Shiloh to Bull Run to Antietam, Fort Sumter to Vicksburg and lots of places in between. We’d stand on the hills where the generals plotted their strategies and ordered their troops, we’d walk the fieldstone walls that still bear the bullet and cannon scars, we traced the trenches and fortifications, imagined we could still feel the ghosts who snuck through the thick woods to flank the enemy by early morning, traced the names of the fallen in cemeteries formal and overgrown.

The other half of the summers we mostly spent touring Revolutionary sites. Valley Forge, Frontier, more Charleston and the banks of the Potomac that stayed war-torn year after year. People my generation and younger tend to think of America’s wars as blood shed on foreign soil, but our own ground has been amply watered with blood over the centuries. And of all the states of the now-50 whose stars grace our flag, North Carolina has the distinction of being “the most military-friendly state in America” (by declaration of Governor Mike Easley).

For visitors who enjoy military history as much as I do, North Carolina hosts bases and museums and battlefields and attractions that can fill weeks with knowledge and photo opportunities and memories and material covering the whole history of this nation and its military ventures that collectors, history buffs and diverse descendants of warriors will treasure.

The coastal town of Wilmington hosts the Battleship North Carolina anchored in the famous Cape Fear River as a World War 2 memorial. It hosts a museum for all ships to bear the name North Carolina, beginning with a wooden ship-of-the-line in the 1820s, a Confederate ironclad, the WW-I armored cruiser, a never-finished battleship for that same war, and the WW-II battleship visitors can tour. The ship was deployed to the Pacific theatre where it e arned 15 battle stars, and hosts collections of many artifacts, documents, photographs and works of art.
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Top 25 Reasons to Visit NC – 4

Part 4: Reasons 16 – 25

16. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Cultural Feast

The cultural and educational offerings in the State Capital area will appeal to even the most sophisticated of visitors. Excellent history and natural science museums, the North Carolina Symphony, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Duke Gardens at Duke University and more great outings can keep interested visitors busy for weeks!


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Top 25 Reasons to Visit NC – 3

Part 3: Reasons 11 – 15

Moving toward the east, there are more great reasons to consider North Carolina’s abundant offerings for family fun when planning getaways and vacations.

11. Mountains to Sea Trail

From the very top of Clingman’s Dome near the Tennessee border to the sand dunes at Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the strand of the Outer Banks, North Carolina’s 925-mile long Mountains-to-Sea Trail offers an adventurous way to explore the state’s natural treasures and human wonders. This is an adventure a visitor can embrace in small chunks or in an extended all at once while experiencing the best of NC’s towns and cities, rural agritourism initiatives and natural preserves.

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A Guided Tour of New Bern

The first Colonial capital of North Carolina, historic New Bern maintains a regular time capsule of building styles in well-maintained houses and buildings. This is a narrated video tour of the coastal port city where the Trent and Neuse Rivers meet and flow into the southern arm of Pamlico Sound.

While in the coastal region, you may want to investigate some of the coastal legends that have accumulated over the centuries, from the storied Lost Colony through ghosts, pirates and even ghost ships, to a Dismal Swamp said to be home to a tragic Lady of the Lake.

To begin planning your trip to the beautiful and storied North Carolina coast, check out some of the offered information and links at CoastalGuide: New Bern.

Homegrown and Handmade

NC’s Arts and Agriculture Trails

There is much more to North Carolina’s agritourism movement than just what was reported in Green Dreams, Green Schemes. There is also an alliance between the North Carolina Arts Council and the NC Cooperative Extension service called HomegrownHandmade that has mapped out “Art Roads” and “Farm Trails” in the foothills, piedmont and coastal regions that allow visitors to travel along back roads, sample fresh goat cheese and scuppernong wines, visit artists’ studios and sidewalk cafes in charming little towns. Each trail is unique, so check the links below of some HomegrownHandmade trails (their titles sort of describe the gist of what’s to see and do), and then explore at the pace you like best!

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Valdese, NC: The Waldensian Stronghold

Way back in the middle ages – 1174 to be exact – a French businessman from Lyons caught the radical gist of Jesus’ teachings in the gospels and committed himself to a life of voluntary poverty and itinerant preaching. His name was Valdes. He renounced his previous business practices, threw all his money into the street, and started a soup kitchen during the famine of 1176. He traveled the countryside preaching the gospel of Jesus and eventually creating a rift with the dominant Catholic Church.

Valdes inspired other wandering preachers including Peter Waldo, who established the Poor Men of Lyons sect that preached apostolic poverty as the way to perfection. They traveled to Rome around 1177 and received the blessing of Pope Alexander III, who at the same time forbade their preaching without authorization from local clergy. The Waldensias (as they became known) of course disobeyed the papal edict, and were formally declared heretics by Pope Lucius III in 1184 and by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

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