Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 4 - Echoes in Action

Echo 20 - When the Pines Ran Dry

The Spoils of War

Andrew Brinkley and the Moonshine Trade of Anderson Creek Township

For generations, the longleaf pines of the North Carolina Sandhills had provided a livelihood. From their resin came turpentine, tar, pitch, and rosin, products that sustained families and helped build an industry.

But the forests could not give forever.

Years of harvesting depleted the pines, and as the old economy changed, the need to earn a living remained. By the turn of the twentieth century, much of the original longleaf pine forest had disappeared, and the once-thriving naval stores industry had lost much of its prominence in North Carolina.

For Black families in the Sandhills, already facing limited economic opportunities, the decline of traditional livelihoods created additional hardships.

The land could sustain a family, but it did not always provide the cash a family needed.

Whiskey production offered another means of earning money. Corn could be grown, distilled, and sold, transforming an agricultural product into something with a ready market. The trade was illegal, and the consequences of being caught could be severe. Yet for some, the potential income made the risk worth taking.

Whether the decline of the turpentine industry directly influenced Andrew Brinkley's involvement in the whiskey trade is unknown. But his story unfolded in a region where the old ways of making a living were changing.

And in 1913, Andrew Brinkley, a Black man associated with Anderson Creek Township in Harnett County, would find himself at the center of a newspaper account celebrating the capture of a substantial whiskey operation.

The newspaper headline announced:

A BIG STILL CAPTURED.

United States Marshal D. C. Downing and Deputy Sheriff J. McD. Monaghan had departed Fayetteville on a Monday night, traveling to a location described as three and one-half miles above Manchester and approximately sixteen miles from Fayetteville.

Manchester served as a geographic landmark, but the Brinkley family associated with this history lived in Anderson Creek Township, not in the town itself.

The officers discovered a sixty-five-gallon whiskey still, eleven large tubs, twelve cooling worms, a heater worm, and a doubler. They also found seven hundred gallons of beer and another seven hundred gallons of mash.

The quantity of materials suggested a substantial operation, one requiring equipment, supplies, labor, and some means of distributing the finished product.

After collecting the equipment, the officers began their return journey around two o'clock Tuesday morning.

Somewhere on the Fayetteville side of Manchester, they encountered Andrew Brinkley traveling with a mule and wagon. Inside the wagon was a keg containing thirty gallons of corn liquor.

The officers arrested Andrew, whom the newspaper identified as the owner of the still.

The article did not explain how ownership was established or whether Andrew was transporting the liquor for himself or others.

By approximately 6:45 that morning, the officers had returned to Fayetteville with their confiscated equipment and whiskey.

The newspaper celebrated the seizure, describing the officers' haul as the “Spoils of War.”

For Andrew Brinkley, however, the consequences were only beginning.

From the Wagon to the Chain Gang

By the spring of 1913, Andrew had been prosecuted for violating North Carolina's prohibition laws and sentenced to eighteen months on the county roads.

In the Jim Crow South, a sentence to the road gang meant more than confinement. Prisoners performed demanding physical labor building and maintaining public roads, often under harsh conditions and armed supervision.

Andrew had served approximately ten days of his sentence when authorities removed him from the Cumberland County chain gang and transported him to Raleigh.

He was needed as a witness in federal court.

The case involved a man named Joe Harvey.

Newspaper reports published in June 1913 indicated that Harvey had been riding with Andrew when officers encountered the wagon but had fled before being apprehended later.

Andrew subsequently identified Harvey in federal court as the man who had accompanied him. The proceedings reportedly concerned the unlawful removal of whiskey from outside a bonded warehouse.

The exact relationship between Andrew and Harvey remains uncertain. Were they partners in the whiskey trade, acquaintances, or simply traveling together? The surviving accounts do not provide enough information to establish their relationship or the circumstances under which Andrew testified.

In December 1913, Andrew's name appeared again in connection with a possible pardon. The notice referenced his eighteen-month sentence, but whether a pardon was ultimately granted remains unknown.

The newspapers leave us with an incomplete account of what happened to Andrew after his conviction and testimony.

Yet, the whiskey trade continued.

An Industry That Endured

Andrew Brinkley's arrest was one episode in a much larger history of whiskey production in the Sandhills.

Family oral histories suggest that the enterprise continued in Anderson Creek Township long after his encounter with the law.

By the next generation, moonshining was remembered as more than an undertaking by isolated individuals. According to family accounts, participants maintained lawyers on retainer and provided assistance to families when someone was arrested.

Other recollections associate some proceeds from the industry with the construction of local churches, although those accounts have not been independently verified.

These stories suggest an underground economy in which financial opportunity, legal risk, and mutual obligation existed side by side. They do not establish that Andrew's operation and the later enterprise were a single, continuous organization, but they preserve a dimension of community life seldom found in newspaper reports of whiskey raids.

What the Newspaper Left Behind

The newspapers recorded the equipment, the whiskey, the arrests, and the sentences. They preserved the names of the officers and the details of their enforcement efforts.

But they revealed little about the lives of the people involved.

Andrew Brinkley's story did not end with his conviction or his testimony against Joe Harvey. An August 1914 newspaper account reported that "Bell Brinkley" was allowed $12.50 for Andrew's burial expenses. The same account stated that Andrew had served eleven months of a twelve-month sentence on the county roads, a discrepancy from earlier reporting that described an eighteen-month sentence.

A subsequent newspaper report, published in February 1915 under the heading “Outside Poor,” again recorded the $12.50 burial allowance, this time identifying Bella Brinkley. The term outside poor referred to individuals who received public assistance while living outside the county poorhouse. Such assistance could also include burial expenses for those whose families lacked the means to cover them.

These records establish that Andrew Brinkley had died by August 1914, little more than a year after his arrest and imprisonment. They do not reveal the precise date or circumstances of his death, nor do they explain the discrepancy in his reported sentence.

The burial allowance provides a final, sobering entry in the surviving newspaper record. The man once identified as the owner of a substantial whiskey operation was now the subject of a modest county expenditure to cover his burial.

Yet Andrew's death did not mark the end of the whiskey trade in Anderson Creek Township.

Family oral histories preserve accounts of an enterprise that continued into another generation, one in which participants reportedly maintained lawyers on retainer and provided assistance to families when someone was arrested. These recollections suggest an economic network whose influence extended beyond the production and distribution of liquor.

The authorities measured their success in gallons seized, equipment confiscated, and men brought before the courts. The newspapers documented Andrew's arrest, his imprisonment, and ultimately the expense of his burial.

Family memory preserved something else: the economic struggles, relationships, and obligations that existed beyond the still.

The longleaf pines had once provided a living. As that economy faded, people found other ways to survive, sometimes outside the boundaries of the law.

Andrew Brinkley died in 1914, but the larger story of the moonshine economy in Anderson Creek Township continued long after his death.

The lawmen carried away the still. They did not carry away the story.