Farming continued, but it was just part of the larger economy. It is hard to say exactly when moonshining entered the picture, but it definitely was an important part of Dry Fork life for quite a while. Floyd and Franklin Counties are known for their moonshine activities even unto the present day. Estellia Saunders mentioned that the first settlers brought the knowledge of moonshine-making with them when they settled Dry Fork. The legacy may go as far back as the Booth family, who owned Rueben Ferguson. According to Booths will he is listed as having four stills and over 800 gallons of brandy. Nate Charleton remembers working for a Mr. Hunt from Princeton. The still was as large as the bed of a pickup truck. Mr. Hunt wanted to be called Sack Daddy, and he handed out dollar bills and bought new shoes for the residents. Nate and Arch Saunders ran the still way back up the holler. They lived in a still shack and kept the still fired all day and all night. Well, he had a 60 gallon barrel for a dumper, for a cap. I got down inside of it and cleaned it out. I could run a hundred-gallon in the day, and my buddy would take over at night. He run it a hundred at night. Seal it up so it wont lose no steam. He had a cream separator at, for a worm, the worm go around and around. It was pretty good whiskey. Shucks, it had to be. That man wadnt nothing but a, he was a perfectionist. The communty of Dry Fork was able to survive, when so many marginal agricultural communities did not, because of a combinatin of factors. The bounty of the land was lean, but sustaining. The resourcefulness of the people enabled many to take advantages of opportunities when they appeared., i.e. moonshining, etc. The relatively benign racial relations of the area allowed mutually beneficial economic relationships to develop. The availability of jobs on the railroad and in the coal fields was extremely important. However in the final analysis, Dry Fork would not still exist without the strong relationship of a once landless people to their first land; to the land that was both symbol and substance to their new freedom. The ties that bind continue through many generations to the present day. Would you like to return to the top of the page? Download an Acrobat pdf version of this document.
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