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    The Glen Rose Moonshine Raid
    The Glen Rose Moonshine Raid
    The Glen Rose Moonshine Raid
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    The Glen Rose Moonshine Raid

    By Martin Brown and W.C. Jameson

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    About this ebook

    With hills studded with whiskey stills and cisterns brimming over with beer, Glen Rose operated in concerted defiance of one of Prohibition's chief champions, Governor Pat Neff. In 1923, Neff dispatched Texas Rangers and undercover agents to do the job of the unwilling local law enforcement. More than fifty men were arrested, including the sheriff and the county prosecutor. Outraged, the town's most prominent citizens stalked the Rangers and their agents, assassinating the primary operative in an ambush and further escalating the affair. Author Martin Brown follows the frenzy of the raid and its aftermath.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateSep 18, 2017
    ISBN9781439662601
    The Glen Rose Moonshine Raid
    Author

    Martin Brown

    Martin Brown is a native of Dallas, Texas. He was a patrol officer and detective with the police department in Garland, Texas, and left in the early 1980s to form a private detective agency in downtown Dallas. He retired to a small ranch in Glen Rose, Texas, where he lives today.

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      Book preview

      The Glen Rose Moonshine Raid - Martin Brown

      Grave

      Chapter 1

      MOONSHINE

      Too much of anything is bad; but, too much good whiskey is barely enough.

      —Mark Twain

      If God intended for men to make moonshine whiskey, he gave them Somervell County, Texas, as a gift. Limestone streams crisscrossed the county between the Brazos River and the Paluxy and Squaw Creeks. There were hills and deep crevices for concealment. There was plenty of cedar wood to get a good, hot fire going quickly and plenty of oak to keep it steady. And the county’s proximity to Dallas and Fort Worth gave bootleggers lots of thirsty customers and put money that would otherwise not be there in the pockets of Somervell men.

      The corn mash was just beginning to show a little foam. It had been about five days since the barrel was filled with cornmeal, corn malt, yeast, sugar and cool water straight from the little stream that ran along the Paluxy Creek. Sam Darnaby dipped a little on a flat stick and gave it a lick. He and his brother, William, were ready to start cooking. William was known as Rabbit to his family and friends in Somervell County. The Darnaby brothers had built up their still in the crevice that the stream had created on its way down to the Paluxy. The slip gave them seclusion, not only from the law, but also from other moonshiners who might want to eliminate a little competition by ripping up the still and grabbing the product.

      In the 1920s, Somervell County was one of the poorest counties in Texas. With the steep hills and rocky soil, little could be cultivated. There was some tourism, brought in by the artesian springs that dotted the area along the Paluxy in the small mill town of Glen Rose. In the premodern medicine days of Victorian America, tourists visited the health resorts and rubbing doctors to experience the perceived curative powers of these sulfurous healing springs. Physicians of the day touted these waters as a cure for stomach, kidneys, liver and other complaints.

      A 1925 brochure from the Glen Rose Chamber of Commerce. Somervell County Heritage Center.

      One so-called rubbing doctor was G.R. Milling, a mixed Cherokee known as the Longhaired Doctor. His magnetic healing involved massage and hypnosis. The pistol-toting Milling was a frequent guest of the Glen Rose jail for practicing medicine without a license and, once, for firing his pistol across a road. In 1914, Milling was killed near the town square with a blast from a double-barreled shotgun. Evidently, he rubbed someone the wrong way.

      To supplement the healing of these mineral-laden artesian springs of Glen Rose, pharmacists and doctors, like William B. Pruitt, supplied healing spirits that came directly from men like Sam and Rabbit Darnaby and their stills in the hills. But not all of these spirits were used for healing. In fact, most of it was just for pure ol’ fun. It was enjoyed by the multitude of tourists who came to Glen Rose to camp out under the huge oak trees along the Paluxy Creek in places like Nanny’s Park on the south side of town; others danced on a big wooden barge that was tied up to the bank and known as the Floating Palace. They danced the turkey trot and the two-step to the music of the Allen Family Band and the newer fox trot with music provided by the town’s string orchestra. The stout moonshine whiskey went down well with the music, livening up a hot summer evening.

      Rabbit ladled the foamy mash into the top of a big, round copper boiler, or pot, that tapered at the top to a short chimney. The fire was roaring in the makeshift furnace of rock and mortar, heating the pot until it started to give off a little steam into the chilly, spring air. Distilling whiskey was tricky. Too much heat would cause the mash to boil over, sending some of it slopping along the vent into the thump keg and making the whiskey too harsh. Not enough heat, and the mash wouldn’t convert to steam for distillation.

      G.R. Milling, the Longhaired Doctor. Somervell County Heritage Center.

      Once the steam from the short chimney at the top of the pot was rolling out at a rate that Rabbit liked, he and Sam placed a copper cap over it that captured the steam along a copper vent and into the small wooden barrel sitting next to it. The thump keg had been partially filled with older runs of moonshine. The hot steam from the pot would mingle with the older spirits, causing the little keg to bump, or thump, and fortify the steam that then rose through another vent into a spiraling copper apparatus that resembled a huge spring and was called the worm. The worm was placed inside a large barrel that was supplied with constant cool running water from the nearby stream, cooling the coil and converting the hot potent steam back to a distillate that ran out through a short pipe and over a funnel. From there, Glen Rose moonshine was filtered into quart fruit jars.

      As the pressure built up in the copper pot, leaks began to appear in the various fittings. To keep the steam from escaping, Sam began to seal the leaks with a paste that he had made from bran, flour and water. It looked like biscuit dough and hardened from the heat to stop the flow. The steady jump and bump of the thump keg sounded like progress to Sam and Rabbit—like money being made right there.

      The land itself supplied the moonshiners with most of what they needed: firewood, fresh water, corn and barley. Local merchants, like Rabbit’s uncle Tom Darnaby, supplied them with what the land couldn’t: sugar and fruit jars. The copper stills were something else. Copper was essential for the construction of the pots, vents and pipes used in the distillation process. Copper heated up efficiently, spread and dissipated the heat well and absorbed the harmful elements that occurred during the process. Also, the sulfur that was created during fermentation would cling to the copper during the cooking process and keep the product from smelling skunky. Joints in the copper sheeting and vent pipes had to be joined with non-lead solder in order to keep the brain-damaging lead out of the finished product. Such specialized construction was mostly left to professionals in the nearby cities of Fort Worth and Dallas. Local merchants contracted with these professionals to make the copper equipment and had local haulers ship the items back to Somervell County. This practice created another link in a long chain of criminal enterprise.

      Tourist camping in Glen Rose, circa 1920s. Somervell County Heritage Center.

      Typical still operation. Somervell County Heritage Center.

      None of that was on the minds of Rabbit and Sam as they worked through the night getting this run out of the worm and into the fruit jars. They had twenty barrels of mash waiting for the process to start over again. As the distillation progressed, the finished product pouring from the worm became less and less potent. At the end of the run, the product was mixed together with water until the right proof was obtained. Shaking a jar of freshly mixed moonshine, Rabbit watched the bubbles bead up in the jar. He watched and noted how quickly the beads would dissipate. The quicker they disappeared, the higher the proof. When he was satisfied, the jars

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