Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a moonlight from the 1920s, which could have been part of the illegal drinking operation, once illegal, of the gangster Al Capone.
Researchers at the University of Tennessee found barrels, ash blocks, a garden hose and other artifacts in the “Hell Hole Swamp” outside Charleston, South Carolina.
The abandoned operation is said to have been led by Benjamin Villeponteaux, a notorious flirt who smuggled state drinks for Capone.
Villeponteaux was eventually killed in a shooting, but experts believe rival bootleggers took over the operation for their own illegal business.
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Volunteers crossing the Hell Hole Swamp in South Carolina’s Lowcountry discovered the remnants of a moonlight that I still believe belonged to one of Al Capone’s richest.
The items were found in Hell Hole Swamp, located in the Francis Marion National Forest in South Carolina, Berkeley County, about 48 miles from Charleston.
Katherine Parker, a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has been researching illicit distillation in the region since 2018.
Moonshine since South Carolina dates back to the colonial era, Parker said in a 2018 report.
During the ban, Hell Hole Swamp hosted some of the largest operations in the country.
Researchers found barrels, ash blocks, a garden hose and other artifacts from a 1920s lunar operation.
Due to the secretive nature of the month’s operations in the 1920s and the lack of interest from academics, few sites have been formally investigated or documented.
But due to the secretive nature of the paper and the lack of interest from academics, few sites have been officially researched or documented.
“A lot of archaeologists tend to dismiss them because they think they’re, you know, too cold to really bother, or there’s too much documentary evidence that we shouldn’t do archeology,” Parker told The Post and Courier.
Parker also found distillery operations in the woods.
In November, she led a team of volunteers back into the forest, where they found seven more stills.
Last month, they drove to Hell Hole Swamp and found a metal barrel and hose, ash blocks and other debris.
The ash blocks were often laid to maintain the rigidity of the ground so that the mixture could be heated from below.
An architectural historian dated the ash blocks in the 1920s, based on their size and composition.
A 12-foot well that ensured its operation was also discovered in the area, along with tin, coal and other signs of heating elements used to heat the puree inside the still.
Unlike most photographs, it was not located near a stream or other body of water, which is why Villeponteaux could have created a weel.
An architectural historian dated the ash blocks of the site to the 1920s, based on their size and composition.
During the ban, Berkeley County was infamous nationally as a hotbed of illicit distillation: in 1929, pro-temperament Governor John Gardiner Richard declared the county “a painful pain in South Carolina.”
Hell Hole Swamp was one of the largest suppliers of alcoholic beverages in the Chicago era, according to Charleston magazine, with Capone visiting the area in an elegant limousine to check on operations.
In 1930, the Charleston Daily Mail wrote that the swamp emanated “an aroma of spirits that smelled all over the southeast.”
Archaeologists believe they discovered the remains of a moonlight that still belongs to Benjamin Villeponteaux, a notorious for Al Capone (pictured) in the 1920s and 1930s.
Volunteers found the remains less than a kilometer from Ben Villeponteaux’s home. The park was frequently located near an operator’s property, Parker reported, “to protect the camera from accidental discovery.” In the picture: Barrels used in the operation of the month
The corn whiskey will be taken out of the swamp, loaded onto the railway wagons and transported to Windy City.
The Parker team discovered that the artifacts were found less than a mile from the location of the home of Benjamin Villeponteaux, one of the largest moonwashers in the country, which led her to believe the operation was his.
Parkers were frequently located near operators’ property, Parker found in his research, “to protect the camera from accidental discovery and the operator permanently from additional copyright infringement fees.”
The Villeponteaux clan was among one of the few families in the region successful enough to pay the authorities to look elsewhere.
“These operators were made up of some of the oldest families in Berkeley County,” Parker wrote. They competed for control through networks controlled by Al Capone himself, and the frequent and violent confrontations between the two rivals led to the nickname of “Bloody Berkeley” county.
Villeponteaux was killed in a shootout with the McKnight family, but Parker believes rival pockets probably continued to use his still after his death.
It is not clear how long this special configuration was used.
The ban was repealed in 1933, but high alcohol taxes in South Carolina kept monthly in business for years afterward.
Although the Ban was repealed in 1933, bootlegging continued in Lowcounty for years. Pictured: Government officials standing next to the operation still outside Chattanooga, Tennessee
Parker says abandoned liquor beds are often mistaken for piles of garbage, but they have several distinct features, including an oven or fireplace for heating and stones or blocks to lean on.
There may also be jars of broken stone or glass, nails, rivets, tin fragments, rubber pipes or hoses, drums or barrel rings, buckets and even used clothes and ammunition.
Parker continues to comb the forest and hopes to find some personal belongings of his relatives, in order to get a clearer picture of who they were.
Local volunteers also shared stories about family members who were moonwashers, some of whom were enslaved.
“They said, ‘Yeah, you know, a lot of our ancestors drank alcohol … they did moonlight here,'” Parker told the newspaper.
“They did much smaller operations than maybe some white planter families that made moonlight, but they are still part of that culture.”