Women Who Ran the Hills
Dr. G. G. Wilkins tells the history of the sisters, widows and grandmothers of New England and the mountain South who kept the household stills going: colonial tavern-widows, kitchen cordial-makers, and wartime farm wives who ran the rye while the men were away at the war. Retired revenue officer Captain Donald Vance joins him with new stories about women who outsmarted him in the hills, including a quilting-frame condenser, a code in knitting patterns, and three sisters who signaled with their wash line. In Segment 4, Wilkins answers Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller of Wilkesboro, NC, about hickory ash and red oak in the thump keg, then knocks down the old notion that the color of a spoon-flame proves whiskey is safe.
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Full episode transcript
♦ Audible wax cylinder surface crackle, slow drip of clear distillate into a glass jar
♦ Barnaby the black bear grunting and chain clinking outside log cabin window
Wilkins: Barnaby! Settle your carcass down, you overstuffed rug. That was a chickadee, not the county sheriff. Lord, the bear is as jumpy as a deacon in a dance hall.
♦ Bear huffs, chain drops in the dirt
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth, swelling and then falling under
Wilkins: Good evening, neighbors, and welcome to Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, coming to you from the log walls of Fort Wilkins on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. I am your host, tooth-puller, horse-shoer, coin-stamper, and the most-arrested gentleman in this end of Merrimack County. Tonight we are doing a thing no man in this valley has had the nerve to do. We are going to give the women their due.
Wilkins: Sisters, widows, and gray-haired grandmothers. They ran more rye through these hills than half the swaggering roosters who bragged about it in the tavern, and they did it with a baby on one hip and a ladle on the other. Every man in Merrimack County who boasts that he runs his own still has a wife at home who knows exactly where he hid the key, and why the jug is lighter than he left it.
♪ Fiddle flourish fades out
Announcer: A quick word, friends! The Flame-Flow still, United States Patent 10,561,960, is hammered out of heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper for an even heat and an honest run. See it at the showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, or visit moonshinestill.com today. Moonshinestill.com!
♦ Wax crackle
Wilkins: Segment the first, the history of it.
♪ Low banjo vamp under
Wilkins: Start where the country started. In the colonial days, when a man here died of fever, a falling tree, or a cider-drunk fall off his own barn roof, his widow did not get a pension. She got a mortgage and six hungry mouths. So the county courts of New England did a sensible thing, and that does not happen often. They handed out innholder and tavern licenses to widows, so the poor woman could feed her brood by pouring for travelers. Up and down the old post roads you would find Widow So-and-So's tavern, with cider in the cellar, rum on the shelf, and a cider brandy that could take the varnish off a church pew.
Wilkins: Now, before you think the women only poured what the men made, go read the old household receipt books. The grandmothers of Portsmouth and Exeter kept little alembics and limbecks in their kitchens to distill cordials, strong waters, and what they called simples, herb tinctures for colic and coughs and the melancholy that comes with a New Hampshire February. Distilling was kitchen work, neighbors, the same as putting up pickles, and the man of the house no more understood it than he understood a needle.
Wilkins: Then came the war. Sixty-one through sixty-five. The boys marched off to the Virginia mud, and who do you suppose ran the farms, the gristmills, the cider presses, and yes, the copper pot up behind the sugar house? The women did. My own neighbor up toward Barnstead, I will call her the Widow Tilton to spare her kin, kept her husband's rye going all four years while he was off with the Twelfth New Hampshire. When he came home with one good leg and a pension of eight dollars, he found the farm paid off and a new roof on the barn. He asked how she managed it. She said, Hush, and eat your supper. I asked the Widow Tilton for the secret of her rye once, and she told me the first step was to stop asking her.
Wilkins: And it was not only Yankee women. Down in the Tennessee hills there lived a lady by the name of Mahala Mullins, a real woman, born in eighteen and twenty-four. She sold her brandy out of a cabin on Newman's Ridge, and by legend she grew so mighty large she could not fit through her own door. The deputies came to haul her to court, took one look, and the story goes that one reported her catchable but not fetchable. Which is also how I describe my bank account. They would have had to take the cabin apart log by log to get her out, and no county in the Union pays a deputy enough for carpentry.
Wilkins: Now here is the part the men never want to hear. Those women were often the more careful distillers. They had been nursing sick children and boiling linens their whole lives. They knew a clean pot, and they knew a bad smell when they caught one. My grandmother could out-swear a canal boatman and out-pray the minister, and she did both in the same sermon, and I never once saw a dirty kettle in her kitchen.
♪ Banjo vamp out
♦ Bear grunt, chain rattle
Wilkins: Barnaby, you have no say in this. Barnaby has been married to nobody, courted by nobody, and refused by every she-bear on the Suncook, and I respect a fellow who knows his limitations.
