NEWS: Battle Rages Between Moonshiner & Revenue Men, 1920, Bell Co. -------------------------- Submitted by Mary Lou Husdon Date: 28 Oct 2003 -------------------------- ************************************************************************* USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ************************************************************************** Middlesboro Daily News, Middlesboro, KY - Dec. 6, 1920 Battle Rages Between Moonshiners and Revenue Men In Desolate Mountain Region Fourteen Revenue Raiders of Lexington and A Revenue Force From Tennessee Captured Five Stills --Nine Moonshiners Surrendered. Reports reaching here today from near the Bell and Whitley county line at its intersection with the Kentucky, Tennessee border, say a battle raged in the mountains there Saturday and Sunday between prohibition agents and moonshine distillers, and more than a thousand shots were fired, and a number of men are said to have been wounded, probably a few fatally. A late unconfirmed report says the battle is still raging. The battle opened with fourteen prohibition agents on one side and forty odd moonshiners on the other, on an isolated mountain slope, where the revenue raiders were fired upon by a squad of alleged illicit distillers, who it is said, under a heavy rain of bullets, finally retreated to brush heaps and deep ravines, where within crude trenches, erected for preparedness in the event of attack they let loose a hail of lead that made the officers seek shelter behind ledges of rocks and trees. The fight soon developed into a siege. Each side fought desperately to dislodge the other, and for whole hours together the mountains echoed with the roar of the skirmish. Time and again the shooting became a fusilate (sic), as the officers would leave their "breastworks" to press closer to the enemy. It is claimed the firing became desultory from the moonshine "army" Sunday afternoon, and that hoisting a white flag nine moonshiners surrendered and following their capitulation five stills were captured and destroyed. The officers had surrounded the mountain men who, except the nine before mentioned, broke through the lines of the revenue agents, and escaping they formed their liens further back in the mountains, and at night fall, yesterday shots were crashing through the trees. The raid is being led by Steve Cornett, Charles Winfrey, J.M. Kavenaugh, J.H. Reynolds, Charles "Red" Steward and Harry Redmon, of the revenue office at Lexington, reinforced by dry agents from Tennessee. The scene of the battle is called "South America," a desolate mountain region, twenty miles from a railroad. It is claimed that moonshiners, undisturbed, have operated here for two years.