Moonshine stories

The name “moonshiners” evolved because the people who produced alcohol operated their stills at night. The necessity of keeping stills and the production of alcohol secret was due to Prohibition and later taxes that would be due if discovered. (georgiaencylcopedia.org)

Richard Adams recalled that his father and two of his father’s brothers made and sold moonshine. One of the Adams brothers lived along what is now Hewlett Road in Sandy Springs. A large amount of glass was discovered behind the house by the homeowner.

Richard (Gene) Adams at his Dunwoody Club Drive home in 1936. The road was known as Old Lawrenceville Road at the time. (Photo from Richard Adams)

Adams grew up along what is now Dunwoody Club Drive and shared the story of the night there was a raid on the family home. “We had considerable bottles of white lightning. Knowing the cost issues if found, my mother placed the filled bottles under the mattress and got in bed pretending to be sick.” A marshall asked a young Richard Adams if he knew where his daddy’s liquor was hidden, but Adams knew to say he knew nothing about his dad’s business. (Memoirs of Richard Adams)

When Ralph Glaze was a boy growing up along Winters Chapel and Peeler Road, he remembers the rumor of moonshine production between Happy Hollow and Winters Chapel Road along what is now Dunwoody Club Drive. Adults used to say, “don’t go down there,” sometimes using the story of a monster to keep children away. The monster was a moonshine-producing still. (Ralph Glaze oral history for Dunwoody Preservation Trust, 2017)

J. W. Wilborn and Frank Self of Sandy Springs shared the story of Tubby Sewell and his multiple stills. They recall him as a local bootlegger who kept residents in whiskey. Sewell drove a 1944 coupe that “could go down the road 90 miles an hour and turn around and meet the police coming back, turn that thing around at ninety miles an hour right in the middle of the road.” (Sandy Springs Gazette Volume 1, 2017)

In the 1930’s, Tubby Sewell was the main supplier of whiskey for Sandy Springs. “If you needed a pint of whiskey, why you called this number and he said put two dollars in the mailbox. When you went back by you picked up your whiskey.”

The Ware family once lived on land where Life Center Ministries is today on Mount Vernon Road. The cottage that still stands on the property was built by Bill Ware’s great grandfather John Ware. Farmers sometimes tried the moonshine business during the Great Depression to help their families survive, but Bill Ware says the Wares difficulties started before the Depression. (From Bill Ware oral history for DPT, 2017)

When farming was not enough, his grandfather William Ware opened a store in Roswell and tried moonshining. Rather than keep a still on Ware land, it was built across the road where Brooke Farm is today. The family eventually sold their land and moved in with a relative who had a home in Kirkwood.