The Reverends and the Revenuers

LOGAN COUNTY REVENUERS – STILL DESTRUCTION

The man on the left is wearing “snake boots.” The high-top boots were protection from poisonous bites of rattle snakes and copperheads as they beat the brush down on their way up the mountainside

Dogs came in handy when searching for the moonshiners and their stills.

Lock . . . Load . . . Rock And Roll. Revenuers holding up their firearms used to search the mountainside ready to smash any still they came across.

The pictures above are of the Internal Revenue agents who raided a still that was located in the Lick Branch area of Mingo County in July of 1949. It was the fifth such operation shutdown in this area in the last two years, and it was operated by a father of ten children. The man was held in the Cabell County jail under a thousand dollar bond pending the next special term of Federal court in Huntington scheduled for August. Two of the State Liquor officers and Logan County Sheriff Combs said the still was capable of producing twenty gallons per day. The average-sized still produces about fifteen gallons daily.

REVERENDS OF LOGAN COUNTY

Some of the early ministers were Rev. “Uncle Dyke” Garrett, Rev. J. Green McNeely, and Rev. A.J. Coffey. Rev. Billy Sunday was a famous evangelist who came to Logan, and held a tent revival in May and June of 1923. His sermons were against the use of alcohol. Before his call to the ministry, he was a professional baseball player in the National League.

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