♦ Wax crackle
Wilkins: Segment the second, legends and runners. And tonight I have a guest I would ordinarily set the bear on. He is a retired revenue officer, twenty-eight years tramping the White and Green Mountains with a badge and a bad attitude. Captain Donald Vance, welcome to Fort Wilkins. Wipe your boots, and do not make any sudden moves toward the window.
Captain: Evening, Doctor. I have been greeted by worse than a bear, though I cannot rightly remember when. I will keep my hands where your pet can see them.
Wilkins: Wise man. Captain, tonight is about the women. Tell me honestly. Did the ladies of these hills ever make a fool of a federal man?
Captain: Doctor, they made a career of it. There was a widow in the Kearsarge hills, a little bird of a woman, and we had good word she was running rye. I went into her parlor and there sat six neighbor women around a quilting frame, stitching a wedding quilt for a niece. I searched the pantry, the cellar, the woodshed, and the privy. Nothing. I tipped my hat and left. Ten years later, at that niece's own anniversary, the widow told me the condenser coil had been rolled up inside the quilting bolster the whole while, with six good Christian ladies sewing right on top of it.
Wilkins: Ha! The revenue man searched the parlor, the pantry, and the privy, and never once thought to look under six Congregationalist ladies and a wedding quilt, because no man alive has the courage. Captain, I would rather walk into Barnaby's den with a pork chop in my pocket.
Captain: So would I, Doctor. So would I. Then there was a grandmother over by Plymouth. We seized her little account book, all written out plain. Knit four, purl two, cast off three. My office spent a solid month on it. We had a clerk from Concord who was sure it was a cipher from the Rebellion.
Wilkins: And was it?
Captain: Half of it. Purl two meant two jugs to the mill foreman. Knit four meant four to the Grange. But the other half was a real mitten pattern. The judge's wife made a pair from our evidence copy, and she said they fit beautifully.
Wilkins: A woman's knitting is the only cipher the federal government has never cracked, and the only one that keeps your feet warm while it beats you. Captain, you should have hired that grandmother to write your dispatches. The Rebels would still be counting stitches.
Captain: Now the one that stings my pride. Three spinster sisters near Bristol, all past sixty, sharp as a hay knife. Every time we rode out their way, there was nothing to find. Took me two years to work out that it was their wash line. Red flannels on the line meant revenue men on the road. A single white apron meant the coast was clear.
Wilkins: And how did you catch them?
Captain: I didn't, not properly. I just finally noticed. They hung red flannels on a Tuesday, Doctor. No decent New Hampshire family hangs its wash on a Tuesday. Monday is wash day, and it says so in Scripture, or near enough. When I rode up, the eldest was waiting on the porch with three cups of tea poured. She said, You took your time, Captain. And I said, Ma'am, so did you.
Wilkins: I believe that is the first time a federal man was out-scouted by underclothes. And did you ever get the better of any of them?
Captain: The better? Doctor, one of them got a day's labor out of me. Over in the Ossipee country my horse threw a shoe, and an old widow on the road says, Young man, since you are walking anyhow, carry this basket of laundry up to my house. So I did, a mile uphill, with the sheets folded neat as a hymnal. She paid me in gingersnaps. Years later, at a church supper, she leaned over and whispered that there had been a five-gallon crock under those sheets, and that I had personally carried it past my own deputies.
Wilkins: Captain, you carried a widow's laundry a mile uphill and got paid in gingersnaps. That is the most honest wage a federal man ever drew. I have pulled teeth for less, and the patients were not half so grateful.
Captain: I will tell you the truth, Doctor. The women I dealt with were the careful ones. Clean pots, fair dealing, no lead in the joints. The dangerous outfits were run by fools in a hurry, and fools in a hurry are mostly men.
Wilkins: There it is, neighbors. That is a federal confession on the record, and I mean to stamp it on a penny. Captain Donald Vance, thank you, and mind the bear on your way out. He has been eyeing your hat.
Captain: He can have the hat, Doctor. It has seen worse.
♦ Bear grunt, chain clink
♪ Fiddle sting
♦ Wax crackle
Wilkins: Segment the third, copper and the craft. This is where I put on my alchemist's apron, and I will remind you that this is history and education, and that making spirits for drinking without a federal permit is against the law of these United States.
♪ Soft banjo picking under
Wilkins: Here is what the grandmothers knew. The wash goes in the pot, and the fire is brought up slow, as low and patient as a widow waiting out a bad husband. The spirit does not come all at once. It comes in parts, and a distiller who cannot tell them apart is no distiller at all.
Wilkins: First come the foreshots, the sharp, solvent-smelling early run. Then the heads, which still carry the harsh, volatile matter that will split your skull and worse. The foreshots and heads go out. Not in the jug, not in the cordial, not in a rinse for a sore tooth. Out. Then come the hearts, sweet and clean, and that is what you keep. Last come the tails, oily and dull, and those are set aside. That is the whole gospel of the cuts, and the women of these hills kept it better than the men, because they had buried enough children to have no patience with poison.
Wilkins: The copper does honest work as well. A bright copper surface takes the sulfur stink out of the vapor, but only if you keep it clean, and Captain Vance will tell you the careful women scrubbed their pots like they were company dishes. And every joint must be sound and free of lead. Any man who solders a still with lead is not a distiller. He is an undertaker drumming up trade.
Wilkins: Last, mind the fire. Alcohol vapor burns, and a leaking still beside an open flame will turn your sugar house into a bonfire and your widow into a richer woman than you meant her to be. Never leave the pot untended, and keep the room aired out.
♪ Banjo picking out
♦ Wax crackle
Wilkins: We will take a moment now for a word from the folks who keep the lamps lit at Fort Wilkins.
♪ Brassy patent-medicine-show drumroll and cornet fanfare
Announcer: Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Have you ever stood beside a copper pot and wondered what in thunder was happening inside it? Wonder no longer! Fort Wilkins Academy proudly presents the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Master Distilling Course, a comprehensive eight-week historical and technical distilling academy! Master the thermodynamics of vapor! Learn the art of the cuts, foreshots, heads, hearts, and tails, the way the careful grandmothers of the hills did it! Study the deep history of American spirits, from colonial cider brandy to the Revenue Act! You will learn directly from master distillers, coppersmiths, and historians, with over thirty hours of detailed modules, true blueprints, and live question-and-answer sessions. See why heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper is the metal of honest men and honest women! And all of it for the modest sum of one hundred and ninety-nine dollars! Enroll today at fortwilkins.com/course. That is fortwilkins.com/course! You may also find it at moonshinestill.com/course, or come in person to the showroom at Fort Wilkins on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, where the bear is chained and the coffee is hot. Seats are limited, friends. Reserve yours now at fortwilkins.com/course!
♪ Cornet fanfare finish
♦ Wax crackle
Wilkins: Segment the fourth, myths and the mailbag. And we have a voice on the call-in cylinder all the way from the Carolina hills. Let us hear it.
♦ Click of a cylinder machine, hiss of a recorded voicemail
Cletus: Alchemist, my uncle swears old-timers used to throw hickory ashes or red oak shavings into the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Is there any truth to that, or was he just making swamp medicine?
♦ Cylinder click off
Wilkins: Cletus Rabbit Miller of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, I salute you, and I salute your uncle, who sounds like a man who has never let the truth spoil a good story. I would know.
Wilkins: Let us take the hickory ash first. Wood ash is potash, Rabbit. It is the very same stuff every grandmother in New England leached in a barrel to make lye for soap. Lye is caustic. It will burn your hands, and it will not separate one drop of the bad heads from the good. The heads come over early because of how they boil, and the only cure is the distiller's judgment in throwing them out. Rabbit, putting lye-ash in your thump keg to cure bad heads is like scrubbing a Concord politician with soap: you will raise a lather, and the rot stays underneath.
Wilkins: Now the red oak shavings. Red oak is loaded with tannin, the same stuff that tans a hide. It will give your spirit color, a pucker, and a woody taste. It will not take out the heads. Red oak shavings will give your spirit the color of tea and the manners of a horse blanket. The thump keg strengthens the run, Rabbit, but it is no filter and no confessor. Make your cuts, and throw out your heads.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: That one is for you, Rabbit. I struck that penny so hard it confessed to being a half-cent.
Wilkins: And while the anvil is warm, here is another myth that needs a hammer. There is an old saying that you pour a spoonful, set it alight, and if the flame burns blue, the whiskey is safe. Hogwash. The color of a flame will not show you lead, and it will not tell you whether a fool kept his heads. Lead poison does not wave a flag at you from the spoon. If a blue flame meant the whiskey was safe, every lightning-struck barn in Merrimack County would be a temperance hall.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Two strikes. The old ladies knew it already. You judge the spirit by clean copper, sound joints, and honest cuts, and not by a parlor trick with a spoon. Rabbit, thank you for writing in from Wilkesboro, and give your uncle my regards. Tell him to keep his ashes for the soap kettle, where they belong.
♦ Wax crackle
Announcer: A quick word before we part! The Flame-Flow still, United States Patent 10,561,960, built of heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper, and the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Master Distilling Course are waiting for you at moonshinestill.com. That is moonshinestill.com!
♪ Parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme returns softly
Wilkins: Well, neighbors, that is the evening. Raise a glass, a lawful one, to the Widow Tilton, to the quilting ladies of Kearsarge, to the three sisters of Bristol and their Tuesday flannels, and to every grandmother who kept a family fed with nothing but a copper pot and her wits. And if you want to learn the craft the careful way, enroll in the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Master Distilling Course at fortwilkins.com/course. Remember, this program is for history and education only, and making spirits without a federal permit is against the law.
Wilkins: Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♪ Theme fades out under wax cylinder crackle